Melania Trump presents the White House Christmas.

Home Is Where the Heart Is
AMERICA’S CHRISTMAS

This Christmas, let’s celebrate the love we hold within ourselves and share it with the world around us. After all, wherever we are, we can create a home filled with endless possibilities. pic.twitter.com/VouZAtLpHU

— First Lady Melania Trump (@FLOTUS) December 1, 2025

I laughed when I saw the picture of Trump on the windowsill, like Trump — mugshot Trump! — is a Christmas character — along with Santa and Jesus. But on rewatch, I see the emphasis on the United States as a political entity, in its 250th year. And there's George Washington on the other windowsill as if the windows are a time line from the origin point in the past to the present day. We see Jesus, but not Santa. There's nothing aimed at children here. It's elegant, not fun or cute.

Melanie reaches out to one of the frosted white ornaments. There must be one for every state, because it says "Georgia." We see the slogans "Fostering the Future" and "Be Best." [ADDED: I said there is "nothing aimed at children" in the decorations, but both of those these slogans indicate programs aimed at children.]

The animal that represents Christmas in this display is a blue butterfly. Is that a real species of butterfly or just a monarch butterfly rendered in blue?

Cheryl Hines does a fabulous job of establishing rapport with Bill Maher right at the beginning of this Club Random podcast.

I'm listening to the whole thing, but only 26 minutes in.

She's fascinatingly skillful at personal interaction... and he appreciates it. He raises the dumb subject of wearing orange — because it's "right before Halloween" — and somehow she's got him talking about women in "blood red" lingerie and how he doesn't want to be touching a woman wearing leather in the middle of the night....

They talk about Bobby and Trump too. Watch it for yourself.

"Thank you for making this trip such a happy experience. Thank you for being here at the exact right moment, by my boat. Thank you for taking my bait. Thank you. We love you."

Said Garvin Watson, as he kissed the orange shark and let it go.

Quoted in "Fishermen Pulled In an Orange Shark Off Costa Rica: ‘My God, What Is This?’/Scientists published a study this month on the nurse shark, which was caught and photographed by sport fishermen last year" (NYT)(gift link, so you can see the pictures and lose yourself in sharkdom).

"Finding a studio that made her 'feel comfortable enough to be creative' took time, she said, and eventually, she found Pot, a studio in Los Angeles that seeks to empower people of color in ceramics."

"'In that studio, I met a lot of people that help me feel safe and feel able to create whatever I want without thinking: Am I going to sell this or is this going to be something that people are going to want in their stores?' said Ms. Muñoz, who now lives in El Paso and has a studio in Guadalajara, Mexico."

From "That Art Piece on Your Coffee Table? It’ll Get You High. Cannabis paraphernalia is joining the world of home décor. Here are some of the most interesting new designs and designers" (NYT)(free-access link).

I'm expending one of my 10 gift links on this one because I want you to see some of the godawful pottery the NYT is promoting for artists and empowerers of people of color. I found this article at the top of the NYT home page, right next to "Trump Favors Blunt Force in Dealing With Foreign Allies and Enemies Alike." No pun intended, I'm sure.

I'm old enough to remember the kind of gigantic atrocious ashtray that was regarded as an "art piece on your coffee table," back in the heyday of tobacco smoking. 

Smoking paraphernalia "joined the world of home decor" a long time ago.  

By the way, did you ever look and look and finally find a place where people helped you feel safe and feel able to create whatever you want without thinking and then you relocated to Mexico?

Now, get out there and be creative. Creative for the people. Of color. Perhaps orange. Or avocado....

Althouse and Meade photograph an ash tree at 7:43 a.m.

Photo #1 by Althouse, photo #2 by Meade.

Open thread in the comments.

Happy Birthday to John Lennon!

I don't say happy birthday to John Lennon every year, but just by chance it happened that the first post of the day — "Both VP nominees are now participating in the old tradition of responding to questions written on an orange..."— contained the sentence:

"I struggle to resist re-telling the story of My Dinner With Bruce Springsteen."

The internal link goes back to a post from the first year of this blog:

Go back to the first post of today to see how that connected up. But rereading that old post — which has a Sean Lennon Ono tag (because I sat near Yoko Ono when she was pregnant with Sean) — made me want to check to see what Sean was writing on X today. I see:

What nice synchronicity! It was only by chance that John and Sean were born on the same day and only by chance that on this October 9th, the story of an orange rolled up the aisle of an airplane took me back to the story of My Dinner in the Vicinity of John and Yoko.

If I had to try to think of a meaningful connection, I'd say — as I've said before — I like that Yoko Ono book "Grapefruit."

