Clutching the lunch cloche.

I'm just reading the New Yorker article, by Lauren Collins, called "The Case for Lunch/Notes on an underappreciated meal." I'm not going to appreciate or fail to appreciate the meal called "lunch." I just want to snip out 2 things that stirred my love for language:

Per Samuel Johnson’s dictionary, the word “lunch” likely derives from “clunch” or “clutch,” meaning “as much food as one’s hand can hold.”... 

It was lunch, so there was sunshine, streaming into the dining room, backlighting the cursive lettering on the plate-glass windows. I felt as though I had just put on a cloche and pulled up a seat in the cafeteria of a Hopper painting....

"Cloche" — which means "bell" in French — is a bell-shaped hat:

"And on his head, where a swooping red beret has sat almost every day of his adult life, there was only a cap-shaped tan line and balding pate...."

"In a city rich with sartorial symbols, few have been more memorable than [Curtis] Sliwa’s ruby red headpiece. It helped the Guardian Angels, his subway patrol group, gain notoriety in the 1970s; was his uniform for a career in television and radio and provided an unofficial motif for his unsuccessful first run for mayor in 2021. Yet as he takes a second, seemingly more viable run at City Hall, Mr. Sliwa, 71, is beginning to show up without it... 'For some people, the beret is a defining issue,' Mr. Sliwa said, volunteering that it could evoke a certain Che Guevara-style revolutionary look. 'Guys and gals, I get it. If taking my red beret off will help you just to listen to me, no problem.'... Mr. Sliwa makes a point of wearing his beret underground — he tries to campaign in the subway two hours a day ('It’s the only way') — and on the streets. It makes him more visible.... Mr. Sliwa said he has six berets in rotation. On hot summer days, the wool can create its own small heat dome. 'I don’t mind shvitzing, but my wife does,' he said. 'She says, "oofa, this beret, it can walk on its own by the end of the day."' He is also hearing from friends who think it is worth more on than off.... 'First, I was all for taking his red hat off,' Mr. Dietl said. 'But now I think when Superman came to save everyone, he didn't take his cape off.'"

From "Curtis Sliwa Wants to Be Mayor. He’s Taking Off His Beret to Prove It. The Guardian Angels founder and Republican nominee for mayor has long been a New York curiosity. Can he become a serious contender?" (NYT).

You know who wore a hat? Lincoln. As Trump likes to say, responding to critics who call him insufficiently presidential: "I would say I can be more presidential than any president in history except for possibly Abe Lincoln with the big hat." And by the way, Trump has a damned distinctive hat and it worked for him. 

If the question is how can you be serious in a hat I think we have the answer, and Sliwa made that beret so much a part of his persona that it's the only thing recognizable about him. Without the hat, he's a generic old guy. It's too late to de-hat. He has to convince people he's serious, without de-hatting.

 

Should Curtis Sliwa prove his worth by going without the hat?

No, it's too late now.

No, the hat is good.

Yes, it's a barrier to being taken seriously. Crucial to de-hat.

Yes, but don't concede that it wasn't serious. Take control of the expression.

Who cares? This clown can't win. Move on to Cuomo or Adams.

 

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"One statement from the ministry urges people to be wary of strangers wearing masks or goggles, driving pickup trucks and carrying large bags or filming around military, industrial, or residential areas."

"Elsewhere, a poster published by the state-affiliated Nour News – which is close to Iran’s security apparatus – singled out for suspicion people who wear 'masks, hats, and sunglasses, even at night' and those who receive 'frequent package deliveries by courier.' The poster asks people to report 'unusual sounds from inside the house, such as screaming, the sound of metal equipment, continuous banging' and 'houses with curtains drawn even during the day.'..."

From "Iran’s Mossad paranoia grows, amid fears of Israeli spies wearing 'masks, hats and sunglasses'" (CNN).

"I was minding my own business, gardening, when it struck up from behind and boofed me on the head.... I’ve decided to wear a hat today because I don’t want it to happen again."

