"It takes one to know one, on the weight question. And the president, of course, himself, is not in good shape. So, he ought to respond to that from me."

"I would say also that his personal attacks on me are just evidence of a guy who’s still living in fifth grade. He’s the kind of bully that throws invectives at people, because he knows that what he’s saying is actually commentary on himself."

Said the rotund Illinois Governor Jay Pritzker, quoted in "Pritzker responds to Trump’s weight comments: 'It takes one to know one'" (The Hill).

This forces me to look up what Trump said, which would otherwise have been erased from my brain (if it was ever there). Let's see... here:  "We will solve Chicago within one week — maybe less.... Chicago's a disaster and the governor of Illinois should say, 'President, will you do us the honor of cleaning up our city? We need help.' They need help. They need help... We may wait -- we may or we may not. We may just go in and do it, which is probably what we should do.... I hate to barge in on a city and then be treated horribly by corrupt politicians. The bad politicians, like a guy like Pritzker. He ought to spend more time in the gym actually, the guy is a disaster."

"People called her impulsive. Reckless. Even other rescuers — people who should’ve stood beside her — joined the mob.... The rescue world cannot keep cannibalizing its own."

Said a statement from KJ Farms Animal Rescue, quoted in "Mikayla Raines, Who Rescued Foxes and Other Animals, Is Dead at 30/She founded Save a Fox Rescue to care for foxes that had been abandoned or bred for their pelts on fur farms. She gained millions of social media followers along the way" (NYT).

We're told "Her husband, Ethan Frankcamp, said the cause of death was suicide."

"Thank you all for coming, and shame on you for being here."

Said Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, quoted in "'Twain hated bullies.' Conan O'Brien receives Mark Twain Prize at the Kennedy Center" (NPR).

I'd love to hear a lecture demonstrating — with lots of quotes — Mark Twain's hatred of bullies. I have a Kindle copy of "The Complete Works of Mark Twain" (only 99¢ at Amazon!), so I can easily do my own search, though it's hard to do a search for the word "bully," since many of the occurrences are in things like "Bully for the lion!" — shouted by "young ruffians" during a tour of the Coliseum in "Innocents Abroad" — an archaic usage.

But how can you delve into Twain and his times when you've got Trump... and your "shame" for showing up in what was once an arts paradise and is now the humbled plaything of that garish clod who is remaking everything in his own horribly orange image?

"And let us choose inclusion over retribution. Let us choose common sense over nonsense...."

"And let us choose the sweet promise of tomorrow over the bitter return to yesterday. We won't go back. We won't be set back, bullied back, kicked back. We're not going back."

Oprah at the DNC:

It's a familiar Democratic Party trope: We go forward and Republicans go back. Back where? I remember when Joe Biden came out with "They're going to put y'all back in chains." So: back to slavery times. Who was that dreaded Republican racist who was "going to put y'all back in chains"? It wasn't that terrible ogre Donald Trump. It was Mitt Romney. 

"So we’re left with a two-bit case that has devolved into dirty bits, filled with salacious details...."

"Trump came across as a loser in her account — a narcissist, cheater, sad Hugh Hefner wannabe, trading his satin pajamas for a dress shirt and trousers (and, later, boxers) as soon as Stormy mocked him. The man who was the likely source of the 'Best Sex I Ever Had' tabloid headline, attributed to Marla Maples at the time, no doubt loathes Stormy for having described their batrachian grappling, as Aldous Huxley called sex, as 'textbook generic.' Like a legal dominatrix, Stormy continued to emasculate the former president after her testimony, tweeting: 'Real men respond to testimony by being sworn in and taking the stand in court. Oh … wait. Nevermind.' The compelling part of this case is not whether Trump did something wrong with business papers. The compelling part is how it shows, in a vivid way, that he’s the wrong man for the job."

Writes Maureen Dowd in her new column "Donnie After Dark" (NYT).

1. Dowd seems to approve of using the criminal process not for its proper purpose — to enforce specific written law — but to expose and humiliate one's political enemy. Let's look at him in his underwear and sneer at his sexual fumblings, as described by someone who openly hates him — please, emasculate him! — and let's laugh.

