Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry... WaPo is soooo so so so sorry Donald Trump was on "Saturday Night Live."

I went over to The Washington Post to read "Trump’s sorry night on ‘SNL’: An overhyped bummer for us all" and I couldn't help noticing the sidebar:



Nothing like showing us how you really feel. I get it. You hate Trump and you're irked that he got the platform of "Saturday Night Live" to pose on — just like Hillary Clinton a few weeks ago and all the many other politicians who've had a shot at hosting over the years. What was so bad about the episode?

Hank Stuever, the WaPo TV critic calls the episode "an anemic and halfhearted dud" and a "boring and misspent episode," but based on what? He says that the cast members seemed to lack the "desire to participate" or "play with him." There was one sketch that was about the cast doing a sketch while Trump was tweeting about them and feeling bad about that, and maybe that signaled how they really felt about him, but that doesn't make the show halfhearted and dull. That showed them going meta with whatever distance they felt they needed, which isn't necessarily dull.

Stuever seems to demand that the show do sharper political mockery, but the failure to insult and abuse a guest host doesn't mean there won't be stronger satire on other occasions or that the comedy we did get wasn't good. So what was such a "sorry" "bummer"? Well, Stuever didn't like the "You're a racist" yell from Larry David in the cold open. But that was great! And:

From there it was one dud after another — some of it featuring Trump, much of it not, the minutes slowing to a crawl. A sketch set in 2018, in a wildly successful Trump White House, fell apart quickly. “Weekend Update” did a fair job of playing a little offense.... The “Update” segment also made good use of Bobby Moynihan’s “Drunk Uncle” character — turns out he’s the ideal demographic for the Trump message...

I'm sorry, Stuever, you have not marshaled the evidence that this was a sorry, boring, dud bummer. You're just pissed that Trump was showcased.

ADDED: Here's my earlier post on what I thought of the show.

NPR interviews the rap artist who provided the rap for that Ben Carson ad that has come up for a certain amount of mockery.

NPR provides the text of the answers, but the questions are summarized. I recommend listening to the audio to get a sense of whether there's condescension toward the black Christian Republican (whose name is Robert Donaldson (stage name: Aspiring Mogul)). This was the best part, where he responds to the question whether it's condescending to use rap music to appeal to "a certain constituency":

When Obama ran for president and the whole music industry made a song — from Will.I.Am to Alicia Keys to Common Sense and everybody — "Yes, I can! Yes, I can!" That was definitely a rap song. And so for me, I see it as the exact same thing. So [Ben Carson] did a rap ad — he did a country ad, too! Is that a knockoff to people who like country music, because he has a country song that represents him? ...

What I'm basically saying is: What genre of music is sufficient to use for a presidential ad? Is it only classical music? Is it pop music? I never said that this is an ad to get the black vote. That was the way they marketed it; I wrote the song because Ben Carson inspired me. And if they're using it for that reason, I'm now talking to you and have this opportunity to have this conversation. So the song has done, to some degree, the goal that I initially intended to begin with.

Ben Carson's house is a monument to himself.

Or so it looks in these pictures in The Guardian.

Maybe that's just the museum wing.

The man's been in the inspiration business for 2 decades. How many motivational speeches has he given over the years? What plaques and statuettes and medals have been handed to him on these occasions? What effect has that journey had on his brain? Not as much as surgery, I take it, but still, what is his judgment like after all of that fol-de-rol?

The NYT gushes: "Hillary in History/Win or lose, she is the perfect transitional figure."

That's the teaser on the front page, leading to the Gail Collins column, "Hillary in History."

No sooner did I write "The NYT gushes" than I began to doubt whether it is gushing. Yes, "perfect" sounds like high praise, but: "transitional figure." It's almost an oxymoron. If it's perfect, why are we progressing through this stage, transitioning? She's not the fully formed female President, but she's perfection as a way station on the road from here to there. She isn't where we really need to be, and so the perfection is imperfection.

[O]ne of the running subtexts in this story... is that when it comes to women winning political office, there’s a long line of wives in the cast of characters. [Elizabeth] Dole is married to the former presidential candidate Bob Dole. Margaret Chase Smith was both wife and office manager for Congressman Clyde Smith of Maine, and she took his seat after he died.

The first woman governor, Nellie Tayloe Ross, won a special election in Wyoming to succeed her husband in 1925. The first female senator was Hattie Wyatt Caraway of Arkansas, who was initially appointed to succeed her husband....

Collins had Hillary Clinton on the telephone, and Hillary told the old joke about a "successful businessman" who tells his wife that if she'd married her old boyfriend she'd be the wife of that gas station attendant and the woman says — as Hillary flattens the punchline — "No, if I’d married him he’d be a big success like you." Is that what Hillary thinks of Bill? That's my question. Collins didn't ask that and she sure didn't ask my next questions: If Bill got to be President because of you.  wouldn't electing you now be like giving you a third term as President? Haven't you already had your full constitutional share of presidential terms?

Clinton — the wife of a former president, with the longest résumé in the room — is a perfect transitional figure, whether she wins or not. Maybe there had to be a heroic Senator Smith with a muffin recipe, too. Maybe — and this is taking a really huge jump — there also had to be a “Ma” Ferguson, who became the first woman to be elected governor of Texas in 1925 after her husband was convicted of financial corruption. Ferguson did promise voters “two for the price of one” long before Bill Clinton thought of the phrase.

So the perfection Collins flogs is status as a wife of a former President?! In that framework, Hillary is only "the perfect transitional figure" if you believe America is mired in its travels on the road to female equality in some godawful backwater town where a woman cannot make it on her own. Did Mary Tyler Moore throw her hat in the air for nothing?



That was Minneapolis in 1970, and I am not buying that a woman in 2015 needs to make it by riding alongside her successful husband. That's not where we are, and I can't believe Gail Collins isn't embarrassed to talk about the United States that way.

Donald Trump's "Saturday Night Live" stint.

1. This was the best part:



That's very funny even without knowing the original video that it spoofs, but you can watch that here. Spoofing that isn't original. It's already much spoofed.

2. For the commenter who asked at 11:05 PM last night, "Why aren't you live blogging SNL?" You have no idea how early I go to bed! I was up at 5, however, and I watched the DVR of the show over breakfast.

3. We loved seeing Ed Grimley! Too bad they had to put "Ed Grimley" in big letters on screen... presumably to help the kids out there whom they must have imagined all saying "Who's that guy?" Here at Meadhouse, Ed Grimley is imitated approximately every other day.

4. Trump did a nice job. He wasn't just a good sport about getting flanked by 2 Trump impersonators in the opening monologue. He seemed to enjoy it. And he accepted Larry David yelling "You're a racist!" at him. Laughing at the idea of being considered a racist. That's edgy. [ADDED: "A Hispanic advocacy group had offered anyone in the SNL audience a $5,000 reward if they called Trump a 'racist' during his opening monologue."]

5. I skipped over the musical act, but Sia stole my 1965 hairstyle.

6. Lots more Larry David in the cold open. David owns the Bernie Sanders impersonation. I wonder if that was the first time the line "It's Saturday Night!" was skipped. Cranky old Larry/Bernie says "Live from New York, eh, you get it."

7. Late in the show there's a fake ad for Donald Trump done by aging porn actresses. The punch line is Donald Trump walking on and saying "I'm Donald Trump and I in no way, shape, or form approve of this message," but the most interesting thing is the shot at Bill Clinton that comes at about 3:00. One of the messed-up ladies dreams of getting to visit the White House: "I haven't been there since the 90s," and the other says, "Oh, yeah, I hit my head on the desk." For a show that's seemed so in-the-tank for Hillary, that's some serious balance.

A view of Madison, from the north.

It looks near wintry, but it was 70° (2 days ago).

Talk about anything you want in the comments.

Some Yale students are hopping mad at 2 faculty members who didn't see the exquisite importance of repressing Halloween costumery.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education explains the multilayered outrage.

This email from Associate Master of Silliman College Erika Christakis is the main source of irritation. She had the nerve to address Yale students as intellectuals, drawing on her expertise — she teaches a class on "The Concept of the Problem Child" — and saying things like:

At the first link there's video of Yale students yelling at Erika Christakis's husband Nicholas:

“As your position as master, it is your job to create a place of comfort and home for the students that live in Silliman,” one student says. “You have not done that. By sending out that email, that goes against your position as master. Do you understand that?”

When Christakis disagreed, the student proceeded to yell at him. “Who the fuck hired you?” she asked, arguing that Christakis should “step down” because being master is “not about creating an intellectual space,” but rather “creating a home.”

To be fair, I'd like to know more about what representations Yale made to the students it lured into matriculating. Was a "safe space" promised? Part of the "marketplace of ideas" that the Christakises champion is the marketplace of colleges where students get their choice. What did the Yale packaging say? I can't really judge the anger and the urgency of these students without knowing what other offers they had and what they were led to think they were buying when they picked Yale. A vibrant "intellectual space" sounds exciting to me, but is that what they were told they'd get if they came to Yale? Maybe some other schools offered a challenging intellectual environment and they passed on it, preferring a caring, nurturing setting. Were they deceived?

There's a lot that could be said here, but I'll just say one more thing. Halloween is childish fun. If you're grimly serious about it, you've aged out. Maybe some of your classmates are still playing around, vacationing from their daily worries, indulging in this annual childishness. If you're too adult to join them, then do the adult thing and stay home and read. Complaining to the authorities is another form of indulgence in childishness — not childish fun but childish whining and tattling.

"At least 100 students at a high school in Cañon City traded naked pictures of themselves... part of a large sexting ring."

"The revelation has left parents outraged, administrators searching for missed clues, and the police and the district attorney’s office debating whether to file child pornography charges... against some of the participants...."

Because it is a felony to possess or distribute child pornography, the charges could be serious. But because most of the people at fault are themselves minors and, in some cases, took pictures of themselves and sent them to others, law enforcement officials are at a loss as to how to proceed. “Consenting adults can do this to their hearts’ content,” said Thom LeDoux, the district attorney, but “if the subject is under the age of 18, that’s a problem.”

There are so many questions and issues here. But let me just ask: Are we talking about anything other than nudity? If you take a picture of yourself naked, have you manufactured pornography? Maybe a little sanity could be injected into this perplexity by asking that question.

Here's something else that deserves scrutiny: The authorities are trying to divide the students into predators and victims. Students collected each other's photographs (using apps called "vaults"), "with boys and girls involved in seemingly equal numbers." But there's a focus on the football team:

Members of the high school football team, the Cañon City Tigers, were at the center of the sexting ring, [George Welsh, the superintendent of the Cañon City school system] said. On Thursday night, separate community meetings were held for parents of football players and parents of other students to address the scandal, which has shocked this quiet, semirural community of 16,000. The team was forced to forfeit its final game of the season.

Separate meetings?! Why?

Mr. Welsh, the superintendent, said in a statement that “because a large number of our high school football players were implicated in this behavior, the coaching staff and administration, after careful thought and consideration, decided that stepping on the field to play this weekend to represent the Cañon City community is just not an option.”...

I don't understand treating the football team differently. They're the "the center of the sexting ring"? It sounds like a huge group of students — female and male — were communicating, sending selfies voluntarily. It's obvious that the authorities won't accuse them all of felonies. I can't see any justification for treating the boys differently from the girls or for demonizing the football team.

I don't know what we should do about the problem of kids texting naked pictures of themselves, but it's such a widespread practice at this point that I'd lean toward educating students about why it's not a good idea. That assumes the adults really know why it's so terrible and are capable of communicating.

"In the admittedly brief time that I have had this coloring book, it has filled a particular activity niche for me..."

"... which is 'something to do with my hands while I watch Netflix.' Other activities in this niche include: knitting, painting my nails, texting, putting candy in my mouth. End of list."

Writes Julie Beck in "The Zen of Adult Coloring Books/I get it now."

Why do I need to do two things at once? Why can’t I just sit quietly and enjoy a TV show? In part, it’s because I feel a little less lazy if I’m making something while I wile away the hours with Friday Night Lights. But also, I’m watching TV in the first place to relax, to quiet my mind, and often my mind is loud enough that it shouts over Coach Taylor. I really do think that a lifetime of multitasking has left me occasionally incapable of subduing the entirety of my mind with one activity. If the front of my mind is occupied by the show, and the back is focused on picking colors and staying in the lines, there’s not room for much else. It’s a sort of mindfulness that’s more like mind-fullness....

Now, I actually understand this.

I was excited about another Democratic candidates debate, but then I saw it was just a "forum," that is, a series of individual interviews.

Why is that called a forum? Candidates sit for interviews all the time, so what's interesting about a sequence of interviews? That it was in an auditorium full of people rather than a closed up studio? Voices reverberated. Applause interrupted.

I sat through the whole thing, not that I wasn't reading or doing crosswords on my iPad most of the time. I figured there'd be a transcript in the morning, and I could cherry pick a few things I'd remembered. When I woke up this morning, before I went searching for the transcript — never to find one — I pushed myself to remember something from last night. Come on, Althouse, think. I thought of one thing: Bernie Sanders is annoyed by the sounds high-tech devices make. It's somewhere in here...



... along with "How many pair of underwear do I have?" and "Am I really Larry David?" (which is a reference to this, on SNL). Ah, yes, the noisy tech at 1:30. He also says "People think I'm grumpy."

Now, why did I watch all that? I do not know. I also remember that Martin O'Malley said he owns a kilt, but only because somebody gave it to him, and that Hillary Clinton regards "hush puppies" as both a food and a type of shoes. I can't believe I spent my Friday night on that, but I did go out for a late lunch...



... and I sometimes wonder if anything makes sense anymore. I can only hope that Bad Lip Reading doesn't pass up this "forum" because it's not a debate. I really do look there for meaning. Meade and I have watched the last debate on BLR dozens of times...



... Can I help you?!

"Incanting 'Black Lives Matter' rather than 'All Lives Matter' hardly constitutes advocating 'racial justice,' in my view."

