"Don't say anything robophobic."

IN THE COMMENTS: rhhardin said: "That's a Woody Allen bit. He was unkind to his toaster and the elevator threw him around for it."

Here:

"Anything that I can't reason with — or kiss or fondle — I get in trouble with." 

"Ann, I need your assessment. I thought Dershowitz was excellent but I’m not a lawyer nor a law professor. You are. Give him a grade, Professor."

Wrote M. Jordan in the comments to my post, "I will now give you a list of presidents who in our history have been accused of abusing their power, who would be subject to impeachment under the House Manager’s view of the Constitution," which quotes from the transcript of Alan Dershowitz speaking to the Senate last night.

That comment thread got off to an acrimonious start, with Annie C. saying: "Rats. When I saw your post in the cafe, I thought you were going to write what you thought about his presentation." In last night's café, people were talking about Dershowitz, and I said I'd watched and "Will write about it in the morning."

Am I writing about it if all I do is choose a passage and boldface 3 sentences of it? My answer to Annie C. — at 6:27 AM — was: "Push me to be useful and I will be even less useful."

I put up 3 more posts and went out for my sunrise run. Sunrise came at 7:18 this morning, and whatever I've said I will do "in the morning," the sunrise time is locked in. Unlike constitutional law interpretation, but sunrise is very precise.

Alan Dershowitz was concerned about precision and vagueness. He said "precisely" 5 times and  "precise" once. ("Another constitutional rule of construction is that when words can be interpreted in an unconstitutionally vague manner or in a constitutionally precise manner, the latter must be chosen.") He said "vague" or "vagueness" 20 times. Example:

Instead of answering my arguments... on their merits and possible demerits, they have simply been rejected with negative epithets. I urge the senators to ignore these epithets and to consider the arguments and counter arguments on their merits, especially those directed against the unconstitutional vagueness of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. I now offer a criteria for evaluating conflicting arguments. The criteria that I offer, I have long called the shoe on the other foot test...

In the last night's café, rhhardin said "Dershowitz thinks criteria is singular in number."

Out on my run, I thought about what Dershowitz said, and when I got back, I added to this morning's comments thread: "For the record, I was not convinced by D's argument and on reflection, I disagree with him. It would take some trouble to explain why, and I may do that later."

Precisely as I was writing that, M. Jordan was asking his question, the question you see in the post title above. It's easy for me to get started answering that question, hence this new post.

Here's how I graded when I graded students. I gave a question, and I judged them based on how they answered the question asked. I gave zero points for anything not responsive to my question, and then I converted the points to letter grades by following a required curve. So letter grades didn't mean too much to me. It was all comparative. But the points meant a lot, and you only got points for understanding the question and giving me material that got at the question.

I didn't give Dershowitz a question. To think in my lawprofessorly way about grades, I would have to infer a question that I might have asked.

I think that question should be: Restate the constitutional phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors" into a workable standard that the House and the Senate can and should use today and in the future in all cases of presidential impeachment. Explain your choice using all of the methodologies of constitutional interpretation that you deem appropriate (and explain why you are deciding this approach to interpretation is appropriate).

Do you think he did that? Read the transcript.

Has Rush Limbaugh declined in the Trump Era? If so, is it because of Trump?

In the open thread here last night, Smerdyakov raised the subject. (Smerdyakov's Blogger profile gives no information about him, other than that he wants to be thought of as "the son of the reeking one.")

Here's Smerdyakov:

Is it me or is Rush losing his sense of humor over the this impeachment thing. Depressing, and I don't listen to Rush for that. And the half hour monologues about Papadapoulos and Mifsud every other day. He used to be a lot more entertaining.

Skylark responded:

Yeah, Rush has lost the movement on his fastball. I don’t listen to him to hear him rant like the guy in the bar, I listened to him for interesting analysis. He was always very good at that kind of stuff. Leave the ranting, fifes and drums and three cornered hats to Mark Levin and Hannity.

Narciso said:

Rush has been at this for 30 years, and he doesnt see it getting better, the most outrageous things get tractions and the things of value get derided.

Wild chicken said:

Yeah, Rush has lost the movement on his fastball He's gotten more shouty than before. None of the talk guys are much fun anymore.

It's the Era of That's Not Funny, but Trump is funny... maybe so funny (and shouty) that there's no room for anyone else in the game anymore. The contrast is lost, and Trump is so big, he blots out all competitors. I know Trump caused me to stop listening to Rush Limbaugh. I let my subscription to the podcast version of the show lapse, and I used to listen all the time. I can't say if he's declined in the Trump Era, that's why I'm reading these comments and trying to understand.

There are 2 more Rush-related comments in the thread. Limited Perspective said:

I can't listen to Rush anymore. He used to find interesting topics in the news, insight into politics and human nature with a sense of humor. Now when I tune in, it's all rants and the repetitive, repeat, repeat, repeat, of last month's rant. I guess everyone winds down in time. I did enjoy listening in the day.

He sees change. And rhhardin said something that I remember him saying from time to time in the past, not seeing change (and perhaps not listening lately):

Rush is popular for a larger-than-life persona, which is actually self-deprecating humor.

