"The surge of tiny clapping has led to an endless debate on TikTok about the proper way to do it."

"Some insist finger claps should be silent and bristle at people who say 'clock it' or 'tea' while clapping. Others take issue with influencers who clap with their index finger, when the middle finger is more commonly used in ballroom. (If this seems pedantic, imagine the reaction if you used your middle finger to give a thumbs-up.) And a notion has spread that the finger clap is supposed to resemble the American Sign Language sign for the number 8, because it means someone 'ate,' or performed extremely well. (Ballroom folks say that’s a reach.) As one commenter noted, 'Man the finger police is strict strict.'"

From "'Clock it.' We’re all finger-clapping wrong. As more people embrace finger claps, the queer ballroom scene is clapping back at those unaware of its origin and meaning" (WaPo).

Who cares? Yeah, I get it if that's your reaction, but this post earns some of my favorite tags. I like that.

"I was bickering, or rather joking, with my wife. It's nothing."

Said Emmanuel Macron, quoted in "The giveaway sign that Macron was 'furious' with wife Brigitte for viral push in face... as he tries to brush it off as 'joking around'" (Daily Mail).

I'm sure you've seen the video:

French President Emmanuel Macron responds after he apparently got assaulted in the face by his wife Brigitte while stepping off of a plane in Vietnam.

Macron was seen getting shoved in the face before getting off the plane as if nothing happened.

Macron has since responded to… pic.twitter.com/YeEAwdLcxF

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) May 26, 2025

My favorite part is his "Oh, hi" gesture, when he sees that the face push got caught on camera. And that you only see Brigitte's hand, not the rest of her — in the manner of Soupy Sales and White Fang:

ADDED: Here's a different angle:

"He starts wiggling and loosening the collar as people disagree with him."

He starts wiggling and loosening the collar as people disagree with him. pic.twitter.com/8aqf7iZSVM

— Whatsup - The Purple Whale (@80strolls) April 26, 2025

"The Nazi salute sh*t was insane. Honey, we're going to call a fig a fig, and we're going to call a Nazi salute what it was."

"I mean, I'll see things about him in the news and think, That's f**king cringe, I should probably post about this and denounce it, which I have done a few times.... But other than that, I don't give a f**k about him. I really don't. It's annoying that people associate me with him. I just don't have any room to care anymore. When I initially did the whole thing, when he came for me, the Jordan Peterson interview, that was the most cathartic moment of my entire life by far. I had all this pent-up energy, I had wanted to speak out for so long after being [essentially] defamed in a book, after being doxxed. Everything that had gone on — especially in my childhood — when that finally happened, it was the most cathartic experience I have ever had. And then I was like, Okay, whatever...."

Said Vivian Jenna Wilson, quoted in "Vivian Jenna Wilson on Being Elon Musk’s Estranged Daughter, Protecting Trans Youth and Taking on the Right Online/In Teen Vogue’s special issue cover story, the estranged 20-year-old daughter of Elon Musk talks about the 'cartoonishly evil' Trump administration and being a young trans woman today" (Teen Vogue).

The "[essentially]" is Teen Vogue's. I guess they're afraid the accusation of defamation is itself defamation and want to avoid seeming to be adopting that defamation. The "book" in question is, I believe, Walter Isaacson's biography of Elon Musk. What specific statement of fact has she called defamatory?

The Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates debate.

The difference between these Susan Crawford and Brad Schimel is sharply defined.

AND: Here's a new NYT article, "The Trump Loyalist Aiming to Swing Wisconsin Back to the Right/Brad Schimel, a judge who is so supportive of the president that he dressed up as him for Halloween, is hoping to flip the Wisconsin Supreme Court for conservatives":

The state’s Democratic Party is airing television ads tying Mr. Musk to Judge Schimel....

Click that link to see an ad that shows Elon Musk wielding the chain saw and giving the "Nazi" salute over and over again.

"Body-language and behavioral expert Darren Stanton said he thought Zelensky appeared 'quite angry from the outset' and got 'caught up in his own ego.'"

"At one point while Vance is talking, Zelensky moves from leaning forward to leaning back with his arms crossed, showing a 'dramatic change in inner emotion' that Stanton believed was the moment Zelensky realized 'he was going to leave.' 'He felt he wasn’t getting his points across or wasn’t allowed to,' Stanton said, adding that he also thought Trump was greatly frustrated by Zelensky, despite remaining stone-faced."

From "Body-language experts break down the dramatic Trump-Zelensky meeting/The row between Trump and Zelensky was heightened by the lack of an interpreter, the power imbalance, and the men’s TV backgrounds, body-language experts say" (WaPo).

"The diagnosis of online irony poisoning tends to understate the extent to which social media’s rightward drift regulates so much else in life..."

