"[T]hree large blank sheets of paper had been affixed to a wall. On the floor was a basin filled with a viscous liquid, tempera paint mixed with animal blood...."

"Then Mendieta—an energetic and diminutive woman, just five feet tall, if that—walked in, to the accompaniment of a drumbeat, dressed in a baggy white ensemble. She drenched her hands and arms in the mixture, reached to the top of one piece of paper, then forcefully smeared her limbs down the surface to make two bloody tracks, ending up on her knees on the floor. Mendieta performed this action twice more before absenting herself, leaving the audience to contemplate the visceral imprints she left behind.... It’s impossible to view Mendieta’s output and not think about the physical stamina and cultural daring that she must have had—not only to make art from her exposed body but also to hide herself away and make work that might only ever please or satisfy herself...."

From "Ana Mendieta, the Body Artist/Decades after her death, her bold innovations are finally coming into focus" (The New Yorker).

"As a Frida Kahlo portrait glared protectively at me over Madonna’s shoulder, we talked past, present, future, prayer, dicks, nutritional yeast, and more…"

Writes Mel Ottenberg, introducing "The Madonna Interview" in Interview Magazine.

EXCERPT:

OTTENBERG: When was the last time you confessed?

MADONNA: Well, every song on this record is—not every song. Some are just joy. “Love Sensation” is just joy. But a lot of the songs here are confessional.

OTTENBERG: What about the last time you confessed in a church?

MADONNA: Oh, that’s been a while.

OTTENBERG: Do you have a relationship with organized religion?

MADONNA: Well, I was raised a Catholic and I’m a cultural Catholic.

King Charles arrives at the White House.

I don't know why I find this so charming. I dreamed about King Charles last night. I felt sorry for that poor man somehow.

From Trump's speech: "For nearly two centuries before the revolution, this land was settled and forged by men and women who bore in their souls the blood and noble spirit of the British. Here on a wild and untamed continent, they set loose the ancient English love of liberty and Great Britain’s distinctive sense of glory, destiny, and pride. And that’s what it is: glory, destiny, and pride. The American patriots who pledged their lives to independence in 1776 were the heirs to this majestic inheritance. Their veins ran with Anglo-Saxon courage. Their hearts beat with an English faith in standing firm for what is right, good, and true.

"[A]s Vice President JD Vance took a podium in Pakistan and said no deal had been reached had been reached to end the war in Iran... President Trump... was surrounded by people, but Mr. Trump was somehow an isolated figure...."

"People mostly circulated around him, checking in with updates and then leaving again. For the most part, Mr. Trump sat and impassively watched blood and saliva sprayed out from the fighters beating each other silly in front of him...."

Writes Katie Rogers, "Trump Was Watching a U.F.C. Fight in Miami While Iran Talks Collapsed On his way to Florida, President Trump said it did not matter to him if a deal with Iran was reached or not: 'We win, regardless,' he said" (NYT).

Blood and saliva — I've got tags for both of those.

Trump was "surrounded." People "circulated around him." When you're a star, you can't grab what orbits around you:

"It’s a small amount, not too gory. But white people think it’s scary."

Said Ratthee Rueangpisansin, the events and marketing director of a Thai restaurant in NYC, speaking about pig blood as a soup ingredient. He's quoted in "Will Americans Get Over Their Fear of Eating Animal Blood? The ingredient — a staple of cuisines around the world — is increasingly showing up on restaurant menus and in cookbooks in the U.S."

I hate to purport to speak on behalf of all "white people," but I think it's not that we're afraid. We're disgusted.

People eat blood around the world in all kinds of ways: from France’s rich, gamy sauces and Spain’s morcilla to Swedish blood pancakes, British black pudding and the chocolate-laced blood sweets of Italy; in sausages and stews throughout Southeast Asia; in the wobbly slabs of blood tofu that are a key element in China’s hot pots and soups. Yet in the United States, most blood from slaughterhouses is processed into animal feed and fertilizer. In this era of nose-to-tail dining, when we pat ourselves on our sustainable backs for every ear, liver or trotter we dare to eat, why do we routinely pour the most vital part of the animal down the drain?

It's not down the drain. It's into animal feed and fertilizer. But maybe there is some wonderful stuff we the white people of America are missing out on.

"I love the U.S.A.!"

Jack Hughes processing the emotions of the CLUTCH overtime goal for GOLD! 👏 pic.twitter.com/TAX9U76pbK

— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) February 22, 2026

"The Discombobulator. I’m not allowed to talk about it. They never got their rockets off. They had Russian and Chinese rockets, and they never got one off."

"We came in, they pressed buttons and nothing worked. They were all set for us.”

Said Trump, quoted in "Trump reveals to The Post secret ‘discombobulator’ weapon was crucial to Venezuelan raid on Maduro" (NY Post).

