At the Sunday café...

... just a few pictures from yesterday in the Arboretum...



That one's from Meade, as I was walking away. Later, we got caught together in a reflection...



I took that one — of an odd spike of the artificial in what was mostly trees...



... and flowers...



... at their prettiest.

Sarah Palin: "I think Paul Ryan is about to be Cantored — as in Eric Cantor."

That was in answer to a question from Jake Tapper, just now, on his Sunday show, about what she thought of Paul Ryan's statement — after saying he would support the GOP nominee — that he was not yet ready to support Donald Trump.

She continued: "His political career is over, because he has so disrespected the will of the people. As the leader of the GOP — the convention, certainly — he is to remain neutral and for him to already come out and say who he will not support was not a wise decision of his."

To be clear, Ryan's statement was: "I'm just not ready to do that at this point. I'm not there right now." Is it fair to paraphrase that as saying "who he will not support"? The inaccurate word is "will." If she'd said "who he does not support," she'd be fine.

But "about to be Cantored" is the memorable language. Very harsh. Maybe you also jumped at "His political career is over." What happened to her political career?

How I made a Walt Whitman essay from 1856-57 look as though it was the talk of the internet yesterday.

I'm not referring to "Manly Health and Training," the set of essays, published under a pseudonym and revealed to the world last month, a genuinely a newsworthy matter, which really did belong on Memeorandum, the website that — through some mysterious automated process — presents a one-page picture of what articles and items are getting linked to and discussed.

I'm talking about "An American Primer," a long known, long available essay by Walt Whitman, which was reprinted in the April 1904 issue of The Atlantic. It's about one of my favorite topics, blunt speech — blunt speech, as opposed "delicate lady-words" and "gloved gentlemen words." Whitman — touting America and liberty — comes out for "coarseness, directness, live epithets, expletives, words of opprobrium, resistance." I love that sort of thing, and I think most of America — not the elite, not the civility bullshitters, but most of America — loves it.

So I was moved to blog about it yesterday, after I ran across it by chance, not in anything current, but in an old acrostic puzzle in the New York Times archive, way back in October 2011. I don't think anyone else was looking at "An American Primer" yesterday and getting excited about it and linking to the old April 1904 issue of The Atlantic.

But it popped up on Memerandum:



I guess it was a slow Saturday. But thanks, Memeorandum. Thanks for weighting me however much that was in your algorithm. And thanks for nudging whomever you may have nudged to see what all the buzz is about, whatever it was that Walt Whitman wrote back in 1856-57. I know what it was. I read the whole 6,000-word essay. Out loud. To Meade. And we talked about it for a long time, connected it to the Donald Trump phenomenon, etc. etc. So there were the 2 of us. But I just find it so delightful to think that — via the magic of Memeorandum — somebody else got the idea that "An American Primer" was the thing to talk about and got to reading and talking about it too.

And then there's the little corner of the internet that was my blog last night, and maybe — without the nudge of Memeorandum's absurdly false impression that "An American Primer" was a Topic of the Day — you read it or at least the snippet of it that I posted, and maybe you were hanging out at Althouse on Saturday night, talking with other people about the distaste for delicate lady-words and gloved-gentlemen words and a love for epithets, expletives, and words of opprobrium.

There was BDNYC, who said: "Unreadable." And kentuckyliz, who said: "I found it quite readable once I found the sweet spot in my bifocals." And Paul Zrimsek, who said: "I am yuge, I contain multitudes." And traditionalguy:

Whitman spoke like an earlier version of Trump because Whitman was also giving voice to an implacable will to be strong and free men. That is what made America Great the first time.

It started with Andrew Jackson defeating the murderous British in the West to save the Mississippi River Valley, and then took off with Robert Fulton building his steamboats and DeWit Clinton building his canal locks to go over the Niagara Escarpment at Lockport, NY to complete a transportation circle from New York City to the Great lakes and then down the Mighty Mississippi to New Orleans. And which soon saw Robert Morse building his single wire telegraph to carry the news.

Trump is a messenger and a builder. And nobody cares if he says bad words in his battle to make America Great Again.

IN THE COMMENTS: Ngtrains said: "Robert Morse? how about Samuel?" And I said: "Mm. Yeah. Should I fix that for him. Robert Morse... was he the actor in 'How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying'?" I look it up. And it's just so damned Trumpian....

"So, awaiting final toxicology, it has now been reported in the New York Times that Prince was toxic. I can relate. I was toxic too."

