"If some people are beautiful because they are so fascinatingly ugly, there must be people who are ugly because they are so fastidiously beautiful..."

"... people who have achieved technical excellence at the expense of erotic charisma."

Writes Becca Rothfeld, in "The Captivating Derangement of the Looksmaxxing Movement/In their warped and wrongheaded way, the omnipresent influencer Clavicular and his compatriots are intent on demystifying the ideal of natural beauty" (The New Yorker).

I'm not up for reading another article about Clavicular (or "his compatriots"). I'm more concerned with those who are actually successful in Hollywood who are ruining their natural beauty with "looksmaxxing." I can't look at them anymore, except in horror.  

"I think the museum staying in North Bay will help them from making foolish choices, like what they did to us, you know. It should never be repeated again."

Said Annette Dionne — born in North Bay, Ontario — quoted in "Annette Dionne, Last of the Celebrated Quintuplets, Dies at 91/She was the first to crawl, the first to cut a tooth, the first to recognize her name, and the last to die. And, like her sisters, she resented being exploited as part of a global sensation" (NYT).

Imagine being one of 5 babies and then also to be famous, all your life, for just that. It's a puzzle of distinction and indistinction.

From the Wikipedia article for North Bay: "The Dionne Quintuplets... had a tremendous impact on tourism in the area. For a province struggling against economic strangulation they were as valuable a resource as gold, nickel, pulpwood or hydro power. They saved an entire region from bankruptcy. They launched Northern Ontario's flourishing tourist industry. At their peak they represented a $500 million asset. North Bay and the surrounding area lived off this legacy well into the 1960s. Many visitors to the area discovered lakes and summer retreats that were easily accessible, and the businesses thrived on the tourist dollars."

"I think the NYT has framed men as a problem. They're not thriving, they're not aspiring. We need to figure out what's wrong with them..."

"... maybe even empathize with them, because, after all, we do need them to function."

So I said, in the previous post. And one reason I said it was because I'd already opened a tab for a second article on the home page of the NYT today: "Where Have All My Deep Male Friendships Gone? I have many guy friends. Why don’t we hang out more?"

This is a long piece in the NYT Magazine, by Sam Graham-Felsen, and like the article discussed in the previous post, it assures us that there's nothing gay going on here: "I never had sexual feelings for Rob, but there was an intensity to our connection that can only be described as love. I thought about him all the time, and cared, deeply, about what he thought of me. We got jealous and mad at each other, and often argued like a bitter married couple — but eventually, like a successful married couple, we’d always find a way to talk things out."

Graham-Felsen has had many other close male friends — "nearly a dozen other dudes — dudes I spent thousands of accumulated hours with; dudes I shared my most shame-inducing secrets with; dudes I built incredibly intricate, ever-evolving inside jokes with; dudes I loved and needed, and who loved and needed me...." 

But he doesn't have dudes like that anymore. Is that because he's older, and his contemporaries are absorbed in family and work, or is it because American men in general "are getting significantly worse at friendship"?

How to dress to work in the garden... if you are a goddess.

I got that image from the front page as it looks right now. It's sandwiched between "Tesla Sales Are Slumping, Even in the Most E.V.-Friendly Place" and "After a Slow Start, High-Speed Rail Might Finally Arrive in America."

Those 3 things in a row... oh, New York Times... must you?

IN THE COMMENTS: Aggie said, "Well, at least they got a good picture in that place away from the cameras."

"To me, 'he looks homeless' is loaded with classism. But it's true that Bernie looks like he doesn't care—and that's what makes his outfits great."

"The irony is that the more you chase this quality, the more affected you can look. And certainly, not everyone who 'doesn't care' looks great (Fetterman comes to mind). This is why style writers are so obsessed with this quality. To me, if you constantly chase the idea of middle class respectability, you can end up looking a bit stiff an uninspired. But if you open your mind to wider expressions of style, you'll not only enjoy what you see around you, but you'll be more stylish as a result."

Writes Derek Guy, at X, after writing this Politico article — "Congress Is Falling Apart /But These 5 Guys Look Good Doing It" — which caused Meghan McCain's husband (Ben Domenech) to say that he once saw Bernie Sanders and mistook him for a homeless man.

For the annals of Things I Asked Grok: "Tell me about the idea, expressed by fashion writers, that looking like you don't care how you look is actually a great look to pursue."

"The ugly shoe conversation reminds me of..."

