How I made a Walt Whitman essay from 1856-57 look as though it was the talk of the internet yesterday.

I'm not referring to "Manly Health and Training," the set of essays, published under a pseudonym and revealed to the world last month, a genuinely a newsworthy matter, which really did belong on Memeorandum, the website that — through some mysterious automated process — presents a one-page picture of what articles and items are getting linked to and discussed.

I'm talking about "An American Primer," a long known, long available essay by Walt Whitman, which was reprinted in the April 1904 issue of The Atlantic. It's about one of my favorite topics, blunt speech — blunt speech, as opposed "delicate lady-words" and "gloved gentlemen words." Whitman — touting America and liberty — comes out for "coarseness, directness, live epithets, expletives, words of opprobrium, resistance." I love that sort of thing, and I think most of America — not the elite, not the civility bullshitters, but most of America — loves it.

So I was moved to blog about it yesterday, after I ran across it by chance, not in anything current, but in an old acrostic puzzle in the New York Times archive, way back in October 2011. I don't think anyone else was looking at "An American Primer" yesterday and getting excited about it and linking to the old April 1904 issue of The Atlantic.

But it popped up on Memerandum:



I guess it was a slow Saturday. But thanks, Memeorandum. Thanks for weighting me however much that was in your algorithm. And thanks for nudging whomever you may have nudged to see what all the buzz is about, whatever it was that Walt Whitman wrote back in 1856-57. I know what it was. I read the whole 6,000-word essay. Out loud. To Meade. And we talked about it for a long time, connected it to the Donald Trump phenomenon, etc. etc. So there were the 2 of us. But I just find it so delightful to think that — via the magic of Memeorandum — somebody else got the idea that "An American Primer" was the thing to talk about and got to reading and talking about it too.

And then there's the little corner of the internet that was my blog last night, and maybe — without the nudge of Memeorandum's absurdly false impression that "An American Primer" was a Topic of the Day — you read it or at least the snippet of it that I posted, and maybe you were hanging out at Althouse on Saturday night, talking with other people about the distaste for delicate lady-words and gloved-gentlemen words and a love for epithets, expletives, and words of opprobrium.

There was BDNYC, who said: "Unreadable." And kentuckyliz, who said: "I found it quite readable once I found the sweet spot in my bifocals." And Paul Zrimsek, who said: "I am yuge, I contain multitudes." And traditionalguy:

Whitman spoke like an earlier version of Trump because Whitman was also giving voice to an implacable will to be strong and free men. That is what made America Great the first time.

It started with Andrew Jackson defeating the murderous British in the West to save the Mississippi River Valley, and then took off with Robert Fulton building his steamboats and DeWit Clinton building his canal locks to go over the Niagara Escarpment at Lockport, NY to complete a transportation circle from New York City to the Great lakes and then down the Mighty Mississippi to New Orleans. And which soon saw Robert Morse building his single wire telegraph to carry the news.

Trump is a messenger and a builder. And nobody cares if he says bad words in his battle to make America Great Again.

IN THE COMMENTS: Ngtrains said: "Robert Morse? how about Samuel?" And I said: "Mm. Yeah. Should I fix that for him. Robert Morse... was he the actor in 'How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying'?" I look it up. And it's just so damned Trumpian....

The NYT description of NYC in August quotes "The Great Gatsby."

From "New York Today: Empty City":

But in the winding-down of summer, the city moves at a slower pace, and the lazy days of August can be quite pleasant.

Or, as F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in "The Great Gatsby":

"I love New York on summer afternoons when every one’s away. There’s something very sensuous about it — overripe, as if all sorts of funny fruits were going to fall into your hands."

Did we ever do that sentence in the old Gatsby project? Oh, it's 2 sentences, and we only read one sentence at a time, but it's the second sentence, the one with the fruits, that's asking for it. If we did, I'm sure we didn't take it to mean simply that summer in the city is lazy and pleasant.

So, yes, we did read that sentence, back on March 2, 2013, and I see that I did throw the first sentence in for context:

You should know that ["There’s something very sensuous about it"] refers to "New York on summer afternoons when every one’s away." That's New York City, of course, not the whole state. People in New York mean New York City when they say "New York." They call the state "New York State" if it's ever worth talking about....

What kind of sensuous, overripe, funny fruits are falling into your hands... wherever you are when "every one's away"?

