"So sorry to hear the news about Jeff Bozo being taken down by a competitor whose reporting, I understand, is far more accurate than..."

"... the reporting in his lobbyist newspaper, the Amazon Washington Post. Hopefully the paper will soon be placed in better & more responsible hands!"

Tweets Trump.

Which competitor newspaper took down Bezos? According to TMZ, it was The National Enquirer:

[T]he tabloid published alleged text messages between Bezos and GF Lauren Sanchez after he announced he and MacKenzie Bezos were getting a divorce. Trump seems to be implying that the paper forced Jeff's hand.

Trump's nicknames are so out-and-proud childish. "Jeff Bozo." It's like the first thing a 10-year-old kid would think of reading the name. I'm assuming "Bozo" is a current character in American culture. Why wouldn't he be? I don't keep up with the rising and falling popularity of these fictional characters. Clowns come and go. But if you told me there was a summer blockbuster movie, "Bozo, The Movie," I'd believe it long enough to check.

The Althouse Bloggiversary: Today marks 15 years of blogging (and without a single missed day).

I'm delighted to be still here, a blogger on Planet Earth, where I wake up every day able and genuinely excited to write a few more sentences. It's a strange way of life, but it's what I do.

Thanks to all of you who stop by to read and to get whatever value you might find here, including the chance to write a few sentences of your own.

And thanks especially to Meade, who's been with me 2/3 of the way through these 15 years.

Author overuses a word.

Let's just talk about books you like by authors you completely respect. Now... ever notice the overuse of a word? Some words are so strange that even once seems like too much. For example, the other day I ran across "marmoreally":

“OK, so stay awake, right?” he said, pressing as much of his surface as he could against her marmoreally cold skin.

I was listening to an audiobook, and I thought maybe the reader was garbling "mammalian"... or, I guess, "mammalianly." But no, it was "marmoreally." That means like marble, so "marble-like" would have been an easily comprehensible alternative. Or, no... it would need to be an adverb ("marble-likely"?). So, okay. I learned a word.

And what I want to talk about are more normal words, words you understand, but you have the feeling that they can't be used more than, say, once every 100 pages. The book I just read is Jonathan Franzen's "Freedom," and the word somebody should have told him not to use so much is "reproach." He used "reproach" 19 times. It's a long book, but it's not 1,900 pages. It's not even 1,000.  It's 600. So 19 is too much. I know. I'm reproaching. But...

Connie, for her part, whenever it became clear that the boys were going off to be boys, knew enough to fall back and dematerialize without reproach or entreaty.... She was competing with her mom and sisters. She wanted her kids to be a reproach to them.... She’d never been a compromiser of him, never an insister on sidewalk hand-holding, never a clinger, a pouter, a reproacher.... Joey’s feeling of bereavement was giving way to irritation, because, no matter how much she denied that she was doing it, she couldn’t seem to help reproaching him. These moms and their reproaches, there was no end to it....The nature of his mother’s reproach wasn’t simple the way Carol Monaghan’s was. Carol, unlike her daughter, was not too bright. Connie had a wry, compact intelligence, a firm little clitoris of discernment and sensitivity to which she gave Joey access only behind closed doors....

And on and on. There are 13 more.

Have you ever noticed something like that?

Wake up!

"What if there were no collusion or conspiracy but simple cognitive bias on both sides, where the actions of one seemed to confirm precisely the suspicions of the other?"

Asks Jonathan Turley (at The Hill).

There are now two possibilities. The first of those is that Trump really was some “manchurian candidate” placed in the Oval Office by Russia and controlled from afar by Vladimir Putin. Many are unlikely to ever accept any other possibility, though the New York Times story does not suggest that this counterintelligence operation found any basis for the original allegation....

Now to the more intriguing theory that is more consistent with known facts.... Trump started to counterpunch against what he saw as a deep state conspiracy....

"Ocasio-Cortez is the latest Twitter powerhouse."

Reports Axios, with this chart (click to enlarge and clarify):

I like that there's football team named after the item I'm most likely to forget in my hotel room.

Nice helmet design expressing the concept.

"With the start of the new year, Belgium became the latest European country to ban traditional Jewish and Muslim animal slaughtering practices."

"The move was applauded by animal rights activists but condemned by religious leaders who see the ban as a threat to their communities. At issue is whether to allow religious exemptions to European Union rules that state animals must be knocked out before they are slaughtered, which supporters say is more humane. The United States has similar regulations, but allows for religious exemptions.... Religious leaders say minimizing an animal’s pain has always been central to their traditions, and a ritual slaughter — carried out with a sharp blade to the neck — should be quick and almost painless. When they are stunned, animals are rendered unconscious through blunt force, electric shocks, gassing or a steel bolt that penetrates an animal’s skull. Stunning has been used for decades and
'promotes animal welfare and meat quality,' according to the North American Meat Institute, a trade group that represents 95 percent of American red-meat producers.... Beyond the concern for animals, Jewish and Muslim leaders see darker motivations behind the effort to outlaw the practices. The historical precedents are grim. The Nazis also cited cruelty to animals when they prohibited slaughter without stunning in 1933."

From "Is Stunning an Animal Before Slaughter More Humane? Some Religious Leaders Say No" (NYT).

Confusing headline of the day: "Nancy Pelosi Spanks the First Brat."

Hint: It's Maureen Dowd's new column.

It caught my eye because here in Wisconsin, a brat — rhymes with "squat" — is a very popular sausage. So what's "spanking the brat"? Seems like another one of the many euphemisms for masturbation.

But the NYT is not Wisconsin, so it must be brat — rhymes with "slat" — "a child, so called in contempt" (to quote Samuel Johnson's "Dictionary of the English Language").

What brat would Nancy Pelosi be spanking? I'm thinking Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or maybe Rashida Tlaib — one of the impish new House members.

But no! It's Trump! It's always Trump. Everywhere you look...

When Trump said he could “relate” to federal workers who are now going without pay, it may have been the most audacious lie he told all week....

As Pelosi told reporters: “He thinks maybe they could just ask their father for more money. But they can’t.” She also leveled the barb on Trump in person.

Pelosi deploys what she calls her “mother of five” voice on our tantrum-prone president, perhaps in an effort to reparent him. But how do you discipline the world’s brattiest 72-year-old?

The headline writer equates the use of a "mother of five" voice with spanking. I think Pelosi wants to pose as the adult and make Trump look like the child, but isn't the person resorting to physical violence the one who is immature?

And even if you think Trump can be childish, there wasn't anything childish about saying that he relates to the federal workers who are going without pay. That's the kind of routine presidential expression of calm empathy that people often complain about not getting enough of from President Trump. Dowd tells us that Trump is "tantrum-prone," but — whether that's true or not — his statement of empathy — whether that's bullshit or not — is not like a tantrum.

Dowd exults in Pelosi's patronizing (matronizing?) tone, used against the President of the United States. I'm wondering how this choice of attitude will work in the coming campaign season. Should the Trump opponents treat him as if he is "the world’s brattiest 72-year-old" and address him in a "mother of five" voice? It seems to me Hillary Clinton already tried that and it didn't work. It didn't work when he was not yet President and it was hard to picture him as President. But now he is President. I'm thinking the disrespect is dangerous. It can backfire, especially on those who really believe in and delight in their disrespect. Remember Hillary and "deplorables"!

***

By the way, "matronize" — as a humorous way to say that a woman is patronizing — is a usage that's been around since the 19th century. Among the examples in the OED:

a1854 E. Grant Mem. Highland Lady (1988) I. xvi. 349 An extraordinary woman, once a beauty and still a wit, who was now matronising two elderly young ladies.
1966 New Statesman 25 Nov. 786/3 She has the usual phrases about ‘the self-contained universe constituted by a work of art’, and Sartre is matronised for faltering in his ‘faith in the power of an artistic structure to stand up on its own’.

"Matronize" is a real word, with nonjocose meanings: "To act as a matron," "To chaperone" ("Lady Maclaughlan..will Matronize you to the play"), "to act as hostess to (a party, etc.)" ("The lady who was matronizing the tea recognized him"), and "to render matronly" ("Childbed matronizes the giddiest Spirits").

