"Share this video with someone you'd love to visit these incredible places with."

Says the robot voiceover at the end of "12 Must See Places Before Living [sic] This World!" — a TikTok that Meade shared with me... not because I was someone he'd "love to visit these incredible places with."

He knows and I know that neither of us would feel that we must see those places/"places" and both of us know that about the other and both knew that the other would find the idealized pictures absurd.

I enjoyed the first clip — a man cartwheeling into clear turquoise water — but scoffed aloud at the notion of going all the way to the Maldives because the water there might perhaps be clear and colorful.

But the second destination provoked my horror of traveling:

  

Somehow I don't think that will be my point of view.

"[George Magazine's] purportedly post-partisan stance seemed to many people naïve."

"'Ultimately, you can’t have a political magazine that doesn’t have a politics,' Victor Navasky, then the publisher of The Nation, told The New York Times in an article headlined 'George Wins Readers, but Little Respect.' Arguably, the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal was the publication’s undoing. In the spring of 1998, when the independent counsel Ken Starr was deep in his investigation of the Clinton White House, George published a puffy cover story on the film 'Primary Colors,' an adaptation of the roman à clef about Mr. Clinton’s 1992 campaign. (For a brief while, America had its own Elena Ferrante in Joe Klein). The magazine further showed its hand when it referred to the under-fire president as the 'chief charmer.' When Mr. Kennedy and his staff tried to cover the imbroglio, they made choices that would now seem cringe, like publishing a write-around article about Ms. Lewinsky’s past accompanied by a full-page caricature of her biting into a hot dog."

From "The Lasting Appeal of John F. Kennedy Jr./A CNN documentary and an upcoming series by Ryan Murphy delve into the nation’s most famous son, who remains fixed in the 1990s" (NYT)(gift link, so you can see the whole story... and all the beefcake pix of the famously gawked-at boy).

Why is it so difficult to find that caricature of Monica Lewinsky biting into a hot dog?

Google gives me 2 pix of Obama stuffing something into his mouth and one of Reagan. This is the most obvious caricature idea for Lewinsky. You'd think dozens of lame efforts would show up in this search. And George Magazine published one. Where is it? Is Google caring for our presumed devotion to the beloved boy? I mean John John. Not that rogue Bill!

"The left wanted to make comedy illegal.... like, you can't make fun of anything.... Legalize comedy!"

Legalize comedy
pic.twitter.com/uKr6fiRI3K

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 20, 2025

And then, do you think this is funny, wielding a chainsaw? I mean, he's cutting thousands of jobs. Those are real people.

 

Must Watch Video: Elon Musk Has Been Knighted At CPAC After Receiving The Chainsaw For Bureaucracy

» WATCH/SHARE THE LIVE X STREAM HERE:https://t.co/7NYWKPuERO pic.twitter.com/mFe0unDA7u

— Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) February 20, 2025

That's Argentina's President Javier Milei, handing Musk the chainsaw, so I went to Milei's feed to try to get the video to embed from Milei's feed, where I got a bit distracted. For example, he reposted this:

 

On this day, February 21 1964, the Rolling Stones released the single Not Fade Away in the UK. Originally a Buddy Holly track, the Stones recorded their version at London’s Olympic Studios and it became the band’s first Top 10 hit in the United Kingdom! 🇬🇧 pic.twitter.com/kkM69cBxUz

— The Rolling Stones (@RollingStones) February 21, 2025

So much masculinity: 1. Comedy, 2. Power tools, 3. The Stones.

ADDED: What is the evidence that Javier Milei loves The Rolling Stones?

I want to watch this whole Bill Maher interview with Vivek Ramaswamy, but I must stop 25 seconds in to share this screenshot.

I got distracted by Maher's high jinks with the zucchini (and I credit Ramaswamy with knowing Maher was choreographing to get this screen shot):

For all I know the 2 men planned this scene together, but I will not accept the alternative that Ramaswamy didn't see the joke and just got pranked. Watch it unfold (and watch the rest of the video) here:

"which piece of public art in Madison disturbs you most?"

