"Wow. Okay."

Said the Pope, accepting the gift of a paperweight from Marco Rubio.

I felt awkward just watching it.

"Meghan has struggled to contact her father after his life-saving surgery because she has lost his phone number and he has stopped using his email address..."

"...it is claimed," The London Times reports in "Meghan ‘no longer has’ her father Thomas Markle’s phone number/The Duchess of Sussex is believed to have lost or deleted her father’s number as she claimed to have contacted him by email after his ‘life-or-death’ surgery."

Hilariously... I mean sadly... unbelievable, for about 10 reasons, including the way the "contacts" on your phone hang on steadfastly until you delete them. I just checked mine, and I see names of people I haven't phoned since the '00s. Maybe Meghan weeds hers out more assiduously than I do, but still... deleting your father's name?

"In recent days Meghan has continued promoting the Christmas special of her Netflix show... in which she talks about a Christmas tree encapsulating a 'family’s story.' In a video posted to... Instagram she is seen making a homemade advert [sic] calendar... and saying 'thank you so … honestly so, so much' to the television crew... Markle is yet to meet his grandchildren... although he did receive a call asking for his daughter’s hand in marriage...."

Now about that advent calendar:

"The President kind of holds up his hand and says, 'No, no, no, hold on a second. There's something much more important. Shoes.'"

"He peers over the Resolute Desk and he says, 'Marco, JD, you guys have shitty shoes.' He goes out and grabs a catalog... And he actually runs us through this incredible shoe catalog. The President is gifting us with four pairs of shoes.... He says, 'Marco, what's your shoe size?' And Marco's apparently an 11 and a half. He says, JD, what's your shoe size? My shoe size is 13. And he asked this [other] politician... what his shoe size is, and he says 7. The President leans back in his chair and says, 'You know you can tell a lot about a man by his shoe size.'"

Vice President JD Vance just dropped a hilarious Oval Office story leaving the entire room cracking up.

President Trump glanced over the Resolute Desk at VP Vance and Secretary Marco Rubio and said, “You guys have shitty shoes.”

Right then and there, Trump pulled out a shoe… pic.twitter.com/3Z2xyh9MZK

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) December 6, 2025

You can't lie about your shoe size if the shoes are going to be ordered by the other person and he's expecting you to wear them, and besides, if a man's shoe size is 7, his feet are going to look pretty small. So there was no escaping the penis-size innuendo. Or maybe Trump wasn't promising to buy that other guy new shoes. It was only Marco and JD who got called out for having "shitty shoes."

"I would cry real tears of joy if I was drunk and a boy showed up [at a party] with homemade cinnamon bread."

Writes Nell — commenting on  a TikTok video — and it's "extremely validating" to the man who was treated as though he'd done something hopelessly weird.

"Could students take their college professor out to Chipotle for an end-of-term celebration? And if so..."

"... would it somehow become criminal to take the professor for a steak dinner? Or to treat her to a Hoosiers game?"

Wrote Justice Kavanaugh, quoted in "Corruption Law Allows Gifts to State and Local Officials, Supreme Court Rules/The court, which has limited the sweep of several anti-corruption laws, distinguished after-the-fact rewards from before-the-fact bribes" (NYT).

The alleged gratuity in the actual case was money — $13,000. The federal statute, §666 — to quote the opinion — "makes it a crime for state or  to 'corruptly' solicit, accept, accept, or agree to accept 'anything of value from any person, intending to be influenced or rewarded' for an official act." Importantly, federal law subjects federal officials to 2 different provisions, one for bribes and the other for gratuities, with a much lower sentence for corrupt gratuities. As for the non-corrupt gratuities, where is the line drawn?

The NYT reminds us that Clarence Thomas has received "luxury travel and gifts from the Texas billionaire and conservative donor Harlan Crow."

"My mother has a large jar of pot gummies that she uses as a sleep aid. She doesn’t know that I know about them. She told a friend..."