2. It's so exciting — sexually and politically — that she doesn't see the downside. The aggressive desire to humiliate and crush him makes him sympathetic and makes you look like a bully. 

3. I'm imagining the jurors talking about this testimony and trying to connect it to the elements of the crime — assuming they can get their mind around what this crime even is. In my vision, they say: What was that Stormy Daniels testimony even about? Why did we have to know what material his pajamas were made out of? Satin! A shiny fabric. Waved about... to distract us.

4. "Batrachian" — it means "Of or pertaining to the Batrachia, esp. frogs and toads" (OED). It wasn't Daniels's adjective. Dowd got it from and credited Aldous Huxley. I found the relevant passage, in his "Point Counterpoint":

‘But what has love to do with it?’ asked Slipe. ‘In Beatrice’s case.’

‘A great deal,’ Willie Weaver broke in. ‘Everything. These superannuated virgins—always the most passionate.’

‘But she’s never had a love affair in her life.’

‘Hence the violence,’ concluded Willie triumphantly. ‘Beatrice has a n*gger sitting on the safety valve. And my wife assures me that her underclothes are positively Phrynean. That’s most sinister.’

‘Perhaps she likes being well dressed,’ suggested Lucy.

Willie Weaver shook his head. The hypothesis was too simple.

‘That woman’s unconscious as a black hole.’ Willie hesitated a moment. ‘Full of batrachian grapplings in the dark,’ he concluded and modestly coughed to commemorate his achievement.

"Furry is a fandom. We don’t think that we’re animals. I really like the idea of animals that walk and talk, so I’m going to dress up as one, as kind of a fun sort of cosplay thing."

Said a student named Strudel, quoted in "Students walk out of Utah middle school to protest ‘furries’" (abc4). Strudel explained that people who think they actually are a nonhuman animal are called "therians."

The student protesters object to the school's tolerance of the furries. There is a dress code banning things that "draw undue attention, distract, disrupt, or otherwise interfere with the learning atmosphere." You can see from the video of the protest, below, that signs say things like "Compelled speech is not free speech" and "I will not comply," so there seems to be more going on than a simple failure to enforce the dress code against the furries. I haven't watched much of the video, but I'm guessing the non-furry students are compelled to acknowledge the furries' professed identity in some prescribed way. And the article says the protesting students accuse the furries of "biting, scratching, spraying air freshener on, barking at and chasing other students." I'm guessing they are claiming a privilege to manifest behavior in line with their professed identity. How would that explain spraying air freshener? Perhaps that's a mellow substitute for a spray bottle of urine.

I'm not sure this isn't a hoax. There's plenty of video though:

Bully.

I'm reading "White House’s Efforts to Combat Misinformation Face Supreme Court Test/The justices must distinguish between persuading social media sites to take down posts, which is permitted, and coercing them, which violates the First Amendment."

This is Adam Liptak's piece in the NYT about the case that's up for oral argument in the Supreme Court.

[A 5th Circuit panel] said the [Biden administration] officials had become excessively entangled with the platforms or used threats to spur them to act.... [The administration argues] that the government was entitled to express its views and to try to persuade others to take action.

“A central dimension of presidential power is the use of the office’s bully pulpit to seek to persuade Americans — and American companies — to act in ways that the president believes would advance the public interest,” Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar wrote.

In response, lawyers for the states wrote that the administration had violated the First Amendment. “The bully pulpit,” they wrote, “is not a pulpit to bully.”

As we await today's argument, let's take a moment to consider what the "bully" in "bully pulpit" means. In 1909, President Theodore Roosevelt exclaimed: "I suppose my critics will call that preaching, but I have got such a bully pulpit!" First, clearly, he was using "bully" — as he often did — to mean very good or excellent. And he used the word "pulpit," because he knew he was preaching, that is, proclaiming righteous opinions in public.

Pressuring people behind the scenes is not preaching. You're not in a metaphorical pulpit. You're in the metaphorical backroom. And you're not proclaiming righteous opinions, you're exerting power, intimidating people. It's not "bully" in the sense of excellent.

