Why did Sean Spicer do the Emmys? Did no one ever tell him they're not laughing with you they're laughing at you?

The yearning for acceptance from the popular kids must claw at poor Spicey.

Via WaPo: "Here's how it went down, with late-night host Stephen Colbert — who happens to be one of Trump's most unapologetic and high-profile critics — setting up the gag:"

COLBERT: What really matters to Donald Trump is ratings. You've got to have the big numbers. And I certainly hope we achieve that tonight. Unfortunately, at this point, we have no way of knowing how big our audience is. I mean, is there anyone who could say how big the audience is. Sean, do you know?

(Spicer glides out with a podium, Melissa McCarthy-style.)

SPICER: This will be the largest audience to witness an Emmys, period — both in person and around the world.

COLBERT: Wow. That really soothes my fragile ego. I could understand why you'd want one of these guys around. Melissa McCarthy, everybody, give it up!

The WaPo headline calls the cameo "yucky," and the column-writer, Aaron Blake is not grossed out because Spicey played along despite contempt for him and for the President he once served, but because:

... Spicer yukking it up over one of his most demonstrably false statements from the White House lectern strongly suggests this is just what spokesmen are supposed to do. The president asked him to do it, so it must be okay. Damn the truth.

Blake thinks this comedy "normalize[s]" the lying/bullshit/puffery of press secretaries.

[L]aughing at flouting the truth... serves notice to other spokesmen that they needn't worry about being credible.

Blake belongs to the that's-not-funny school of comedy appreciation. I'm surprised at his reaction. I thought Spicer got conned into participating in political satire that hurts him and the politicians with whom he's allied himself. I think America deserves better political satire and that it was a bad idea to load the Emmys show with political satire — especially partisan political satire (why alienate half your potential audience?). But I think comedy, done well, is powerful, important speech. The Spicer bit was criticism of the dishonesty of the White House press secretary. It didn't slough it off or "normalize" it. If the bullshit is normal, there's no joke in Spicer's line.

Now, I can see that Blake could have said that just allowing Spicer into the Emmys party sends the message that he's not completely toxic. And perhaps that's the sad-sack reason Spicer did the show, like the high school kid who's pleased to get an invitation to popular kid's party...



Well, in that movie the popular kids get it in the end. The bullying and the hate can backfire. And we all know what happened when "Laugh-In" included Nixon:

At the Garden Path Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

(And consider shopping through The Althouse Amazon Portal.)

"But it's different with girls, don't you think?"

"A Silicon Valley CEO reveals her secret to getting ahead in business - dyeing her blonde hair brown, and ditching her heels and contact lenses."

BBC reports.

"The first time I dyed my hair was actually due to advice I was given by a woman in venture capital," [Eileen Carey] says.

Carey was told that the investors she was pitching to would feel more comfortable dealing with a brunette, rather than a blonde woman.

Here's a close-up of her blonde hair before she "dyed" it brown:

I don't know if there really is discrimination against blonde women, but it looks as though she was a woman who had bleached her hair blonde, and then switched to a more natural color.

"I was told for this raise [of funds], that it would be to my benefit to dye my hair brown because there was a stronger pattern recognition of brunette women CEOs," she explains.

Pattern recognition is a theory which suggests people look for familiar experiences - or people - which in turn can make them feel more comfortable with the perceived risks they are taking.

When she had blonde hair, Eileen says she was likened to Elizabeth Holmes, whose company Theranos has been through a lot of controversy.

"Being a brunette helps me to look a bit older and I needed that, I felt, in order to be taken seriously," Carey says.

If you were really concerned about being taken seriously, would you go to the press and rave about your hair color like that?

If there's a real problem with hair-color discrimination — is there? do some serious research! — then let's fight it, not cater to it and bullshit with the euphemism "pattern recognition."

In interviewing candidates for roles at her startup, Glassbreakers, which provides companies with software aimed at attracting and empowering a diverse workforce, she's encountered other blonde women who have also dyed their hair brown.

"We discussed that there's the fetishisation of blondes," says Carey. "People are more likely to hit on me in a bar if I'm blonde. There's just that issue in general. For me to be successful in this [tech industry] space, I'd like to draw as little attention as possible, especially in any sort of sexual way."

Key word: start up. This is a person looking for attention — while saying "I'd like to draw as little attention as possible." It's just embarrassing. Her company Glassbreakers is pushing software the "empower[s] a diverse workforce"?! Then don't make a joke out of color-based discrimination. I suspect she thinks her type of color discrimination isn't pernicious because it's aimed at something unique to white people, blonde hair, and she's characterizing it as bad. But she isn't characterizing it as bad! She's saying blonde women are so much more attractive that we've got to apply a chemical treatment to darken it it to erase the powerful advantage. That's grotesque. It's like advising white people to wear blackface makeup to surrender white privilege.

But, again, I don't think this woman is a natural blonde. So she was a color-changer. Maybe there's discrimination against women who don't keep their natural hair-color. I don't know that there is, but it does say something about you that you've made the effort to change. People will speculate about why you are doing that (and also why you're letting dark roots show). It may be that they're thinking you're striving for kind of conventional or Fox News look, and that really would conflict with the Glassbreakers message.

"For him, basketball was everything."

"Kim [Jong Un] drew pictures of Michael Jordan and slept with a basketball, according to Ko Yong Suk, the aunt who cared for him [when he was at school in Bern, Switzerland].... It is a measure of how impoverished America’s contact with North Korea has become that one of the best-known conduits is Dennis Rodman, a.k.a. the Worm, the bad boy of the nineties-era Chicago Bulls. Rodman’s agent, Chris Volo, a hulking former mixed-martial-arts fighter, told me recently, 'I’ve been there four times in four years. I’m in the Korean Sea, and I’m saying to myself, "No one would believe that I’m alone right now, riding Sea-Doos with Kim Jong Un."' 2013, when Vice Media, aware of Kim’s love of the Bulls, offered to fly American basketball players to North Korea. Vice tried to contact Michael Jordan but got nowhere. Rodman, who was working the night-club autograph circuit, was happy to go. He joined three members of the Harlem Globetrotters for a game in Pyongyang. Kim made a surprise appearance, invited Rodman to dinner, and asked him to return to North Korea for a week at his private beach resort in Wonsan, which Rodman later described as 'Hawaii or Ibiza, but he’s the only one that lives there.' On his most recent trip, in June, Rodman gave Kim English and Korean editions of Trump’s 1987 best-seller, 'The Art of the Deal.'"

The Risk of Nuclear War with North Korea/On the ground in Pyongyang: Could Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump goad each other into a devastating confrontation? by Evan Osnos (in The New Yorker).

ADDED: Here's a WaPo article from last year: "The secret life of Kim Jong Un’s aunt, who has lived in the U.S. since 1998":

“He wasn’t a troublemaker, but he was short-tempered and had a lack of tolerance,” Ko recalled. “When his mother tried to tell him off for playing with [games and machinery] too much and not studying enough, he wouldn’t talk back, but he would protest in other ways, like going on a hunger strike.”...

He was shorter than his friends, and his mother told him that if he played basketball, he would become taller, Ko said.

"New York Times publishes eye-popping correction on campus-sexual-assault book review."

Erik Wemple (at WaPo) writes about a book review by Michelle Goldberg that led to a correction that reads:

A review on Page 11 this weekend about “Blurred Lines: Rethinking Sex, Power and Consent on Campus,” by Vanessa Grigoriadis, refers incorrectly to her reporting on the issues. She does in fact write about Department of Justice statistics that say college-age women are less likely than nonstudent women of the same age to be victims of sexual assault; it is not the case that Grigoriadis was unaware of the department’s findings. In addition, the review describes incorrectly Grigoriadis’s presentation of statistics from the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. She showed that there is disagreement over whether the data are sound; it is not the case that she gave the reader “no reason to believe” the statistics are wrong.

Just above that correction are the last 2 sentences of Goldberg's review:

But if you’re going to challenge people’s preconceptions, you have to have your facts straight. “Blurred Lines” gives readers too many reasons not to trust it, even when perhaps they should.

Does that mean that if you are confirming people's preconceptions, you don't have to get your facts straight?

ADDED: That question of mine is, I think, key to understanding the prevalence of "fake news."

I resisted blogging the kid-mows-the-White-House-lawn photo op, but this...

... makes the cut for me:

Not sending a great signal on child labor, minimum wage & occupational safety >> Trump White House lets a 10-year-old volunteer mow its lawn https://t.co/uj7N9Mr8Yi

— Steven Greenhouse (@greenhousenyt) September 15, 2017

Now, there are 2 sides, and it's a delicious fight.

Professor Bret Weinstein settles his case against Evergreen State College for $500,000.

He (and his wife) originally sued for $3.85 million, and he is resigning from the job.

"Cake Is His ‘Art.’ So Can He Deny One to a Gay Couple?"

A fair presentation by Adam Liptak in the NYT of what's at stake in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

Jack Phillips bakes beautiful cakes, and it is not a stretch to call him an artist.... “It’s more than just a cake,” he said at his bakery one recent morning. “It’s a piece of art in so many ways.”

The couple he refused to serve, David Mullins and Charlie Craig, filed civil rights charges. They said they had been demeaned and humiliated as they sought to celebrate their union. “We asked for a cake,” Mr. Craig said. “We didn’t ask for a piece of art or for him to make a statement for us. He simply turned us away because of who we are.”

What is art? Why does it matter? Does artier artisan work get counted as speech?

“Because of my faith, I believe the Bible teaches clearly that it’s a man and a woman,” [said Mr. Phillips]. Making a cake to celebrate something different, he said, “causes me to use the talents that I have to create an artistic expression that violates that faith.”...

“Our story is about us being turned away and discriminated against by a public business,” said Mr. Mullins, 33, an office manager, poet, musician and photographer.

Getting it together.

I'm up to Step 4 in transforming the rarely used living room into The Music Room.

(Please use this post as an open thread... which means that I must add: Please consider doing any shopping you might have through The Althouse Amazon Portal.)

