"I think what you look like is a standard poodle and I love standard poodles."

A model for a perfect husband, revealed in "My cool cancer story/A year after losing my hair and self image to cancer, I put on my $5,000 prescription wig and look at myself and say, 'THERE she is.'" (WaPo video, free access).

"He’s a good-looking guy. He looked really, very handsome last night. Some people look better in person? He looked great. He looked really nice, and I told him that."

Who said it? And who did he say it about?

"Vivague Ramaslimey backpedaling more than his receding hairline."

Tweeted Nalin Haley, quoted in "One Haley Who Isn’t Afraid to Let Insults Fly Nikki Haley’s 22-year-old son, Nalin, has hit the campaign trail and is taking shots at his mother’s political attackers" (NYT).

Nalin, who obscures his own hairline with massive bangs...

... even as high-foreheaded folk lurk behind him, doubles down on the receding-hairline theme:

Someone help me spot the difference I’m having trouble… pic.twitter.com/AiM6OK7ia5

— Nalin Haley (@Nalin_Haley) November 9, 2023

Ha ha. Hilarious. Are we allowed to make fun of how people look? More importantly, should candidates unleash their handsome offspring to hurl insults at their parent's opponents? If the answer is yes, then tremble at the thought of Trump releasing the Barron. But who can imagine Barron launching out onto the political landscape with blithe insults and memes? When Barron springs forth it will be with grandeur and momentousness... won't it?

"Augustus Gloop now ‘enormous’ instead of ‘fat’, Mrs Twit no longer ‘ugly’ and Oompa Loompas are gender neutral."

"Roald Dahl books rewritten to remove language deemed offensive" (The Guardian).

Hundreds of changes were made to the original text – and some passages not written by Dahl have been added.... 

In The Witches, a paragraph explaining that witches are bald beneath their wigs ends with the new line: “There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.... 

References to “female” characters have disappeared. Miss Trunchbull in Matilda, once a “most formidable female”, is now a “most formidable woman”....

"People of no ethical background for you are easy prey, and they’re your line of business—patronizers, snobs and highbrows, whoever they think they are."

"But you understand them as geometrical bodies, with solid angles and planes, and you know how to make them see wonderful things, and you can make music that drives them mad. You’ve got the character of Saturn and the spirit of Venus. Passion and desire, you give it to them under the counter. Your guidelines are simple, and you rule nothing out. Strip yourself bare and dance the sword dance, buck naked inside of a canvas tent, fenced in, where the town royalty, the top brass and leading citizens, bald as eggs throw their money down, sometimes their entire bankroll."

From Chapter 47 of Bob Dylan's "Philosophy of Modern Song." 

That's Bob, talking about — what songs did you think he was going to talk about? — "Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves."

In the song the men of the town would lay their money down. But for Bob, they throw it down, those bastards. And they're all bald. As eggs. But they are understood as geometrical bodies, with solid angles and planes. You try doing that with an egg. Bob, he's a genius. He's like Picasso. He sees the angles and planes in what, for you, is ovoid.

"I'm surprised this story didn't mention that Black women have been wearing their hair shaved to the scalp for decades."

"I'm African American and first cut my hair super short in the mid-1980s and quickly went to peach fuzz. I wore it like that until 5 years ago. Back in the 80s I got occasional stares, but also a lot of compliments, especially from men. By the 90s, I was just one in the crowd. This look is nothing new." 

That's the second-highest-rated comment at "Shaved Heads Have People Buzzing/A shaved head still has the power to shock" (NYT).

Third-highest-rated — though a search of the page for "Jada" turns up nothing: "G.I. Jane 2, can’t wait to see it!" 

Top-rated: "Bald and balding people need to resist this egregious form of appropriation."

"Particularly for his wife. And she’s got alopecia. So… not a happy home life."

I got through the entire blogging day yesterday without mentioning Will Smith, but this morning, reading the comments in last night's cafe, I took the prompt to watch a clip of Joe Rogan talking about it. 

That's a 15-minute clip. I still intend to watch the rest of it, but 5 1/2 minutes in, I found myself wondering what Ricky Gervais has said about the incident. Ricky is brilliant, and he's a stand-up comedian who's hosted awards shows and roasted the big stars. Here he is at the 2020 Golden Globes. 

