President William McKinley, the 25th President of the United States, heroically led our Nation to victory in the Spanish-American War. Under his leadership, the United States enjoyed rapid economic growth and prosperity, including an expansion of territorial gains for the Nation. President McKinley championed tariffs to protect U.S. manufacturing, boost domestic production, and drive U.S. industrialization and global reach to new heights. He was tragically assassinated in an attack on our Nation’s values and our success, and he should be honored for his steadfast commitment to American greatness.
In 1917, the country officially honored President McKinley through the naming of North America’s highest peak. Yet after nearly a century, President Obama’s administration, in 2015, stripped the McKinley name from federal nomenclature, an affront to President McKinley’s life, his achievements, and his sacrifice....
Obama changed the name to Denali, and Trump opposed the change at the time — "Great insult to Ohio. I will change back!" With this order, he's done what he said he would do — though now it's about recognizing a man as a hero and not about a particular state that supposedly cares a lot about that man. Note that "Denali" was not a person's name, so Trump isn't elevating one state's hero over another.
"I spoke with Tricia Gronnevik, a forty-four-year-old credit-union marketing analyst who attended the San Antonio rally. 'Doug just blew me away with how real he is,' she said. 'It doesn’t seem fake or forced, like good old J. D. Vance.' Gronnevik is a fifth-generation Texan—she grew up on a ranch—and she thought Emhoff would be a worthy First Gentleman. 'We need a new version of masculinity represented,' she said. 'I’m really tired of the alpha-male toxic bullshit. Being a South Texas country girl... I grew up in deer camps listening to a lot of misogynistic shit. It’s refreshing that we have men here who are supportive and not punching down, being bullies.' Emhoff’s 'super-cool' musical taste 'is making me love him even more,' she added. 'I’m a big New Order fan, too. The Cure is my favorite band of all time, so if he’s a Cure fan I’m gonna die.'"
"... the gray or blue jacket reminds us of a common class background; the distinctive pattern of the tie orients us toward the wearer’s unique identity.... The tie could sometimes get so compressed in its significance as to lose its witty, stealthy character and become overly and unambiguously 'loaded.' There is no better story of suicide-by-semiotics than that of the rise and death of the bow tie, which, beginning in the nineteen-eighties, became so single-mindedly knotted up with neoconservatism, in the estimable hands of George Will, that to wear one was to declare oneself a youngish fogy, a reader of the National Review, and a skeptic of big government. The wider shores of bow-tie-dom—the dashing, jaunty, self-mocking P. G. Wodehouse side of them—receded, and were lost. It became impossible to wear a bow tie and vote Democratic...."
"'... officers and enlisted, immigrants and native-born, different races, different faiths, but all Americans.' In Phoenix, Trump, invoked the racist 'great replacement' conspiracy theory, saying Biden had orchestrated an 'invasion' at the border as part of 'a deliberate demolition of our sovereignty' because “they probably think these people are going to be voting.... Trump... complained about 'endless wars' and 'delinquent' Europeans, and vowed to 'spend our money in our country' — including by 'moving thousands of troops, if necessary, currently stationed overseas to our own borders.'... Will Americans recognize their country in the dark and desperate portrait Trump painted? 'Our country is falling to pieces,' he said, and if he isn’t returned to power, 'the country is finished ... You won’t have a country anymore.' Trump described a nation full of 'crooked people' and serving as 'a dumping ground for the dungeons of the Third World.'"
Milbank's writing is so heavy-handed, but it must please some readers, perhaps readers who want to believe Biden is a good-enough candidate. He rhapsodized about a story told by the rows of graves, while Trump complained of endless wars.
Donald J. Trump appears to be a stronger candidate than he was four years ago, polling suggests, and not just because a notable number of voters look back on his presidency as a time of relative peace and prosperity. It’s also because his political liabilities, like his penchant to offend and his legal woes, don’t dominate the news the way they once did....
Really? I think he seems to dominate the news. But of course, he isn't President. The actual President does necessarily claim some space. In Biden's case, it's the least space I've ever seen claimed by a President. Because of all the prosecutions, Trump's first presidency is still immensely important daily news. And Trump also gets attention as the leading contender to be the next President. Biden is overwhelmed. What do we hear of Biden? He said something weird about cannibalism. He didn't wear a bow tie with his dinner jacket.
