"Of Hemingway’s three children, Patrick came closest to simulating, though hardly emulating, his father...."

"Hemingway’s first son, Jack, was an avid fly fisherman who fished in Europe between battles in World War II. He had difficulty finding a postwar career until he became Idaho’s fish and game commissioner in the 1970s. He died in 2000. Hemingway’s third child, Gloria Hemingway, was a physician who struggled with alcohol abuse. She wrote a memoir, 'Papa' (1976), before undergoing transition surgery later in life. She died in 2001."

From "Patrick Hemingway, Ernest’s Devoted Second Son, Is Dead at 97/Inspired by his parents’ travels, he spent much of his life in Africa and helped complete his father’s safari memoir. He also published a volume of father-son letters. He was Ernest Hemingway’s last surviving child" (NYT).

Transition surgery? I clicked on "She died in 2001" and got to the obituary "Gregory H. Hemingway, 69; Wrote a Memoir Called 'Papa.'" Excerpt:

"In one 20-minute video, Westman flips through the disturbing handwritten manifesto. Much of it is written in a homespun code that uses Cyrillic characters and English phonetic words."

"In the deranged writings, he gleefully fantasizes about 'being that scary horrible monster standing over those powerless kids'.... 'I am feeling good about Annunciation. It seems like a good combo of easy attack form and devastating tragedy and I want to do more research. I have concerns about finding a large enough group. I want to avoid any parents, but pre and post school drop off,' another page reads. 'Maybe I could attack an event at the on-site church.... I think attacking a large group of kids coming in from recess is my best plan … Then from there I can go inside and kill, going for as long as I can.' Near the end of the video, Westman flicks through a number of blank pages before reaching what appears to be a drawing showing the inside of a church, saying 'Haha, nice'... stops turning pages... takes out a knife and stabs into the center of the sketch... withdraws the blade, and quietly mumbles, 'kill myself.'"

From "Minneapolis school shooter ID’d as trans woman Robin Westman — as apparent manifesto included 'kill Trump'" (NY Post).

UPDATE: Writing this post, I avoided quoting the text that used a pronoun for Westman. The Post had used "she," but I see this morning, the "she"s are all changed to "he"s, without any notice that a correction/"correction" has been made. 

"We have now seen that the Trump administration manages the economy with the same expertise and competence it manages higher education, and as a result we might begin to rally the American people."

I'm reading "I’m a Columbia Professor. Here’s the Really Disheartening Part of This Mess," a NYT op-ed by Matthew Connelly, a Columbia history professor.

I'm all for expertise and competence, but who is this "we" threatening to "rally" us in the name of longing for expertise and competence?

Well, it doesn't say "rally us," it says "rally the American people." I used the "us" pronoun for "the American people," but that doesn't work very well with the "we" that is used twice in the quoted sentence.

Professor Connelly sees himself and his New York Times readers as the "we" who look on as Trump breaks things and hope to excite "the American people" to oppose and resist Trump. But the American people have supported Trump because the American people have seen what your "we" has done with its power when it has had the chance. "Let the Experts Handle It Again" is not a great rallying cry these days.

I'm railing about one sentence. Most of the column is about Columbia working with the Trump administration and professors at other schools boycotting Columbia. Connelly's "we" is not cohesive. It's in no position to "rally the American people." It's in what Connelly calls a "circular firing squad." And you want to be our "expertise and competence" providers?

Is insisting that people say "Gulf of America" similar to insisting that people use "they/them" and other "preferred pronouns"?

I see that "On Tuesday the White House broke with decades of precedent and blocked Associated Press reporters from attending two of President Trump’s media availabilities. The AP said it was blocked because it hasn’t changed its stylebook entry for Gulf of Mexico to 'Gulf of America'" (CNN).

Say it my way or face consequences.

The consequence here is the loss of a great privilege, the access given to the small group of reporters who speak directly to the President. But it made me think of the pressure that has been applied to ordinary people to say things in a way that is dictated by their political antagonists.

"In the manifesto, called 'War Against Humanity,' the author writes that they have 'grown to hate people, and society' and calls their parents 'scum.'"

"The author also writes that they acquired weapons 'by lies and manipulation, and my father's stupidity' and describes wanting to die by suicide, but feeling like carrying out a shooting was 'better for evolution rather than just one stupid boring suicide.'"

Writes Newsweek, in "Natalie Rupnow's Reported Manifesto: What We Know" (about the school shooting that took place in my city yesterday).