Said Paul Boys, 64, quoted in "In pursuit of the hawk divebombing tall men in Hertfordshire/A Harris’s hawk is terrorising the village of Flamstead, where about 20 people have been attacked in the past fortnight" (London Times).

The hawk was minding his own business too, but its business is boofing tall men.

"Boof," the noun, has been around since 1825. It's "A blow that makes a sound like a rapid, brief movement of air" (OED).

I like the village name, Flamstead, which just means "place of the Flemings." There's an annual Flamstead Scarecrow Festival....

"'Dark MAGA' spreads as conservatives embrace Musk’s influence on Trump."

A headline at AP (AP, which, by the way, is suing Donald Trump for excluding it from White House access because it won't use the new sobriquet for the southward Gulf).

The AP writer, Adriana Gomez Licon, saw a lot of the black MAGA hats at CPAC. Does wearing the black version of the MAGA hat represent affiliation with Musk? 

Also: "Speakers at CPAC frequently brought up DOGE, playfully named after a meme coin with the face of a Shiba Inu dog popularized by Musk in 2021. They variously referred to him as a 'white knight,' a 'hero of free speech,' and according to one of his harshest critics, Steve Bannon, 'Superman.'"

"It wasn’t planned. That wasn’t two coaches throwing guys over and saying 'This is happening' — none of that happened. That was as organic as it gets."

Said Jon Cooper, the coach for Canada, quoted in The London Times:

Here's the video at YouTube. Judge for yourself. Political theater? Is this about Trump — Trump and his tariffs and his fifty-oneness?

Meanwhile, Trump himself was at The Daytona 500 and — with his lovely tiny little granddaughter — the sports-related masculine political theater was not brutishly macho but nobly patriarchal:

ADDED: The oversized MAGA hat emphasizes the tininess of the granddaughter, and it made me think of this image of Elon Musk in a giant hat:

pic.twitter.com/nhRCtyA3wj

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 7, 2025

You can see the hat as it is — large — or you can perceive the optical illusion that Musk is a tiny person, a child. Musk famously tweeted: "I love @realDonaldTrump as much as a straight man can love another man." And I've been thinking the love is a boy's love for the father he never had. Musk real father was — as Musk tells it — "a terrible human being" who has done "almost every evil thing you could possibly think of." The giant hat is a bid to be seen as a boy, to be loved by a father.

"Ms. Tilevitz, the sex therapist, said that a certain confidence can be gained by wearing generously sized sweaters."

"'There is a sexiness women can feel internally when they wear something that allows them to disappear from anyone else,' she said, comparing the garments to a security blanket. At a time when women in America have lost rights to their bodily autonomy, sweaters that 'obfuscate the body' can also serve as a sort of armor, said Kat Henning, 37, a senior footwear designer.... 'You feel a little under attack and being swaddled in a beautiful knit that completely covers you, not being available as a sex object, makes women feel better,' said Ms. Henning, whose has knits from Lauren Manoogian and Wol Hide, a brand in Philadelphia. Kelsey Keith, 40, a creative director in Berkeley, Calif., ... described their appeal this way: 'It’s about dressing on your own terms. The male gaze is not even a consideration.'"

From "Hefty Sweaters for Heavy Times/Thick, woolly and oversize knitwear has for some become a form of soft armor" (NYT).

Sweaters! This time, they're political.

Last time around, the political knitwear was the pussy hat, and you had to go to a big protest. This time, the knitwear is much larger, and you don't have to go anyplace... other than deeply inside it.

Additional reading: "Goodbye, 'Resistance.' The Era of Hyperpolitics Is Over. Where has the anti-Trump energy gone?" (NYT).

Posing on the front steps... ready to fight... or dance.

We're told that when Trump stepped out of the SUV, President Biden said, "Welcome home." Nice.

And nice hat on Melania and purple tie on Trump. Jill leaves in brilliant blue.

That's my photo, from my remote outpost in Madison, Wisconsin, where it is 29 degrees colder than it is in Washington, where the inauguration solemnities and festivities have been moved indoors. 

What did Elon Musk mean by "I’m not just MAGA, I’m Dark MAGA!"

I saw this in real time in the live feed from Saturday's Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and I thought he might just be referring to his black clothing and his black-on-black Make-America-Great-Again cap.

And then I thought it might be a slang use of "dark" as in "Dark Brandon." Remember that? Wikipedia says:

The phrase "Dark Brandon" was initially a meme created by online progressives to parody supporters of "Dark MAGA", a belief promoted by former U.S. representative Madison Cawthorn that former president Trump would return to power "with a vengeance."  It copies the "fashwave" aesthetic used initially by online supporters of figures like Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis....

So Dark MAGA preceded Dark Brandon. 

Remember Madison Cawthorn?

Railing against "the cowardly and weak members of our own party," Cawthorn wrote [in May 2022]: "It's time for the rise of the new right, it's time for Dark MAGA to truly take command." "Dark MAGA" references a fringe movement advocating a vengeful return of Trumpism.

With that background, why would Elon Musk choose to horse around with the phrase "Dark MAGA"? Could he be seriously connecting to the Cawthorn meaning?

In discussions of Elon Musk's recent declaration, I'm seeing various sources that discuss the 2022 use of the phrase, so let me just select one to quote: "Dark MAGA: Will It All End Here?" by David Levi Strauss (in The Brooklyn Rail, which seems like an interesting publication, around since 2000, but only just noticed by me today).

The NYT creates a multicolored diagram of a Trump rally speech.

That's from "The 9 Elements of a Trump Rally" (free-access link). It should be "The 9 Elements of a Trump Rally Speech," because the article and diagram are only about Trump's speech, but there are, in fact, many elements to a Trump rally that are not Trump's speech.

There are the hours spent in line waiting to get in, during which Trump fans interact with each other. There are the further hours spent inside and waiting for the show alongside fellow Trumpsters, listening to Trump's playlist and dancing or talking. These people are hanging out at Trump's party, having fun.

How do I know that? Have I been to a Trump rally? No. But my husband has been to 3 Trump rallies (and I've watched quite a few on YouTube).

"Biden's fun. Biden's kind of fun... I don't want to lose him now that he's just not going to be the president. He's fun now...."

Says Tim Dillon near the end of this week's podcast, reacting to Biden's putting on a Trump hat he gets from some old guy at a rally and telling the guy not to eat dogs and cats:

And watch beginning at 24:10 for Tim's critique of the Wall Street Journal piece reassuring readers about the viral video of armed migrants in the corridor of an apartment building in Aurora, Colorado: "This is the Wall Street Journal writing an article telling people to relax, going, hey, why don't you fucking relax, you racist, because what you thought was a full takeover of a building was not — it was just 10 violent Venezuelan prison gang members carrying out a routine operation or something they felt needed to be done.... Thank you, Wall Street Journal.... There are guys in the in the corridor with guns, and they're killing someone, but it's okay. They didn't take over the whole building.... Can you imagine writing this article thinking it lands?...."

Here's the Wall Street Journal piece in case you want to fact-check Tim's mockery: "In Colorado, a Murder and a Viral Video Stoke Fears of Migrant Crime/In exaggerated claim that a Venezuelan gang took over an apartment complex spread quickly through an already-on-edge community."

"Remember: No eatin' dogs and cats!"

NEW: Full exchange of the incident leading up to Joe Biden putting on a Trump 2024 hat.

Biden: "Sure, I'll autograph [a hat]."

Man: "You remember your name?"

Biden: "I don't remember my name... I'm slow."

Man: "You're an old fart."

Biden: "Yeah, I'm an old guy... You would… pic.twitter.com/yQcCXmtzIZ

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) September 12, 2024

Teen Vogue weighs in on "Why the Harris Walz Camo Hat Is Becoming a Status Symbol for Liberals."

"Nearly $1 million worth of Walz inspired hats have been sold through the Harris campaign" — by Alyssa Hardy.

On August 6, VP Kamala Harris posted a video asking Minnesota Governor Tim Walzto join the ticket as her vice presidential nominee. He gleefully accepted from his living room, where he was sitting on a wicker chair wearing a black t-shirt, khakis, bright white sneakers, and a camo hat.

"Richard Hofstadter identified a paranoid style of American politics in the 1960s. His student, Christopher Lasch..."

"... called out the narcissism of American society in the 1970s and ’80s that we now know metastasized into Trump. As a card-carrying historian (who studied under Lasch), I am going to give it shot. The contemporary Republican Party acts as if it has a histrionic personality disorder. Their election playbook speaks directly to type: create a straw man/woman of your opponent, throw corrupt corporate and big PAC money to attack it, and then lie, fearmonger and, well, be histrionic to win votes. Nothing about the truth matters. If the opponent has nothing to distort or take out of context, make something up. Act on rash decisions. Rationalize your choices, no matter how mistaken. Above all, play the victim and win at all costs."

Wrote Tracy Mitrano, last July, in "The Republican Party Has a Histrionic Personality Disorder/And the impact on national security is serious" (Inside Higher Ed). Here's Mitrano's Ballotpedia page. She's a Democrat, so she's not explicitly making the larger point like Hofstadter and her mentor Lasch. But it seems obvious to me: We see histrionics across the board in American politics.

I found that year-old piece after wondering why people diagnose Trump with narcissism, when his personality seems much more like what the DSM calls "histrionic personality disorder." 

Here's what the NIH has to say about HPD:

"To be creative, you want to feel like you're getting away with something."

Also: "You spend all your life trying to save time, but when you get to the end of your life, there's no time left, and you'll go to heaven, and you go 'But wait, I had velcro sneakers, no-iron shirt, clip-on tie. What about all that time? It's gone.'"

And, though Seinfeld won't show you his Star of David necklace, he says "Yes, I wear a Star of David necklace, because it makes me feel closer to the people of Israel that I feel close to and that's why I wear it."

He reveals his favorite word: "quintessence." He discusses the meaning, but I wanted the OED meaning: "The most essential part or feature of some non-material thing; the purest or most perfect form or manifestation of some quality, idea, etc."

But that's the figurative meaning.

Trump's secret: hats... always hats.

I'm reading "Trump invested in a muscular turnout operation, and it paid off" by Michael Gold in the NYT.

Much of the Trump campaign’s focus was on enlisting 'caucus captains,' devoted supporters who agreed to recruit 10 friends and neighbors to caucus for Mr. Trump. To incentivize them, the campaign offered signed hats and chances to meet the former president. The campaign held trainings for caucus captains at its headquarters, where it taught them the ins and outs of caucusing so the captains could pass their knowledge on to new caucusgoers.... At his rallies, caucus captains and volunteers collected information from attendees, and the campaign followed up with emails, phone calls and text messages.... The campaign... deployed educational videos — one with a cartoon blob named Marlon, the other with Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law — that offered step-by-step instructions to first-time caucusgoers.

Hats and simple cartoons — here's that Marlon thing — maybe politics is far simpler than anybody but Trump understands.

ADDED: Political hats are a big topic. There are metaphorical hats — the hat that you throw into the ring, the white hat that designates the hero. And there are literal hats, like the shockingly powerful MAGA hat. And remember pussy hats? To go back in history, there's the liberty cap.

And look, here's a liberty cap, atop the flagpole, in The Great Seal of the State of Iowa:

"We said 'never again.' The UK was a safe haven. Now..."

"... after the biggest massacre of Jews since the holocaust, British Jewish children are being advised to hide their identities as they walk to school, for their own safety. There should be mass outrage that this is necessary."

Writes J.K. Rowling, at "X," showing us this letter to the editor of the London Times from London resident Dr Sarah Nachshen:

Sir, On advice from her school our teenage daughter has gone off without her blazer this morning. Her male classmates have been advised to cover their skullcaps with baseball caps. On her pre-school dawn run yesterday she ran past the broken glass of a kosher café’s windows and a fresh anti-Israel slogan painted on a bridge. All my grandparents were Holocaust survivors who found safe haven, and built new lives, in the UK, so of course I am twitching with latent anxiety and the creeping dangers of the masses not speaking out against terrorism. I sincerely hope Rishi Sunak honours his pledge to stand with Israel and protect British Jews. 

