"Whereas clowns were naive idiots, bouffons savagely undermined the people in power."

"They were doing something important: using biting and at times cruel humor to undermine systemic injustice. It’s what satirists have done throughout history.... Ali G is a white imbecile—a delusional cultural appropriator—who steals the fashion and lyrics from his favorite gangsta rap and dancehall idols, from Compton to Kingston.... Like a good bouffon, he undermines that establishment—not the culture he loves and borrows from.... Each of my characters has a specific mechanism to encourage people to drop their guards and show what they really believe, prejudices and all. Borat, an antisemitic journalist, exposes Jew hatred, xeno­phobia, sexism, and casual racism. Erran Morad, a stereotype of a tough-guy Israeli commando—'I’ve been in 14 terror attacks,' he says in my new movie Ali G: Who Iz I?, 'and started two'—exposes Islamophobia.... Ali G works on another level. He’s not extreme—he’s just extremely dumb. But his absurd questions lead powerful people to underestimate him and answer in earnest, revealing their own biases...."

Writes Sacha Baron Cohen, in "Why Satire Is No Laughing Matter" (Time). 

According to Baron Cohen, the "bouffon" is a "tradition dated back to 11th century France, where societal outcasts—gay people, heretics, those with deformities—would be let back into their villages once a year to put on shows viciously mocking the ruling class."

I noticed that Time essay because of "What to Know About ‘Ali G: Who Iz I?’ Sacha Baron Cohen has revived his fictional wannabe rapper in a new movie that will be in theaters for just this weekend. Here’s what to know" (NYT).

Here's an excerpt from that (showing why Baron Cohen is highly motivated to justify his continuation of the Ali G character):

"The color, I think, for many people maybe has been drained out of life..."

"... and when they were to point at it, maybe, if the reality is, yeah, dude, you're distracted all the time, and you scroll easily forgettable largely gray homogenous slop on a daily basis and your body is made out of everything you put in your mouth and your brain is made out of everything that you put into your eyes and ears you think about what that consumption pattern is like you are basically feeding yourself fast food for your amygdala on a daily basis...."

Said Chris Williamson on the new episode of the "Modern Wisdom" podcast, titled "Why Life Feels So Dull All The Time (and how to fix it)."

He's talking with Robert Greene, who has a new book called "The Law of the Sublime" (commission earned). Maybe he's got the answer to our problem of colorlessness. 

Williamson prompts:

"What blossomed here in this place was the Western desire to uncover all that ignorance, darkness, and distance had kept hidden from the mind of man."

"The Greeks did not just shape history; the Greeks gave us history itself. Much... of what we know about many ancient civilizations comes almost entirely from the records of Greek explorers and historians, explorers and historians who didn’t just chronicle the histories of their own people, but ventured outwards to observe and record the sagas of foreign peoples and cultures all across the world. Where others looked inward, the Greeks were the first to direct their focus outward, to chase the thrill and glory of seeing all that was strange and new. It was this trait – it was this trait that would push the West to create and build things that others could not, marking us out from so many other cultures and civilizations where stability and subsistence were the highest ends of life. But it is not just the ambition to explore the unknown that we inherit from the Greeks; it is the conviction that the unknown can be known. The confidence that the world can be charted and measured and mapped and understood...."

Said Marco Rubio, in Athens today. Full text and video here.

"Headlines like 'Are Shirt Buttons Sexist?' are why the New York Times has lost credibility with the broad center of American politics."

"To we [sic] moderates, it sounds like something that would be mocked on the satirical website, 'The Babylon Bee.'"

That's the 3rd-highest-rated comment at the NYT article "Are Shirt Buttons Sexist?/A reader questions the point of having men’s and women’s shirt buttons on different sides." 

The highest-rated comment is "Sometimes I really do wonder what life is like for people who are constantly scanning the world in search of something to gripe about."