Everyone's relating to Prince, including actress and children's book author Jamie Lee Curtis.

Meanwhile, "I Was Prince’s Private Chef":

I cooked teriyaki salmon like I used to make for myself all the time (with that Soy Vey assist!) with grilled asparagus on the side, plus a hot-and-sour soup that I’d literally never made before and a coconut sorbet with fresh mango for dessert. It was terrifying.

Literally.

The assistant had warned me that Prince eats like a bird, but he finished everything and asked for seconds.... A few days later I was en route to a wedding in Vegas when Prince’s assistant called and said, “You got the job but you can’t split it, he only wants you. You have to be on call 24-7. Oh and by the way – he’s nocturnal. And you start tonight. Ryan Seacrest is coming to dinner.”

The pressure is unfathomable. 

The Church Lady interviews Ted Cruz and Donald Trump.

"The appetite of the people of these States, in popular speeches and writings, for unhemmed latitude, coarseness, directness, live epithets, expletives, words of opprobrium, resistance."

"This I understand because I have the taste myself as large, as largely, as any one. I have pleasure in the use, on fit occasions, of—traitor, coward, liar, shyster, skulk, doughface, trickster, mean cuss, backslider, thief, impotent, lickspittle.... A perfect writer would make words sing, dance, kiss, bear children, weep, bleed, rage, stab, steal, fire cannon, steer ships, sack cities, charge with cavalry or infantry, or do anything that man or woman or the natural powers can do.... I like limber, lasting, fierce words. I like them applied to myself,—and I like them in newspapers, courts, debates, congress. Do you suppose the liberties and the brawn of these States have to do only with delicate lady-words? with gloved gentlemen words? Bad Presidents, bad judges, bad clients, bad editors, owners of slaves, and the long ranks of Northern political suckers (robbers, traitors, suborned), monopolists, infidels.... shaved persons, supplejacks, ecclesiastics, men not fond of women, women not fond of men, cry down the use of strong, cutting, beautiful, rude words. To the manly instincts of the People they will forever be welcome...."

From "An American Primer" (1856-1857) by Walt Whitman.

Nicholas Kristof, at the NYT, calls out universities for their bias against conservatives.

Read the whole thing, but this jumped out at me:

A friend is studying for the Law School Admission Test, and the test preparation company she is using offers test-takers a tip: Reading comprehension questions will typically have a liberal slant and a liberal answer.

A student asked me the other day why I'm the only conservative at the law school. I said but I'm not a conservative. (I'm a moderate.) And the amazing thing is that I'm viewed as a conservative — even though it's easy to see from this blog that I support abortion rights and gay marriage and that I voted for Obama in '08 and have any number of liberal ideas as I'm sure my conservative readers will be happy to point out.

I had to change the question to: Why am I viewed as conservative? My answer to that was that I show respect for the conservative viewpoint as I teach and write about a range of issues. If that creates the impression that I'm a conservative, what are students hearing from the rest of the professors?

Wild life.

(Just now, in the UW Arboretum.)

Trump on Hillary: "She's been the total enabler. She would go after these women and destroy their lives."

"She was an unbelievably nasty, mean enabler, and what she did to a lot of those women is disgraceful."

"There’s a long tradition of men living with something like roommates."

"Men used to live in boardinghouses quite commonly. You had places like the old Y.M.C.A.s. These were really significant parts of the housing stock a century ago. They have since become far less common... I think it’s flipped... There’s much less of a stigma being a 40-year-old man living alone than being a 40-year-old man living with a male roommate. Living alone has become far more viable. A hundred years ago, that would have been completely different."

Says an NYU sociology professor, Eric Klineberg, quotes in the NYT article "Age 31 and Up, With Roommates. You Got a Problem With That?"

"He referred to the American foreign-policy establishment as the Blob."

"According to Rhodes" — Ben Rhodes, "The Aspiring Novelist Who BecameObama’s Foreign-Policy Guru" — "the Blob includes Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates and other Iraq-war promoters from both parties who now whine incessantly about the collapse of the American security order in Europe and the Middle East.... Barack Obama is not a standard-issue liberal Democrat. He openly shares Rhodes’s contempt for the groupthink of the American foreign-policy establishment and its hangers-on in the press. Yet one problem with the new script that Obama and Rhodes have written is that the Blob may have finally caught on...."

Commenting on that long NYT piece: Thomas E. Ricks in Foreign policy:

Rhodes comes off like a real asshole. This is not a matter of politics — I have voted for Obama twice. Nor do I mind Rhodes’s contempt for many political reporters: “Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”

But, as that quote indicates, he comes off like an overweening little schmuck. This quotation seems to capture his worldview: “He referred to the American foreign policy establishment as the Blob. According to Rhodes, the Blob includes Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, and other Iraq-war promoters from both parties who now whine incessantly about the collapse of the American security order in Europe and the Middle East.” Blowing off Robert Gates takes nerve.

Lee Smith in The Weekly Standard: 

[David] Samuels's profile is an amazing piece of writing about the Holden Caulfield of American foreign policy. He's a sentimental adolescent with literary talent (Rhodes published one short story before his mother's connections won him a job in the world of foreign policy), and high self regard, who thinks that everyone else is a phony. Those readers who found Jeffrey Goldberg's picture of Obama in his March Atlantic profile refreshing for the president's willingness to insult American allies publicly will be similarly cheered here by Rhodes's boast of deceiving American citizens, lawmakers, and allies over the Iran deal. Conversely, those who believe Obama risked American interests to take a cheap shot at allies from the pedestal of the Oval Office will be appalled to see Rhodes dancing in the end zone to celebrate the well-packaged misdirections and even lies—what Rhodes and others call a "narrative"—that won Obama his signature foreign policy initiative.

Jack Shafer in Politico:

Rhodes deserves his castigation. You don’t claim that the “average reporter” you talk to is 27 years old and they “literally know nothing” without suffering some blow-back. You don’t dismiss the American foreign policy establishment—including Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, and editors and reporters at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the New Yorker—as “the Blob,” and expect polite applause in response. And you especially don’t brag about leading a “war room” effort to turn arms-control experts and reporters into sock puppets, or admit to creating a false narrative about the Iranian nuclear deal to sell it to the public, as Rhodes does, without expecting return fire.

Cat problem is a skunk problem.

A letter to a real estate advice column (in the NYT):

A neighbor leaves bowls of food around the neighborhood for feral cats, even placing some on the grounds of the Russian diplomatic mission at the end of our block. I’ve asked her to stop, and I remove food when I can, but to no avail. The cats treat my garden like their litter box, track mud over my car and wail and moan when they fight or mate. Worse, the food attracts skunks. A neighbor’s dog was sprayed twice and my shuttered window was sprayed, filling my house with the stench. Another neighbor and I trapped seven skunks to be released in Pelham Bay Park, but there are more. What recourse do I have?

Sounds like he currently has 7 skunks in a cage and is relying on letter-writing to figure out what to do. Doesn't he have a bigger problem than the feral-cat lady. 

"I continue to hope that logic will prevail."

Says a man who built a big swing set in his yard — in violation of the village code — and wants a variance. Part of his argument involves portraying the structure as a "wisteria arbor."

I'm not sympathetic to people in this position, which of course has nothing to do with logic. He's relying on the old strategy: Better to ask for forgiveness than permission. Every time that works, it erodes the belief that the rules apply to everyone.

“The village is interested in compliance. . . . The rules apply to everybody. They apply them equally,” said Suellen Ferguson, an attorney who represents Chevy Chase Village in the case. Ferguson said the swing set initially was described as an “arbor” in documents his family submitted requesting a variance. Then, things got a little wild. Time went on, swings started being attached... It became a play structure.”

Did Donald Trump intentionally expose a photo of Marla Maples in a bikini within the cluttered frame of his taco-bowl Cinco-de-Mayo photograph?

It's just a sliver, a slice of magazine, at the bottom of the pile of newspapers underneath the plate that held the china bowl that held the taco bowl that Trump acted as if he might be eating. There are many details in the picture that captured everyone's attention 2 days ago, and Buzzfeed's Benny Johnson won the prize for noticing it first....

Donald Trump is eating a taco salad on top of a bikini-clad photo of his ex-wife, Marla Maples. pic.twitter.com/sW2itGBAOK

— Benny (@bennyjohnson) May 5, 2016

... and then everyone wanted to talk about that. It's an old picture of Marla, from 1985, so you might at first think he's got an old memento, but it turns out it's the May 2d issue of People, an article about him, "Marla Maples Opens Up About Surprisingly Modest Lifestyle After Her Split from Donald Trump: 'I Laugh When People Think I Walked Away with a Fortune.'" It makes sense that he'd have that magazine, open to that page, so you can go any way you want, asking whether the old man was ogling a picture of his ex-wife. He was maybe going through what's in the current press in a businesslike fashion, maybe enjoying/treasuring/"creeping on" the photograph.

