"Now we’re feeling what not having hope feels like."

Said Michelle Obama to Oprah.

Trump's response:



Transcript:

“Michelle Obama said yesterday that there’s no hope. But I assume she was talking about the past, not the future, because I'm telling you, we have tremendous hope and we have tremendous promise and we have tremendous potential. We are going to be so successful as a country again. We are going to be amazing. And I actually think she made that statement not meaning it the way it came out, because I met with President Obama and Michelle Obama in the White House. My wife was there. She could not have been nicer. So I honestly believe she meant that statement in a different way than it came out, because I believe there is tremendous hope and, beyond hope, we have such potential. This country has such potential. You watch. It's going to be so special. Things are going to happen like you haven't seen happen in many decades."

Things are going to happen like you haven't seen happen in many decades.... I think I know what the Trump-is-Hitler contingent will say about that. But everyone will load whatever meaning they want into high abstractions like "tremendous promise," "tremendous potential," and "tremendous hope." I get that it will be big, but big what? You watch. Just wait and see. It's going to be so special. Special, eh? Special. Do I want something special? I might want something normal. I'm a little worried about special.

Of course, Obama's "hope" was always an abstraction that absorbed whatever meaning people saw in it. He's leaving now, having fulfilled some hopes and not others. One hope he has not fulfilled is the perpetuation of his party's power. He's as responsible as anyone for laying the foundation for Trump's campaign. He didn't mean to do that — I don't think! — but he never had the ability to control what was in the minds of the people who responded to his idea of hope, and now there will be a new President, bringing a different version of hope, and the old President's wife chooses to say that "we" are feeling the absence of hope.

Who's that "we"? The Democrats or the woeful people of America who — despite 8 years of Obama — still had to hope. Let's take a closer look at what Michelle Obama said to Oprah:

“So your husband’s administration, every -- everything, the election, was all about hope,” Winfrey said in a clip that aired Friday on “CBS This Morning.” “Do you think that this administration achieved that?”

The first lady responded in the affirmative. “Yes, I do,” she said, “because we feel the difference now.”

All right. That addresses my first question. Obama should already have fulfilled the hope he inspired.

“See, now we’re feeling what not having hope feels like. You know? Hope is necessary. It’s a necessary concept,” Obama continued. 

Now, she's disengaged from Oprah's question. Instead of talking about what President Obama achieved, she's talking about the ongoing feeling that people ought to have. But hope is future-looking and based on continuing need. If Obama had achieved what some of those he inspired were hoping for, would hope still be the important concept? Wouldn't we transition to preserving what we have?

“And Barack didn’t just talk about hope because he thought it was just a nice slogan to get votes. I mean, he and I and so many believe that if you -- what else do you have if you don’t have hope?”

You have all those things you've achieved! Health, happiness, security, understanding!

“What do you give your kids if you can’t give them hope?” said the first lady. 

You give them a safe, secure, loving home, a good education, solid character. What you give them, they have received. They have it. I wonder if I'm arriving at what Trump was groping toward when he said "I assume she was talking about the past, not the future."

Michelle Obama seems to confuse the past and the future in a strange way that relates to a criticism of Democrats one often hears: Their political strategy relies on maintaining economic dependency and feelings of victimhood. To say you must have hope is — think about it — a euphemistic way to say you must continue to feel needy.

"You know, our children respond to crises the way they see us respond. You know, it’s like the toddler that bumps his head on the table...they look up at you to  figure out whether it hurts. And if you’re like, oh, my God, they’re crying. But if you’re like, you know what, babe, it’s okay.... I feel that Barack has been that for the nation in ways that people will come to appreciate,” she said. 

We, the people, are children.

“Having a grown-up in the White House who can say to you in times of crisis and turmoil, hey, it’s gonna be okay."

So Obama has been the good father, calm in a crisis. That says nothing about whether Trump will be an equally good father figure or whether the father/children metaphor is ideal. I think Michelle is drifting back into a comfortable meditation on her husband's much-admired temperament. She doesn't leap into saying that Trump's demeanor is distinctly different from Obama's or that Trump's approach to fatherhood would be bad. There's no reason to think Trump would be an "oh, my God" type of parent, the one model Michelle seems to believe would not work.

