"And I’m still amazed by how quickly I got used to being naked in front of others, how little I cared, how little notice others took."

"I thought I would be stared at, regarded as an embarrassing old woman showing off in public. Pottering in my garden this morning, deadheading geraniums and hanging out the washing, I was itching to take off my nightie and stand there in the altogether, but I have close neighbours; even next door’s cat was giving me the side-eye. Living with my 40-year-old son, I certainly don’t intend to parade around top and bottomless indoors any time soon, but I have invited a friend to join me on Brighton’s nudist beach, which is very near where I live. Swimwear seems so unnecessary to me these days...."

Writes Elaine Kingett, in "I’m 75 and hate my body. Will my first naturist holiday help? The writer Elaine Kingett used to love her body but that changed after a heart attack, breast cancer and the death of her husband. Can a ‘clothes optional’ break in Crete kickstart a reconciliation?" (London Times).

"But the fact of the matter is, I had expected by now you would hear harsher rhetoric and seeing more missile attacks. "

"Why would the Iranians be downplaying the amount of damage done? Well, they're probably wildly embarrassed about this. Here was the national treasure of Iran, right? The nuclear program was the symbol of its strength and its resistance to the United States. The caretakers of the nuclear program, both the mullahs and the military, and the civilian president and administration had no higher responsibility than protecting this as the ultimate defense for the Iranian state. And here they've now lost that ability, at least for a while. And there's another possible explanation... which is they could be downplaying it so that it doesn't force their hand into a massive response, one that would put them on an escalation ladder with the United States...."

Said David Sanger — on today's episode of the NYT podcast "The Daily," "The U.S. Bombed Iran. Now What?" (Podscribe) — answering the question "What has been the response from the Iranians so far?"

People don't want to shout out their own name, but Kamala Harris seems to have thought it would be a cool way to demonstrate that "It's about all of us."

They were loudly chanting her name, and she instructed them to shout out their own name, the idea being, I think, to unleash a hilarious, heartwarming cacophony:

This might be the most awkward moment ever, the second-hand embarassment is real pic.twitter.com/ObaMKPR9c3

— TaraBull (@TaraBull808) October 29, 2024

But she got silence. She still pretended she'd received the desired response, and declared the conclusion to be derived from the demonstration that hadn't happened: "It's about all of us."

Apparently, individualism is not in vogue... or not something her people feel good about expressing loud and proud.

If I followed the method of the elite media and the Democratic Party, I would call it fascistic. The crowd showed that it only wanted to be unified behind the identity of the adored leader.

ADDED: I feel the strong need to republish a post I wrote in September 2018:

"My husband and I are white. I bought our daughter several dolls of different races with skin colors..."

"... that reflect the diversity of our community. Her absolute favorite is a Black baby doll. She carries him everywhere. My partner feels uncomfortable with this when we are in public, though. He worries that her doll seems like appropriation or virtue signaling. Your thoughts?"

A question asked of the NYT "Social Q's" adviser, Philip Galanes.

The question got my attention because I had a black baby doll back when I was a little girl in the 1950s. But I didn't have it because my mother (or father) chose it for diversity purposes. I had it because I saw it in the store and enthusiastically requested it. I doubt if "diversity," "appropriation," or "virtue signaling" was anything my parents thought about back then, and it certainly had nothing to do with my request. I didn't even understand who this doll was supposed to represent. It was just something amazing because I'd never seen anything like that before. I've always appreciated that my parents never said anything like, "That's not for you" or "Don't you want a little doll who looks more like you?"

But about this girl whose mother chose the doll and composes the letter? She's displaying pride in her own choice and in her success conveying her message of diversity to the little girl, and she wants her husband to bolster her pride, not be embarrassed. But virtue signaling is embarrassing. Let the poor man be embarrassed. And, of course, let the little girl keep her doll. Too late now! You can't take it away. It's her "absolute favorite." 