"... the stylist Allison Bornstein’s 'wrong shoe' theory: the idea that you can really make an outfit sing — or make a boring outfit interesting — with a shoe that contradicts the rest of the look.... I think there’s also concern around being a 'fashion victim' not just by wearing an ugly shoe, but by wearing a shoe that will be everywhere. I like the non-ugly Bode Nike Astro Grabbers, for example — especially the cream style with colorful shoelace charms. But even if I’m able to nab a pair when they’re released on May 1, do I want to be wearing the same sneaker as every other joker on Orchard Street?"

Says Jessica Testa, in "The Ugly State of Shoe Collaborations/Blingy Crocs, punk Uggs and spangled sneakers, oh my" (NYT).

This gets my "paradox" tag: the wrongness is the rightness.

"In the writers’ room, we have occasionally had a kind of recurring phrase: 'Which is the most funny thing that could happen here, and by that I mean the most painful?'"

"And, sometimes, 'Which is the most painful thing that can happen here, by which I mean the most funny?'" 

Said Jesse Armstrong, quoted in "The End of 'Succession' Is Near/The show’s creator, Jesse Armstrong, explains why he has chosen to conclude the drama of the Roy family in its fourth season" (The New Yorker, February 23, 2023).

That's a quote I read recently — after watching all 39 episodes of "Succession" in something close to 39 days, which I did because I kept seeing New Yorker articles about the greatness of the final season and felt doomed to see the spoilers sooner or later. Having watched the show, I could finally read the articles, and so I have a vast trove of things to be reminded of when I'm reading other things, and that's how a post like this ends up happening. That last paragraph of the previous post — "Drinking is funny until it's not.... The need to say things like 'self-care,' 'virtuous aftercare,' and 'biohack' sounds desperate, but that can be part of the funny, especially for the drunkards" — got me thinking about Armstrong's quote about comedy and pain.

This is a big topic — comedy and pain — and I challenge you to discuss it without quoting Mel Brooks.

"Criminal prosecution is the wrong idea. Use the 14th Amendment on Trump."

Write Bruce Ackerman and Gerard Magliocca (in The Washington Post).

Legislation already proposed by Democratic Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.) and Jamie B. Raskin (Md.) would grant special jurisdiction to a three-judge federal court in the District of Columbia to determine, within three months, whether Trump’s involvement in the assault on Capitol Hill amounted to an “insurrection.” The panel’s decision would receive automatic Supreme Court review.

This is urgent business. If Congress does not move quickly to enact the Schultz-Raskin proposal, the issue of Trump’s political future will drag into 2024, when the next election will rev into high gear and courts will be inclined to let the voters decide.

Yes, hurry up! Wouldn't want to leave it to the voters to decide. Democracy is at stake.

You know, I wish Trump would go away. But these efforts to subvert the democratic process using the courts and the 14th amendment are not the way to make it happen. I know there's a tremendous fear that if allowed to run for President, Trump might win. But if you give into that fear and look for some way other than fighting him politically, you are blatantly displaying your mistrust of democracy.

How is it possible to be a "lookalike" with a person who is "unrecognizable"?

I'm trying to read "Simon Cowell, 63, continues to look unrecognisable with his radically different facial features as he attends a Christmas Carol event with lookalike son Eric and fiancée Lauren Silverman" — in The Daily Mail.

"According to Ms. Evangelista’s lawsuit... those stubborn fat deposits that balloon beneath their skin do not look like normal flesh."

"Instead, they resemble longish, solid rectangular bars — which in fact, reproduce perfectly the shape of the hand-held CoolSculpting wand, the device that is passed over the flesh to 'freeze' the fat. In other words, in cases of [paradoxical adipose hyperplasia], the body permanently takes on the precise contours of the tool used to reshape it. The body has literally, visually, internalized the weapon that deformed it and conformed to that weapon. In Ms. Evangelista’s case, she says her body created a permanent, visible record of what it — and she — were supposed to conceal."

From "The Cruel Paradox of Linda Evangelista’s Fate/A world obsessed with women’s hyper-visibility can dispatch them so swiftly to invisibility" (NYT).

The NYT writer, Rhonda Garelick, works hard at portraying Evangelista's medical problem as a Greek tragedy. Evangelista, I would say, was the most beautiful model of her time. She could have been satisfied with her glory and resisted all treatments, not deigned to allow anything as gross as a CoolSculpting wand to come anywhere near her perfect — or erstwhile perfect — self. 

I don't think Garelick pulls off the Greek tragedy comparison, because look how she's blaming the world — a world obsessed with women’s hyper-visibility has dispatched her so swiftly to invisibility. 

