At the Saturday Night Café...

 ... you can write about whatever you want.

"I invented Edna because I hated her.... I poured out my hatred of the standards of the little people of their generation."

Wrote Barry Humphries, quoted in "Barry Humphries (Dame Edna to You, Possums) Is Dead at 89/Bewigged, bejeweled and bejowled, Mr. Humphries’s creation was one of the longest-lived characters ever channeled by a single performer" (NYT).

Dame Edna emerged when the young Mr. Humphries, under the sway of Dadaism, was performing with a repertory company based at the University of Melbourne.... On long bus tours, he entertained his colleagues with the character of Mrs. Norm Everage — born Edna May Beazley in Wagga Wagga, Australia, sometime in the 1930s — an ordinary housewife who had found sudden acclaim after winning a nationwide competition, the Lovely Mother Quest. 

Unthinkable as it seems, Edna was dowdy then, given to mousy brown hair and pillbox hats. But she was already in full command of the arsenal of bourgeois bigotries that would be a hallmark of her later self...

I loved Dame Edna. (Click my "Dame Edna" tag.) But not everyone appreciated this sort of humor: 

"Swimming is required to graduate with full honors from the elite Manhattan public school. Some Muslim girls worried..."

"... the shift to co-ed classes would pit their academic goals against their religion," the NYT reports. 

After the outcry, Education Department officials said this week that students who need accommodations would soon be able to receive full honors through classes on other life skills.... 

Someone gives you a card, but when — exactly when — can you — should you — throw it out?

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When did you first become sensitized to the mocking of women?

I wonder, this morning, as I scan the comments on yesterday's post, "Whatever you think of [Dylan] Mulvaney’s transition, or her rather cloying girlishness... [s]he traffics not in anger or cruelty, but in whimsy and joy."*

Here's what I'm seeing (boldface added):

Sebastian: "Exuberant mockery of women, subversion of common sense, and in-your-face-take-that-deplorables-middle-fingerism....

Michelle Dulak Thomson: "[A]ll I can say is that he doesn't traffic in 'whimsy and joy.' He is a sick individual who mercilessly mocks women. Which is evidently OK these days...."

"This show unites blue-chip buttocks by the likes of Francis Bacon, Andy Warhol, John Currin and Cecily Brown; dorsal drawings and pastels by Degas, Klimt and Schiele..."

"The bottoms on display are male and female, nude and clothed, seen from a forensic distance or in fetishistic close-up, but rarely lascivious. All together the show is well-bred and understated...."

Writes Jason Farago in "'Rear View,' a Show About Butts, Is Forward Thinking/At LGDR’s new gallery, blue-chip buttocks by 60 artists, from Degas and Klimt to Cecily Brown and Andy Warhol." 

Paul Cadmus, whose retrograde male nudes are enjoying an unmerited revival in attention, appears here with yet more anemic drawings of standing and reclining musclemen, none more consequential than the gents on a Calvin Klein underwear box. (For what it’s worth, the gay male artists in this show all come out looking second-rate, with none of the perverse intelligence of Degas, Schiele and the other straight bros. Did Michelangelo die for this?)....

"What speech, she said, comes close to being a 'true threat' but is so 'supervaluable' that we need to be worried about it?"

"She" = Justice Kagan, described in "Justices hear 'true threat' protected speech case" (SCOTUSblog). 

At the end of nearly two hours of debate, the justices generally appeared skeptical of Colorado’s contention that courts should use an objective test, that looks at whether a reasonable person would regard the statement as a threat of violence.... 

Chief Justice John Roberts... cited one of the statements for which Counterman was convicted, in which he told Whalen that “staying in cyberlife is going to kill you. Come out for coffee.”....

Justice Amy Coney Barrett... asked “[Who] is the reasonable person?” She outlined a hypothetical involving a college classroom in which a professor, for “purely educational” reasons, “puts up a picture of a burning cross and reads aloud some threats of lynching that were made at the time.” “Maybe it’s the case,” Barrett suggested, “that nowadays people would be more sensitive to that and … a reasonable Black college student sitting in that classroom would interpret that as threats … that might materialize into actual physical harm.”

Sunrise — 6:15.

"As far as I’m concerned, I sat next to [Clarence Thomas] on the bench for 28 years. I like him. He’s a friend of mine."

"I’ve never seen him do anything underhanded or say anything underhanded.... My personal point of view is he’s a man of integrity."

Said Stephen Breyer, quoted in "Justice Thomas Is ‘Man of Integrity’ Says Ex-Colleague Breyer" (Bloomberg).

Breyer... pushed back on the criticism that the Supreme Court does nothing on ethics... He said the difficulty with a code of ethics in the Supreme Court is that the justices can’t be replaced if they disqualify themselves like lower court judges.

"Whatever you think of [Dylan] Mulvaney’s transition, or her rather cloying girlishness... [s]he traffics not in anger or cruelty, but in whimsy and joy."

"Where Matt Walsh offers enemies, Dylan Mulvaney aspires to exuberance. She suggests the possibility of making yourself, and the world, into something better, while [Matt] Walsh promises, at best, only the dour satisfaction of being right about how terrible everything is. It isn’t surprising that the kids are choosing Mulvaney over that. But Walsh is right, his followers cry. Even if he were, it wouldn’t justify his tactics. In the court of public opinion, truth is not necessarily a sufficient defense."

Writes Megan McArdle in "For conservatives, Dylan Mulvaney should be a role model" (WaPo).

Also: "Conservatives... understand that bullying has cost progressivism a lot of support among moderates, including on issues surrounding transgenderism, where successful efforts to stifle public discussion of basic questions — such as 'What Is a Woman'? — have led to resentment and backlash rather than consensus...."

ADDED: I've got a new post based on some of the comments in this post. Writing that new post, I noticed my use of brackets in the post title above — "[s]he traffics not in anger or cruelty" — makes it seem as though McArdle might have used the masculine pronoun "he." No, she had "She," and I needed to switch to a lower-case "S." I just deploying brackets in the conventional way editors do when cutting down a quote. Nothing substantive.

"I should have the right to introduce my daughter to the concepts of adultery and coveting one's spouse."

"It shouldn’t be one of the first things she learns to read in her kindergarten classroom."

Said John Litzler, general counsel for the Texas Baptists Christian Life Commission, quoted in "Public schools would have to display Ten Commandments under bill passed by Texas Senate/The Senate also passed a bill that would set prayer and Bible reading times during the school day" (The Texas Tribune). 

On the pro side, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said: "I believe that you cannot change the culture of the country until you change the culture of mankind. Bringing the Ten Commandments and prayer back to our public schools will enable our students to become better Texans."

I like the way Litzler is invoking parental rights, which, on other issues, are so performatively treasured by social conservatives.

RFK Jr.'s presidential announcement speech is so good, but it made me wonder why is it so hard to be this good? Why isn't this just basic competence?

Please help me share this video announcing my run for President of the United States. #Kennedy24 pic.twitter.com/OLvOXZlRHC

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) April 20, 2023

Possible answer to my question: It's really not that good. It's just that old clips of Bobby and John flip an emotional switch in my head and distort my perception. 

Making it a crime not to censor.

Here's Jonathan Turley in "The Tower for Twitter? UK Minister Calls for Jailing Social Media Bosses Who Do Not Censor Speech":

[A]fter Musk decided to buy Twitter, Hillary Clinton called upon European countries to force social media companies to censor Americans. The European Union quickly responded by threatening Musk and other executives. Now, Technology and Science Secretary Michelle Donelan has announced plans to jail social media executives if they fail to censor so-called “harmful” content on their websites. The government, of course, will determine what is deemed too harmful for citizens to see or hear....

The bill focuses on "'all forms of expression which spread, incite, promote or justify hatred' based on various progressive characteristics, including transgenderism."

Elon Musk is "personally" paying for blue check subscriptions for LeBron James, William Shatner, and Stephen King.

The Verge reports.

Now you know who are the truly elite of this world.

The sportsman, the actor, and the writer.

Not politicians and journalists. And certainly not every sportsperson, showbiz character, and creative scribbler.

Just these very grand characters — James, Shatner, and King.

Musk tweets: "I’m paying for a few personally."

I'd like to see the full list. Or maybe not. If he shows the list, others will say, I belong in that set. But James, Shatner, King — who can say "I'm with them"?

Sunrise — 6:07.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

Today's wildflowers.

Bloodroot:

Cutleaved toothwort: