You're not dressing like Cary Grant.

I disagree that you dress like Cary Grant. In this thread, I will list some of the ways in which your dress differs and why such important details matter. 🧵 https://t.co/6hTiPgpxSX

— derek guy (@dieworkwear) April 28, 2024

Read the whole detailed thread. Quite aside from the fantasy of dressing like men did in 1548, Guy shows it's also a fantasy to believe that men in suits these days are dressing like Cary Grant in 1948.

I was especially interested in Guy's attention to the problem of a collar gap, because I was troubled to see that Biden was allowed to go on close-up camera last night at the Correspondents' Dinner with a giant gap between his shirt and his neck:

  

It's reminiscent of a ventriloquist dummy, notably Charlie McCarthy, who dressed in white tie:

"The problem is here they want... White supremacy by ventriloquist effect. There is a Black mouth moving but a White idea through the running on the runway of the tongue..."

"... of a figure who justifies and legitimates the White supremacist practices. We know that we can internalize in our own minds, in our own subconscious, in our own bodies the very principles that are undoing us. So to have a Black face speaking in behalf of a White supremacist legacy is nothing new. And it is to the chagrin of those of us who study race that the White folk on the other side and the right wingers the other side don’t understand."

Said Michael Eric Dyson, talking about Winsome Sears, quoted in "‘A Black Mouth Moving’ That ‘Justifies and Legitimates’ White Supremacy: MSNBC Guest Says Winsome Sears Win Doesn’t Make GOP Racially Progressive" (Mediaite).

Do you know when you are speaking your own true thoughts and are not channeling someone's else's? Are you sure? Do you know when somebody else is speaking their own true thoughts and are not channeling someone's else's? I could see being eternally skeptical about whether anyone is ever truly speaking their own mind, 100% originality, but I'm just going to be skeptical of the people who choose to pronounce some and only some people to be the puppets of others. The selective puppet accusation itself might be channeling what somebody else is launching off the runway of your tongue.

When puppet accusations fly, I feel compelled — by my own true motivation of the heart — to post this video clip:

 

ADDED: Video of Dyson:

MSNBC guest on @WinsomeSears:

“There is a black mouth moving but a white idea running on the runway of the tongue of a figure who justifies and legitimates the white supremacist practices.” pic.twitter.com/P3O8ciTveG

— Jewish Deplorable (@TrumpJew2) November 5, 2021

"Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken was in the Oval Office, pleading with President Biden... to end Trump-era restrictions on immigration..."

"... and to allow tens of thousands of desperate refugees fleeing war, poverty and natural disasters into the United States... The attitude of the president during the meeting, according to one person to whom the conversation was later described, was, essentially: Why are you bothering me with this? What had been an easy promise on the campaign trail — to reverse what Democrats called President Donald J. Trump’s “racist” limits on accepting refugees — has become a test of what is truly important to the new occupant of the White House... Now, a decision to raise the refugee limit to 62,500 — as Mr. Biden had promised only weeks earlier to members of Congress — would invite from Republicans new attacks of hypocrisy and open borders even as the president was calling for bipartisanship. It was terrible timing, he told officials.... Biden’s staff came up with a compromise.... The backlash was immediate.... Within hours, the president backtracked...."

Writes Maggie Haberman in the NYT. 

Isn't that awfully mean? One person interprets the President's attitude, and it gets published in the NYT:  

Why are you bothering me with this?

As if the man — touted for his empathy — has no empathy. What really happened? Obviously, Biden understands the human experience of the refugees. He doesn't need Blinken acting out the suffering to him at great length. I'm imagining Biden wanting to solve the problems pragmatically, taking all the considerations into account, not just caving in to gushing empathy for the desperate people at the border. 

Now, the NYT is portraying Biden as weak and wavering this way and that as he's criticized for anything he does, over a problem for which there is no satisfying solution.

IN THE EMAIL: Lloyd writes:

David Brooks heard no "talk of community and compassionate conservatism" at the GOP convention.

It's embarrassing. He really let his bias show when he said:

[T]here is a flaw in the vision the Republicans offered in Tampa. It is contained in its rampant hyperindividualism. Speaker after speaker celebrated the solitary and heroic individual. There was almost no talk of community and compassionate conservatism. There was certainly no conservatism as Edmund Burke understood it, in which individuals are embedded in webs of customs, traditions, habits and governing institutions.