I would expect Ricky to defend the role of the comedian versus the stars, but all he did was one little thing, retweet this tweet from the British "Office" twitter feed that shows the tiniest clip from an old episode of the show:

“And she's got alopecia. So... not a happy homelife." pic.twitter.com/b1NYWWIncX

— David Brent Music (@DavidBrentMovie) March 28, 2022

ADDED: From that 2020 Golden Globes performance: 

 

"Let's go out with a bang. Let's have a laugh at your expense — shall we? Remember: They're just jokes. We're all going to die soon. And there's no sequel."

Oh, but the "just jokes" defense — just jokes at the expense of the hyper-privileged — that's not going to work anymore. It's the Era of That's Not Funny, and the preening empaths are out there in force telling you never ever ever ever to joke about anything that's actually physically wrong with a person. Or something like that. Can we still laugh at bald men? At bald white women? Who knows? I'm guessing we've reached end of the entire tradition of comedians on stage at awards shows making fun of the stars for the amusement of the little people out there in the dark. Whoever they get to emcee will be telling the stars they are wonderful and beautiful. Will Smith smacked the comedy out of the whole show. Get all the jokes out ya fucking mouth, from now until the end of Hollywood.

Chris Rock — punched by Will Smith for a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith's hair — once made a documentary about black people and their hair.

Here's the trailer for "Good Hair": 

 

Here's Rock making the joke, Will chuckling, and Jada not amused, and then Will striding onto the stage and hitting/"hitting" Rock:

 

At 0:42, I felt sure what I'd seen was a fake "Hollywood" punch. Rock stood planted in position and even leaned his face forward, then — it seemed — threw his head back after the seeming contact. 

And Rock recovered so quickly, still smiling, and chattered out "Will Smith just smacked the shit out of me." But if it was scripted, would he have said "shit"? I haven't been watching the Oscars in recent years, but back in the days when I used to care enough to live-blog the hours-long show, I had the tag "fleeting expletives" to keep track of the litigation that arose after Cher's saying "fuck" at the 2002 Billboard awards activated the FCC. Who can even remember what the Supreme Court ultimately did about that threat to free speech? 

But when Will Smith got back to his seat and proceeded to yell "Keep my wife's name out ya fucking mouth! Keep my wife's name out ya fucking mouth!" it was hard to believe it was scripted. But, as I said, I don't know where we are with fleeting expletives these days, and maybe we are right where it would be scripted precisely because it would create the illusion that it was unscripted. 

Then Smith wins the best actor Oscar, and we get to listen to his speech, which give us another chance to assess the real-or-fakeness of the punch/"punch"/slap/"slap":

But if he's such a great actor — do we really still believe the stars who get the statuette are "great actors"? — he should be able to sell a scripted acceptance speech with faux-sincere lines about his being a "river of love" or some such nonsense and to cry seemingly real tears of apology.

What makes me think it was real is that it makes Smith look bad. He looked ugly yelling "Keep my wife's name out ya fucking mouth!" And he overshadowed his own winning of the Oscar. Why would anyone do that? The best explanation is that he lost his temper. But exactly why did he lose his temper? I think we'd need to know more about his relationship with his wife. Remember he was laughing at the joke, and she was looking grim. The camera wasn't on them continuously, but I imagine she said something to him or gave him a look that meant you'd better act now or you are not a man. 

Finally, it's sad that the Smiths aren't proud of Jada's hair. She boldly shaves it down to almost nothing and that's a way of expressing great confidence in one's own beauty. I'm seeing some articles talking about her alopecia, but if you go to that link, you'll see she has a thin line of baldness across the top, and it's something that would be hidden if she didn't shave her head. She's highlighting the beauty of her face and the elegant structure of her head. She's not like those women in Chris Rock's movie who spend so much time at the hairdressers, use harsh chemicals, and cause so much importation of human hair from India. 

Jada Pinkett Smith could have had any wig she wanted. To go to the Oscars with a shaved head is to make a strong statement that you think this is your best look. Chris Rock said she could play in a sequel to "G.I. Jane," which means she could play Demi Moore's iconic role. Demi Moore is famously beautiful. 

The best response to the joke would have been an imperious smile that meant: Yes, I know I am beautiful. Not: My husband will now punch you in the nose!