Nevertheless, Cohn seems to have convinced himself that Trump is lower profile in the news these days:
"People who wear them fall in and out of love with them or bear them as a burden for life. People who have to look at them can find them irritating or worse. The presence of a bow tie always seems to draw comment and the phrase 'bow tie-wearing' in certain contexts can sound like a slur....
To its devotees the bow tie suggests iconoclasm of an Old World sort, a fusty adherence to a contrarian point of view. The bow tie hints at intellectualism, real or feigned, and sometimes suggests technical acumen, perhaps because it is so hard to tie. Bow ties are worn by magicians, country doctors, lawyers and professors and by people hoping to look like the above. But perhaps most of all, wearing a bow tie is a way of broadcasting an aggressive lack of concern for what other people think.... Another class of bow-tied men is comprised of comedians who wear them ironically, like Mark Russell [and] Pee-wee Herman.... [George] Will said he started wearing a bow tie in the 1960's as a statement 'when things started going crazy.'..."
You can scroll back to the beginning to watch that whole 12-minute clip. I actually listened to the entire 3+ hours of the podcast on Spotify. Roth is such a motor mouth, but it's all pretty interesting. He did leave Rogan in the dust, though. The main thing Roth got across — if you take the 3 hours as a whole — is that he's internalized the lesson his father taught by asking — every night at the dinner table — what did you contribute?
In case you're wondering, Roth will be getting a new tooth. I forget how he said he got that one knocked out.
Speaking of Spotify, I like that — at the age of 70 — I've been able to hear something new now and then and genuinely adopt it as a personal favorite. When I was a teenager, it was so easy to accept new musical artists and really love them — internalize them. Now, it's an amazing delight when something leaps into the place in my head that was so open when I was young. Yesterday, I clicked on this and immediately took it to heart:
That's the live version, obviously. The version on the album is what especially appealed to me.
1. I don't know if I'll have much to say. I can see my son John is set up and ready to live blog, so I point you over there. He's sure to have substance. I will, at most, have transitory feelings and stray observations. I hope something interesting happens. I don't care to hear them trot out their plans and policies. I prefer to consume that in writing. I'm only interested in seeing debating style and behavior and finding things weird or funny. But you can say what you like in the comments.
2. Joe is trying to intimidate Bernie by looking at him.
3. Kirsten Gillibrand gets away with interrupting... for a while, and then she's cut off. I don't listen to what she says because I'm noticing she's got the same mascara problem Amy Klobuchar had last night — just a few blots in the center of the lower lid. I assume that's accidental transfer of upper lash mascara. She also seems uncomfortable with her false eyelashes. She's blinking furiously. Oh, now she's interrupting again. So annoying. I'm literally getting a headache.
4. Andrew Yang is not wearing a tie. He's asked a question and he acts like he hasn't heard it.
5. Swalwell picked out his orange tie. He's also got an orange ribbon. Must mean something. I'm reading the Wikipedia article on the meaning of the orange ribbon. There are a lot of possibilities, including: "In the 1920s, an orange ribbon was used [in Sweden] for the national association of overallklubbar, clubs promoting a radical change in fashion meaning everyone should wear jumpsuits."
6. They're all talking at once! It reminds me of last night's audio snafu. Pure chaos. Kamala Harris gets off a joke: "America does not want to witness a food fight. They want to know how we're going to put food on their table."
7. The tension and anger is cranking up, and I blame Bernie Sanders. It's catching, and several of the others are infected, notably Joe Biden. When they yell, I can barely listen.
8. The subject of health care is going on and on. I consider this mainly a legislative matter. I'd rather hear them talk about things that are specific to the executive power.
9. On the hand-raising question, Biden has a halfway gesture, holding up an index finger at nose level. Is he trying to say: I have a special statement to make. I guess that's okay. Why force people to accept or reject a dictated statement?
