"I have to say, I’m pretty much on my own with this question, and I’m at a loss."

Said the director Wim Wenders, 80, asked about his movie "Wrong Move" (1975) which made the now easily perceptibly wrong move of gazing at the breasts of a 13 year old. But what to do about that now?

I'm reading, "Wim Wenders Pulls Film With Teenage Nudity After Actress’s Pleas/Nastassja Kinski was 13 years old when she was shown topless in the 1975 film 'Wrong Move.' 'I could already tell that wasn’t right,' she told a German newspaper" (NYT).

"On Wednesday, Wenders released a statement on his foundation’s website," the NYT says, linking to a German text. I used Grok to put it in English:

"While it’s unclear what in The Savant read as objectionable to Apple’s decision-makers, its delay is emblematic of the heightened caution and scrutiny Hollywood feels as it navigates the Trump administration’s media ecosystem."

From "Apple Pulls The Savant From Its Release Schedule" (Vulture).

Here's the trailer, full of pulsating anxiety about extremist violence about to reach the nicest residents of American suburbia:

"But one man — who did not agree with the protesters — decided he would occupy the central spot. To the consternation of the others, he invited people to come talk to him one-on-one."

I wrote on March 4, 2011, in "A Free-Speech Countervoice Takes the Center of the Wisconsin Capitol Rotunda."

This interlude in the Wisconsin protests came to mind as I was thinking about the death of Charlie Kirk and what his supporters might do without him. I think there is a method of engagement with people, showing courage and openness to the exchange of ideas, that is available to everyone, and it is what this one man did in 2011.

I wrote at the time: "I started to imagine Wisconsinites coming back to the building every day, talking about everything, on and on, indefinitely into the future. That man who decided to hold dialogues in the center of the rotunda is a courageous man. But it isn't that hard to be as courageous as he was. In the long run, it's easier to do that than to spend your life intimidated and repressed. That man was showing us how to be free. He was there today, but you — and you and you! — could be there tomorrow, standing your ground, inviting people to talk to you, listening and going back and forth, for the sheer demonstration of the power of human dialogue and the preservation of freedom."

Proposed museum installation: Loop this clip and project it endlessly onto each of the 4 walls of a darkened room.

I watched it 10 times and felt quite mesmerized:

Defund NPR. It should survive on its own.

pic.twitter.com/dtm5qbbxix

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 4, 2025

"I mean, when you talk to these Republican lawmakers privately, they all understand a vote against something that Donald Trump really cares about is a vote to end your career."

"I mean, there's not that many people who are willing to end their career. So even though I know for a fact there are a whole bunch of Republicans who if it was a private secret vote, would vote against — en masse — many of these nominees that he's put up, they won't dare do it in a public setting under the gaze of Donald Trump. And there's actually something deeper that's happened in American politics that Trump has changed. A generation ago, if you were a member of Congress, you could kind of protect yourself and defend yourself by raising money and having coalitions and whatever. All of that has been obliterated by Donald Trump's monopoly on the attention landscape. And If you get in their cross hairs, it doesn't matter what kind of a war chest you have that will be squirted away in two days, you are finished, your career's done."

Said Jonathan Swan, on yesterday's episode of the NYT's "Daily" podcast, "Trump 2.0 Arrives in Force."

ADDED: I figure he said "squirted away" because it's the NYT and "pissed away" is considered dirty, but "squirted away" sounds dirtier. I had to laugh.

"As well as changing cultural references such as 'Walkman,' the publisher removed words that it believed some readers might find offensive. A character is described as 'cheerful' rather than 'plump'..."

"... references to villains making victims 'slaves' have been removed and 'crazy' has been changed to 'silly.' In one of the novels, a character wearing a Halloween costume, dressed as 'a dark and stormy night,' no longer wears black face paint.  Scholastic said that it had made the changes to 'keep the language current and avoid imagery that could negatively impact a young person’s view of themselves today, with a particular focus on mental health.'"

From "Goosebumps books ‘sanitised without RL Stine’s permission’/Mental health and weight references tweaked to avoid offence" (London Times).

