Marrying the father figure. So if a teenage girl goes for a year believing an older man is her biological father, but then finds out it was just rumor, is it okay to marry him? I mean in a conventional family-oriented movie. That's what happened in "That Hagen Girl" (discussed here, with pictures, yesterday). Ronald Reagan was none too happy with the role of the father figure and begged for a rewrite in which he doesn't end up marrying Shirley Temple.

Reagan's misgivings about the script were borne out when the film had its first preview screening. After he rescues Temple from her suicide attempt, he admits that he loves her. But when he said the words on screen, the preview audience screamed "Oh no!" almost in unison.

So they recut it, so people wouldn't scream in horror! But that only made it an inexplicably sexless marriage.

The TA Strike. The TAs here are about to strike:

But I wonder how much student support for them there is:

(You may need to scroll down on that second link to get to the discussion of the strike.) Note the technique used by the signmaker to engage the interest of undergraduates in labor issues: "Don't go to class!" That surely has appeal quite aside from any understanding of which side is right in this dispute. But "Strike Party"? Okay, skip class and come to a party--that will surely prove the degree of student support. Not a word on the sign about why the TAs are striking. Note the fine print: "Kites--Music--Dancing."

"Defend your beloved country." The NYT reports:

L. Paul Bremer III, chief of the American occupation authority, delivered a stark television address on Friday in which he declared that "Iraq faces a choice" and that the American plan to bring stability and democracy here might not succeed unless ordinary Iraqis come quickly to its defense.

"If you do not defend your beloved country, it will not be saved," he said.

Why doesn't that tell the reasonable Iraqi to do nothing? If time is short and the Americans are about to give up and leave Iraqis to their own devices, wouldn't you want to lie low and not call attention to yourself? Wouldn't you picture the future by reference to the aftermath of the 1991 war and steel yourself for the next brutal regime?

Inferiority or superiority? David Brooks has a meditation on misunderstanding the Columbine murderers (who suffered, the evidence now shows, not from feelings of inferiority but feelings of superiority):

[I]t is striking how resilient this perpetrator-as-victim narrative remains. We still sometimes assume that the people who flew planes into buildings — and those who blew up synagogues in Turkey, trains in Spain, discos in Tel Aviv and schoolchildren this week in Basra — are driven by feelings of weakness, resentment and inferiority. We cling to the egotistical notion that it is our economic and political dominance that drives terrorists insane.

But it could be that whatever causes they support or ideologies they subscribe to, the one thing that the killers have in common is a feeling of immense superiority. It could be that they want to exterminate us because they regard us as spiritually deformed and unfit to live, at least in their world.

Interesting how he turned self-blame into an "egotistical notion." I'm sure the self-blamers will find a way to say that the distorted sense of superiority grows out of a feeling of inferiority--mania is a mood swing away from depression.

Technical difficulties experienced. It was a morning of minor technical difficulties.

The Charter cable internet access was down again, so I couldn't get to my blog quickly with my laptop open on the dining table next to my New York Times and my coffee. I noted bloggable ideas on a Post-It, as I used to do before I got the high-speed access. Then I used my dial-up access and learned something that I'll try to put to good use. I knew I was putting up a lot of photos yesterday. It was that sort of a happening day, what with the Sexual Health Festival, The Madhatters, Ernie & Roger, and it being Shirley Temple's birthday and all. And still hanging around on the not-yet-archived first page were all the many photos taken last Saturday in the best photo-op in Madison ever, the 9 Beet Stretch. And then there was that day I walked to Dancing Grounds and took pictures of the neighborhood flowering trees along the way.... Needless to say, the page loaded slowly. So I'll try to be a little more careful, within a given front-page span, not to put too many pictures up. And yet... I liked that new idea of recapping a film with photos, every one of which was justified. Oh, really? Even the blur of Reagan--or Reagan's double--diving into the river? Why, yes, emphatically! And that was Reagan. And Reagan caught pneumonia diving repeatedly into the river, and it left him hospitalized at a time when Jane Wyman went into premature labor and gave birth to a baby that soon died. The marriage never recovered, I read, from that harsh separation in time of direst need. So that dive changed the entire history of the world, didn't it?

I also set Roomba, the robot vacuum cleaner, to try its ... uh ... hand at my living room. I set a row of thick candles to block the entry to the fireplace, which was full of ashes, and tucked the rug fringe under according to instructions, and I draped the curtains up over the radiator and closed all three sets of French doors (which I like to call "freedom doors"). I go back to my newspaper and Roomba is making its little electronic sound that means "I have a problem." Well, it's one thing after another. Tucking the fringe under made a bump that Roomba got stuck on. Untucking the fringe led to some nasty tangling. Roomba got stuck under a chair. Roomba started up the slanted base of a floor lamp and couldn't figure out what to do. One thing that didn't stop Roomba was the line of candles I foolishly believed would keep it out of the fireplace: a trail of ashes had been dragged across the rug when I wasn't supervising. Oh, but the instructions said to supervise Roomba the first time you do a room. But this thing is supposed to save time. And just the task of tucking the fringe under took longer than old fashioned vacuuming! Yeah, but you have to drag out the vacuum cleaner. I have to drag out the Roomba. The worst thing about the Roomba, though, is that long hair (like mine) gets coiled around the brush axle, and I have to wield a Phillips screwdriver to detach the brush and remove the axle-braking hair after every use. Conclusion: much more work than an old-fashioned vacuum cleaner. I'd love to have more robots for housework and yardwork, but they need to be much better!

Roomba did provide some amusement, like when my son imitated its blind idiocy as it bumped into objects and picked another direction setting it into an eccentric zigzagging path that would take forever to actually find every spot in the room. And when my other son said, "Every time I hear the word Roomba, I think of the line 'Do you rhumba? Pick a rhumba from one to ten.'" (And if you know what movie that's from you will enjoy this trivia test. Hmmm.... Mrs. Claypool's first name was Fluffy!)

End of my exposition of the morning's technical difficulties. I'm now at the café, using the wireless access here, and watching the folks stroll by on State Street. It's the first Saturday of the Farmer's Market and there's a big race, called Crazylegs, that will be snaking all over the town. I saw all the traffic barriers that I expect to find blocking many of the roads I'd intended to use on the way home. But it's all just fine. It's a cool but lovely Saturday, the last weekend of the semester. Ah! Here come the runners!

Ronald Reagan and Shirley Temple. Today is Shirley Temple's birthday, and TMC is showing a lot of her movies. I love Shirley and have my TiVo programmed to capture her work. Today, it caught "That Hagen Girl," which is only a one-star movie, but it co-stars Ronald Reagan, so--what the hell!--I started watching and made it to the end. It's bad, but awesome. Ronald Reagan comes to town, hears people gossiping about him, and doesn't like it.

He's a lawyer, and he sets up in a law office that has a nice portrait of Lincoln on the wall:

When he mouths off to a pretty young teacher, he apologizes: "I'm sorry I sounded off on you. I'm an attorney and every once in a while I talk to people as if they just belted someone with a meathook." Here's how he looks, delivering that line:

The gossip is all about how Mary Hagen, played by Shirley Temple, is an illegitimate child and the father is Reagan. Shirley was the most adorable child ever, but here she is as a gorgeous teenager:

The small town in this movie is entirely designed for the purpose of torturing Shirley Temple. Here's how to insult people in the town: "Why don't you go somewhere and catch yourself, you foul ball?" What possible solution could there be for poor Shirley? Especially after Ronald Reagan offers to pay her "tuition fees" to go to a university that they'll choose for her after she graduates from junior college. But she hangs around and has conversations like:

I've never done anything wrong ... except getting born.

I know, it seems like an injustice, but...

We remain confused throughout the movie about whether Reagan really is Shirley Temple's father, until the point where he's about to call her on the phone and ask her to marry him. At exactly that point, the townsfolk read in the newsaper that Reagan has received a medal from the President of the United States for his contribution to "the successful launching of atomic warfare." Apparently, Reagan has dropped the atomic bomb on Japan! The townsfolk decide they love Ronald Reagan, and they burst in on him just as he's about to go to Shirley. He tries to leave. They say:

But we haven't accomplished our mission!

Like you boys in the airforce, we believe in Mission Accomplished.

