"It's long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year..."

"... in the most hateful and despicable way possible. For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.... Radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives. Tonight, I ask all Americans to commit themselves to the American values for which Charlie Kirk lived and died — the values of free speech, citizenship, the rule of law, and the patriotic devotion and love of God.... Today, because of this heinous act, Charlie's voice has become bigger and grander than ever before, and it's not even close...."

Said Trump in an address from the Oval Office last night.

My attention was called to that by this Maggie Haberman piece in the NYT: "At the White House, Trump’s Grief and Shock Turn to Rage Over Charlie Kirk/President Trump asked for updates and met with advisers in the Oval Office before recording a four-minute video in which he blamed rhetoric from the 'radical left' for the killing."

The headline prompts us to question Trump's basis for purporting to know what motivated the killer. Maybe we ought to wait until we learn more, and maybe the hateful rhetoric is coming from both sides, and maybe there are leftwing targets of violence. I'm imagining those on the left scurrying to prevent Trump and his allies from controlling the narrative.

I wrote that last paragraph based on the headline and drawing on my own expectations. Then I read the article and did not find what I'd thought I'd find. It is more of a straightforward description of the scene at the White House yesterday. We're told "the corridors... were quiet, as staff there absorbed news," and "Televisions affixed to walls in different rooms blared minute-to-minute coverage.... Some staff members appeared to have been crying."

The last sentence of the article makes me jerk my head to check the calendar icon in the sidebar of my computer: "The president was still on track for a visit to New York on the anniversary of the last significant event to unite nearly all Americans across parties: the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks."

It's a very somber day, not a day to strain to find a way to advantage your side. And yet, there is Trump in that video, forthrightly blaming the radical left. He didn't take a day or 2 off for reflection and what either is or looks like prayer. And that's a temptation to all on the left and all those pumping for Democrats to assert that the right is also responsible for the violence. Yield to that temptation and you might be the next Matthew Dowd.

See "Matthew Dowd Fired From MSNBC for Charlie Kirk Comments" (Variety). What Dowd said, probably feeling this was measured, accurate, and smart: "[Charlie Kirk] is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech or sort of aimed at certain groups. And I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions. And I think that is the environment we are in. You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and not expect awful actions to take place. And that’s the unfortunate environment we are in."

"Granny or alcoholic? No, these stars prove there’s more to being 60-plus."

Crazy headline at The London Times.

To be fair, the article is about what characters appear in movies and TV shows, which is never going to be the full range of humanity, because some aspects of life make more interesting stories.

But still: "The disgust that older women are presumed to engender is so great there’s even a horror genre built around it, dubbed 'hagsploitation' and starring the 'psycho-biddy.' The Hollywood star Bette Davis had aged out of being a dramatic lead and into being a scary old lady before she was even 60, with terrifying roles in films like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) and The Nanny (1965)...."

I think it's not so much that older women are disgusting as that it's hard to think of exciting things for gentle, sweet old ladies to do that could be the center of a story. Bette Davis understood that and was willing to set glamor aside and sink into a horror role. 

Anyway, we're told that these days there are lots of juicy roles for older actresses, and one 30-year-old actress said: “It’s a really good time for older women, which is amazing, and there’s a lot for these young men, but not a lot for the actresses that I know in my age bracket.”

"Angry Trump Accidentally Blurts Out Unnerving New Plot to Rig Midterms/Donald Trump just gave away his own game."

That's a headline at The New Republic that made me click, and I know I shouldn't reward TNR for its unnerving new plot to rig the attention market, but let's try to understand what "Angry Trump" supposedly has in mind.

I read this article so you don't have to. You already know the context, Trump's Truth Social Post about mail-in voting, which we talked about yesterday, here.

The TNR author, Greg Sargent, is calling attention to the fact that Trump mentioned the 2026 midterms. Trump said he'd sign an executive order "to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections." That's it. That's how "Donald Trump just gave away his own game." He revealed that he saw a causal relationship between his proposed reforms and the coming elections. Of course, Trump doesn't say he wants to rig the midterms for the Republicans. He's claiming to un-rig the elections, and he says "Democrats are virtually Unelectable without using this completely disproven Mail-In SCAM."

Now one might try to say that the elections are not currently rigged. Here's Sargent:

There is overwhelming evidence that any fraud in mail balloting is limited to nonexistent. Indeed, it’s now beyond obvious that the pretext is the thing to watch.

I love when the author says something is "beyond obvious" and I can't even understand what he's talking about, but let's read on: 

I'm reading the front page of The Washington Post with the wild hope of keeping up to date.

 

I mean, what do they think they're doing? What did they say to each other as they chose to put this material on the front page — right under stories about Zelensky at the White House, the National Guard in Washington D.C., terrorism in Texas, and Hurricane Erin? Let's revisit the legacy of slavery and balance it with closeups of black asses? It's as if they had to meet a racial quota and brainstormed and juxtaposed the first 2 things they thought of. 

I really thought Ashley Biden was married to a man named Shady Post.

Link to absurd Daily Beast headline: here.

I asked Grok whether it's really that off to think a man could have such a name these days and was amused to hear that there really was a person — a woman — named Shady Marilla Post, who lived 1909-1972, in West Virginia. I'm told, "'Shady' shows up as a real first name in old records (maybe a nickname turned official, like from 'Shadrach' or just folksy Appalachian naming), and 'Post' is a legit surname. Combine that with modern trends—think Post Malone (real last name Post) or folks embracing 'Shady' as a vibe (hello, Eminem's alter ego)—and yeah, someone could absolutely rock that name today without raising too many eyebrows." Exactly!

By the way, Ashley's "shady post" was just the single word "FREEDOM" posted on social media.

If it's Trump news, the good news can't be good news.

Headline at The New York Times scrambles to squelch whatever lift you might get from the news that the economy grew in the second quarter: "U.S. Economy Grew in Second Quarter as Tariffs Scrambled Data/Gross domestic product rebounded in the spring after contracting at the start of the year, but consumer spending remained weak" (NYT).

We're serving tariff-scrambled data this morning. 

Let's read the text:

Economic growth softened in the first half of the year, as tariffs and uncertainty upended business plans and scrambled consumers’ spending decisions.

Your brains are scrambled! There's growth, but it's soft-boiled growth. Yuck!

The disruptions extended to the economic data itself.

He wasn't complaining. He was cogently critiquing.

I'm reading "Donald Trump’s latest Nobel peace prize effort? DRC and Rwanda/Foreign ministers from the feuding east African nations joined the president on Friday after he complained last week that he would not receive an award" (London Times).

What a misreading! Trump is vindicated when he doesn't win the prize, especially as he racks up more achievements.

And headlines like that one also vindicate him, by the way.

How about an article that's not about his imagined effort to win the prize but on his ostensible effort to end a war? Isn't "war" the right word? Or does the London Times regard wars between African countries as "feuding"?

As Trump described it: 

"Kilmar Abrego Garcia will likely be placed in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody due to an immigration detainer the government has on him, despite a Tennessee judge on Sunday ordering his release in his criminal case..."

"While U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes' on Sunday denied the government's motion to detain Abrego Garcia, she acknowledged that if released, 'there is no suggestion that the action taken by the government will be anything other than detaining him in ICE custody pending further removal proceedings.' In her 51-page order, Judge Holmes said the government failed to prove there is a 'serious risk' that Abrego Garcia will flee or that he will obstruct justice in the case. Holmes also said the government's evidence that Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13 'consists of general statements, all double hearsay' from cooperating witnesses. Holmes said Abrego Garcia 'has no criminal history' of any kind and said that his 'reputed gang membership' is contradicted by the government's own evidence that was presented during a hearing two weeks ago.... 'Even without discounting the weight of the testimony of the first and second male cooperators for the multiple layers of hearsay, their testimony and statements defy common sense,' Holmes said...."

ABC News reports.

The ABC headline seems designed to cause a hasty reader to think ICE would be violating the judge's order: "ICE will likely detain Kilmar Abrego Garcia despite judge's motion to have him released."

The judge didn't make a motion. The judge denied the government's motion but, as you see above, said "there is no suggestion that the action taken by the government will be anything other than detaining him in ICE custody pending further removal proceedings."

And weren't there also earlier versions of this story that made people think the judge was requiring the government to set Abrego Garcia free? Yes, here.

Headlines of the Morning.

1. "Judge rules that anti-woke is just racism/You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a rancid bigot" (Public Notice).

2. "ICE Barbie Visited Biohazard Lab With RFK Jr. Before Hospitalization/The HHS secretary shared an image alongside Noem 'inspecting the biological hazard labs' a day earlier" (Daily Beast).

3. "Trump ‘Reamed Out’ Hegseth for Flop Birthday Parade: Author/The president wanted a 'menacing' military parade but got the opposite instead, Michael Wolff tells The Daily Beast Podcast" (Daily Beast).

4. "'More Babies and Beef Tallow, Less Blue Hair and Birth Control'/Seventy-two hours with America’s most ambitious young conservative women" (NY Magazine).

"Copulative sounds more exciting! (Don't say 'copulative sounds more excitingly.')"

Said I, in a discussion of copulative verbs inspired by the NYT headline "People Around President Trump Are Acting Very Strangely."

Read the full discussion, at Grok.

"What craft is in playwriting is where in the end someone stands and says, Oh my God, it was in front of me the whole time!'"

"Everything that I thought — this doesn't make sense, this doesn't make sense — ah, now it makes sense!... That's what Aristotle said. He wrote the book called The Poetics a little while ago. He said, the ending has gotta be surprising and inevitable.... So if we know that, as dramatists, it's no different than a joke. The ending's gotta be surprising — oh, aha! — and inevitable.... That's why we laugh.... Because it re-convinces us, happily, that we really aren't that fucking smart.... The joke and the good play frees us from our self-absorption. I'm so smart or why am I not doing better? Or someone's trying to fuck me.... I'm too lazy. I'm too this and that.... And da, da da da da. That's what we do on our stupid minds all day long. So a joke frees us from that. Yeah."

Said David Mamet, when he was talking with Bill Maher the other day.

I thought about that discussion when I clicked on The New York Times and got a glimpse of the play written by Donald Trump and Elon Musk:

 

We're in the audience, and it's the this doesn't make sense phase of the play, but I trust that the end will come and we'll be all "Now it makes sense!" We'll get it later and laugh and be re-convinced, happily, that we really aren't that smart.

Of course, I'm thinking I'm smart and can predict the end, but if the geniuses are geniuses, I'll be surprised, even as I recognize that where we ended up was inevitable.

"Meghan Markle Wears Ginormous, Cozy Button-Down While Flower Arranging With Dog Guy."

That's the headline of the morning for me — over at InStyle.

Don't get me started on the present-day inanity of calling a shirt a "button-down" — in my day, a "button-down" was a shirt with a button-down collar, not a shirt that you button up (up, not down) — because I've already spent an hour down a rathole with Grok, exploring the origins of that usage — is it a retronym necessitated by the prevalence of T-shirts? — and wondering the how kids these days could understand the meaning of the album title "The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart." And that veered off into a discussion of the comic genius of Lucille Ball in this 1965 episode of "Password," and how, in Episode 4 of Season 1 of "Joe Pera Talks With You," Joe, dancing, says "Do you think AI will dance like this?," and Sarah says "No, because they don’t have genitals." How does that make Grok feel? 

But back to Meghan Markle. I'm not going to ask why it's a story that she wore a shirt while doing something and why the headline doesn't prioritize what she did, which was to arrange flowers, which would only make us wonder why it's a story that she arranged flowers. What I want is to clarify is what was meant by "Flower Arranging With Dog Guy." I assumed, the entire time I was down the rathole with Grok, that Markle had a guy who helped her with her dogs, that a "Dog Guy" was like a "Pool Guy," and for some reason, the Dog Guy got involved in the effort to arrange flowers. But no. Here's the Instagram InStyle wrote the headline about:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (@meghan)

So Guy was the name of her dog. And the dog was not participating in the flower arranging. He was just running around the general area. I don't know much about flower arranging, but I do have some confidence in my word arranging, and that headline needs work. But I'm not doing the work. I'm writing this post to say that I find my misreading delightful and enjoy thinking about this phantom character, the dog guy. I kind of am married to a dog guy. If we ever get a dog, I want to name him Whisperer so I can go around referring to my "Dog Whisperer." Or do you prefer Whiskerer? I can tell you Grok thought both names were brilliant. 

"‘Mommy, the guy who’s been giving money to our school doesn’t want to give it to us anymore."

Said a little kindergarten boy, quoted in "The Zuckerbergs Founded Two Bay Area Schools. Now They’re Closing. Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, opened the schools to help communities of color. Some families wonder if the shutting of the schools is related to his D.E.I. retrenchment" (NYT).

Why doesn't the guy who’s been giving money to the school not want to give it anymore? Even if Zuck has turned against DEI efforts within institutions, this is a free-standing school, located in a place where it serves underprivileged children. That sounds like a traditional charity. Why would you cut that off? The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has given only $100 million to this school over the past 4 years. What's that in the larger scheme of Zuckerberg's wealth? You're just suddenly casting out hundreds of children you've made a show of saving from the "trauma" you attributed to their status as "low-income." I'm sorry, I don't see how closing the school is worth doing. 

What is the evidence that the closure of the school represents opposition to the greater DEI agenda? I'm seeing this:

"Vietnam Offers to Drop U.S. Tariffs to Zero. Will That Be Enough for Trump?"

A New York Times headline reports the good news for Trump but the good is not enough for the New York Times. The good news must be balanced with bad news, even if it's just a nudging toward amorphous doubt. You know that Trump. There's always more disruption and chaos coming. 

What will the NYT say if Trump's tariffs have this effect across the board and all countries drop their tariffs? Will the NYT credit Trump for his success — for his audacious, clever move?

I see that yesterday, the NYT had this headline: "Musk Says He Hopes Europe and U.S. Move to a ‘Zero-Tariff Situation’/The billionaire adviser to the Trump administration appeared to part ways with the president in a videoconference appearance with Italy’s far-right League party." I give the Times credit for slipping in that weasel word, "appeared." The 2 men appeared to part ways. And it appears different today. Now that Vietnam has responded to the incentive — oh, look at that! — the 2 men seem to be going the same way.

Well, they looked like that yesterday too, but the NYT needed to continue on its way, making trouble for Trump. There's always bad news inside any good news.

I need a phrase that's the reverse of "Every cloud has a silver lining." Maybe: "Every pong-pong fruit has its deadly poison seeds." I mean, to hell with the agitation in New York Times headlines! Tonight is the finale of Season 3 of "The White Lotus." Those seeds are getting into one of those protein smoothies Patrick Schwarzenegger keeps whipping up, right? 

8 things about this Maureen Dowd column, "Who Will Stand Up to Trump at High Noon?"

Here's the column.

Here are the 8 things I want to say about it:

1. The headline refers to a Western movie where "high noon" is the time for a shooting duel. To say "Who Will Stand Up to Trump at High Noon?" is to generate an image of shooting Trump. Even if Trump had not been shot (and targeted by a second assassination attempt), it is wrong to say something that either is or can be mistaken for an invitation to shoot the President!

2. Under the headline is a photograph from the movie "Shane," and Maureen Dowd discusses the movie "Shane," which she saw when she was quite young. She never mentions "High Noon." I guess Westerns are interchangeable to NYT headline writers. 

3. "High Noon" had a villain and a hero and so did "Shane." Good guys and bad guys. Binary. 

4. I remember when Democrats loved to talk about how nuanced they were in their sophisticated thinking,

"During my first 24 years at the Times, from 2000 to 2024, I faced very few editorial constraints on how and what I wrote...."

"[T]he editing was very light... even when I took positions that made Times leadership very nervous.... [T]he columns themselves were published as I wrote them.... Then, step by step, all the things that made writing at the Times worthwhile for me were taken away.... [I]n 2024, the editing of my regular columns went from light touch to extremely intrusive... toning down, introducing unnecessary qualifiers, and, as I saw it, false equivalence. I would rewrite the rewrites to restore the essence of my original argument.... ... I was putting more effort—especially emotional energy—into fixing editorial damage than I was into writing the original articles. And the end result of the back and forth often felt flat and colorless....  [W]hat I felt during my final year at the Times was a push toward blandness, toward avoiding saying anything too directly in a way that might get some people (particularly on the right) riled up. I guess my question is, if those are the ground rules, why even bother having an opinion section?"

Writes Paul Krugman, in "Departing the New York Times/I left to stay true to my byline" (The Contrarian).

What's going on there? Who wants blandly written columns? That doesn't solve any problem I'm aware of.

Taking down TikTok punched a hundred holes in my blog.

Where I had embedded video yesterday, it now looks like this:

Every post that had an embedded TikTok video now looks empty like that and is missing its point. Every post where I linked to anything on TikTok has been turned — forcibly, by our government — into something that would not be posted.

I watched a lot of TikTok yesterday, so I saw how many many TikTok creators were saying goodbye to the audience they had drawn in over the years, and now, this morning, I'm seeing mainstream media articles about how these last goodbyes sounded. The NYT has the headline "In TikTok’s Final Hours, a Mix of Silliness and Sadness." And that headline made me angry, because I didn't see "silliness." I saw sadness, but the other thing I saw was outright anger — anger at the American government for shutting down a medium of free individual speech that was an important part of life for tens of millions of Americans. Even if much of TikTok could be labeled "silly," even silly speech matters — seriously — when the government comes and takes it away.

Respect for the recently deceased Jimmy Carter outweighed by unquenchable need to disparage Trump.

At The Daily Beast:

When a President dies, do we not review all of his work, the good and the bad? And at what point is the mentioning of the bad considered "hammering"?

“Nobody wants to talk about the Panama Canal now,” he said. “It’s inappropriate, I guess, because it’s a bad part of the Carter legacy.”

The president-elect offered some measured praise for the 39th president, calling him “a good man” and “a very fine person.” Not to let his point be forgotten, however, Trump reminded again that “giving the Panama Canal to Panama was a very big mistake.”...

Is that hammering? To speak of hammering before the body is in the ground creates a violent mental image. I find that disrespectful.

"I do not work with AI at this time directly other than to produce options. Here’s this table: could I see this table in a wood? And then..."

"... could I see this shape in, you know, a marble? I’d like to see it in reflected steel. Only in that scenario. I’ve been using AI as a tool, not as an agent. Now, people speak very much about AI at this moment, being an agent in that it has its own, you know, thoughts, its own ability to create, and I’m sure that at some point that I will be moving in that direction in some manner, but I’m very embedded at this moment in biology."

Said Jeff Koons, quoted in this Guardian article with a headline that doesn't square with that quote: "Jeff Koons on why he has drawn a red line on AI in art: ‘I don’t want to be lazy’/World’s most expensive artist, who is exhibiting at the Alhambra in Granada, sees his work as embedded in biology."

ADDED: I read the headline to mean that he said he would not use AI in his art, but obviously he's not against using it. One might try to defend the headline by saying that he has drawn a red line — one that distinguishes some uses from others. But even if you can see that distinction — don't use it "directly other than to produce options" — he's only observing the distinction "at this time," and he's "sure that at some point that I will be moving in that direction in some manner."

I'm not criticizing Koons. I'm criticizing The Guardian.

Politico finds what it calls "9 Political Issues That Bit the Dust This Year."

How do "issues" die? Based on this article, issues "die" when they don't work as Democratic Party hacks hoped. Thus, celebrity endorsements have died. The Kennedy mystique has died. Abortion — as a political issue — has died. The explanations may amuse you — or just annoy you. The lack of self-awareness is about exactly what you'd expect. For example, on the topic of celebrity endorsements:

In 2024, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign took that to the next level, siphoning up much of the Hollywood and entertainment A-list, from Arnold Schwarzenegger to Bad Bunny. Vogue at one point compiled a list of 37 stars who endorsed Harris. President-Elect Donald Trump tried to counter with endorsements from the likes of Jason Aldean or Kid Rock, but he couldn’t keep pace. “We don’t need a star because we have policy,” Trump said at a rally in Pittsburgh. In some ways, he wasn’t wrong: Trump won without the elite sheen of Harris’ fleet of surrogates. If anything, her star-studded backers may even have hurt her campaign, giving credence to conservatives who cast her as an out-of-touch California elite. In a fractured country, with the monoculture all but gone, and with anti-elite sentiment building, it’s getting harder and harder for any celebrity — even Taylor Swift — to move enough voters to sway an election.

Are Joe Rogan and Elon Musk not celebrities? I guess to Politico, "celebrities" are only in the acting and popular music category. Politico won't admit that these people flocked to Kamala Harris because they needed to for their own selfish reasons — not because KH's campaign operated at some especially high "next level"! Their endorsements, unlike the endorsements of Trump by Joe Rogan and Elon Musk, did not represent any kind of knowledge or thoughtful judgment about the candidates. Maybe the way celebrity endorsements work on us is changing, even improving. But they didn't work for Kamala, even in massive abundance, so, to Politico, they died!