Both VP nominees are now participating in the old tradition of responding to questions written on an orange that a reporter has rolled up the aisle of the campaign plane.

ABC reports.

Walz did it first, responding to the question "Dream dinner guest?" His answer (written on the orange and rolled back (more than a day later)): Bruce Springsteen.

(I struggle to resist re-telling the story of My Dinner With Bruce Springsteen.)

Vance's reporters wanted in on this orange action and rolled him the question "Fave Song." Under the circumstances, I would have chosen "Let Me Roll It"...

But Vance rolled back — immediately — "10 Years Gone":

Thank God something light-hearted is happening on this overwrought campaign.

Rivers always reach the sea/Flying skies of fortune, each a separate way/On the wings of maybe....

Why did it take Walz over a day to think up Bruce Springsteen? If you were going to workshop the most politically opportune answer, assuming you'd pick a pop star, wouldn't you pick a pop star affiliated with a battleground state? 

I see that Kamala Harris, on Steve Colbert's show last night — see "The high life: Kamala Harris cracks open a beer with Stephen Colbert" (Guardian)— chose Miller High Life as the beer for the little exercise in relatability" and...

Harris repeated the popular slogan “The champagne of beers”, while Colbert noted that it comes from Milwaukee, in the swing state of Wisconsin. He said: “So that covers Wisconsin. Let’s talk Michigan. Let’s appeal to the Michigan voters, OK? What are your favourite Bob Seger songs?”

Walz could have said Bob Seger! What're his politics?  

Vance answered quickly, and his choice is a bit idiosyncratic, but that doesn't free him of any suspicion of answering what he thought was politically advantageous. He's a quick thinker, and he knows the assignment. But he's chosen British pop stars, and "Ten Years Gone" is not near the top of obvious Led Zeppelin songs.  It's #40 on Vulture's "All 74 Led Zeppelin Songs, Ranked." So there's a good chance it really is his favorite Led Zeppelin song.

Is Led Zeppelin his favorite band? The name appears 4 times in "Hillbilly Elegy." Here are 2::

Another year has passed in The Althouse Sunrise Project.

Yesterday was the 5th anniversary of my daily photographs of the sunrise. A few days were skipped for bad weather and once or twice I overslept, but the ritual practice is nearly every single day. I try to get good pictures, but many days are like other days and simply doing it is more important to me than getting a distinctive photograph. Still I rejoice on those days when it looks especially great, and I take this annual occasion to repost a few of the best.

Like this one, with the most unusual color, from May 21:

And this, from April 26, where white showed its worth as a sunrise color:

And just last week, on September 3, brown was a delicate delight:

"The bronze sheen on our presidential candidates... used to be organic: the result of hours spent in the sun rallying crowds and shaking hands..."

"But even if the campaigning is done in the confines of a television studio, you’ll still see sun-kissed skin, glowing just the right amount for the HD cameras.... Makeup telegraphs the way politicians see themselves — or how they want others to see them. The men on Harris’s short list for vice president have portrayed themselves as middle-of-the-road, no-nonsense everymen, an image complemented by their polished but natural makeup looks. The Republican National Convention in July brought forward a different kind of male face: Kardashian-bronze, a look favored by party standard-bearer Donald Trump.... This parade of copper-colored men were a united front of Trump aesthetics: highlighting the strange cocktail of masculinity favored by Trump himself — a mix of swashbuckling American masculinity and Hollywood sensibilities, expressed in deep tans and bandaged ears, a kind of gilded populism."

From "Color theory for male politicians: Am I a gold, copper or bronze? The 2024 presidential election season has given us an eyeful of the glorious highs and perilous lows of men’s makeup" (WaPo).

Are the 2 parties really doing different colors? Here's Josh Shapiro as he appeared last week:

Is he not orange? Seems to me all the men have adopted the ridiculous color Trump has used all these years — to endless mockery. 

On the day before the solstice, the group "Just Stop Oil" besmirches Stonehenge.

Just stop oil protestors damage Stonehenge 😭
pic.twitter.com/HSQvfWIdNh

— Stonehenge U.K (@ST0NEHENGE) June 19, 2024

The group stresses its moderation: "The orange cornflour we used will soon wash away with the rain, but the urgent need for effective government action to mitigate the catastrophic consequences of the climate and ecological crisis will not."

"Does the shade remind anyone else of a complexion? Specifically, a light one? That gave me pause, for a moment."