Stine — who cranked out 67 of these books and claimed he could write one in 6 days — tweeted: "I’ve never changed a word in Goosebumps. Any changes were never shown to me." 

If you really cared about the "mental health" of children, you'd want them reading better things than the Goosebumps series. But I can see that Scholastic is keen to keep the old series from getting cancelled for seeming behind the times for repetitively calling its characters fat and crazy.

ADDED: Four days ago, the London Times published "Goosebumps author edits mentions of weight and mental health/Writer’s self-censoring includes changing ‘plump’ to ‘cheerful’ and ‘crazy’ to ‘silly.'" That article is linked to by the newer article that contradicts it.

Did Stine self-censor or not? One or the other article needs a correction update.

I'm agnostic on whether God is toying with Jordan Peterson.

I’ve always been pretty agnostic on Peterson. But this is not good. If a leftwing icon was asked “Do you believe in God” and they answered “It depends” on the meaning of “you,” “do” or “believe” (nevermind “God”) the mockery from many Peterson fans would be wild. https://t.co/ZlyQooFZmm

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahDispatch) October 19, 2022

It's not just Jonah Goldberg. Peterson is trending on Twitter and it's mostly about this clip. We're living in a time when your worst few seconds will be ripped out of context and held up to discredit you. Better never to speak on camera at all than to risk creating one of these horrible clips to be used against you. 

We're created a mediascape where only the cocky and reckless will speak freely. Ironically, Peterson will be one of those people. Everyone else will shrink out of public view.

Mansplainingbusters.

Guess she realized how absurd she was being, because she edited it… pic.twitter.com/2n4Zqgqs5e

— IrishStephen (@NDIrishFan_72) September 21, 2022

"The word, not used intentionally in a harmful way, will be replaced. The road to success is always under construction."

Said representatives of Beyoncé, quoted in "Beyoncé to cut ableist slur from Renaissance song/Charities question why lyric was released weeks after similar controversy" (London Times).

The objected to line — on "Heated" — is "Spazzing on that ass, spaz on that ass." 

Who wrote that line? "The song has nine credited writers including Beyoncé and Drake, the Canadian rapper, but it is not clear which of them wrote the lyrics."

What was the "similar controversy" that happened recently? Lizzo used the same word, in the line "Hold my bag, bitch, hold my bag/ Do you see this shit? I’m a spaz."

"The inclusion of a transgender personality for kids and adult doll collectors alike is groundbreaking. This is bigger than even Laverne Cox herself. This would ripple down many generations to come."

Said Tinu Naija, "a New York-based Barbie enthusiast [who] ordered the Cox doll," quoted in "Laverne Cox is first trans woman to have Barbie doll modeled after her" (WaPo). 

Cox herself said: "I hope all the kids who are feeling stigmatized when their health care is being jeopardized, whose ability to play sports [is curtailed], I hope they can see this Barbie and feel a sense of hope and possibility."

ADDED: I had an additional thing I was going to say. Then I checked out the comments over there and saw the top comment is pretty close to what I'd self-censored : "I thought Ken was the first transgender Barbie doll. Look in his pants."

Ha ha. I got the original Ken doll when it came out, and I was quite interested to see what was in his pants. It was 1961. I was 10. Should Mattel have dangled that in front of me?

"I do not tolerate people who hold views that can be harmful to others.... I am tolerant of other people’s views, but only if those views are not offensive...."

Here are the actual questions on that free-speech survey we were talking about yesterday — the one the University of Wisconsin system decided to delay until next fall. 

 Please go to the link and view all the questions — it's quite long! — then answer my survey:

Is this poll distorted to get a particular result?

No. It's impressively well-balanced and neutral.

A little. It helps students perceive the value of free speech, which is good.

Yes! They want to undermine concern about an inclusive environment for women and minorities.

I don't know, but I can see why they need more time to figure this out.

 

pollcode.com free polls

"The University of Wisconsin System’s free speech survey, which was set to go out Thursday to all undergraduates, has since been pushed back to fall 2022...."

