"Food can sew the seeds of love...."

I'm reading this in The New York Times: "Are You in a Restaurant Gap Relationship? You check Resy by the hour. Your date couldn’t care less. A misalignment in dining tastes is the ultimate test of compatibility."

I've got a homophone gap in my relationship with The New York Times.

ADDED: The trendy use of the word "gap" began in the 1950s, with anxiety over the Cold War. There was talk of the "bomber gap" and the "missile gap." This was satirized in "Doctor Strangelove" (1964):

"I think it would be extremely naive of us, Mr. President, to imagine that these new developments are going to cause any change in Soviet expansionist policy. I mean, we must be increasingly on the alert to prevent them from taking over other mineshaft space, in order to breed more prodigiously than we do, thus, knocking us out of these superior numbers when we emerge! Mr. President, we must not allow a mine shaft gap!"

We boomers remember the talk of the "generation gap" in the 1960s, but that got started with a Look magazine article in 1967 titled  "The Generation Gap" — in a deliberate play on "missile gap." 

"You know we're building the ark," said Noah.

Trump says his ballroom might cost more than $300 million but adds, "you know we're building the arc. Maybe we use it for the arc. We raised a lot of money for the ballroom, so maybe we'll put -- the arc is going to be incredible for Washington DC, so maybe we use it for the… pic.twitter.com/D9yuyWpC7e

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 25, 2025

"But that might be a mistake—as it turns out, many of those edible villains have earned their 'bad' wraps unfairly, and, according to recent studies, some of them might even be healthier for us than we initially thought."

Says the first sentence I read in this Vogue article Meade sent me — Meade sends me Vogue articles?! — "9 Foods That Are Healthier Than You Would Think."

That article is from March 2024, and no one has corrected the error yet?

I'm giving Vogue a "bad wrap" — perhaps a tainted burrito or a scruffy mink stole.

By the way, these 9 foods are healthier than I "would think" if I hadn't already read numerous articles touting potatoes, eggs, coffee, butter, cheese, whole milk, nuts, chocolate, and fatty fish. 

"But is Zuckerberg’s claim that 'fact-checkers have just been too politically biased' correct?"

Asks Nate Silver, at Silver Bulletin:

In my view, it’s at least pointing in the right direction, in line with my Indigo Blob theory about how the lines between nonpartisan institutions and partisan actors have become blurred. In the B.T. days — Before Trump — journalists who were appointed (or who appointed themselves) as fact-checkers tended to be experienced generalists with a scrupulous reputation for nonpartisanship — a sharp contrast to edgier and less experienced journalists in the Trump era who would later claim to own the disinformation beat. Perhaps because demand for fact-checking was coming overwhelmingly from the left... the journalists who selected into the subfield tended to be especially left of center.... 

"My mom was like, 'Amy’s called her son "genital."' And I was like, 'What are you talking about?'"

Said Amy Schumer, explaining why she had to change the name she and her husband had given their baby son, The Independent reports.

The original name was Gene Attell Fischer. Attell was in honor of the comedian David Attell. Apparently, it took them months to notice the unfortunate near homophone, "genital." They changed the middle name to David.

By the way, does Ron DeSantis notice that his name sounds like Rhonda Santis? Apparently not, since he could easily call himself by his full name Ronald DeSantis (or Ronald Dion DeSantis or R. Dion DeSantis or Dion DeSantis).

ADDED: Meade observes that  R. Dion DeSantis sounds like "Hard On DeSantis."

AND: I was looking for... I forget what... and I ran across this Amy-and-children video:



That really bothered me. I get the humor, but I don't think children should have been used in making the video. I started out being bothered just by the adult "bob" hair (wig?) on the one little girl. I ended up being quite upset that the girls were talking about sex.

A new template for Trump-haters: "Trump Is Epic."

That's the headline for a conversation at the NYT between Gail Collins and Bret Stephens. The pull quote under the photo of Trump is: "'Which horrible things the president has done lately seem most appalling to you?' Gail Collins asks."

I'm thinking this is a real turning point in Trump-hating, a recognition that the portrayal of Trump as small isn't working anymore. The man with the tiny hands and tiny penis, the child of man, who bumbled into the White House and is throwing tantrums, watching TV, writing the teeny-tiny missives called tweets, eating kid's food, and ordering befuddled adults into acting out his random impulses — this template won't do anymore. The new template is: He's HUGE!

That's my hypothesis. I'll follow it with a new tag, "Trump Is Epic." And let me give you some highlights from the Collins-and-Stephens dialogue. The first observation isn't that Trump is epic, but that Trump is tiny:

Gail Collins: [G]iven the man’s general disorganization, I find it hard to imagine the [Muller] report picking him out as the sinister, canny leader who was orchestrating everything behind the scenes.