"... establishing the terms and the tenor by which we enter that bustling intersection called discourse. The comedification of America has become the memeification of America.... The puerile hasn’t confabbed with the establishment so much as replaced it, with the latter’s permission. Jokes mingle with cruel and lethal austerity measures. At the podium during a rally held after the Presidential Inauguration, Musk raised a stiff right arm in what looked like a Nazi salute yet it was laughed off by the Anti-Defamation League as just an 'awkward gesture.' This month, Musk briefly changed his profile name on X, the social platform he owns, to Harry Bōlz, a brilliant display of homophonic potty humor that prompted a surge in an obscure cryptocurrency by the same name. This is where America lives and what America does. Nothing is funny, but everything is. And therein lies a sense of impotence, because our ability to discern the consequential ghoulishness of this nation’s policies–LOL that’s crazy!–doesn’t in and of itself constitute resistance.... Laughter does not speak for itself. We must ask after it.... We ask the universe, as one memesmith did, 'does anyone know if we have to maintain our senses of kindness and empathy despite the world constantly trying to destroy the individual and destroy feelings in impersonal society tomorrow.'"

Writes Lauren Michele Jackson, in "The End of Seriousness/Our unfunny times are rife with laughter that seldom offers relief" (The New Yorker).

I get to use my "Era of That's Not Funny" tag again.

How are you doing in the bustling intersection called discourse?

I saw Musk's "Nazi salute" in real time, but failed to jump up and blog it.

Now, it's so old, I'd have to add something of value. I've been thinking of saying about what I'd have said if I'd jumped up right away: He's doing something like blowing a kiss. He's slapping his heart, then throwing it toward the audience, to say my heart goes out to you.

Or what I felt like saying earlier this morning: This is such a social-media meme — so easy to see and comment on that it's working incredibly well as a distraction. Therefore, the Musk/Trump haters are getting conned. And: I wonder if Musk did all this on purpose — to divert critics from the main highway of policy substance into a cultural cul de sac.

But I worked on other things, as you can see below, and even more time passed. I was about to let it go entirely, but then 2 things I saw on X made me laugh, so I'll give you this:

Governor Newsom's seesawing shoulders inject horror into the phrase "some ideas around some land use concerns... around speculators coming in."

NO FU*KING WAY.

"I was just talking to Josh Green, the governor down in Hawaii, who had some ideas around some land use concerns he has around speculators coming in, buying up properties.

So we're already working with our legal teams to to move those things forward and we'll… pic.twitter.com/ed1Msb8O0v

— HustleBitch (@HustleBitch_) January 13, 2025

Discussed at X, here.

How do you read that body language (and facial expression)? I'm seeing knowledge that speculators have already outrun him and cannot be stopped. What do you think?

That shoulder action seems to say: Everyone has always found me so cute, so I'll try being extra cute. It's all I've got.

ADDED: If Newsom had controlled his body language, I would have been inclined to think that he was getting ahead of the problem and that talking to the Governor of Hawaii — who dealt with the aftermath of the Maui fires — made a lot of sense.

"As the former presidents, first ladies, and vice presidents sat together at the National Cathedral on Thursday..."

"'Sometimes it’s hard for me to believe that God put me on one of these rows,' Pence remarked. Media coverage scrutinized the small interactions among them, noting Pence’s handshakes with the Trumps and former Second Lady Karen Pence’s refusal to acknowledge either. 'He greeted me when he came down the aisle. I stood up, extended my hand. He shook my hand. I said, "Congratulations, Mr. President," and he said, "Thanks, Mike,"' Pence said. 'You’d have to ask my wife about her posture, but we’ve been married 44 years, and she loves her husband, and her husband respects her deeply.' The very public reunion was far from the only thing on his mind at the funeral. Before joining the Reagan Revolution and becoming a Republican, Pence had voted for Carter and was 'greatly heartened that there was a born-again Christian serving in the White House,'... Backstage at an event in 2015, Pence said he got to thank the 39th president for his service and commended how Carter 'spoke plainly about his faith in Jesus Christ' in office...."

Write Harvest Prude and Kate Shellnutt, in "Mike Pence Shares the First Thing He Said to Trump in Four Years" (Christianity Today).

"Leader Schumer, what do you say to Americans who feel as though you and other top Democrats misled them about President Biden's mental acuity?"

Chuck Schumer is confronted on NBC for covering up Biden's mental health decline.

Never forget: The Democratic Party knew that Biden wasn't competent enough to be president and hid the truth from Americans for four years.

Democrats do not care about Americans. It's that simple. pic.twitter.com/4sJbzMPi4C

— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) January 5, 2025

"No. Look, we didn't. And let's – let’s look – let’s look at President Biden. He's had an amazing record. The legislation we passed, one of the most significant groups of legislation since the New Deal – since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, putting in 235 judges, a record. And he's a patriot. He's a great guy. And when he stepped down, he did it on his own because he thought it was better not only for the Democratic Party, for America. We should all salute him. We should all salute him."