"The survey asks about self-censorship, opinions toward viewpoint diversity, perceptions of campus climate, knowledge of the First Amendment and consequences of expressing oneself.... Tyler Katzenberger, press secretary of Associated Students of Madison, said... 'We get what the survey’s trying to address and we think it's an important cause to discuss, but why is there not a survey addressing diversity issues in the System?... Why are we prioritizing this over other more pressing diversity issues?' Katzenberger said ASM additionally questioned the legitimacy of the survey because it received an exemption from UW-Stout’s institutional review board, which protects the rights and welfare of human research subjects. However, Eric Giordano, executive director of the Wisconsin Institute for Public Policy and Service, said in a statement that representatives from most other campus institutional review boards (IRBs) also 'reviewed the project and determined that the research did not qualify as human subjects research.'..."

The Capital Times reports.

Interesting that the student leader speaks of "diversity issues" repeatedly, apparently without noticing that the survey is about an issue that is labeled "diversity": "viewpoint diversity." Maybe for students, "diversity" is a term of art, and it only means diversity of identity groups and has nothing to do with the life of the mind. 

Anyway, they're censoring the censorship survey. 

"I don't know whether the backlash this piece has inspired is ridiculous or depressing. The truth is..."

"... that anyone who has spent time on a college campus in the last few years knows what this author is talking about. There is an ever-narrowing range of permissible opinion, and any apparent divergence from it risks serious social repercussions. No one really speaks their mind, except those who are most religious in their adherence to the favored ideology. I taught a university seminar recently where students repeatedly thanked me — in private — for putting tough questions to guest speakers. The students were afraid to challenge the speakers themselves — not because they were afraid of them, but because they were afraid of the other students in the room."

From the most-liked comment at "I Came to College Eager to Debate. I Found Self-Censorship Instead" by University of Virginia senior Emma Camp (NYT).

ADDED: Some of that backlash might be envy, as in: Why does this college kid get a NYT op-ed when I could have said the same thing? But the fact is, you have say it! There's real place in the world for people who just plainly state the obvious. If you can do it too, do it too!

"Students and professors, editorial assistants and editors in chief—all are aware of what kind of society they now inhabit. That’s why they censor themselves..."

"... why they steer clear of certain topics, why they avoid discussing anything too sensitive for fear of being mobbed or ostracized or fired without due process.... Many people have told me they want to change this atmosphere, but don’t know how. Some hope to ride it out, to wait for this moral panic to pass, or for an even younger generation to rebel against it.... Anonymous reports and Twitter mobs, not the reasoned judgments of peers, will shape the fate of individuals. Writers and journalists will fear publication. Universities will no longer be dedicated to the creation and dissemination of knowledge but to the promotion of student comfort and the avoidance of social-media attacks. Worse, if we drive all of the difficult people, the demanding people, and the eccentric people away from the creative professions where they used to thrive, we will become a flatter, duller, less interesting society, a place where manuscripts sit in drawers for fear of arbitrary judgments. The arts, the humanities, and the media will become stiff, predictable, and mediocre....  There will be nothing to do but sit back and wait for the Hawthornes of the future to expose us."

 
From "The New Puritans/Social codes are changing, in many ways for the better. But for those whose behavior doesn’t adapt fast enough to the new norms, judgment can be swift—and merciless" by Anne Applebaum (The Atlantic).

Hawthorne = Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of "The Scarlet Letter."

What is the real "free speech problem" on the left from the point of view of a real leftist?

I'm reading "Do Progressives Have a Free Speech Problem?/The illiberal left is a lot less threatening than the right. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist" by Michelle Goldberg (NYT). Goldberg signed the "Letter on Justice and Open Debate" that was published in Harper's, and she's using this column to expand on the topic.

She says she initially declined to sign the letter, "in part because it denounced 'cancel culture'" — a term she associates with "right-wing whiners like Ivanka Trump who think protests against them violate their free speech." I'd like to see the first draft! I want to know what had to be taken out to get so many signatures. At least we know what one person says she objected to and that it was, she says, edited out. Goldberg notes that discussions of the letter have talked about "cancel culture," even though the words aren't in the draft.

