"There was a cult of Fauci. People were getting Fauci tattoos and dancing with images of Fauci."

"He really was on the cover of every magazine, which, if you think about it, was weird! If millions of Americans suddenly made me their cult leader, and I had previously just been an unknown short man in the back of an HIV press conference, I would go insane with power too. So would you. And when you see lockdowns in the context of a power-drunk elf getting turned on by the idea of canceling Easter—he’s typing so fast he can barely keep up—you can understand better what we all lived through. For him, the pleasure was canceling things, especially things he felt gave power to the right (sports, family gatherings, religious events). We can never forget the freaks who gain power in a centrally controlled system...."

Writes Nellie Bowles in "I Am the Most Famous and Talked-About Person in the Country" (The Free Press).

So do "freaks... gain power in a centrally controlled system"? Or does the power that's there to be gained  in a centrally controlled system make freaks out of people? Bowles must mean the latter, because she'd saying she would "go insane" under the same circumstances and "So would you."

About that "dancing with images":

Flash back to the paid vaccine pushers!!! Never forget!!! pic.twitter.com/FxouJOmKNL

— Freedom Forever (@Freedom49503795) November 6, 2023

About what I boldfaced above: I'm up for taunting Fauci over the things Fauci deserves to be taunted for, but having repeated fun over his height seems... well, it seems like Obama's thing about balding:

"When we did... the Laestrygonians… there were these stuntmen who were all 7 feet and then they got stunt men who were under 5 feet. My double was a woman...."

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Josh Horowitz (@joshuahorowitz)

Devyn Dalton, the stunt double, is 4'6". Damon is said to be 5'10".

Xi is pulling the old chair-rigging power trip.

沙发肯定是特制的，习近平座的沙发明显高过川普的沙发，而川普比习近平身高10厘米，中共在这些细节上处处用尽心机。 pic.twitter.com/qP4ifU8im7

— David Tsai/蔡慎坤 (@cskun1989) May 15, 2026

Reminds me of the time Trump confronted David Letterman. It was December 2, 1987:

"How come this seat is at such a low level? You know, I'm looking at him. He's got this stage rigged, folks.... That seat is a good six inches higher than my seat."

Even better, the dictators cranking up barber chairs in "The Great Dictator" — here.

"Well well well, if it isn’t gender-affirming care for straight folks."

That's the top-rated comment on the NYT article "'I’d Like to Be Normal': Can Height Surgery Make Them Happy? Limb-lengthening can add inches to a person’s stature. But its risks have made it controversial."

"Violence is necessary. Violence is a part of America’s culture. It is as American as cherry pie."

A quote from the subject of the NYT obituary "Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, Black Power Activist Known as H. Rap Brown, Dies at 82."

He died in prison, convicted of murder. But once: "With his trademark black beret and sunglasses, dexterous mind and imposing 6-foot-5 inch frame — 7 feet, with his Afro — he was a persuasive and charismatic figure to many, adept at rallying Black audiences to his cause while alarming many white listeners."

Other quotes in the article: "Black folk built America, and if it don’t come around, we’re gonna burn America down," "You’ve got to arm yourself. If you’re going to loot, loot yourself a gun store," and, referencing 5 days of rioting, “I don’t think you could articulate the sentiments of Black people any better than they just did in Detroit."

The NYT prints the full "n-word." Is it fit to print? I won't write it. But it is the second word of the 3-word title of the man's 1969 autobiography. The other 2 words are "Die."

"why does the horse have three ears"/"So he likes 7 foot tall women? Or is he riding a pony?"

X users rain on Musk's boyish dream.

In a romantic pre-Raphaelite style, a tender moment unfolds between a handsome knight in gleaming silver armor and a beautiful woman in a flowing white gown adorned with flowers.

The knight, with a sword at his side, sits astride a brown horse with a red-gold draped saddle,… pic.twitter.com/0w32szTD9D

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 9, 2025

"And now they never meet in grove or green, by fountain clear or spangled starlight sheen, but they do square, that all their elves for fear creep into acorn cups and hide them there."

Last night in Spring Green.

"Acorn" appears a second time in the script: "Get you gone, you dwarf, You minimus of hind’ring knotgrass made, you bead, you acorn—"

"I’ve never liked the way that little man runs that band."

Said Ringo Starr, about Roger Daltrey who fired Ringo's son Zak from The Who. Ringo is quoted in "Ringo Starr Doesn’t Like ‘That Little Man’ From the Who" (NY Magazine).

How little is "that little man"? The internet tells me Roger Daltrey is 5'6". Ringo is 5'8".

"For an appearance at the 2024 TwitchCon convention, Mr. Piker wore a tank top that showed off his arms"/"Some of Mr. Piker’s followers say that, by wearing jewelry..."

"... and painting his nails, he has helped to promote different forms of gender presentation"/"Fashion is something Mr. Piker, who is 6 foot 4 inches tall, has loved since he was a 'too-big' teen growing up in Turkey, he said"/"Mr. Piker, who fasts daily as part of his fitness routine, usually has his first meal around 2 p.m."/"His studio is littered with boxes of Nicorette gum and cartons of Zyn nicotine patches."

Just some of the photo captions from the NYT article: "A Progressive Mind in a MAGA Body/Hasan Piker pumps iron, likes weapons and wears pearls. His brand of masculinity has won him many fans online — and has been a useful vehicle for his politics" (free-access link).

The author is Jack Crosbie. Sample sentence: "This fluency between culture and ideology has led many to brand Mr. Piker a Joe Rogan of the left — if Mr. Rogan had a mop top and painted his nails."

I'll just say: The search for The Joe Rogan of the Left goes on... with low-level desperation.

Stray sociology:

Show Redditors finding a happy place to escape from Trump.

 

Link. Who would have thought, back when GWB was the hated devil, that he would one day provide solace to those who were agonizing over a far more hateful devil?

I like this picture someone put up. Do you see who it is? At first, I thought: LBJ??!? But he's too short:

"Before I read 'The Notebooks of Sonny Rollins,' it hadn’t occurred to me that saxophonists must watch what they eat so as not to have 'an accidental elimination' while playing."

"Before I read Robert Hilburn’s biography of Randy Newman, I didn’t know Newman was kind of lying in interviews when he said his song 'Short People' was about prejudice. 'I just thought it was funny,' he said. 'The Art of Dying,' a posthumous collection of writings by the New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl, came out this year. He was ill with cancer when he compiled it. He wrote: 'I swatted a fly the other day and thought, Outlived you.'"

Writes Dwight Garner, the NYT book critic and my favorite garner, in "Our Book Critics on Their Year in Reading/Jennifer Szalai, Dwight Garner and Alexandra Jacobs look back at the books that 'offered refuge from the wheels grinding in our heads'" (NYT).

"Here comes Mr. Bob Dylan himself..."

The best part of this is how much James Austin Johnson looks like old Bob Dylan.

It's interesting that a woman plays Chalamet. That might have some verisimilitude, except that it made Chalamet much shorter than Dylan. In real life, Bob is 5'7" and Timothée is 5'10".

ADDED: Uproxx has an interview with James Austin Johnson about his Dylan imitation and links to this 2022 appearance on the Tonight Show where he sang "Jingle Bells" in Dylan voices from difference eras of Dylan:

James Austin Johnson sings “Jingle Bells” as Bob Dylan through the decades. #FallonTonight pic.twitter.com/kuPegi5Dhw

— The Tonight Show (@FallonTonight) November 29, 2022

Is she even asking for a box?

Trump has this at Truth Social:

No boxes or artificial lifts will be allowed to stand on during my upcoming debate with Comrade Kamala Harris. We had this out previously with former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg when he was in a debate, and he was not allowed a “lift.” It would be a form of cheating, and the Democrats cheat enough. “You are who you are,” it was determined!

Easy for him, the taller one, to say. How quickly you perceive the principle in formal equality when you are the one who comes out ahead and when you are a member of the group that, systematically, gets the real-world benefit.

But though I am ready to make arguments in favor of lining the heads up for television viewing, I'm not seeing that her people are asking for that. 

Why not try it?

Would you debate him on a box?
Would you debate with him on Fox?
Not on a box. And not on Fox.
Not in a house. Not with a mouse.
Not here or there.
Not anywhere.

And check out this art project:

"Does dementia make you taller?"

Let me tell you what I really think. I don't have *any* inside info about this particular event. However, it is a fact that presidents have body doubles and decoys for security reasons. And, from a very reliable, firsthand source: To the extent our intel agencies (or whomever)… https://t.co/lAgeTIYQbm

— Sharyl Attkisson 🕵️‍♂️💼🥋 (@SharylAttkisson) July 26, 2024

"Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas has unexpectedly emerged as a top contender to become Donald J. Trump’s running mate..."

"... according to three people with direct knowledge of Mr. Trump’s thinking who insisted on anonymity to discuss private meetings. These people said that Mr. Trump’s other current favorites were Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota and three of Mr. Cotton’s Senate colleagues: Marco Rubio of Florida, Tim Scott of South Carolina and J.D. Vance of Ohio...."

Writes Michael C. Bender, in "Trump’s V.P. Pageant Has an Unexpectedly Strong Contender: Tom Cotton/Donald Trump’s interest in the Arkansas senator reflects a desire to choose a running mate with experience and the ability to run a disciplined campaign" (NYT).

The former president has said privately that he views Mr. Cotton as a reliable and effective communicator in cable news interviews. Mr. Trump has also praised Mr. Cotton’s Army service, which included deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, and the fact that he is a fellow Ivy League graduate. Mr. Trump went to the University of Pennsylvania, and Mr. Cotton attended Harvard, earning undergraduate and law degrees....

Mr. Cotton has long been considered one of the party’s rising stars, ambition that could hurt his chances with Mr. Trump, who has undermined allies in the past when he perceived them to be intruding on his spotlight....

Bender could be wrong about Trump's determination to hog the spotlight. Trump may actually care about the ongoing project of making America great again. To a Trump hater, MAGA is at best an embodiment of Trump's ego, but Trump may want to pick the person who can carry Trumpism into the next administration and beyond. If he is thinking like that, then he'd pick Tom Cotton, don't you think?

I had Tom in mind for this purpose from just after the 2020 election:

And here's this from February 10, 2013: "I had never heard of the guy, but he impressed the hell out of me."

"The women have historically served as a combination of brood mares and mannequins. Their job is to stay thin, say little..."

"... look good in clothes, and produce heirs who will stay thin, say little and look good in clothes. (Prince Philip was said to have approved of Diana’s entry into the family because she would 'breed in some height.') When something threatens the reputation of a more senior, male Windsor, the women have another essential role: human shield. Has King Edward VIII abdicated and run off to France to be with Wallis Simpson? Let’s be sure to blame the American divorcée. Has Prince Charles taken a mistress? Blame his mom for not letting her son marry his true love; blame his wife for not keeping him faithful — oh, and call the mistress ugly. Has Prince Harry declined to perform his family duties and decamped for sunny California? Let’s blame his 'narcissistic' wife for ensorcelling him!"

Writes Jennifer Weiner, in "How the Windsor Women Became Human Shields" (NYT).

It had seemed, until recently, that "Catherine might become the rule-proving exception, the single privileged Windsor wife allowed to float above the fray." But then something popped in her abdomen.

"Biden, always a little taller than you expect, wore a navy suit and a bright-blue tie."

"He passed a study off the Oval, where he keeps a rack of extra shirts, an array of notes sent in by the public, and a portrait of John F. Kennedy in a contemplative pose.... He continued to the Oval Office dining room, a small, elegant space where, in Biden’s eight years as Vice-President, he often visited Barack Obama for lunch. One wall is graced by 'The Peacemakers,' a famous painting of Lincoln and his military commanders, on the cusp of winning the Civil War. Another is dominated by a large television set, installed by Donald Trump."

From "Joe Biden’s Last Campaign/Trailing Trump in polls and facing doubts about his age, the President voices defiant confidence in his prospects for reëlection" by Evan Osnos (The New Yorker).

I paused over "always a little taller than you expect." It had a bit of a large-boulder-the-size-of-a-small-boulder feeling about it. It gets my favorite tag: big and small. I love these conundrums of size. Osnos is using "you" to refer to himself. He's talking about his subjective experience, and he — unlike, probably, you — has been in the vicinity of the President on multiple occasions. But what is this taller and taller effect? It must be that when he's around Biden, he's struck that Biden is a little tall, and, afterwards, Biden shrinks in Osnos's memory, setting him up to be struck once again, at the next encounter, by the slight tallness of Biden.

Biden was showing Osnos — as Biden put it — "where Trump sat and watched the revolution."

"Who cares. Didn't read it. This is not news. Do better"/"Why do I feel like these characters are being forced on us? Nobody cares."

"Who cares?"/"Congratulations - this might be the most vapid article the Washington Post has ever published"/"Thanks for explaining this, WaPo. Now I won't be tossing and turning tonight wondering"... etc. 

These are the comments on what is the second-most-read article at The Washington Post right now:

 

Sample text: "With the internet swirling with theories about Megan’s lyrics, Minaj took to X (formerly Twitter) to voice her displeasure with the song and announce her follow-up 'Big Foot,' which she released on Monday. The title appeared to be a reference to Megan’s 5-foot-10 height and the fact that she was shot in the foot...."

It took 2 reporters to write it... these 2...

I would watch a movie about those 2 reporters trying to collaborate to fulfill this writing assignment. A bit like another remake of "The Front Page," you know, that sort of thing.

"White emerged as a sex symbol at a time when his country needed him...."

"With his tattooed, grungy intensity, he was the snack the people were craving after two years of slathering on hand sanitizer and stockpiling Clorox wipes. (As one fan put it to MEL Magazine, 'This is a dude who will eat you out in a porta-potty at Warped Tour.')..."

Writes Jennifer Wilson, in "The Shareable Feast of Jeremy Allen White’s Calvin Klein Ad/The frenzy surrounding the 'Bear' star’s beefcake ad harks back to the brand’s heyday in the eighties and nineties" (The New Yorker).

Some of the ads use still photography. And here's the live-action commercial, replete with Lesley Gore soundtrack denying someone the power to deprive another person of the right to "go with other boys":

"Casting a 5-foot-11, rom-com heartthrob in a role traditionally played by dwarf actors was what the film’s director, Paul King, called 'a real lightbulb moment.'"

"'You go, 'Hugh Grant’s an Oompa-Loompa! Yes, please!"' he [said]. Or maybe, 'No, thanks,' if you’re a performer with dwarfism who’s been typecast in bit parts your entire career, now confronting a future in which even those can be CGIed to fit the frames of A-listers."

From "Hugh Grant is an Oompa-Loompa now. What’s left for dwarf actors? Hugh Grant’s casting as an Oompa-Loompa in ‘Wonka’ feels to some like the latest in a long line of slights against dwarf actors" (WaPo).