When he moralizes he's awful, because he can't do self-deprecation at the same time.

This has been going on for years, it being a question of a ratio, is all.

I'll do a little poll. If you haven't been a listener to the show in the Trump Era, you should refrain from participating. Do not vote just to express support or hostility for Rush!

Has Rush declined in the Trump Era? (Pick the answer that's closest to what you think (and don't answer if none are close).)

No. He's still going strong.

No. But things have changed in a way that has made him less appealing.

Yes. He's running out of what it takes to do a long show every day.

Yes. He can't figure out how to do his thing well in the Trump Era.

pollcode.com free polls

UPDATE: Poll results:

"... $53,999, the highest non-winning total in show history..."

Did you watch yesterday's phenomenal "Jeopardy!" episode?

Described here at ESPN.

We've been enjoying the fantastic James Holzhauer, and yesterday, he had a worthy competitor, Alan Levin. I'm glad James won, but it was great to watch Alan almost get him.

Over at WaPo, Charles Lane writes "Jeopardy!’s James Holzhauer is a menace":

... Holzhauer’s streak reflects the same grim, data-driven approach to competition that has spoiled (among other sports) baseball, where it has given us the “shift,” “wins above replacement,” “swing trajectories” and other statistically valid but unholy innovations.

Like the number crunchers who now rule the national pastime, Holzhauer substitutes cold, calculating odds maximization for spontaneous play. His idea is to select, and respond correctly to, harder, big-dollar clues on the show’s 30-square gameboard first. Then, flush with cash, he searches the finite set of hiding places for the “Daily Double” clue, which permits players to set their own prize for a correct response — and makes a huge bet. Responding correctly, Holzhauer often builds an insurmountable lead before the show is half over.

Dazed and demoralized opponents offer weakening resistance as his winnings snowball....

Lane's essay went up yesterday just after Levin made his thrilling challenge, but obviously was written before. Bad luck for Lane! Ha ha.

[T]his professional gambler from Las Vegas does not so much play the game as beat the system. What’s entertaining about that? And beyond a certain point, what’s admirable?...

Of course, Holzhauer’s strategy could not work without his freaky-good knowledge of trivia, just as baseball’s shift requires a pitcher skilled at inducing batters to hit into it. The old rules, though, would have contained his talent within humane channels....

If you enjoy watching nine batters in a row strike out until the 10th hits a homer, you’re going to love post-Holzhauer “Jeopardy!”

Are you buying the baseball analogy? I like baseball well enough, but I have no opinion on whether the "grim, data-driven approach to competition... has spoiled... baseball." If it has, then is what Holzhauer is doing the same kind of grim spoilage? It seems to me that Holzhauer has plainly demonstrated a strategy to rack up much higher numbers, and it's exciting and available to other players. It requires taking a big risk early on, but you only get in a position to take that risk if you pick up a few of those $1000s in single Jeopardy and then hit the Daily Double. Yesterday, it didn't work because the show was wily enough to put the Daily Double at the $1000 level and it was the first square chosen. And Levin made some Jamesesque moves and nearly beat him. Is that like "data-driven" baseball?

IN THE COMMENTS: rhhardin says:

Actual base running in Jeopardy would be good. A ball would come in somehow.

I answer:

A model for a TV game show with a running component was "Name that Tune." They'd play a tune and the contestants had to name it, but instead of hitting buzzer to get the chance to give the right answer, you had to run across the stage and pull a cord.

I found a full "Name that Tune" show on YouTube. You can see the contestants in ridiculous action here (scroll to 6:00 to see the actual running):

Talk in the Raturday Night Café and the Google search it inspired.

Click to enlarge and clarify...



Here's a link to last night's café.

"Marriage is the death of hope" brings up webpages that purport to quote Woody Allen. I'm dubious.

"Marriage is the death of romance" gets me to some boring relationship advice plus the assertion that it's the translation of a Chinese proverb:

I'm dubious. It used to be very common to hear characters on TV (often in ads) say "Ancient Chinese wisdom" (in a fake Chinese accent) followed by something in the form of a proverb (almost always a manifestly fake proverb).

"Marriage is the death of love" gets me to boring relationship advice, some more groping after a Chinese proverb, and a review of a play about Maynard Jackson, "the first African-American mayor of a major U.S. city, elected in Atlanta in 1973":

[Playwright Pearl Cleage has a] sagacious way with words, and epigrammatic pearls like "There's no greater cynic than a failed romantic" (a variation on George Carlin’s "Scratch a cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist"). Later, when Evey recalls an epiphany of self-discovery in Paris, she tells J.P., "Marriage is the death of love."

Ha ha. Scratch me, I'm a failed cynic.

Have you thought about Maynard Jackson recently? Did you know he fought Muhammad Ali?

“The only thing that really worries me is what happens if I hit him, for his sake and for mine as well,” [Mayor] Jackson said.

“[He] will not land one punch in one round, and if he dreamed it, he better wake up and apologize!” Ali responded....

But Jackson won with a technical knockout:

“Those trunks he had saved him because he had them too high.,” Ali told reporters. “I couldn’t hit him low because you’re not supposed to hit below the belt. He came with the trunks up to his breast, therefore I couldn’t hit him in the effective spots ‘cause he’s so big, he’s like a balloon, and if you hit him he’ll bust.”