"... whose daughter told me. I have been keeping an eye on the jar. She doesn’t seem to use many of them. Can I take a few gummies to sell to school friends (over-18 only) to pay for Hanukkah gifts for my family?"

A question addressed to the NYT ethicist. 

Hilarious, but it's fake, isn't it? Maybe, but not as fake, and not as hilarious — as this got-to-be-fake question addressed to WaPo's advice columnist:

Here are 6 TikToks I've selected for you. Let me know what you like.

1. A downplayed gift.

2. Fear of heights.

3. The opposite of fear of heights.

4. Paul McCartney, on horseback, shows you his sequoia.

5. A man imitates that chickadee you liked so much yesterday.

6. Is it too weird to skip small talk?

Key word: "regifted."

For Father’s Day my kids regifted me a cold and distant stare.

— Conan O'Brien (@ConanOBrien) June 19, 2022

I've got 6 TikTok selections today. Let me know which ones you like.

1. Making "breakfast coffee" — from the 1950s — involves egg whites.

2. What meaning can a 3-year-old find in the song "Under the Bridge"?

3. A fly breaking up with a fly.

4. Peter Doocy saying goodbye to Jen Psaki.

5. A lesson in awful restaurant conversation.

5. What are the guys in the office getting their mother for Mother's Day? (There's a clear winner.)

6. A mother remembers.

"For years my mother bought me perfectly nice sweaters of a kind that I never wear: sweaters with patterns, 'Cosby Show' sweaters, suburban dad sweaters."

"I felt she was attempting to dress me as a big sexless teddy bear rather than a man living in New York City and still hoping, in middle age, to attract a mate. The most memorable of these was bright red, with a gold crest on its breast, like the sigil of the kind of hoity-toity prep school I did not attend, and drooped so hugely on me I looked like a small boy dressed in his father’s clothes. My girlfriend charitably suggested that I 'loomed large' in my mother’s mind.... My friend Boyd and I have an aphorism: All mothers live in palaces built of lies. When Mom gave me a gray-and-white snowflake-pattern sweater one Christmas, I took it across the country with me to Seattle, where I staged photographs of myself wearing it with friends.... Later that afternoon, we returned the sweater to Macy’s.... A few years ago, I finally wore a sweater that Mom gave me 10 years earlier to visit her in the memory care unit at her retirement home. Although she no longer remembered the sweater, she did go out of her way to admire it, and I got to tell her that it was from her...."

From "The Unbearable Sadness of Your Parents’ Bad Holiday Gifts" by Tim Kreider (NYT).

1. "All mothers live in palaces built of lies" — Ironically, that's a lie that the son is telling himself. The mother in his mind lives in a palace made of lies he's telling himself about what must be in her mind. 

2. He doesn't even have his lie-palace built straight. He won't commit to whether his mother wanted him to look unlovable ("sexless") or lovable ("hoping... to attract a mate") or go too deeply into whether he's thinking of the interior of his mother's mind or his own. 

3. Maybe his mother was playfully participating in the Ugly Christmas Sweater meme and waiting for him to overcome his politeness and call her out. He's a humorist. Did he not get some/any of his humor from her? 

4. Do sons stereotype their mothers as Mothers? I won't say all sons stereotype their mothers as Mothers, but the ones who begin sentences with "All mothers..." certainly do — unless they're just kidding.

5. I learned a new word: "sigil."

"The priciest Advent calendar on the market is probably the new $150,000 Tiffany version, a four-foot-tall cabinet with a reproduction of the Jean-Michel Basquiat painting... on the front and 24 gifts inside."

" So why has the Chanel version gotten people so het up?... ... Chanel does lay out all the contents of the calendar on its website, so it’s not a secret what anybody is getting for their money. It’s not apparent that their offering is any more flimflam than that of other brands. But because it was new, and because it cost so much [$825], and because it was Chanel, with all the mythology built into the name, the stakes and expectations may have been higher. And the sense of betrayal when those expectations were not met, greater — and, it would seem, the desire to publicly pile on in response, irresistible. Those who profit from perception can also lose because of it. What Ms. Harmon opened up wasn’t just a new mini perfume. It was a new reality, now completely out of the box."