No, no, if this is to be a Greek tragedy, it's Linda's fault! 

But this is to be a NYT article, so the woman can't be to blame. She's a victim of the culture. Ordinariness.

Government gives the go-ahead for a super-spreader Christmas.

Here in Madison, Wisconsin, the Wisconsin State Journal reports: 

Less than two weeks before Christmas and with the number of new daily COVID-19 cases declining and local health providers getting the first shots of vaccine, the Madison and Dane County public health department issued a new order on Tuesday allowing indoor gatherings of up to 10 people.... Outdoor gatherings, previously limited to 10 people, will be allowed with up to 25 people.... 

The new order will be in effect for 28 days, or the length of two COVID-19 incubation periods. The health department said it’s still safest to only gather with household members, but according to a Georgia Tech risk-assessment tool, the chances that at least one person in a gathering of 10 will be COVID-19 positive has dropped from 32% when the previous order was issued on Nov. 17 to 22% today. For groups of 15 and 25, the likelihoods are currently 30% and 46%, respectively.

Things have improved because of what we've been doing, and that's a reason to stop doing what we're doing? Isn't that the cue to invoke the name Fox Butterfield? 

"The Butterfield Effect" is a term coined by James Taranto in his online editorial column of The Wall Street Journal called Best of the Web Today, typically bringing up a headline, "Fox Butterfield, Is That You?" later "Fox Butterfield, Call Your Office." Taranto coined the term after reading Butterfield's articles discussing the "paradox" of crime rates falling while the prison population grew due to tougher sentencing guidelines.

Would you go to a Christmas gathering where there's a 22% chance that somebody there has COVID? The "experts" say, go ahead go — go if it's 22%, but don't go if it's 32%. If we follow that expert advice, how long will it take before the chances go back up to 32%? Why aren't we saying what we're doing is working, so let's keep going with what's working? The answer better not be that the Electoral College has sealed Biden's victory, so we don't need to manufacture gloom anymore.  

"I'd like a crisply clear result to come into focus as soon as possible, and I'd like gracious winners and losers, all united in love for our beautiful country."

I wrote before going to sleep on election night. 

I was thinking about that this morning, after remembering a phrase I'd used in yesterday's podcast. I had some empathy for Trump, who's been so focused for so long on winning winning winning, and I thought of the idea that he can still win — if only to "win at losing." 

UPDATE:

...And neither am I! https://t.co/2DuqDyRs2K

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 22, 2020

No nudes is good nudes.

I'm reading this NYT article by Roberta Smith about the rearrangement of the various permanent galleries at the Museum of Modern Art. I see what's going on here:

The fourth-floor gallery, with a mix of what most people would recognize as Pop Art, was previously “From Soup Cans to Flying Saucers” and is now “Domestic Disruption.”... This gallery... is far less discombobulated than its previous iteration, corroborating more convincingly the internationalism that is a recurring subtext on this floor. Tom Wesselmann’s scaled up “Still Life #57” (1969-70) is one of his best installation paintings, not least for containing no nudes. It is in dialogue with Noah Purifoy’s “Unknown,” a balletic assemblage-painting in which a parasol armature radiates across saturated bands of green, yellow and red. To the other side stands Beatriz González’s “Lullaby,” a metal baby crib, painted enamel green with an appropriated image of mother and child.

"Still Life #57" — which you can see here — is a very large painting of a radio, an orange, and some daffodils. But longtime museumgoers almost certainly associate Wesselmann with vivid, forthright "Great American Nudes" like this one, "Great American Nude #75."

Now, the nudes are banished, the galleries are rearranged, Wesselmann will be known by an orange (instead of the orange's shape-mate, the breast), and it must be "in dialogue" with an African-American man's balletic parasol and a Hispanic woman's crib. 

I'm not looking at it, but it sounds like ham-handed inclusiveness. It sounds as though the white man is still the center of power: The arrangement seems like an exercise in diluting and offsetting him. That, ironically, is an expression of a deep, persistent belief in white male supremacy. 

"Sooner or later you’re going to encounter these anti-American ideas about addressing racism in your workplace, on kids’ homework, or in the faculty lounge..."

"... and you can’t be fragile when confronting it. You need to have a base of knowledge about race in America that demonstrates an understanding of the enormity of the country’s sins, as well as demonstrating you’ve made an effort to inform yourself about overcoming them. You need to understand that your opponents might be employing manipulative logic to make their arguments – arguments that are fast becoming so pervasive that many people making them might readily revise their opinions once you confront them with your concerns. Already there are stories circulating that people have successfully challenged the woke racial thought police in the office and at professional organizations by arming themselves with some basic knowledge. But we can’t stop there. If we inform ourselves about the real history of race in America and engage with the good-faith arguments on both sides, we might be able coalesce around solutions and come together as Americans. It won’t be easy, but if this is what it means to 'do the work' rather than simply let ourselves be told what to think, the effort will be worth it."

From "What To Read Instead Of 'White Fragility'" by Mark Hemingway (The Federalist).

He's flipping the imprecation to "do the work," and predicts that you'll fare better if you've worked (in some other way) and are not avoiding the issue of race — being lazy, not working. And yet, I'm reading that "Whiteness" article from the National Museum of African American History & Culture and it presented the work ethic as part of the internalized aspects of white culture:



For the record, I consider it racist to assign the value of hard work to white people and leave black people on the other side (exactly where the traditional stereotype puts them). I think each of us values work and the avoidance of work in our own way, and it's fine that we do. We should be efficient and make particularized judgments about what's worthwhile, otherwise we'll lose our productive energy and languish in meetings and training sessions led by the dullest people on earth.

Is Obama talking to Joe? He says: "If you look at the world and look at the problems it's usually old people, usually old men, not getting out of the way."

That's from a BBC article with a title that stresses his flattery of women: "Barack Obama: Women are better leaders than men." But I'm noticing the sharp nudge at Joe Biden (and Bernie Sanders):

Now women, I just want you to know; you are not perfect, but what I can say pretty indisputably is that you're better than us. I'm absolutely confident that for two years if every nation on earth was run by women, you would see a significant improvement across the board on just about everything... living standards and outcomes.... If you look at the world and look at the problems it's usually old people, usually old men, not getting out of the way.... It is important for political leaders to try and remind themselves that you are there to do a job, but you are not there for life, you are not there in order to prop up your own sense of self importance or your own power.

As for the stuff about women, I have heard that all my life, and I have always regarded it as manipulative and insincere. I consider it part of the subordination of women. And I don't think it helps women gain positions of power to talk about us this way. I think it exacerbates the suspicion that women won't handle power effectively and rationally.

"Had they seen that same issue in a woman who was not a woman of color, they would not have felt empowered to take me off the plane."

"In pop culture, especially black women with a body like mine, they’re often portrayed as video vixens. So I’ve had to deal with those stereotypes my whole life"/"We are policed for being black... I’ve seen white women with much shorter shorts board a plane without a blink of an eye. I guess if it’s a ‘nice ass’ vs. a Serena Booty it’s O.K."

Wrote Tisha Rowe — on Twitter and Facebook — quoted in "Woman Required to Cover Up on American Airlines Flight Says Race Was a Factor/Dr. Tisha Rowe was about to fly from Jamaica to Miami when a flight attendant briefly removed her from the plane because of her romper, she said" (NYT).

Dr. Rowe said she was walking to her seat when a male flight attendant, whom she described as black, asked her to return to the front of the plane. Another flight attendant, who was also black, then spoke to her about her appearance while she stood on the jet bridge, Dr. Rowe said.

“She poses the question to me, ‘Do you have a jacket?’” Dr. Rowe said. “I said, ‘No, I do not.’ I’ve been given no explanation as to why I was taken off the plane. So finally she says, ‘You’re not boarding the plane dressed like that.’ Then they started to give me a lecture about how when I got on the plane, I better not make a scene or be loud.”

The airline’s conditions of carriage, which are posted on its website, make a brief reference to a dress code: “Dress appropriately; bare feet or offensive clothing aren’t allowed.”

So... the airline has a dress code with improper grammar. How's a person to know what's "appropriate" in this world? The airline is specific about one thing: bare feet. I take that to mean it's okay to wear flip flops. Or does it depend on whether the feet you expose are hairy and gnarly?

That's the trouble with the "offensiveness" standard! It doesn't address the clothing, but the way other people react to YOU in the clothing. But the airline doesn't want to get specific and say no bared shoulders or clothing must cover your legs at least to mid-thigh — even though your seatmates have an obvious interest in not having to be in contact with your bare flesh.

With that subjective standard, any enforcement is going to feel personal, and inevitably that will mean that people will feel that race and gender and age and level of attractiveness are going to be part of the judgment — whether they are or not. I doubt if the employees enforcing the rule can even know whether they're using inappropriate factors in applying their standard of appropriateness. It's a paradox of propriety.