10. The Democrats are embracing completely open immigration, as far as I can tell. It seems that anyone can decide to move here and be welcomed and supported. I can't believe that is what Americans will vote for, and neither can Trump:
All Democrats just raised their hands for giving millions of illegal aliens unlimited healthcare. How about taking care of American Citizens first!? That’s the end of that race!
This was the first song that popped into my head when I needed a Rodgers and Hammerstein song for a footnote earlier today. I came up with something else for that post, but the song "Younger Than Springtime" has stuck with me all morning. I rewatched this version — from the movie "South Pacific" — even though I don't like the singer's voice and I find it absurd the way the man has to hold up the woman the entire time he's singing...
Now, the actor you see there — in his shirtless glory — is John Kerr, but the voice belongs to Bill Lee. I mean, I don't particularly like the voice, but they could have had anybody. They didn't need the singer to look great shirtless and nonridiculous with that woman swooning in his arms for 3 minutes. But I guess the people of the time (1958) liked that voice. Bill Lee was also the singing voice of Prince Charming in "Snow White and the Three Stooges" and the singing voice of Captain von Trapp in "The Sound of Music."
I much prefer this version of "Younger Than Springtime" by Frank Sinatra. I love everything about this, including when he waves with his tie at Nancy Sinatra:
By the way the character in the story, Marine Lieutenant Joe Cable, loves the woman, who is Tonkinese, but — spoiler alert — rejects her because of racism and, out of dramatic necessity, dies in battle.
Google put out a glossy video based on the Google searches beginning with "how" that people did in 2017:
I watched it this morning because there was a Metafilter post about it, here, where people said things like:
When I type "how" into Google, the first auto-complete which comes up that I know isn't mine is, "how to hard boil eggs".
Thanks, Google. I know that some of my other searches may put me into "can't tie his own shoes" categories, but I do know how to hard boil eggs. I'm slightly less useless than that.
But there are fine points to hard-boiling an egg. You might want to check unless you already know whether to put the egg in at the beginning or only after the water boils. Do you really know the exact number of minutes to go after the water boils and is that with the water continuing to boil or with the heat turned off? Now that I think about it, I bet if you Google, you'll find your method of tying your shoes called into question.
Speaking of which... "how to tie a tie" — along with "how to make slime" — is one of the most common search completions on Google. Another Metafilter commenter said:
Top three "how" autocompletes for me are:
"how to tie a tie"
"how to lose weight"
"how to kiss"
I think Google has a misapprehension about me. I bloody hope so.
I blame the fact that I'm on the Internet connection at my parents' new vicarage where they've only just moved in, so maybe this is a picture of the single vicar who was here before?
So I did my own "how to..." search, and Google gave me:
how to tie a tie
how to make slime
how to buy ripple
How to buy Ripple?! You mean how to stumble into a low-rent liquor store?
I prefer this song about Ripple:
And for you "Sanford and Son" fans, here's a full glass.
Ah, but I'm living in the 1970s. Google is right now, kicking 2017 to the curb and moving on to 2018. And Ripple, I learn this morning, is another cryptocurrency, that is, another subject that fails to convince me to ground myself in the present.
This is the main advantage of ether: it makes you behave like the village drunkard in some early Irish novel ... total loss of all basic motor skills: blurred vision, no balance, numb tongue – severence of all connection between the body and the brain. Which is interesting, because the brain continues to function more or less normally ... you can actually watch yourself behaving in this terrible way, but you can't control it.
During what was supposed to be a stump speech for Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.), Trump drifted away from campaigning to ask members of the crowd if they’d “love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now, he’s fired?’”
Here's the video:
ADDED: On a fashion note, what's up with the peppermint candy necktie?
I never saw the movie — meant to, just didn't — but I realize this plays on something in "There Will Be Blood." Know Your Meme gets me the details:
I Drink Your Milkshakeis a catchphrase originating from There Will Be Blood.... It tells the story of a silver-miner-turned-oil-man on a ruthless quest for wealth during Southern California’s oil boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
In the film, the phrase was intentionally used as a metaphor: sucking milkshake from someone else to demonstrate not only oil drainage from prized land, but the harsh nature of how cruelty often trumps meekness. In its original context, the scene is meant to evoke contempt for the character of Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day Lewis) and pity for his adopted son H.W. (Russel Harvard).