The use of the word "scum" in a manifesto makes me think of "SCUM Manifesto," a 1967 feminist document. I discussed it back in 2017, when Facebook was banning some women who wrote about men as "scum." The "SCUM Manifesto" begins: "'Life' in this 'society' being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of 'society' being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and eliminate the male sex."

And yet, this new manifesto — what I'm seeing of it, anyway — uses the language of gender neutrality: "Humanity... people... society... parents." There is, however, "father." I see that Newsweek is using they/them pronouns for the killer.

Newsweek also reports President Joe Biden's hasty response: "We need Congress to act. Now. From Newtown to Uvalde, Parkland to Madison.... Congress must pass commonsense gun safety laws: Universal background checks. A national red flag law. A ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines...."

But when he pardoned his son Hunter for violating existing gun laws, Joe Biden attacked the prosecution as unfair and biased. One might have thought he'd refrain from calling for more gun laws when he so recently and conspicuously treated a gun law as not justifying enforcement. And yet didn't we all expect it — expect that next time there's a school shooting, Joe would indignantly cry out for more gun laws? #hypocrisy

"did you guys know I was in the original YMCA music video?!"

Since the @realDonaldTrump YMCA dance is trending and taken the world by storm…did you guys know I was in the original YMCA music video?!
Check it out! So much fun! pic.twitter.com/29EzcE46bg

— Caitlyn Jenner (@Caitlyn_Jenner) November 27, 2024

AND: For the annals of pronoun usage:

God he’s hot

— Caitlyn Jenner (@Caitlyn_Jenner) November 28, 2024

ALSO: That video was clearly influenced by this much more carefully choreographed scene in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes":

"On the sensitive and divisive issue of gender identity, Ms. Harris’s change in tone is especially telling."

"In 2019, she introduced herself at a CNN town hall by saying, 'My pronouns are she, her and hers.' Today, she changes the topic when asked whether she would honor her pledge to guarantee that detained immigrants, prisoners and anyone else under the government’s care can access gender affirming surgery. 'I think we should follow the law,' she said in a recent interview with NBC News, moving on quickly.... At the same time, Ms. Harris has not explicitly acknowledged any distance from the party’s left flank.... The question for those in the progressive wing of the party is whether they continue to pursue some of their more polarizing ideas about identity.... Whether Ms. Harris wins or loses next week, few expect full capitulation or retreat...."

Writes Jeremy W. Peters, in "In Shift From 2020, Identity Politics Loses Its Grip on the Country/There are signs that society is moving away from the progressive left’s often strict expectations about how to discuss culture and politics" (NYT).

Me and...

I wrote an elaborate post about what JD Vance said (on Joe Rogan) about "the normal gay guy," and the subject, in the comments immediately turned to pronouns. No, not the innovative pronoun usage that has come into vogue in recent years but old-time grammar. Vance used the objective pronoun as a subject: "I wouldn't be surprised if me and Trump won just the normal gay guy vote."

The first commenter, Ralph L, calls attention to it, and I, the second commenter, point out that Vance used "me" as the subject more than that one time." 53 minutes into the podcast: "So one of the big things that me and President Trump confront all the time is the accusation that we're somehow like in bed with Russia, which is like the, the dumbest thing in the world to me."

Naturally, I thought about the "Me and" playlist I put together on Spotify a while ago. I'll embed it at the bottom of this post, but the point I want to make is that the "Me and" form — used as a subject — works very nicely in the colloquial speech that is reflected in many excellent song lyrics. Not all of the "Me and" songs on my playlist use "me" ungrammatically. But the ones that do are:

"Just moments ago, Joe Biden stated that our supporters are garbage."

"He's talking about the border patrol, he's talking about nurses, he's talking about teachers, he's talking about everyday Americans who love their country and want to dream big again and support you, Mr. President. And I hope their campaign is about to apologize for what Joe Biden just said. We are not garbage. We are patriots who love America and thank you for running Mr. President."

Said Marco Rubio to Donald Trump, on stage at Trump's rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania last night. Click the video below, which is cued up to the spot. Trump appears to be hearing this news of President Biden's statement for the first time.

Trump reacts: "Wow. That's terrible.... Remember Hillary? She said 'deplorable' and then she said 'irredeemable.' Right? But she said 'deplorable.' That didn't work out. 'Garbage,' I think is worse. Right? But he doesn't know. You have to please forgive him. Please forgive him! For he not knoweth what he said."