Trump commented on the weapon when asked about reports this week that the Biden administration “Havana Syndrome.” Not much is known about the weapon, but those reports followed on-the-ground accounts from Venezuela describing how Maduro’s gunmen were brought to their knees, “bleeding through the nose” and vomiting blood. One member of the deposed strongman’s team of guards recounted afterward that “suddenly all our radar systems shut down without any explanation. The next thing we saw were drones, a lot of drones, flying over our positions. We didn’t know how to react.... At one point, they launched something; I don’t know how to describe it. It was like a very intense sound wave. Suddenly I felt like my head was exploding from the inside... We all started bleeding from the nose. Some were vomiting blood. We fell to the ground, unable to move. We couldn’t even stand up after that sonic weapon — or whatever it was."

"Juvenal said that being a gladiator turned an ugly man into an Adonis in women’s eyes. 'It’s the steel they love,' the poet wrote."

"Men were obsessed too. Maecenas, a patron of the arts under the emperor Augustus, discussed the warriors’ form on a carriage ride with the poet Horace; the playwright Terence complained that one of his performances had been ruined by a crowd rushing in thinking that gladiators were fighting. The Romans felt it was good luck to part a bride’s hair with a spear that had been thrust into a gladiator’s body and drank tinctures of their blood to cure epilepsy...."

From "Sex, sesterces and status — the perks of being a gladiator/Those Who Are About Die is a myth-slaying history of the world of Roman fighters by the classicist and novelist Harry Sidebottom" (London Times).

"Stanford’s top disinformation research group collapses under pressure/The Stanford Internet Observatory provided real-time analysis..."

"... on viral election falsehoods but has struggled amid attacks from conservative politicians and activists." 

That's the headline at WaPo, and I'm wondering how the 2 parts of the headline relate to each other. Why did the Stanford Internet Observatory collapse? Was it because conservatives attacked it? How much of a struggle is it for a research group that specializes in monitoring disinformation to handle attacks? The word "amid" fudges the causal connection. Did X happen because of Y or did X and Y just happen around the same time?

The word "amid" also appears in the first sentence: "The Stanford Internet Observatory... has shed most of its staff and may shut down amid political and legal attacks that have cast a pall on efforts to study online misinformation."

"Amid" appears again in the 4th paragraph: "Students and scholars affiliated with the program say they have been worn down by online attacks and harassment amid the heated political climate for misinformation research, as legislators threaten to cut federal funding to universities studying propaganda."

Have I ever gone on "amid" alert before? Yes! In October 2013, there was a NYT headline, "Obama’s Uncertain Path Amid Syria Bloodshed." 

People who don't know — or pretend not to know — that Roseanne Barr is a comedian.

Here's the highly lovable video clip:

 

At Kari Lake’s fundraising event at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, Roseanne Barr told young people to “drop out of college” while pushing QAnon conspiracies:

“It isn’t nothing but devil worshipping, baby blood drinking, Democrat donors.” pic.twitter.com/WP9Br1X1DQ

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) April 4, 2024

And here's where I found that: "Roseanne Barr Pushed QAnon Blood Drinking Conspiracy at Kari Lake's Mar-a-Lago Event/Barr also encouraged everyone to drop out of college" ("The people of Arizona will decide if they want to send someone who associates with QAnon conspiracy theories and those who against college to represent them in the senate").

That's at something called MeidasTouch, which I saw because it was featured at my favorite source of links, Memeorandum.

"Former President Donald J. Trump says that his recent warning of a 'blood bath'.... was made in the context of electric vehicles..."

"... and that he was not talking about political violence generally. But if discussing a type of automotive technology in bloody terms seems odd to some, it fits in the increasingly brutal language Mr. Trump has been applying to electric vehicles, one of his favorite foils. He has long claimed electric cars will 'kill' America’s auto industry. He has called them an 'assassination' of jobs. He has declared that the Biden administration 'ordered a hit job on Michigan manufacturing' by encouraging the sales of electric cars.... Jennifer Mercieca, author of 'Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump,' noted that... 'his speech was so disjointed it makes it difficult to know if he was threatening the U.A.W. workers, the U.S. auto manufacturers, or the nation as a whole.... In a sense, it doesn’t matter because Trump was threatening all at once.... Trump paints a dire picture of the nation, threatening economic ruin if he isn’t put in charge.... Using threats of force to gain power over a nation is authoritarian... not democratic.'"

Writes Lisa Friedman, in "Trump’s Violent Language Toward EVs/The former president has deployed increasingly aggressive talk about electric vehicles and their effect on the American economy" (NYT).

I should note that Trump's antagonists paint a dire picture of the nation ruined if Trump is put in charge. There's a lot of metaphorically violent rhetoric going around, but it's only denounced when it comes from the Trump side.

