At the Saturday Night Cafe...

 ... you can talk about whatever you want.

I have been reading and trying to get around to blogging "The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election" since 2:10 p.m. yesterday.

2:10 p.m. is not a normal time for me to be blogging. I tend to blog between 4 a.m. and 10 a.m. Sometimes I come back to the computer in the afternoon or evening, but usually not to analyze something complicated. And if other people are jumping on a new item, there's less and less reason, as the hours wear on, to blog the link just to show it to you. I feel more and more obligated to get into some of the complicated layers.

2:10 p.m. yesterday was when I first saw the article and decided it was very important. It's 9:36 a.m. the next day now, and I've put up 7 posts, beginning at 5:30 a.m. But the entire time, I've been putting off what I know I need to do and completely intend to do, blog "The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election." 

This is a long article, and understanding it, for me, involves figuring out why Time published it and understanding the possible bias of the author, Molly Ball. It's hard not to read "saved the... election" as rigged the election. Why is this coming out now, just before the weekend before the impeachment trial begins? Time is openly proclaiming that something "secret" happened in the "shadow"? 

MORE: An excerpt:

"Eyebrows? Who cares? With all the suffering around us, with all of the important things to focus on, it flummoxes me to witness how people waste time and money."

That's the third-highest-ranked comment on a weirdly long WaPo article titled "Our pandemic eyebrows are driving us crazy. Can we learn to love them?" 

All the high-rated comments say just about exactly the same thing. I chose that one to quote because it features my favorite word: flummox. It's a colloquial and vulgar word, according to the OED. "The formation seems to be onomatopoeic, expressive of the notion of throwing down roughly and untidily; compare flump, hummock, dialect slommock sloven." 

The oldest appearance is 1837 in Dickens's "Pickwick Papers": "Ve got Tom Vildspark off that 'ere manslaughter, with a alleybi, ven all the big vigs to a man said as nothing couldn’t save him. And my 'pinion is, Sammy, that if your governor don’t prove a alleybi, he’ll be what the Italians call reg’larly flummoxed, and that’s all about it." 

Italians?! Is that like saying "Pardon my French"? 

"Pardon my French" or "Excuse my French" is a common English language phrase ostensibly disguising profanity as words from the French language. The phrase is uttered in an attempt to excuse the user of profanity, swearing, or curses in the presence of those offended by it, under the pretense of the words being part of a foreign language. Although the phrase is often used without any explicit or implicit intention of insulting the French people or language, it can nevertheless be perceived as offensive and belittling by Francophone speakers. However, most users of the term intend no such belittlement....

Required cultural reference: 

 

Bonus fact (from the above-linked Wikipedia article, "Pardon My French"): The word for a French kiss in French is "une pelle." It means "a shovel." Please use that knowledge wisely!

"As a law student, I worked in the mayor's office in Detroit during the 1967 riot, and I can tell you what happens to major cities with sustained increases in violent crime..."

"... Very large parts of them are destroyed. That's what I fear could happen again. It's all the more likely if liberal mayors and their cheerleaders in the press act as many did during the 'mostly peaceful' BLM protests. Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser tweeted that it was 'shameful' for federal police to use force to clear Lafayette Square on June 1. Those overrunning it tried to topple the statue of Andrew Jackson and started a fire in St. John's Church, 'the presidents' church,' just to the north. That civic space was violated just as the Capitol was on Jan. 6.  ... Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton argued in The New York Times for sending the National Guard and federal troops into cities where rioting got out of hand, as was often done from 1967 in Detroit to 1992 in Los Angeles. That common-sense suggestion sent young Times journalists into tears, and they demanded — and got — the firing of editorial page editor James Bennet. It's easy to make fun of the double standard here, with Bowser decrying the active duty military being 'used on American streets against Americans' in June and having no problem with it in January. Or with then-President Trump decrying rioters in June and spurring them on in January."

Writes Michael Barone (at Rasmussen).

"'Originally, I thought the context in which I used this ugly word could be defended.' The science reporter... described the 'n-word' incident..."