I believe that last bit was an attempt to evoke the words of Jesus: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." 

Trump continues: "These people. Terrible terrible terrible — to say a thing like that, but he really doesn't know. He really, honestly, he doesn't. And I'm convinced that he likes me more than he likes Kamala. Convinced. But that's a terrible thing."

It was a terrible thing to say, but you can see that Trump knows that Biden's rhetoric — like Hillary's "deplorable" — was an excellent gift to his campaign. And it came just as Kamala Harris was delivering her big closing-argument speech that was supposed to reach out to all Americans and to characterize her as the one who, unlike Trump, embraced everybody.

Here's the NYT article about that: "Harris’s Mission: Disqualify Trump, but Extend a Hand to His Voters/Kamala Harris, in her closing argument to voters, acknowledged an inescapable political reality: Donald Trump is not a fringe figure within his own party or the nation" (free-access link):

Vague, vacuous, and not flustered... 2 looks at that Kamala Harris interview.

"Kamala Harris didn’t hurt herself in her interview this week with CNN’s Dana Bash. She didn’t particularly help herself, either."

Writes Bret Stephens in a NYT piece with a meaner headline: "A Vague, Vacuous TV Interview Didn’t Help Kamala Harris."

But really, absorbing that meanness, isn't vague and vacuous what they were aiming for? I'm saying "they" not because I'm rejecting the she/her pronouns Harris has announced but because I presume her performance was developed by a team.

Stephens identifies pluses and minuses. On the plus side, "she came across as warm, relatable." (Did she?) 

On the minus side, we see the basis for that headline:

She’s vague to the point of vacuous. She struggled to give straight answers to her shifting positions on fracking and border security other than to say, “my values have not changed.” Fine, but she evaded the question of why it took the Biden administration more than three years to gain better control of the border, which it ultimately did through an executive order that could have been in place years earlier. It also doesn’t answer the question of why she reversed her former policy positions — or whether she has higher values other than political expediency.

We can infer the answer easily enough. What's she supposed to do, come right out and own it? 

The Stephens reaction is paired with a reaction from another NYT opinion writer, Michelle Cottle, who says, "I think that went pretty well, don’t you?"

Since you asked, I'll answer. Yes. Expectations were low, and there's no mistake for her enemies to feast on today. There were no big silences and no memorable passsage-of-time inanities.

Cottle gives Harris credit for not "ducking" questions or "getting flustered."

Flustered! To quote something I said in 2013: "That's a word that people have traditionally used — this is my observation — to portray a woman as incapable of standing her ground and dealing with emotional turmoil."

Why are you waiting to see if a woman gets "flustered"? It feels as though you're expecting her to prove her worth by not seeming like a stereotype of a woman. 

And Cottle continues with this "flustered" business:

The not getting flustered part was as important as the answers themselves. She absolutely needed to avoid giving any opening for the MAGA trolls — who are obsessed with machismo and performative toughness — to accuse her of being overly emotional or weak or easy to rattle. Amusingly, Bash looked more flustered than Harris did for most of the interview....

Yeah, why was that amusing... to Cottle? I'd have to guess that Cottle wanted Harris to win, and Bash's terror counted toward the Harris win. How presidential Harris was! She intimidated Bash. As if that means Putin and other dictators will be intimidated by Harris. But that inference is entirely unjustified. Bash was chosen because she was thought to be most inclined to help Harris. And Bash had the complex task of helping while seeming to be tough and properly journalistic.

Cottle projects her own worries about womanly inadequacies onto "MAGA trolls." Of course, they are out there, looking for material that can be used to attack Harris: They are "are obsessed with machismo and performative toughness — to accuse her of being overly emotional or weak or easy to rattle." But that doesn't mean Harris's own supporters are free of their own doubts and sexist stereotypes.

The classic "Fear and" title is "Fear and Loathing," but somehow, in these days of loathing, we've got "Fear and Joy."

I'm so skeptical... as I'm reading "Fear and Joy in Chicago/The excitement that radiated through the Democratic National Convention was the other side of what had until recently been a deep despair" by Fintan O'Toole (NYRB).

[T]he Democrats in Chicago were singing a redemption song. It had three parts: valediction, malediction, and benediction....

Having taken a break to listen to "Redemption Song" (see below), I will concentrate on the malediction:

[B]ad-mouthing Trump at a Democratic convention is not that hard. Yet it too had its complications. Just as the Democrats had to navigate between loving Joe and giving him a jubilant cheerio, they had to figure out how to manage another contradictory feat: cutting Trump down to size while retaining a clear sense of the threat he poses to the very existence of the American republic...

