"Dad, are you running for President?... You can't... I'm too young. You need to spend more time with us."

Gavin Newsom quotes his son:

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A post shared by CNN (@cnn)

"How do you deal with that one?" Newsom asks. "I'm asking you," he says to Dana Bash, who says "I'm not running." Then Newsom switches to inane verbiage: "That's the point. And the point is the point. And so what matters is what matters. Like, what matters is what matters."

That poor boy!

That video is from last month, but I'm looking at it now because it came up in this new NY Post article, "Huge wake-up call for Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris as dire poll released."

Why was this allowed to happen?

19-year-old Violet Affleck gives a mask-muffled harangue at the U.N.

From the New York Post editorial about it: "At the UN’s Healthy Indoor Air session Tuesday, Violet Affleck — just 19 and with no qualification beyond being the daughter of actors Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner — railed about the dangers of airborne viruses and the importance of mask mandates amid the 'ongoing pandemic.' 'Adults,' she huffed (through a KN95 mask), are 'ignoring, downplaying and concealing both the prevalence of airborne transmission and the threat of Long COVID.'"

Yes, adults are reckless and dimwitted about a lot of things, but the obvious one here is that teenagers, especially ones who seem hysterical, should not be put in the public spotlight. You might think your little girl is the new Greta Thunberg, but keep it to yourself. Don't push her out onto the stage to emote in the "How dare you!" mode.

And if the left wants some kind of "believe the science" high ground, don't keep sending children and teenagers out to lecture us. 

Speaking of dolls, whatever happened to "Creatable World" dolls?

Dolls came up in the previous post when a NYT author located Trump's "level of aesthetic consideration" to that which a child gives "her doll’s face before covering it in nail polish."

That took me down the rathole that is the "dolls" tag in my archive, and I was surprised to encounter this 2019 post: "That’s why I applaud Mattel’s Creatable World, a new collection of gender-neutral dolls, which allow kids to customize their Barbie and Ken in ways they never could before."

That's not me applauding Creatable World. I was quoting something. I can't think of a time when I applauded a toy, and, though I like the idea of children creating little imaginary worlds with their toys, I'm wary of Big Toy's packaging of a particular world to capture the creative energy of the child. Was Creatable World — i.e., gender-neutral world — offered as the antidote to the excessive genderizing of Barbie?

But what happened to Creatable World? I don't think Mattel ever announced that it was withdrawing the product. How much of a fiasco was it?

Did kids just not like it? Did the adults who liked that sort of thing simply fail to have children?

Who even remembers Creatable World? It surprised me to run across it this morning. Is it in the junkpile of things people like to forget ever happened? Have we created a world in which Creatable World never existed?

"Their joke was about my 15-year-old son, 'Oh, how does he feel about minorities?' Like the idea that he wants to be a policeman, therefore he’s, he’s racist, my son."

"And like, you know, that was the big laugh. And then I got dragged in the comments and all that stuff and, and I thought to myself, 'This is why you fuckers are losing elections'.... He’s 15. He thinks about World War II and gaming and playing linebacker, that’s his world. You’re deciding he’s a racist because he wants to be a cop. And why does he want to be a cop? He wants to be a cop because he wants to help people, you know, and he thinks that’s the best way he can help people. And that’s how the Democratic Party talks to men, not just white men, but men."

Said Jake Tapper, quoted in "Jake Tapper Says Liberal Podcaster Made Racism Jab After He Revealed Son Wants To Be a Cop: 'This Is Why You F**kers Are Losing Elections'" (Mediaite).

"It wasn’t planned. That wasn’t two coaches throwing guys over and saying 'This is happening' — none of that happened. That was as organic as it gets."

Said Jon Cooper, the coach for Canada, quoted in The London Times:

Here's the video at YouTube. Judge for yourself. Political theater? Is this about Trump — Trump and his tariffs and his fifty-oneness?

Meanwhile, Trump himself was at The Daytona 500 and — with his lovely tiny little granddaughter — the sports-related masculine political theater was not brutishly macho but nobly patriarchal:

ADDED: The oversized MAGA hat emphasizes the tininess of the granddaughter, and it made me think of this image of Elon Musk in a giant hat:

pic.twitter.com/nhRCtyA3wj

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 7, 2025

You can see the hat as it is — large — or you can perceive the optical illusion that Musk is a tiny person, a child. Musk famously tweeted: "I love @realDonaldTrump as much as a straight man can love another man." And I've been thinking the love is a boy's love for the father he never had. Musk real father was — as Musk tells it — "a terrible human being" who has done "almost every evil thing you could possibly think of." The giant hat is a bid to be seen as a boy, to be loved by a father.

8 things about this Maureen Dowd column, "Who Will Stand Up to Trump at High Noon?"

Here's the column.

Here are the 8 things I want to say about it:

1. The headline refers to a Western movie where "high noon" is the time for a shooting duel. To say "Who Will Stand Up to Trump at High Noon?" is to generate an image of shooting Trump. Even if Trump had not been shot (and targeted by a second assassination attempt), it is wrong to say something that either is or can be mistaken for an invitation to shoot the President!

2. Under the headline is a photograph from the movie "Shane," and Maureen Dowd discusses the movie "Shane," which she saw when she was quite young. She never mentions "High Noon." I guess Westerns are interchangeable to NYT headline writers. 

3. "High Noon" had a villain and a hero and so did "Shane." Good guys and bad guys. Binary. 

4. I remember when Democrats loved to talk about how nuanced they were in their sophisticated thinking,

A right jolly old elf.

President Biden makes a new friend during a visit to Children’s National Hospital. pic.twitter.com/37gC6Qpmbg

— The Recount (@therecount) December 20, 2024

The use of children in politics.

This kid has great instincts pic.twitter.com/FyYIADelrc

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2024

It felt like an imitation of Kamala Harris's "I grew up a middle-class kid" — Tim Walz began his answer with "I grew up in small, rural Nebraska, town of 400."

The moderator, Margaret Brennan, purporting to delve into "personal qualifications" — that is, character — asked Tim Walz to explain why he said he was in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square protests when, in fact, he was not.

Here's the transcript of the full debate. Walz answered:

Well, and to the folks out there who didn't get at the top of this, look...

That "look" makes me feel as though I'm being chastised for not paying attention. Am I one of the "the folks out there who didn't get at the top of this"? What does that even mean? "At the top of" what? "Get at the top"? Did he mean those who didn't watch — get in on — the debate from the beginning? Anyway, that sets up this:

... I grew up in small, rural Nebraska, town of 400. Town that you rode your bike with your buddies till the streetlights come on, and I'm proud of that service.

That's like Harris's "grew up in the middle-class" safe space. Instead of answering the question asked, he goes back to a snapshot of his youth. Somehow he's "proud of that service." The service of riding your bike around until it got dark. Much as I'd love to see the kids of America riding their bikes around and I'd be willing to regard them as performing a "service" if it would help, Tim Walz was just deflecting the question and doing so in a way that reminded me of all the times Harris deflected questions by directing us toward a picture of her as a child. Walz's picture is at least a happy one.

"The room erupted when Harris and Walz walked in, and the band played the school fight song with football players and cheerleaders in the back of the room."

"Leaning into his experience as a former coach, Walz gave a quick speech about teamwork. Harris told the crowd they were all leaders in their own way. Next stop: Sandfly Bar-B-Q in Savannah, a restaurant decorated with license plates from various states. Harris and Walz were greeted by the restaurant's owner, employees and local patrons. Walz sought out a group of teachers and praised their 'noble' work. He talked about the importance of optimism and insisted, 'Our politics can be hopeful.' Outside, a man held a Trump flag."

This is the best NPR can do at puffing the Harris/Walz bus tour of Georgia, in a piece titled "Harris is on a 2-day Georgia bus tour. It’s the latest sign the state is in play."

It's kind of unfair not to mention Walz in the headline. He seems to be doing most of the work — telling the football team that teamwork is important, brown-nosing the teachers, and touting optimism. What did Kamala Harris even do? She "told the crowd they were all leaders in their own way." I must infer that she first did some self-promotion: She's asking to be made the leader of the world. Then, in a show of caring, she speculates that they too are leaders in some obscure way in whatever obscure backwater of Georgia this happens to be.

Why does a public school herd its students into campaign events — replete with student musicians repurposing the school's fight song to support a political candidate? It's compulsory schooling and compulsory participation in politics. The purpose is openly political.

ADDED: Here's video of the event at the high school:

The use of children in politics.

Tim Walz is under fire for aggressively pulling his son Gus Walz’s arm on stage at the Democratic National Convention.

The incident was apparently filmed on the third day of the event (Wednesday), the same day Walz gave his speech.

Gus is 17-years-old and reportedly has a… pic.twitter.com/5yMWpgy8Ur

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) August 23, 2024

 

Tim Walz's son Gus is 17. We were discussing him yesterday in "Simply having a neurodivergent son is not enough reason for [Tim Walz] to be praised..." 

Yesterday's post title is a quote from an MSNBC article that goes on to say "what makes the Walz family’s story so reassuring is that they seem to want to help Gus live a good life rather than change who he is." I hope that is what they want. But if we're going to talk about what "they seem to want," then we have to contemplate the way Tim Walz — who's being held out as some sort of Dad for All of Us — yanked the boy into place on the stage. But let's talk about all the children who were — conspicuously or not — yanked onto that stage — or any stage.

It's been bothering me for a long time. I've had a tag — "using children in politics" — to collect the many stories over the years. 

ADDED:

This deceptive clip is going viral on right-wing media for supposedly showing Walz “abusing his son” by grabbing his hand & pulling him. In the 2nd clip, I show that he was pulling his son away from smashing his head into the teleprompter, which his daughter has to walk around. pic.twitter.com/EUE2AH5UdK

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) August 23, 2024

KH picks Walz.

"Harris picks Tim Walz as VP ahead of multistate tour" (WaPo).

ADDED: This was expected, and what can we say about it? 

1. If it were a race for the presidency, Josh Shapiro would be the stronger candidate, but for that reason, I'm happy to see him left out of the position of subordination to the already subordinate person, Kamala Harris, the sitting Vice President, sitting in the shadow of the barely-there President Joe Biden. Better for Josh Shapiro to remain active and independent, accomplishing things in Pennsylvania, and to launch a presidential campaign in his own right in 2028 or 2032. He'll have a stronger position than Tim Walz, if Tim Walz is the sitting Vice President, hoping to run in 2032. A Vice President always looks inert, and he tends to have been chosen to strengthen someone else. Do you realize how rare it is that a sitting Vice President gets elected President? It's only happened twice in U.S. history — 4 times if you count the first 2 Vice Presidents (which you shouldn't, because they did not get there as the winner's running mate).

2. What does this say about Kamala Harris's position on Israel? Is she appeasing the pro-Palestinian forces within the Democratic Party? Was anti-Semitism involved or some kind of idea that Kamala Harris, being triply intersectional, needed a running mate completely composed of traditionally privileged elements?

3. I'm interested in watching the onslaught against Walz. In the last couple weeks, Democrats have unloaded on JD Vance, so it's time for the retaliation. What form will it take? How intense will it be?

4. Or is it better to yawn? From my morning textings:

5. Do I hear a Walz?

6. Is there something about "Tim"? Hillary picked a Tim too. Did you know that "tim" was "A term of personal abuse" in the 1600s (according to the OED). From Ben Jonson's "The Alchemist": "Then you are an Otter, and a Shad, a Whit, A very Tim." 

7. The name Hillary has been uttered, and she is summoned. Up she pops, and she is thrilled:

"So if your parents don’t want you, I’ll take you."

Trump to a kid: “So if your parents don’t want you, I’ll take you.” pic.twitter.com/uX0bf4opgP

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) June 22, 2024

That little video was taken at this event: "Trump goes to Tony & Nick’s for a cheesesteak, completing a Philly trilogy/This was Trump's third cheesesteak stop in Philly at three different shops. That may be a record for a presumptive presidential nominee" (Philadelphia Inquirer)("it was unclear whether Trump ordered his steak 'wit' or 'witout'").