"Adult friendship is touchy.... Everyone wants to be effortlessly surrounded by loved ones, so putting work into making friends can be embarrassing."

"While the search for romance feels normal, and even noble, actively seeking friends as an adult — and saying that openly on apps or social media — still carries stigma, friend-seekers said.... Making adult friends requires work and vulnerability, which is a lot to ask from people who are lonely, different or tired, [31-year old, self-described loner Greg] Walton said, blinking back tears.... You won’t make a friend the first time you show up [to a group meetup arranged through an app], Walton said, or even the second, because friendship requires revealing yourself over time. But real friends are out there, and the fear and ambiguity are worth it. 'Yeah, you might feel like a creep, but hopefully somebody will help you,' they said. 'First, you have to show that you’re trying.'" 

 
From "Loneliness is taking friend-making apps mainstream/American adults are lonely — and done waiting on friendship to find them IRL" (WaPo).

"I think we’re probably going to be embarrassed by the pandemic, every kind of reaction to it and the way it’s sort of defined our time."

"To me, it’s already sort of becoming an embarrassing topic, and you can feel people not wanting to talk about it.... I feel embarrassed about being a little irrational about certain topics and the politicization of every single thing that happened in that whole time period, where how people handled their own health was a political topic. And that just doesn’t make rational sense. Also, how every single thing in our lives — even what music we listen to and what art we see — you have to align yourself with a certain political agenda. I think that will eventually feel embarrassing, or it’ll hopefully turn into something else, because I feel like there’s no end to that thought process. It makes people go a little crazy and become conspiracy theorists or just totally isolated from all of their friends."

Writes the essayist/novelist Natasha Stagg, one of many contributors to "Future Cringe/One day we’ll look back on this moment and wonder: What were we thinking?" (NYT).

I love the big question, what are we doing now that we are going to be embarrassed/ashamed of in the future? I noticed this question when I was a child and heard things said about people in the past, as if those people were benighted and ridiculous. We are those people to people somewhere out there in the future. How can I avoid being looked at by them the way people today are looking at the people of the past?

"This is speed metal without the embarrassment of Spandex and junior high school devil worship."

Writes Bob Dylan, in "The Philosophy of Modern Song."

What recorded performance is he talking about? This:

"In the first episode of Archetypes released since the Queen’s death, Meghan recalled her 'adolescent embarrassment' at being naked at a Korean spa with her mother as a teenager."

I'm reading "Meghan podcast hits out at films’ ‘toxic’ Asian stereotypes" (London Times).

She may have suffered "adolescent embarrassment" long ago, but she's far beyond embarrassment now. She's got a very popular podcast, and now, championing Asian women, she's citing her experience on "a trip to a Korean spa with her mother where swimwear was not allowed.

"I don’t take things very hard. Death, for example. People die, and I sidestep the moment in some way. Or if you just say something embarrassingly dumb to someone..."

"... or you think you’re talking to one person but he’s actually somebody else. I’m vaguely aware that I have a capacity not to dwell on this. I can see that there’s another way to live where you’re lying awake about it. I just think, 'Move on and to hell with it.'"

Said Tom Stoppard, quoted in "Tom Stoppard Finally Looks Into His Shadow/After years of living 'as if without history,' the playwright belatedly reckons with his Jewish roots, and his guilt, in 'Leopoldstadt,' his most autobiographical play" by Maureen Dowd (NYT).

He describes how he felt when his cousin, Sarka Gauglitz, got in touch with him when he was 56, and  she "told him how his four grandparents had perished at the hands of the Nazis and how his mother’s three sisters had died in Auschwitz and another camp": 

"I was totally poleaxed. I was in my 50s. I’d had this entire life. I couldn’t change it retroactively even in my mind. So it wasn’t like some kind of new start. I just carried on being the person I was.”

 He also has this to say about politics:

"I have many kind friends with wonderful attributes, but one horrible thing they all have in common is a compulsion to come up and talk to me when they see me arrive on my bike."

"There, they find me at my worst, both physically and emotionally. I am damp from the ride and must now take off my helmet and redo my oddly compressed hair. It is possible that the breeze, once a source of my power, blew something gross — an insect, the torn corner of a Snapple label — onto my face. Using only the two hands that the Lord gave me, I must rearrange myself, smooth my rough edges, and prepare to rejoin society. All while also securing my bike to one of the city’s O-racks, or, more likely, a street-sign post with another bike already chained to it. This takes time and focus; I am essentially completing a physical equivalent of a Kumon worksheet. Inevitably, something drops to the ground. This is both embarrassing and part of my process."

From "Never Look at Someone While They’re Locking Their Bike" by Clio Chang (NY Magazine).

Things I spent time doing this morning: 

"Admitting and accepting guilt is not easy. It’s painful looking at yourself in the mirror. I’m embarrassed that I didn’t know better 25 years ago.... It was after what happened to George Floyd..."

"... that I began to wrestle with my having bought into systemic racism in ways I was never aware of. That was really the moment that I began to examine the ways I had participated. I knew then I needed to course-correct.... What makes this truly emotional for me is that I want this connection I didn’t have.... I deeply, deeply want this connection with the Black community that I didn’t have. Because of 'Friends,' I never attained that.... In this case, I’m finally, literally putting my money where my mouth is.... I want to make sure from now on in every production I do that I am conscious in hiring people of color and actively pursue young writers of color. I want to know I will act differently from now on. And then I will feel unburdened."

Said Marta Kauffman, quoted in "‘Friends’ lack of diversity ‘embarrassed’ its co-creator. So she made a $4-million decision" (L.A. Times).

Kauffman — who gets this fawning publicity — endowed a professorship in the African and African American Studies department at Brandeis. The amount of her donation is 1% of her $400 million net worth. I'd say she ought to contribute something more like $40 million before she claims to have literally put her my money where my mouth is. It's still the wrong use of "literally," but it wouldn't be so bad.

He'll have to name names then, won't he?

 

If he doesn't, people will infer he made the whole thing up.

The screenshot is from Drudge, and the links go to "Kevin McCarthy Says Madison Cawthorn Admitted He Exaggerated Claims About Cocaine and Orgies: He ‘Lost My Trust’" (Mediaite) and "'He's an embarrassment': Republicans threaten to primary Cawthorn over controversial antics" (CNN).

By the way "admitted he exaggerated" means that the underlying assertion is true. It's just that the words were imprecise. 

I don't remember to use my "embarrassment" tag often enough. You know, there are different ways of being "an embarrassment." An embarrassment to whom? Just himself? Or to the party? Or to a bipartisan group of powerful Washingtonians?

"Jane was never embarrassed, and for a pretty specific reason. The way she grew up — she was Methodist — she was taught you are not the center of the universe..."

"... which made her feel free, like no one was watching. 'To be embarrassed would be to assume that anyone in this room or anyone who witnessed this actually spends more than 5 seconds thinking about me. And they don't. Why would you think anyone but God gives a shit about anything you're doing, ever? They don't. Like, you are nothing. You mean nothing in the world. It's obnoxious, basically, to think that, like, any of your actions — that anyone is actually looking in your direction.' This worldview, that others weren't judging her, helped her not judge herself. Those thoughts just didn't occur to her."

From Episode 749 of "This American Life," "My Bad" (about embarrassment).

I've thought a lot about embarrassment, and I sometimes wonder what might life could have been if I'd found my way to immunity from embarrassment when I was a child. When you're a really young child, learning to speak, learning to walk, babbling nonsense, falling on your ass every other minute, it's all in good fun, and you never get the idea that everyone's laughing at me and I keep making a fool of myself. You have to learn to be embarrassed, but some people learn not to be embarrassed. 

Can Methodism help? 