In the comments, Sydney said, "New York City must have been a hell hole in the summer before air conditioning," and I said, enlarging the context:

Yeah, the sentence is from a passage in which the problem is no a/c. Some characters want to go to the movies and others want to just drive around, which seems to be a way of being out and catching some breeze.

Also, this sentence is very close to one of the favorite "Gatsby" project sentences, the one known for short as "hot whips of panic."...

There's less overripe, falling, funny fruit when air-conditioning is everywhere every where.

Anyway, in the end, the conversation orbited around Harvey Keitel's balls (after kentuckyliz brought up the old famous-for-male-nudity movie "The Piano").

"Why Thatcher Wouldn’t Succeed in Our ‘Lean In’ Culture."

By Amity Shlaes.

As [Sheryl] Sandberg laboriously notes [in her bestseller "Lean In"], Harvard Business School, which already famously focused on teamwork and consensus, has lately emphasized teamwork even more. It’s hard to imagine Thatcher (“Defeat? I do not recognize the word”) thriving at HBS.

The result of the collaborative culture is that corporations or government institutions focus intensely on internal culture and pour their energy into achieving minuscule policy changes relating to workplace efficiency, gender or race. The great victory with which future Thatcher biographers are likely to open their accounts is her winning back the Falkland Islands from the Argentine junta. The great victory with which Sandberg opens her book was getting Google Inc. (GOOG) to establish reserved parking for pregnant women.

IN THE COMMENTS: MayBee asks: "What is with this annoying attempt to get people to use the phrase 'lean in'?" I've been irked by this too. Obviously, Sandberg was trying to sell her book and came up with something she wanted to make into a meme, but how did she get so many media people to adopt it?

Why does the meme seem useful? Is it some subliminal effect? I see the connotations of slimming down and also being lazy (like when you're leanin' on the shovel/mop instead of working).

I suspect that media people are mostly just lamely grasping at ways to make the same old material seem new. I'm guilty of spreading the meme too, since I put this post up, but I have actually been avoiding "Lean In" stuff. I fell for it this time because of the Margaret Thatcher + Amity Shlaes prod.

ALSO IN THE COMMENTS: "I enjoy watching a woman 'lean in.'" And: "Lean In while wearing a low cut blouse, and you're sure to get a promotion." Is that the subliminal sustenance people are receiving?!

What did Jesus write in the sand? (Or: things I should have learned in church that I figured out from the Althouse comments.)

Yesterday, when many blogs were talking about the Islamist Facebook page with a cartoon showing how to stone a person who had committed adultery, I added the New Testament story, from John 8, in which Jesus said: "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her." Jesus had just been teaching some people, and the scribes and the Pharisees, looking for a way to trip him up — they wanted to bring charges against him — present Jesus with a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery and remind him that the Law of Moses commanded that she should be stoned. "So what do you say?" Instead of answering, Jesus bends over and writes in the dirt. They keep pushing for an answer, and it's only then that he says: "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her."

I didn't include the next few sentences, but the story was very familiar. After Jesus makes his brilliant remark — which finds a new way into the question — the crowd disperses and Jesus tells the woman to "go and... sin no more."

Some of the commenters focused on what it was that Jesus wrote on the ground. I'd always assumed that what Jesus was writing was irrelevant and that he was simply gesturing I'm not going to talk to you. He invoked his right to remain silent, as we say in the United States of America. He knew whatever he said would be used against him. Later, when he arrives at the New Testament doctrine — the higher law — he speaks up and articulates it pithily. He doesn't write it. Jesus isn't the put-it-in-writing type. The scribes are the bad guys here, and he's about talking to the people. The Word is spoken. (It's only written down later.)

But, reading the comments, I see interest in the subject of what Jesus wrote.

"Am I going to die today? Just give me a percentage."

Senator Mark Kirk tells about his stroke. (The percentage the doctor gave him — in the ambulance — was 98% in favor of not dying.)

I was in my hospital bed when the waves came and I began to lose control of my body and mind. Unbelievable, I thought. I’m only 52. I didn’t even know anyone who’d had a stroke.

More than a week later, I regained a confused consciousness in the intensive care unit. I knew I was lying in a bed. I thought someone was sharing the bed with me, but it was my own leg. I vaguely remember a party the ICU staff had for the Super Bowl and the smell of the food they brought.

Later:

I regarded my left leg as a lifeless appendage. Mike kept insisting that it would bear weight. The moment I realized that it would, and that I could swing it from my hip and propel myself forward, was the breakthrough revelation of my rehabilitation.