"Cheap labor isn't so bad for me... My landscaping is beautiful. There's not a bit of slime on my pool. It's good for me, but I care about my fellow Americans," says Ann Coulter.

And then hearing some muttered snark from Bill Maher about the pool, she rises to the comic occasion, leans forward, and confides, "He doesn't come to my pool."



The part I'm quoting begins around 6:00. Bill Maher's effort at a retort is, "I'm sorry, I'll make it up to you in bed tonight." What? She got off a good punchline, so he's the one who's suffered the conversational damage? He should have let his guest have the glory of a good joke.

And by the way, can a man go sexual with a woman like that, in the era of #MeToo? The knee-jerk answer is that when it's left against right, it's still just fine, but I don't buy that. And Maher's audience gives him a much bigger laugh for his line — his sexist line.

Her joke was fantastic — "He doesn't come to my pool." She had been delivering some great substantive material about cheap labor and how it benefits the rich, but she repositions to take advantage of the "slime on my pool" imagery that Maher called attention to, and she takes a shot at Trump. She's flexible enough to do that. I don't like Maher going for a cheap sex joke to top her.

Talk about slime on the pool. That's some toxic masculinity.

ADDED: In the comments, rhhardin says, "I didn't get the joke or the rejoinder. Does pool mean vagina? Is it a wetback joke? Mexican in pool leaves scum? And why wouldn't the Mexican come to the pool. You need to skim off leaves and so forth."

I don't normally interfere with rh's musings, but I had to say:

The first meaning related to the ordinary algae that forms in a pool.

The second meaning referred to Donald Trump.

A third meaning — never intended or explored — would be to characterize immigrants as slimy. The potential for seeing that meaning made the original use of the word "slime" inadvisable. It's possible that Maher was pushing that meaning onto her to get her in trouble, but Coulter's joke was to accept the Trump-hater's idea of Trump as slimy.

Let's all reread "Being and Nothingness"...

AND: A fourth meaning, offered by AZ Bob in the comments, has Maher as the "he" in "He doesn't come to my pool." If that's the meaning — and I don't think it is — then Maher's riposte is less sexist. She called him slimy, and somehow to bring his sliminess to a sexual encounter would pay her back.

Ever have one of those Facebook exchanges that make you think, I need to stay out of Facebook for a good long time?

I have!

I'm used to being the blogger, and readers come to me, and they comment here. Over on Facebook, I'm a passive reader and an occasional commenter. I do very bland posts of my own sometimes, mostly of the here's-how-Lake-Mendota-looked-today kind.

I should probably never comment on a political thread (other than my son John's posts, which are feel very much like a blog I'd love to read outside of Facebook). But I do sometimes see awful things that other people have written and feel called to say, for example, as I wrote yesterday (not on one of John's posts), "Eliminationist rhetoric. Humans visualized as insects. Is this where you want to go?"

The response I got from this person made me want to sign off Facebook and never look back.

IN THE COMMENTS: rhhardin said:

So there's some insect-related hot button so far unrevealed.

Thanks for prompting me to add my "insect politics" tag.

Whatever happened to the sweet comedians?

I ask the internet, a propos of a conversation in last night's "Deep Purple Café," which had a photograph of some lush purple flowers. Xmas said:

I'm surprised they are still selling purple lupines. I thought you were far enough East that they'd be considered invasive.

And I said:

These are not lupines. I am certain they are salvia because I have another picture of the same set of plants where the label, a sticker on the pot, is clearly readable. These are May Night Salvia. The 2 plants are completely different, not even the same order. Salvia are Lamiales, which include 23,810 species, including (Wikipedia says) "lavender, lilac, olive, jasmine, the ash tree, teak, snapdragon, sesame, psyllium, garden sage, and a number of table herbs such as mint, basil, and rosemary." Lupines are Fabales, which include "the families Fabaceae or legumes (including the subfamilies Caesalpinioideae, Mimosoideae, and Faboideae), Quillajaceae, Polygalaceae or milkworts (including the families Diclidantheraceae, Moutabeaceae, and Xanthophyllaceae), and Surianaceae."

Lupines are in the family Fabaceae or Leguminosae — "commonly known as the legume, pea, or bean family..."

Blah blah blah... I had to reverse that line of Wikipedia-powered blather:

I'm just cutting and pasting from Wikipedia and not showing off my own knowledge. I had to look it all up. If you'd have told me, 10 minutes ago, that salvia and lupine were 2 words for the same plant, you could have fooled me.

rhhardin reacted aptly:

Furze and gorse are the only two exact synonyms in English.

And I said:

I'd like a comedy team named Furze and Gorse.

And then I started thinking of all the comedy teams that were around in the 1960s. There was a sweetness to them. Who was I thinking of? Allen & Rossi?



That's a random men-in-shorts occurrence. Anyway, back then, the audience laughed easily at Marty simply saying "Hello dere."

The second sweet comedy team I think of is Shields & Yarnell:



That was back when we loved mime. Mimes were so sweet. And Sonny and Cher were a pretty sweet comedy team too. But where is the sweetness now?

The internet returned this 2017 NYT article, "Sick of Angry Comics? Try Some Sweet-Tempered Stand-Up":

Comedy clubs have long been packed with head-shakers airing grievances and heatedly picking apart nonsense. But [Josie] Long is part of a new breed of young performers more likely to begin a joke with affection than annoyance and to end with ridiculousness, not ridicule. This sunnier stand-up is in part a function of the times, when social media keeps count of likes and favorites, and late-night television is a chummy safe space for celebrities. But the hopefulness is also a refreshing artistic change of pace, a backlash against generations of smug finger-pointing and knowing raised eyebrows. When irritation becomes so common, good cheer can be novel, if not downright irreverent....

Is there a nascent sweetness trend in comedy? If so, can we also get a sweetness trend in politics? I'm sick of all the anger there too.

When Maureen Dowd used the word "editrix"...

I asked:

By the way, do you find "editrix" jaunty and amusing, annoying and groan-worthy, or evidence that Dowd isn't doing feminism right?

It doesn't really matter who the "editrix" in question was, but it was some former editor of Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire.

I got a lot of interesting answers. Robert Cook went for what I see as the traditional feminist answer:

"Editrix" is anachronistic, as are terms such as "waitress" and "actress," etc. The terms "editor," "waiter," (now "server"), and "actor" are not innately masculine in their connotations, and so are suitable--preferable--when referring to females working at these jobs.

"Editrix" is anachronistic, as are terms such as "waitress" and "actress," etc. The terms "editor," "waiter," (now "server"), and "actor" are not innately masculine in their connotations, and so are suitable--preferable--when referring to females working at these jobs.

Mary Beth did the research:

Yeah, like early 20th Century, when the word was first used. Google Ngram shows it becoming popular in 1911, except for one fluke blip in the graph in 1838. It actually looks like it's becoming more popular.

We don't need gendered nouns in a non-gendered language so the use of one seems like an affectation. It was still the most interesting thing in what I read.

Though rhhardin joked us in a childish direction — "Editrix is for kids" — quite a few minds went straight from "-trix" to "dominatrix." Owen said:

"Editrix" should be "editrice." Sounds less like black leather and fishnet stockings, more classy.

And Ignorance is Bliss said:

I find a sudden urge to check if PornHub has and editrix category, just to see what that might involve.

And I think that's something of what's going on in the mind of tim in vermont:

As a man, I can only say "editrix" communicates female power and competence. But we men know nothing, we think that the sexes are different in many ways not visually obvious.

Similarly, FIDO:

["Editrix"] is perfect for a controlling female authority figure, adding a little panache to an otherwise dreary field.

I'm front-paging all that because I thought this was quite a coincidence yesterday: I was continuing my reading of Mary McCarthy's "Up the Ladder from Charm to Vogue" (in the essay collection "On the Contrary: Articles of Belief"), first blogged about in this post on April 3d (which I was reading because I'd done the research and discovered that it is the first published appearance of the word "Orwellian" (in 1950)). And I encountered the word "editress."

Unlike the older magazines, whose editresses were matrons who wore (and still wear) their hats at their desks as though at a committee meeting at the Colony Club, Mademoiselle was staffed by young women of no social pretensions, college graduates and business types, live wires and prom queens, middle-class girls peppy or sultry, fond of fun and phonograph records....

But beyond the attempt [by Vogue] to push quality goods during a buying recession like the recent one, or to dodge responsibility for an unpopular mode (this year’s sheaths and cloches are widely unbecoming), there appears to be some periodic feminine compulsion on the editresses’ part to strike a suffragette attitude toward the merchants whose products are their livelihood, to ally themselves in a gush with their readers, who are seen temporarily as their “real” friends.

There are 2 other appearances of "editress" in the essay, including one, I realize now, that was in the excerpt I put up on April 3rd:

As an instrument of mass snobbery, this remarkable magazine [Flair], dedicated simply to the personal cult of its editress, to the fetichism of the flower (Fleur Cowles, Flair, a single rose), outdistances all its competitors in the audacity of its conception. It is a leap into the Orwellian future, a magazine without contest or point of view beyond its proclamation of itself, one hundred and twenty pages of sheer presentation, a journalistic mirage....

I'm not going to insist that Maureen Dowd read my blog post, but if it's more than coincidence that her next column uses a feminine form of "editor," I wonder if she considered the word "editress" and opted instead for "editrix" and, if so, why? I think the answer is up there in what various commenters said: "editrix" sounds more exciting and dominating and "editress" is condescending. Mary McCarthy certainly meant to sound condescending as hell.

The OED says the "-trix" ending began in English with some words adopted from the Latin — administratrix, executrix, persecutrix, etc. And: "The suffix has occasionally been loosely used to form nonce-feminines to agent-nouns in -ter, as paintrix n. instead of the regular paintress. The commoner suffix in English is -tress suffix...." That is, when you go for "-trix" rather than "-tress" to goof around with feminizing one of those nouns about things people do, you're being weirder, and therefore going for an effect, like making us laugh or get excited, which is what Dowd did.