 
From "Chanel, TikTok and the Beauty Advent Calendar Controversy/Some social media users are not feeling the Christmas spirit — or this box of mini lipsticks and branded stickers" (NYT).

Here's Elise Harmon's viral TikTok video, showing her unboxing the Chanel Advent calendar. Here's Chanel's presentation, revealing what you get for the money (click to enlarge):

"The next morning, I return to Viroqua for a stroll through the town’s vaunted bookstore, Driftless Books, housed in another massive tobacco warehouse."

"The walls are covered floor to ceiling in secondhand books. Framed custom portraits hang from the rafters. A moose head. A rusting sousaphone... 'So yeah, one thing led to another, and a guy gave me this building,' says owner Eddy Nix, a community fixture in Viroqua. He is wearing a loose sweater and patched denim, and he wraps used books in donated paper bags as I pepper him with questions about the store. 'Literally just gave it to you?' I ask. 'He was like some guerrilla philanthropist,' he says. They met when Nix was running the first iteration of his shop in nearby Viola. A stranger walked in one day looking for Richard Brautigan’s 'Trout Fishing in America.' Nix sold him a copy, along with a preorder for 'Wake Up,' Jack Kerouac’s posthumously published biography of the Buddha. And that was that — until a year later, when Nix grew obsessed with this empty old warehouse in Viroqua and finally contacted the owner, who asked whether the Kerouac book had arrived yet. 'It was the same dude!' he says. 'And then like five months later, after forcing me to read the complete commentaries of Gurdjieff and all this metaphysical hoodoo, he gives me the building, like out of the blue.'"

Oh, no! The Washington Post has discovered Wisconsin! 

I'm reading "In southwestern Wisconsin, the bucolic Driftless Area is an overlooked gem."

My favorite comment over there is from Owen Caterwall:

Please, please don't come here. Don't bring your crappy coffee shops, your whiney tourists, your behemoth vehicles, your brassy loud voices, your unsolicited opinions, and your bored witless kids. People live here. It's not quaint, or cute, or charming, or fey. It's where we live and conduct our lives. It's not a museum or gawkers' paradise. Go to Disneyland. You'll have more fun.

"This is the best gift idea I've ever had."

Chelsea Clinton has an etiquette question.

Just found out one of my closest childhood friends didn’t receive the wedding present I sent because I foolishly sent it to her old address. And the new occupant just kept it?! What’s the etiquette here? Serious question.

— Chelsea Clinton (@ChelseaClinton) December 15, 2020

Question? I'd say questions. First of all, are you lying? This better not be a cover for not sending a present. How long ago was the wedding? Did you attend the wedding? How expensive was the present? Why are you accusing the new occupant of just keeping the present when you know there are thieves who steal items from doorsteps? Surely, the identity of the people you're accusing — or just asking about — could be easily uncovered. What's the etiquette about insinuating that random private citizens are thieves? How many people are in the category "my closest childhood friends" for you? Does the "childhood" part mean you're not really friends with them anymore? Did you even consider going to the wedding? Are you tweeting this now because you heard from the childhood friend and wanted to do something to vouch for your interest in her wedding? 

I read some of the replies over there and there are quite a few that say if a package from Chelsea Clinton arrived on their doorstep, they'd be so starstruck, they'd definitely keep it. It seems that Chelsea Clinton fans aren't big sticklers for legal procedure.

ADDED: In the discussion over there, Chelsea reveals that she did already send a new present to the old friend, so her "etiquette" question is only about what should be done — or thought — about the package keepers. 

"As Mike Bloomberg celebrated his 48th birthday in 1990, a top aide at the company he founded presented him with a booklet of profane, sexist quotes she attributed to him."