"Laughter itself has fragmented. Just listen to it: You’ve got your gurgling, impotent The Late Show With Stephen Colbert laughter over here..."

"... you’ve got your harsh and barkingly energized Trumpist laughter over there; you’ve got your free-floating Joe Rogan–podcast yuks; and then you’ve got the private snuffling and seizurelike sounds that you yourself make when you’re watching Jay Jurden Instagram clips alone, on your phone, with your earbuds in. And for most of us, behind all of this, the feeling that we’re whistling past the graveyard: that the sludge is rising, politically; that the bullyboys are cracking their knuckles; that we’re 'just kind of half-waiting,' as Marc Maron put it in a recent HBO special, 'for the stupids to choose a uniform.' How did we get here? How did we arrive at a place where Jordan Peterson, who wouldn’t know a good joke if it ran him over, is instructing us on the importance of comedy as a defense against totalitarianism, while Dave Chappelle—one of the funniest men alive—burns up his comic capital defending his right to be mean about trans people?"

Writes James Parker, in "Comedians Only Care About Comedy/A new book cured me of any attachment to the idea of the stand-up as truth-telling philosophe" (The Atlantic).

"One Twitter user dubbed the woman 'Insurrection Eva Braun'.... Someone called her 'fascist Matilda'..."

"... and several users made jokes about her being a character from a Wes Anderson movie. 'Emily in-carceration,' read one of the joke tweets referring to the show 'Emily in Paris.' There were a couple of comparisons to April Ludgate, the character played by Aubrey Plaza in NBC’s 'Parks and Recreation.' The clothing designer’s friend was among them: 'He’s always on Twitter, and he said something like, Yo, check out this chick.'  That night, after tipping off the FBI, the clothing maker took to his own Twitter account, quote-tweeting the FBI’s post. 'I use to date this girl in 2019 LOL,' he tweeted, attaching an old picture of [Jennifer Inzuza] Vargas, wearing a red ski hat.... 'We were hooking up for a few months.' Toward the end of those months, the designer said, Vargas posted on his Discord that she was reading ['Mein Kampf.'].... 'I was just instantly turned off, like, Yo, I don’t think this is going to work out....'"

From "Jan. 6 rioter in pink beret identified after ex spotted her in a viral FBI tweet/'It’s just going to be one of those things for me. I dated this girl that was on the FBI’s most wanted list" (NBC News).

Here's the FBI tweet:

#FBIWFO released photos of this woman who allegedly participated in the U.S. Capitol riots on January 6, 2021. If you recognize her, call 1-800-225-5324 or visit https://t.co/t8G7LO4hxu to submit a tip. Refer to photo 537 in your tip. pic.twitter.com/cJ9oYfSxxu

— FBI Washington Field (@FBIWFO) April 27, 2023

"I have a dear friend who has been exploring and expanding her style. She will show up to dinner wearing a suit with a bow but without a shirt..."

"... and with a huge hat, which gets in other diners’ way. She also loves to wear things that make a lot of noise while walking. Everyone I know is uncomfortable with these new choices. Am I wrong to feel this way in 2022? How can we address this and also be sensitive to style and individuality? "

That's a question addressed to the NYT fashion writer Vanessa Friedman.

I don't care what the answer is. I just want to see a movie based on this question.

I especially love "things that make a lot of noise while walking." I feel as though I've seen many movie/TV bits about a huge hat that gets in someone's way, so this movie will have to create some other fashion aggression.

I love the theme of a lady deciding it's time for her to explore and expand. You know it's traditionally a problem for women that we've been socialized to make ourselves small and to always account for the needs of others and rein in our own urge to express. So I'd love to see a character go big with fashion — wild, invasive, annoying fashion. It's a comedy. With a serious message.