Donald Trump hits up Tony & Nick’s, formerly Tony Luke's, for a cheesesteak prior to his rally in North Philadelphia.pic.twitter.com/cjyEJkgXW0

— Rob Tornoe (@RobTornoe) June 22, 2024

"Donald Trump is presenting himself as the Man on the Cross, tortured for our sins."

"'I consider it a great badge of courage,' he tells crowds. 'I am being indicted for you.'... In January, he put up a video on Truth Social about how he is a messenger from God, 'a shepherd to mankind.'... 'All Americans need a Bible in their home, and I have many,' Trump barked. 'It’s my favorite book.' Maybe the Bible has replaced that Hitler book Trump’s ex-wife said he kept by his bed. But it’s all a scam. Running for president is about enriching himself....  If there is one thing Trump knows how to do, it’s exploit chaos he creates.... Declining faith in religion and rising faith in conspiracies create fertile ground for a faker like Trump...."

Maureen Dowd meowed, in "Donald Trump, Blasphemous Bible Thumper" (NYT).

If they hadn't leaned so hard into persecuting him, he wouldn't have the foundation to make the comparison to Jesus Christ.

And — to repurpose Dowd's phrase — if there is one thing Trump knows how to do, it’s to exploit the chaos his haters create for him. 

ADDED: Whatever you think of Donald Trump, should you use the term "Bible thumper"? Isn't it a looking down on people who follow religions worthy of respect? The OED designates the term "derogatory," and here's a discussion in the subreddit r/Christianity. Someone writes:

"I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to raise an American girl in this moment.... Their right to bodily autonomy is more conditional."

"The backlash against not conforming to gendered ideals seems more virulent than in recent memory.... Maybe part of the answer is telling the truth in all its absurd failure and glory. Several brilliant American Girl doll meme accounts on Instagram have done just that. They’ve made me laugh and, even though they’re laced with dark irony, they still retain some of the plucky hopefulness of Kit and Samantha. These accounts take photos of the American Girls and put them in ridiculous situations for a doll. Many of their posts portray the dolls witnessing random historical moments — like when Dan Quayle misspelled the word 'potato' — with their blank yet slightly knowing half-smiles dominating the images.... A meme account whose Instagram handle is a bawdy play on 'Kit Kittredge' posted a viral image after Roe v. Wade fell, highlighting the states where the Nixon-era American Girl doll Julie may have had more access to abortion in 1974 than we do today.... Within the world of these memes, there is nothing the world won’t throw at an American Girl doll, and there is nothing she can’t do.... [My daughter is] a few years away from marching on the National Mall, but she’s learning that progress doesn’t happen without effort and determination, and that’s a message any American girl should know by heart."

Writes Jessica Grose, in "What It Means to Raise an American Girl Now" (NYT).

The "bawdy play on 'Kit Kittredge'" — presumably not fit to print in the New York Times (those body shamers!) — is "Klit Klittredge," and here's how that image looked:

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A post shared by @klit.klittredge

I live-blog my first reading of Joe Biden's convention speech.

Transcript (with punctuation improved in spots based on the video):

Good evening, Ella Baker, a giant of the civil rights movement left us with this wisdom: give people light and they will find the way. Give people light.

I give this post my "light and shade" tag (one of my favorites).  I don't remember ever hearing about Ella Baker, but it's a good quote, and it sets up a theme, and gives us something we can use to test the success of this speech. He must give light. He cannot simply claim to be the light. Jesus said, "I am the light of the world," but Biden is not Jesus.

Those are words for our time. The current president has cloaked American darkness for much too long, too much anger, too much fear, too much division here.

I don't yet know if Biden is going to claim to be the light, but he has asserted that Trump is the dark. The dark is defined as anger, fear, and division, but I don't know how the Democrats can say they are not part of that darkness. The speech is already marked with divisiveness: The other side is the darkness and we bring the light.

And now I give you my word. If you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us. Not the worst. I’ll be an ally of the light, not the darkness.

So he's not the light, but an ally of the light.

It’s time for us, for We, the People to come together and make no mistake. United, we can and will overcome this season of darkness in America.

"We can... overcome." Not: We shall overcome. He didn't Lyndon Johnson it! If he'd said "We shall overcome" it would have tied to the Civil Rights Movement, and he did begin the speech with a quote from "a giant of the civil rights movement," but he's not talking about racial justice specifically here. He's talking in the most generic way about light and darkness. There's nothing about any specific people, just all the people, the ethereal entity "We, the People," which needs to "come together."

We’ll choose hope over fear, facts, over fiction, fairness, over privilege....

Pretty much everyone chooses those things in the abstract, but he's telling us what we will do. What's the evidence of that? It seems to me that We, the People have been, in reality, choosing the negative side of each of those binaries, but if Donald Trump can be made to embody fear, fiction, and privilege, then it's correct to say we'll choose hope, facts, and fairness if only we vote him out of office.

Biden accepts the Democratic Party nomination for President, but if he is elected, he'll be "an American President," working for everyone, "not just our base or our party":

This is not a partisan moment. This must be an American moment. Someone with a cause for hope and light and love — hope for our future, light to see our way forward, and love for one another. 

I've been wondering where's the love. He's offering love — love and hope and light. That's all very abstract, of course.

No, nearly a century ago, Franklin Roosevelt pledged a new deal in a time of massive unemployment, uncertainty, and fear. Stricken by a disease — stricken by a virus — FDR insisted that he would recover and prevail, and he believed America could as well. And he did. And we can as well. This campaign isn’t just about winning votes. It’s about winning the heart and yes, the soul of America — winning it for the generous among us, not the selfish when needed for workers who keep this country going, not just the privileged few at the top, winning for those communities who have known the injustice of a knee on the neck, for all the young people [who] have known only America being  rising inequity and shrinking opportunity....

The metaphorical "knee on the neck" has affected whole communities... but weren't these communities in cities run by the Democratic Party?

And now history has delivered us to one of the most difficult moments America has ever faced: four historic crises.

The 4 crises are: the pandemic, the economy, the "call for racial justice," and climate change.

As many have said America is at an inflection point...

Inflection point! (I blogged about the term "inflection point" twice yesterday — 1, 2 — after Kamala Harris used it in her speech.)

We can choose a path to becoming angrier, less hopeful, more divided, a path of shadow and suspicion or, or we can choose a different path and together take this chance to heal, to reform, to unite, a path of hope and light.

As if the idea of light could meet 4 crises. By the way — only 4? Why not 6?



Back to Joe:

In case you missed it...

This was gorgeous, in case you missed it. pic.twitter.com/XABIUDa0oP

— Marianne Williamson (@marwilliamson) August 18, 2020

I object to the use of children in politics but that was a lot better than this...



And this...



IN THE COMMENTS: Wince said:

Why weren't they shown taking a knee?

Simultaneously, Bob Boyd:

Were they all kneeling?

Which was exactly what Meade said here in real space.

The answer to Wince is: They were shown from the chest up, in the familiar coronavirus-y style of people Zooming from home. That's why it's so funny to ask "Were they all kneeling?"

Enlisting school children to paint "Black Live Matters" murals for downtown Madison.

I'm reading "Painting murals gives students empowering role in protest movement" (Wisconsin State Journal):

As murals were being painted at the end of the school year, SJ Hemmerich, art teacher at Randall Elementary School, created a slide presentation of them. Hemmerich then presented it to students and as a last assignment asked , “If you could design your own mural for (Black Lives Matter), what would it be?” Then Hemmerich got the idea of why not do it for real.

Hemmerich, like other teachers, reached out to “Black and brown students” to get involved. Hemmerich got permission to work on one large mural and five panels located near each other. ... Hemmerich also sent an email out to art teachers in the Madison School District to recruit more help beyond Randall and wound up with more than 135 students and some staff members.

“I am really passionate about social justice work,” Hemmerich said. “I thought it would be a really good way to get students involved.”...

Monique Karlen, art teacher at La Follette High School, said she started by recruiting some of her students and then got other help from students from Middleton and East high schools...