That's the familiar little child-man. The old template.

Anticipating a fizzle of a Muller report, Collins searches her feelings to find something that could be big: "Still feeling that the real disaster for Trump is going to come with the investigations into his business practices in New York." Stephens says that his "guess" too. He expresses concern about Trump's inauguration committee and campaign-finance violations, but he thinks they won't amount to much if the Russian collusion story doesn't stick. So instead of concentrating on "what Trump might have done behind people’s backs," we should shift our concern to "what he does every day in plain sight."

So Collins poses the question, "Which horrible things the president has done lately seem most appalling to you?" Stephens indicates he's ready to go — "Well, that list is long" — but then he chooses to "start by praising Trump on a couple of fronts":

I think he’s shown moral leadership on Venezuela, by getting much of the world to recognize Juan Guaidó as the legitimate president and drawing attention to the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding under the Maduro regime. And I’m also glad he’s partially reversed course and will keep at least some troops in Syria....

That's all big and presidential, and so is the first appalling thing Stephens comes up with —the declaration of a national emergency over border security. Second is calling the NYT "a true ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE" (the caps are Trump's). And then "hankering for a deal" with North Korea, the "desire to start another trade war with Europe," and "lies and exaggerations and demagoguery about the purported evils of illegal immigration." And then there's just his "overall comportment" — you mean like this? — "his overall comportment continues to be a foul stain on the office of the presidency."

Collins joins in with reproductive rights, domestic violence, and guns, and it seems obvious that the main problem is what I've thought it's been all along for Trump haters — they wanted the other candidate to win the last election. And they get around to (almost) admitting it:

Gail: When he was running against Hillary Clinton I thought he was terrible, but not nearly as terrible as he turned out to be. Kind of amazing. Did you foresee all of this?

Bret: Partly. I wrote more than a dozen columns for The Wall Street Journal during the last presidential campaign, denouncing his bigotry, lawlessness, ignorance and demagoguery. He vindicates my first impression with his every foul tweet.... 

They never declare "Trump Is Epic." That's just in the headline, so it's a bit of a puzzle. I'll leave my hypothesis as it is. Trump-haters are pivoting. Trump is now presidential — mega-presidential. But it's bad horrible terrible presidential.

ADDED: Bret Stephens reveals his propensity for disgust with his repetition of the word "foul": "his overall comportment continues to be a foul stain on the office of the presidency" and "He vindicates my first impression with his every foul tweet." The one I would edit out is "foul tweet." It's not just the repetition but also the accidentally funny homophone, "fowl tweet." You've got that bird image already there with "tweet."

Stephens uses an old-fashioned locution for some reason. He sounds like the straight man in a 1930s comedy. Your overall comportment continues to be a foul stain on the office of the presidency sounds like a line that would have been delivered to the President of Freedonia in "Duck Soup." Hey, there's that fowl again!

Are you a feminist? "Yes. What else is there to be? Everything else is being an asshole. These are your choices."

"I have three sisters, and no brothers. In my family it is all women, and they are very strong, opinionated, professional women, and the idea that they would be in some way disadvantaged by comparison to men was just ludicrous, and if you had tried to suggest it to them you’d have got hit. So I learned it early."

Said Salman Rushdie, one of 15 famous men asked the question. Don't know if I like the hitting. But equality is achieved in negative and positive ways, and domestic violence is another field of human activity.

I like this answer: "Yes. Absolutely, of course. It’s a stupid question. Sorry." That's by Darren Aronofsky, whoever he is.

I checked. He's a movie director. Directed the movie Meade and I saw the day we met. That damned movie nearly kept us apart! Here's the blog post I wrote about it: "10 thoughts about 'The Wrestler.'" You'd never know I'd just met the man I'd marry 7 months later. The post begins, "To be fair to Marisa Tomei, it should have been titled 'Meat.'" Meat... almost a homophone for Meade, but there's zero mention of Meade in that post.

How would Meade answer the question asked of the 15 famous men? I say the question in exactly the words used by the magazine at the link: "Are you a feminist?" Pause. He says:  "Do I believe that women are people? Yes." Good answer. The problem with the question, what irks Aronofsky, I suppose, is that the question contains an abstract term that you might not want to adopt. Your head floods with thoughts about the people who define the term and why they might want to pin you down. What do they want from you? But you can muse too long about the meaning of the term. You need to jump to yes as fast as you can.* If you don't say "yes" right away, as Salman Rushdie revealed, you'll be considered an asshole. Meade had a better answer than the 15 famous men, I think, because he got his definition in quickly and elegantly and got to that "yes" easily. And his definition evoked the great old saying: "Feminism is the radical notion that women are people."
________________________________
* Or Salman Rushdie's mother might hit you.