I didn't pick that for the post title because it's too gripe-y — it gripes about griping — and I don't think the article is griping. It's puzzling over a quirk of clothing construction.

The author of the article, Vanessa Friedman, is addressing a question from a reader. She goes through the various theories of how this right/left difference might have happened — one is most common and perhaps you're sure it is the explanation — and observes that none of those reasons apply today. Tradition has its hold. We could change but we don't.

Only the headline writer uses the word "sexist" — and only to ask a question.

But the commenters — NYT commenters! — come for Friedman. They don't say what an amusing light-hearted jaunt through history, thanks for the fun. She's not perceived as having fun at all. She's seen as a grim, angry feminist. Things are changing.

Writing that made me think of this video clip I saw yesterday:

"The View" host Sunny Hostin stands up for accused Cornell gang rape defendants.

🎥: ABC pic.twitter.com/4wo46PXsQU

— TMZ (@TMZ) September 29, 2026

Swimming with LBJ.

My son Chris sends that passage from "Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream" (by Doris Kearns Godwin (commission earned)).

Chris is reading biographies of all the U.S. Presidents, as you may remember from earlier posts. Someone emailed asking for a list of all the books in that project, and, though I don't do everything you might ask, I did do this. 

First, Chris sent a photo of his bookshelf:

"I am calling on the Smithsonian Institution to honor the Life and Legacy of George Washington, America’s Greatest Hero, with a five-year exhibition..."

"... at the National Museum of American History, beginning now, and continuing through, February 22, 2032, the 300th anniversary of Washington’s birth. I am also calling on the Smithsonian to erect a 30-foot 'Colossus statue' of the Father of Our Country outside the Museum, to replace the so-called 'Infinity' sculpture that stands there today. That strange modernist sculpture tells visitors nothing about America, inspires no one, and honors none of our Great American Heroes...."

Writes President Trump, at Truth Social.

Choose one:

Vote:

"Jesus? He would have been just one of many Jewish sect leaders of his day, had he not had St. Paul to proselytize and the Roman Empire to finish the job."

"Genghis Khan? The mere beneficiary of heavy rainfall. Adolf Hitler? 'Hitler’s own life before the age of 30 gave no hint of his subsequent qualities as Germany’s leader,' Diamond writes. 'How, then, can we claim that no one else could have become the mature Hitler?' How indeed? Figuring out how to separate historical forces from human agency has puzzled scholars since the days of Herodotus and Thucydides.... Now, [Jared] Diamond proposes a new tool for assessing leaders. Rather than using 'the biographic method' of studying leaders in their own context, he suggests the 'natural experiment.' Social scientists have used natural experiments — finding occasions where life allows them to run comparative data studies — to analyze things like the economic impact of the minimum wage. Diamond claims that natural experiments also have significant potential in political history, religious studies and sports. The problem is, they don’t really work.... Can the natural experiment help us figure out the historical effect of a president being assassinated — or narrowly escaping such a fate?"

I'm reading "What Is It About Jesus Christ and Genghis Khan? In “Profits, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings,” Jared Diamond considers the impact leaders might have had on the course of their civilizations" (NYT gift link).

That's Dan Jones — author of "The Plantagenets: The Kings Who Made England" — reviewing the new Jared Diamond book (commission earned).

"In 1986, Justice Byron R. White... summoned his clerks to his chambers for a special assignment that took several weekends. Together they marked his quarter-century on the court..."

"...  by feeding his records, including from the landmark Miranda rights case, into a shredder purchased for the occasion, according to Dennis J. Hutchinson, his biographer. 'Well, here’s an article. Here’s an entire book,' one of the clerks later told Mr. Hutchinson, describing what it was like to insert invaluable history into the jaws of the machine. 'I couldn’t believe how much history was going down the chute,' he said."

Writes Jodi Kantor "How the Supreme Court Locks Away Its Own History/After Justice Scalia died, the justices held private negotiations about locking away their papers. We may not see the ultimate record of the Roberts court for decades" (NYT gift link).

