The Biden campaign is a disaster and this is what The New York Times dredges up?

I'm reading "A Hollywood Heavyweight Is Biden’s Secret Weapon Against Trump/The longtime movie mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg always sought scary villains for his films. Now he has found what he considers a real-life one in Donald J. Trump."

Trim and wiry, intense but amiable, Mr. Katzenberg at age 73 still exudes a kind of ambitious, animal energy as if he were one of his movie protagonists. He is famous around Hollywood, and now Washington, for rising at 5 a.m. and riding an exercise bicycle for 90 minutes while simultaneously reading four newspapers before taking as many as three breakfast meetings — and waffles or eggs-and-extra-crispy-bacon breakfasts, not the leafy California kind. “The guy eats like a horse and he doesn’t gain any weight,” his close friend Casey Wasserman, the sports, music and entertainment mogul, groused good-naturedly.

Are Biden supporters in such deep delusion that they would take comfort from this "secret weapon"? This inane filler says: Time to panic! 

Katzenberg once ran Disney, so...

"My decades of experience in the region taught me that Palestinian and Israeli parents may say different prayers at worship but they share the same hopes for their kids—just like Americans, just like parents everywhere."

"That is why I am convinced Hamas must go.... Hamas does not speak for the Palestinian people...."

Writes Hillary Rodham Clinton, in "Hamas Must Go/The terror group has proved again and again that it will sabotage any efforts to forge a lasting peace" (The Atlantic).

Clinton begins with an account of her brokering a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas back in 2012, a cease-fire that Hamas violated in 2014. Now, she tells us: "Cease-fires freeze conflicts rather than resolve them.... Cease-fires can make it possible to pursue negotiations aimed at achieving a lasting peace, but only when the timing and balance of forces are right."

She wants change not only in Gaza, but also in Israel: "Going forward, Israel needs a new strategy and new leadership. Instead of the current ultra-right-wing government, it will need a government of national unity that’s rooted in the center of Israeli politics and can make the hard choices ahead...."

ADDED: The first 2 sentences are too rich not to quote: "One morning in November 2012, I knocked on the door of President Barack Obama’s suite in the Raffles Hotel in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, so early that he was barely out of bed. I had an urgent question that could not wait for the president to finish his morning coffee: Should we try to broker a cease-fire in Gaza?"

Can't he just sip his Raffles coffee?

AND: That last question references this: "At diner, Obama brushes off question on Hamas. Says, 'Why can’t I just eat my waffle?'"

Yes, Obama's famous "Why can’t I just eat my waffle?" was a reaction to a question about Hamas.

"... music, dancing, gigs, parties, festivals, films, TV, sport, fashion, fame, brightly coloured plastic things, sex, food, kissing, singing, YouTube, social media, talent shows, online hook-ups...."

"These are the things that over the past hundred-odd years have been increasingly invested with importance by a cultural superstructure bent on working the population to death in miserable jobs, by fooling us into thinking that the rest of the time we are having 'fun.'... These are the activities that, because I do not enjoy them, have always led me to believe that I am not having a fun life myself. For I do not dance and will not dance and have never been to a gig or festival. I don’t like parties and I can’t watch films and the company of other people is mostly disappointing to me. And fashion and fast food and casual sex, although I’ve dabbled, have only ever depressed me. With the result, of course, that I tend to feel I have missed out terribly. That I 'haven’t had much fun in my life.'"

Writes Giles Coren, in "If Barbra Streisand hasn’t had fun, who has?/Sad truth is that parties, festivals and casual sex are passports to misery, and true happiness lies in the mundane" (London Times)(addressing Barbra Streisand's statement, as she promotes her memoir, "I haven’t had much fun in my life").

"At diner, Obama brushes off question on Hamas. Says, 'Why can’t I just eat my waffle?'"

Something you may only half remember, reported April 21, 2008, in the Chicago Sun-Times.

"Eggo Brunch in a Jar makes it easy for parents to kick back when they’re not caring for their little ones."

Says the press release from Eggo, quoted in "Eggo’s ‘Brunch in a Jar’ sippin’ cream is a boozy, diabolical disaster" (WaPo).

Was this some kind of bizarre meal-replacement product, with the added bonus of a buzz (thanks to the 20 percent ABV)? No, apparently it’s meant to be consumed alongside … real Eggo waffles in their solid form.... [I]t’s a rich beverage infused with dessert flavors including banana pudding and dark chocolate and coffee....

The urge among food companies to booze-ify their offerings is apparently strong, no matter how improbable the resulting product. (See Arby’s french-fry-flavored vodka, Oreo Thins wine, Hellmann’s ‘mayo-nog,’ and the Velveeta martini.)...

I was irritated by the vague hillbilly cosplay of the [Eggo] container, a jar meant to conjure up moonshine, and the folksy droppin’ of the letter “g”...

I'm glad the elite WaPo writer — Emily Heil — is offended on behalf of the hillbillies of this world. But what about some empathy for the people who really do love waffles and are just wondering what alcoholic beverage to pair them with? 

ADDED: To paraphrase Obama: Why it is that, like, I can't just eat my waffle and sip my sippin' cream? Just gonna eat my waffle and sip my sippin' cream right now.

Can't I just not eat my waffle?

I'm reading "Opinion: The unjust shaming of a little girl highlights the broad issue of institutional food waste" (WaPo):

On Nov. 21, a 9-year-old student of color at Palm Elementary School in Lorain, Ohio, didn’t want to eat the packaged waffles that had been put on her lunch tray. When she threw them away, a White cafeteria monitor forced the girl to retrieve them from the trash and sit at a table until she ate them. Within weeks, the monitor and the school principal were both fired. But the story did not end there. In January, the district released video of the event, and it is being used as evidence in a civil rights lawsuit against the district. 

Whatever the outcome of the case, this incident has exposed cracks around race and class as they play out in the country’s long-standing commitment to feeding the more than 30 million public school students who rely on the National School Lunch Program every day....

ADDED: Sometimes your teaching of a lesson becomes the lesson.

"What would move a man to say you have to play it 840 times to be complete?"

Garry Moore asks John Cale in this 1963 episode of "I've Got a Secret":

 

How cerebral TV game shows were back then!

I'm noticing this today because I was emailed by Jeff Gee, who'd read this post of mine about a 24-hour-long film montage. He said:

I am reminded of Erik Satie's "Vexations," which has the notation "In order to play the theme 840 times in succession, it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, and in the deepest silence, by serious immobilities." Turns out 840 times = 18 hours, which is how long it took a battery of pianists (every description of it I've seen says "battery," except the Wikipedia article) to perform it at The Pocket Theater in 1963. John Cale, who was one of the pianists, appeared on "I've Got a Secret," and so did the single spectator who made it all the way through (tho Wiki says he was "present" which doesn't mean necessarily awake) I think the Satie scribble is a (good) joke, like the Ring Lardner stage direction that so-and-so exits "as if smuggling waffles," and nicely deadpan. Not sure about "the clock."

"The Clock" is the subject of that earlier blog post.

Markley seems sort of grimly earnest, but maybe he's another nutty guy with a great deadpan...

And let me add — as if smuggling waffles — that John Cale is so handsome in his little quiz show appearance. 1963 is one year before he participated in the creation of The Velvet Underground. His role predominates in things like "Lady Godiva's Operation." Audio at the link. Lyrics here. Excerpt: "Doctor arrives with knife and baggage/Sees the growth as just so much cabbage/That must now be cut away/Now come the moment of Great! Great! Decision!/The doctor is making his first incision." Cerebral!

ADDED: I clicked on my "John Cale" tag to see if I'd ever used it before. I had. Twice. Including once where I updated to add that same "I've Got a Secret Clip" (after a commenter linked to it). I don't like to see a repetition. I take some pride in not repeating myself, but there are 62,935 posts on this blog, and it's delusional to believe I know everything in all of them, especially in the updates inspired by comments, which I would characterize as afterthoughts. The post proper was about a current interview with Cale, wherein he was "reclaim[ing] and reconfigur[ing] his dispair," supposedly.