The question was "What do you say to Americans who feel as though" we were lied to. The question was framed to exclude an assertion about what you supposedly really did. But you gave that kind of response anyway — the nonresponsive response. Why'd you do that? It wasn't believable. It was a bald-faced lie about a bald-faced lie. It didn't even address us, the people — people with feelings about what you did. You just went off on a screwy rant that ended with a demand that we salute Joe Biden.

Salute the President? And they say Trump supporters seem like fascists.

ADDED: Here's the transcript. In case you are questioning whether Schumer said "We should all salute him" twice. 

"Holding space."

 Perhaps you're noticing this today:

Margaret Cho: "I'm holding space for that CEO shooter, the abs, and that body"

The American left's creepy fascination with Luigi Mangione continuespic.twitter.com/CJbFoys6iN

— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) December 15, 2024

That's Margaret Cho: "I'm holding space for... those eyebrows, that body, the abs."

She's being funny... and inappropriate, and I'm not going to say anything more about how bad it is to drool over an alleged murderer. I want to discuss the phrase "holding space," which gained traction a week ago with this promotional interview for the movie "Wicked":

"People are taking the lyrics of 'Defying Gravity' and really holding space with that and feeling power in that."

I see there's a Wikipedia article, "Holding space":

"Holding space" is a psychology concept meaning towards creating a safe space for someone or something by being present for them, physically, emotionally and mentally without judgement.

"So you can have people who attempt to gesticulate. Again, modern politicians, you’ll see this sometime where they feel like, 'I’m supposed to be making hand gestures'..."

"... and they’re terrible at it. And it undercuts it. Cicero and Quintilian give some very amusing examples from ancient Rome. He says, there was this one guy who when he spoke, looked like he was trying to swat away flies because there were just these awkward gestures. Or another who looked like he was trying balancing a boat in choppy seas. And my favorite is there was one orator who supposedly was prone to making, I guess, languid supple motions. They actually named a dance after this guy, and his name was Titius. And so Romans could do the Titius, which is this dance that was imitating this orator who had these comically bad gesticulation...."

From "Transcript for Gregory Aldrete: The Roman Empire – Rise and Fall of Ancient Rome | Lex Fridman Podcast #443"

The segment on gestures begins here. Or watch the video:

Photoshopping you'd think would already have happened.

You can see that someone proposed it 8 days ago on Reddit, but it didn't happen. 

Trump walks out into the GOP convention: What was your reaction?

I watched live last night — did you? — and I'm rewatching now:

0:06 — Trump ambles out slowly. He's got a patch of white gauze atop his upper ear. 

0:16 — We're seeing him backstage, where he can — with his famous and his unfamous ear — hear the crowd cheering. He looks serious... and tired.

0:22  — Lee Greenwood, live on stage, begins Trump's theme song — If tomorrow all the things were gone — and Trump raises his arm into a fist pump — the gesture last seen 2 minutes after he nearly died.

0:35 — He's mouthing some words, he waves, does another fist pump, looks down, gives a thumbs up, mouths "Thank you, thank you."

0:57 — I remember thinking last night that he looks different and I flashed on the possibility there could be a body double then estimated it at zero when he turned sideways and we could see his idiosyncratic ducktail.

2:00 — Ascended onto the podium, he looks happy now. He moves to the speaker's position, but he gives no speech, only a mouthed "Thank you" and another fist pump. He smiles for a moment then walks over to join a select group of family and friends. Not Melania, but Tiffany and the 2 older boys. J.D. Vance, Byron Donalds, Tucker Carlson. Lee Greenwood: "He is here tonight to show his courage, his defiance against somebody who tried to kill him."

2:08 — His facial expression becomes softer, gentler. He seems as if he might cry.

2:25 — From the lakes of Minnesota, to the hills of Tennessee — we know he is sensitive to music, and hearing this song again, now, must be an overwhelming emotional experience. Watch his face at this point.

2:53 — He dances slightly. 

3:13 — He's calmed down a bit now and is smiling and waving. 

3:43 — There's some restrained interaction with Vance after which his eyes swivel Vanceward, as if it might be possible for Trump to observe him unnoticed.

3:51 — Vance points at something, which seems to warm things up, and the 2 men chat. Then the 2 men point together. Pointing at something out of our view — perhaps at nothing at all — is a standard political gesture, and the 2 men seem to flow smoothly into this performance.

4:09 — The song ends, Trump salutes, the crowd chants the chant from the scene of the attempted assassination: "U-S-A! U-S-A!"

4:24 — Trump joins the chant. He's got a very wide smile, and again, I feel that he's holding back tears.

"The image is saintly."

Announces Washington Post fashion writer Rachel Tashjian, in "Jill Biden is Vogue’s cover star. What timing. The first lady covers Vogue for the third time, positioned by the magazine as a savior of the country’s fate."

Here's the image:

Tashjian proclaims that "a striking, fascinatingly out-of-character image in its storytelling."  What's the usual "character"? More smiley? More of a sidekick? I really don't know. Do you? We're told "the religious undertones are startling": "Her pose and visage, not to mention the color of her dress, recall religious paintings of saints communing with their higher power."

IN THE COMMENTS: Rafe — short for Raphael? — says "Which paintings? What a lazy comparison, to paintings which only exist, apparently, in her mind." 

I went looking for paintings of saints gazing upward. There's this, by Raphael:

Notice that Catherine's hands do not hang limply at her sides. They are expressive of ecstasy and placed in locations that would seem truly odd on a modern-day politico. Unlike Jill, she's got her weight shifted to one side, and also unlike Jill, she's leaning on what we know to be the device used to torture-murder-martyr her. Jill exists in an empty brown-gray void.

But it's the difference in the eyes that is most striking. Jill's eyes are rotated sideways, and only slightly upward, as if she is gazing fondly at her somewhat tall husband. They're not fixed on Heaven. 

Can we find paintings of saints with eyes rotated sideways, which seems mildly coy? Consider the entirely un-Jill-like Saint Lucy:

"In Finland, swinging your arms and other unnecessary sudden hand gestures are quite commonly interpreted as a sign of aggression, which should be avoided unless you want to get your ass kicked."

Writes someone in Finland in a Reddit discussion, "Do Europeans ever use their hand[s] to make 'Air Quotes' in a conversation, for example, to express sarcasm or a euphemism?"

Someone in Slovakia says "If you can't express sarcasm or a euphemism by you voice and tone, you shouldn't be allowed to do it. (I haven't seen it here, but maybe somebody does it.)"

An American says: "I did it in Italy once, and my little Italian cousins absolutely lost it laughing so hard, bc they didn't know why I was wiggling my fingers around (which I understand would look very, very strange if you don't know the meaning)." 

Someone in Italy answers: "We don't do it in Italy. Some people may know what it means because of American movies and TV series."

I know the TV series! It's "Friends":

"Taking the baton from Stevie Wonder, Annie Lennox sang the second portion of the 'In Memoriam' segment..."

"... delivering a stark rendition of 'Nothing Compares 2 U' in tribute to the late Sinéad O’Connor. Flanked by Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman of Prince’s legendary Revolution, Lennox concluded the balled by raising her fist in solidarity with Gaza: 'Artists for cease-fire!'"

From "Grammys 2024 performances, ranked from best to worst/Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs’s duet of ‘Fast Car’ was the highlight of the night, along with Joni Mitchell and Annie Lennox’s moving ballads" (WaPo).

Was that "solidarity with Gaza" or an attempt to resolve the longstanding conflict between O'Connor and Prince? No way for the 2 dead artists to declare a truce, but maybe some will see Lennox and Wendy and Lisa as proxies for the departed disputants.

But if we want to talk about symbolism, how does a raised fist represent a cease fire? Doesn't the fist let slip that a cease fire is wanted so that the struggle can continue?

And look at that typo: "balled" for "ballad."

"In 1924, the artist Nancy Cox-McCormack recounted her experience sculpting the bust of Benito Mussolini..."

"... in an article for The New York Times Magazine, 'When Mussolini Poses.' While posing, Mussolini was surrounded by opulent gifts, she wrote, including a music box that 'played only the Fascisti marching song.' The verb 'to pose' was first recorded in the mid-14th century. Its earliest definitions, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, include to propose a theory or question, to arrange an object or, like Mussolini, to assume a position for a portrait. When someone poses for a portrait, he or she presents an 'idealized' version of him or herself, 'often as a person of culture, fashion or erudition,' the lexicographer Grant Barrett said. But people 'posing' in life may be pretending to be someone they’re not to impress or deceive others. A character in a film reviewed by The Times in 1943, for example, was 'posing' as a millionaire’s long-lost daughter...."

Writes Sarah Diamond, in "A Pop, Dip and Spin Through the History of ‘Pose’/Though the word 'pose' is associated with voguing, it is less a part of the vocabulary and more a part of the movement" (NYT).

Somehow the women's victory emanated from the men's balls.

I'm reading the stunning first 3 paragraphs of "The Kissing Scandal After Spain’s Women’s World Cup Win/The support for a player who endured an unwanted kiss during the trophy presentation shows how attitudes toward women’s soccer are changing, but not fast enough" (The New Yorker).

Great writing from Louisa Thomas: