"In the most eye-popping moment of the exchange, Mr. Watters asked if Dr. El-Sayed believed it was OK 'for a parent to slash his kid’s ding-a-ling off'..."

"... referring to transition surgeries for minors. Dr. El-Sayed responded by asking if Mr. Watters was circumcised. 'Uh, yeah, but that’s a personal question, doctor,' Mr. Watters responded, laughing, before contending that 'circumcision’s different than castration.' Dr. El-Sayed said that he believed the government should not tell Americans what health care procedures they could undergo, but he did not directly say whether he approved of transition surgeries. The interview showed the strategy Dr. El-Sayed is adopting as Mr. Rogers seeks to paint him as a radical leftist who is out of touch with Michigan voters. The Democratic nominee’s approach is to cast 'culture-war' issues as a distraction from the everyday problems Americans face, like rising costs and worries about health care...."

From "El-Sayed Joins Fox News for Some Light Verbal Combat and a Pitch to Republicans/In a smiling yet tense interview, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan, argued that his Republican critics were using culture-war issues to distract from Americans’ economic concerns" (NYT gift link).

"Mr. Rogers" = Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate.

"I'm not sure why WaPo covered this, but ignored trump wearing a wig that is styled like his mother's hair during her last year of life."

That's the top-rated comment (by far) on the WaPo article, "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says she’s freezing her eggs/The Democratic congresswoman, 36, said she made the decision to undergo the fertility procedure to 'feel more in control of my life'" (gift link).

I was trying to figure out whether and how to blog the AOC story. I saw her video yesterday:

AOC is starting her journey for freezing her eggs!

Sharing her doing the shot.

"Don't be weird about this even though I know you all will be".

She knows the internet so well. pic.twitter.com/2ywzN8R5d9

— Winter (@LeftyWinter) August 9, 2026

I haven't seen such a display of political abdominal flesh since the days of LBJ and his gall bladder surgery:

Still wondering how to blog that. But what's all this about Trump and his wig?

"Texas Children’s Hospital will create the nation’s first 'detransition clinic,' fire five physicians and pay the state $10 million..."

"... under an unusual settlement announced Friday by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R). The clinic would focus on providing [free] medical care to patients who had undergone gender-affirming healthcare and work toward reversing its effects, Paxton said.... The move follows an investigation that began in 2023 after Texas passed a law banning health providers from facilitating gender-affirming medical care for minors.... In a statement, representatives from the hospital system insisted they had been compliant with all laws but were settling to 'protect our resources from endless and costly litigation.'"

The Hill reports.

I'm also reading the Axios report of this story. There's this quote from Paxton:

"Today is a monumental day in the fight to stop the radical transgender movement. This historic settlement reflects an institutional and fundamental cultural shift away from radical 'gender' ideology."

And what Axios calls a "Reality check" (but I think Paxton would call radical ideology):

Transition-related care for kids is considered safe, appropriate and medically necessary for children by major medical organizations, including the American Medical Association. 

Surgeries for transgender children are rare. Transgender teens who get gender-affirming care report high levels of satisfaction. 

Detransitioning, or stopping or reversing gender transition, is relatively uncommon. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health said evidence of later regret is limited.

"If that’s what 'woke' means, it explains why most Americans don’t want to be woke."

"Transgender adults should have the freedom to live as they see fit and that includes the option to pursue elective medical procedures. But why should that choice come at taxpayer expense, especially for noncitizens? If the fiscal well-being of California isn’t incentive enough to crack down on such wasteful mismanagement of tax dollars, then maybe Newsom’s political future is. The outgoing governor seems determined not to learn from the failure of another California Democrat. The most devastating attack ad against Kamala Harris in 2024 featured her saying during her previous presidential campaign that she supported taxpayers picking up the tab for federal prisoners to receive gender transition care...."

Writes the Editorial Board of The Washington Post, in "Gavin Newsom chooses the wrong side of gender politics again/Sex changes for illegal immigrants might sound like a Republican ad, but it’s California policy."

"Colleagues in the operating room 'had concerns that Dr. Shaknovsky did not have the skill level to safely perform this procedure'...."

"After Dr. Shaknovsky removed the organ, 'The staff looked at the readily identifiable liver on the table and were shocked when Dr. Shaknovsky told them that it was a spleen,' the state documents said. 'One staff member felt sick to their stomach.'"

From "Surgeon Who Removed Wrong Organ From Patient Is Charged in His Death/Dr. Thomas Shaknovsky tried to persuade his colleagues in the operating room that the liver he removed from a 70-year-old patient was a spleen, according to Florida’s Health Department" (NYT).

"Well well well, if it isn’t gender-affirming care for straight folks."

That's the top-rated comment on the NYT article "'I’d Like to Be Normal': Can Height Surgery Make Them Happy? Limb-lengthening can add inches to a person’s stature. But its risks have made it controversial."

"A jury on Jan. 30 found a psychologist and surgeon liable for malpractice after they supported and performed breast removal surgery..."

"... on a 16-year-old girl who at the time identified as transgender. Fox Varian, now 22 and no longer identifying as transgender, was awarded $2 million in damages.... The jury found that in many respects the surgeon and psychologist had skipped important steps when evaluating whether she should go forward with the surgery and had not adequately communicated with each other. These missteps were a 'departure from the standard of care,' they decided."

National Review reports.

ADDED: Benjamin Ryan writes, at X: "I was the only reporter to attend the entire 3-week, historic trial.... The entire case file was put under seal when the trial started (although I obtained all those documents before they was sealed), and all the transcripts from the trial are also under seal. The riveting trial was sparsely attended and there was only one other reporter at the trial; and he only attended for part of it and, as I observed, took few notes. So my own hundreds of pages of notes from the trial will likely remain the only way for the public to learn about the all finer details of what transpired, possibly ever (or until an appeal, should that happen)...."

"Everyone will have access to medical care that is better than what the President receives right now."

Elon Musk wants you to know what it will be like 5 years from now.

Elon Musk's jaw-dropping prediction (Jan 2026):

“Don’t go into medical school.”
Elon Musk: “Yes. Pointless.”

In 3 years (2029), Optimus robots will be better surgeons than any human on Earth — at scale.
By 4–5 years? Not even close. The best medicine in the world will be free… pic.twitter.com/q7KTMpICk8

— Camus (@newstart_2024) January 10, 2026

And don't bother with higher education... except for "social reasons."

"[A]n Idaho man was on his rural property in October 2024 when a skunk approached him and scratched him on the shin."

"About five weeks later, the man started to hallucinate, have trouble walking and swallowing, and had a stiff neck.... Two days after his symptoms started, he collapsed of what was presumed to be a heart attack, the report said. The man was unresponsive and taken to a hospital, where he died. Several of his organs were donated.... A Michigan man received the donated kidney. Five weeks after the transplant, he started to experience tremors, weakness, confusion and urinary incontinence, the report said...."

From "Kidney Recipient Dies After Transplant From Organ Donor Who Had Rabies/Only four donors have transmitted rabies to organ transplant recipients since 1978, according to federal officials" (NYT).

Be the Zeppo.

I thought Variety's "100 Best Comedy Movies of All Time" was pretty well done, but what I liked best about it was the way it inspired me to write one of my unwritten books. Look:

To my mind, this still from the movie establishes a proposition I've long been aware of: Zeppo was the funniest Marx Brother. For the uninitiated: Zeppo is second from the left. 

Now, for those of you who don't want to read anything written by A.I., it's time to leave. Here's the prompt I took to Grok: "Is it true that in the opinion of those whose opinion counts most Zeppo was the funniest Marx Brother?"

The answer is yes.

First, Groucho said it, repeatedly. Grok writes: "He described Zeppo as having the best natural comic timing and delivery in real life, a dry, deadpan wit that killed in a room, but that Zeppo simply didn’t care enough about performing to push himself forward on screen. Groucho claimed Zeppo could have been the breakout star if he’d wanted it."

Then there was George S. Kaufman, co-writer of "The Cocoanuts" and "Animal Crackers," who "reportedly said Zeppo was the funniest of the brothers in rehearsals and in person." Other authorities who said the same thing included Steve Allen, Woody Allen, and Billy Crystal.

So Zeppo was given the “straight man/romantic lead” role until after "Duck Soup" he quit movies altogether and "became a successful theatrical agent and inventor (he held patents related to the cardiac clamp used in open-heart surgery)."

I was motivated to say: "If the other brothers saw him as the funniest, they had something to strive to excel. Zeppo was maximizing the comedy by performing that role and he didn't have the motivation to excel anyone. He was secure."

Skimming Grok's somewhat lengthy mirroring of what I'd just said, I got a new idea: "I want to expand this into a larger life lesson and write a self-help book — in the manner of 'Let Them' — that would be titled 'Be the Zeppo.'"

1. By "write a self-help book," I meant write a blog post that would earn the tag "Unwritten Books," that is, the blog post you are reading now.

2. Of course, Grok immediately outlined this book for me, replete with subtitle options — like "The Power of Radical Non-Competition" — and 10 chapters — including "The 'Anything Further, Father?' Principle/One perfectly timed sentence beats a ten-minute monologue. The power of strategic silence."

3. Here, you can read everything Grok said.

4. Here's Mel Robbins, the author of "The Let Them Theory," quickly explaining the whole book to Bill Maher. 

5. Anything further?

It's a good question, but it's easy to answer.

Good question pic.twitter.com/cgdRX8TW01

— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) November 23, 2025

I think the answer is in this logic:

Identity is in your feelings.

From that 1967 Clairol ad: "Why don't you try saying this out loud: 'If I've only one life, let me live it as a blonde.' If you get a surge when you say the words, you're a blonde at heart." And you are free to bleach your hair blonde so it affirms your inner feelings.

And by the way, the blondest blondes in American culture — Marilyn Monroe, Madonna, Debbie Harry — had to bleach their way to blondeness, and some classy writers have argued that they are more truly blonde — whatever that means! — than the natural blondes. 

"In Iran, gay men and lesbians can be punished by public flogging and the death penalty."

"As a result, the United Nations Human Rights Council found, many gay and lesbian Iranians who are not trans are 'pressured into undergoing gender reassignment surgery without their free consent.'... Sam, 32, a trans man from Orange County, Calif., is currently in Tehran to pursue a hysterectomy and metoidioplasty, a kind of penis-construction surgery. Requesting anonymity to discuss a sensitive medical procedure, he said he was drawn to Iran because he believed the doctors there were 'more confident' than those in the United States.... Iran’s experience with transition surgery stems from a fatwa issued in the 1980s by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founding supreme leader of the Islamic republic, who declared that transgender individuals could gain legal recognition of the gender with which they identified, but only on the condition that they underwent transition surgery."

From "Iran Lures Transgender Foreigners for Surgery but Forces Operations on Locals/Iran became a pioneer in gender transition operations by forcing procedures on L.G.B.T.Q. Iranians. Desperate for cash, the Islamic republic is hoping to attract trans patients from around the world" (NYT)(free-access link).

"They... filled the cracks in my dodgy vertebra with this human cement stuff. I mean, I’ve got so many plates and bolts inside me already..."

"... why not pour a slab of concrete in there too?... Death’s been knocking at my door for the last six years, louder and louder. And at some point I’m gonna have to let him in. The funny thing is, I used to worry more about my mortality when I was younger. It’s weird. You get closer to the end — the very thing you were scared of your whole life — and suddenly the weight’s lifted off you.... When the end does come, I don’t want to be cremated. It’s like you were never here. You’re just a bag of dust. That’s not for me. I wanna make the flowers grow.... It’s just crazy how quickly a lifetime goes.... Life’s so short...."

Writes Ozzy Osbourne, in "Ozzy Osbourne: How Sharon and I pulled off my crazy last gig/Less than three weeks before he died, the ailing Black Sabbath frontman played one final concert, for 42,000 fans at Villa Park. In an extract from his posthumous memoir, he shares the inside story of the biggest miracle of his unlikely career" (London Times).

"Mr. Gutfeld’s style mixes anti-liberal insult comedy with relentless punchlines about women’s bodies — their age, their weight, their sexual attractiveness."

"Each night, Ms. Timpf sits at his right-hand side, playfully challenging him while staking out an alternate style of physical humor — one that centers her own experience inhabiting a woman’s body. I met Ms. Timpf on a Tuesday morning in August, on her second day back at 'Gutfeld!' after a reconstructive surgery in which the tissue expanders inserted behind her chest muscle during the mastectomy she underwent in March were replaced with permanent breast implants. She wore baggy jeans and a tight gray T-shirt, which she had second-guessed that morning. “Would I be better off wearing a looser shirt?' she asked. 'Something about breast cancer is — I don’t want to say embarrassing,' she said. 'People are like, Are you breastfeeding? And you have to be like, I just cut my tits off.' She added, 'It’s a weird thing, which is part of the reason why I’ve decided to be so open about it.'... She will have her nipples reconstructed over the next year. It will be her first tattoo. 'I don’t think that those are small things,' Ms. Timpf said. 'I think that those are big things.'"

That's from the New York Times: "A Baby. A Double Mastectomy. Many Opinions From Fox News Viewers. Kat Timpf got pregnant, got breast cancer, then got back to work on the political comedy show 'Gutfeld!' — all as a culture war brews over ambition, motherhood and women’s health."

"Hopper had suffered body dysphoria since childhood and his feet were an 'unwelcome extra'.... Hopper did not regret the operations, but 'bitterly regrets' the 'dishonesty' about their cause...."

I'm reading "Surgeon jailed after amputation of own legs" (BBC).

An NHS vascular surgeon who had his own legs removed has been jailed for two years and eight months for insurance fraud and possessing extreme pornography. Neil Hopper, 49, of Truro, Cornwall, carried out hundreds of amputation operations before having his own legs removed in 2019.

"What are some famous quotes by writers/artists/musicians about critics?"

That's I question I had, a couple hours ago, as I was gathering my thoughts in preparation, I thought, for blogging this article by the New Yorker's movie critic, Richard Brody, "In Defense of the Traditional Review/Far from being a journalistic relic, as suggested by recent developments at the New York Times, arts criticism is inherently progressive, keeping art honest and pointing toward its future."

I got a bunch of great quotes out of Grok with my question, including the one that deserves to stand in for them all: "Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read" (Frank Zappa).

Then there was this, from Pablo Picasso: "The critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." And that got me tumbling down a side path with an issue I'd encountered yesterday, the idea that there are individuals who identify as eunuchs and the notion that castration is, for them, medically necessary. I was told: "The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) Standards of Care (Version 8) includes a chapter on 'eunuch' as a gender identity, suggesting that castration may be considered 'medically necessary gender-affirming care' for some who identify as eunuchs and experience distress from their genitals."

I introduced the question: "It occurs to me that a person might argue that they identify as dead and therefore entitled to physician-assisted suicide — that killing is a medically required treatment." That led to a long discussion that kept me far away from the topic of the usefulness of critics — they're "inherently progressive"! — and I'm not going to go into the details. I'm just going to list a few phrases that came up in the Grok discussion that's displaced blogging for me this morning:

"Conditions like Cotard’s syndrome, where individuals genuinely believe they are dead or non-existent, are rare and classified as a psychiatric delusion, treated through therapy or medication, not affirmation," "So you're saying that if only doctors had been killing people who 'identify as dead' for a longer period of time and managed to fight off those who think it's wrong, it would be analogous to transgender surgeries," "You’re correct that genital transgender surgeries, like vaginoplasty or phalloplasty, are... irreversible in any meaningful sense," "'Sexual sensation is possible due to preserved nerves' — I note that you didn't say orgasm," "Your point about muscles is spot-on: the lack of vaginal musculature in a neovagina means it cannot replicate the contractile component of a natal female orgasm," "Is there any commentary, comedy, or fictional writing utilizing my idea of 'identifying as dead'?," "Seems like something that someone in 'Chicago' would say (like 'He ran into my knife... 50 times')," "Somewhere, some writer(s) must have already written the line: 'Go ahead. Try to kill me. You can't. I'm already dead.'"

That went on and on, with the discussion of many movies, and it wasn't the only A.I. conversations that kept me away from the blog this morning. There was also, among many others, "Summarize this article... and explain why Brody thinks arts criticism is 'progressive.'" Which led to: "What is 'progressive' supposed to mean? It strikes me as utter bullshit." And: "Weave into this discussion what Tom Wolfe wrote in 'The Painted Word.'" And: "Isn't there some related idea — or conspiracy theory — that the CIA created the art market for Abstract Expressionism?"

All of that was more interesting to me than what I would have produced reading Brody's article and blogging it in my usual way. And my "usual way" is to follow whatever interests me, not to feel obligated, but to do what is intrinsically rewarding for me. You see the problem!

"After becoming pregnant with their son, St. Clair and Musk’s relationship progressed.... In November, Musk responded to a selfie she texted him saying: 'I want to knock you up again.'"