"Trump is wrong on the flag and the anthem. Forced respect isn't respect, it's submission."

So writes ace commenter rhhardin in the previous post, which is about Trump's new tweet, "If NFL fans refuse to go to games until players stop disrespecting our Flag & Country, you will see change take place fast. Fire or suspend!"

1. Trump did not say You must respect. He didn't even say You must stop disrespecting. He only made an observation about cause and effect: If fans stop attending games because the showing of disrespect is part of the spectator experience, it will create market pressure on management and players to improve their product to win back their customers.

2. There is a difference between outward display and what is in a person's heart, but you can refrain from displaying disrespect toward people and things you don't respect because you, in fact, do have a sincere appreciation for peace and civility or because it's in your social or economic interest. That's something most of us do every day, when we refrain from vocalizing random unkind thoughts or smile and speak pleasantly to people who are bothering us for one reason or another.

3. Let's assume that management gets the message that the product — a football game — is unacceptable to the customers —  the spectators — without the traditional opening ceremony — all players standing as a group and not drawing attention to their own individual opinions. How can management insure that every single player goes along? Trump's idea is: Just make it clear that it's a firing offense. Presumably, then, every man would stand there as required.

4. Now, the problem raised by rhhardin is that we would know they were all just standing there like that because of the firing threat. When the camera shows the faces of the players, there'd be static in the old-time fan-fantasy that these guys really love our country. We might think: Oh, he's just doing what they forced him to do.* That's not real love. He might be seething inside, hating the country even more, because he knows he's doing it for the money. ("[T]he average salary of an NFL player is only $1.9 million per year.")

5. The serious question — as I hear rhhardin's pithy comment — is what is the satisfaction for the fans? How will they experience the new product? It may look like respect, but we know what some of them are really thinking, and they're only acting respectful because their livelihood was put on the line. Let's do a poll:

Under the proposed new policy, what would be the most common experience for the kind of football fan who cares about the traditional opening ceremony?

The outward show of respect would be enough to convey respect as it had in the past.

It wouldn't read as true respect, so the fan would be dissatisfied.

There would be added enjoyment observing the submission of the would-be protesters.

Knowledge of the submission would make it worse than having to see a player kneel.

pollcode.com free polls

_______________________

* As I read this post out loud, this sentence makes Meade start singing the same Bob Dylan line that was in my head as I was writing: "Sooner or later, one of us must know/That you were just doin' what you’re supposed to do..."

ADDED: Poll results:

Why did Clay Travis say "I believe in the First Amendment and boobs," and what's the best thing Brooke Baldwin could have said in response?

I put the clip up yesterday, and said little other than that Travis clearly meant to say it and had no regret about saying it. I'm interested in figuring out what he was trying to make happen. He's a radio guy. Is he a shock jock? Was it just: Here's my opportunity, I'll get everyone talking about me? Or did he think he could trigger a substantive discussion about freedom of speech or the looks-based success of women in TV journalism?

Brooke Baldwin, the female CNN host, handled the comment by repeatedly asking Travis if he'd really said "boobs," emphasizing her own status "as a woman," giving the other guest (Keith Reed) a chance to speak (but cutting him off 3 times when he was speaking), and then announcing "I'm done, yanking mikes, bye."

Baldwin has a written piece at CNN now, "Speaking like this to women in 2017? No way." She reveals that her own response to was to "let it hang," but her executive producer (a man) started talking to her in her earpiece, and that's why "I just couldn't let this go."

I quickly felt myself turning red -- getting irritated and angry. My mind was racing. My face, I could tell, was incredulous. In the thick of it all, I could see my other guest, Keith Reed, was equally aghast. The newsroom around me fell silent. I was staring into the camera trying to make sense of what was unfolding on live television.... And then I did something I've done only a handful of times in my career. I told the control room to kill his mic and said "bye."

The stages: 1. Disbelief, 2. Anger, 3. End of discussion.

Rewatching the video, what bothers me most is that Baldwin cuts Reed off. He's saying lucid things, responding to Travis appropriately. Anyway, I understand the reaction that Travis wouldn't have gotten on the show in the first place if they'd known he would say that, but I wish that instead of Baldwin's theater of disbelief, anger, and silencing, she'd confronted him with intelligence and strength. Why — if she's good enough to be a CNN host — couldn't she get out a pithy question requiring Travis to connect up his thoughts? I'm thinking of something like: Did you come on my show to play the clown or do "boobs" — as you inelegantly put it — have something to do with your idea of why Curt Schilling got fired and Jamele Hill did not? 

Dominate him. Don't let him melt you!

Baldwin claims that Travis's remark was unexpected, but according to Callum Borchers at WaPo, "Clay Travis used his ‘First Amendment and boobs’ line long before he shocked CNN." Travis was invited on Baldwin's show after he'd written:

I don’t believe Jemele Hill should be fired for tweeting Donald Trump was a white supremacist and for recently saying police officers are modern-day slave catchers. I also don’t believe Curt Schilling should have been fired for what he said about the North Carolina transgender bathroom law or any of the other conservative political positions he’s adopted over the years. That’s because I’m a First Amendment absolutist — the only two things I 100 percent believe in are the First Amendment and boobs — who is also capable of doing something that most in modern media seem incapable of — distinguishing between a person’s public job and their private political beliefs. (Which are also public thanks to modern-day social media.)

Borchers writes:

And that wasn't the first time. Travis wrote in June 2015 that “absolutism on either the right or the left is scary to me — which is why I’m a radical moderate — who believes in only two things absolutely: the First Amendment and boobs."

When Baldwin appeared stunned and disgusted by Travis's quip on Friday, he replied, “I say it live on the radio all the time.”

This is who Travis is. CNN ought to have known what it was getting.

All right then. I assume CNN did know. In which case, the whole hoo-ha is fake news. CNN got its viral clip circulating, and however many people now view Clay Travis as toxic, I'm sure he getting lots of new listeners for his podcast. Let me look for that page. Oh! Here's Travis discussing the incident (warning: big boobs):

So I just went on CNN to discuss the collapse of MSESPN and said I didn’t believe Jemele Hill or Curt Schilling should be fired because I believe completely in only two things that have never let me down — the first amendment and boobs. And when I said that CNN got totally and completely triggered. Seriously, this thing plays out like an SNL skit. The other guy sputters and goes straight into offended pearl clutching mode.

That has an update:

CNN is so offended by my comments that they already asked me to come back on Monday. And, for the record, I will be on Fox News tomorrow night.

In the end, it's all about ratings. That's what they really believe in. Forget all the I-can't-believe-you-said-that-in-this-day-and-age, if it makes us watch, they'll be saying it more. In the end, they'll give the people what we want. Demand in the marketplace of ideas overcomes censorship. And that thought shines a different light on the remark "I believe in the First Amendment and boobs" and transforms it into a proposition I heartily endorse.

ADDED: For reference, here's how CNN — the woman with a man in her earpiece — presents Brooke Baldwin:



IN THE COMMENTS: Quoting me — "Did you come on my show to play the clown or do 'boobs' — as you inelegantly put it — have something to do with your idea of why Curt Schilling got fired and Jamele Hill did not?" — rhhardin says "Boobs are her job so that domination isn't going to work."

I'd never noticed Baldwin until this boobs thing erupted, but now that I've watched the clip embedded above, I see the problem very clearly. Baldwin is disempowered and silenced. She cannot address the issue head on. She's too implicated.

She's got a man talking into her ear. The producer is prodding her to react, but how can she say the interesting, probing thing I'd like to hear? What does she really think about boobs in media? She can't talk about it.

So we get women on TV, and they're pushed to talk about women's issues, but they can't really do it. Their value is appropriated and drained. And the sexist view of women is amplified: She's put in skimpy clothes, sculpted with contouring makeup, and left with nothing to say about sexism except to get flustered and mad, as prompted by a male ventriloquist.

"There's a probably tedious book of Dick and Jane grown up, after the divorce."

Wrote rhhardin in the comments to "Have you ever seen a sentence written on the 50th grade level?"

I said "It's called 'The Dynamics of Interbeing and Monological Imperatives in Dick and Jane: A Study in Psychic Transrelational Gender Modes.'"

I wouldn't have gotten the reference myself, so let me share this:

"Kafka's hero didn't have tweets."

Writes rhhardin in the comments to the previous post, which is about the rumors about secret proceedings against Trump.

I get the commentary as it pertains to the current news, but part of me would like to see "The Trial" rewritten as a series of tweets from K.

"Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested...." Full text at link, so have at it.

Here's Trump tweeting his response to the WaPo rumor:

They made up a phony collusion with the Russians story, found zero proof, so now they go for obstruction of justice on the phony story. Nice

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 15, 2017

IN THE COMMENTS: Kate wrote:

-No breakfast today. wtf?

-Old woman who lives opposite is a freakin busybody. Buy the book, honey!

-Come on in pal, and join the party.
Him: You rang?
No, srsly, that's what he said!
Me: Howzabout breakfast?

-Ugh. I should've stayed in my room.

-Hey, buddy, it's a free country. Peace, love. Laws. wtf are you doing in my home?

-Is this a bday prank? Cuz I can take a joke like a bawz. #candidcamera

New York's Public Theater does Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" with a Trump lookalike playing JC and getting stabbed to death on stage.

"Criticism of the play reached a fever pitch on Sunday when Fox News reported that it 'appears to depict President Trump being brutally stabbed to death by women and minorities.'" And now sponsors are withdrawing, the NYT reports:

“No matter what your political stance may be, the graphic staging of ‘Julius Caesar’ at this summer’s Free Shakespeare in the Park does not reflect Delta Air Lines’ values,”* the company said in a statement on Sunday night.

“Their artistic and creative direction crossed the line on the standards of good taste,” the company said. “We have notified them of our decision to end our sponsorship as the official airline of the Public Theater effective immediately.”

Bank of America followed hours later, saying it would withdraw financial support from the production of “Julius Caesar” but would not end its financial relationship with the theater, which a spokeswoman, Susan Atran, said had lasted for 11 years.