They revoked Andrew Cuomo's Emmy, and the first question is why did Andrew Cuomo win an Emmy?

Here's an NPR article from last November: "Andrew Cuomo To Receive International Emmy For 'Masterful' COVID-19 Briefings." 

The International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences announced Friday that it is breaking with tradition and awarding its International Emmy Founders Award to a real politician who is currently in office....

They went out of their way to create a new concept for an award just to adulate Cuomo.

"The Governor's 111 daily briefings worked so well because he effectively created television shows, with characters, plot lines, and stories of success and failure," the academy's president and CEO, Bruce Paisner, explained in a statement announcing the decision.... 

When you go to the URL for the statement, you can't read the full text with all its original effusiveness. You just see this, dated yesterday:

The International Academy announced today that in light of the New York Attorney General’s report, and Andrew Cuomo’s subsequent resignation as Governor, it is rescinding his special 2020 International Emmy® Award. His name and any reference to his receiving the award will be eliminated from International Academy materials going forward.

I was going to dig the original statement out of the usually reliable Wayback Machine but look — it only records what happened there yesterday:

The Wayback Machine becomes the Memory Hole! So does Google's "cache." Hey, keepers of the web, don't help these award-givers hide their embarrassment. Preserve history for us!

I wanted to get to the original statement to see the full text of the sentence that called Andrew Cuomo "masterful." Why would a man think he could do the things Cuomo is accused of doing? He's responsible for whatever he did, even if other people encouraged and enabled him, but I want to express disdain for the ostensible adults who gave a politician an award for being "masterful." 

Think about it what it means to praise a politician for being "masterful" in his use of media to massage minds and to control behavior. Let me help you by quoting from the OED's definitions for "masterful": 

Having a master's character or disposition; accustomed to or insisting upon having one's own way; imperious, wilful, overbearing. Of an action: high-handed, despotic... Having the qualities of a master; powerful and able to control others; commanding, vigorous in rule....

If a politician is the master, we the people are the slaves.  

ADDED: The ceremony presentation is still available — because it's in Cuomo's own YouTube account. Enjoy the tongue bath:

"A lack of distancing irony is, generally, an element of cringe, whether it’s imagining Trump nailed to a cross or picturing Michelle Obama as a Jedi master."

"Sometimes the cringe is so earnest and so personal — as when one Twitter user declared that, in her fantasies, 'Pete & Chasten will have Kamala & Dougie over for weekly potlucks that Michele O. will crash with a bottle of wine & gossip' — that the offending individual literally deletes her entire account. Either way, the earnest invocation of an idealized politician being either a stacked savior or a wine-sipping bestie makes a mockery of the idea that politicians are nothing more than fellow citizens chosen for a short time to serve the public good. Cringe reaches its apotheosis in a particular genre of bizarre video that mashes up politicians with action heroes. Consider this gem, which pastes the heads of Democrats pasted onto the bodies of the Avengers in their last-ditch effort to defeat supervillain Thanos — reimagined, of course, as Trump. Soak in the unironic iconography of it all, the transmutation of mere politicians into godlike warriors from one of the three franchises the general public recognizes.... If imagining Trump as a world-historical defender of the Constitution is bizarre and anti-democratic, so is turning the vice president and secretary of transportation into cozy sitcom characters rather than people who have been given great power and need to be held accountable for how they use it."

From "We live in a golden age of cringe" by Sonny Bunch (WaPo).

Yes, we need to rediscover embarrassment. 

"My dream from the time I was probably 7 or 8 was to be 50.... That was just always my goal."

"But you have to accept that you are where you are. Like, whatever it is, that’s kind of what it is. It’s probably not going to get a lot better, probably not going to get a lot worse. But, I mean, nobody said to me, 'You’re going to be struggling as an artist for X number of years, and then it’s going to work out.' When you’re younger, you wake up and you work. You don’t know if anyone’s even going to see it. You don’t even have a space to do it in. Now I have a drawing table! I press a button, and the light turns on, and I can trace things. I have that accessible to me at any time. I get to dress weird. I get to have long hair. I’m going to get a tattoo. People say, 'How are you going to feel when you’re old and have that thing?' I’m already old!"