As Roger L. Simon points out (via Instapundit):

Hello, where were you, David? On Thursday evening, one after the other private citizen came forth to testify to Mitt Romney’s extraordinary personal charity and deep community spirit. I have never seen anything like it at a convention, Republican or Democrat. I don’t know if you would call it Burkean, but you would certainly call it eminently decent and highly laudable. The culmination was Ted and Pat Oparowsky of New Hampshire who recounted how much time and attention the young Mitt Romney gave their son, a child he did not know, when the boy was dying of cancer.

Maybe Brooks skitters away from the part of the web of customs, traditions, habits and governing institutions that is religion.

I'd love to see Brooks write another column and explain — if this is what he thinks — that the compassionate, communitarian activities done within religion don't count as part of a political party's vision for America. Perhaps these activities are like the good things you do for your family and friends. It's a group of insiders, and someone operating within government needs a "vision" that relates to the whole community, not to groups that give each other special treatment.

But I don't think he'll be able to prop up his old Edmund Burke ventriloquist doll to say that. Brooks will need to come out and say it on his own. And then we can judge whether David Brooks represents conservatism (even for NYT op-ed page purposes).

Vintage Ventriloquist Dummies.

Some are hip...



... and some are square....

And there's more!

"On paper, they look an awful lot like Hillary Rodham Clinton."

"They are professional women of a certain age — politically active Democrats, liberals, unabashed feminists who remember what it was like to be told they could not become firefighters or university department heads, let alone president of the United States of America."

So why aren't they for Hillary Clinton?

"She leaves me cold," said Sidonie Smith, who chairs the University of Michigan English department. "I hate to say that. It's a very strange feeling to have."

The classic feminist diagnosis would be: sexism. Did you think feminism immunized you from sexism? You consciously favor the advancement of women, but then when you look at a particular woman who is at the point of advancement, you think: Yes, but not her.

But is this what we are feeling about Hillary? I think not. Hillary is not just another professional woman of my generation, who ought to inspire sisterly empathy. She is a throwback to an earlier era, when women found their place through their husbands. The resistance I feel toward Hillary has to do do with her advancement under the aegis of a powerful man — a powerful man who seems to have diminished quite a number of women. According to the article, I'm responding the way women my age respond:

For many, it's visceral. While they struggled to break through institutional barriers in the workplace, Clinton hitched her star to her man and followed him to the top. When his philandering imperiled his political career, she not only pulled him out of the fire but helped orchestrate attacks against his accusers.

Exactly.

For others, the anger they feel is purely political. Some are disappointed by her support of the Iraq war, her reluctance to take stands on some hot-button issues or the fact that she has re-created herself as a centrist.

For me, these are reasons to support her.

Much more in the article. Let me just extract one more line: 

[I]n an interview with LA Weekly last May, Jane Fonda called Clinton "a ventriloquist for the patriarchy with a skirt and a vagina."

The dreaded double-V! Ventriloquist with a vagina! Wow, Ms. Fonda is kind of crude. Also, inaccurate: Hillary doesn't wear a skirt.

ADDED: As a commenter notes, it's unlikely that Fonda meant to cast Hillary as the ventriloquist. Didn't she mean that the patriarchy is the ventriloquist and Hillary is the dummy? 

"We're going to South Carolina and Oklahoma and Arizona and North Dakota and New Mexico. We're going to California and Texas and New York!"

How about Wisconsin? Our primary is February 19th. After the first few, it seems Dean just started naming the most obvious states.

I finally saw a TV ad here in Wisconsin for one of the candidates. It was for Wesley Clark. After the part in the end when he does the obligatory this-is-my-ad thing, he stares into the camera with those Etruscan eyes. The eyes stare for a few seconds. No, no, General Clark, that's abnormal, everyone needs you to blink. Then he blinks, once, a bit slowly, like a ventriloquist dummy:

"I never forgot a segment from the Paul Winchell show, wherein Jerry and Knucklehead were sitting at the big desk, gavel in hand. Poor Knucklehead had an inferiority complex -- he was bemoaning the fact that Jerry had 'real' hair, whereas his was only painted on. He was also jealous of the fact that Jerry had moveable eyelids and he didn't! Also, Jerry had a higher position than he did. Knucklehead was really complaining and feeling sorry for himself, and Jerry was generously trying to bolster him up. Hilarious! I never forgot it!"