The NYT itself is a sponsor of the play, and the article reports pressure on the Times to withdraw. Its position, however, is: "As an institution that believes in free speech for the arts as well as the media, we support the right of the Public Theater to stage the production as they chose."

This conception of the play pre-dated the Kathy Griffin incident:

Performances at Central Park's Delacorte Theater began in late May, just days before comedian Kathy Griffin was widely condemned for posing for a photograph in which she gripped a bloodied rendering of Trump's head.

If the producers had had a chance to see how Kathy's tribulations unfurled, they'd probably have done the show another way. But they committed to their idea back when it was harder to see through the shell of the bubble. And now they're losing money over it.

The show runs until June 18th, and the show must go on. What else can they do? Change the makeup, wig, and costume of the lead actor? Send some weasel out to do a faux Shakespearean we-mean-no-harm prologue, some sort of "If we shadows have offended/Think but this, and all is mended" bullshit...



____________________

* "United couldn't have said that" (says rhhardin in the comments.)

Seriously hardcore resistance to travel.

In the "Muddy Boots Café," where I alluded to our recent sojourn in Utah, rhhardin said:

I can take the somewhat wind-sheltered daily bike route to the more distant Kroger or the exposed route to the nearer Kroger, for getting out of the house; and nice wifi at home.

What more do you need?

And:

It helps if you're repelled by travel, say from early exposure to world-spanning business trips. No exoticism is worth the hassle and motels. You're always looking forward to getting home.

Happy New Year's Day — pre-dawn, quiet-house looking back on New Year's Eve.

Some of you spent at least some of the annual-nonsense evening at this blog's New Year's Eve post. I'm up working on what I can't really properly tag written strangely early in the morning. It's just not strange for me to be writing early in the morning. Maybe there are some topics that are strange to blog early in the morning, but the comments that arrived while I was sleeping isn't one of them.

MadAsHell said:

Haven't you used this video....er, pardon me....movie in an earlier post?? 

Yes, here. Back when I was editing home movies and posting them as I made them. But I never put this up on actual New Year's Eve before.

Charlie Currie said:

Wait, these are my family home movies...ha...I really need to work on getting mine digitized.

It's easy to get them digitized. I was happy with Legacy Box. The hard part is figuring out what belongs in a watchable edit and not getting distracted by thoughts about how they should have used the camera. It's pointless to say hold the camera steady, pan slowly, and stop showing people opening Christmas presents.

EDH said:

Did any children coincidentally arrive 9 months after that hootenanny?

My parents already had their 3 children, 2 of whom you see in bed in the beginning of the clip. As for "hootenanny," I'm sure the music was not folk. I'm guessing, since it was danceable, it was some kind of big band jazz or Latin music.

BJM said:

Great video Althouse! My folks had a Tiki party room with bamboo furniture, jungle floral drapes, a palm thatched roof over the bar and a pair of red & white conga drums ala Ricky Ricardo... corny as all get out now... but it was magical to an eight yr old creeping down the stairs in the dark to watch a very similar scene of merry making on New Year's Eve 1954.

Yes, everybody loved Ricky back then.



Lucy always wanted to get into his act, and she embodied all of America's desire to get up and dance. Americans really wanted to be happy.

rhhardin said:

Traditionally, I just go to bed on new year's eve and the dog wakes me up at midnight when the rural gunfire starts outside.

At 9:31 PM, Peg said:

I'm sitting here reading Ann's blog. You can imagine how thrilling my evening is! ;)

I outdid you by being asleep.

Earnest Prole said:

If I recall from years ago, it's your mother sitting in someone's lap showing off her garter -- remind us of the story.

I had to edit something out of that part of the video. But there's no "story" to tell. I don't know who the man is.

robother said:

God, the memories! Even in the mid sixties, girls had garters holding up nylons, the flash of which was an instant turn-on. Pantyhose didn't off[er] anywhere near the titillation, and presented whole different logistical issues in seduction by dashboard light.

If only you knew the struggle in the sliver of time when miniskirts overlapped with wearing stockings and garters. Stockings had a dark band at the top, and, when sitting, you had to take care not to let your "stocking tops" show.

Andy Cunningham said:

I like how everyone used to look so nice. Back when, men wore suits, ties, hats and pocket squares even while robbing a bank. People dressed up for meals. Singers and comedians dressed up. You could often discern a man's job since it came with a uniform (and hat). Now with the 60's riff raff running things we are all under-dressed even to paint a garage.

Here's a 39-second edit I made of home-movie clips of my father. Check out — at 6 seconds — what he wore to install patio bricks.

Big Mike said:

Happy New Year to Professor Althouse and the irrefutable Meade.

Irrefutable?! I'm going to use that.

Sane_voter said:

2016 ended wonderfully with Mariah Carey's epic fail live on ABC just before the ball drop....

Ah, yes. A bad start for the year for Mariah Carey....

Shit happens 😩 Have a happy and healthy new year everybody!🎉 Here's to making more headlines in 2017 😂 pic.twitter.com/0Td8se57jr

— Mariah Carey (@MariahCarey) January 1, 2017

But what are you going to do? Shit happens.

When a Che Guevara humidor was a "Trumptastic" Christmas gift.