The only mention of parents in the article is about one student who said that her parents worry about her participation in the protests, so the mural-painting is a good, safe alternative. But I don't think teachers should be recruiting children to engage in political activism — even if it's artistic — without first involving the parents and getting their consent. I don't think adults should put any sort of pressure on children to take a political position and to do political work — even if it's artwork. Teachers should not be exploiting their access to children for any political purpose. They are given access to our children for the purpose of education, and it is a solemn trust that should never be violated.

"Revolutionary moments also require public confessions of iniquity by those complicit in oppression. These now seem to come almost daily."

"I’m still marveling this week at the apology the actress Jenny Slate gave for voicing a biracial cartoon character. It’s a classic confession of counterrevolutionary error: 'I acknowledge how my original reasoning was flawed and that it existed as an example of white privilege and unjust allowances made within a system of societal white supremacy … Ending my portrayal of "Missy" is one step in a life-long process of uncovering the racism in my actions.'... If you find this creepy, but don’t want to say that out loud, just know that you are not alone. Ibram X. Kendi, the New York Times best seller who insists that everyone is either racist or anti-racist, now has a children’s book to indoctrinate toddlers on one side of this crude binary.... The use of the term 'white supremacy' to mean not the KKK or the antebellum South but American society as a whole in the 21st century has become routine on the left, as if it were now beyond dispute.... The word 'racist,' which was widely understood quite recently to be prejudicial treatment of an individual based on the color of their skin, now requires no intent to be racist in the former sense, just acquiescence in something called 'structural racism,' which can mean any difference in outcomes among racial groupings. Being color-blind is therefore now being racist. And there is no escaping this. The woke shift their language all the time, so that words that were one day fine are now utterly reprehensible. You can’t keep up — which is the point.... So, yes, this is an Orwellian moment. It’s not a moment of reform but of a revolutionary break, sustained in part by much of the liberal Establishment."

From "You Say You Want a Revolution?" by Andrew Sullivan (New York Magazine).

"Being color-blind is therefore now being racist." — That's been true for a long time, at least where I live. When was the last time you could say "I don't see color" and not be thought an idiot at best. I've lived in Madison, Wisconsin since 1984 — and that's not an Orwell joke — and assertions of colorblindness have always been regarded as racist. I think there was a chance to adopt the ideology and outward manifestations of colorblindness back around 1968, but America went in another direction. Everyone younger than the Baby Boomers could have been taught colorblindness from the earliest age. But that opportunity was lost, and now we are very far along in cranking up racial sensibilities. Sullivan's yearning for a time when you could get off the racism hook by being colorblind — or, realistically, claiming to be colorblind or believing yourself to be colorblind — is a yearning for a past that never existed. There was a time when it was posited as a goal — notably, MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech — but that goal was down a road not taken and a cynic would say you can't get there from here.

In the complicated emotional manipulation that was yesterday's lawprof hearing, one almost random thing stuck way out.

I can only guess what goes on in other people's head. It was hard enough for me as a law professor to understand how much law students were getting out of a discussion, and those were carefully selected participants who were supposed to have read a text that was exactly what we were talking about. But what did Americans get out of yesterday's hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, where professors jabbered all day, prodded by posturing politicos professors?

What would James Madison think of us right now, can you tell me, professor? How about Hamilton?, what does he think, because we care about what that guy thinks now because of the Broadway musical about him. Well, this is the most impeachable thing that ever came down the impeachment trail. If this isn't impeachable, then nothing is impeachable, and any President will be able to do anything and it won't be impeachable! On the contrary! If this is impeachable, then every President will always have to be impeached!

Ugh! Such a crazy clutter! I turned away, and I'm used to absorbing legal-ish stuff like that. It's no challenge to understand. For me, it's like reading a young adult novel. It's just a matter of whether I'd want to consume something on that level. But I'm a former law professor. I taught all the separation of powers materials they were talking about. And I'm old and have lived thought not just the Clinton impeachment hearings but the Nixon impeachment hearings.

So who am I to guess at what was going on inside 100 or so million heads? What, if anything, got from that hearing into the mind of the voter? Maybe mostly just a vague sense of reinforcement in whatever level of hostility or support they already felt for Donald Trump. But I think there was one thing that rose about the chaotic verbiage: The Child!

My Google search just now (click to enlarge and clarify):