I'm as interested in Amy Klobuchar as the next person... You know me, I said in December 2018...

"I'm just going to be for Amy Klobuchar."

But I am amazed that on the day of the first primary, this is what I see at the top of my go-to political link webpage Memeorandum:



"Clay Aiken on 2020 primary...."

Clay Aiken!??

Is there some other Clay Aiken than the Clay Aiken I know, the guy who came in second in the second season of "American Idol"? No, this is that Clay Aiken.



Apparently, his opinion on who's the best Democrat this time around is the most important political news this morning.

I clicked through to the column, even though it's at USA Today, which is so clogged with ads that I feel like a person who doesn't even know how to read. But here's a paragraph. I'll put it over here so I can see it:

I, for one, am tired of candidates trying to dazzle me with meaningless platitudes or beat me over the head with poll-tested spin. I’m not so stupid that I can’t realize when a candidate doesn’t answer the question. I am not so forgetful that I don’t remember when they spit out the same talking points in every interview. The political world is littered with self-important candidates who speak to us like … well … politicians. We need a candidate who, instead of speaking with scripted talking points, is straightforward, honest and down to earth. Klobuchar is relatable.

Okay, I was with you until you asserted that Amy is not like all those other candidates....

And at that point, I got distracted into the "Not Like Other Girls" phenomenon:



To conclude: Amy is a politician, and Clay is a pop singer, and today is the New Hampshire primary, and you know me, I said it long ago, I'm just going to be for Amy Klobuchar.

ADDED: I'm reading those other links pictured in the Memeorandum screen-grab above. There's "Trump Rallygoers Confident He Can Beat Any Democrat This November" at HuffPo. That quotes one woman's opinion of Amy Klobuchar: "She seems like a bitch. She’s got that bitch face on her all the time... I have no use for her. I think she’s crazy.”

Oscars. Are you watching at all?

We did for a bit, but have signed off. Interesting seeing Kim Novak, but she was used irrelevantly. Nervy of Jim Carrey to imitate Bruce Dern right at Bruce Dern. Carrey declared it "intense," and we enjoyed the contrast to Ellen DeGeneres, whose squishy niceness doesn't really fit the grandeur of the occasion, and then she was bitchy to Liza. I didn't get that. And they keep trying to incorporate the idea of social media — Ellen tweeting from the stage, that sort of thing. They need to keep up the grandeur or it's just incoherent and boring. Eh. We turned it off. It was sluggish and draggy. We're out. But keep up the Oscar talk here if you like.

"Yes, I'm afraid one surefire sign that Pop has turned crackpot is that he starts to consider Charles Krauthammer [as] quite the cutting philosopher."

"A related symptom is when someone starts quoting Thomas Sowell as if he were de Tocqueville.... I consider myself blessed. My parents have not succumbed to the swine flu of Fox. Their TV addictions are Judge Judy, Judge Joe Brown, Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz (basically any show fronted by a judge or purported doctor), a few soap operas, the local Baltimore news, Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune, and, my father's personal favorite, Married...with Children reruns. This has kept them admirably sane and unsour, especially compared to the Simpsons grandpas shaking their canes at the sight of that radical red Harry Reid, and of course they have ME to beam the sweet light of reason from my command post in Manhattan should they ever find themselves trapped in a waiting room with that hectoring parrot Sean Hannity on the TV screen."

"ME" = James Wolcott, at Vanity Fair. 

1. I read that because, in search of blogging inspiration this morning, I impulsively opened all the bookmarks in my file labeled "left."

2. That was funny, funny of the palpable bitchery kind.

3. How irritated/amused are you by the crap your family members watch on television?

4. What exactly are they watching and why do you think it's any worse than the crap you are watching?

5. What do you think they think of the crap you watch?

6. How genuinely demented would your family members need to be before they'd stop serving as raw material for your humor writing?

7. Imagine them writing about you, with exactly the same form of humor you use about them. What do they write?

Out of 25 U.S. Presidents, I am most like... Barack Obama.

Compared to the general population, this test says I — like Barack Obama — am:

Above average on Extroversion, indicating that you are somewhere in between a pure extrovert and a pure introvert - an "ambivert."
Above average on Openness, indicating that you are very impatient with the way things are and always on the look for the new, the untested, and the untried.
Average on Agreeableness, indicating that you alternate between being tenderhearted in some situations and tough-minded in others.
High on Conscientiousness, indicating that you are focused when it comes to goals and deadlines and like to complete your goals and tasks before starting new ones.
Average on Neuroticism, indicating that you respond adequately to changes in your environment and feel some measure of stress under pressure without letting it get to you.

Professor Yin took it and ended up being most like Dwight Eisenhower.

ADDED: After Meade took the test and came up as Barack Obama too, I formed the belief that the point of this test was to promote Barack Obama, who's so very very normal. He's just like me and the same as you. ALSO: The overeagerness of this test to tell us that we're like Barack Obama is shown by the fact that Meade and I were not the same on 4 of the 5 elements. He was average on extroversion (where I was above average), below average on openness (where I was above average), average on conscientiousness (where I was high), and low on neuroticism (where I was average). The only thing were the same on was agreeableness, where we were both average. I call bullshit on the test (and palpable bitchery on myself).

AND: A funny line from Meade's results page: "Amazingly, your personality is simply too smooth and well-rounded for Dr. Neiman's study to be able to say anything about you." To which I add: Unamazingly, Dr. Neiman's study is simply too smoothed out and dumbed down to be able to say anything about about anybody. I know: More palpable bitchery from Althouse. Which, I'd say, makes me most like… oh… Andrew Jackson. Let's make shit up.

An artsy-fartsy photo project lifts the lid on that "Death" box in your psyche, almost causes me to start another new blog, and gets us back to how John met Yoko.

"Philip Seymour Hoffman looks chillingly vacant in this tintype photo he posed for at the Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 19, just two weeks before his death Sunday from an apparent heroin overdose."

I had noticed that set of Sundance tintypes — here, at Esquire — but I'd passed on blogging it because it seemed artsy-fartsy. I like the one of Sam Shepard. That takes advantage of the effect nicely. (The movement of the subject causes the hair to resemble a white bird in flight.)

The Philip Seymour Hoffman one is among the best in the group, but how can you separate the old-timey artsy-fartsiness from all of your emotions in that box in your head labeled "Death" that this picture now opens?

But wasn't that the artsy-fartsy idea of doing tintypes in the first place — to take people alive today and position them in a past so long ago that they all look like people who must certainly now be dead and to plunge us into an angsty state of awareness that all of the pictures of ourselves and everyone we now love will some day be pictures of the dead?

"Actually, the Althouse animagus scared the crap out of me this morning..."

"... with the rant on [Stephen] King and the intelligent bow to Tyler Cowen who rejects the push-button of good v. evil stories for his preferred superior push-button of having a higher IQ, superior to schmucks frozen in hell with lower IQ’s. The higher IQ test (the end-all criterion for the real hot smarties) juxtaposed against the raw animalistic gaia rant really scared me – until I saw what I felt (I may be wrong about this) was the point, er the two points, er the three points, (I can’t count higher than three, so I must stop here) – expressing palpable bitchery (that had to feel primally good) to provoke exactly the binary good v. evil reaction that Cowen criticizes – whether Cowen is right or wrong is not the issue, because simple rightness or wrongness is not the test – when it’s not the test."

That's just part of what Naked Surfer said in the ice cave a few hours ago. You can't surf naked on Lake Superior, even when you're feeling superior, especially when its frozen, but I appreciate Naked Surfer's effort to understand what was going on here on the Althouse blog at 4:52 in the morning, when I accepted Stephen King's apology and grabbed his abandoned but unforgettable phrase "Palpable Bitchery" for my very own.

Oh! The poor politico whose speech — written by The Daily Show's Lizz Winstead — gets called "The most painful speech ever" by Politico.

My heart — which, I must say, contains an element of palpable bitchery — goes out to Democratic Congresswoman Donna Edwards, who had a text, probably a fine text that would have killed if delivered with the intensity and commitment — the passion and intrigue — of a Daily Shower like Samantha Bee.



Now, Donna Edwards is to be mocked — on Politico! — because the nitwits in the audience couldn't get jokes like: "Come on, help me y’all: I want to give a really special shout out to Nancy Pelosi and all my sisters in the libido caucus — holla'!"