To suppress these communications is to promote the belief that the Justices are humble servants of the law, a belief that enhances their power. But how can that work unless all the Justices go Byron White on their papers? And it's too late for that. Justice Blackmun set the release date for all his papers at 5 years after his death. He died in 1999. You might think that would motivate the other Justices to formalize their position one way or the other, but Justice Scalia, who died in 2016, did not. Perhaps his papers are full of material that offsets things in Blackmun's, but it doesn't seem that he cared. Perhaps he thought the final written opinion was the operative text. That's what a humble servant of the law would believe. 

"Through much of the 19th century, noncitizen voting expanded alongside U.S. territorial gains..."

"(the government offered the vote to Europeans who helped dispossess Indians and colonize the West). But in the mid- to late 1800s, immigrants started to become scapegoats for changes that native-born Americans saw as threatening.... Confederates banned immigrant suffrage during the Civil War because they thought migrating Europeans were anti-slavery, while northern states rolled back voting rights in reaction to waves of immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe at the turn of the 20th century, which they associated with crime. By 1926, no state let noncitizens vote in federal elections. In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed into law the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, making noncitizen voting in federal elections a crime...."

Writes Zak Cheney-Rice, in "The Fear of Noncitizen Voting/For Trump, it is the death of America. For liberals, 'Woke 1' excess. Why is noncitizen voting so terrifying?" (New York Magazine).

It doesn't take much these days to be considered "formal."

I'm reading "Think It’s Cool to Wear Fancy Sneakers to Work? You Might Be Old. After years of office casual, young people are embracing loafers, derbies and oxfords" (NYT gift link).

Earlier this year, Esquire described the trend as the loafer’s “big generational shift,” describing how younger consumers “were bypassing sneakers in growing numbers.” And in January, The Times UK deemed 2026 “the year of the loafer.”...

The surging interest in formal footwear fashions has simultaneously been a boon for both high-end luxury retailers and heritage brands with classic shoe offerings, like Allen Edmonds, the Wisconsin-based retailer. Nick Wooster, the brand’s consulting creative director, said that they have “absolutely” seen a recent increase in interest in their handmade leather loafers and derbies among younger customers. 

Even sneaker brands are trying to be more dressy.

Socialists in shorts.

I'm reading the NYT article "Is the Democratic Party Facing Its Own Tea Party Moment? A string of primary wins by progressive candidates has revealed the strength of a high-energy insurgent movement but also its potential limitations," which you can read for yourself at that gift link.

It's a topic I'm following, and I've recently blogged about. I said it a week ago: "The socialists are to the Democratic Party what the Tea Party was to the GOP."

So right now, all I want to do is put up something I cropped from one of the photographs:

"Dr. Abdul El-Sayed tried to attract young voters," and he did. They came toddling in wearing shorts, shuffling in slides and sneakers.

If I were a NYT essayist, I'd muse that they are showing us what real, human, embodied and, yes male power can look like.

ADDED: After publishing this post, I dashed off a question to Grok, "Can the males wear shorts and slides to the revolution?" Answer:

"In the 1800s, a secretary was part aide-de-camp, part executive-in-training — someone who handled the boss’s correspondence and bookkeeping, but also learned the business..."

"... and would eventually ascend to a senior job. With the rise of the modern corporation around the turn of the 20th century, however, the secretary became more like a noncommissioned officer — a worker with real responsibility but little upward mobility. It was at this point that the position became mostly female. Companies then broke up and degraded the job further over the decades, replacing the secretary with pools of typists, receptionists and data entry personnel, almost all of them women, too. The final step, amid pressure from the feminist movement in the 1970s, was to allow a small number of college-educated women to ascend from these clerical jobs to the ranks of middle management. But even this came with a loss of status, as managers would have to do more of their own grunt work. 'They’re now being promoted, but the clerical tasks are promoted with them,' said Jason Resnikoff, a labor historian. 'The middle manager would do more typing, correspondence, more of their own filing.' These days, almost no one has an assistant...."

From "In Trump’s Economy, Job Gains Go to Women. That’s Not an Entirely Good Thing. Despite the administration’s best attempts, the diminishing status of many American jobs is driving a spike in women’s employment" (NYT gift link).

"Moko was asleep at the time. We decided we want to wake this thing back up again."

Said Mark Kopua, who "grew up in a Māori community that had lost all its tohunga tā moko, or ritual tattoo artists."

He is quoted in "A Once Outlawed Māori Art Form Is Alive and in the Flesh/Young Māori in New Zealand are embracing tā moko, the ritual tattoos that were banned under British colonial rule and became an act of protest in the 1970s" (NYT gift link).

Without forebears to teach them, Mr. Kopua — a tohunga whakairo, or a master woodcarver — learned tā moko from the patterns he used in carving and weaving. They studied moko kanohi patterns on decapitated heads that were under the care of New Zealand’s national museum. Māori warriors believed that decapitation severed their enemies’ connection to the gods. In the 19th century, British settlers collected the heads as curiosities and trophies and offered guns and gold in exchange — prompting some Māori people to hunt down those who wore mataora and moko kauae.

"Do you think that it's the goal of the Smithsonian Institution to promote white supremacy culture?"

Congressman Brandon Gill asks Smithsonian Museum director Anthea Hartig at the House Oversight Committee hearing today.

It's quite an exchange. Gill has a very well-planned set of question designed to destroy Hartig, and Hartig's defense is almost entirely restricted to long silences and diligent note-taking, as if she's endeavoring to learn from Gill:

 

GILL: "Director Hardig... would you say that that the goal of history, even if it's not properly carried out... is to be objective?... Doesn't that seem a little bit concerning? It it certainly does to me because as part of this white supremacy document that your organization has promoted, objectivity is a core and defining aspect of white supremacy culture. Do you think that it's the goal of the Smithsonian Institution to promote white supremacy culture?

"Given all the lovemaking, it’s remarkable any of them had time for painting or poetry. But each activity reinforced the next, sex flowing into art..."

"... art turning into sex, all of it transforming what was ostensibly a holiday by the sea among friends into a frenzy of erotic and creative expression — an outpouring that, as Europe girded for war, acquired a rebellious political charge. 'It’s as if the group were thumbing their noses at fascism,' Thomasson writes, their lives and work serving as a 'manifesto for an alternative world to the one that was coming into being.'"

From "Sex and Surrealism on the French Riviera/A group of artists gathered at a hotel on the Côte d’Azur in 1937. A new book by Anna Thomasson captures the art and escapades the holiday inspired" (NYT).

I'm skeptical... but envious.

Is the book readable? Sample text: "We get a powerful sense of physicality. Of bodies, of limbs and breasts and bottoms and penises, alone or entwined, still or in action. We feel the warm sun and salt water on bare skin and sand between toes, intimacy and proximity and responsiveness and desire." It's really hard to write about sex! Actually, that writing reminds me of a podcast I like: "Boring History for Sleep." It goes on and on about how everything looks and feels and smells and sounds. 

"I’m worried about Weimar America. That’s the title of the next book I’m working on. The first thing people say when they hear that is..."

"... 'Oh, is this a "Trump is Hitler" book?' No, Trump barely figures in this book. When we hear Weimar, we think of the film 'Cabaret' and corruption, and we think it all ended up in Nazism. But that is a superficial understanding of it. We have created in America today, perhaps throughout the West, the psychosocial conditions of Weimar without having suffered the traumas that Germany did — losing the First World War, hyperinflation, and the Great Depression. This also goes back to Hannah Arendt and her famous 1951 book, 'The Origins of Totalitarianism.' She tried to explain how it was that right-wing totalitarianism in Germany and a left-wing version in Russia rose, and she said social atomization is by far the most important factor...."

Says Rod Dreher, quoted in "'I'm Worried About Weimar America'/'It may not be Hitler 2.0. It may not be Stalin 2.0. It might be something all American, but it’s not going to be what we’re used to,' the author Rod Dreher argues" (NYT). This is Ross Douthat's podcast "Interesting Times," and you can listen to the whole thing and read the transcript here (and elsewhere).

Bonus: "What is fascism?" 

"These are very, very special times. And this is a very special place. You live in a very special place. Congratulations everybody."

Those were the very very very special words of our President, Donald J. Trump, speaking at Mount Rushmore, on the eve of the 250th anniversary of the 4th of July.

"And we rededicate ourselves to being a nation as big, bold, noble, and as great as these American giants. And that's not easy to do, but we're going to do it. These men could only have been made in the USA. Their faces are engraved on these bluffs, not only because of what they did, but to remind us forever who we are. These heroes exemplify what is timeless, enduring, and eternal about the American character. And in the end, it has always been that character, our distinct and unique identity. It is a truly unique identity and it'll never change.... Liberty has prevailed here because of the culture and character of the people who declared it, defended it, and preserved it.... The identity of a nation is the destiny of a nation. And America has a destiny like no other because we are a people like no other. For whatever reason, that's just the way it is.

"To feed its millions of troops in World War II, the military turns to food science. Orange juice is reduced to concentrate, potatoes are dried into easily reconstituted flakes..."

"... and Cheddar is dehydrated and pulverized. But the war’s end leaves mountains of surplus cheese powder. Charles Elmer Doolin, riding high on the success of the Fritos he created 16 years earlier, fries extruded puffs of cornmeal and coats them in the powder. Dozens of other food companies take advantage of food technology developed for the war effort, ringing in the heyday of ultraprocessed foods."

That's the NYT, selecting Cheetos to represent the 1940s, in "1776 – 2026/The Pursuit of Hungriness: 250 Years of American Food Innovation" (gift link).

"At a time of fierce debate over how to teach American history, particularly around issues of race, the Freedom Trucks weigh in squarely on one side of the argument..."

"... telling a patriotic, positive story of core American values and exceptionalism. They stand in sharp contrast to liberal efforts in recent years — in classrooms, museums, national parks and media — to lift up discussion of systemic racism and highlight chapters where America has failed to live up to its ideals."

From "Trump-backed ‘Freedom Trucks’ tell a sanitized story of the country’s founding/At a time of fierce debate over how to teach American history, the mobile exhibits weigh in squarely on one side of the argument." (WaPo)(gift link).

"And beneath the bluster, Trump’s limited view of the American Revolution is very familiar..."

"... it reflects, like so much else about him, the mainstream culture of the Cold War era, when museums and films did indeed tell a relentlessly upbeat story of American accomplishment — in vivid contrast to the plodding drudgery of communism. The leftist radicals of the 1960s and 1970s dissented noisily from this cosy view, but the majority accepted it unquestioningly. Since then a more extreme view has taken root: those who see the revolution not as the start of an unfinished project but as a fixed source of authority, a 250-year-old set of final answers. But as the US blows out its birthday candles, does it still have the capacity it once had for political renewal, while retaining its founding principles? It is always easier to start revolutions than to end them. This is why so many Americans have believed theirs was superior to others: it had been brought to an elegant conclusion by the constitution of 1787. Americans, it seemed, had escaped the spirals of radicalism and authoritarianism that beset France, or Latin American republics...."

From "Happy birthday USA. But is America’s revolution unravelling? When the USA turned 200, the nation came together as one. Fifty years on, what are the chances of the same thing happening under Donald Trump? A special series from The Sunday Times Magazine is dedicated to the 250th anniversary of the USA."

That's the London Times. The view from the losing side.