Interesting happenstance, the appearance of the verb "trumps."
The video at Know Your Memes is not available, but I've found it. Here:
Okay. I had never seen that before. Very intense. I get it. Here's the text (which you won't fully appreciate without hearing the performance):
That land has been had. Nothing you can do about it. It's gone. It's had... You lose.... Drainage! Drainage, Eli, you boy. Drained dry. I'm so sorry. Here, if you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake, and I have a straw. There it is, that's a straw, you see? Watch it. Now, my straw reaches acroooooooss the room and starts to drink your milkshake. I... drink... your... milkshake!
Back to the cartoon. Is the other man — the little man with his back to us — supposed to be Putin? I assumed so. It was the cartoon of the day when Trump first encountered Putin in the flesh. But the setting is the Oval Office, and that's not where Putin and Trump met. And I don't think a world leader in the Oval Office is ever seated on the other side of the President's desk. But maybe the cartoonist resorted to the simplest indication that this is the Oval Office. And yet, come on, cartoonist (Farley Katz), you don't even have Trump's hair swooping in the right direction.
And why the distracting extra-long tie? I know it's stock humor about Trump — he wears his ties very long. We can veer into phallic symbology. Or are we supposed to focus on the tie? Is it the equivalent of the straw that reaches across the room? Are we to picture the drinking of Putin's (or whoever's) country as accomplished with the tie?
I like the idea of Daniel Day-Lewis playing Trump. He played Abraham Lincoln in a movie — another movie I haven't seen. Maybe there's some reference to that movie that might make the cartoon click into place for me. But I'm a little confused. I do think the little guy in the movie looks a bit Putinish, and it's funny to think of Trump towering over him, yelling at him, humiliating him, and reducing him to a quivering mass of jelly. But that doesn't seem anti-Trump enough for New Yorker cartoon-of-the-day purposes. So... maybe back to the tie. It's long but limp....
IN THE COMMENTS: I'm prodded to see the little man in the chair as Obama. David Smith points to "the big ears... the half-tone shading on the face." Laslo Spatula observes the "Vaguely tight, smooth afro (no hair lines drawn to indicate wavy, straight, etc; Trump has line detail in his hair). Big ears. Skin tone darker than Trump."
I realize this idea did cross my mind, but I was so stuck on Putin when it was cartoon of the day on that day. To see the other man as Obama answers my problem of a world leader seated on the other side of the President's desk. And now I notice the door behind "Trump." When the President is seated at his desk in the Oval Office, there are windows behind him. The Trump character there is pre-presidency Trump, looming over President Obama and threatening him.
But why would he say "I drink up your country"? The United States is Trump's country too! In The New Yorker's view, perhaps, there are 2 Americas. Red America and Blue America, like 2 milkshakes, and Blue America might have been happy with its own milkshake, ignoring Red America over there. But Red America is cruel and greedy. It will drink up Blue America.
AND: Yet it doesn't make sense — or it makes only horrible sense — for Americans to picture political power in terms of draining the country, with the Democratic Party having its share and the Republican Party the other share. It might make sense — but I don't think this would be The New Yorker's sense — for Trump to be talking about getting votes that Democrats think belong to them. A politician is doing a fine job if he wins votes that have traditionally gone to the opposing party. But when people cast votes, they aren't drained. They've simply participated in the most recent election and they fully retain their vote, to be cast in the next election. I guess there might be some kind of insinuation that these voters, duped into voting for Trump, will have their interests drained... or maybe that a Trump presidency will destroy democracy and their vote really will be lost.
Have I thought about this more than The New Yorker did? Maybe it simply hit the editors as surreal and bizarre, and — because of a solid assumption of Trump hate — it seemed to just work.
ALSO IN THE COMMENTS: I think pacwest sums up the New Yorker's thinking:
That is Obama behind the desk in the oval office. He created an America greater than any other. The evil fat monster Donald Trump has just been elected and is going to suck all the juices out of his divine creation. Bwaa ha ha! The horror!