How the Democratic candidates responded to prompt what's "the biggest misconception about you."

There are different ways to interpret this invitation, so let's analyze and judge the candidates by the choices they made.

These are not in the order they appear in the transcript. I've grouped them in the way that fits my analysis.

First up: Biden and Bloomberg:

BIDEN: I have more hair than I think I do.

BLOOMBERG: Misconception, that I'm six feet tall.

Both of these men used the opportunity to point to a physical flaw that they've probably been sensitive about all their adult life. It's a well-known flaw. But it's not a misconception to believe that Biden has struggled with hair loss and Bloomberg is short. So they had to restate the flaw to make the answer fit.

One approach would have been to exaggerate the flaw so that it's wrong. That is, Biden could have said: The misconception is that I'm completely bald! And Bloomberg could have said: Some people say I'm only 4 foot 9! Now, nobody has that misconception, but I'd find it very funny.

Bloomberg exaggerates in the other direction, and nobody has that misconception, but he's imagining himself as a tall man, and in doing so, conceding that he is not. There's a kind of self-deprecation in that, even though it seems to be sneaking in a boast. But it's not a boast, because we absolutely know he's not 6 feet tall.

"Everything I do is political," says Representative Ayanna Pressley, about revealing that she is, in fact, completely bald.

There's no explanation of why she lost all her hair — was it traction alopecia from wearing tight braids? — but she does explain why she's choosing to reveal that she is bald, rather than simply hiding it by continuing to wear wigs. The explanation is that everything she does is political, and that, she says, pushed her to talk about it and actually to show it (which you can see at 6:00 in the video).

I think she looks fine being out-and-proud bald (other than that she's projecting sadness and loss). I wish more people who go bald would be openly bald. If you're bald and you choose to wear wigs, it may be a good idea to wear a perfectly wiggy wig — like they say in the old song, a "wig-hat" — so that there's no expression of hiding or shame.

I think of Andy Warhol. He wore wigs from 1955 on, and they were very wiggy-looking wigs. From "The Andy Warhol Diaries":

"How did everyone like the salad? I thought it was OK, but it needed just a little more scalp oil and a pinch of dandruff."

Look out! It's the wit of Amy Klobuchar. She'll never shake that eating-salad-with-a-comb story, so she's going with self-deprecating humor.

You never know. I once thought Donald Trump could never be elected President because his hair was so weird.

Maybe there's something mystical about hair — connecting celebrities to the people. I remember how The Beatles got to us with hair. And in politics, it does seem that the candidate with the best hair wins.

It might jinx you to come out and say it, of course. John Kerry, on his first day of campaigning with his veep choice, the ill-fated John Edwards, proclaimed:

"We've got better vision. We've got better ideas. We've got real plans. We've got a better sense of what's happening to America. And we've got better hair. I'll tell you, that goes a long way."

My blogged reaction at the time, July 2004, was:

That bulbous wig of a hairdo Kerry's been using to offset his lengthy face is good hair? That flappy, fine fringe accentuating Edwards' babyish looks is good hair? Please! For decades, I've been groaning about the outdated Beatle haircuts worn by aging Baby Boomers. Long hair is a young man's style that makes an older man look like an unattractive woman! Beatle styling, with combed down bangs in front, belongs in the 1960s--early 70s at the latest. It's as if 20 years from now, some guy were to run for President and wear his hair like this. I realize practically every man in Congress is making the same mistake of keeping the Beatle do alive, but could someone please tell these people how terribly estranged from any sense of style these men are? The only one of the current candidates with a respectable hairstyle is George Bush....

And George Bush won, so by my lights the candidate with the best hair did win in 2004, as in all the other elections, including the ones with our last bald president, Dwight D. Eisenhower.



The question of Trump's hair was immensely complicated in 2016, when his opponent was a woman whose oft-changing hair had been a matter of public inquiry for a quarter century. But she chose to forefront the hair comparison. She made a whole routine out of it with Jimmy Fallon...

She says (slightly garbling what must have been a prepared line): "Have you ever been able to let him touch — let you touch his hair?" And then: "Have you ever really touched it?" When Jimmy says no, she says: "You wanna touch mine?" Jimmy grabs a hank and gives it a sturdy pull. The gesture says: This is not a wig. And he shouts: "It's real! It's real!" He waves his hands about joyously and — with the band playing celebratory music – adds: "And it's got wave and it's fantastic, you guys, and it smells great!" He's laughing heartily and she's laughing heartily.

