"I'm still mulling the point... about whether or not both parties moved in an individualistic direction and that there were these big solidaristic movements on the left that that began to to fade.... "

"My instinct was it was wrong. And as I think about it, I think it's right, but I think that it's right for possibly a different reason...."

Mulls Ezra Klein, in the new episode of his podcast, "MAHA Is a Bad Answer to a Good Question." I'm jumping you to a spot about half an hour into the discussion:

"I think there's a sense that that politics failed... particularly after 2024... You look around at the way... communal shaming worked. You look at the way people look back on the pandemic. You look at the backlash now to what gets called wokeness, Me Too. And whatever you believe about the underlying arguments being made that the effort to shame your way to a better world was a political failure — not a small political failure, but a political failure that has empowered the absolute worst people, the people you feared the most, like a Murderers' Row of who you did not want to have power.... And the move — I'm not sure if I would call it towards individualism — but away from this heavily enforced solidarity of both action and language — very, very aggressive on speech and info hazards — that that was part of what went wrong....  [T]he left became extremely comfortable with the deployment of state power on behalf of institutions and so on in a way that really radicalized the other side. And the other side didn't become libertarian — in a strange way, they became authoritarian...."

Klein seems to be blaming the left for making the right authoritarian, but isn't he also accusing the left of authoritarianism? What is "heavily enforced solidarity" that's "very, very aggressive on speech and info hazards" — what is it to be "extremely comfortable with the deployment of state power" — if not authoritarianism?

By the way, what is a Murderers' Row? The term goes back to at least 1850, when it referred to a row of prison cells in New York City's Tombs. But most Americans probably think of it in as referring to baseball— especially the 1927 New York Yankees, which had a very intimidating batting lineup. If that's your reference point, Klein sounds like he's expressing awe and admiration for the left's adversaries. Trump is the Babe Ruth of politics.

"Larry David had one of the stupidest op-eds in today's New York Times in which he compares Bill Maher having dinner with Donald Trump with having dinner with Adolf Hitler."

"Um, you know, Larry David, that's a form of Holocaust denial. Comparing Trump to Hitler is a form of Holocaust denial because Trump didn't have gas chambers, he didn't have shooting squads, he didn't take babies, and throw them into ovens, and if you're making a comparison what you're saying is Hitler didn't have any of those things either. So shame — shame — on you Larry David. You know, we used to be friends, boy. No more. And the one thing: about Larry David he stopped being funny, I don't laugh at his jokes anymore because I know they're not jokes. That's who he really is, so they're not jokes...."

Said Alan Dershowitz, trashing Larry David's trashing of Bill Maher's dining with Trump.

Here's David's NYT op-ed "My Dinner With Adolf" — free-access link — which begins:

Imagine my surprise when in the spring of 1939 a letter arrived at my house inviting me to dinner at the Old Chancellery with the world’s most reviled man, Adolf Hitler. I had been a vocal critic of his on the radio from the beginning, pretty much predicting everything he was going to do on the road to dictatorship. No one I knew encouraged me to go. “He’s Hitler. He’s a monster.” But eventually I concluded that hate gets us nowhere. I knew I couldn’t change his views, but we need to talk to the other side....

Read the whole thing. I gave you the free link. Now, I do think what Larry wrote there is funny. It just violates a rule of taste: You shouldn't compare anything to the Holocaust. 

We can talk about why that rule fell out of fashion. But whether Larry David is violating a strict and important rule or just going with the flow of the current taste within his hyper-elite stratum of society is a separate question from whether it's funny.

"The Emcee is some poor jerk in Germany who’s all by himself, sort of a drunk and probably, you know, into other drugs."

"The girls all have to prove themselves to him. And then he goes home at the end of the day to milk and cookies. He has nothing of a life, except what goes on in that nightclub, and everything goes on in that nightclub. I’d worked in nightclubs before, and I hated it — all these crummy emcees who would do anything for a laugh, such creeps. One day, I said to [the director Hal Prince], 'Let me try something at rehearsal today.' And I did. I was very lewd with all the girls, touching and feeling them — I was disgusting! And they were all looking at me like I’d lost my mind. Afterward, I went and hid behind a flat in the theater because I thought my career was over. It was so vulgar. And I was standing in the back, hiding from everybody, and Hal walked up to me, and he put his arm around me, and he said, 'Joely, that’s it.'"