They seemed — to O'Toole — to be trying "to reconfigure Trump as the Wizard of Oz, a little man who has conjured an illusion of MAGA magnitude." 

Even the renegade Republican Adam Kinzinger was entirely on message when he called Trump “a weak man pretending to be strong. He is a small man pretending to be big…. He puts on quite a show, but there is no real strength there.”

I add my favorite blog tag, "big and small." 

Laura Ingraham detects Trump's gender fluidity.

Ingraham: What are your pronouns?

Trump: I don’t want pronouns

Ingraham: So, you’re fluid? pic.twitter.com/KjA8tZxpnw

— Acyn (@Acyn) July 30, 2024

ADDED: As you can see a few posts down, I've been reading "John Adams" by David McCullough. After writing this post, I went out for a walk with my audiobook version and was stunned to hear a passage that fit with the topic of a President's gender fluidity. From pages 659-660, about the presidential campaign of 1800:

Not satisfied that the old charges of monarchist and warmonger were sufficient, [the propagandist James] Callender called Adams a “repulsive pedant,” a “gross hypocrite,” and “in his private life, one of the most egregious fools upon the continent.” Adams was “that strange compound of ignorance and ferocity, of deceit and weakness,” a “hideous hermaphroditical character which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.”

"I have never met a nonbinary person who thinks that they/them pronouns are somehow exclusive to nonbinary or trans people."

"They are a way to opt out of the gender binary in third-person reference, and people may choose to do that for many reasons—gender-based, political, philosophical, even religious. One uses the pronouns someone requests because it is the courteous thing to do. It does not stop being the courteous thing to do because one disagrees with the person's reason for requesting them (at least so long as the request is made in good faith rather than as political trolling)."

Says a commenter to the NYT Ethicist column, "My Relative Isn’t Trans or Nonbinary But Wants to Use ‘They/Them’ Pronouns. The magazine’s Ethicist columnist on allyship and forms of solidarity" (NYT).

The Ethicist, Kwame Anthony Appiah, took a different position: "Using pronouns properly is a matter of not misgendering people. It isn’t part of a general policy of calling people whatever they want to be called.... [Y]our relative evidently identifies as cisgender and is motivated simply by allyship.... As the N.A.A.C.P. activist Rachel Dolezal notoriously failed to grasp, solidarity with a group does not grant you membership within it. Many will find the notion that you support people by appropriating their markers of identity to be passing strange."

"I’ve written freelance articles for years, drawing mostly on my life experience.... My boyfriend of eight months has requested that I not write about him anymore."

"He was initially okay with it, but he has read the handful of things I’ve published since we started dating and has changed his mind. I never say anything that reflects poorly on him or that I think he would find embarrassing; usually, if anything, I am self-deprecating. Before this relationship, I dated someone else for more than five years and wrote about that relationship freely with his blessing. I actually think part of what my current boyfriend is uncomfortable about is the implied comparison between that relationship and this one. My writing life will be quite a bit more difficult if I can’t write from life anymore. And he has already said no not just to articles that focus on our relationship, but also to ones that mention him in even a cursory way. It is an understandable request, but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s controlling and sabotaging, hopefully unintentionally."

A letter to the WaPo advice columnist.

Are you supposed to support your partner by accepting that you are a topic to be written about — raw material? It's an old problem. I've been there... on both sides.

But what's funny here is the writer's unwillingness to see herself as the user.

"On one side or the other — one side or the other is going to win. I don’t know. I mean, there can be a way of working — a way of living together peacefully..."

"... but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised. They really can’t be compromised. So it’s not like you are going to split the difference."

Said Justice Alito, quoted in "Justice Alito Caught on Tape Discussing How Battle for America 'Can’t Be Compromised'" (Rolling Stone). 

Alito made these remarks in conversation at the Supreme Court Historical Society’s annual dinner on June 3.... His comments were recorded by Lauren Windsor, a liberal documentary filmmaker.... She asked questions of the justice as though she were a religious conservative.... 

The recording... captures Windsor approaching Alito at the event and reminding him that they spoke at the same function the year before, when she asked him a question about political polarization. In the intervening year, she tells the justice, her views on the matter had changed. “I don’t know that we can negotiate with the left in the way that needs to happen for the polarization to end,” Windsor says. “I think that it’s a matter of, like, winning.”