... and that led Jimmy Fallon — when Trump later appeared on his show — to grab Trump's hair the same way he'd grabbed Hillary's. And that normalized Trump's ultra-weird hair.

But back to Amy Klobuchar. That comb is the most famous thing about her, and she can't lose it. She's got to find a way to work with it. And the Democrats need a way to defeat the President with the absurd hair. Well, Amy's got the comb. If rock breaks scissors, and scissors cut paper, and paper covers rock, then surely, comb conquers hair.

What American gender politics has done to my mind.

I wanted to read Maureen Dowd's new column, "Sick to Your Stomach? #MeToo" (NYT). It begins:

Somewhere in the dim recesses of my mind, I can recall a time when the sight of that white dome thrilled me. As a teenager, working for a New York congressman, I felt privileged to walk the same marble corridors where some of America’s most revered leaders had walked.

I swear that when I read that, I thought the "white dome" was the bald head of the white man she was working for. I don't know how many more sentences I had to read before I realized the "white dome" was the Capitol building.

I read the sentence out loud to Meade, to see if he got tripped up in the same way. First, he heard "white dome" as "Whitedom" (which I guess is the dominion of white people). I read it again with better enunciation, and even though he did (he admitted later) know it meant the Capitol, he said, because he knows my mind so well, "I think of the heads of 7 bald men." That is, he knew I pictured a bald head, and he was teasing me about my oft-stated remedy for the hiccups. (It works. Try it. Think of the heads of 7 bald men.)

But enough about my mind. How about Maureen Dowd's mind? Meade got stuck on the first phrase, "Somewhere in the dim recesses of my mind..." Soon, he was singing "In the dim recesses of Maureen Dowd's mind..." to the tune of The Grateful Deads' "Attics of My Life":



Here are the lyrics, in case you want to write your own parody:

In the attics of my life
Full of cloudy dreams unreal
Full of tastes no tongue can know
And lights no eye can see
When there was no ear to hear
You sang to me

I have spent my life
Seeking all that's still unsung
Bent my ear to hear the tune
And closed my eyes to see
When there were no strings to play
You played to me...

2 more verses at the link, to Genius, where there's only one annotation, on the line I bold-faced, above:

You fill to the full with most beautiful splendor those souls who close their eyes that they may see

St. Denis’s Prayer: A fourteenth-century poem from Saint Denis’s The Cloud of Unknowing.

IN THE COMMENTS: Angle-Dyne said:

Nobody knows who wrote The Cloud of Unknowing, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't St. Denis.

I said:

Thanks. I was wondering about that. I've read "The Cloud of Unknowing" — one of the greatest books ever — and when I read it it was anonymous. Somehow I was ready to believed that they'd tracked down the author!

The link in the Genius annotation goes to a page that identifies the unknown author of "The Cloud of Unknowing" as having also written "The Mystical Theology of Saint Denis." That seems to be the source of the confusion.

ADDED: I think the problem is that there's one book with "The Cloud of Unknowing" that also has "The Mystical Theology of Saint Denis" and the text of the St. Denis prayer, which is properly quoted above. Did Saint Denis actually write those words? I don't know. But I did look up St. Denis, and I have a better understanding of the illustration:

Denis is the most famous cephalophore in Christian legend, with a popular story claiming that the decapitated bishop picked up his head and walked several miles while preaching a sermon on repentance....

A cephalophore is what it sounds like — someone who carries his own severed head. You never hear about that happening anymore, but people used to say it did:

A cephalophore (from the Greek for "head-carrier") is a saint who is generally depicted carrying his or her own head. In Christian art, this was usually meant to signify that the subject in question had been martyred by beheading....

[T]he folklorist Émile Nourry counted no less than 134 examples of cephalophory in French hagiographic literature alone....

Aristotle is at pains to discredit the stories of talking heads and to establish the physical impossibility, with the windpipe severed from the lung. "Moreover," he adds, "among the barbarians, where heads are chopped off with great rapidity, nothing of the kind has ever occurred."

Hat talk.