A topic of discussion at r/madisonwi.

There are so many to choose from, but the biggest rivalry is between "Flayed Bucky by the Best Western on Highland by UW Hospital" and "The sculpture of the parents reaching out to their dead child in the cemetery on Speedway Road."

About that dead child sculpture, someone says:

I actually like that sculpture, although I'm probably not in the majority. If you ask me "how can I feel more alive?" I'd parrot Martin Heidegger, "spend more time in graveyards."

EDIT: Now that I know it's a "memorial" against abortion I don't like it anymore.

There's also "The turd on top of a pyramid on Regent Street" and the "crowning woman" and "The pale yellow man resting on the bike bridge at Jenifer Street." And "The plaques along Picnic Point that showcase monetary donations and ego over nature and historically sacred land." 

Way too many people bring up the "footballs penis" and need to be told that was excised.

It's pretty hilarious that there was such a wealth of bad public art around here to choose from. 

"Now that they took care of the garden, what are they going to do about that tower at the school’s main entrance?"

That's the top-rated comment at "Exclusive girls’ school called out after drone footage reveals phallic garden" (NY Post).

A man from a place called Dildo has taken a photograph that turns everyone into a comedian.

Link to CBC.

And, yes, Dildo is a real place. I looked it up. It's on the island of Newfoundland. Wikipedia:

"When Polka Dots Signal Both Optimism and Disquiet/The motif has long been associated with a certain brand of American cheeriness but, as its recent ubiquity attests, is most visible during times of turbulence."

A headline in T, the NYT Style Magazine, for an article by Nick Haramis.

The history of polka dots. This is the article I want to read. I feel some pressure to write about Biden's 2-hour news conference yesterday, which I watched, but I'm loath to blog it without a complete transcript. I have seen the "5 takeaways" pieces and the "utter disaster!!!" stuff, and it's propaganda on top of propaganda. Until I find a transcript, I'm holding off, I'm in the ellipsis... and therefore: polka dots!

Haramis writes delightfully:

"New York Times editorial board member Mara Gay's comments on MSNBC have been irresponsibly taken out of context."

"Her argument was that Trump and many of his supporters have politicized the American flag. The attacks on her today are ill-informed and grounded in bad-faith."

Tweets NYTimes Communications/@NYTimesPR.

That's about the controversy we were talking about yesterday, here. I said: "I think this is an honest revelation: American flags really do disturb Mara Gay." And: "This is a pretty standard aversion to the flag. It made me think of Katha Pollitt's famous reaction to flag displays after the 9/11 attacks...." 

The NYT tweet came out yesterday, so I guess what I wrote is within the category "attacks on her today" and my circumspect and considered remarks have been denounced as "ill-informed and grounded in bad-faith."

So I'm going to say that tweet is ill-informed and grounded in bad-faith! What a ridiculous blanket statement with no regard for the individuals who listened to Gay and made our own interpretations and expressed our opinions.

It's so hypocritical to obsessively protect her while attacking all her critics with broad-brush insults!

IN THE COMMENTS: You can see email, along with responses from me, on the subject of whether the American left has an aversion to displays of the American flag. I am reminded of this photograph of mine that I posted on the 4th of July in 2005:

At the time, I wrote: "In my family, this is known as my 'most right wing photo' and jokes have been made along the lines of: 'What if you put that on your office door? What would people think? What would they say?'"

There were a lot of comments at the time, including one from a colleague who said: "I quite like the photo and resist the idea that the right owns the flag. " I was motivated to post what I called "my most left-wing flag photo, from the Kerry rally here in Madison last fall":

Elon Musk makes the phallic nature of space travel — which was never subtle — explicit.

I'm reading "Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos in Twitter spat over Nasa moon funding/Musk has attacked Bezos on Twitter after a protest about Nasa awarding SpaceX $2.9bn to build a space rocket, Tom Knowles writes" (London Times): 

Blue Origin, the space rocket company founded by Bezos, has filed a lengthy protest against Nasa’s decision to award $2.9 billion to Musk’s SpaceX team to build the rocket that will return astronauts to the moon by 2024. 