"Standing in the middle of the outer-office desks, he retied the tie in the Windsor knot, wider and more shaped than the traditional four-in-hand, which was becoming fashionable in 1949, and then stepped back to admire his handiwork. 'Look at that!' he said. 'He’s got a man’s knot now, not a limp one.' And assignments to his staff were sometimes made in the same tone. When, during his presidency, a woman reporter wrote critical articles about him, he would tell White House counsel Harry McPherson, 'What that woman needs is you. Take her out. Give her a good dinner and a good fuck.' And, McPherson would learn, the President wasn’t kidding. Joseph A. Califano Jr., to whom McPherson related the incident, writes that 'Periodically the President would ask McPherson if he’d taken care of the reporter. Every time she took even the slightest shot at the President, he’d call Harry and tell him to go to work on her.' Lyndon Johnson was never kidding when he gave such instructions."
A Stanford law professor wrote a 700-word essay — published in the NYT — about the neckties Trump wears. The professor — Richard Thompson Ford — is "writing a book about dress codes," so he may not be going too far out of his way to analyze Trump at the fashion level. Obviously, we know Trump wears a plain, wide red tie and he ties it so it hangs very long. You could either search for the reason he has chosen that and sticks to it (he must intend the result) or you can find fault with that (why doesn't he learn how to tie the tie correctly?).
Ford takes the latter approach: "The putative leader of the free world cannot tie a necktie properly." And he justifies his attention to the seemingly trivial by asking if it might "reflect weightier issues of self-discipline, competence and integrity?" And we, the readers, might ask if a law professor's enterprise of seeking meaning in the President's necktie might reflect "weightier issues of self-discipline, competence and integrity?" That is, does the professor begin with the necktie and find meaning in it, or did the professor begin with an opinion of the President and then ascribe that meaning to the necktie? What would the necktie mean if you loved President Trump? If the meaning would be different, then you're not analyzing the necktie.
Ford gets into some good detail:
Perfectly symmetrical knots with centered dimples betray an obsessive-compulsive personality. The Italians have mastered the insouciance of the slightly off-center knot — some even leave the narrower end a bit longer, letting it peek out from behind the thicker one in front, as if to say, I really couldn’t be bothered to redo it.
And political self-awareness:
Trump partisans may well complain: Why is the Italian imperfect tie-knot considered chic and the presidential idiosyncrasy déclassé? Isn’t this a double standard set up by liberal elitists?
I'd say double standards are an important part of the perception of fashion. The right stylish person can take something low class and make it elegant. And something stylish, widely adopted by gross people, can become horrible. I don't think elitists are imposing the standards. It's more about who's wearing what. That's why new fashions look so good: You only see them on models and styled-up stars. When that stuff finds its way onto the bodies of ordinary people, it looks dowdy and sad. Of course.
Ford's theory is that "the Italian" is showing "an aristocratic disdain for the trappings of masculine potency," but Trump's "symmetrical but overlong tie stands out like a rehearsed macho boast, crass and overcompensating." The Italian is high-class ("aristocratic") and not hung up on masculinity, while the billionaire betrays his low-class grasping at machismo. Does this theory save Ford from the "liberal elitist" charge? Why the love for a quality that feels to him like Italian aristocracy? Why the attitude about the wrongness of too much masculinity?
Ford does not progress that deeply into the subject. I guess the NYT reader is imagined to accept the notion that that "Italian" has it just right. There's only a picture of Trump at the link, so The Italian is a picture in your head. And doesn't he look excellent, your stereotype, this Italian?
The picture of Trump shows him exiting a plane with the tie flying backward in the wind, revealing, on its underside, an X of cellophane tape:
This is the opposite of the Italian’s devil-may-care. It betrays a devil who cares too much — and about the wrong things. Whereas the slightly imperfect tie knot demonstrates nonchalance, the badly tied and taped tie suggests a desperate but failed bid to look “correct.” It’s not only a failure, but also a fraud, a paper moon artlessly stuck over a cardboard sea.
So it's both haphazard — artless —and too careful? What's fraudulent about taping something in place? And why isn't that damned Italian considered overcareful in his taking the trouble to "master" the "slightly off-center knot"? The answer is easy: It's all in your head. You like this Italian, and you don't like Trump. Ask yourself, Professor Ford, if you caught a glimpse of the underside of Barack Obama's tie and there was tape, would you not find that "insouciant" and "devil-may-care"? It's like those models who make clothes feel like fashion: The person creates the mood. The perception is in your head.
