Sunrise — 5:33.

"And now, 35 years after Mr. Kirk’s skeletal remains were found, a search for how he ended up dead in a chimney can begin."

The NYT covers a Madison, Wisconsin story, in "35 Years Later, the Remains Known as ‘Chimney Doe’ Have a Name and a Face/A skeleton found in the chimney of a Wisconsin music store in 1989 has been identified, relaunching a police investigation that had been dormant for decades" (free access link).

The skeleton — a 5'7" male with a broken pelvis— wore "a faded, paisley dress and pointed heels." After 35 years, searching DNA databases led to Ronnie Joe Kirk. The police have brought in the Trans Doe Task Force, which works on "cold cases involving L.G.B.T.Q. victims and victims of suspected gender-based violence."

"I think he’s praying. But if he is sleeping, you know, he certainly looks pretty while he sleeps."

Said Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, reacting to Congressman Robert Garcia, who'd had some reason to point out that Trump seems to be sleeping some of the time at his criminal trial, reported at Mediaite.

This exchange took place at the same House Oversight Committee meeting where Marjorie Taylor Greene sneered at Jasmine Crockett's false eyelashes and Crockett shot back with a butch-phobic remark about MTG's body.

The most outré quotes come from the Oversight Committee.

Consider "D.C.’s 'first activist hotel,' the Eaton, which features a 'Radical Library' in its lobby and has hosted protest song performances in its rooftop bar."

"And the city’s feminist-inflected Hotel Zena, where you will encounter a huge portrait of Ruth Bader Ginsburg made of tampons."

I'm reading "The world’s coolest hotels want to tell you a story/The latest design-driven hotels aim to immerse guests in a story or social movement, or transport them to another time" (WaPo).

That link on "feminist-inflected" goes to a 2020 Architectural Digest article about the hotel, where it says, "The larger-than-life homage to Justice Ginsburg has been constructed using 20,000 hand-painted tampons, arranged on a pegboard to create a pointillist portrait (complete with the justice’s signature lace collar and her 'Notorious' moniker). A 20-foot-long curving wall in the hotel’s restaurant evokes a glittering gown, adorned with 12,000 protest buttons from decades of feminist marches and events.... And a hanging installation of painted folding chairs honors Chisholm’s famous advice: 'If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.'"

I looked at Hotel Zena's website. It costs about $400 a night to stay there. I was sad to see that some of the rooms had a "king" bed. That's so wrong. I want to be drenched in activism when battling insomnia at the feminist hotel. They need to curate every detail or it's insufficiently immersive. Also what's with bringing your own folding chair? I thought we were kicking the fucking door down?

Sunrise — 5:36, 5:44, 5:45.

"If someone on this committee then starts talking about somebody’s bleach blond, bad-built butch body, that would not be engaging in personalities, correct?"

Said Representative Jasmine Crockett, during a meeting of the House Oversight Committee, referring to Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who had just said to her "I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading."

I've seen the video, and now I'm reading the NYT article, "The Ugly Effect of Physical Insults/A recent congressional meeting devolved into a back-and-forth that reflects a changing norm in politics — one that rarely makes anybody look good."

I don't approve of the unprofessionalism, but if we're just comparing insults and taking into account that Crockett didn't start it, I want to say "bleach blond, bad-built butch body" is impressive — with 6 B's in a row and the unforgettable "butch body." And can we analyze the extent to which "bad-built butch body" violates the norms of progressive speech. It's not just body shaming, it's expressing contempt for a woman's failure to have a body in the stereotypical female form. That's transphobic (in the broad sense).

Lawrence O'Donnell does an excellent professional job of clearly and concisely presenting what happened to Michael Cohen yesterday.

TikTok so it's after the jump:

"Bimbo feminism is the celebration of woman as a dumb, hot object. Woman as an absolute idiot."

"To hell with girlbosses and equality in the boardroom. New feminism—bimboism—is about celebrating the vacant, sexual woman, the dumb woman, the hole. Being smart is capitalism. 'No more Instagrams about rising and grinding,' an opinion writer at The New York Times told us one day in describing the trend. 'No more The Wing. No more straining to be smarter than the boys. Bimboism offers an opposing and, to some, refreshing premise: Value me, look at me, not because I’m smart and diligent but for the fact that I’m not. It’s anticapitalist, even antiwork.'...The first wave [of feminism] was the suffragettes from the late 1800s who fought for a woman’s right to be seen as an autonomous individual and to vote. By the 1960s and ’70s, the second wave was about equal rights for women at work and the little things, like being able to own credit cards and decide when you have your own children. The 1990s saw a third wave focused on sexual liberation and expanding the conversation beyond wealthy white women.... And now, in the 2020s, there’s the fourth wave. The fourth turning. The trans revolution and the bimbo feminist.""

Writes Nellie Bowles, in "Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches From the Wrong Side of History" (commission earned).

That opinion writer at The New York Times was Sophie Haigney. Here's her piece "Meet the Self-Described ‘Bimbos’ of TikTok." And here's where I blogged it back in 2022. When I ran across "bimbo feminism" listening to Bowles book this morning, I felt like that's something new, I ought to blog that. But now I see, not only did I blog the article Bowles was talking about, I had the same feeling I was seeing it for the first time:

"Activities and experiences have long been part of luxury hotel offerings. But many current offerings come with extra cachet...."

"That could mean an invitation to an artist’s private studio to learn about their process ($7,500) or mastering fish butchery and handcrafted sushi ($750)....  'When you get to the top of the mountain, you’re talking to God,' said [one hotel] manager.... 'I’ll send you up there with a bottle of Champagne and say, "Just sit down and have a chat."'... Hotel experts say that the arms race for bigger, bolder, more creative experiences will continue. 'Guests are starved for something new because everything around them has been turned into an algorithm,' said [one concierge team supervisor], who is constantly digging deeper to come up with the novel...."

From "Looking for ‘a Different Kind of Wow’: Next Level Hotel Experiences/From cooking with a Michelin-star chef to taking a chauffeured shopping spree in Singapore, hotels and resorts are offering ever-more-lavish activities for guests" (NYT).

The word "experience" appears 10 times in the article. You travel somewhere and the hotel has packaged what they call an "experience" that you can buy. Some of it is frankly bullshit — "talking to God" — and some of it is frankly off-putting — "fish butchery" — and some of it feels socially awful — intruding on an artist and "their process." Who is taken in by this sort of thing?

"In order to return to the university, some students would be required to complete a 49-page set of reading and tasks — 'modules' — known as the Ethos Integrity Series..."

"... geared at helping participants 'make gains' in 'moral reasoning' and 'ethical decision making.'... Some students would be assigned a 'reflection paper'... address[ing] several questions, among them: What are your values? Did the decision you made align with your personal values? What have you done or need still to do to make things right? Explicitly instructed not to 'justify' their actions, the students were told to turn their papers in by May 29 in '12-point Times New Roman or similar font.'..."

Writes Ginia Bellafante, in "Why Is N.Y.U. Forcing Protesters to Write Apology Letters?/The university calls it a 'restorative practice'; the students call it a coerced confession" (NYT).

A university spokesman characterized the assignment as consistent with what are called "restorative practices." Bellafante writes:

In this instance, though, the exercise cannibalizes the mission, favoring a will to dishonesty — inviting a charade of guilt. Anyone driven to protest is marching and chanting precisely as an expression of a certain set of fiercely held moral beliefs and values — not in deviation from them....

In this instance... what about other instances? Is this instance so special? I'd like to see more depth on this topic of "restorative practices" and the horrors of forced speech and compulsory insincerity. 

I liked this comment over there, from Jeremy:

"I’m somewhat sympathetic to those who find protests uncomfortable. They’re always disruptive..."

"... as they’re supposed to be. And big loud crowds make me nervous now in a way that they didn’t when I was 22 and a big loud crowd was fun and meant I was at a club with oontz-oontz-oontz music and 73 of my closest friends. I now prefer political participation that is less hard on the knees. But I am exhilarated to see students using protest for exactly the reasons it’s protected by the First Amendment. It allows them to stand up for their values, invest in what’s happening in the world and hold decision makers accountable, even if it means putting themselves at risk. And most compellingly, it’s getting the attention of the president and other lawmakers who can effect change far beyond the walls of any university campus."

Writes Elizabeth Spiers in "What Hillary Clinton Got Wrong About Student Protesters" (NYT).

What did Hillary say that Spiers deemed wrong? She dismissed young people as ignorant of "the history of the Middle East or frankly about history in many areas of the world, including in our own country."

By the way, I had to look up "oontz-oontz-oontz music." I found this:

"Across the battleground, Biden is losing to Trump among working-class voters by 16 points."

"That compares to Biden’s national working-class deficit of just 4 points in 2020.... In Michigan, Biden’s working-class deficit against Trump is 24 points. In 2020, that deficit was just 6 points.... In Pennsylvania, it’s Trump over Biden by 19 points among working-class voters. That’s a sharp drop from Biden’s 9 point deficit among these voters in 2020 (States of Change data). This is a state that Biden won by only a single point last election. In Wisconsin, Biden is behind Trump by 6 points among working-class voters. That doesn’t sound so great but is actually 6 points better than Biden did in 2020, when he lost these voters by 12 points. This is the only state of the six surveyed by the Times where Biden is running better among these voters today than in 2020...."

Writes Ruy Teixeira, in "The Working Class-Sized Hole in Democratic Support Widens/This is a big, big problem" (Liberal Patriot). He's looking at the recent NYT poll of voters in the battleground states.

Seems like the key for Biden is understanding Wisconsin. What's happening here that isn't happening in Michigan and Pennsylvania?

Teixeira ends his column with the idea presented in Blueprint, which he quotes:

"People are thinking...." Which people?

I'm trying to understand Trump's new post (at Truth Social):

People are thinking that Soros backed D.A., Alvin Bragg, who never wanted to bring the Witch Hunt against me in the first place, is going to drop this ridiculous and very unpatriotic “CASE” in order to save lots of money, and also the self respect of his once revered Office. He would then be able to focus on Violent Crime, which is running rampant and totally out of control in New York. The dilemma is, and always has been, the Trump Hating (APPOINTED IN 2009 & STILL ACTING!) Judge, Juan Merchan, who would be confronted with the problem of how he would explain this TRUMP loss, to the Radical Left Democrats, to whom he owes so much? Bring back “Justice in America.” ELECTION INTERFERENCE!!!

Which people are thinking this? He's writing in the present tense. He uses this crazed shorthand, expects us to get what "election interference" refers to, and that I get. But who thinks that at this point Bragg would drop the case? There are always people thinking things, but why post? You could post any idea you want to waft and append "People are thinking." Just by reading that, I'm "thinking" about it. That's what reading is. It's easy to translate into a wish: Bragg ought to drop the case.

Oh! It's "risible Robin DiAngelo" now!

I'm reading Michelle Goldberg's new NYT column about the Nellie Bowles book, which I'm almost done reading. 

The book is "Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches From the Wrong Side of History" (commission earned).

The column is "Wokeness Is Dying. We Might Miss It." Excerpt:

There is much about that febrile moment worth satirizing, including the white-lady struggle sessions inspired by the risible Robin DiAngelo and the inevitable implosion of Seattle’s anarchist Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. Bowles dissects both in the book's best sections.... But “Morning After the Revolution” is undermined by Bowles’s lazy mockery and insupportable generalizations.... 

I note that Goldberg doesn't provide any support for calling Robin DiAngelo "risible." Is that not also lazy mockery? What did Robin DiAngelo — once vaunted in the New York Times — do to deserve this casual brush-off? She was everywhere and now she's... what? Worthless?

There's also this from Goldberg:

Sunrise: 5:34, 5:37, 5:39.

"The perpetrator was not a member of any radicalized group.... He was not left or right — he was interested in politics, that’s all."

"The only group he was a member of was the association of Slovak writers," according to Interior Minister Matus Sutaj-Estok, who said that "the suspect had expressed antigovernment sentiments, including attending protests over the last year, but had been 'radicalized recently, after the presidential election.'"

From "Slovak officials call the shooting suspect a ‘lone wolf’ who had recently been radicalized" in "Suspect Is Charged in Attempted Killing of Slovakia’s Leader/The authorities did not identify the suspect in the shooting of Prime Minister Robert Fico but described him as a 'lone wolf.' Politicians called for calm as Mr. Fico’s condition appeared to stabilize" (NYT).

We're told the suspect was a "71-year-old amateur poet" and he "did not 'agree with current politics.'" But what were the current politics that the suspect did not agree with?