After avoiding writing about the subject — telling herself other things are more important — she got triggered by the "scathing rejoinder" written by Hannah Giorgis (in The Atlantic):

“Facing widespread criticism on Twitter, undergoing an internal workplace review, or having one’s book panned does not, in fact, erode one’s constitutional rights or endanger a liberal society.”

This sentence brought me up short; one of these things is not like the others. Anyone venturing ideas in public should be prepared to endure negative reviews and pushback on social media. Internal workplace reviews are something else. If people fear for their livelihoods for relatively minor ideological transgressions, it may not violate the Constitution — the workplace is not the state — but it does create a climate of self-censorship and grudging conformity....

"I deleted a tweet that in retrospect was mean spirited. I’m mad at myself for commenting on someone’s looks..."

"... instead of their ideas, especially so because I didn’t realize their identity, which obviously could make my comment more hurtful," tweets Thomas Chatterton Williams, who wrote that "Letter on Justice and Open Debate" we were all talking about last week.

So what was the tweet? Whose looks did he disparage?

I don't think it's the "In the middle of nowhere expelling" tweet that became a meme, explored on Know Your Meme:

"In the Middle of Nowhere Expelling" refers to a tweet by Harper's columnist Thomas Chatterton Williams. In the tweet, he relays a story about "expelling" a person from his house because they insulted New York Times opinion writer Bari Weiss. Many parodied the tweet online as a phrasal template, replacing elements of the tweet with various other absurd situations....

Hilarious. Though he deleted that post too, it's not what I'm looking for. Whose looks did he take a shot at? I'll just take a shot at his looks — he reminds me of Pat Paulson and Taylor Mead...



... but I'm going to guess that his target was Robin DiAngelo, because that's someone he's been tweeting about substantively lately:

How many "white" people can really relate to earning up to $150,000 per month from one of their revenue streams?

"during the year preceding Covid-19 [she] gave eight to 10 presentations a month, sometimes pro bono but mostly at up to $15,000 per event." https://t.co/kmKPKAQNm3

— Thomas Chatterton Williams 🌍 🎧 (@thomaschattwill) July 16, 2020

I think DiAngelo looks great in that picture. Just perfect for what she is and what she's purveying. So maybe it's someone else. Maybe Mary Trump? I tried to watch some of her interview with George Stephanopoulos and got a little absorbed in her looks...



I think it's good, if you're a writer, to have some lines about how a person looks, but I can certainly see pushing back your antagonists for talking about anybody's looks in a negative way. And there's a certain conventional etiquette that forbids speaking about looks, even in a positive way. Thomas Chatterton Williams wants to be a public intellectual, but he's showing how easy he is to push back. Stand your ground!

"As shown by the arc of my relationship with Jamie—and the many other Jamies who populate the New York writing scene—Trump is as much a symptom as a cause."

"His appearance in American politics coincides with a larger trend on the left that now serves to elevate every form of personal disappointment into a symptom of 'systemic' abuse. The result hasn’t just been that my erstwhile friends are afflicted with debilitating persecution complexes: It also has destroyed their ability to exercise independent thought. For free thought requires the free use of language, which is impossible when smart people like Jamie or Daniel are required to push the round peg of art and creation into the square hole of political sloganeering.... Is this process of submission—and the resulting discordance between ideology and one’s own authentic stream of thought—what drove my friends to states of miserable, anti-social agitation? I don’t know, because I am no longer in touch with either of the two men. I also have parted ways with my long-time girlfriend, who got swept up in these same currents, and who once literally wept in my presence because I had made a flattering reference to Camille Paglia."

From "Confessions of a ‘Soulless Troglodyte’: How My Brooklyn Literary Friendships Fell Apart in the Age of Trump" written under the pseudonym Lester Berg (Quillette).

"'Long Time, No See' Is Considered Offensive, Non-Inclusive Language at Colorado State University/Viewed as derogatory towards those of Asian descent."