Mr. Trump’s neckties tell us something about his social and political ties. He has made the persona of the loud, tacky mogul a sort of trademark.
Oh, come on! It's the other way around! Trump's persona caused you to think about his tie the way you did. Here's Bernie Sanders in approximately the same tie:
I'm asking myself that question in the cold dark of pre-dawn. All I wrote last night was "UPDATE: Gorsuch." Not even an exclamation point after "Gorsuch."
But this is good. Talk about normalizing Trump! Trump named someone on his pre-vetted list, just as he said he would do. The man, by all observable indicia, appears perfectly appropriate, including the humble demeanor.*
Trump looked and sounded very presidential in the classic East Room setting. Those who want immediately to trash anything Trump does were invited to look like fools.
I was watching CNN, and the first (and only) attacks I heard were about Gorsuch's opposition to assisted suicide. I laughed. The Trump antagonists are going to rage about the value of suicide?!
We're supposed to get outraged because Gorsuch is against suicide? The Trump-haters think they can rally us with our enthusiasm for suicide?! Maybe they think they can. After all, younger folks may hanker for euthanizing us baby boomers, and arguments about suicide resemble arguments about abortion. Knock yourself out, Gorsuch opponents, you crazy nuts.
_____________________________
* If I had live-blogged my every thought last night, I would have dinged him for wearing a plaid tie and wiping his nose a few times and turning the pages of his written speech with undue amplitude. I'd have complained about his incantation of all the usual pieties,** but that wasn't enough to get me up out of my comfy TV-watching chair last night. Perhaps Trump planned it that way. Make it a prime-time TV show and people will be deactivated in their comfy chairs. They'll watch and feel that Gorsuch is a very fine man. Look at his education credentials. Clerked for Whizzer White and Anthony Kennedy. And doesn't his wife look like my high school teacher in that white blouse and a-line skirt? Zzzzz.
_____________________________
** "'Pieties' — is that not a word?" I ask the room as Blogger impugns it as a typo. Before looking it up and ensuring that it is indeed a word — it is — I'm distracted by its silliness — "pie ties," just as I'm writing about the man's tie. I'm contemplating the American slapstick/protest history of pies in the face of dignified tie-wearing men....
... it's so perfectly the opposite of pieties. But the dignified men of the present are well-defended nowadays, and I haven't seen a classic pie-in-the-face protest in a long time. The one in those 2 pictures is a mayor deliberately taking a pie-in-the-face challenge.***
_____________________________
*** The answer to the old question Can a footnote have a footnote? is: Yes!
The headline at ABC is "Officer Pulls Over Speeding Student, Teaches Him to Tie a Tie," but the young man never pays attention to the tying, nor does the officer tell him to watch and learn. The first time the cop ties the tie, the bottom part is way too long, and the second time, the top part is way too long, and the cop seems more concerned about how it looks than the guy... who, by the way, says he was speeding because he had a presentation to give and needed to stop first at the home of a friend "and he knows how to tie a tie."
ADDED: The cop knows he's on camera, so this is law-enforcement theater. The young man has no choice by to lend his performance to this police PR. It's very well done, and I'm glad the cameras incentivize this good — too good? — behavior by the police.
But I'm sure there are naysayers: Does everyone get such benevolent service, or is this special for drivers of BMWs? And does this not bear out the thesis of the old Eddie Murphy sketch "White Like Me"?
"With the assistance of his wife, he cut rectangular holes measuring six by fourteen inches in the ceilings of more than a dozen rooms. Then he covered the openings with louvred aluminum screens that looked like ventilation grilles but were actually observation vents that allowed him, while he knelt in the attic, to see his guests in the rooms below. He watched them for decades, while keeping an exhaustive written record of what he saw and heard. Never once, during all those years, was he caught."