In response, Musk has tweeted that Bezos “can’t get it up (to orbit) lol”, and told reporters that the businessman, who will step down as chief executive of Amazon later this year, should be more involved in Blue Origin.

It's revolting to see these adolescent men taunting each other over billions of our money.

Phallic Outrage of the Day.

BREAKING: Photos show Trump's ridiculously large salt and pepper shakers

“Obama, Bush, and Clinton used the same size shakers as their guests.”

Solid reporting @businessinsider !

https://t.co/bnco2DqYtS

— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) December 7, 2019

"Trump’s getting impeached? I defy you to convince anyone at this cursed truck stop."

Writes Alexandria Petri, who seems to have ventured out of the elite cocoon to talk to some deplorables before condemning them for failing to match her opinion. This account of a perilous journey to the hinterlands appears in The Washington Post. She doesn't state where this truck stop is, so I'm not certain it isn't a satirical fantasy. I'm just reading the headline and glancing at the text, trying to find out exactly where this is, and I'm suspecting "cursed" is a clue that the place is her invention, the truck stop from hell.

Now, I'm reading the text.

I’ve been interviewing for what I figure is at least an hour — the clock on the wall is broken — and everyone I speak to still supports the president just as much as they did the day he was elected....

Who relies on a wall clock to know what time it is? That's your first clue.

The old man at the end of the counter shakes his head when I tell him the president is beleaguered by scandal. He’s not tied to his phone, like some of you coastal types. He’s not bound even to the latest fashion. I notice he’s wearing an old wide-brimmed hat and rimless spectacles, the kind I haven’t seen outside of movies. He says he’s still with the president, and that he doesn’t pay attention to the daily buzz of news. He has priorities like many real Americans have. I want to go out to my car, but it’s raining too hard. Coffee here is only a nickel. I order another cup.

I think that's another clue. Coffee can't be only a nickel anywhere, can it? I look it up, and find this at Eater:

A latte may cost $5—but America’s cheapest cup of coffee is a mere 5 cents.... Yet, one kitschy old place in Wall, South Dakota is garnering attention for the opposite reason. Their cup of joe only costs a nickel. And owners haven’t raised the price since the 1960s. Wall Drug Store, also known as Wall Drug, is a Western-themed diner on the edge of the Badlands that sells the bargain brew using an honor system, with serve-yourself coffee urns and piggy bank-style boxes where customers drop their change. 

Well, hell. I feel like I've dropped into my own surreal scenario. I look up the clue — 5¢ coffee — and I get an answer about what "truck stop" we're talking about and there it is: "South Dakota is garnering attention"... garnering! That word I've been railing against since 2015 (click the tag for more). Sometimes it seems the universe is winking at me.

Back to Petri:

I try to say something about the impeachment, but no one can hear me over the noise of the soybeans, growing healthy and strong. I have never heard a soybean so loud before....

Okay. Ha ha. So funny. Laughing at the farmers.

When I look at my watch, the hands don’t seem to move, but when I look at it again after my next sip of coffee, it says hours have passed. How long have I been here?

So she's not relying on the wall clock.

Someone tries to mention the phone call to the president of Ukraine, and out of nowhere, pigs in all the neighboring fields begin to screech, horribly, an almost human sound, and they only stop when he gives up mentioning it....

Oh, no. She's laughing at the idea of people living in farm country. It makes them so stupid. The screeching of the plants and animals fills up their useful-for-nothing-but-farming brains. What tags should I give this? Besides "garner (the word!)," I mean. I'm thinking "class politics."

The corn and soybeans don’t care about what the president has been doing on his phone calls to Ukraine. Whenever I try to ask, something rustles against the window, and it’s corn. I think it must be higher than an elephant’s eye now. The corn is pressed right up to the glass. I think the corn wants to get inside.