"... as having occurred during a dinner discussion about the use of racial slurs, in which one student on the trip asked whether a classmate should have been suspended for using racist rhetoric in a video. 'To understand what was in the video, I asked if she had called someone else the slur or whether she was rapping or quoting a book title. In asking the question, I used the slur itself,' McNeil wrote. He apologized for 'extraordinarily bad judgment' to both the staff of the Times, singling out those he worked closely with, and to the students on the trip. 'I am sorry. I let you all down.'... Times executive editor Dean Baquet had previously said McNeil should be 'given another chance' because his comments were not 'hateful or malicious' in intent, but in a message to staff on Friday, the top editor wrote, 'We do not tolerate racist language regardless of intent.'"

From "NY Times Star Reporter Donald McNeil Exits After Daily Beast Exposé" (Daily Beast).

In the old days, a big deal was made of the "use/mention" distinction. It doesn't seem to matter anymore. Even McNeil, defending himself, asserts that he "used" the word.

I understand wanting to say that "intent" shouldn't be decisive, because it presents evidentiary problems. What went on in a person's head? Did he somehow mean well? But the "use/mention" distinction doesn't require a trip into someone's mind. If you have the outward statement, you can know whether the speaker/writer used the word as his own word or was referring to the word as a word. 

You don't need to know whether I think Dean Baquet is a coward to distinguish the statement "Dean Baquet is a coward" from "I can imagine someone saying 'Dean Baquet is a coward.'" And writing that last sentence, I can see why the "use/mention" distinction went to hell!

"A splintered Supreme Court on late Friday night partly lifted restrictions on religious services in California that had been prompted by the coronavirus pandemic...."

"With the pandemic raging, in-person worship services were entirely barred in Tier 1, which covers almost all of the state. In a brief, unsigned opinion, the court blocked that total ban but left in place a 25 percent capacity restriction and a prohibition on singing and chanting. Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch said they would have blocked all of the restrictions. Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented, saying they would have left all of the restrictions in place. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., in a concurring opinion, explained why a middle ground was appropriate....  Justice Amy Coney Barrett, in her first opinion, wrote that she would not have blocked the restrictions on singing and chanting based on the available evidence. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh joined her opinion. Justice Gorsuch, joined by Justices Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., said the state had favored its entertainment industry over worship services.... 'In the worst public health crisis in a century,' Justice Kagan wrote, 'this foray into armchair epidemiology cannot end well.'"

Writes Adam Liptak (in the NYT).

Here's the opinion. I'll just single out the Gorsuch opinion, which looks at what I find most compelling, unequal treatment. It's one thing for government to choose a strict, risk-averse approach to the epidemic, something else to be strict toward some and generous toward others. Justice Gorsuch writes:

It seems California’s powerful entertainment industry has won an exemption. So, once more, we appear to have a State playing favorites during a pandemic, expending considerable effort to protect lucrative industries (casinos in Nevada; movie studios in California) while denying similar largesse to its faithful. See, e.g., Calvary Chapel Dayton Valley v. Sisolak, 591 U. S. ___, ___ 2020) (GORSUCH, J., dissenting from denial of application for injunction relief ).... 

"Earlier today Air Station Traverse City launched two helicopters to respond to reports of over 60 ice fishermen stranded on an ice floe near Sturgeon Bay, WI."

"The ice had broken free from land, and high winds associated with the approaching winter storm system quickly pushed the floe farther away from shore. Ice continued to crack into smaller sections throughout the crews' time on scene. The helicopter crews lowered rescue swimmers to the ice to help coordinate the rescue as local first responders and other Coast Guard ice rescue assets arrived. After additional assets arrived, the helos continued conducting overflights of the area looking for signs of distress and vectoring ice rescue boats to groups of shanties. Thanks to all our local partners for their swift response and efficient work in evacuating over 60 people from the ice!" 

 The Coast Guard reported on Thursday. 

Here's their view of the broken-away ice:

"Conspiracies at this scale often get exposed and ultimately it took the hasty tweet of Greta, who with other international celebrities suddenly turned sensitive towards farmer issues."

Said one Indian minister, VK Singh, quoted in "Greta Thunberg sparks criminal conspiracy probe in India with accidental tweet" (NY Post). The now-deleted tweet, per Singh, “revealed the real designs of a conspiracy at an international level against India.” 

It looks as though Thunberg passes things along without processing them through her own mind. You can see the deleted tweet here. She says "Here's a toolkit if you want to help" and gives a link to a document, which you can read. 

Apparently, somebody included her in the distribution of the document and she — or whoever does her Twitter posting — thought she could contribute by widely distributing the document instead of crafting an individual post using tips from the document. I'd argue that she's not part of a conspiracy because the sharing of the raw document is evidence that she didn't know what she was doing. She hurt whatever conspiracy there was. She exposed it.

This incident is interesting because it shows the mechanisms of shallow political activism and because India is taking such a strong position in response to the political speech of people outside their country:

Delhi police on Thursday confirmed that it had launched “a criminal case against the creators of the ‘Toolkit document'” that Thunberg shared. “The call was to wage economic, social, cultural and regional war against India,” police said of the plot supposedly taken up by the celebs.

In Germany, they are trying a 95-year-old woman in juvenile court — because she was under 21 at the time of her alleged crimes.

From "Woman, 95, Indicted on 10,000 Counts of Accessory to Murder in Nazi Camp/German prosecutors indicted the woman, who once worked as a secretary to the commander of the Stutthof concentration camp, after a five-year investigation" (NYT). 

“It’s about the concrete responsibility she had in the daily functioning of the camp,” said Peter Müller-Rakow of the public prosecutor’s offices in Itzehoe, north of Hamburg.... 

With the last people involved in carrying out atrocities for the Nazi regime close to death, German authorities have been pushing hard to bring as many of them as possible to justice.... 

“It’s a real milestone in judicial accountability,” said Onur Özata, a lawyer representing survivors in the trial of the former camp secretary. “The fact that a secretary in this system, a bureaucratic cog, can be brought to justice is something new.” 

Something so new, for someone so old, who was once someone so young.

At the Friday Night Café...

... you can write about whatever you like. 

"We ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book we are reading doesn’t shake us awake like a blow to the skull, why bother reading it?"

Said Kafka, quoted in "Please Don’t Ask Elizabeth Kolbert How She Organizes Her Books" (NYT).

"For $150, Brad Holiday’s customers could purchase and download a package of dating tips and tricks he called his 'Attraction Accelerator.' "

"The batch of files featured advice from Mr. Holiday, a self-styled Manhattan dating coach, about things like the best facial serums and pickup lines, and his thoughts on the viciousness of the opposite sex. But tucked between videos denigrating women and reviews of height-boosting shoes were other guides: how to defeat Communists, expose what he claimed were government pedophilia cabals, and properly wield a Glock... [Holiday, whose real name is Samuel Fisher, has a] large online footprint [that] suggests a fierce devotion to a hypermasculine ethos of chauvinism, grievance and misogyny.... Some experts said men like Mr. Fisher were particularly attracted to Mr. Trump because they see him as emblematic of a certain kind of masculinity. 'The men that are in these movements themselves try to enact that kind of masculinity, and because Trump enacts it they are drawn to him,' said Ronald F. Levant, co-author of the book 'The Tough Standard: The Hard Truths About Masculinity and Violence.' 'He models it. He gives them permission.'"

From "The Misogynistic ‘Dating Coach’ Who Was Charged in the Capitol Riot/Samuel Fisher left a long trail of videos and social media posts that reflect the views of a fringe faction of disgruntled men who became fixated on President Donald J. Trump" (NYT).

ADDED: But what is Trump's "certain kind of masculinity"? I have a tag to keep track of that: "Trump's masculinity." Things with that tag in my archive: Trump is mocked for dancing like a woman, Roseanne Barr declares Trump "The First Woman President," Trump was denounced as "the Most Unmanly President," and I opined that "there's something womanly about Trump."

I'm also seeing a post that ends "You may hate Trump, but don't use him as a weapon to attack masculinity. Masculinity doesn't deserve hatred. Find your own mix of masculinity and femininity and respect your own individuality and the individuality of others." There are kinds of masculinity, so let's be specific. 