"While she was pregnant, Musk had urged her to deliver the baby via caesarean section and told her he didn’t want the child to be circumcised. (Musk has posted on X that vaginal births limit brain size and that C-sections allow for larger brains.) St. Clair is Jewish and circumcisions are an important ritual in the religion, and she decided against a C-section. He told her she should have 10 babies, and they debated the child’s middle name.... She complied with the request to not name Musk on the birth certificate. Not long after the birth, [Musk’s longtime fixer, Jared] Birchall pushed St. Clair to sign documents keeping the father of the baby and details regarding her relationship with Musk secret in return for financial support. The offer was a one-time fee of $15 million for a home and living expenses, plus an additional $100,000 a month until the baby turned 21. Musk told her by text it was dangerous to reveal his relationship to the baby, describing himself as the '#2 after Trump for assassination.' He added that 'only the paranoid survive.' But she didn’t sign...."

From "The Tactics Elon Musk Uses to Manage His ‘Legion’ of Babies—and Their Mothers/The world’s richest man juggles more than a dozen children and ‘harem drama’ along with running his companies and advising Trump. He recently took a paternity test in a battle with one woman over money and privacy" (Wall Street Journal).

The life of a one-man genius sperm bank is not easy.

"This is a patient that was very sick.... It went through an operation on Liberation Day, and it's going to be... a very booming country."

"It's going to be amazing, actually.... The operation's over, and now we let it settle in. You see the plants are starting to construction, already. We have many plants — Indiana massive auto plant...."

Do you like the reasoning through analogy? The economy is a person, its supposed problem is a sickness, the tariffs are a surgical procedure, and the patient is in the post-op stage. That might be a difficult stage, with various pains and struggles. Even if this is a good analogy — economies are like human bodies, and tariffs are like an operation for an illness, and the immediate effect is a stage in the recovery from surgery — we still don't know if the right medical treatment was chosen and performed successfully.

For the annals of Things I Asked Grok: "Could you summarize the Susan Sontag book 'Illness as Metaphor' and say whether it has some use in critiquing the above-stated analogy about the economy?"

That book is less about using illness as a metaphor to explain something other than illness and more about using something other than illness to explain illness. From "Illness as Metaphor" (commission earned):

"No dating men, no sex with men, no heterosexual marriage and no childbirth. These are the four principles of South Korea’s 4B movement..."

"... a radical feminist movement that gained popularity in 2019, in response to sexism, hidden camera pornography and intimate partner violence. Following Donald Trump’s victory, some American women have sought out the movement.... Some American women are already devising plans to apply used menstrual pads to trucks with MAGA stickers and undergo voluntary hysterectomy surgery. TikTok and Instagram reels videos related to the 4B movement gained millions of views this week, and Google searches spiked in the U.S. on Wednesday, most notably in Democratic states. Trump’s win was devastating for many women. Their rage is understandable, but a 4B-style reaction is not constructive or sustainable...."

Writes Kami Rieck, in "A Sex Strike Is a Losing Strategy for American Women" (NYT).

"Not only do more women want to be small; they want to be smaller. Jerry Chidester, a plastic surgeon in Salt Lake City, said his patients used to ask for C cups."

"Now, they want Bs. He often does five breast reductions a week, mostly on young, postpartum mothers.... Small breasts may not draw as much attention on the subway or the street as bigger breasts do, but they are also a fashion. Whereas big breasts signal motherhood and sexual availability, smaller breasts can convey youth, girlishness, puberty, thinness, androgyny.... They can also indicate class. In March, a meme circulated on X... 'MEN,' it said. 'Which do you prefer? The aristocratic elegance of the small breasted woman OR the Nietzschean pro-sex, pro-beauty large breasted woman?' Thornton agrees that smaller breasts signal the self-assurance of affluence whereas breast augmentation can signify social ambition — a desire to attain wealth and status via the attention of men.... For a woman to withdraw from the male gaze, to assert herself in her refusal to be ogled, to relieve her own pain, to be able to comfortably train for a marathon or dance at her own birthday party — that is liberation. But it’s a personal, individual one, said Thornton. 'If women are going to have an emancipated rack,' she said, 'then men need to change.'"

I'm reading "The Power of a Smaller Breast/Breast reduction is all the rage in cosmetic surgery. Are women asserting their independence or capitulating to a yet another impossible standard of beauty?" (NYT).

Thornton is "Sarah Thornton, 59, a sociologist who lives in San Francisco, was a B cup before her double mastectomy. After breast reconstruction she had Ds, which felt huge to her — 'bulky and cartoony,' she wrote in 'Tits Up,' her recent social history of the breast."