From "8 ‘Trumptastic’ Holiday Gifts" — a Politico article about a selection of gifts that appeared in the Winter 2006 issue of Trump magazine:

IN THE COMMENTS: rhhardin said:

Grab them by the humidor.

"Speaking of news, there's as usual no sensible explanation of Pence's plane off the runway."

"Nobody can find a single person able to offer a simple technical explanation. Hard landing suggests they were either fast or long and in a hurry to get it down to start slowing, which is a pilot error. You're supposed to go around."

Writes rhhardin (in the comments to the previous post).

Here's a typical article on the Pence plane incident, short on technical substance and padded with fluff — like Pence throwing a football at some earlier point in the day, the choice of food on the flight (salmon or pork, the pork with "loaded potato"), the Secret Service joke before the landing ("93 percent chance we crash"), the view from the window ("Grass and mud starts coming up"), the thoughts in the head of one passenger ("Are we going to stop in the water? Are we going to stop in the grass? Are we going to hit something? … What’s the end game here?”), the smell ("like rubber, like burnt rubber"), quotes from people who didn't know what happened ("We were trying to figure out what the f--- had happened"), and the difficulty passengers had getting reconnected with their luggage.

"This case inspires terror in some artists who fear they could end up in court for denying that a work they did not do isn't theirs."

The artist who got sued for saying he didn't paint that — has won his case.

The evidence, the judge said, showed this was a case of imperfect memories, coincidences and mistaken identity. He said it was a different Peter Doige, who spelled his name with an "e," who created the artwork. Feinerman rejected the idea that Doig, the renowned artist, and Doige were the same person.

[Robert] Fletcher, 62, testified that he bought the painting of a desert landscape [for $100] while Doig was serving prison time in Canada's Thunder Bay Correctional Center. But Feinerman said it was Doige — who was several years older and painted at the time — who was briefly in prison.

2 Doig[e]s, painting in the same prison. That's odd! The plaintiff still thinks he's got a real Doig, and who knows how much  money he can get for what he at least once believed was good for $10 million.

ADDED: The quote in the headline is from a law professor, and you might be disinclined to pull it apart enough to see that it's got too many negatives, as the first 2 commenters simultaneously point out:

I think there's an extra negative in that sentence. — campy at 6:53 AM

I hesitate to say that I don't disagree with you. — rhhardin at 6:53 AM

Trump's tendency to say "There's something going on"...

... attracts the attention of Max Ehrenfreund at WaPo's Wonkblog.

That phrase, according to political scientists who study conspiracy theories, is characteristic of politicians who seek to exploit the psychology of suspicion and cynicism to win votes.

The idea that people in positions of power or influence are conspiring to conceal sinister truths from the public can be inherently appealing, because it helps make sense of tragedy and satisfies the human need for certainty and order. Yet politicians hoping to take advantage of these tendencies must rely on vague and suggestive statements, since any specific accusation could be easily disproved.

"He's leaving it to the audience to piece together what he's saying," said Joseph Uscinski, a political scientist at the University of Miami, in a recent interview.... Uscinski noted that Trump has used the tactic throughout his campaign to gain support by appealing to voters' fears and cynicism. "The one thing that’s remained absolutely consistent is his penchant for conspiracy theorizing," Uscinski said.

Yeah, there's something going on there with Trump saying there's something going on there. I'm prompted to try to piece together what scary, sinister plans Trump may be conspiring to conceal. So many layers!

Meanwhile: "Trump revokes [Washington] Post press credentials, calling the paper ‘dishonest’ and ‘phony’" — writes Paul Farhi at — of all places — WaPo.

“Based on the incredibly inaccurate coverage and reporting of the record setting Trump campaign, we are hereby revoking the press credentials of the phony and dishonest Washington Post,” read a post on Trump’s Facebook page.

Another post said, “I am no fan of President Obama, but to show you how dishonest the phony Washington Post is, they wrote, ‘Donald Trump suggests President Obama was involved with Orlando shooting’ as their headline. Sad!”

Trump was referring to an article that posted online Monday morning that was headlined, “Donald Trump seems to connect President Obama to Orlando shooting.” The article was the most-read on The Post’s website at the time. Its original headline, which Trump accurately cited in his Facebook post, was changed about 90 minutes later. The newspaper changed it on its own, before Trump’s complaint.

What was the original headline?

ADDED: The original headline — included in the blocked quote — was "Donald Trump suggests President Obama was involved with Orlando shooting." Sorry for leaving that question at the end of this post. I had meant to delete it. What a crazy, embarrassing headline! But "The newspaper changed it on its own, before Trump’s complaint." There's some low-level self-praise!

IN THE COMMENTS: rhhardin — known for his gnomic comments — gets off a string of gems:

1. "What was the original headline?"/More Mush from the Wimp.

2. Something's happening here./Everybody look what's going down.

3. Suspicion is looking up, etymologically speaking. I don't know if a toga was involved.

4. Weasel words have a musky smell.

5. Terrorists don't hate. They're fine upstanding participants in a stable culture. Just keep the culture in their own country.

6. The unicorn ate it gravely./Finest line in Thurber.

Here's "The Unicorn in the Garden," for understanding #6.