Is Brad Holiday's pathetic hawking of dating tips the same "certain kind of masculinity" as Trump's? The NYT article doesn't give much detail about Holiday. It's almost all high-level generality like "a hypermasculine ethos of chauvinism, grievance and misogyny." If you hate Trump, his masculinity is easily tossed into the same deplorable basket, but that's sloppy work, as gender analysis goes.

"I started talking to my belly this year. Blowing her kisses and showering her with praises."

"I used to want to cut my stomach off I hated it so much. But it’s literally ME." 

From "Lizzo talks to her stomach in empowering self-care video" (NY Post). 

Sometimes, the belly talks back:

"The assignment asked students to answer this question: 'A slave has disrespected his master by telling him, "You are not my master." How will you punish the slave?'"

"The Sun Prairie School District apologized for the 'grave error in judgment' and put the teachers on administrative leave pending an investigation. [Lawyer B'Ivory] LaMarr wants the teachers to be fired, saying he feels their actions were deliberate. LaMarr also says [6th grade schoolchild] Zayvion now feels unsafe and unwelcome in the school. The assignment came on the first day of Black History Month."

WKOW reports. 

From an earlier report about this school assignment: "The question appears to be about the Code of Hammurabi — an ancient code of law, which talked about how to punish slaves thousands of years ago."

The problem seems to have arisen from the babyish form of the question: "How will you punish the slave?" If it's really you, a present-day American, you wouldn't punish the slave or even accept that a person could be a slave. Why didn't they ask "What would happen to this person under the Code of Hammurabi?" Maybe if we saw the larger context, there would be some invitation to the students to imagine that they lived within the time and were bound by the Code. Maybe there's some idea of a classroom exercise that is more vivid and "hands-on" than simply reading about what happened in history. 

UPDATE: The school district identifies that source of the lesson, a website called Teachers Pay Teachers, and says: "We have reached out to the organization Teachers Pay Teachers demanding the removal of this racist activity and a public apology for originating and monetizing it." In response, Teachers Pay Teachers has removed the lesson from its website and denounced it as "unacceptable, inappropriate, and antithetical to TpT’s values," and asserted that "it prohibits any resources that are racist, offensive or 'trivialize traumatic experiences.'"

"Strange branding. I don't associate him with the feeling of getting a good night's sleep."

"Maybe some slogan playing on the idea of 'woke,' like 'Now, the woke can sleep.' Or 'How the woke sleep.'" 

I write, over at Facebook, commenting at a post linking to an NBC news article, "David Hogg launching pillow company to 'put MyPillow out of business'/Hogg tweeted a list of goals for the future company, which included supporting progressive causes and hiring formerly incarcerated Americans."

In the photo NBC chose to illustrate its news flash, Hogg looks sleep deprived:

Why would anyone want political meaning in their pillow? Have you ever used politics to try to fall asleep? There's a reason the cliché falling-asleep method is counting sheep — not counting Senators. Though Senators are dull. But they not dull in the right way. 

ADDED: We're told that Hogg's company will sell pillows that are "American-made by union workers," and I see at least one commenter mocking him as stupid — "Can you imagine the cost of a unionized pillow?" That made me think of the old "Look for the union label" ad campaign, which urged Americans to buy American-made clothing and to feel good about paying the extra cost. I rewatched those commercials, and they might make you laugh, but they actually made me cry, and I was trying not to cry. 

"It’s so hard to fit old First Amendment principles into the social media era. This is one of those areas of law that needs to evolve."

Said Greg H. Greubel, a staff attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, quoted in "Students Punished for ‘Vulgar’ Social Media Posts Are Fighting Back/A lawsuit against the University of Tennessee questions when schools can discipline students because of their online speech" (NYT).

According to court papers, the [University of Tennessee pharmacy school's] professional conduct committee, composed of nine faculty members and three students, cited several examples it considered objectionable in [Kimberly] Diei’s [Twitter and Instagram] posts. 

Those tweets, her court papers say, include one in which she was “contributing to a trending discussion on Twitter about the song ‘WAP’ by Cardi B featuring Megan Thee Stallion by suggesting lyrics for a possible remix.” 

Her suggestion — “He ain’t my pops but I call him DAD” because he is good in bed (her wording was less polite) — was “well within the normal bounds of discussion on social media,” her complaint says....