"I can't stop thinking about waffles."

The MSNBC chyron says "MOUNTING PRESSURE" but this Northam constituent makes me think the pressure is lifting.

I love everything about this Virginian — right down to the coffee cup — and it's very funny afterwards how the newsman (Geoff Bennett) scrambles to maintain the "mounting pressure"...

How can the pressure be dissipating when all these faces are arrayed against Northam?



MSNBC is going on and on about this story, and I think you can really tell that what's driving them is a desperation to bolster the powerful Democrats who went all in on this?

It seems to me that if that guy with the coffee cup wants to give the Governor another chance, that's the right answer. I'm going with Coffee Cup Guy.

ADDED: He has a name — AJ Brewer. Let me transcribe what he said: "I don't like this idea of, you know, this person doesn't deserve a second chance. It seems to be, at least from my perspective, Ralph is a decent guy, and, whatever person he was 35 years ago doesn't seem to be that person today. I don't want people to treat me that way, so I'm not going to treat him that way."

ALSO: Here's an article about AJ Brewer in Richmond BizSense:

'It sounded like you said 'robot waffles.'"

Me, responding to Meade, who re-articulated: "'Robot brothels.' They're 'dehumanizing and dangerous.'"

Me, looking for the link to whatever he's reading: "Are you really reading 'dehumanizing and dangerous'?" Because I was Googling that phrase and not finding the article. Suddenly: "Oh! It's in a British paper!"

The headline in The Sun: "BAD BOTS Sex robots BACKLASH as brothel workers reveal fury over ‘dehumanising and dangerous’ droids."

Me, looking at the photograph and laughing: "It's funny how they look standing up because they're trying to make room between their legs."

But don't worry, guys, the robot woman won't laugh at you.

Another angle on The Era of That's Not Funny.

F s a s y a o f b f o t c, a n n, c i L, a d t t p t a m a c e. N w a e i a g c w, t w t n, o a n s c a s d, c l e...

"How to Memorize Verbatim Text."

I'm reading about this subject because I've long been interested in paraphrasing, and, writing the previous post, I encountered one of those "quotes" that are virtually always remembered in paraphrase form. You know, like "Play it again, Sam" (For "Play it, Sam"). Why do we do that? Does it happen when there's something off about the verbatim quote, and we're really fixing it, making it what it would be if we were writing the screenplay and expecting an actor to say it?

The misremembered quote I ran into this morning is "Why can't I just eat my waffle?" I can tell you for a fact, based on watching the video about 25 times just now, that the verbatim quote is: "I was wondering why it is that, like, I can't just eat my waffle. Just gonna eat my waffle right now."

Why did I watch 25 times? Because I found myself forgetting the word order almost as soon as I heard it even when I was trying to get it verbatim. It was incredibly hard to remember exactly where Obama said "like." Also, the first 3 words are garbled... because he is literally eating the waffle. That's why the word "just" is so important. He's not wondering why he can't eat his waffle. He is eating his waffle. He wants to eat his waffle without having to do something else at the same time.

The difficulty of discerning "I was wondering" might cause listeners to begin the sentence with "why it is that," which sounds odd. I myself, trying to get a verbatim quote, kept switching to "why is it that." There seems to be a strong instinct to switch words into a more natural order, which might say a lot about how language develops and how babies learn to speak in a way that follows established rules (and long before they have any awareness that there are rules that many adults believe in and take pains to enforce).

So if you're looking to memorize verbatim text, it will be easier, I think, if the text you choose follows the natural pattern of speech. And — to continue in the same line of thinking — if you find a particular text strangely hard to memorize, you might want to think about why it was put in that form. Is the speaker/writer hiding something or trying to affect an elevated style? Is there something humorous? Something meant to exclude less intelligent listeners? What's going on?

Did you understand the post title? You will if you read the linked article... the linked... link... ... linc...

That's a technique for memorization. I remember reading, long ago, about papers left by an old woman who couldn't talk and who was assumed to have lost her language ability. It was considered sad that her notes looked like this: o f w a i h h b t n t k c t w b d o e a i i i h....

But then it was understood, and they realized what they were seeing and felt overwhelmed by their failure to understand her.

WaPo provides "Perspective/Barack Obama’s summer reading list is everything we need right now."

I've heard about the "blue wave." This seems to have us lolling about on the beach. What does it mean to say "Barack Obama’s summer reading list is everything we need right now"? I hear: Remember the good old days? Wasn't Barack Obama great? It's okay to disengage from all the craziness of today and lean back and read some books.

But let's see what the books are. Maybe they're all about riling us up about today. Oh. Wait. There's this introductory material from WaPo.

It’s the classiest, most passive-aggressive move Barack Obama could make: He posted a list of books he’s been reading on ­Facebook...

The WaPo book editor (Ron Charles) is trying to deflect the message I heard. He's seeing AGGRESSION! in Obama's amiable communication. Classy aggression.

Obama didn’t rage against his enemies or attack the pillars of our democracy. He didn’t call anybody a “dog.” He didn’t brag about his own bestsellers — or the size of his book-reading hands.

Instead, he just presented a small window into the mind of a man who appreciates how books can alter the pace of our lives and illuminate the world.

“One of my favorite parts of summer is deciding what to read when things slow down just a bit,” Obama wrote, “whether it’s on a vacation with family or just a quiet afternoon.”

For a nation showered by the sputtering rage of his replacement, Obama’s implicit reminder of how incurious and aliterate the Oval Office has become is almost cruel.

La la la. Isn't he wonderful? And isn't his wonderfulness all we really need to make the argument that Trump is intolerably horrible?

Credit to Ron Charles for deploying the word "aliterate." It's different from "illiterate." It means "unwilling to read, although able to do so; disinclined to read" (OED).

ADDED: This post made me think of Obama and the waffle. Remember? "I was wondering why it is that, like, I can't just eat my waffle. Just gonna eat my waffle right now." (By the way, have you ever noticed that the waffle quote is virtually always remembered in paraphrase form, as "Why can't I just eat my waffle?" Go ahead, Google the verbatim quote, which I've provided, and you'll get lots of hits, all substituting the paraphrase.)

ALSO: Althouse on Facebook (but don't try to friend me)(click to enlarge):

"Where Is Barack Obama?/The most popular American, whose legacy is the primary target of Donald Trump, has, for now, virtually disappeared from public life."

Gabriel Debenedetti (in New York Magazine) asks the question that perhaps you, like me, have been wondering about.

How did the most ubiquitous man in America for eight years virtually disappear?... He has mostly opted out of liberal America’s collective Trump-outrage cycle. Though he reads the Times and other newspapers, he doesn’t follow daily Trump developments on Twitter or watch television news. He is upset by the administration’s actions, and he’s confided to friends that what worries him most is the international order, the standing of the office of the presidency, the erosion of democratic norms, and the struggles of people who are suddenly unsure of their immigration status or the future of their health-care coverage. Still, in conversations with political allies, Obama insists that today’s domestic mess is a blip on the long arc of history and argues that his own work must be focused on progress over time — specifically on empowering a new generation of leaders. He says his legacy is not what concerns him. (“Michelle and I are fine,” he tells those who ask about it.) And while he often says he misses the day-to-day work of fixing people’s problems, he has even less patience for day-to-day politics than he did as president.

In fact, in private conversations, Obama rarely mentions Trump at all.... One of Obama’s friends repeatedly described the former president as newly “Zen-like,” a striking descriptor given that Obama’s impossible calm has been a hallmark of his entire time on the national stage. To those who’ve known him longest, his confidence in the decision not to wade back into the political muck is the product of the same hyper-self-aware posture he’s had since childhood, growing up straddling worlds and then writing a book about himself in his 30s....