(Hmmm.... there's a phrase!) They invite him to speak at graduation. He suggests the subject of his speech: Mary Hagen! But she's been expelled! For going to the "tavern"! He tells them off. They leave, and immediately an official of some sort arrives and hands him a suicide note from Mary! She's "picked the lagoon," according to the note. Thunder rolls. We see Mary walking in the rain, and, wet, Shirley is modern and fabulous:

It's our dear girl, Shirley, wet and suicidal! She's looking into the water and her whole life flashes in front of her, and her whole life is the mystery of whether Ronald Reagan is her father. I watch the flashback and think: 1. Shirley Temple was so beautiful (I seriously believe Marilyn Monroe derived her vision of female loveliness from Shirley), and 2. Mary Hagen really needs to go to college in some other town! Suddenly, Ronald Reagan runs up, his trenchcoat flapping in the storm: "Mary! Mary!" We see him desperately trying to take off that trenchcoat and then a wide shot of trenchcoat-removing Reagan and the flowing river. Mary has jumped! Reagan, in dress suit and shoes, but sans trenchcoat, dives into the river.

And our man Reagan, finally, after all these years, tells her that isn't important. "It's what you are, and where you're going that really matters."

He tells her she was an ordinary adopted orphan, no connection to him at all. Yay! Reagan can marry her!

Old things. This book finally came out. It was interesting (for me at least) to go back and read that entry from the early days of this blog. Funny to see a post right under it, from January 25, about The Apprentice, titled "How much of 'The Apprentice' is a set up?" I considered the possibility that the women were actresses, in on a joke on the men.

Beyond the Madison Sexual Health Festival. Well, the Sexual Health Festival wasn't the only thing happening in Library Mall today. The Madhatters were giving an al fresco a cappella performance and drawing a big crowd:

And Ernie & Roger's is back with their giant vat of popcorn, stirred with a big paddle and popped in the open air:

I love the joyous spectacle of dumping the popcorn into a huge copper kettle:

Oh, and ASCAP has a new way to try to get the kids to stop downloading music:

Do you know who you hurt when you download music? A little baby! You bad, bad person!

Ah, guilt! Just the thing to wash away the atmosphere of fun and games generated by the Sexual Health Festival. Once sex was very, very serious, and often involved a lot of guilt. That was not the mode of presentation used for the Sexual Health Festival, which portrayed sex as hilarious. Why was sex more serious when the topic wasn't disease? I don't know, but this downloading music business: it's very serious, people. Something really terrible is going to happen to a baby if you don't cut it out!

Festival atmosphere explored. Place: Library Mall, Madison, Wisconsin. What's this festival atmosphere?

Did you notice the warning sign? Neither did I, not until I was leaving the area. But here's a closer look.

So walk into a public square, my friend, and you are giving your consent. To what? Well, there's this:

And this (which doesn't seem too scientific):

And this (which could be taken as a personal insult--like the old Army slogan "Be all that you can be"):

And--oh, no!--there's this (possibly unintentionally inspiring abstinence):

The vote for versus the vote against. Prof. Yin has an interesting new post on the question of whether the American Idol vote this week is evidence of racism, in part responding to my post here. He agrees with me (and Jennifer Hudson's own public statement) that the voting system is the most likely cause of the outcome. He says the voting system should be changed, possibly switching to voting against people instead of for them.

Since we are voting for who want to keep, not who we want to boot, people who think that Jennifer, Fantasia, and LaToya are the three best are in a bit of a quandary. Who do you vote for? You could spend two hours splitting up your votes among all three, but that makes you less effective than the obsessive John-boy fan who spends two hours voting for him.

But the show has a successful formula based on voting for who you like, not ganging up on someone to convey the message that you are against them. The spirit is positive. The voters who are happy with three contestants and dislike one should not be able to kick off the guy that is the only one some other people love. If three "divas" make a great show, why didn't more people watch the all-diva VH-1 contest a year ago? (And why don't more people buy the unbelievably great gospel recordings that already exist?) It's not an objective talent contest. People like the music they like (and much of it is by black artists). The producers want to keep everyone watching to the end, want the winner to sell records (not just be the least disliked, but to have rabid fans, as Clay does), and are not averse to the drama produced by the constant risk that the "wrong" person will go. That's the successful formula. Don't change it. Just keep reminding people to vote--a lot--for the one they love most. That split vote effect works to keep at least one person of the type that a segment of the audience likes. That's how John Stevens survived after JPL was gone. And Nikki McKibben outlasted Tamyra Gray because people who loved Tamyra also loved Kelly Clarkson and people who liked "rockers" had only Nikki to vote for after Ryan Starr was gone. It's the nature of the game.

