"What is that sound that that we hear irritating us so dreadfully?" Dick Cavett asks Jimi Hendrix, as some kind of background noise, emanating from the musical equipment, is interfering with our effort to hear the very soft-spoken guest.Jimi Hendrix: "Well, it sounds it sounds something like the New York street. I don't know. It's like today the air is all static, so the amplifiers are static. Music is loud, the air is loud, and you know, we're trying to settle things down a little bit, but it's going to take it like a rest."
The idea of trying "to settle things down a little bit" gets the mind of Cavett going toward the idea of human beings settling down, and later he asks Jimi if he sees himself getting married. When Jimi says he hopes not, Cavett delivers a punchline: "But you'll never get a situation comedy on television." That's funny, because sitting on the other side of Hendrix is Robert Young, the father of "Father Knows Best."
Young looks like an funny throwback to an earlier time, but Hendrix died a year later, and Young lived for 3 more decades.
"Social media has been filled with testimonies from young people turning to Christianity for the first time, with even atheists saying they are reconsidering their position on religion. Pastors have coined a term for the religious revival galvanised by Kirk’s death: the Charlie effect.... In Irvine, California, a 20-year-old student named Bryce Bohorquez filmed the overfilled parking lots outside Oceans Church, where he is a longstanding member. 'Charlie Kirk, look what you did. No parking. Everyone wants to come now. Amen,' Bohorquez said in the video, which has been viewed more than three million times...."
By the way, look at this insane and distracting distracting ad the London Times had right in the center of the page, right after the words "God's way of reminding us to live for him":
Note the headless angel, the creepy succession of men, and — topping it all off — the little puppet boy. Beyond heads — hands: I like the mirrored hand gestures, the angel and Joe Biden and then Tom Cotton and Pinocchio. All the human entities frown. We can't know the expression on the angel statues head and Pinocchio is slack-jawed and woozy.
Here's the article on Jenna Bush Hager's new book, "Everything Beautiful in Its Time." I've got to admit, I think the sentiment in the title is utter bullshit, and I myself would be tempted to put a photograph of Hitler next to it to make it look especially stupid, so I'm just pointing out that the NYT did this.
"Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) summed it up earlier in the week: 'The woke-topians will . . . disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home and invite MS-13 to live next door.' All this scaremongering was accompanied by outright slander of Mr. Biden, against whom Republicans leveled unsubstantiated corruption charges — and whose record and platform alike Mr. Trump distorted into almost a parody of radicalism.... In this fictional realm, a man who lauded white supremacists as 'very fine people' becomes a champion of racial comity, and a leader who ignored warnings about the pandemic actually sets the global standard for disease response.... The conjured specter of widespread 'urban violence,' combined with warnings that the dictatorial Democrats against 'guns, gasoline and God' would force Americans to wear masks, lock them down and keep them from church, may well resonate with people the GOP is aiming to fire up. And the falsely comforting portrait of the president may soothe those the party is hoping to persuade: giving them permission to support someone whose values jar their consciences by pretending his values are something else altogether."
I could laugh, but I won't, at "In this fictional realm, a man who lauded white supremacists as 'very fine people'...." WaPo editors speak of Trump's "fictional realm" while plainly displaying themselves as existing in their own fictional realm, the one in which Trump "lauded white supremacists as 'very fine people.'"
The haloed image could be understood as sarcasm. Biden is the light of the world. Trump is darkness. I do think it works to command attention to the hand gesture, because I fell into a reverie about paintings... but which paintings?! I linger over the hand gesture. What paintings am I thinking of? St. Thomas in "The Last Supper"?
This is the sort of visual joke we often see on Drudge. I'm certain it's no accident. The seal is super-cute, and it was easy to find a photo of the politician waving and to put it just close enough to have an uplifting effect and not so close as to be ridiculous. Right next to the seal is a Playmobil toy holding up a flag. The flag raising is close to a wave, and the toy, the seal, and Steyer are all smiling.
Steyer’s ability to transform his personal wealth into a spot [in the next debate], while longtime elected officials such as Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) have been unable to qualify, is a source of growing friction in the party — especially at a time when income inequality is a heated topic among Democrats....
“Tom Steyer is doing what everybody should be doing,” said Johnnie Cordero, chairman of the Democratic Black Caucus of South Carolina, who has not endorsed a presidential candidate. “He is in the black community. He’s dealing with the people who you need to carry the state, at least for the African American vote.”
Black voters, who make up most of the state’s Democratic electorate, still back former vice president Joe Biden by large margins. But in the latest South Carolina poll, Steyer jumped to second place among that demographic, garnering 16 percent support — though Biden still commands 43 percent support.
Oh, isn't it interesting? There's a new essay that purports to see “troubling similarities” between Hitler's Germany and present-day America. And it's "different" from all the old essays that already claimed to see and be troubled by similarities. It's a choice to highlight similarities when there are also differences. For example I could say that there are similarities between Hitler's gesture in that screenshot and Melania's. There are also differences, and it would be a choice of mine to accuse Vox of juxtaposing those images as a way of saying Melania is like Hitler. I could just as well say those images were juxtaposed as a way to say Melania is different from Hitler. Or maybe there's no juxtaposing at all, and it's pure happenstance that Melania got tucked in over there, to the right of Hitler and underneath "Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation will delegitimize the Supreme Court — and that’s good/It’s time America woke up to the radical right that’s run the Court for years."
That's some hyperventilating by Matt Yglesias, and I don't know where he gets the authority to "wake up" America to what's really going on at the Supreme Court. You know, Vox touted that new essay about America and the Nazis precisely because it is written by "one of America’s most eminent and well-respected historians of the Holocaust." And now here comes Matt Yglesias, who is not an eminent and well-respected Supreme Court scholar, and he's eager to wake us up to the "reality" of the "radical right" that's been "run[ning]" the Supreme Court and to explain why it's good for the Supreme Court to be "delegitimized."
When the Supreme Court gives lefties outcomes lefties like, they want conservatives to stand down and accept that the Court is doing proper, even brilliant, legal work. It's analogous to what I call "civility bullshit." You propound belief in something when it serves your interests, but you violate it without a care when your interests go the other way.
I'm interested in this word "delegitimize." I wonder, is it "delegitimize" or "delegitimatize"? The OED doesn't contain the word "delegitimatize," but "delegitimize" is only a subentry, under the entry for the prefix "de-" and without a definition, just 2 historical examples, the oldest of which is from 1969. What a year, 1969! I can't link to the OED, but let me cut and paste this telling quote:
1969 C. Davidson in A. Cockburn & R. Blackburn Student Power 349 People will not move against institutions of power until the legitimizing authority has been stripped away... And we should be forewarned; it is a tricky job and often can backfire, de-legitimizing us.
It looks like we're seeing the word coined right there! It works because we already know "legitimize." But is it "legitimize" or "legitimatize"? Both "legitimize" and "legitimatize" have been around since the 1600s.
"Legitimatize" is defined as "To make legitimate; to serve as a justification for (something); spec. to make (a child) legitimate by legal enactment or otherwise." The OED tells us it's rare, but John Cheever used it in 1961:
1961 J. Cheever Jrnls. (1991) 152 The most important thing he did for me was to legitimatize manly courage.
Harrumph! Sounds right wing. Let's check "legitimize." The OED refers us to "legitimatize" for the definition but does not warn us that it's rare. I guess people don't like too many syllables.
"But for women who live the greater part of their lives in the public eye, smiling is a kind of code for being not only engaged, but also being engaging. For a woman who was once a model, who ostensibly is practiced in the art of nonverbal communication, the willingness to forgo a grin seems less like an accident and more like the tiniest declaration of personal control and rebellion. She is here for you, but she is not going to perform for you."
I'm not sure where the "control and containment" is supposed to be — maybe in the constricting leather skirt or maybe it's something she's extracting from the President who scampers at her heel — but from the waist up, I'm seeing a more freewheeling style, an eschewing of a fully controlled structure. I'm not criticizing this choice, I'm just saying this isn't the Jackie Kennedy choice of clothing as armor, but a stretchy sweater over something less than the most rigid undergarments. I see an amusing combo of loose and tight.
The headline is probably not written by Givhan. I'm just poking fun at WaPo there. I mainly wanted to show you that part about women smiling, which is a long-term feminist issue. It's sexist to tell women to smile,* so what do you do when you want to comment on Melania's unsmiling face? Givhan reads it as "the tiniest declaration of personal control and rebellion," which sounds as though she — in her own little way — is part of the female resistance against Trump.
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"And when Clinton got her hands on a pair of the baby pink pumps, she was more than happy to show them off to their best effect for Perry’s Instagram."
Speaking of style, what atrocious writing style! When I hear "got her hands on a pair of baby pink pumps," I'm the kind of person who immediately wants to say: and got her feet on a pair of adult blue gloves. And when I hear "more than happy," I go looking for the George Carlin clip:
ADDED: I got to that link via Drudge, who follows it with what I think is a non-accidental line-up of links:
Thanks to Fernandinande (commenting in the café post below) for prompting me to acknowledge Drudge and to perceive intentional drudgtaposition. Notice how the word "pump" appears twice. Well, what do you think? Intentional comic juxtaposition? Here's another way to frame the screenshot. What do you think of this?
You've got the 2 images of something normally unseen. We peer in utero at unborn babies. (What are they doing?) And we gawk endlessly at a belly a man had dressed to cover. Bracketing these 2 images of human beings who did not choose self-exposure are 2 women who dearly want and demand our attention, who pose with forthright willingness for the camera: 1. Hillary Clinton, positioning herself like a cute-girl marionette, displays pop-star-branded candy-colored shoes, and 2. Ayn Rand stares at us in utterly serious black and white, imposing her imperious will that says we must see her as both distinctly beautiful and absolutely devoid of girlishness.
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