I saw what Foos was doing, and I did the same: I got down on my knees and crawled toward the lighted louvres. Then I stretched my neck in order to see as much as I could through the vent, nearly butting heads with Foos as I did so. Finally, I saw a naked couple spread out on the bed below, engaged in oral sex. Foos and I watched for several moments, and then Foos lifted his head and gave me a thumbs-up sign. He whispered that it was the skiing couple from Chicago.
Despite an insistent voice in my head telling me to look away, I continued to observe, bending my head farther down for a closer view. As I did so, I failed to notice that my necktie had slipped down through the slats of the louvred screen and was dangling into the motel room within a few yards of the woman’s head. I realized my carelessness only when Foos grabbed me by the neck and, with his free hand, pulled my tie up through the slats. The couple below saw none of this: the woman’s back was to us, and the man had his eyes closed.
And: "Foos made it clear to me from the beginning that he regarded his voyeurism as serious research, undertaken, in some vague way, for the betterment of society." And: "During the spring of 2013, thirty-three years after I had met him, Foos called me to say that he was ready to go public with his story.... How could he assume that going public with his sinister story would achieve anything positive? It could just as easily provide evidence leading to his arrest, lawsuits, and widespread public outrage. Why did he crave the notoriety?"
Talese... explained that the problem with female journalists was they were limited by their desire to stay above the fray, according to an audience member who spoke to the Washington Post. Amy Littlefield, 29, said that Talese explained "how educated women don’t want to hang out with antisocial people."
His answer seemed to shock the audience, with one person shouting out the name of Joan Didion....
"Trump may have his name plastered on assorted buildings, but he looks more like an ordinary, angry middle-management guy," writes Robin Givhan, criticizing Donald Trump's looks after criticizing Donald Trump for criticizing somebody else's looks.
The somebody else is an unnamed "guy" who "went crazy" about something Trump said about food stamps. Said guy was "seriously overweight." Givhan takes Trump to task for "fat-shaming" this man:
[M]ocking someone’s weight cuts at the core of personal appearance, societal prejudices and a fraught sense of insecurity that by all rights should not exist but stubbornly does.
By all rights? Really? Isn't there at least a smidgen of justification for observing that the federal government spends our money on a program that feeds people who are, demonstrably, eating too much? Trump used a fairly respectful expression. He said:
You know, it’s amazing. I mentioned food stamps and that guy who is seriously overweight went crazy. He went crazy. . . That’s an amazing sight.
It's not like he said I mentioned food stamps and that fat pig — huuuge pig — went crazy....
Givhan says "It is a fashion insult — of the pettiest sort," before proceeding to criticize the fit of Trump's suits, the color and length of his tie, and the strategy of the combover. She's not taking a 2-wrongs-make-a-right/tit-for-tat position. Trump's insult of the "seriously overweight" "guy" was "a visceral, intimate insult.... So Trump’s fat-shaming of a protester begs one to consider Trump’s own appearance." He was asking for it.
But does Givhan really need justification to launch into an analysis of how some politician looks? That's her beat as a columnist and has been for years. Since when does she need to build a foundation for her fashion critiques by demonstrating that her target has done fashion insults that cut to the core?
I had to think for a few seconds about that, and what I came up with was that she wanted to criticize Trump for talking about how a guy looks, but that risked hypocrisy, since she continually writes about how people look, and she's criticized for that. How to attack Trump without exposing herself to the same attack? And I think her first reaction to Trump's pointing out that some guy is fat was probably that Trump himself is fat. But it's not her taste level to write that somebody's fat.
So Givhan processed the temptation to say that Trump is fat into the assertion Trump worries about whether he looks fat. There's this anecdote from 1999, in which Trump comically exclaimed that some photo made him look "like I weighed 500 pounds!" But I think that little story displays Trump as openly expressive, feeling free to talk about weight, and not a shame-oriented kind of person.
But Givhan places a sound bet that Washington Post readers are shame-oriented and ready to loathe Trump for prodding them where it hurts and where liberals are telling them they're entitled not to hurt. And of course they're entitled to food stamps even if they're fat. That's not even an issue to discuss. But it's what Trump was discussing.
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Now, there's your nontoxic masculinity. Aim higher younger-than-boomer guys. I saw JD Vance's fuchsia tie at the debate last night, but there are miles ahead on the road to detoxification.
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