Alito responded "I think you're probably right" and then said the lines quoted above. I consider his remarks anodyne. When people are ideologically polarized, they don't go in for compromises. They keep fighting. Just like Rolling Stone is keeping fighting with this article and its inflammatory headline. Alito doesn't use the word "battle" or say anything about a "Battle for America." He just responds to the instigator Windsor by observing that ideologues are not compromisers.

Alito talks about sides without putting himself on one of the sides. He doesn't join Windsor in the use of the pronoun "we." His words are neutral: "one side or the other," "there can be a way," "it’s difficult," "there are differences," "They" (meaning the "differences"). It must have been frustrating to Windsor. And yet, here's Rolling Stone serving them up as if Alito had declared himself a bitter ender battling for Christian Nationalism. Ludicrous!

"And now, 35 years after Mr. Kirk’s skeletal remains were found, a search for how he ended up dead in a chimney can begin."

The NYT covers a Madison, Wisconsin story, in "35 Years Later, the Remains Known as ‘Chimney Doe’ Have a Name and a Face/A skeleton found in the chimney of a Wisconsin music store in 1989 has been identified, relaunching a police investigation that had been dormant for decades" (free access link).

The skeleton — a 5'7" male with a broken pelvis— wore "a faded, paisley dress and pointed heels." After 35 years, searching DNA databases led to Ronnie Joe Kirk. The police have brought in the Trans Doe Task Force, which works on "cold cases involving L.G.B.T.Q. victims and victims of suspected gender-based violence."

"So we embarked on a new era — no longer Papa and Daddy but now Mommy and Daddy."

Writes Richard Just, in "Our daughter wanted a mommy, so she picked one of her dads/Are women really the only people who can be maternal?" (WaPo).

At first, I thought it might turn out to be a quickly forgotten phase, but our daughter... made it clear she was digging in: Any time I slipped up and referred to him as Papa, she swiftly corrected me. Pretty soon, she began to police my husband’s pronouns as well. Initially, I had tried to pair his new Mommy title with the male pronouns that he uses — a small concession to reality, I guess — but it wasn’t long before our daughter began to insist that he be referred to as she and her....  “She!” she would gruffly instruct me, as I unthinkingly mis-mis-gendered the man I had been married to for 10 years. “Why do you say ‘he’?”...

The daughter is 3 1/2. 

In the end, I’ve come to believe our daughter has been telling us something beautiful and profound: that she has everything she needs — including those attributes that society has normally treated as the provenance of mothers — right here in her two-dad family....

"In sharing her preferred title and pronouns, Ms Wood celebrates herself and sings herself – not in a disruptive or coercive way, but in a way that subtly vindicates her identity, her dignity, and her humanity."

Wrote federal district judge Mark Walker, quoted in "Florida can’t ban teacher from asking students to use her preferred pronouns, judge rules/Katie Wood, a transgender algebra teacher, has long gone by ‘Ms Wood’ but the law required students to say 'Teacher Wood'" (Guardian).

The judge was using Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself," which famously begins:

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

"One of us didn't understand..."

Link.

Have you ever understood implications of the meaning of a book that perhaps the author did not intend? Is the author the supreme interpreter of her works? Do you adhere to originalism in the interpretation of novels? Do you think that anyone who doesn't is a laughable fool?

ADDED: There are 2 dimensions of understanding here.

"My brain wants to delete everything it’s heard from people who have spent time in [Biden's] presence in the last year. (It’s not encouraging.)"

I wanted to highlight those 2 stray sentences that appear in "Biden Must Win. But How?," an opinion piece by Pamela Paul in The New York Times.

I really don't care what her "brain" "wants." Your brain is you. If it feels like a separate entity that you need to speak about in the third person, something is very wrong. Maybe you think it's humorous. But you're talking about withholding information from us. You're admitting that you know things that would hurt Biden's campaign, and you won't share it with the voters. You just wish you didn't know.

This is destructive of democracy. There must be a flow of information to the voters.

Paul goes on to argue that the Biden campaign should stress substantive policy differences between Trump and Biden. That's what I've been saying too. But you can't simply hide the candidate and forefront the party's policy agenda as if the man is nothing at all. You can't beat something with nothing.

If this becomes a personality contest — as hideous and inconceivable as that may sound to steadfast Trump loathers — Biden may well lose. 

ADDED: Pamela Paul exhibits the problem that Ricky Gervais mocks Karl Pilkington about: