"That [burned Limoges] City Hall is at the epicenter of generations of struggle. It's not connected to how I fancy croissants and brie..."

"... and red wine but all I can find now is kebab in a shop blaring rap.... We should be alert to how the history of struggle is obscured by the reactionary and racist commodification of nostalgia and tourism."

"When my agent called me about a 'Simpsons' audition, I knew exactly what role it was for, and the idea actually made my stomach sink."

Said Sunil Malhotra, quoted in "Apu Returns to ‘The Simpsons’ With a New Voice Actor/After almost a decade away from Springfield, the character returned to the show, this time voiced by a South Asian actor rather than a white man" (NYT).

Was it wrong to remove Apu in the first place?

If it wasn't wrong, is it right to bring him back? Do you remove the problem if you insert a voice actor of the same ethnicity as the character? If so, what was wrong with the TV version of "Amos 'n' Andy"? It had black actors.

"Is that a racial stereotype I’m not aware of, that Hispanics are good at surviving long falls? Although for a man who started out labeling Hispanics as murderers and rapists, to end up at 'bouncy'...."

Said Jordan Klepper, who, I guess is a comedian, quoted in "Late Night Is Stunned by Trump’s New Stereotype/The president told attendees celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month at the White House to watch their step while touring the unfinished ballroom: 'Only a Hispanic could survive that fall'" (NYT).

Yes, I see, he's on "The Daily Show." Okay, then: comedy. How do you do comedy on top of a Trump statement that is already completely weird? 

Seth Meyer also had a go at it. He tried: "You’ve gotta be a platinum level racist to come out with stereotypes no one has ever heard before." And: "'Only a Hispanic could survive that fall'? Are you thinking of cats?"

If it were your job to write a joke based on "Only a Hispanic could survive that fall," what would you say. For the record, I think Trump's "joke" is racist. It's like a comment based on the notion that black people have a special ability to toil in the hot sun. The idea is that they're physically adapted to a job they are stereotyped as doing. 

"For this person, the commitment to contesting the evil of whiteness is all-consuming, an ideological North Star that orients her entire worldview...."

Writes John McWhorter, in "When White People Like Hannah Gann Pretend to Be Black" (NYT).

To be the victim is to be not just innocent but also more interesting. It also can provide a sense of meaning in a modern world that no longer gives ready answers to the question of life’s purpose. “Who am I? What am I for? I’m … Black!”.... 

In the pre-woke days, I knew a couple of intermediate cases. These were white women who embraced Black culture, dated Black men exclusively, used “blaccents” spontaneously and deep down seemed to wish they were Black. (Why these cases seem to almost always involve women is an interesting question to which I don’t have an answer.).... 

That column was inspired by the new Rachel Dolezal, Hannah Gann.

"But critics argue the bare nails trend actually says something about class, the hamster wheel of beauty standards, and who gets to define what is considered tasteful."

"Nail art's historical and creative roots are linked back to black, Latino, and Asian communities and the suggestion that bare nails are now a sign of high status could stigmatise bold manicures, they say. 'That trend really promotes blankness and this kind of sameness and erasure of culture and identity that is so important to black and brown communities,' beauty journalist Kristina Rodulfo tells the BBC. 'They are often called elegant or tasteful, and these are often usually euphemisms that perpetuate white supremacist standards of beauty.'"

So it says at the BBC. 

Anyone who thinks the nails in that photo are unpolished must be the kind of person who thinks vanilla doesn't count as a flavor. But vanilla is a great flavor, and a thin coat of light pink nail polish is great way to paint your nails.

Anyway, if I prefer vanilla ice cream, it takes nothing away from your enjoyment of Rocky Road. If you want to be a maximalist, just be a maximalist. Don't try to bully minimalists into promoting the maximalist agenda. We're not "erasing" you! But maybe that's a hint about why people are drawn to maximalism: Is there a fear that unless you go big and bold and loud you might cease to exist? Quietness is not "blankness."

"[I]n the face of the evidence we have so far, and given the incendiary nature of the claim, why would anyone say that the United States is experiencing a 'national crisis' of lynchings?"

"One reason is a stylized wariness that Black Americans are often taught as a kind of wisdom — to be ever on guard that the bad old days could return at any moment. Another reason is a belief that Black people don’t hang themselves because of the fraught historical associations with the act. 'It is very uncommon for young Black men to commit suicide, let alone by hanging,' Raymond Winbush, a psychologist who has treated hundreds of Black men and boys, told The Washington Post. 'That’s not the way we do' is how Black Americans often put it in conversation. But we must ask, with all due compassion: Suppose it is?"

Writes John McWhorter, in "Are Lynchings Really Happening?" (NYT).

The Clancy holdout was the only nonwhite person on the jury, and he was a black man.

NEW: Lindsay Clancy juror Paula Devlin reveals on 'CBS Mornings' that the lone, male holdout juror who voted to find Clancy guilty of murdering her children was the *only* person of color -- a black man.

The 11 not-guilty jurors -- who hectored him for a week to cave -- were all… pic.twitter.com/5qirHNGCyx

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 11, 2026

Imagine how this man felt, how he feels now. The white people all ganged up on him, accused him of being inarticulate and incoherent, impermeable to reason. What a pressure cooker!

***

"Whoa. I have to sit with that for just a second" — Gayle King. Amazing that she was surprised by that. Weren't there pre-interviews to smoke things like that out? Or did they know, mean to suppress it, then realize they needed to get it out and chose Gayle King to perform the necessary theater? If so, she's an excellent actress! She really seems blindsided.

ADDED: Meanwhile, on Oprah's show, a black woman expresses the concern that black women who kill their children will not receive the same compassion that was shown to Lindsay Clancy:

Target apologizes for a costume that — accidentally? — looks like blackface.

You decide. It's the "Kids’ Glows under Blacklight Circus Clown Halloween Costume Bodysuit":

I'll do a poll:

"Restitution, if only in the form of honest contrition and perhaps even a public apology, is in order."

"Restitution, for instance, for Stan Wischnowski, the top editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, who in 2020 had to resign from his job and issue a groveling apology for the sin of running an article by the paper’s architecture critic with the headline 'Buildings Matter, Too.' Restitution for Mike Pesca, the host of a popular podcast, 'The Gist,' who was suspended indefinitely from his job at Slate for making a case, in an interoffice back and forth, that it may sometimes be permissible for a non-Black person to quote a racial slur in narrow contexts. Restitution, yes, for James Bennet, a former editor of The Times’s Opinion section, who was forced from his job after the publication of a controversial guest essay by Tom Cotton, a Republican senator...."

Writes Bret Stephens, in "Yes, Woke 1.0 Was Crazy. Now Where’s the Accountability?" (NYT gift link).

"Setting aside the plagiarism and fabrication allegations, I’m struck by just how … bad Arday’s work is."

"It makes me cringe to watch video of Professor Hilary Cremin, head of Cambridge’s faculty of education, fawning over him: 'We’re so lucky to have you. You’re the best in the world in terms of the research you do.' I’m gobsmacked that she didn’t think it might be worth trying to read the book he’d claimed to have written before offering him a plum academic job."

Writes Sonia Sodha, in "Jason Arday is the product of academia’s soft bigotry/Universities risk undermining genuine equality of opportunity when they reward identity over merit and sideline proper scrutiny" (London Times). 

And here's a London Times review of that book: "Jason Arday’s memoir is mawkish, self-aggrandising and hard to believe/The embattled former Cambridge professor’s autobiography, Great and Unfortunate Things, feels precision-tooled to flatter the biases of the sappiest white liberals."

Excerpt from the review: "As young Arday failed to hit his milestones, doctors declared him 'deficient' and said he was 'no better than a vegetable.' Arday was, by his own account, a profoundly intellectually disabled child. He claims that he could 'register sounds, but I couldn’t shape them into meaning.' He also says that smearing his faeces on the wall was one of his few sensory releases.... 'Most of my memories of my early childhood are of generalised images, sounds, sensations, feelings, rather than specific events, perhaps because language helps us to form memories, and I didn’t have access to that until I was older.'"

"I am QTBIPOC and an immigrant, he is cis-white-straight/ish citizen, a decade older than me and didn’t even know what queer or BIPOC meant before meeting me...."

"The question is: How do I know I am not only doing this 'under the influence' of love?..."

A nutty question to a WaPo advice columnist, in "I planned to always be a queer, single cat-mom aunt. Then I met him. How does she know she’s not changing her life plan 'under the influence of love'?"

If love is the wrong reason, what is the right reason?