He's aloof. That was always the case. That's kind of what we liked about him, those of us who liked the man who — in my observation — is considered the most likable person to become famous in our lifetime. We're just experiencing the full dimension of coolness. It's not always to your liking, even if you were one of those people who really liked it.



But I think Obama should be allowed to eat his waffle, go to restaurants and be left in peace, write his books, experience down time, and stay out of the fray. He may seem political useful, but that's because he's avoiding being used, and that's exactly what he should do.

ADDED: That waffle video won't work in the embedded form. You can click through and see it at YouTube, but for a workable embed, here's Obama eating noodles in Vietnam with Anthony Bourdain:

Anthony Bourdain goes to Waffle House.

Via Meade (so I'm sorry if I'm not hat-tipping someone I should).

And sorry the audio so rough.

Did you watch the Golden Globes last night and hear what the entertainment industry people had to say about Trump?

"The most memorable part may have been at the beginning, when Mr. Fallon’s Teleprompter went out. He vamped for a bit, and after the commercial break he returned with a joke — likening his mishap to Mariah Carey’s singing disaster on New Year’s Eve — that it seemed half of Twitter had already made at that point."

From a NYT review of the Golden Globes show last night, "Trump Was the Elephant in the Ballroom at the Golden Globes."

Jimmy's a nice man. I like him. But I find celebrity talk about presidential politics so compulsively avoidable these days. The celebrities all backed Hillary Clinton. They — in their reeking privilege — seemed to have had their hearts set on 8 more years of glamming it up in the White House.

How many of them were at Obama's Last Party — the one that raved on until 4 a.m. and ended with waffles?

8 years ago, Obama demanded the freedom to "just eat my waffle," and last Saturday, the most elite and celebrated people celebrated the last of The Presidency called Obama with waffles in the White House.

And then they jetted back to L.A. to dress in even prettier clothes to celebrate themselves with awards — golden globular awards — and to take shots from their La La Land* at the new celebrity President, the one whose opponent they all backed, and somehow they think we could care what nastiness they lobbed at Trump.

Did it hit? I don't know. I don't care. We were in the heartland — the frozen heartland — watching another channel and hailing Mary.

____________________________

* "With a 'La La Land' sweep, Hollywood once more falls in love — with itself."

"Where are my pancakes?"

Why pancakes? I was thinking of Obama's old "Why is it that I can't just eat my waffle?" but there's this:

"'God our Father, God our Father, we thank you, we thank you,' he sang. 'For our many blessings, for our many blessings, Amen, Amen.'"

Child at the Waffle House.

Jesus calling: You can't just eat your waffle.

Why can't I just eat my waffle?

"Mary Burke accuses Scott Walker of 'waffling' on gay marriage issue."

"Go forth and suck, Badgers."

Because "the first version of every big project is 'janky.'"

[Reddit co-founder Alexis] Ohanian, who had planned to become a lawyer, had an “epiphany” his sophomore year in college, after ditching studying for the LSAT to go to a Waffle House.

“I realized, I wanted these waffles more than the LSAT,” Ohanian said. “So I probably shouldn’t be a lawyer.”

Can't I just eat my waffles... and be a billionaire... through janky suckage?

"The last thing Universal wants is another actor to emerge as its 'Fifty Shades' protagonist only to waffle."

The last guy quit because:

1. Fans of the books didn't think he properly embodied sadistic billionairitude and their hostility freaked out the poor guy, or...

2. The script sucks, and the actor's effort to participate in rewriting it went too far, and the studio drew the line, or...

3. It's a really dumb role, and whoever plays it will be ruined. As it says at the link: "the virgin-turned-sexpert Anastasia Steele... has greater dimension than the [Christian] Grey character." A 5-page booklet has greater dimension than a single sheet of paper. She gets to go from virgin to sexpert. (Is there a cornier word than "sexpert"?)

4. No one wants to be laughed at while performing sex, especially the sort of eroticism that depends so heavily on being taken seriously. If people start laughing in the theaters, which you know they will, this is a disaster. There's a reason stories like this get popular in print form.

5. Why can't I just eat my waffle?