Why are there so many videos about minimalism?

And why are they so long and complicated?

I'm talking about unwatchable bilge like this and this.

"The man of a thousand voices talking perfectly loud/But nobody ever hears him or the sound he appears to make..."

I was amused by this perfect version of the old Beatles song. I must have heard it before — it's from 1968 — but I don't remember. The demeanor of the female singers is downright spooky. The lines I chose for the post title interest me. It feels like a variation on  If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?:  If the man of a thousand voices is talking perfectly loud but nobody ever hears him, how can he appear to make a sound?

"The book treats us to the spectacle of a distinguished, gray-headed scholar... watching as a young artist commands her audience to spit Jell-O into her pantyhose."

"'I like to question the socially constructed notions of our sense of sex,' she declares. Our hapless sociologist-hero scribbles notes as a male art student screens hard-core pornography as part of his 'practice.' Another artist-in-waiting reflects: 'For me the vagina is the solution.'... The M.F.A. trains artists to talk about their work with slickness and flair, in conformity with the lexicon of the art world. The premise of M.F.A. education, Fine says, is 'helping students not only to be artists, but also to look the part.' Making art is not enough; aspiring artists must be able to articulate and defend the political and conceptual interventions their work performs. Learning to 'look the part' entails firm, sometimes punitive, lessons in self-presentation. This instruction takes place at the program’s central ritual: the critique.... One of the glorious features of contemporary art is that any material — tangled museum ropes, used lipstick tubes, untreated lumber — can be made interesting with the aid of a canny framing....  The ability to position one’s efforts as protest or satire, experiment or dream, is more than glib posturing. What the ritual of critique tests, however, is command of a particular vocabulary, one that emphasizes transgression, resistance, and rupture. An irony is that this insistence on verbal virtuosity privileges certain educational and class backgrounds."

From "Art-School Confidential/The expensive superficiality of M.F.A. programs" (Chronicle of Higher Education ) — a review in the book "Talking Art: The Culture of Practice and the Practice of Culture in MFA Education" by Gary Alan Fine.

As for the privileging of certain educational and class backgrounds — it also privileges a willingness to parrot, please, and bullshit. By the way, where's the transgression, resistance, and rupture if you're passing along your teachers' dedication to transgression, resistance, and rupture? It's such an obvious paradox. You'd need spirit and fortitude along with a determination to squander it. Do you get that with "certain educational and class backgrounds"? Maybe yes!

"The lack of a 'liberal Tea Party' reflects a fundamental and longstanding asymmetry between Republicans and Democrats."

"The Republican Party is the agent of an ideological movement; most Republican politicians, activists and voters view their party as existing to advance the conservative cause. Because their goals of reducing the scope of government and reversing cultural change are difficult to achieve in practice, Republican officeholders are vulnerable to accusations of failing to uphold principles..... The Democratic Party, by contrast, is organized as a coalition of social groups. Democratic voters tend to view politics as an arena of intergroup competition rather than a battlefield for opposing philosophies, and the party is dominated by an array of discrete interests that choose candidates on the basis of demographic representation and capacity to deliver policy.... This year, Democratic candidates remain focused on challenging vulnerable Republican-held seats more than purging ideologically impure incumbents.... Liberal candidates and activists can succeed in pushing the Democratic Party to the left on specific issues. But they will do so by appealing to the interests and loyalties of social groups rather than engaging in broader ideological debates."

Writes polisci prof Matt Grossman at "Why There Is No ‘Liberal Tea Party.’"

What he's saying about electoral politics rings true, and yet I also think it's true that it is the left that's looking for heretics and the right is looking for converts. That may not be a contradiction.

ADDED: I think I've figured out why it's not a contradiction. These are the 2 propositions: 1. The electoral success of the Democratic Party depends on maintaining a coalition of interests groups, and 2. Democratic Party partisans create pressure on each other not to get out of line. These ideas fit together well if you take their perspective: We need to stay united. It's not effective at winning converts, because there's no appealing idea to be understood and believed in. In fact, it's threatening to those who are outside of the group. These outsiders may insult the left by saying they are "looking for heretics," but the so-called "heretics" are only people in the group who undermine the adhesiveness of the group. The conservatives can "look for converts" because they do have some abstractions that seem appealing and coherent to ordinary people, and those people can feel burned when their representatives do various pragmatic things that deviate from the ideology.