"Do you think that it's the goal of the Smithsonian Institution to promote white supremacy culture?"

Congressman Brandon Gill asks Smithsonian Museum director Anthea Hartig at the House Oversight Committee hearing today.

It's quite an exchange. Gill has a very well-planned set of question designed to destroy Hartig, and Hartig's defense is almost entirely restricted to long silences and diligent note-taking, as if she's endeavoring to learn from Gill:

 

GILL: "Director Hardig... would you say that that the goal of history, even if it's not properly carried out... is to be objective?... Doesn't that seem a little bit concerning? It it certainly does to me because as part of this white supremacy document that your organization has promoted, objectivity is a core and defining aspect of white supremacy culture. Do you think that it's the goal of the Smithsonian Institution to promote white supremacy culture?

The color of death.

I'm reading "The women running death salons for people of color to process grief: 'It allows for freedom'/Death salons are spaces that allow free-flowing conversations about mortality and are becoming more popular around the country" (The Guardian).

In a small cream-colored room at a cemetery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Nefertiti Moor sat at the head of a semicircle. Dressed in black with her long hair in locs, she delivered instructions for the... free-flowing conversation about mortality, otherwise known as a death salon or death cafe, was unique in that it was designed for people of color. Death salons for marginalized communities are becoming more common around the country, with practitioners addressing the unique end-of-life concerns of queer, trans, or Black and brown people....

"Visitors in red, white and blue darkened with sweat stood in lines for hours, sometimes screaming in frustration and other times collapsing from exhaustion."

"The Independence Day parade was canceled and the Great American State Fair delayed. Steel fences and closed roads made photos of iconic monuments hard to capture. Both white supremacists and liberal activists marched through the city, each demanding their country back...."

I'm reading "America’s 250th celebrations marked by severe weather, political division/Officials ordered thousands of people to evacuate the National Mall after a severe weather warning that delayed President Donald Trump’s speech." That's in The Washington Post (not the NYT, as I'd accidentally had written).

"Small protests popped up throughout the day. One group lugged a 700-foot banner that read 'We the People' down Pennsylvania Avenue, condemning the president. About 50 people with another group, 'Refuse Fascism,' marched toward the White House, demanding that Trump leave office.... [H]undreds of uniformed members of Patriot Front, a white-supremacist group, marched toward the U.S. Capitol. Their faces covered in white masks, the men beat drums and carried flags — some upside down, others Confederate — as they chanted, 'Reclaim America!' Many gripped combat shields as they passed the Capitol building...."

How did the extra-important 4th look from your vantage point? 

"'It’s respectability politics at the end of the day, and Black women know this'..."

"... said Cyndia Robinson, who owns Cure Nailhouse in Detroit. 'We’ve been dealing with this our entire lives. We’ve been told our hair, nails, bodies, clothes are too much.' She also emphasized that salons are about more than beauty. Nail salons, she said, can be spaces where culture is 'protected and passed down.' 'When we decide that these spaces don’t matter,' she said, '“we lose rooms where women survive and take care of each other.'"

From "When Did Bare Nails Become a Status Symbol?/From a 'Love Story' plotline to runways and street wear, minimal or nude nails are everywhere" (NYT).

From the comments over there, there's this, from a guy called Norman:

"At a time of fierce debate over how to teach American history, particularly around issues of race, the Freedom Trucks weigh in squarely on one side of the argument..."

"... telling a patriotic, positive story of core American values and exceptionalism. They stand in sharp contrast to liberal efforts in recent years — in classrooms, museums, national parks and media — to lift up discussion of systemic racism and highlight chapters where America has failed to live up to its ideals."

From "Trump-backed ‘Freedom Trucks’ tell a sanitized story of the country’s founding/At a time of fierce debate over how to teach American history, the mobile exhibits weigh in squarely on one side of the argument." (WaPo)(gift link).

"Her famous dad was mostly absent for the first six years of her life, but she still manages to write about him with the sort of girlish affection..."

"... that many daughters reserve for their fathers. Things weren’t always so pretty. Her father was raised in a brothel in Peoria, Ill., where he witnessed the constant terror of violence and rape. His father was a pimp. His grandmother, who raised him, ran the family sex business. But Pryor escaped, using comedy as an outlet for his trauma...."

Writes Lauretta Charlton, in "Richard Pryor’s Daughter Grapples With a Flawed Father and a Hateful Word/Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor’s new book, 'Something We Said,' is at once a memoir and a history of a racial slur" (NYT).

It sounds as though the book expands on Pryor's TED Talk from 2019. Pryor, the daughter, became a history teacher, and she had an experience with a student quoting a line from "Blazing Saddles" — which her father co-wrote — and saying the "n-word" as part of the quote. She asked "Why not connect [Richard Pryor's] legacy with her own by becoming a foremost scholar of the n-word?"

Here's the TED Talk:

Side note: I'm reading about Richard Pryor's contributions to the "Blazing Saddles" script and see that he was especially pleased with this line:

The proposed rule would impose "a narrow, culturally specific understanding of family" that "privileges a dominant cultural framework over the lived realities of communities of color and global Christians."

I'm reading "Presbyterian Church faces revolt after proposing clergy must be in monogamous relationships — and critics blame white privilege" (NY Post).

The headline is miswritten. The rule doesn't require a relationship. Clergy can still be single. They just can't have more than one partner. It seems that clergy can have sequential sexual relationships — with no commitment at all — as long as they follow a one-at-a-time approach. 

The Presbyterians on both sides of this controversy are relying on progressivism. Opponents tap into racial critique — that "lived realities" discourse. 

Proponents deploy feminist critique. They're "arguing that the practice of polyamory or polygamy can create 'power imbalances, emotional harm, and spiritual confusion,' particularly for women, children, and historically marginalized persons."

It seems that no one wants to get caught invoking tradition. History is that place where persons were marginalized. It's something to be undone. 

***

I love the stock photo the Post chose to illustrate this story. It's like an ad for fabric softener:

Which one is supposed to be the Presbyterian clergyperson?

"There is supposed to be an esprit de corps between artistic colleagues."

Link to X.

What exactly did Arquette say? I found this paragraph, from 3 days ago, in the London Times, "Rosanna Arquette: ‘I paid a price for saying no to Harvey Weinstein’/The actress shot to fame 40 years ago alongside Madonna — and is back in a film, The Moment, with Charli XCX. She talks marriage, motherhood and surviving Hollywood":

In 1994 Arquette had a minor but memorable role in Pulp Fiction, playing the drug dealer Eric Stoltz’s wife and telling John Travolta why she’d pierced her tongue (“Sex thing. Helps fellatio”). “It’s iconic, a great film on a lot of levels. But personally I am over the use of the N-word — I hate it. I cannot stand that he [Tarantino] has been given a hall pass. It’s not art, it’s just racist and creepy.”

I don't think she's saying the whole film is "not art." She's rejecting the idea that the "n-word" can be used if only it's within what is genuinely art. She's saying it's still "racist and creepy" — even when the work of art was made at a time when the taboo on saying the word wasn't so strong. I note that Tarantino himself avoided any use of it in his last film, "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" (2019).

It's one thing to say that using the word inflicts harm and we ought to avoid it out of kindness and quite another thing to say that to use it at all — even in fictional character dialogue — is racist. Arquette got so harsh. She hates it, cannot stand it. Why flare up and call out Tarantino now?

Well, of course, Tarantino answers the question.

"It’s a small amount, not too gory. But white people think it’s scary."

Said Ratthee Rueangpisansin, the events and marketing director of a Thai restaurant in NYC, speaking about pig blood as a soup ingredient. He's quoted in "Will Americans Get Over Their Fear of Eating Animal Blood? The ingredient — a staple of cuisines around the world — is increasingly showing up on restaurant menus and in cookbooks in the U.S."

I hate to purport to speak on behalf of all "white people," but I think it's not that we're afraid. We're disgusted.

People eat blood around the world in all kinds of ways: from France’s rich, gamy sauces and Spain’s morcilla to Swedish blood pancakes, British black pudding and the chocolate-laced blood sweets of Italy; in sausages and stews throughout Southeast Asia; in the wobbly slabs of blood tofu that are a key element in China’s hot pots and soups. Yet in the United States, most blood from slaughterhouses is processed into animal feed and fertilizer. In this era of nose-to-tail dining, when we pat ourselves on our sustainable backs for every ear, liver or trotter we dare to eat, why do we routinely pour the most vital part of the animal down the drain?

It's not down the drain. It's into animal feed and fertilizer. But maybe there is some wonderful stuff we the white people of America are missing out on.