This is the figure of speech called "metonymy" — the things associated with people stand in for the people. She's talking about corn and soybeans as a way to talk about the people. You can only do this with white people, by the way. Talk about black people as animals and your career is over, but talk about white people as plants and you'll do fine.

There’s a Norman Rockwell painting hung on the wall, and it says it doesn’t think the president has done anything bad. There’s a scarecrow in a pair of dungarees with a big pitchfork. He and his pitchfork both voted for Trump. They will vote for him in the next hundred elections. When I turn around from talking to them, I don’t see the windows anymore. Is it day or night? I thought there used to be windows. Has it always been so dark? Are we underground?...

Here's the reveal that it's all a bad dream, presumably. Ha ha ha. Not fake news, not class snobbery, just something hilarious cooked up in the Washington Post for the comfortable amusement of its readers.

The walls are packed earth and so is the clock and it still hasn’t moved and now there is something crawling in the wall. The wall bursts! There’s an enormous worm here, and I pledge allegiance to it, willingly. I burn my notebook for King Worm!...

Just in case you were slow picking up that this is satire, you're beaten over the head with a giant phallic symbol (and soon enough "The walls squeeze in and out, like the clenching of an enormous fist!").

Good satire? A commenter over there says: "Wow. A bravura performance. Perfectly captures the dystopic and Kafka-esque reactions of the right wing to this clear cut (and clearly impeachable) scandal. Kudos, Ms. Petri."

"No one quite knows why Pyongyang slowed its public and overt testing, nor why Donald Trump’s bluntness and boasting that his nuclear button was bigger seems to have worked."

"But consider this: Trump largely inherited practices initiated in the Obama years, military moves that were meant to threaten and coerce North Korea in light of its diplomatic failures.... Into this near autonomous skid towards conflict blundered Mr. Trump. It did look grim for a few months, the two threatening strikes on each other, missiles flying, and speculation even emerging that the United States might move nuclear weapons back onto South Korean soil.... Say what you will about Trump, but after some very bad years of active nuclear testing and missile shooting, disarmament on the Korean peninsula has already occurred. Things are quieter and two leaders who previously weren’t talking – ever – now are. Sure the United States should remain vigilant, but much of the penis-wagging and button-pushing is over. To say no success has occurred is factually incorrect. Just getting rid of the war cry is enough to cheer over."

Writes William M Arkin in The Guardian.

I'm enjoying this genre of awkward acknowledgement of Trump success. Notice how carefully it steers around any potential criticism of Obama. On quick first read, I thought "much of the penis-wagging and button-pushing is over" referred to Obama, but that wouldn't happen. For Obama, the penis metaphor will be actively avoided. For Trump, they'll use it whenever they can.

Speaking of white men not "reflecting the gender and racial diversity" we've come to expect in liberal America — see previous post — look at what just came in the email from CNN?

No Kathy?! I knew that was happening, but they're not replacing her with a woman? There was a rumor that the replacement was going to be Leslie Jones (a black woman):

Griffin says she heard from a few different people a hosting rumor. “The hilarious @Lesdoggg (Leslie Jones) was in talks to co-host CNN’s New Year’s telecast with Anderson Cooper this year,” Griffin wrote. “I was elated when I heard this news. If I can’t get the gig, I will cheer for Leslie.”... But then Griffin says Jones was iced out of the hosting position...

So we have Andy Cohen, gleefully smiling as he grips his phallic-symbol bottle of popping champagne. I actually don't even know who Andy Cohen is, but that laughing face just makes me feel really bad about the ousting of Kathy. That picture looks like something from the days of Rowan and Martin. Smirking, self-pleased white men in tuxedos.

"A game of brinkmanship began when the Musée d’Orsay here invited Julian Schnabel to choose paintings from its 19th-century collection to exhibit alongside his own works of art."