"Indeed, I see the making of such verbal concessions as a kind of cheap grace. These genuflections ask very little of the (white) politicians or their (white) voters. But endorsing universal early childhood education, scattered site public housing, massively increased spending on mental health care for the indigent, revamped criminal justice policies, a guaranteed minimum income for all American families, public jobs as employer-of-last-resort, higher per capita expenditures on the education of those from the least advantaged home environments — all of these things, and more, enacted via comprehensive legislative initiatives DO ask a great deal from politicians and WOULD be a massive step in the direction of 'social justice' in America. And, given their disproportionately beneficial impact on black communities, enacting such a comprehensive progressive agenda would constitute achieving the only kind of 'racial justice' worth fighting for in my view."

Writes Glenn Loury.

I added the boldface.

"The swastika appeared overnight, drawn with human feces on a college dorm’s brand new white wall...."

"Now a graduate student says he is on a hunger strike and is willing to die unless the school’s president steps down."

“I already feel like campus is an unlivable space,” said [University of Missouri student Jonathan L. Butler, 25], who is African American. “So it’s worth sacrificing something of this grave amount, because I’m already not wanted here. I’m already not treated like I’m a human.... It’s just gotten to the point on campus where it’s really not safe for black students or really all marginalized students. Me personally, I won’t feel safe on campus until there is an urgency that things need to change and be taken seriously. It’s just a very hostile environment for black students... We are facing a lot of negativity and oppression on a daily basis... And then you students go to a diversity forums, you see them write letters, you see them write e-mails and send tweets and do all these things, we bare our souls and tell very painful stories but … our lives are still not valued. At some point, after spending all that energy telling people that I deserve to be recognized as a human, like my existence matters, at a certain point you are putting people in a corner and you keep poking them with a stick, things escalate until people feel like they are hurt."

The linked article, in The Washington Post, describes some other incidents. The scrawler of the swastika is unknown. 

"Judge reopens ‘Serial’ case, allowing Adnan Syed to introduce new evidence."

WaPo reports.

Now, the court will consider a 2015 affidavit from Syed’s alibi witness, Asia McClain, in which she said she remembered talking with Syed in the library at the time prosecutors said the then-teenager killed his former girlfriend, Hae Min Lee. McClain said she reached out to Syed about helping with his defense, but his former lawyer never contacted her....

The court will also take up the reliability of cellphone evidence that helped the state place Syed at one of the scenes of the crime. Welch wrote that the court will also take up Syed’s former attorney’s “alleged failure to cross-examine” the state’s cellphone expert and “potential prosecutorial misconduct during trial.” In a sworn affidavit submitted last month, former AT&T engineer Abraham Waranowitz said he wasn’t given a disclaimer about the reliability of such data that he considered “critical” and “would have affected my testimony.”

The Supreme Court takes 7 cases seeking Religious Freedom Accommodation Act exemptions from Obamacare.

Explained, at SCOTUSblog, by Lyle Denniston. These cases all involve non-profit religious organizations, which the federal government has tried to accommodate. You may remember the Hobby Lobby case. That had to do with for-profit corporations, which the government argued (unsuccessfully) had no right to accommodations under RFRA. In the new cases, non-profit organizations say that the accommodations they've been offered do not go far enough:

[The government's] accommodation requires the institution to notify the government of its objection; that, the government argues, is enough to excuse that institution from any direct role in providing contraceptives to their female employees. From then on, it is the government, working with the institution’s health insurer, that actually provides the free access to contraceptives for those employees....

The religious institutions have countered that, because the plans that will provide for the access are those institutions’ own heath insurance systems, the government will “hijack” those to provide the contraceptives. The mere act of notifying the government of a religious objection, those institutions have contended, works as a “trigger” to the government to go forward with contraceptive coverage through their plans. That, the institutions have said, confronts them with the choice of violating their religious beliefs or paying the heavy fines.

The organizations argue that their exercise of religion is substantially burdened by this level of involvement in the process. If this need to avoid even direct participation counts as a substantial burden on religion, then the government must have a compelling interest and it must meet that interest with the "least restrictive means."

In Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court didn't decide but assumed that "the interest in guaranteeing cost-free access" contraception was compelling. It said that the government had certainly not used the least-restrictive means, because it didn't even give the accommodation that it worked out for not-for-profit organizations.

In these new cases, the question is whether even that accommodation is the least restrictive, a question Hobby Lobby left open. As the Court wrote in that case, the "most straightforward" accommodation "would be for the Government to assume the cost of providing the four contraceptives at issue to any women who are unable to obtain them under their health-insurance policies due to their employers’ religious objections."

There's a vast robot conspiracy against Hillary.

Look what they did to her retweet of some sweet puff piece at NBC with the headline "Hillary Clinton's Campaign Is Powered By Pizza, Analysis Shows":



"Probably the most unfortunate dot dot dot in any political retweet, ever...."

Commenting dispairingly and disparagingly...

... on the students at the University of Missouri Law School.