The OED entry for "bully pulpit" is clear that "bully pulpit" originates with Theodore Roosevelt. It explained "his personal view of the presidency." It is — as the OED puts it — "A public office or position of authority that provides its occupant with the opportunity to speak out and be listened to on any issue." 

We're also told: "In later use sometimes understood as showing bully n.1 II.3a." That meaning of "bully" is:

Originally: a man given to or characterized by riotous, thuggish, and threatening behaviour; one who behaves in a blustering, swaggering, and aggressive manner. Now: a person who habitually seeks to harm, coerce, or intimidate those whom they perceive as vulnerable; a person who engages in bullying.

If "bully pulpit" is sometimes understood that way, it's risky to argue "A central dimension of presidential power is the use of the office’s bully pulpit...."

The riposte was predictable: "The bully pulpit is not a pulpit to bully."

I want to add that what is said behind the scenes is not from the pulpit at all. A pulpit is an elevated and conspicuous platform. One thing about social media posts is that they are out there, in public, and perfectly conspicuous. If the President (or the shadowy people behind him) want to use the"central dimension of presidential power" that is the "bully pulpit," let them step up onto a conspicuous platform and proclaim opinions they intend us to find righteous.

In this case, the opinion that was conveyed behind the scenes was that social media platforms ought to take down posts on various political topics — coronavirus vaccines, claims of election fraud, and Hunter Biden’s laptop — that people wanted to debate. If it's pulpit-worthy, express that opinion outright and clearly to all of us. Don't go behind our back and intimidate the social media giants upon whom we, the little people, depend to slightly amplify our tiny voices.

Trump defeated Ron DeSantis. We all know that. But how gendered was it?

I'm reading a NYT "Political Memo" by Michael C. Bender and Nicholas Nehamas, called "The Emasculation of Ron DeSantis by the Bully Donald Trump."

Emasculation? Really?

The former president’s brutal, yearlong campaign of humiliation.... Donald J. Trump plumbed new depths of degradation in his savage takedown... a yearlong campaign of emasculation and humiliation.... 

... Mr. Trump painted Mr. DeSantis as a submissive sniveler, insisting that he had cried and begged “on his knees”....

We were kicking him, and he moved his ass.

"Pelosi calls Santos a ‘coward’ for leaving chamber before expulsion vote closed" (The Hill).

“This is not a casual vote for us. It’s something you take very seriously and and he should have taken it seriously,” Pelosi told reporters following the vote, adding that he “should have been man about it.”

Be a man — I hadn't heard that in a while.

Was that a one-time pot shot, just for Santos? He's gay, right? On any other day, you'd be canceled for advising the gay man... or any man... to "be a man." But on very special days, there's one person who liberates everyone to say what they really think.

"A notorious Long Island mom charged with repeatedly running over her teen son’s reputed bully was sensationally acquitted of attempted murder Tuesday...."

"Jennifer Nelson, 36, had faced up to 25 years in prison for repeatedly ramming her Honda Passport into a 15-year-old boy she believed had stolen her child’s Adidas Ye slides last October. But it took a Suffolk County jury less than four hours to clear her of the top rap, and instead opt for a lesser conviction of leaving the scene of an accident with serious injuries.... The violent confrontation came two hours after Nelson was captured on cell phone camera pulling a knife on a group of teens she believed had just beaten and robbed her son.... Nelson said she only wanted to scare the assailants when she had threatened them with a blade."

I'm reading "Surprise verdict reached in case involving LI mom who allegedly ran over son’s teen bully: 'Happy with the outcome'" (NY Post).

The comments over there are very supportive of the woman: "Good for her," "You go, Mama Bear! Congratulations!," "When bullies aren’t prosecuted street justice is required," My new Hero, you go girl!"....

This looks like jury nullification.

"I could just cry because I’m so tired of having to fight for little kids because they just want to be included."

"I wish that people were as passionate about little kids being able to be included or grow up as they were about fictitious women’s fairness in sports. I have to tell you I am very tired."