From the transcript of the Trump/Theresa May press conference today, I enjoyed this banter about the jaunty straw fedora one reporter was wearing:

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I like your hat.

Q Thank you, sir. (Laughter.) Mr. President as —

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Good without it, too. Good head of hair. Good solid head of hair.

Q I don’t have a good solid head of hair, but thank you.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: No, I know exactly what you have, Jeff.

As we're about to see, the reporter is bald. Trump is funning with him.

Q (Laughs). Going into your meeting —

PRIME MINISTER MAY: Appeal to the rest of us. (Laughter.)

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Come on, Jeff. Take it off. Will you show, please?

Q Oh, boy. (Laughs.) Okay.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I like you better without the hat. Go ahead.

Q Here we go. (Laughter.)

And the reporter — who looked distinctly cooler with the hat on — goes along with the exposure as a bald guy.

Was that funny or a little mean of Trump, who knew perfectly well that the guy in the snazzy hat was bald? It wasn't as bad as the time — back in '06 — when George W. Bush tried to josh with a reporter who he assumed was wearing sunglasses to look cool and it turned out the man wore sunglasses because he was blind:

"Are you going to ask that question with shades on?" Bush asked.

"I can take them off," [Peter] Wallsten offered.

"I'm interested in the shade look," replied Bush. "Seriously."

Wallsten said, "All right, I'll keep it, then."

"For the viewers," the president said to the TV cameras, "there's no sun." Some in the press corps laughed.

"I guess it depends on your perspective," replied Wallsten, Zen-like.

But Bush absolutely did not know the man was blind. Imagine if Bush had known and had talked to the blind man as if he were wearing "shades" to look cool! That would be more like Trump, that edge of sadism to the humor. Trump knew the man was bald. Of course, baldness is a much more normal thing to tease someone about that blindness. And Trump — who's been mocked so much about his hair — may deserve extra latitude on the topic of hair.

The plot against Scott Adams.

This is the second Jeff Bezos media property to slander me with fake news in one day. In 48 hours I have been called by "journalists" a holocaust denier, a Men's Rights Advocate, ALT-RIGHT, racist, "former cartoonist" and now . . . pro-rape? Watch carefully how this works. https://t.co/xyyQSxxa6q

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) April 24, 2018

I like the discussion under that tweet:

"Oh, I try like hell to hide that bald spot, folks. I work hard at it. It doesn’t look bad. Hey, we are hanging in, we are hanging in, we are hanging in there. Right? Together, we are hanging in.”

That's Trump at CPAC. I found that at the NYT, which fleshes out the wisp of a story with other details about Trump's efforts around his bald spot, such as the time in June 2015 when he had a woman at some campaign event touch his hair and answer the question "Is that sucker real?" Her answer was "It’s thin, but it’s real."

"My board is thinking of firing me. All I’m asking, is let me take a leave of absence and get into heavy therapy and counseling."

"Whether it be in a facility or somewhere else, allow me to resurrect myself with a second chance," begged Harvey Weinstein, in email allegedly sent to "high-level Hollywood executives at the studios, networks and talent agencies" (right before his board did fire him).

A lot of the allegations are false as you know but given therapy and counseling as other people have done, I think I’d be able to get there. 

There? Exactly where? I guess: To the resurrection!

I could really use your support or just your honesty if you can’t support me. But if you can, I need you to send a letter to my private gmail address. The letter would only go to the board and no one else. 

Because privately sent email will stay put, like a penis in a resurrected man's pants. 

We believe what the board is trying to do is not only wrong but might be illegal and would destroy the company. 

Who's "we"?

If you could write this letter backing me, getting me the help and time away I need, and also stating your opposition to the board firing me, it would help me a lot. I am desperate for your help. Just give me the time to have therapy. Do not let me be fired. If the industry supports me, that is all I need. With all due respect, I need the letter today.

It's not as if the executives could give him a legal opinion that might scare the board into thinking they don't have the power to fire him. So what argument does he make that might induce the tycoons to help? He doesn't offer to exercise any power for them. He simply presents himself as a frightened desperate man who wants empathy. Yet there isn't a word of empathy for the women he hurt.

There is a glimmer of inspirational material in the idea of "a second chance." It makes me think of that F. Scott Fitzgerald line from "The Last Tycoon": "There are no second acts in American lives."