Said Joel Grey, quoted in "The Yesteryear Issue/‘Good God, It Was Fun!’/Barbra Streisand, Liza Minnelli, Dick Van Dyke, and more legends of Broadway reprise their most memorable characters" (NY Magazine).

He created a brilliant role and made "Cabaret" what it is, but you could never do that today. You couldn't suddenly surprise the other actors by groping them lewdly... even if it was all for art.

For the annals of Things I Asked Grok... I wrote:

1. What if this scenario happened today:

Trump seeks to excise "divisive" ideology from the Smithsonian Institution.

Read the text of his "Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Restores Truth and Sanity to American History."  Excerpts:

The Order directs the Vice President, who is a member of the Smithsonian Board of Regents, to work to eliminate improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology from the Smithsonian and its museums, education and research centers, and the National Zoo.

What was happening at the zoo?! 

More generally, how do you decide what is "improper, divisive, or anti-American"? I'm sure some will say that it's improper, divisive, and anti-American to sanitize race out of the presentation of our history and culture.

Does the order step down from that abstraction and get specific as it discusses enforcement of the Trumpian vision?

It's shocking that a man in this mental condition is President of the United States.

I'm reading "Biden Calls Meta’s Ending of Fact-Checking Program ‘Shameful’/Responding to a question from a reporter, the president said he believed Americans 'want to tell the truth'" in the NYT.

You can see from the headline that the NYT is forefronting something he said that seems like something its readers will agree with. I think it's wrong and deceptive — shameful, really. He doesn't seem to understand the "community notes" approach to dealing with misinformation or the bias problem with the fact-checkers. 

But if you keep reading this article about yesterday's press conference, it gets worse and worse.

"I would say it's a bony eared assfish"/"Honestly, I thought this was a joke until I saw more comments saying it."

A discussion at the animal ID subreddit — "I found this fish in my box of frozen shrimp."

Someone links to the article at Wikipedia, which contains the statement, "The bony-eared assfish may have the smallest brain-to-body weight ratio of any vertebrate."

And somebody says "The amount of shaming on its Wikipedia page is harsh. They start by implying it’s stupid and go on to refer to it as 'flabby.' Who did it hurt?"

Why doesn't this article even mention RFK Jr.? This is precisely his issue.

I'm reading "We Tire Very Quickly of Being Told That Everything Is on Fire," by Jeneen Interlandi in the NYT:

The obesity crisis has... brought its share of unintended consequences. Alarm bells have almost certainly nudged more people to eat healthier foods. They also helped spur the development of effective anti-obesity medications. But they have not touched off any meaningful effort to repair our food system, which most experts agree is the root cause of expanding waistlines. 

"Obesity did not reach epidemic proportions because of changes in human nature or human willpower," says Tom Frieden, who served as C.D.C. director under the Obama administration and is now president of the public health nonprofit Resolve to Save Lives. "What changed is that our environment became far more conducive to weight gain." 

What crisis vibes have managed to accomplish is to normalize fat-shaming, especially among doctors. Shame is a deeply ineffective way to resolve any health crisis, but it has proved especially counterproductive and cruel when it comes to weight loss.....

Why doesn't this article even mention RFK Jr.? This is precisely his issue. He blames the food industry, and Trump's elevation of him to Secretary of Health and Human Services surely  represents a "meaningful effort to repair our food system." But why look at him when we have an Obama era former C.D.C. director to quote? And, more importantly, why give him any credit for getting something right when we are deeply into the agenda of portraying him as a dangerous crackpot.

Yes, I'm journalism-shaming, and I think it needs to be cruel to be productive.

"Going high is the only thing that works, because when we go low, when we use those same tactics of degrading and dehumanizing others, we just become part of the ugly noise that’s drowning out everything else. We degrade ourselves. We degrade the very causes for which we fight."

Said Michelle Obama, at the 2020 Democratic National Convention.

Quoted in "Walz’s 'couch' quip, and Democrats’ growing comfort in going low/The Democratic VP nominee’s apparent reference to a lewd, fake internet story reflects a more bare-knuckle campaign against a GOP presidential nominee who has spent years plumbing new depths." That's an essay by Aaron Blake, at WaPo.

It gets my "civility bullshit" tag, because civility has been advocated in the past, and Democrats are in a phase where they see an entitlement to reject it.

This also gets my "masturbation" tag. Who would have predicted that Democrats would lean heavily into masturbation shaming? It's 30 years since Bill Clinton fired Jocelyn Elders!

"As I applied the nightly serum, I remembered the description, by philosopher Clare Chambers in her book, Intact: A Defence of the Unmodified Body, of 'shametenance'..."

"... all the things we do (like applying 'natural makeup') that contribute to the idea that our unmodified bodies are shameful, that even our ageing eyelids must be fixed.... And then one night I had a terrible dream that my eyelashes had grown too long. They were like a dark black fringe, blinding me, and I woke in a sweat. Shortly after this, I started to read about experts warning of potential side-effects linked to eyelash growth serums, including 'a permanent change in eye colour,' dark circles under the eyes and 'a sunken effect.' At this point my lashes had grown longer, definitely longer, but also spidery and fine...."

From "All of a flutter: how eyelashes became beauty’s biggest business/The eyelash business is worth $1.66bn – and is predicted to grow from there. Why are we so obsessed with our lashes? Eva Wiseman reports on their history and significance" (The Guardian).

That article continues with various other eyelash treatments, so I go looking for more on Clare Chambers and "shametenance." I find this from last year: "A Defense of the Unmodified Body: Clare Chambers Interview/We spoke to the acclaimed Cambridge philosopher Clare Chambers about her new book, Intact, which examines and critiques the urge to alter or ‘perfect’ our bodies." Excerpt:

"We’re not judging you for the soap that you use. But, collectively, that can add up as billions of people wash their hands or bathe..."

"... hundreds or thousands of times a year. If you’re so inclined, it makes sense to switch to a more eco-friendly product. Just understand that there may be a trade-off between sustainability and comfort. 'The consumer has to decide: Are they serious about where their soap comes from, whether it’s synthetic or natural?...'"

From "Bar soap or body wash: Which is best for your skin and the planet? Depending on its ingredients and packaging, your soap could cut as much as a third of the carbon emissions from your next shower" (WaPo).

So: Don't feel judged, but feel judged. "We’re not judging you"... but you — you conscientious people — need to step up and judge yourself.

That reminds me. I'm reading a book — "Morning After the Revolution" by Nellie Bowles (commission earned) — and here's how the chapter "The Most Important White Woman in the World" begins:

"We are not here to denounce body positivity or detract in any way from the strides we, as a community, have made in inclusivity."

"The reality is that two truths exist — obesity can impact health, but the discrimination, stigma and shame experienced by people living with obesity for their weight is also very real."

Said a representative from Novo Nordisk, the manufacturer of Ozempic, quoted in "New marketing push by Ozempic and others sparks body-positive backlash/Plus-size influencers are getting paid to promote weight-loss drugs. Some call it ‘an affront’ to what was previously a ‘safe space’ for body acceptance" (WaPo).

Jessie Diaz-Herrera, who is a plus-size certified fitness instructor, posted an Instagram video saying that if she received another partnership offer from a company selling medical injectables she would throw her computer.

“If some of your favorite fat influencers start doing paid campaigns for this stuff, it’s because they sold themselves into diet culture, period,” she said in the video, using an expletive.

"During World War I, eating less was considered patriotic, a way of freeing up precious caloric resources for American troops fighting abroad."

"Later, doctors and psychologists came to the (wrong) conclusion that overweight people were lazy, and society adjudicated heaviness a 'disgrace,' in the words of Lulu Hunt Peters, an early diet-book author. Dieting organizations ruthlessly shamed people into losing weight. In the early ’50s, one such 'support' group held public weigh-ins and forced members who’d gained weight to stand in a 'pig line,' where they would sing a song that included the lyric 'We are plump little pigs who ate too much, fat, fat, fat.'"

Writes Olga Khazan in "People Just Want to Lose Weight/Americans go on yo-yo diets, but we also have a yo-yo relationship to dieting" (The Atlantic).

This video is an on-theme placeholder so I can put something after the jump.

Look at this:

"Page doesn’t really delve into questions of masculinity, or what it means to be a man, but he brings to life the visceral sense of gender dysphoria..."

"... or at least one type of dysphoria: the sense that your body is betraying you. It’s an utterly alien sensation for those who haven’t experienced it: 'Imagine the most uncomfortable, mortifying thing you could wear. You squirm in your skin. It’s tight, you want to peel it from your body, tear it off, but you can’t. Day in and day out. And if people are to learn what is underneath, who you are without all that pain, the shame would come flooding out, too much to hold. The voice was right, you deserve the humiliation. You are an abomination. You are too emotional. You are not real."

From "Elliot Page, From Shame to Self-Acceptance, in Hollywood’s Glare/In the 'brutally honest' memoir 'Pageboy,' the actor recounts the fears and obstacles to gender transition, and the hard-won happiness that’s followed" (NYT).

ADDED: The book reviewer, Gina Chua, talks about her own experience as a transgender person. It made me wonder about her line "It’s an utterly alien sensation for those who haven’t experienced it." Frankly, I had trouble understanding that sentence. How can something be "an utterly alien sensation for those who haven’t experienced it"?  Either you experience it and find it alien — but why is it "alien" if it's what you feel? — or you don't experience it — in which case it is no feeling at all. Eventually, I understood the sentence by editing out "for those who haven’t experienced it." I was going to question the idea of "alienness." What is the point of reference? But the sense of not belonging is very common among human beings. Where does it come from? 

"The young ones tend to never wear a bra.... What is with the hate on bras?... I am very happy to wear a comfortable bra every day..."

"... and I am uncomfortable not wearing one. I find this new generation of braless ladies rude and unprofessional. These young ladies do not seem to mind the stares from others and more so when the office gets a little chilly. I have nothing against 'free the nipple' but why impose this on others in a professional environment?"

Asks an anonymous letter-writer of Roxane Gay, the NYT "work friend" advice columnist.

Hey, you know what's "unprofessional"? Staring at nipples!

As Gay puts it: "Women are not imposing their nipples on you by existing, braless, in public spaces. You are imposing your judgment on their bodies." She advises Anonymous to "interrogate the judgments you place on other people’s bodies." Ha ha ha. "Interrogate." Academic jargon is hilarious encountered in the raw on a chilly morning. I picture a crime suspect grilled in a harshly lit, windowless room. But it makes perfect sense to say: question your own judgments. That's something we should do more often.

"There are all kinds of things you can do to develop and retain [a blog] audience... but the single most important thing you can do is post regularly and never stop...."

"[The demand for content] is so insatiable that there is currently no real economic punishment for content overproduction. You will almost never lose money, followers, attention, or reach simply from posting too much. It’s this last part that is often most difficult for writers to accept.... Before they post, therefore, many writers mentally calculate: Is this post 'good enough,' or does it dilute the overall quality of my work, alienate my audience, etc.? But [WaPo's Matt] Yglesias profile’s very existence reminds us of an important rule of thumb for navigating the content economy in the 21st century: Under the present regime, there is no real downside risk to posting.... Even the most anodyne, mediocre writing fulfills the requirement of regularity. (What is the 'Wayne Gretzky' quote? 'You miss 100 percent of the audience conversion opportunities you don’t take'?)... What do the top text-based content-creation entrepreneurs of our time have in common? Logorrhea.... It’s easy to see why writers reared in the hothouse reputational marketplace of Twitter are desperate to avoid the shame of negative attention. But... people forget, or move on, or don’t really care.... Feeling shame that prevents you from doing or saying inappropriate things is maybe a useful way to navigate complex moral-social arrangements, but fearing shame that prevents you from adhering to the first commandment of blogging ('post frequently and regularly') is counterproductive. As Yglesias says, it's the best time there’s ever been to be somebody who can write something coherent quickly. Put things out. Let people yell at you. Write again the next day."

Writes Max Read in "Matt Yglesias and the secret of blogging/How to be a successful content entrepreneur" (Substack)(riffing on the WaPo profile of Yglesias).

Max Read doesn't mention artificial intelligence, but if his idea of successful blogging is right, then bloggers can set their blogs to automatically generate endless posts. And that's why he can't be right. But by his own terms, he doesn't need to be right. He just needs to load in more words words words. 

"With their thin majority, House Republican leaders will have little room to distance themselves from any of their members, giving lawmakers with incendiary views outsize influence..."

"... said Russell Riley, a presidential historian at the University of Virginia Miller Center. 'Every time some outrage erupts from that body, it will remind the American people of Donald Trump and that this is still the party of Donald Trump,' Riley said. 'The noisy and unruly behavior in the House will be perpetual reminders that the party prefers to make noise rather than govern.'"

Writes Toluse Olorunnipa, in "Hitting back at Trump, Biden gears up for more clashes with GOPAs Biden prepares his reelection bid, some Democrats see an advantage in highlighting volatile remarks by Republicans" (WaPo).