"Although you will spend most of the painful, torturous and stressful two hours it takes to survive mother! trying to figure out what it’s all about..."

"... I advise you to ignore the reviews entirely and make up your own fantasy. One critic says it’s a satire on the chaos the dysfunctional world has been turned into by Donald Trump.... One reviewer says [Jennifer Lawrence] plays the quintessential Earth mother who works feverishly to restore balance to a planet Earth that is being constantly torn apart by wickedness and savagery. I love the review that compares the movie to the 'lancing of a boil.' They all insist mother! is a metaphor for something, although they are not quite sure what it is.... The New York Times critic arrogantly warns in his review: 'Don’t listen to anyone who natters on about how intense or disturbing it is.' Sorry, pal, but [SPOILER ALERT] a mob that burns a screaming baby and its mother alive, then turns cannibal, eats the baby and rips its heart out to flush down the toilet while Patti Smith sings about the end of the world pretty much fits my definition of both 'intense' and 'disturbing.' What’s yours?"

Writes Rex Reed. In addition to a rating of zero stars, Reed opines that “Worst movie of the year” isn't enough and calls it the “Worst movie of the century.” It's just too early in the century to be saying that though, so Reed seems to be of a piece with the culture of hysteria that's giving us movies like this.

"Singing and acting are actually very similar things. Anyone can sing and anyone can be a film actor. All you have to do is learn."

"I learned to sing when I was a child I had a babysitter named Thelma. She was 18, I was six, and I was in love with her. I used to sing her an old Jimmie Rodgers song, 'T for Thelma.' [He sings:] 'T for Texas, T for Tennessee, T for Thelma, that girl made a wreck out of me.' [He smiles:] I was singing the blues when I was six. Kind of sad, eh?"

Blogged here in 2013. He was Harry Dean Stanton, who died yesterday at the age of 91. Here's the NYT obit. Excerpt:

[H]e remained largely unknown to the general public until 1984, when the seemingly impossible, or at least the unexpected, happened: Mr. Stanton, the quintessential supporting player, became a leading man.

That year he starred as a wandering amnesiac reunited with his family in Wim Wenders’s “Paris, Texas,” which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and as a fast-talking automobile thief training Emilio Estevez in the ways of his world in Alex Cox’s cult comedy “Repo Man.”...

Mr. Stanton was never anonymous again, although he continued to make his contributions almost entirely in supporting roles. He played Molly Ringwald’s underemployed father in the teenage romance “Pretty in Pink” (1986), the apostle Paul in Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ” (1988), a private eye in David Lynch’s “Wild at Heart” (1990), a judge in Terry Gilliam’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” (1998), the hero’s ailing brother in Mr. Lynch’s “The Straight Story” (1999), a veteran inmate cheerfully testing the electrocution equipment in “The Green Mile” (1999) and Charlie Sheen’s father in “The Big Bounce” (2004)... [and] Roman Grant, a self-proclaimed prophet with 14 wives, on [HBO's] “Big Love”...

"And lo! There, right infront of us, was the so hyped ‘white giraffe’ of Ishaqbini conservancy!"

"They were so close and extremely calm and seemed not disturbed by our presence. The mother kept pacing back and forth a few yards infront of us while signalling the baby Giraffe to hide behind the bushes..."



Hirola Conservation Programme Director & Founder, Dr. Abdullahi Ali says:

"I am positive these rare giraffes will change the perception of outsiders regarding north eastern Kenya in which many people have negative perceptions. I remember two years while I was in the US someone asked me where do you come from in Kenya and I said Garissa in Eastern Kenya. Her immediate response was that 'there is a lot of nothing there.' Snowy white giraffes and the rare hirola are [of] course not everywhere!"

"Summary of Clay Travis vs CNN."

Summary of Clay Travis vs CNN pic.twitter.com/8kNLuBZJa7

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) September 15, 2017

The heart-shaped boob challenge.

"People are squishing their boobs into hearts, for reasons we don’t entirely understand...."

More examples here.

Jeremy Hillary Boob, Ph.D.

"Jeremy Hillary Boob, Ph.D., is a fictional character appearing in the 1968 animated film Yellow Submarine."

Jeremy Hillary Boob was originally named Jeremy Y. du Q. Adams, after Southern Methodist University professor Jeremy DuQuesnay Adams. The character of Jeremy was intended as a parody of public intellectuals and polymaths, most notably theatrical director and doctor, Jonathan Miller, whom story writer Lee Minoff had previously worked with. He is also alleged to have been inspired by Cambridge poet J.H. Prynne.

From 2016: "The Dallas Man Who Inspired Yellow Submarine's Jeremy Hillary Boob Has Died."

“What parents do to kids is awful,” [Jeremy DuQuesnay Adams] said in an interview with the Observer in June, 2015. Back in the '60s, he was going by Jeremy Y. du Q. Adams, which his friend Erich Segal, who invented the character, loved. The character’s name was originally Jeremy Y. du Boob before being changed to Jeremy Hillary Boob....

Apparently, "Hillary" is funnier than "Y. du Q."