"At a certain moment the museum said: You can’t have this or that painting, so I said I can’t do it,' Mr. Schnabel said in a recent interview at the museum. 'I thought, if I can’t pick the paintings, there’s no reason for me to say that I picked the paintings.' The American artist and filmmaker, 66, had his eye on works by four artists in particular — Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Cézanne — which the museum did not want to move from their usual places."

In the end, Schnabel got everything but the Cézanne for the show, described here, in the NYT.

The article doesn't say which Cézanne was so firmly unmoveable, and I don't think it's the Cézanne mentioned in this paragraph (which confused me):

The earliest of [Schnabel's] works in the show is the large-scale “Blue Nude with Sword” from 1979, the first figurative, as opposed to abstract, plate painting that Mr. Schnabel made. It hangs alongside Cézanne’s much smaller tableau “La Femme Étranglée” (“The Strangled Woman,” 1875-1876), with which it shares a similar red, white and blue palette.

I was struck that the NYT would allow such a blurry, distanced hint at violence against women in this article. Women are strangled, not just in the Cézanne painting...



... but in the newspaper that also, when it's in the mood, tells us about the women protesters who scream about our subordination. But in the museum, the men dominate as usual. Schnabel is a man with the power to compare himself to anyone he likes and he likes all men — Van Gogh, Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec, Cézanne.

But at least Schnabel's nude woman isn't strangled but wields a sword. No! Faked you out: Schnabel's "Blue Nude with a Sword" is a man:


What's he aiming that sword at? A curled up red dog? A pile of shit? I don't know, but why, with all those phallic symbols — the pillars, the sword — do we see no genitalia between his legs? Or is that the point — "Blue Nude Without Testicles"?

Are you enjoying the Gender Studies at Althouse this morning?

"It’s not my normal approach to b indecisive," tweeted the 85-year-old Charles E. Grassley, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee...

... letting the Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh know about the latest deadline extension accorded to Kavanaugh's accuser Christine Blasey Ford.

The newest deadline is 2:30 PM today (Saturday). I'm told — reading the NYT — that they're working on negotiating the terms, but it's hard to believe this "tango" — NYT's word — is really over terms:

Throughout the day on Friday, Dr. Blasey’s lawyers and Senate Judiciary Committee aides tried to work out details like how many photographers and television cameras would be in the room (Dr. Blasey, fearful of being mobbed by the news media, wanted one of each); who would ask the questions (Republicans wanted an outside lawyer, Dr. Blasey favored senators); and what day the session would take place (Dr. Blasey asked for Thursday, Republicans wanted Wednesday).

If Blasey really wanted to testify, I think these terms would easily have been worked out. I suspect this last moving of the deadline is simply because they already know there will be no additional hearing, and the vote can't be until Monday anyway, so why not make even more of a show of being caring, considerate, and accommodating to Blasey? In this view, Grassley isn't really "b-ing" indecisive, nor is he really addressing Kavanaugh. It's a show for us, the sensitive people, and Grassley already knows the outcome of this story — that there will be no hearing and Kavanaugh will be confirmed.

In a follow-up tweet sent after the one directed to Judge Kavanaugh, Mr. Grassley wrote: “With all the extensions we give Dr Ford to decide if she still wants to testify to the Senate I feel like I’m playing 2nd trombone in the judiciary orchestra and Schumer is the conductor.” He was referring to Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader.

Schumer is making him do it. I understand teenagers getting pushed around but the man is 85 years old. Grow up, already, or retire. Is he suffering from learned helplessness? I suspect he's simply posing as a man who gets pushed around by a stronger man. Maybe he thinks the American public is so sympathetic to victims these days that he'll get some.

Notice the use of phallic symbol metaphor: Schumer wields his powerful conductor's baton and he's stuck with a stupid old trombone.

A trombone is a well-known phallic symbol, so don't try to tell me otherwise. The motion of playing it is typically compared to male masturbation. Commenting on Prince's phallic display of his guitar at the Super Bowl in 2007, Rolling Stone magazine contributing editor Gavin Edwards said: "Those trombones are phallic, too. What are you going to do?"