There's no context for that line. It appears among fragments for the unfinished book, like this:

My blue dream of being in a basket like a kite held by a rope against the wind. It’s fun to stretch and see the blue heavens spreading once more, spreading azure thighs for adventure.

•

Girl like a record with a blank on the other side.

•

There are no second acts in American lives.

•

Tragedy of these men was that nothing in their lives had really bitten deep at all.
Bald Hemingway characters.

•

wily plagiarist
exigent overlordship
not one survived the castration

"Before, it was more punk.... Now, people are starting to think maybe a shaved head is actually really chic and elegant."

"It’s not just for skinheads."

Women shaving their heads is a big new thing now, according to the NYT.

“Individuality and androgyny are certainly not a new thing in fashion, but the trend has swung back around due to a larger gender conversation,” said Alastair McKimm, the fashion director at i-D....

“A girl with a buzz cut is like Jaden Smith wearing a skirt,” [said shaved-headed model  Tamy Glauser], referring to Will Smith’s son, who has publicly challenged gender norms through fashion. Ms. Glauser says that people often make assumptions about sexual orientation based on appearances, “but the two have nothing to do with each other. I think it’s good for society to see people going against what we’ve all been taught is the way we’re supposed to dress for our sex and our orientation,” she said. “You realize there’s no right or wrong.”

It's funny that something like this can be made to seem new. I've heard remarks like Glauser's for half a century. And here's a book from a quarter century ago — "Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siecle," by Elaine Showalter  — about breaking the gender norms over 100 years ago. Excellent book, by the way. I read it when it came out. What I remember as Showalter's message is — and I might be misremembering — that the most intelligent and sophisticated people find themselves in the middle, within gender ambiguity. It's the cruder, dumber people at the poles of gender differentiation.

Back to the NYT article:

“The first time [I shaved my head], it was an impulsive decision,” said Mackenzie Jones, 20, who has kept a shaved head since she was 15, when a bad breakup inspired the act. “But when I look back now, I think I did it — without knowing it at the time — because it was the ultimate rejection of the male gaze.”

Besides the obvious convenience and the aesthetic appeal, Ms. Jones said, she has stuck to the shorn style because, particularly when she was younger, it helped filter out potential suitors who weren’t “on my level.” (Plenty of guys, she adds, are into the look.)

Suitors! I love the notion that within this supposedly new way of living, there are still characters called "suitors."

Dressing for one’s self, not one’s paramour, has been a theme in fashion for several seasons now....

Dressing for yourself has been the theme in fashion writing for as long as I can remember, and I have read a lot of fashion writing. (I had a job once — in the 1970s — that required me to read all the fashion magazines.)

And add "paramour" that picture of life as we live it now, along with those "suitors." Paramour and the Suitors — it could be the name of your band.

Practical advice from the article: You'd better make sure you have a good-shaped head before you shave off your hair. It is one way to set yourself apart: I have a well-formed head, and you don't know what hideous form those other ladies are hiding under all that hair.

“A lot of women are very attached to their hair,” Ms. Jones said. “When I was in a bad relationship, my hair was like this mask. Once it’s all gone, you don’t have anything left to change. You have to look yourself in the face and deal with it. It’s really transformative.”

ADDED: From the 60s:

Trying to make the dump-Trump movement look organic.

On "Meet the Press" today, Chuck Todd asked his panel of commentators, "How real is the Dump Trump movement inside the Republican party?" Mark Halperin (of NBC) said "it's real" — not that it's likely to work, but to make it work...

The key... is to not let this be something seen as led by Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, but led by the delegates themselves. There is this movement that you mentioned at the top of the show. Their hope is that that catches on, and they're willing to go--

Chuck Todd popped in with the perfect word:

That it looks organic.

Halperin repeats Todd's word:

That it looks organic and it looks like it's grassroots and that the delegates can trump the voters more easily than people in Washington. Trump talks about it being illegal, it's not illegal. If the delegates decide to do this, they can....

Gwen Ifill (of PBS News Hour) — referring to an interview earlier in the show — didn't think it could look organic:

I don't know after watching that interview with Paul Ryan how you can believe that they can make this seem organic. If you want to lead a movement, you've got to have leaders of that movement. I don't think we have leaders in this Congress. I think they all want to not answer, as we saw Mitch McConnell do. I think the idea that somehow, from the grassroots, people are just going to reach up and do what the leadership wants has never proven to be true.