Said Mo Willems, quoted in "Mo Willems Has a Message for Parents: He’s Not on Your Side" (NYT). 

Since we talked about embarrassment 2 posts down, I should include this: "Is embarrassment about unstructured creativity why parents stop drawing? Embarrassment is a learned disease. It can be cured. It’s about willingness to fail."

Willems is estranged from his parents — "when I started to see some of the harmful behavior that had happened to me starting to be moved over to my child by them, that was the line" — and his only child is trans — "One of the great things about queer kids in this culture is that they have to have done the work. They have to do the questioning and say: 'Who am I? What am I? Where am I in society? What risks am I willing to take or not take to be authentic?'"

"I find this more embarrassing for the country than debilitating for my ability to get started."

Said Joe Biden, quoted in "'More People May Die' Because of Trump’s Transition Delay, Biden Says/Adopting a graver tone, the president-elect said that President Trump’s refusal to authorize a transition could have deadly consequences" (NYT). 

He'd said "If we have to wait until Jan. 20 to start that planning [to distribute the vaccine], it puts us behind. More people may die if we don’t coordinate." And yet... the embarrassment for the country is the real problem.

Why would embarrassment be a greater problem than actually complicating the transition? Possible answers: 

1. Biden is mentally weak, and none of his assertions stand up to close scrutiny. This literal parsing isn't worth our trouble. No one should care about this level of precision. The mainstream media won't.

2. Biden blurted out the truth! He's not really having any serious trouble with the transition, but he wants the credit and dignity he deserves for his accomplishment winning the election. He cares about how it looks, and it looks bad. It's embarrassing!

3. It's a crafty statement designed: A. To assure people that the Biden administration can and will deal with all challenges that may arise including any Trump interference with the transition, and B. To pressure Trump, a man known for his vanity, who may enjoy making life harder for Biden but who just might relent if he's thinks he's not effective at all but merely embarrassing himself and the country he said he'd make "great." 

4. America's image in the world is actually more important than the reality of how well the vaccine is distributed and exactly how many people live or die. Or so Biden believes. 

Pick the best line of reasoning:

Which of the 4 explanations is closest to the truth?

1

2

3

4

 

pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: Poll results:

"[Hans Christian] Andersen's manuscript was at the printer's when he was suddenly inspired to change the original climax of the tale from the emperor's subjects admiring his invisible clothes to that of the child's cry."

"There are many unconfirmed theories about why he made this change. Most scholars agree that from his earliest years in Copenhagen, Andersen presented himself to the Danish bourgeoisie as the naïvely precocious child not usually admitted to the adult salon. 'The Emperor's New Clothes' became his exposé of the hypocrisy and snobbery he found there when he finally gained admission. Andersen's decision to change the ending may have occurred after he read the manuscript tale to a child, or its inspiration may have been one of Andersen's own childhood incidents which was similar to that in the tale: he once recalled standing in a crowd with his mother, waiting to see King Frederick VI, and when the king made his appearance, Andersen cried out, 'Oh, he's nothing more than a human being!' His mother then tried to silence him saying, 'Have you gone mad, child?' Whatever the reason, Andersen thought the change would prove more satirical."

From "The Emperor's New Clothes" (Wikipedia), which I'm reading about because it came up in a conversation about the previous post, which discusses public exposure and embarrassment.

Here's that "nothing more than a human being" Frederick VI:

"You think you’re woke but you’re sleepwalking through a nightmare" — slogan for the Time to Get Organized for an Actual Revolution National Tour.