"Let’s remember the good things that we have. Let’s look at the future. Let’s look at all the things that we’re building. All of this is important for our kids to stay focused and to feel like their work isn’t in vain. That their lives aren’t in vain. What do we do if we don’t have hope, Oprah?”

None of that is Trump-specific. It's thoroughly abstract. But the main thing I see in her words is a wife's anxiety to protect her husband's reputation. The press has cherry-picked words that seem to denounce Trump as the end of all hope. That's not really what she was saying. I suspect she's upset that all of her husband's achievements will be undone and that he will be blamed for failing to preserve them, for allowing the election to be lost. But that's only an inference, not even a stated abstraction.

The Last Christmas with Obama.

Nighttime Christmas lights.

The lights buried after another day of snow. Photo taken just now.

Illinois law forces hairdressers to take training — 1 hour every 2 years — in detecting evidence of domestic violence.

The NYT reports.

The rule was inspired by the spirit of camaraderie in hair salons, said State Senator Bill Cunningham, one of the chief sponsors of the amendment. For some women, those salons are a safe space, where they can sit among other women, drop their guard and confide about life as their hair is braided or colored, or their nails trimmed and painted....

So, it's a great place for government to plant informants. 

The final version of the law, which was signed by Gov. Bruce Rauner in August, does not require salon workers to act on their suspicions, but helps them to recognize warning signs and provides them with resources to pass on to victims so they can get help — such as safe houses or hotlines — get restraining orders or get access to legal professionals....

The curriculum emphasizes the importance of letting clients take the lead in disclosing details about their personal lives....

This gets my Big Government sounds like a creepy stalker tag.

It's interesting that the state doesn't require salon workers to report anyone to the police or to social services. It's not like the way psychotherapists must submit to compulsion. But the state does require the training, repeated training, and it is willing to deprive hairdressers of their license — their livelihood — if they don't comply.

And do I detect condescension in the NYT's attitude toward the sort of women who find "camaraderie" in hair salons?

"a single baked potato, stuffed with beluga caviar and sour cream, eaten once a day."

The Jackie Kennedy diet — from "The Five Worst Celebrity Diets."

The woman who invented the blow-drying method of hairstyling.

You used to "set" the wet hair in rollers and sit under a big hair-drying dome...



... but Rose Evansky — who has just died at age 94 — figured out the new way:

“I’d been wandering past a barbershop in Brook Street around the corner from our salon in North Audley Street, and I saw the barber drying the front of a man’s hair with a brush and a hand-held dryer,” she told W magazine in 2012. “And this image — of the barber with the dryer — flashed through my mind and I thought, ‘Why not for women?’”....

“I picked up a spiky plastic hairbrush and a hand dryer and started rolling a wet section of her hair around the brush, followed by warm air from the hand dryer held in my left hand,” she wrote in a memoir, “In Paris We Sang” (2013). “The more sections of wet hair I rolled over the brush, the easier it became, and soon part of [the customer's] curly hair looked smooth, as if it had been brushed through from a set. Exciting!”

One day by chance, Lady Clare Rendlesham, the editor of the British edition of Vogue, dropped by the salon and, witnessing a blow-dry in progress, stopped dead in her tracks. “What are you doing, Rose?” Mrs. Evansky recalled her shouting....

I'm sure blow-drying makes more sense than the rollers-under-the-dome approach, but I'm in love with the photos of women sitting under those absurd things. Here's an excellent collection — "a moment of reflection on our cultural loss: the importance of hair dryers in mid-20th century american life" from a blog called "finding jackie." In addition to pictures of ordinary women, we see Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, and Sophia Loren — each of whom reacts to the experience of going under the dome in precisely the manner we expect from her.

I couldn't figure out the name of the "finding jackie" blogger, but I got obsessed with finding a book I read long ago that I thought might have that title. Searching for a book on your shelves might be as passé as setting your hair in rollers and sitting under a dome dryer, but I discovered I am still able to do it....

"Watching #Calexit create a firestorm online reminded me of a book published in 1975 that predicted this very idea."

Writes Kate Ryan in "Whether Or Not Calexit Happens, Californians Can And Should Lead A Revolution/Welcome to the United State of California."

In Ecotopia, Ernest Callenbach tells the tale of a West Coast utopia that secedes from a nation consumed by capitalistic greed. According to Callenbach’s vision, Northern California joins Washington and Oregon in seceding from the United States, essentially writing off Los Angeles as a car-obsessed bubble of heathens. While maybe the car-obsessed thing hasn’t changed, the prevailing attitude of young Los Angelenos has...