Said Jonathan Van Ness, quoted in "'Scared' Jonathan Van Ness bursts into tears during debate with Dax Shepard defending trans rights" (NY Post). The "debate" is a long conversation on a Shepard's podcast.

"I was really bullied for my gender expression as a little kid. And there’s a lot of little kids who aren’t going to go be Olympic gold medalist. They don’t want to f–king go to the Olympics. They’re not gonna play —90 to 99% of kids who want to play sports aren’t trying to go to the Olympics, right?"

"Isaacson... writes at length and with compassion about the indignities heaped upon young Elon by schoolmates."

"Elon, an awkward, lonely boy, was bored in school and had a tendency to call other kids 'stupid'; he was also very often beaten up, and his father frequently berated him, but when he was ten, a few years after his parents divorced, he chose to live with him. (Musk is now estranged from his father, a conspiracist who has called Joe Biden a 'pedophile President,' and who has two children by his own stepdaughter; he has said that 'the only thing we are here for is to reproduce.' Recently, he warned Elon, in an e-mail, that 'with no Whites here, the Blacks will go back to the trees.')..."

Writes Jill Lepore, in "How Elon Musk Went from Superhero to Supervillain/Walter Isaacson’s new biography depicts a man who wields more power than almost any other person on the planet but seems estranged from humanity itself" (The New Yorker).

Chris Christie on Vivek Ramaswamy: "To me, he looks like the guy you wanted to stuff in the locker in the 11th grade."

"People have realized that workplaces are full of bullies and weirdos and they don't want to deal with them anymore."

Says Esther Walker at 6 minutes and 9 seconds into this week's episode of the podcast "Giles Coren Has No Idea."

They're talking about the post-lockdown phenomenon of refusal to go back to work in the office. 

I enjoy her mode of expression. It's hyperbole, but it's getting at something true, no? It's a subjective matter — what's bullying and what's weird — but the topic is human behavior. It can't be anything but subjective.

"But just as [Heather] Armstrong created possibility for women on the internet, she collided early with its dark side."

"When hers became one of the first personal websites to accept display advertising, she faced vitriol from readers.... Anonymous members of the site [GOMI (Get Off My Internets)] criticized Armstrong about her parenting, hairstyles and weight loss. They mocked her mental health struggles, and more recently, her relationship with Pete Ashdown, a successful Utah businessman and former U.S. Senate candidate, with whom she shared a home from August 2018 until her death this week. In an interview yesterday, Ashdown said he blamed the hatred and a sea change in the blogging landscape for Armstrong’s descent into depression in 2015. She took a break from the blog because, as she said at the time, she was tired of the harsh comments and of the need to create artificial situations in which her children could highlight sponsors’ products."

Writes Lisa Belkin in "Heather Armstrong Was the Original Influencer/With her blog, Dooce, she ushered in an age of confessional writing online by women, inspiring millions of readers and creators to come" (NYT).

Armstrong killed herself on Tuesday, at the age of 47.

"I now feel happy and satisfied with my legs, but I’m hit by a wave of hate on the Internet. It hurts me a lot."

"With the leg-lengthening procedure, I found myself and finally overcame my old trauma from being bullied. And now I’m being bullied again. Why am I subject to so much hate?"

From "I spent $160K on leg-lengthening surgery — it changed my sex life" (NY Post).

Why would you think bullying will stop if you respond by changing yourself? Here, a woman has had painful surgeries to add 5.5 inches to her legs. And she wasn't even short. She was 5'6" (if my reading and math are correct). Now, she's 6' tall, disproportionately leggy. As the headline shows, there is an absurd sex claim: "I have become very flexible with my legs and have more room to maneuver in bed."

"I've been having some crazy deja vu, because I'm an adult, 26, and, throughout childhood, I was called 'too feminine' and 'over the top,' and here I am now being called all those same things..."

"... but this time, it's from other adults. And if they're going to accuse me of anything, it should be that I'm a theater person, that I'm camp. But this is just my personality. And it always has been. What I'm struggling with most is that I grew up in a conservative family, and I'm extremely privileged because they still love me very much. And I grew up in the church, and I still have my faith, which I am really trying to hold onto right now. But I've always tried to love everyone — you know, people that make it really hard. I think it's okay to be frustrated with someone — confused. But what I'm struggling to understand is the need to dehumanize — to be cruel. I just think that's not great. You know, dehumanization has never fixed anything in history — ever."

Says Dylan Mulvaney, breaking a few weeks of silence and expressing a desire to continue speaking to the people who have liked and enjoyed her.

"Only now — as a student about to graduate — do I realize how few classmates agree with the loudest ones."

"Most of us fall somewhere between or are still forming our opinions. A friend recently told me that 'coming out as a moderate was more difficult than coming out as gay at Stanford Law School.' He eventually moved to San Francisco so he could 'just ignore the madness.' These dynamics are hardly unique to Stanford. My friends in law school at Yale and Harvard, among others, have shared similar experiences...."

Writes Tess Winston, in "With some of my fellow Stanford Law students, there’s no room for argument" (WaPo).

The quietness of people in the middle makes extremism work. They're so busy being invisible that they don't notice — or acknowledge — the role they play.

How easily they internalize bullying:

"The Uvalde, Texas, gunman gave off so many warning signs... that teens who knew him began calling him 'school shooter.'"

"A state investigative report... lays out a long trail of missed signals prior to the massacre but notes these clues were known only to 'private individuals' and not reported to authorities.... The report traces the descent of a shy, quiet boy once thought by a teacher as a 'wonderful student' with a 'positive attitude' into a mass murderer.... A former girlfriend told the FBI that she believed [the killer, Salvador] Ramos had been sexually assaulted by one of his mother’s boyfriends at an early age, the report said, but when Ramos told his mother at the time, she didn’t believe him.... Family members told investigators how Ramos had been bullied as a fourth-grader in one of the same linked classrooms where he carried out the attack. They said he faced ridicule over his stutter, short hair and for wearing the same clothing nearly every day. At one point, the report said, a fellow student tied his shoelaces together and Ramos fell on his face, injuring himself. The report noted that Ramos was flagged by school officials as 'at risk,' but never received any special education services.... In March 2022, two months before the shooting, a student on Instagram told him that 'people at school talk (expletive) about you and call you school shooter.' The next month Ramos asked in a direct message on Instagram, 'Are you still gonna remember me in 50 something days?' After the answer — 'probably not' — Ramos replied, 'Hmm alright we’ll see in may.'"

 
From "Texas killer earned ominous nickname: ‘school shooter’" (AP).

ADDED: Here's a hypothetical to ask any schoolchild: Let's say at some point in the future — a year from now — one of the kids in your class becomes a school shooter: Which kid do you think it is? 

Don't you think the kids already know who the potential school shooters are? 

Here's some advice that we ought to convey to schoolkids, perhaps not in exactly these words: If you ever find yourself inclined to be cruel to another student, stop and think that you may be part of what turns him into the next school shooter. 

"[T]he boys are arguing that their use of biologically correct, if politically incorrect, pronouns is speech protected by the First Amendment."

"The Constitution also forbids the district from compelling them to speak as district bureaucrats suddenly — how long ago did they embrace this orthodoxy? — prefer. Furthermore, the [the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty] says it has spoken with another Kiel Area family “whose daughter was recently given an in-school suspension for ‘sexual harassment’ based on a single statement using an allegedly ‘wrong’ pronoun — and the statement was said to a third party, not even to the allegedly 'misgendered' student."

Writes George Will in "When the pronoun police come for eighth-graders" (WaPo).

The highest-rated comment over there is: "Misgendering someone maliciously is discrimination. Your crutch of 'biological sex' gives your argument a veneer of legitimacy, when you're really arguing that it's fine for these boys to bully this kid. You devoted a whole column to defend teenage bullies picking on the kid that's different. Please think about how sad that is. Why make an argument against inclusion, just because it doesn't fit perfectly into your worldview? Genderqueer people are only asking for basic dignity and respect, it's not 'woke-ness,' it's basic human decency."