"Which doctor is smarter about Hillary Clinton: Matt Drudge or a doctor?"

Asks WaPo's Philip Bump, who consults a doctor, his own doctor, to question whether Hillary Clinton has hypothyroidism.

"One would expect if they were hypothyroid there would be an inability to function under duress for an extended period of time because the level of octane in the bloodstream is low," [Philip Bump's doctor] said. "The fact that she was able to withstand that intensity for 11 hours is probably a test to show that she has normal thyroid function."

But, as Bump's update admits, it's an easily researched fact that Hillary Clinton has been diagnosed by her own doctor as having hypothyroidism. So who's smarter, indeed?

The top-rated comments at WaPo are cruel: "How embarrassing. The Washington Post didn't do their fact checking and Drudge had to inform them. Pathetic." "It's LITERALLY linked on their website... 'In summary, Mrs. Clinton is a healthy female, with hypothyroidism.'" "Wow, you'd think someone who calls himself a reporter would do a little bit of fact-checking before scurrying to prop up Democrat talking points."

Even the best propping-up of Hillary comes from the comments: "If Hillary... by chance were unwell, what would it say about the Committee that a sick old lady whupped them?" That was written, by one "Owkrender" at 10/23/2015 11:07 AM CDT. Approximately 3 hours later, WaPo put up "Clinton’s curse and her salvation: Her enemies":

That was proved once again during her 11-hour inquisition by the House Select Committee on Benghazi, a Republican-engineered train wreck from which she emerged without a scratch.

Pale, hoarse and weary as she was, the former secretary of state left the hearing room looking stronger than she has at any point since she announced her second campaign for president....

I'm completely distracted by "Pale, hoarse." I mean, don't people have the kind of basic knowledge of The Bible that would keep them from putting those 2 words together?



The "Pale Horse" is death!

I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.

Pale, hoarse... as she was....

Headline read aloud to me just now.

"Dems want bigger role for Bill Clinton."

What I pictured:



Come on. Can we get a big jelly roll?

I told you this 3 weeks ago, but Drudge flashes it today: Rachel Jeantel says she warned Trayvon Martin that Zimmerman could be a gay rapist.

Drudge has the transcript of last night's Piers Morgan interview on CNN:

MORGAN: You felt that there was no doubt in your mind from what Trayvon was telling you on the phone about the creepy ass cracka and so on, that he absolutely believed that George Zimmerman, this man, you didn't know who he was at the time, but this man, was pursuing him?

JEANTEL: Yes.

MORGAN: And he was freaked out by it?

JEANTEL: Yes. Definitely after I say may be a rapist, for every boy, for every man, every -- who's not that kind of way, seeing a grown man following them, would they be creep out?... And people need to understand, he didn't want that creepy ass cracker going to his father or girlfriend's house to go get -- mind you, his little brother was there. You know -- now, mind you, I told you -- I told Trayvon it might have been a rapist." 

Here's my post from June 27th, with embedded video from Jeantel's testimony. I said (boldface added):

You assume that there's no way he'd say "cracker" if he didn't see him as white? But he didn't say "cracker." He said "creepy ass cracker." I understand the use of "ass" as an intensifier connected to the adjective "creepy." Creepy-ass cracker, as in very creepy cracker.

But "ass" could go with "cracker" — "ass-cracker." The conversation continued, according to Jeantel: "So... he told me the man was looking at him, so I had to think it might have been a rapist."
Why rapist? A man raping a man? How common is that as a fear? But it was the first thing Jeantel thought to say after he said creepy-ass cracker/creepy ass-cracker. The term "ass cracker" could easily mean a man who rapes a man, especially one who goes after a teenaged boy....

The word "creepy" makes special sense if you reinterpret the "ass" to go with "cracker." Martin said a man was following him, looking at him. He might have thought Zimmerman was a man out looking for sex and was watching him for that reason. What conversations had Martin had in the past with Jeantel about worries of this kind. She "had to think it might have been a rapist."...

Why didn't Martin take Jeantel's advice and run home? The rapist/ass-cracker theory makes sense of Martin's decision to go after Zimmerman. If he saw Zimmerman as a sexual predator, he might think confrontation was a good idea or even an important step: These creeps in the neighborhood need to know that I'm not their prey. It's not enough to run inside daddy's house. My manhood must be established here and now or I can't walk free around here anymore.

Call out the gay rights activists. In this interpretation, it was a gay-bashing!