Much has been made of Trump's use of "bloodbath," but if Biden had used that word in his State of the Union, it would have been praised as feisty and fiery.

Biden's supporters begged for the violence:

This is what gets my tag "civility bullshit."

Bloodbath.

This is the third post of the morning and, like the previous two, it has a title consisting of one word that's in the news this morning. I can see from the comments in those other posts and in last night's open thread, that people especially want to talk about "bloodbath."

I feel so pushed to talk about "bloodbath" this morning that I balk at churning out a "bloodbath" post. You already know what you want to say. Is it my job to expound on "bloodbath" as it relates to the free-speaking raconteur Donald Trump and his gasping, raging antagonists?

I'll just feed your bloodbathlust with my favorite "bloodbath" quotations from the OED:

"Trump denied that he intended any racist sentiment with his 'poisoning the blood' comments, and he pointed to his strong poll numbers with African American and Hispanic voters."

"Asked again specifically about the Hitler comparisons, Trump said: 'First of all, I know nothing about Hitler. I’m not a student of Hitler. I never read his works. They say that he said something about blood, he didn’t say it the way I said it either, by the way, it’s a very different kind of a statement.'"

From "Trump: ‘I’m not a student of Hitler’" (The Hill)(summarizing things Trump said on Hugh Hewitt's radio show yesterday).

They say that he said something about blood.... Trump opponents should find the Hitler quotes about "blood," put them next to Trump quotes about "blood," and compare the meaning — seriously and accurately. There's a great anti-Trump argument to be made, if the material aligns very well. If the argument is not made, I'm going to presume it can't be made. I put a little effort into this task myself, and the Hitler "blood" quotes I saw were about interbreeding and mixed race children. The Trump "blood" quotes seem to be about immigrants who don't speak English and don't share — or want to learn — our values. I'm wary of the Trump-is-Hitler propagandists, but if they do the hard, honest work of developing their argument, I will listen. If they don't, I'm holding it against them.

What's the connection between sounding like Hitler and having read "Mein Kampf"?

I'm reading "Trump, Attacked for Echoing Hitler, Says He Never Read ‘Mein Kampf'" (NYT).

But he said on Tuesday night in a speech in Iowa that undocumented immigrants from Africa, Asia and South America were “destroying the blood of our country,” before alluding to his previous comments.

“That’s what they’re doing. They’re destroying our country,” Mr. Trump continued. “They don’t like it when I said that. And I never read ‘Mein Kampf.’ They said, ‘Oh, Hitler said that.’”

If not having read "Mein Kampf" were an excuse for those who don't want to be considered Nazi-like, then a lot of Nazis would be off the hook. Here's what William L. Shirer wrote in  "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" (p. 81):

Not every German who bought a copy of Mein Kampf necessarily read it. I have heard many a Nazi stalwart complain that it was hard going and not a few admit— in private— that they were never able to get through to the end of its 782 turgid pages.

Who's read "Mein Kampf"? It doesn't mean anything one way or the other not to have read "Mein Kampf." There are Nazi stalwarts who haven't read it and Nazi opponents who should have. To continue with the Shirer quote:

"Until recently, Bryan Johnson was paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to infuse one litre of his teenage son’s youthful plasma into his own ageing blood stream every month."

"'I’ve never paid more attention to what he’s eating … because that was going into my body,' the 46-year-old American tech entrepreneur says.... He also pumped his own plasma into his 70-year-old father’s body to help improve his declining physical and cognitive health: 'It was one of the most meaningful moments in his entire life. And it was the same for me.'... But Johnson had just begun using an algorithm to prevent biological ageing, which sifts through all research on longevity to create the best treatment plan and he was using his own body as a petri dish for it. Doctors have told Johnson he has the heart of a 37-year-old and the lungs of an 18-year-old...."

From "The Immortals: meet the billionaires forking out for eternal life" (The Guardian).

"We try really hard now, and have for a long time, to be clear that Goofus is not all bad, and Gallant is not all good..."

"We just try to be really clear that Goofus isn’t always bad. He’s not. He’s just often making choices that aren’t thoughtful or safe."

Said Christine French Cully, the current editor in chief of Highlights, quoted in "THE COMIC STRIP THAT EXPLAINS THE EVOLUTION OF AMERICAN PARENTING/What eight decades of Goofus and Gallant illustrate about society’s changing expectations of children" (The Atlantic).

Every installment of Goofus and Gallant now has a line at the top that reads “There’s some of Goofus and Gallant in us all. When the Gallant shines through, we show our best self.”

But isn't that exactly what every kid reading Goofus and Gallant in the old days figured out on their own? It was funny because one kid was always good — too good — and one always bad — absurdly bad. I think putting that label on implicitly says we're not trying to be funny anymore because we think you're dumb.

There are some nice examples of the old strip, notably this gem from 1955:

"Circular, and dark blue, with a Tupperware-style lid, it is precisely the kind of vessel you’d transport a soup or salad in."

"I’ve even sealed it inside a freezer bag, to contain any leaks. Or smells. I walk slowly and with care across Westminster Bridge, because any trip could prove disastrous. As I enter St Thomas’ Hospital and head for the infection department on the fifth floor, I realise the object I’m carrying is still warm, and, despite my preparations, I’m sure I can detect a faint whiff of something ripe, like camembert. It is, in a word, a turd. Freshly laid, and brimming with bacteria, the doctors I’m delivering it to believe such faeces could be the future of medicine. I’ve carried mine across London to be made into capsules – that someone else will ultimately eat...."

 
Writes Linda Geddes, in "Keep taking the crapsules: how I became a faecal transplant donor" (The Guardian).

"The impregnator — a clarifying term for a man who starts an unwanted pregnancy — suffers not one twinge of pain related to childbirth, only pleasure in the sexual act."

"And none of the new laws forcing pregnant women to give birth have mandated consequences for the impregnator.... Forced-birth laws mandate a woman not only to withstand childbirth but also to choose: either raise a child she does not want or surrender that child for adoption, a decision that some women embrace but others describe as a lifelong grief. In this way, abortion bans and restrictions could also be called 'forced child-surrender' or 'forced motherhood' laws.... A wise grandmother once told me: 'The decision to have a child is a decision to have your heart go walking outside your body for the rest of your life.' What happens if that decision is made in a statehouse? A courtroom? Does the lawmaker’s heart walk with a child — the one whose mother was denied an abortion — for life?"

From "Antiabortion laws are forced-birth laws. Here’s what that looks like" by Kate Manning (WaPo).

There's also this: "Like abortion foes who wave photos of bloody fetuses outside clinics (fetuses that could not survive outside a woman’s uterus), we who oppose the annihilation of our bodily autonomy ought to plaster statehouses with photos of our episiotomy incisions, our Caesarean scars, our intravenous-line hematomas, our bloody postnatal sanitary pads and bloodstained bedsheets, our cracked nipples and infected breasts."

"[A]n 1885 anti-vaccine banner that read 'Pure blood and no adulteration'; and activists who asserted that vaccination was 'pollution of our veins.'..."

"The association of 'pure,' 'natural' and 'good' would have made perfect sense at the time, since natural goodness and unnatural evil were standard in popular discussions of health. In his immensely popular 1867 book 'The Philosophy of Eating,' homeopath Albert J. Bellows blamed all illness on impurity and in a chapter titled 'Impure Blood' explained how good health depended on 'natural food' and 'pure water.' Illness was the result of 'unnatural drugs or medicine.' The same associations remained powerful in the mid-20th century, when opponents of water fluoridation complained about unnatural adulteration of what should be pure. Their position — described by social scientists at the time as 'naturalist syndrome' — was so mainstream that Stanley Kubrick skewered it in his classic 'Dr. Strangelove,' wherein the lunatic Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper bemoans how fluoride corrupts the 'pure blood of pure Americans.'"

 From "How the phrase ‘natural immunity’ misleads us about real risks and dangers/Antibodies to the coronavirus are not better just because they are ‘natural'" (WaPo, September 29, 2021). 

That's written by Alan Levinovitz, an associate professor of religious studies at James Madison University and the author of "Natural: How Faith in Nature's Goodness Leads to Harmful Fads, Unjust Laws, and Flawed Science."

"So, I know we're all making fun of this. But, I think there should be a much stronger push back against Biden claiming that mainstream Republicans are trading in blood libel."

Highest-rated comment on "Biden Denies Sucking The Blood Out Of Children" (r/Conservative). The post links to "Biden Denies Sucking The Blood Out Of Children" (Guardian Gazette). 

I found that comment because I was looking to see if anyone was saying what I wanted to say. I'm seeing the usual fun-making over Biden gibbering nonsense. But it didn't sound like nonsense to me. It's garbled, but I think he's essentially saying the Republicans are libeling Democrats the way the Nazis libeled the Jews. 

Here's background: "What does blood libel mean?" (BBC). That article is from 2011, taking Sarah Palin to task for saying, after the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, "Within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn."

And here's Biden talking:

PRES. BIDEN: "The idea that the Democrats or the Biden is hiding people and sucking the blood of children, no I’m serious, that’s the — Now you may not like me and that’s your right..”

pic.twitter.com/KuBqYi2mXN

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) July 22, 2021

AND: There is another Biden blood-sucking clip, so he clearly means to get this meme out there:

Biden really just responded to a reporter this way. 😬 pic.twitter.com/4FbmtMqjlS

— Caleb Hull (@CalebJHull) July 23, 2021