"A good salesperson is like a man who tries to pick up women at a bar by saying, 'Do you want to f---? He gets turned down a lot — but he gets f----- a lot, too!' Bloomberg was quoted in the booklet as saying. Bloomberg also allegedly said that his company’s financial information computers 'will do everything, including give you [oral sex]. I guess that puts a lot of you girls out of business.' At the time, some Bloomberg staffers said, they laughed off the comments in the 32-page booklet, 'The Wit and Wisdom of Michael Bloomberg,' as a macho side of one of the nerdiest men on Wall Street.... After The Post informed the Bloomberg campaign that it planned to put online a copy of the full booklet, spokesman Stu Loeser said, 'Mike simply did not say the things somebody wrote in this gag gift, which has been circulating for 30 years and has been quoted in every previous election Mike has been in.'"

From "Mike Bloomberg for years has battled women’s allegations of profane, sexist comments" (WaPo).

And here's the booklet.

From the booklet. I read it. His favorite song is "My Way." He likes to mention blow jobs. Like this:

So what was the Christmas present from Kim Jong-Un? Was it, as Trump guessed, a beautiful vase?

I saw the news 2 days ago:

President Trump did not seem concerned Tuesday when asked about the threat of a "Christmas present" from North Korea if the U.S. doesn't roll back economic sanctions on the country by the end of the year.

"Maybe it's a nice present," Trump told reporters at an event at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. "Maybe it's a present where he sends me a beautiful vase, as opposed to a missile test."

Christmas has come and gone, so what was it? A beautiful vase?

"We'll find out what the surprise is, and we'll deal with it very successfully. Let's see what happens. Everybody's got surprises for me — but let's see what happens," Trump said. "I handle them as they come along."

In other Trump-and-Christmas news: "Psychiatry expert says Trump’s rambling Merry Christmas rant includes three signs of serious mental impairment."

Here's the rant in question:



Do you see the signs? Let me help you. The signs are:

– slurred speech
– semantic paraphasia (inserting wrong word)
– phonemic paraphasia (combining words to form a likely nonsense word)

The purported "phonemic paraphasia" is right at the beginning. He says "And let me begin by wishing you a beautiful" and switches, in the middle of "beautiful" to "look, do you remember this?" If you just clip out the "beautiful" to "look" segment, it sounds like silly nonsense — abyooteefyoowoodlook....



... but it's rank dishonesty to view that as the kind of mental deficiency where a person is saying nonwords as if they were words.

I did enjoy looking up the word "paraphasia" in Wikipedia, because I learned:

The term was apparently introduced in 1877 by the German-English physician Julius Althaus in his book on Diseases of the Nervous System, in a sentence reading, "In some cases there is a perfect chorea or delirium of words, which may be called paraphasia".

I'm always happy to encounter another Althouse/Althaus.

Merry Christmas!

I hope you get what you want.

"I think there’s the potential for the whole range of human emotions, right from humiliation when you give someone a gift. It’s important to us how others feel about our behavior and how it comes across."

Said a psychologist, quoted in "Millennials Want To Ban Secret Santa Because It Gives Them Anxiety" (The Daily Wire).

I'm tired of the reflexive attacks on "snowflake" millennials. Save it for when they really deserve it. Feeling bad about "Secret Santa" events at work is not some special new problem. It's always made people feel bad! I've only been stuck inside one of these things once in my life, and it was way back in the 1970s. It was bad then and it's still bad. I'll bet there are episodes of "The Office" about Secret Santa parties that made everyone — Boomers, Gen Xers, and millennials — feel bad. I don't know, and the reason I don't know is that office stuff like that makes me feel so bad that I cannot enjoy watching a sitcom about it. And this is leftover bad feeling from the 1970s. Millennials want to ban Secret Santa because it gives them anxiety?! Everyone wants to ban Secret Santa because it gives them anxiety. Now, that's hyperbole, so don't tell me you like Secret Santa. Obviously, some people like it. I'm sure on "The Office" there are episodes that reveal what kind of people like Secret Santa and take the lead in making sure the horrible festivity is perpetuated.

Okay, I looked it up. There is a "Secret Santa" episode of "The Office," Season 6, Episode 13. I'm not going to watch it.

The cheap, obtuse fun of mocking Marie Kondo for selling some expensive, carefully chosen objects.

I saw the mockery the other day, but didn't want to take the trouble to say what is too obvious to ignore, but here's Penelope Green saying it in the NYT: "Marie Kondo Wants to Sell You Nice Things. What’s Wrong With That?/Her new online store honors her brand’s ethos: that objects can make people happy."

Kondo's decluttering was never about getting down to the bare minimum. It's about getting rid of everything that doesn't make you feel happy. That assumes you do have a few things that really work for you. But what would those things be? And what if you're just starting out? And also, what if you need to buy gifts for people who you know have followed the Marie Kondo method?

Here's the KonMari store. And here's the page for the most-mocked thing: Tuning Fork & Rose Quartz Crystal/$75.

Marie uses a tuning fork in her everyday life to help her to reset – and she’s never without a crystal. Striking the fork against a crystal creates pure tones that are believed to help restore a sense of balance. Made of aluminum alloy, this KonMari tuning fork has a frequency of 4,096 hertz. Comes with a rose quartz crystal.

She's never without a crystal, but she doesn't make any assertions about what the crystal is supposed to do. Leave the crystal beliefs to others to propound, but as for the tuning fork, the belief is stated: It restores a sense of balance. I note that there's no assertion that Marie believes that or that the belief is true. The assertion is only that there are such beliefs out there, presumably somewhere in the mind of some human beings, because where else could beliefs that complex exist? A cat might have a sense of balance, but it's unlikely that a cat has beliefs about a sense of balance, and virtually impossible for a cat to think it could recover a lost sense of balance by using an object to make a particular sound.

"A 2004 survey of over 30,000 respondents by BabyCenter found that 38% of new mothers received a push present, and 55% of pregnant mothers wanted one..."

"... though fewer thought it was actually expected. About 40% of both groups said the baby itself was already a present and did not wish an additional reward. The popularity of push presents has been attributed in part to media coverage of celebrities receiving them. Examples include a 10 carat diamond ring given to celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe by her husband Rodger after the 2011 birth of their son, a Bentley given to reality TV star Peggy Tanous of The Real Housewives of Orange County by her husband Micah after the 2007 birth of their daughter, and a diamond and sapphire necklace given to singer Mariah Carey by her husband Nick Cannon after the 2011 birth of their twins. The trend has generated a backlash...."

That's at "Push Present" (Wikipedia). I had to Google that after reading somebody on Twitter who said, "My wife just brought up a 'push present.' I had to google to find out what hell that is. This is our fourth kid. She can't start this now." The too-late-to-start-now argument is interesting. It made me think of another too-late-to-start-now argument: Every time it's your birthday, it marks the anniversary of what your mother did for you, going through pregnancy and childbirth, so you should be giving her a present.

By the way "push present" assumes the mother goes through labor and vaginal delivery, so it's the wrong term.  Whatever the woman goes through is a big deal, and she deserves to be honored for her contribution to the continuation of humanity, but often it's a Caesarean section, and naming the present after the "push" might feel quite wrong at a sensitive time. Plus, "push" sounds pushy and calls attention to the idea that the new mother might not want to do what she's just put herself in the position of needing to do.

ADDED: Here's a 2015 NYT article, "First Comes Baby, Then Comes Push Present?":

“They’re a very big thing in L.A.,” said Justin Lacob, 35, a new father who lives in Los Angeles. Although his wife didn’t expect a present, he said, “I’ve heard women complain about what they received.”...

Any gift for a new mother should have special meaning. “When she looks at it, it should remind her of the experience, of crossing over into motherhood,” said the New York City childbirth educator Patricia Rangel, who is curating a list of shopping ideas for her business website. (Ms. Rangel suggests an affordable piece of simple jewelry centered on the new baby, such as a birthstone, an engraved name or a charm in the shape of a peanut.)...

A peanut.