ADDED: Thanks to Irene for nudging me to post this. It was right there in the testimony, and the defense lawyers — who were pretty astute about hearing cues and following up — missed this.

"Should Ann Romney become first lady, perhaps she can promote the therapeutic benefits of horseback riding..."

"... and encourage a culture that funnels the countless unwanted or retired horses to riding farms where emotionally or physically distressed people can enjoy the special communion between human and horse."

Michelle Obama wants to take away your cheeseburgers, but with Ann Romney, everybody gets a pony!

By the way, attacking Ann Romney about her horses was a big mistake, and not just because of this MS/disability angle. Women and horses. It's a thing. Not for all women, but for some women. Do not interfere with a woman and her horse! There's a mystical connection there. Break it up and you create some dangerous energy.

Without question, there is a connection between women and horses. This bond lures both young girls and older women into a web of seduction.

Freudian slip of the day.

In the previous post, I was writing about women who need to be "continually push[ed] to value their insights," and it came out as one of those near-homophone typos: "continually push[ed] to value their insides."

Didn't mean to wander over into "Vagina Monologues" territory.

Former Solicitor General Paul Clement quits King & Spalding over his defending the Defense of Marriage Act.

He writes:

"I resign out of the firmly held belief that a representation should not be abandoned because the client's legal position is extremely unpopular in certain quarters. Defending unpopular clients is what lawyers do... I recognized from the outset that this statute implicates very sensitive issues that prompt strong views on both sides. But having undertaken the representation, I believe there is no honorable course for me but to complete it."

Politico's Ben Smith reported the firm's withdrawal from the case as "a real victory for supporters of same-sex marriage -- and marking what seems like real marginalization for its foes." It quoted the chairman of the firm, Robert D. Hays, Jr., saying: "In reviewing this assignment further, I determined that the process used for vetting this engagement was inadequate." I'd love to hear the gory details.

Anyway, we talked about Clement's role last week, here. I said:

I would like to see the Defense of Marriage Act go, and I encouraged the Obama administration to decline to defend it, but I don't think it's "indefensible," and in fact, it deserves to be defended, and the House Republicans did the right thing in hiring Clement. The country deserves a well-briefed, well-argued case presented to the Supreme Court. The other side is already represented by Theodore Olson, another former Solicitor General. I hope Olson wins, but not because he's the better lawyer. It is absolutely fitting that he be matched with a lawyer of equal stature, skill, and will to prevail.

Crowdsourced Law School Rankings v. U.S. News Peer Rankings.

Paul Caron identifies the law schools that most over-perform in the crowdsourced ranking: Michigan State, Baylor, Syracuse, South Carolina, Duquesne, Gonzaga...

Who knows why? I think people are just reacting to names. "Gonzaga"... that sounds cool. I'll pick Gonzaga.

Speaking of law school names, all the law schools have "School of Law" or "Law School" as part of their name. (Well, there's also "College of Law.") I've long thought "Law School" was better. It's spiffier. Omit needless words. I was a student at one of the "of law" law schools (NYU), and I teach at one of the "law school" law schools (Wisconsin), and I don't think my preference is any sort of home-team loyalty. It's all about style. For a long time, I thought my style preference was just picking the less verbose format — to be more sleek and modern. The "of law" business sounded a little pretentious and faux lofty.

Then yesterday, after all these years, I noticed the homophones. School of Law sounds like School o' Flaw. And Law School sounds like Law's Cool. It's funny. Why don't people hear what they are saying. When you're branding a product (or an institution), you need to listen to yourself. Look and listen.

By the way, Gonzaga's law school is officially called Gonzago University School of Law. See? They tried to go all fancy. It should just be Gonzaga Law School. On the other hand, does crowdsourcing lie? Yes, of course, but probably not with respect to the psychological impact of the name.

"That last post wrecked my blog theme. I was working on a theme."

Meade: "What theme?"

Me: "My piss theme. I had a piss theme going. That's how I got to the dog that pissed off the Nazis. I Googled 'piss,' because I saw I had a theme going."

Meade: "What?"

Me: "There was the 'pee-o-meter' and... "

Meade: "Where was the piss in the first post, the Johnny Weir..."

Me (suddenly realizing I didn't use Johnny Weir's "pissed me off" and "heard worse in bathrooms" until the the second post): "Oh, yeah."

Meade: "Johnny Wee-er."

Me: "You're good with the homophones. The homophobe homophones."

Meade: "I'm afraid of homophones."

Homophone phone message.

I got a phone message from someone who identified himself as someone I had talked about on an episode of Bloggingheads. What I heard: "You disgust me." What I figured out, on relistening: "You discussed me."