"The Fakes always like talking Chaos, there is NONE. In fact, there’s almost nobody in the W.H. but me...."

I just watched a Fake reporter from the Amazon Washington Post say the White House is “chaotic, there does not seem to be a strategy for this Shutdown. There is no plan.” The Fakes always like talking Chaos, there is NONE. In fact, there’s almost nobody in the W.H. but me, and...

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2019

MEANWHILE:

There is only one right answer to the incredible question: Are you a foreign asset? And it doesn’t take 2 minutes to explain... pic.twitter.com/tb76DPP8D1

— Josh Campbell (@joshscampbell) January 13, 2019

That tweet is a wonderful demonstration of where Trump derangement syndrome takes you. Campbell apparently can't see that the question is sarcasm and not a serious effort to pin Trump down. And if Trump thought it was serious and was a "foreign asset," he would be far more likely to say "no" than to say anything else. How could anyone think that if he were a "foreign asset," he wouldn't lie? It makes no sense!

"Only through this system can we discipline those who can't discipline themselves."

"After doing all the good deeds, like donations and such, to gain points, I can now buy high-speed train tickets. I am finally a normal person."

At the Brown Mouse Café...

... you can nibble the fat.

The decline of the flesh-and-blood world....

I needed a picture of a mouse, a reference picture for a drawing. I googled "mouse." Now, I'm a little sad.

Good news for the old men.

Screen shot taken at Real Clear Politics.

"I think writers are basically very sociable introverts. And I think that's also a description of serious readers too."

"You like seeing people, but at a certain point, enough is enough — give me a book, let me shut the door. And what are you shutting the door and going into your room to do but to connect with the person who wrote the book — that is, to connect with people in a different place, but be very very much connected? So I think there's a very strong social urge in both the reader and the writer."

From a conversation with Jonathan Franzen.

I've been reading his novel "Freedom," just a few weeks after finishing his "Corrections." I decided to read his novels while I was in the middle of reading his newest book of essays, the third book of his essays I was reading. Why was I reading all this nonfiction — and only nonfiction — from a writer of reputedly great novels?

I'd gotten the idea of myself as a person who reads nonfiction, but in the past year or so, I've switched to mostly fiction. It all started here, strangely enough.

Anyway, I'm very interested in the idea of reading and writing — in solitude — as a way to have relationships with other people and something that really is sociable.

"MacKenzie Bezos... started writing seriously at age 6, when she finished a 142-page chapter book titled 'The Book Worm.'"

"It was later destroyed in a flood.... At Princeton, she studied creative writing under the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison.... She spent a decade on her first novel, often getting up early to write... 'The Testing of Luther Albright,' which was published by Harper in 2005 and was widely embraced by critics, tells the story of an engineer whose professional and home lives begin to unravel.... In 2013, Ms. Bezos published her second novel, 'Traps,' which follows the journey of woman named Jessica Lessing, a reclusive film star, as she emerges from hiding to confront her father, a con man who has been selling her out to the paparazzi for years.... But Ms. Bezos’s literary career may have been complicated to some extent by her high-profile husband, who has done more than perhaps any individual in recent history to transform and sometimes destabilize the book-selling business.... Some independent booksellers refused to stock Ms. Bezos’s novels.... [I]f Ms. Bezos continues to write and publish, perhaps she could find a more receptive audience among independent booksellers. Some publishing executives, who declined to be quoted on the record, spoke gleefully, at least, of the blockbuster potential if Ms. Bezos decides to write a memoir."

From "Who Is MacKenzie Bezos?/Her divorce from the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has made this novelist, and her private life, a public fascination" (NYT).

ADDED: What does MacKenzie Bezos care about the "blockbuster potential" for anything? She is on track to receive half of the $137 billion fortune she and her husband amassed. She will be the richest woman in the world. The challenge for her is — I would think — to maintain a motivation to do serious, valuable work. Why would she cater to the appetite of drooling publishing executives? It would make more sense to use her money to disrupt the whole publishing business.

I MEAN: Re-disrupt the whole publishing business.