IN THE COMMENTS: Someone snarks: "Show me when this paper has done a similar story for a Republican. *crickets*" — only to be told that Kirk is a Republican. I blogged this item without remembering Kirk's party affiliation or caring enough to check. But when the subject came up in the comments, I did check, went to Kirk's website, and saw his statement, released yesterday, rejecting Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense:

During yesterday's confirmation hearing, Senator Hagel instinctively called the Iranian government both elected and legitimate.  He initially offered strong support for containment of Iran, rather than President Obama's stated policy of preventing an Iranian nuclear breakout.  He could not clearly explain his past opposition to unilateral sanctions against Iran – opposition as recent as 2008.  And at no time did he state his position on whether the European Union should formally designate Iran's terror proxy, Hezbollah, as a terrorist organization – a critical step to cut off the flow of funds to a group responsible for the murders of some 280 American citizens.

The statement is illustrated with the chilling photograph of "Neda Agha-Soltan who was killed during 2009 Iranian election protests."



Am I going to die today? Just give me a percentage.

Are we people, persons, or individuals?

I got into a back-and-forth with kentuckyliz in this comments thread. She experienced "individuals" as dehumanizing, and I found "people" irksome unless the reference is to the collective. We both accepted "persons," but I acknowledged that "persons" feels awkward, unnatural, or even incorrect to some... people.

So, let's check the etymology of the 3 words. I'll use the Online Etymology Dictionary.

"Empty-chair technique or chairwork is typically used in Gestalt therapy to explore patients' relationships with themselves or other people in their lives."

"The technique involves the client addressing the empty chair as if another person was in it, such as President Obama. They may also move between chairs and act out two or more sides of a discussion, typically involving the patient and persons significant to them. A form of role-playing, the technique focuses on exploration of self and is utilized by therapists to help patients self-adjust."

A passage on the Wikipedia entry for Gestalt Therapy, linked to by kentuckyliz in the comments on the previous post. She says:

It was therapy.

I like how "such as President Obama" was added to the wikipedia entry.

LOL!

Since we were all watching, it was group therapy. A primal scream.

How do we really feel about Nancy Pelosi?

I think she's going to come out of all of this very well. Here's my salute to her:



In the comments to the "Stump Nightclub" open thread last night, kentuckyliz prodded our resident animator Chip Ahoy: "photoshop this pic with a teabag dangling down into her mouth. Or clip her out and paste her onto the background for The Scream." She meant this picture:



Not my stump picture:



And Chip said: "Gnarly root Medusa tea-bag Pelosi but nobody is allowed to look at it except for kentuckyliz and Rialby. And now I must go and pray to repent for God told me he's going to totally kick my ass."

So, of course, we looked:



Oh, lord! That's so wrong and so right. But that's another kind of salute to the lady who has claimed her place in American history. There was a time when we pulled our punches when a woman was involved. I say Chip's GIF is a landmark in the journey toward equality for women.

And God have mercy on us all.

Obamalisa and Obama Van Gogh.

"Mona Lisa. Please, someone do it! The sly smile would be so perfect," said Kentuckyliz, in that post yesterday where I'd asked for Photoshoppings of Obama in French impressionist/post-impressionists paintings.

Palladian gave us this:



Chip Ahoy was all:

Ha ha ha ha ha

I can't stand it. But Palladian, Post- Impressionist? Allow me recommend filter/pixelate/pointillize for Seurat-like dotage to conform Obamalisa, ha ha ha ha ha, that kills me all over again, with our Hostess' bleg.

Nothing like a hilarious anachronism. Let's celebrate with a reprise Chip's delightful Obama Van Gogh:



ADDED: MPH does the Modigliani variation:

"Republicans would be foolish to fight the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court..."

"...because she is the most conservative choice that President Obama could have made," says E.J. Dionne, whose assertion shouldn't be trusted.

IN THE COMMENTS: traditionalguy said:

Dionne's advice is letting the cat out of the bag. The Progressive wing will gladly push for withdrawal of her nomination if the repubbies continue to posture and vent over a few imperfections in Sonia's speeches. Then Obama could really un-load on them with his next choice. The nomination of Sotomayor needs another "just like Bush" tag.

Ah, yes. Just like Bush did with Harriet Miers and then Samual Alito. As kentuckyliz suggested, we ought to call Sotomayor Sorta-Miers.