"In the weeks since the election... the White House’s eagerness to call out antidemocratic messages has intensified. It has been fueled in part by the tone and agenda of the newly empowered House Republicans, who have announced plans for actions such as impeaching Biden’s Cabinet members, investigating his son Hunter, blocking spending bills and holding up debt limit increases, all of which the president’s team contends will be unpopular with centrist voters. White House officials deny this is an electoral strategy, saying Biden is doing more naming and shaming in part because there has been a troubling increase in harmful and shameful rhetoric." 

Some rhetoric is harmful and shameful, and some rhetoric is utterly harmless, because it's purely decorative, and no one seriously considers believing it or because there's nothing, really, to believe given some phrase like "in part" that drains all meaning from it — e.g., "Biden is doing more naming and shaming in part because there has been a troubling increase in harmful and shameful rhetoric."

AND: If X does "more naming and shaming" because of the "increase in harmful and shameful rhetoric" isn't that a self-perpetuating dynamic? I'm visualizing a hamster wheel. Must run. Cannot stop. Naming and shaming. Naming and shaming....

"Strict gender roles have governed domestic life in Japan for generations. Men often retire without ever having held a paring knife..."

"... or washed a dish. Those who lose a spouse often find themselves unable to do the most rudimentary chores. An old Japanese saying — 'Danshi-chubo-ni-hairazu,' or 'men should be ashamed to be found in the kitchen' — has spooked husbands from most any housework. Even those who wanted to help typically lacked the know-how.... Simmering resentments frequently come to a head once a man’s career ends and his wife starts to question the arrangement, Tokukura said. 'The power dynamic changes. The wife asks, "Why do I have to do all the housework if you are no longer bringing in the money?"'"

From "Older Japanese men, lost in the kitchen, turn to housework school" (WaPo).

At housework school, old men meet other other old men:

"You describe growing up under Soviet occupation, being trained to revere the Soviets, rat out your neighbors, to obey."

"It was indoctrinated into you to obey and revere an occupier. And this, you say in the essay’s conclusion, familiarized you with being controlled, with being with someone controlling. 'My marriage was a sort of occupation,' you write. Looking at what’s happening in our country and around the world, do you think about the connection between shame and defensiveness and occupation and politics?"

That's a question the NYT interviewer, Rhonda Garelick, asks Paulina Porizkova in "Paulina Porizkova Doesn’t Call Her Book a Memoir/The model and author spoke about writing 'No Filter: The Good, the Bad and the Beautiful.'"

Porizkova's husband was the rock star Ric Ocasek.

That question was absurdly difficult! And Porizkova doesn't really try to answer it. 

Garelick persists: "But you made that political connection in your essay — between the occupying army and Ric."

Fair enough. Porizkova blows it all off. She was jet lagged and under time pressure when she wrote that — "My marriage was a sort of occupation."

Either say it and defend it or don't speak. The dead Ocasek cannot speak. Or do beautiful women have a special privilege to make aggressive analogies?

"Democratic strategist Kurt Bardella recommends that Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) turn to pornography ..."

"... should she lose the down-to-wire Colorado House race against Adam Frisch. Bardella made the suggestion on set with MSNBC host Joy Reid, who responded with a blaring cackle. 'What’s the meaning if Lauren Boebert, the second most popular QAnon congressperson in MAGA, what if she loses?' Reid asked 'I guess there might be a gain for OnlyFans if [Boebert loses],' Bardella responded.... Bardella followed in line with frequent MSNBC guest Elie Mystal, the goofy-looking man who uses racial slurs to refer to Hershel Walker. On Wednesday, Mystal tweeted the following message before quickly deleting it: 'Is… Lauren Boebert still losing? I guess this is the lucky day of the next OnlyFans star Ted Cruz thinks should be a Congressperson.'" 

From "Joy Reid Blasts Her Cackle [When] Sexist Guest Tells Rep. Lauren Boebert to Join OnlyFans" (Outkick). (I found that via this tweet from Glenn Greenwald.)

MSNBC's @JoyAnnReid: "What job will Lauren Boebert have if she loses?"@kurtbardella: "I guess it might be a gain for OnlyFans" pic.twitter.com/fVf5QZG6xa

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) November 10, 2022

According to Yahoo!entertainment — entertainment? — "DNC Adviser Apologizes For Suggesting Lauren Boebert's Next Job Should Be OnlyFans." But let's take a look at the text and context of that apology.