Hey, I wonder if Kerry would have emerged from the Democratic primaries as the candidate if the process were one of sequentially voting against the one you like least, until only one was left.

UPDATE: CNN.com has a big piece on the AI "controversy." This is interesting:

The New York Post reported it was deluged with calls complaining that the voting was racially motivated: Hudson, Barrino and London are black. (The Post is owned by News Corp., which also owns Fox TV.)

George Huff, still in the competition, is black, as was last year's winner, Ruben Studdard. "American Idol," unlike other reality shows featuring competition, is more popular in black homes than white homes.

For the current season, the show was watched in 19 percent of all black households, compared to 15 percent of white households, according to Nielsen Media Research.

"You better pick a nice, good, expensive college.'' I love that Trump locution. It reminds me of Peter Sellers improvising in the role of Quilty disguised as a police officer in Kubrick's Lolita.

(Donald Trump is offering to pay for the college education of Apprentice contestant Troy. Subscribers to Entertainment Weekly: go here, where you can also read about Omarosa getting fired from a Clairol Herbal Essences ''streaking party'' ad.)

Jeremy thinks he's special. Or not. Funny that his response to the charge "narcissistic" was to go to the DSM and mine was to recast it as sin, which may indicate that law is not a social science, though the Law School is in the Social Sciences Division here. Or it may indicate that Jeremy's natural instincts are the sort that cause a person to become a political liberal and mine are the sort that pull in the other direction: If something is wrong, do you think of it as a disease to be cured or a personal failing for which the individual should take responsibility? Anyway, Nina's response is to be off to Japan, and she promises to blog about the extent to which she becomes lost in translation. She's flying to Japan over the Atlantic Ocean and she's not going to Tokyo, so it's all very mysterious! The original "friends" that called blogging narcissistic were/was apparently only one person, whose response was to start her own blog. So you see, just like your mother always told you: they're just jealous. And: you are special!

Speaking of language, John reminds me that it is wrong to say "expound on" something, as I just did in that last post. It's so common to say "expound on," especially in legal circles, that it almost seems too prissy to refrain from using it in casual speech/writing, but John is definitely right that you should say that you expound something, and that the misuse arose from confusion with the phrase "expand on" (or the more rare "expatiate on"). According to Wilson Follett's Modern American Usage:

To expound is to set forth in systematic order ...

Not necessarily reticulated...

... to explain, make clear, elucidate--the word calls for a direct object without intervention. You expound a doctrine; you do not expound on it.

I think people are attracted to the word "expound" over "expand" because "expound" contains "pound" and therefore feels weighty, while "expand" seems "expansive" and that seems empty. "Expound" thus seems to work when you want to flatter someone who speaks at length, because their words have weight, and when you want to insult someone for being ponderous. Isn't it interesting how the weight metaphor works in both a positive and negative way? Well, whether it is or not, people like to say "expound," often with an added "on," which is incorrect, technically, for now, according to Follet....

What the President thinks of the use of weird words. Having just expounded on the use of strange words, I especially enjoyed this extract--in Slate's always appreciated we-read-this-so-you-don't-have-to series--from Bob Woodward's book "Plan of Attack":

Page 186: Bush aide Nick Calio declares his intention to vitiate a congressional filibuster. Bush says, "Nicky, what the f**k are you talking about, vitiate?"

Is blogging a sin? Nina's friends keep telling her blogging is "narcissistic"? Self-publishing falls into the category of "vanity": printers with self-publishers as customers are called "vanity presses." So some vanity, a sin, must be involved. (And a little envy on the part of those friends, in that other ring of hell.) But it's a very low-grade sin isn't it? Think of all the trouble we could be getting into if we weren't tied up at our keyboards.

Putting a picture on my blog has got to heighten the vanity entailed here. When Chris was taking photos yesterday, I can't say that I said, "Please try to get something unflattering." And when I sorted through the results in iPhoto, I can't say that I thought, "Let me find the one that's most reticulated."

UPDATE: Oh, and that internal self-referencing! Not to mention going back and rereading ... and updating ...

"If I had paid enough attention to discover what was going on ... I would have called the chancellor's office and said, 'Hey, do you guys realize that you've got a problem?" More about the Madison bars, drink specials, and antitrust lawsuits involving UW.