Fast-forward to 2016, and much like the book prophesied, we have a state that is directly at odds with the rest of the nation....

That reminds me: "It's Official: Clinton's Popular Vote Win Came Entirely From California."

If you take California out of the popular vote equation, then Trump wins the rest of the country by 1.4 million votes. And if California voted like every other Democratic state — where Clinton averaged 53.5% wins — Clinton and Trump end up in a virtual popular vote tie.

"We are concerned that our brothers have been named publicly with reckless disregard in violation of their constitutional rights."

"We are now compelled to speak for our team and take back our program."



Reason.com has this, by Robby Soave: "University of Minnesota Football Team Boycotts ‘Unjust Title IX Investigation’/Ten students of color were suspended for sexual misconduct, even though the police said it was consensual."

[Team member Carlton] Djam told police that their sex was fully consensual. He produced three video clips taken on the morning in question that showed the woman was "lucid, alert, somewhat playful and fully conscious; she does not appear to be objecting to anything at this time," according to the police report. This satisfied the police and no charges were filed....

[But] the university has its own process for investigating sexual misconduct that is separate from the police. According to the Education Department, Title IX—a federal statute mandating equality between the sexes in public education—requires universities to adjudicate sexual misconduct internally.... [T]he Office for Civil Rights—the agency that ensures Title IX compliance—has instructed universities to use a lower standard of proof. OCR guidance also discourages administrators from allowing cross-examination, one of the most vital tools a defendant has to prove his or her innocent.

As a result of Minnesota's Title IX proceeding, 10 players were suspended. 

Soave proceeds to critique the NYT for failing to mention race in its piece "Minnesota Football Players Pledge Boycott Over Teammates’ Suspensions." 

All 10 of the suspended players are black.

IN THE COMMENTS: David Begley said:

The players are essentially saying: Hey, it's okay to for ten of our teammates to have sex with a single drunk woman.

Christmas lights in the new snow.

Just now.

I just realized that the David Friedman picked by Trump for ambassador to Israel is the David Friedman I went to law school with.

New York University School of Law (J.D., 1981).

I remember him as a young man. Vividly!

Strange to look at that old face and visualize the young man I knew. This blows my mind. "David Friedman" is such a common name that it took me a while — I've been reading news stories about him for days — even to consider checking to see where he went to law school.

Among the many news articles: "Trump Chooses Hard-Liner as Ambassador to Israel" (NYT):

President-elect Donald J. Trump on Thursday named David M. Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer aligned with the Israeli far right, as his nominee for ambassador to Israel, elevating a campaign adviser who has questioned the need for a two-state solution and has likened left-leaning Jews in America to the Jews who aided the Nazis in the Holocaust.

Mr. Friedman, whose outspoken views stand in stark contrast to decades of American policy toward Israel, did not wait long on Thursday to signal his intention to upend the American approach. In a statement from the Trump transition team announcing his nomination, he said he looked forward to doing the job “from the U.S. embassy in Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem.”

Through decades of Republican and Democratic administrations, the embassy has been in Tel Aviv, as the State Department insists that the status of Jerusalem — which both Israel and the Palestinians see as their rightful capital — can be determined only through negotiations as part of an overall peace deal.

What do I remember of the young David Friedman? It's hard to trust memory enough to want to say anything at all, but I believe I remember a young man who was strong and intense and happy to be different from the mass of NYU law students. 

"Why My Son Has My Wife's Last Name/I did what few men do, and my own father flipped out."

Writes a man whose last name is — of all names — Garner.

It was a personal decision because my wife's family name, LeFavour, was dying out. While I have a brother who has two sons, she and her sister were the last of an old line, one that stretches back to colonial times; her ancestors fought in the Revolutionary and Civil wars. We debated giving our children, Penn and Harriet, one of those double-barreled, hinged-at-the-middle last names: Garner-LeFavour. But it sounded ungainly, affected, and like the name of a forgotten Canadian trade bill.

At the time, our decision didn't feel like an act of defiance or cultural daring. It felt like us. We were young and living in a tiny (600-square-foot) apartment on Jane Street in Manhattan's West Village when we had our children....

Ah! Sounds like they lived in our old apartment!

Obama, tired, gets lost in a sentence and knows it.

It was a long press conference today.

Why can't a President, like an ordinary person say I lost my train of thought!?

Obama tags on this blog that have collected a surprising number of posts.

You can see all my Obama tags below the fold. I'll just list some I particularly like for various reasons — odd specificity, surprising usefulness, whatever:

Obama the mood elevator (74)
Obama the boyfriend (58)
Obama and manliness (24)
Obama's psyche (68)
Obama is everywhere (15)
Obama and irony (14)
Obama and pop culture (87)
Obama the father (19)
Obama the teacher (28)
Obama and the fly (13) (Let's see Trump catch a fly with his bare hand.)
Obama eats dog (12)
Obama attacked from the left (11)
Obama gets mad (3)
Obama is bland ( 63)
Obama's tired (5)
Obama is like Bush (78)
Obama is like Carter (15)
Obama is like Nixon (35)
Obama is like Reagan (4)
Obama is like Sarah Palin (4)
Obama's umbrella (5)
Obama says something strange (1)

Because we are stronger together...

"9 Ways to Oppose Donald Trump," by John Cassidy in The New Yorker.

I'm giving this my Trump derangement syndrome tag, even though I don't think it's precisely deranged. I just don't want too much tag proliferation.

When Trump first made noise about running for President, I just used my tag for "The Apprentice" and resisted making a tag even for his name. Now, I've got a bunch of Trump tags, and I'm trying to keep them from getting as ridiculously numerous as my Obama tags. I think I need to do a good culling of my Obama tags — maybe get rid of anything that didn't collect at least 4 posts.

Anyway, speaking of Trump derangement syndrome, Cassidy starts out:

Over the past few weeks, a number of anguished friends and acquaintances, and even some strangers, have got in touch with me to ask what they might do to oppose Donald Trump. Being a fellow sufferer from OATS—Obsessing About Trump Syndrome—my first instinct has been to tell people to get off social media and take a long walk. It won’t do anybody much good, except possibly Trump, if large numbers of people who voted against him send themselves mad by constantly reading about him, cursing him, and recirculating his latest outrages.

Well, that's pretty sensible. OATS is a little silly, but it does allow one to say "I'm feeling my OATS."

To feel ones oats means "to be lively; to feel self-important" — according to the Oxford English Dictionary. P.T. Barnum used it in his 1869 memoir "Struggles & Triumphs":

As I grew older my settled aversion to manual labor, farm or other kind, was manifest in various ways.... In despair of doing better with me, my father concluded to make a merchant of me.....  Of course, I "felt my oats." It was condescension on my part to talk with boys who did out-door work. I stood behind the counter with a pen over my ear, was polite to the ladies, and was wonderfully active in waiting upon customers.  We ketp a cash, credit and barter store, and I drove sharp bargains with women who brought butter, eggs, beeswax and feathers to exchange for dry goods, and with men who wanted to trade oats, corn, buckwheat, axe-helves, hats, and other commodities for tenpenny nails, molasses, or New England rum.

The art of the deal.

Of course, Trump has been compared to P.T. Barnum and he has embraced the comparison. From back in January:

Yesterday, on "Meet the Press," Donald Trump was presented with a list of characters he'd been compared to: "some people are calling you the Music Man of this race. Kim Kardashian. Biff, from Back to the Future. George Costanza. P.T. Barnum. What's - any of those do you consider a compliment?" Trump immediately said "P.T. Barnum."

"It took me three or four times to understand what was happening, that the birds would dive after they heard the dolphins."

"After that, I knew what to expect and could photograph the birds as they dove.... With remarkable eyesight, the gannets follow the dolphins before diving in a free fall from a hundred feet high, piercing the surface of the water headfirst at a speed of 50 miles an hour. They dive as deep as 30 feet to get their fill of sardines before returning to the surface. This type of sardine is the best to photograph because, when confronted by predators, they don’t move. Their instinct is to swim down as a group, but the dolphins keep them at the surface."

Said Greg  Lecoeur, who took the 2016 National Geographic Nature Photograph of the Year.

"By all means, stand with the Department of Energy as it protects civil servants whose work displeases the incoming administration."

"And when the time once again comes when government tries to silence deniers of climate change, stand with those deniers as well. It's a matter of principle, not just politics."

Writes Megan McArdle. I don't know if I agree with everything she says, but she opens up a topic I'd like to talk about.