"I think about how brands like Fenty Beauty have pushed the cosmetics industry to make shade ranges that include people of color, especially those with dark skin. This color, plus the skin connotation of the Peach Fuzz name, hews pretty closely to the shades worn by white people that there are no shortage of."

Said Callie Holtermann, a member of the NYT "style" team, quoted in "Pantone’s Color of the Year for 2024 Is Peach Fuzz/Will it catch fire the way millennial pink did?" (NYT).

"I am mindful of the critics — and I’m one of them — that we can be doing more and better in myriad areas."

"I’m mindful that as governor, I can’t do it all. But I’m also mindful that the buck stops here. And I’m ultimately going to be held to account."

 Said Gavin Newsom, quoted in "Why San Francisco is make or break for Gavin Newsom/Newsom has increasingly been moonlighting as a quasi-city executive of his hometown and approaching its woes as a litmus test for his success in Sacramento." (Politico).

Gaze upon the mindfulness:

That's a screenshot from the photo at Politico. I reduced the color saturation (a lot) and reversed the cast from garishly hot to cool:

How could 1970s interior decoration have happened?

I don't know. Pay attention this time.

 

From the article, which is in The Washington Post:

Why is DeSantis peeling an orange?

 

I haven't read the Time article, and I don't know why I should. I got the image from a Daily Mail article about it, "'Trump is NOT going to be happy!' Ron DeSantis' first Time cover depicts him eating an ORANGE in apparent dig at his GOP arch-rival - who's graced magazine's cover 35 times," and I haven't read that article, only the title.

The title is ridiculous. Why would this absurd image make Trump unhappy? If DeSantis has Time on his side (to coin a phrase), it's not going to help him with conservatives. 

And "eating an ORANGE"... he's not eating an orange. He's peeling an orange.

But I've got to admit that idiotic headline helped me understand why he's peeling an orange. I was puzzled and had to force myself to think about it. I thought: Oranges ≈ Florida. The Governor of Florida, soundly cupping the orange with one hand and tearing into it with the other, is saying Florida is mine, I control Florida.

But seeing The Daily Mail say that he's "eating" the orange in an "apparent dig at" Trump, I remember that Trump has long been derided as the "orange man." For some reason Trump has colored himself orange — dyed his skin and hair orange — and no amount of pointing and mockery and caricature will dissuade him from his color choice. It's a trademark.

So I'm convinced that Time intends the orange to be seen as Trump's head. The Daily Mail calls it a painting, so I'm going to assume that this is an artist's illustration and they didn't get DeSantis to pose holding and tearing into an orange. Notice the juice dripping down all over his hands. Such brutal orange peeling! Brutal and messy. What man in a suit would handle an orange like that? The idea is that's Trump's head and the powerful, remorseless DeSantis will obliterate the orange man.

But, good for Time. You made me look. You made me write a much longer blog post than you deserve. I don't care what you've got to say about DeSantis. Your text is just filler to back this image.

Why can't ChatGPT write a poem praising Trump? It's too hard to make a rhyme for "orange."

We were talking about the failure of ChatGPT to write "a poem about the positive attributes of Donald Trump" (when it easily composed "a poem about the positive attributes of Joe Biden").

Most of the discussion at the link is about the problem of bias in ChatGPT. But commenter Bob Boyd — taunting "Eat your heart out, ChatGPT" — wrote his own poem:

Skin of orange 

He's just like Hitler 

Except for his hair 

And his hands are littler

Of course, being "just like Hitler" is not a "positive attribute" — in fact this is the opposite of a poem of praise — and there's still no rhyme for "orange." But there's an apt rhyme for "Hitler," and there's the push that gets us to think of the age-old problem of rhyming with "orange."

Maybe it's easier to rhyme "orange" in German. Checking the English-to-German translator, I see the German for "orange" is "orange."

There's a Wikipedia article on the word "orange" — the word, not the color, not the fruit — and it's mostly devoted to the subject of rhyming with "orange":

With the death of the Queen, perhaps it's too somber a time to watch TikToks, so I cautiously offer my selection this evening. There are 8. Some people love them.

1. Two young girls encounter a landline telephone.

2. Experience an oranger orange than actually exists.

3. Is the bird oddly stoical or truly in love with the man and his piano?

4. Is morning beer a deplorable notion or something poignantly sublime?

5. When it comes to questions of politics, I wish more celebrities were like Elvis.

6. The ugliest piece of furniture or the most amusingly beautiful?

7. If this is the definition of a "toxic" person, then I am sure I know who is the most toxic person I have ever met. 

8. The Corn Kid — 25 years later.

"Everything — hair, makeup, jewelry, wardrobe and nail care — seemed to communicate calm, control and, especially, neutrality...."