A headline at Reason, linked by my son John at Facebook. I don't know about Asian. I'd have said Native American. Here's my comment over on John's post:

And don't substitute that you haven't seen the person in "many moons" or that you are "heap big" glad to see them. Don't say "Me talk-em Indian talk." Talk standard English. But, of course, to speak standard English is to exercise white privilege, so be very very careful. Or just don't say anything. You see someone you haven't seen in a long time? You could just pretend you don't see them.

Trump's word of the day yesterday: Loco.

I don't remember hearing it from him before, but I heard it twice yesterday.

1. Sparring with the press after announcing the U.S. Mexico Canada trade deal: "Oh, I think the press has treated me unbelievably unfairly. In fact, when I won I said, the good thing is now the press finally gets it. Now they’ll finally treat me fairly. They got worse! They’re worse now than ever. They’re loco, but that’s OK … I used that word because of the fact we made a deal with Mexico."

2. At a rally in Tennessee last night: "Democrats believe that they're entitled to power, and they have been... in a blind rage ever since — boy! — they lost the 2016. They've gone loco. They have gone loco. They have gone crazy."

"Loco" has been used colloquially in American English (of the western kind) since the mid-1800s, the Oxford English Dictionary tells me. The OED defines it as "Mad, insane, crazy" and says it's often used — as Trump uses it — in the phrase "to go loco." Here's the oldest example:

1852 V. S. Wortley Young Traveller's Jrnl. xx. 250 She said, she knew not what she did, but was ‘loco’ (mad) when we paid her a visit.

I looked in the 15-year archive of this blog to see if I'd ever used the word "loco" (even in a quote). I'd only said "in loco parentis" and referred to the song "The Loco-Motion" and an incident in which someone had the name "Bloody Loco." And in the context of arguing that the word "locavore" should be spelled "locovore," because the Latin root for place is "loco-" not "loca-," I speculated that the "locavores" wanted to avoid the association with the word "loco" (meaning crazy).

By the way, some people think it's wrong to make an insult out of "crazy" and words that mean crazy, because there's collateral damage to persons with mental illness. But it's so common. It would be insanely inhibiting to self-censor that one, but I did use to have many long conversations with a person who insisted on my refraining from deploying "crazy" as an insult. I know what you're thinking: He sounds crazy.

Seeing other people as toxic.

I'm reading a piece in The Paris Review that was published in June 2017 because I was looking for a David Sedaris thing that had the word "horse" in it. Read the previous post to see what I was looking for, but this June 2017 piece does have "horse" in it. David Sedaris's father calls him "Horse's ass." But it's a great piece. I just want to show you the ending. The whole thing is worth reading — it's about Sedaris's very negative reaction to the election of Donald Trump — but this is the part I want to talk about:

On Inauguration Day, I am in Seattle. Late in the afternoon, my old friend Lyn sends me a photo of an anti-Trump sticker someone found in Japan. It’s cleverly designed: three peaks that on second glance turn out to be Trump sandwiched between two Klansmen. I want to write back and say, Ha, but instead, as a joke, I respond, “Dear Lyn, I’m sorry you’re so opposed to change, or too small-minded to move past your narrow assumptions. In the future, I’d appreciate your keeping things like this to yourself. David”

A minute later, I send a follow-up email that says, “Just kidding.” And it bounces back, as do the next three emails I send. She’s blocked me! I realize. After thirty-eight years of friendship!

I go to bed that night and lie awake, worried that she’s telling everyone I’m a Trump supporter. The news will spread and by morning I’ll be ruined. But it was just a joke, I say to myself in the dark room. A horrible, horrible joke.

Of course, Sedaris is completely anti-Trump, and he doesn't deserve to be excluded by those who are doing this kind of excluding. But he's taking on the position of a person who is rendered a nonperson because he's a Trump supporter. I don't know if his story is true, because "Lyn" must have known him enough to know he's capable of deadpan humor and because how could anyone not want to maintain a direct line to David Sedaris? But whether it's true or made up, he chose in the end to highlight the problem of interpersonal alienation, and I think it's important when even those who hate Trump can see how much of a problem that is.

I know people in Madison who would say some things about Trump that are not entirely hostile but they feel that they can't, because they'd become pariahs. They'd lose all their friends. So, they go along and do the censorship they think their life depends on.