Jose Diaz-Balart (of MSNBC and Telemundo) likened the effort to seem organic to a balding guy's use of a comb-over:

This reminds me of the, and my dad had this, the big comb-over, you know?... The person with the comb-over thinks you think it looks natural. And that it really is that way. But when you're looking at the person, you're saying, "That's a big comb-over." This thing is being organic and that it comes from the bottom up is a big comb-over. It's a big comb-over. We can see it, everybody's going to see it. And you can say what you wish, if it's coming from all these organized groups, it's a comb-over.

"And then when you get out of it you realize, oh, well, that... was just silliness."

"And when that occurred to me, I felt so much better and I realized, geez, I don’t think I care that much about television anymore."

Said David Letterman, who's been doing some introspection and come to see that it just wasn't true that the show was so important.

He looks completely different now too, with shiny baldness balancing his beard.

I could retire. What would I realize? The danger is you'd realize you preferred working.

"I thought I would have some trouble, some emotional trouble, or some feeling of displacement, but I realized, hey, that’s not my problem anymore. And I have felt much better. It’s something for younger men and women to take on."

If you knew that's what you were going to realize, you'd go ahead and retire. But it you end up realizing you'd prefer working, it's too late to go back. And yet it's a delusion to think you're maintaining your options by continuing to work, because every day that passes is a day gone forever, not saved for future use. You either worked or did not work on that day.

"Trump doesn’t look fastidiously tailored, which is probably one of the many reasons why the average voter can listen to him pound his chest and still relate."

"Trump may have his name plastered on assorted buildings, but he looks more like an ordinary, angry middle-management guy," writes Robin Givhan, criticizing Donald Trump's looks after criticizing Donald Trump for criticizing somebody else's looks.

The somebody else is an unnamed "guy" who "went crazy" about something Trump said about food stamps. Said guy was "seriously overweight." Givhan takes Trump to task for "fat-shaming" this man:

[M]ocking someone’s weight cuts at the core of personal appearance, societal prejudices and a fraught sense of insecurity that by all rights should not exist but stubbornly does. 

By all rights? Really? Isn't there at least a smidgen of justification for observing that the federal government spends our money on a program that feeds people who are, demonstrably, eating too much? Trump used a fairly respectful expression. He said:

You know, it’s amazing. I mentioned food stamps and that guy who is seriously overweight went crazy. He went crazy. . .  That’s an amazing sight.

It's not like he said I mentioned food stamps and that fat pig — huuuge pig — went crazy....

Givhan says "It is a fashion insult — of the pettiest sort," before proceeding to criticize the fit of Trump's suits, the color and length of his tie, and the strategy of the combover. She's not taking a 2-wrongs-make-a-right/tit-for-tat position. Trump's insult of the "seriously overweight" "guy" was "a visceral, intimate insult.... So Trump’s fat-shaming of a protester begs one to consider Trump’s own appearance." He was asking for it.

But does Givhan really need justification to launch into an analysis of how some politician looks? That's her beat as a columnist and has been for years. Since when does she need to build a foundation for her fashion critiques by demonstrating that her target has done fashion insults that cut to the core?

I had to think for a few seconds about that, and what I came up with was that she wanted to criticize Trump for talking about how a guy looks, but that risked hypocrisy, since she continually writes about how people look, and she's criticized for that. How to attack Trump without exposing herself to the same attack? And I think her first reaction to Trump's pointing out that some guy is fat was probably that Trump himself is fat. But it's not her taste level to write that somebody's fat.

So Givhan processed the temptation to say that Trump is fat into the assertion Trump worries about whether he looks fat. There's this anecdote from 1999, in which Trump comically exclaimed that some photo made him look "like I weighed 500 pounds!" But I think that little story displays Trump as openly expressive, feeling free to talk about weight, and not a shame-oriented kind of person.

But Givhan places a sound bet that Washington Post readers are shame-oriented and ready to loathe Trump for prodding them where it hurts and where liberals are telling them they're entitled not to hurt. And of course they're entitled to food stamps even if they're fat. That's not even an issue to discuss. But it's what Trump was discussing.