But, come on! It's intentional! It's such a specific sliver — the woman in a bikini — barely visible, but framed neatly in the lower right hand corner, just under his thumb...



That was meant to be discovered and to spark a whole new round of attention to the absurd taco-bowl picture. We're dragged into the old story of Trump's cheating on his first wife, his access to beautiful women, his cheerful nonchalance about the whole crazy overstuffed life as he's about to overstuff his smiling face with an insanely large portion of faux-ethnic glop. And we're caught peeking, guilty of peering into details that he — we might imagine — didn't mean to expose. Oh, bad us! And let's take a closer look at that bikini-pic, as all the articles about Taco Bowl, Phase 2 contain glaringly clear, large photos of the bosomy 21-year-old. How are we to feel about all this — about him, about ourselves, about all the young women in bikinis and the older men who are able to have sex with them, and our exclusion from and, now, inclusion in their glamorous life?

This is the place he's brought us to, with that little sliver, that tiny slice we got for lunch when he was seemingly wolfing down 20,000 calories.

"My best guess is that the public is primed for Trump to act presidential because it fits the 'bad boy turns good' movie we all have in our heads."

"Everyone likes Han Solo, the tough talker with the heart of gold. Trump is making that movie-like transition now, but don’t expect him to go easy on Clinton. The Clinton attacks will be vicious, but Trump’s overall vibe will still trend (spottily) toward presidential.... It serves Trump well to have it both ways at the same time."

Says Scott Adams, who also says Trump opponents who are calling him “dangerous” are making a mistake because "You know who likes dangerous men? Answer: Everyone."

This reminds me of something I heard Rush Limbaugh say on yesterday's show. He was saying that the new media shape their coverage in a manner that is like movie-making. They look for a main character with a quest and antagonists:

So, going forward, which story will the media find more interesting, Trump's or Hillary's?  Does Hillary even have a story?  Does anyone even care?... [The media] know what Trump wants.  They are fascinated with the idea, "Can Trump really get this?"  Because Trump, there's nothing professional about him.  He doesn't have a speechwriter, doesn't have a teleprompter. He doesn't have a pollster, he doesn't have a consultant, he doesn't have campaign staff. He hasn't been fundraising. He hasn't done anything you're supposed to do. Look what he's doing!  They are fascinated....

That's it.  The Republicans have never had, in their story -- conservatives, either, have never had... I'm talking this in a media context, now. They've never had an agenda or a story that the media would like them to have.  The Republicans are never anything but villains.  Whatever the Democrats want, yeah, they should get it.  We're for it! (interruption)  No, no.  I'm just saying, there may be ways unlocking this deadlock here in the way the media covers people, Republicans and Democrats, and there may be a way for Republican to change it around.  Trump may be showing how it's done, but I run great risks in saying that. 

Bill Kristol just met with Mitt Romney to try to persuade him to run as an independent candidate for President...

... or at least to support another independent candidate if Kristol is able to rustle one up. (WaPo link.)

Here's the top-rated comment over there:

William Kristol has no shame. Remember this:

"The other journalists who met Palin offered similarly effusive praise: Michael Gerson called her “a mix between Annie Oakley and Joan of Arc.” The most ardent promoter, however, was Kristol, and his enthusiasm became the talk of Alaska’s political circles. According to Simpson, Senator Stevens told her that “Kristol was really pushing Palin” in Washington before McCain picked her. Indeed, as early as June 29th, two months before McCain chose her, Kristol predicted on “Fox News Sunday” that “McCain’s going to put Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, on the ticket.” He described her as “fantastic,” saying that she could go one-on-one against Obama in basketball, and possibly siphon off Hillary Clinton’s supporters. He pointed out that she was a “mother of five” and a reformer. “Go for the gold here with Sarah Palin,” he said. The moderator, Chris Wallace, finally had to ask Kristol, “Can we please get off Sarah Palin?”

Why anybody gives this loser any credibility is an absolute mystery to me. If I were Kristol, I'd be ashamed to show my face in public much less offer political commentary. Loser.

ADDED: Let me add a line so you can see where the left margin is. At least one commenter seems to think I wrote that "Why anybody gives this loser any credibility" business.