"[Cassidy Hutchinson] wore minimally visible makeup — what appeared to be light bronzer, but no discernible colors of lipstick or eye shadow.... Social media teems with thousands of tutorials on 'reshaping one’s face' with contouring makeup, how to make eyes look bigger, noses smaller, skin smoother. The overall messages are clear but contradictory: 'become an artist of the self,' 'make yourself beautiful' and 'do it imperceptibly.' It’s a tall order — time-consuming, hard to ignore and subject to wide interpretation. And it’s especially hard for women in politics.... Many of the (often young and attractive) women of the Trump administration favored an overt, high-glam style, and we saw a lot of very long hair, dramatic false eyelashes, sheath dresses and stiletto pumps — a 'beauty pageant' vibe said to be favored by the former president.... At the hearing, Ms. Hutchinson’s image was distinctly different from that aesthetic. She dressed as if ready to blend into the corridors of power, to do her job, to convey depth over surface (although she was noticeably telegenic)..... And the nation is unlikely to forget the day Cassidy Hutchinson, with her precise, low-key style, told her disturbing story."

From "Muted Tones Spoke Loud and Clear/At a surprise session of the Jan. 6 hearings, Cassidy Hutchinson calibrated her appearance to keep us listening" by Rhonda Garelick (NYT).

I'm laughing at the happenstance of seeing "surprise" again so soon after going on about the tedium of surprise. But I'm blogging this piece because I'd blogged, just yesterday, about Cassidy Hutchinson's makeup: She seems to be wearing dark foundation on her face that doesn't match her skin tone. I'm saying that based on the light pink color of her hand, which we keep seeing held up next to her face, because that's the appropriately evocative taking-the-oath position.

6 TikToks for you tonight. Let me know what you like best.

1. People in 5 different countries show what they would make with an orange.

2. How well could you do if you had to adapt to walking on all fours?

3. Hiking from one coast of Scotland to the other.

4. A West Coast Trail hike.

5. What it's like being one of the infinite monkeys who will eventually type the complete works of Shakespeare.

6. The history of Roland the Farter.

Oh, come on. If it isn't an orange hair, it's not worth saying.

At The Washington Post right now, there's the headline on the column...

 

... and the teaser on the front page:

 

And though that doesn't seem to me to be something worth reading at all, it's currently ranking #1 on WaPo's "most read." I take that to mean there's still a ravenous demand for anti-Trump porn.

ADDED: The hair-on-the-sleeve metaphor calls to mind clandestine sexual relationships. That orange hair found on your sleeve that should have been noticed and removed — one pictures a wife discovering your adulterous affair. 

AND: Here's the link to George Will's column in case you want to read it. Let me know if he characterizes the Trump haters' relationship to Trump as sexual. 

Oh, I'll read what Will wrote about hair: "Floundering in his attempts to wield political power while lacking a political office, Donald Trump looks increasingly like a stray orange hair to be flicked off the nation’s sleeve." 

Bleh! Mixed metaphor! If something is "floundering," it doesn't look like a stray hair. It looks like a flopping, dying fish. 

And speaking of the "fl-" words in that dismal sentence, flicking isn't the right motion for removing a hair from clothing. Flicking works on dandruff and other small flakes and flecks. You'd better get a pincer grip on that hair and pull. 

No wonder you're having so much trouble with deTrumpification. You don't know how to use the right words, and you don't know how to take the right actions.

Netflix seems to believe I'll be interested in the "Offbeat, Cerebral" type of movie, and it is correct.

I watched this 17-minute David Lynch movie last night.

I made that screen capture just as the monkey is saying "Who's going to believe an orangutan?" The monkey, Jack, is being interrogated for whatever it is the title "What Did Jack Do?" refers to. The interrogator is played by David Lynch, and the taunt "Who's going to believe an orangutan?" is aimed at the Lynch character. 

The movie came out in November 2017, so I don't know if the orangutan accusation has anything to do with Trump — who was famously taunted about looking like an orangutan— but maybe some resonance was intended. Lynch has something of a resemblance to Trump....

That ran in the NY Post. Lynch was clarifying his earlier remark, "Trump could go down as one of the greatest presidents in history." Oh! It's sad that Lynch should have had to clarify anything. Clarification isn't his lane. Let's get back to interrogating Jack the monkey. 

I'm going to need to rewatch "What Did Jack Do?," and I'm going to do it more offbeatly, more cerebrally. My hypothesis is that the interrogator (Lynch) is Trump, and We the People are the monkey. What did we do?