There's even more commentary on the conductor's baton as a phallic symbol. Example (click to enlarge and clarify):

Quite the line-up of faces on Drudge right now.

We talked about the Pope's horrible scandal yesterday, so I'm not restarting that.

I refuse to talk about the latest murderer (on the right)... other than to just say he looks mentally ill.

The story about Glenn Greenwald is something I was already in the middle of reading. It's in The New Yorker: "Glenn Greenwald, the Bane of Their Resistance/A leftist journalist’s bruising crusade against establishment Democrats—and their Russia obsession." Excerpt:

Greenwald...has lived largely in Rio for thirteen years. For most of that time, he and Miranda, a city-council member, rented a home on a hillside above the city, surrounded by forest and monkeys. Last year, they moved to a... house... in a baronial-modernist style, and built around a forty-foot-tall boulder that feels like the work of a sculptor tackling Freudian themes: it exists partly indoors and partly out....

He seemed happy. He was wearing shorts and flip-flops; he has a soft handshake and an easy, teasing manner that he knows will likely confound people who expect the sustained contentiousness that he employs online and on TV....  Greenwald, though untroubled about being thought relentless, told me that he was “actually trying to become less acerbic, less gratuitously combative” in public debates. He recently became attached to the idea of mindfulness, and he keeps a Buddha and a metal infinity loop on a shelf behind the sofa; a room upstairs is used only for meditation. He has turned to religious and mystical reading, and has reflected that, in middle age, one’s mood “is more about integrating with the world.”

That all strikes me as hilarious, so I give it to you now, but there's much more to the article, which I haven't read yet, because I was reading it while waiting to have blood drawn and the buzzer went off calling me into the lab. It was just a routine test, but I had to fast for 12 hours, including no coffee, so that threw off my morning routine. If you want to know the difference between Morning Coffee Althouse and No-Coffee Althouse, read this post and then all the posts that preceded it this morning. Anyway, I will finish the Greenwald thing, and I'll have more to say about it. I love when left-wing people go after left-wing people. It's just boring when right-wing people go after left-wing people and left-wing people really do need to be gone after.

If you scroll up at Drudge, you'll see...



... link goes to CNBC: "Dow jumps more than 250 points, Nasdaq hits 8,000 as US and Mexico strike trade deal."

ADDED: Maybe, like me, you wondered, what's an infinity loop. Here:

4th of July movie watched last night.

On Turner Classic Movies.



Some nice lines in there about following or not following the law, and I'd quote them here if I could copy and paste them from the text of the original play (by George Bernard Shaw), but I can't, even though — searching for "law" in text — I discovered that the play is much more about law than the movie.

Anyway, the movie unleashes 3 actors — Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, and Laurence Olivier — to emote against each other on the subject of revolution. And there's one woman — Janette Scott — whose task is to decide not whether to join the revolution but which hunky male she likes best. Spoiler alert: Initially her husband Burt leaves her cold and the devilish Kirk Douglas turns her on, but later when Kirk gets virtuous and Burt joins the revolution — and changes from clerical garb into a buckskin jacket — she goes running to Burt who hoists her up on his big horse.

The movie is "The Devil's Disciple," and here's the full text of the Shaw play. I'd like to see the stage play, and I think the movie could be remade. There's a lot of potential to redo the big fight scene in which the Burt Lancaster character single-handedly takes on a bunch of British officers in a room. With no weapons on him, he uses what he can, including a big flaming log he grabs out of the fireplace. How can he hold a flaming log? He swathes the metaphor in a metaphor — his black priestly coat — the one that had previously insulated him from what his smoldering wife had to give.

Ah! I see there is a version of the play with Patrick Stewart and Ian Richardson, available on Amazon Prime. That's a 1987 TV film, so... it's not likely to include a more convincing and exciting wielding of the flaming log. A quick search of the text of the play, however, makes me doubt that glaring phallic symbol was Shaw's idea.

"Big dick energy does not care for your pathetic gender binary and will not pander to it."

"Chris Hemsworth wielding a ludicrously big hammer with arms the size of cows and yelling a lot? Feeble big dick energy. Cate Blanchett simply standing there smirking, but, like, only using her eyes somehow? Powerful, powerful big dick energy."

From "Big dick energy: what is it, who has it and should we really care?/It is a phrase that is ‘a thing’, according to the collective wisdom of the internet – but do you have BDE?" in The Guardian.

The Tuesday NYT crossword puzzle had a "trigger warning" theme with answers — like "bazooka bubblegum" — that began with guns, and the regular crossword-puzzle columnist at the NYT refused to blog it!

The crossword editor, Will Shortz, took over:

There was a behind-the-scenes discussion regarding Peter Gordon’s crossword, which is why I’m writing about it rather than Deb Amlen, the Wordplay editor.

She was so disenchanted with the puzzle’s gun theme — especially in this era of widespread violence — that she didn’t feel she could give it a fair write-up. [This is true. I believe that this puzzle will be upsetting to some people because of its timing, subject matter and revealer, and did not think I could be respectful or kind to it. So I thought that it would be better for you to hear from Will today. — D.A.]

I respect that, so I am writing today’s column, instead.

I liked the puzzle because of the freshness and simplicity of the idea and the elegance in the way it was done.... The revealer of TRIGGER / WARNING (26D/25D) — using this modern phrase in an unexpected way — was icing on the cake.

I added the photo for metaphorical zing. Back to Shortz (somebody stop me from saying "men in shorts"):

The puzzle’s subject of guns didn’t bother me. For better or worse, guns are part of American life. I have my own opinion about guns and their regulation, but as a general matter I try to keep my political views out of the puzzle.

Lots of things are part of American life but kept out of the NYT crossword because they're thought to be inconsistent with the escapist fun of doing the puzzle at breakfasttime. For example, defecation — also part of American life — is excluded.

I don't normally read the NYT puzzle column, though I always do the NYT crossword and I usually read Rex Parker's blog about it. It's via Rex that I ended up looking at Shortz, and the guns bothered Rex too (and before he saw Deb Amlen's resistance:

[G]uns, violence, yuck. This is a personal thing, but I don't really want to participate in crossword gunfests. Guns don't "tickle" me, I guess. Too much daily slaughter in this country for me to be able to enjoy cutesy gun-related wordplay.... But if I just pretend there's no theme, I actually like this grid pretty well, except for WANGLE, which is about the most off-putting word in the English language (67A: Accomplish schemingly). I really wanted WRANGLE there, as it's a good word, as opposed to WANGLE, which is like WIGGLE and DANGLE got together pretended to be a phallus. I mean, come on. It's got WANG right in the name.

An interesting train of thought, but the guns/phallus association is so common it's trite, except to the extent that it's funny, it's some serious analysis of the human tendency toward violence, or it's revelatory of why some people feel instinctive disgust about guns.

The Shortz column has an update:

The original photo on this column, which showed a man firing an automatic rifle at a firing range, was my choice, not Will’s. It was a misguided attempt to demonstrate that words are not just words, and pictures are not just pictures. I apologize for it, and have replaced the photo.

The replacement photograph is of an old man at a lectern, with the caption "English-Canadian musicologist Dr. Alan Walker lecturing on the music of Franz Liszt at the Mannes College of Music." That must seem to fit because the title of the column — and the clue for the answer "trigger warning" — is "Caution Before a Potentially Upsetting Lecture."

A misguided attempt to demonstrate that words are not just words, and pictures are not just pictures... I'm really not sure what that means. The explanation is itself misguided. What was Shortz Amlen attempting to do? Why would a picture of a gun demonstrate that a picture of a gun is not just a picture of a gun and that a word is not just a word? All I can think is — and thanks to the person* who made this image (which I was hoping would exist):

__________________

* The poster — based on the famous Magritte painting "The Treachery of Images" — seems to be by Dave Kinsey. I think you can buy it here.