"I’m with the Time to Get Organized for an Actual Revolution National Tour. We’re touring all across the country to organize thousands into the ranks of the revolution," said "a teenage-looking boy" in the "Free Speech Zone" near a Trump fundraiser in Beverly Hills.

Quoted in "'No Celebrities': Embarrassing Turnout at Trump’s Beverly Hills Fundraiser" in The Daily Beast.

I wonder, who was embarrassed? Was it the people at The Daily Beast imagining that Trump ought to be embarrassed? He doesn't seem like a guy who gets embarrassed. Especially about the lack of "celebrities." Isn't it embarrassing that Democratic Party candidates get all the celebrities?

Here's an article from late November 2016 in Vanity Fair, "Did Celebrity Endorsements Contribute to Hillary Clinton’s Presidential Upset?/The divide in celebrity endorsements between candidates was as large as ever in the 2016 presidential election—and the candidate with the most lost":

The gulf between celebrity endorsements on the Democratic versus Republican side is stark during every election, but this year, the rift seemed infinite. Hillary Clinton had Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, and even Lebron James. #ImWithHer hashtags decorated social output from Ariana Grande, Jennifer Lopez, the Kardashians, and Rihanna, as well as YouTube stars like Tyler Oakley. Clinton carried far and away the majority of celebrity seals of approval....

Many of the celebrity P.S.A.s this year leaned into the idea that no one wants to hear about politics from a Grammy/Oscar/Emmy winner. Lena Dunham’s parody of the earnest P.S.A., “Sensual Pantsuit Anthem,” tried to promote Hillary Clinton and voting through an attempted self-aware rap....

[Trump] removes middleman when it comes to endorsements. Instead of the transitive property of Katy Perry (“I’m a Katy Perry fan; Katy Perry is a Hillary Clinton fan; I’m a Hillary Clinton fan"), there’s the much simpler “I’m a Trump fan” equation, for better or worse.

Trump is his own celebrity. Is that better or worse than having other people to be your celebrities? Please, before answering, watch this video, which came out a few days before the 2016 election.



And come on, let's talk about what's embarrassing!

You think you’re woke but you’re sleepwalking through a nightmare...

ADDED: When the system tries to bring you down, listen to this, which was the actual soundtrack to this post, here at Meadhouse:

"One wonders if the boy did not know what would happen. I do not know about you, but in my youth I have never been in situations like this."

"Never. I was always aware of what could happen. When you are in somebody’s bedroom, you have to be aware of where that can lead to. That’s why it does not sound very credible to me. It seems to me that Spacey has been attacked unnecessarily.... People know exactly what's going on [about Weinstein]... And they play along. Afterwards, they feel embarrassed or disliked. And then they turn it around and say: 'I was attacked, I was surprised'. But if everything went well, and if it had given them a great career, they would not talk about it. I hate rape. I hate attacks. I hate sexual situations that are forced on someone. But in many cases one looks at the circumstances and thinks that the person who is considered a victim is merely disappointed."

Said Morrissey.

ADDED: These remarks made me wonder how smart Morrissey is. My guess was that he's very smart, and he likes to look at things from different points of view and talk about what he sees, and that can get you into trouble, at least if your smartness doesn't lead you to see what you're going to get if you waft miscellaneous ideas where people expect you to say only one thing and you decide to protect yourself by keeping quiet.

I read the "Early life" section of Morrissey's Wikipedia page, and see that his parents were "working-class Irish Catholics," and he "failed his 11-plus exam" after elementary school "and proceeded to St. Mary's Technical Modern School, an experience that he found unpleasant." He was good at sports but still "an unpopular loner." He said his education was "evil and brutal," and "All I learnt was to have no self-esteem and to feel ashamed without knowing why." He did read a lot, we're told, including feminist literature and Oscar Wilde. And he turned to music — very successfully — as the solution.

Even here, music was a solution. Morrissey could have saved these ideas for song lyrics, which can be enigmatic, ambiguous, and seeming to arise from a character the singer embodies.