Joe Biden begins his (non)campaign for the presidency with a manifest lie.

"There's no obvious reason for me why I think I should not run."

Let me Google a picture of obvious for Joe. Here:



Anyway, the quote above is from a CNN "breaking news" email, previewing something airing on a CNN show called "New Day," which is on at 6 a.m. ET. 5 a.m., my time. I'm actually up and able to watch that, but I'm not fool enough to watch news TV at this hour. Who is? It's a good place to slot Biden, lying. Obviously.

Joe continues: "For me, the decision to run or not run is going to be determined by me, as to whether I am the best qualified person to focus on the few things I've spent my whole life on."

For me, the decision what to say about this palpable nonsense is going to be determined by me, because for me what I write is determined by me. Did I mention me? I and only I will decide the things that must be decided, as I am the best person to decide. Sure, Joe. You will decide. You will decide that others have decided that you will not be the one to make all the decisions as the next decider.

Now, go. Focus on a few things, as you continue to expend the remaining years of your whole life. 

Stephen King wants you to "Just know my heart is where it’s always been: in the right place."

So ends his apology for his attention-grabbing Tweet — "Boy, I’m stumped on that one. I don’t like to think it’s true, and there’s an element of palpable bitchery there, but...." — which we were talking about here last night. My post is pretty much only about the instant-classic, unforgettable phrase "Palpable Bitchery."

I pause for a few moments at this point to create a blog called Palpable Bitchery. Feel it, read it.

Now, all I want to say in this new post is: Isn't it funny, the big horror writer, caring so much about our knowledge of his good heart — heart in the right place — when we know that his writerly master mind would — in an instant — take a phrase like heart in the right place and mutate it into some crazy story about hearts in little children turning alien and evil and melting everything within their lovely little communities that he would imagine and describe just so you'd feel awful to see them destroyed?

But Stephen King would like to remind you of the 4 books he wrote — Carrie, Dolores Claiborne, Rose Madder, and Lisey’s Story — that demonstrate that "I have plenty of respect for women, and care about the problems and life-situations they face."  And he has the life story to reinforce this reputation for respecting women: "My single-mom mother faced plenty [of the the problems and life-situations that women face], believe me." Plus, he has "no sympathy whatever for those who abuse children." Can you really write novels about child abusers without inhabiting their innards and seeing it from their point of view? Leave that to the Nabokovs.  This is Stephen King. His evil is pure evil and his good is pure good. "I wrote about such abuse — and its ultimate cost to the victim — in Gerald’s Game." And presumably Gerald['s abuser] is nothing but a monster down to his core. Is there some reason why anyone would read that book?

Here's something Tyler Cowen said in a TED talk:

As a simple rule of thumb, just imagine every time you’re telling a good vs. evil story, you’re basically lowering your IQ by ten points or more. If you just adopt that as a kind of inner mental habit, it’s, in my view, one way to get a lot smarter pretty quickly. You don’t have to read any books. Just imagine yourself pressing a button every time you tell the good vs. evil story, and by pressing that button you’re lowering your IQ by ten points or more.

Consider the palpable foolery of Stephen King. He needs you to know he's a good person. He detected bitchery, and The Grand Bitch Internet struck back. He's cowed. He wants to be loved. And that's why he cannot be a great writer. So give him the love he craves. Apology accepted. You are forgiven, Mr. King, you tiny little man.

It's 4:50 in the morning here in Madison, Wisconsin. Are you feeling the palpable bitchery? It exists, and it is real. And spectacular.

Stephen King weighs in on Dylan Farrow's statement: "There’s an element of palpable bitchery there."

Full quote: "Boy, I’m stumped on that one. I don’t like to think it’s true, and there’s an element of palpable bitchery there, but...."

Palpate any bitches lately, Steve?

What does "palpable" add? Is it just verbiage — meaningless padding — or is it a way to say that he feels it — he senses it? (It's his truth.) Or does it mean there's some substantial bitchery?

And what's with "bitchery" and "element... of bitchery"? That seems like a way to avoid saying that the woman is a bitch. There's some bitchery in the letter she wrote.