Saint Barack.

Former law student said:

[T]his is my gift to Ann's right-wing commenters: A portrait of the Obamessiah.

"Enough. It’s not that you suck, it’s not that you strain for wan fratboy humor, it’s that you’re uninteresting. We’re embarrassed for you."

Enough of Gawker Media.

Via anamariecox.

"The mayor will be the first to admit that he occasionally indulges in bottled water."

"It's not something he's proud of."

An 8-foot-tall cross in Mojave National Preserve, set up by the VFW in 1934 as a war memorial, maintained by the National Park Service.

A violation of the Establishment Clause? The Supreme Court will decide.

The American Civil Liberties Union objected to the cross and filed a suit on behalf of Frank Bruno, a Catholic and former Park Service employee. The suit noted that the government had denied a request to have a Buddhist shrine erected near the cross.

Two years ago, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled for the ACLU and declared the cross an "impermissible governmental endorsement of religion."

Congress has intervened to try to save the cross by transferring a small parcel of land with the cross on it to a private group. However, the 9th circuit judges were unswayed. This "would leave a little donut hole of land with a cross in the midst of a vast federal preserve," the appeals court said.

Bush administration lawyers appealed to the Supreme Court last fall and said the "seriously misguided decision" will require the government "to tear down a cross that has stood without incident for 70 years as a memorial to fallen service members." The government also questioned whether Bruno should have standing to challenge the cross, since he lives in Oregon and suffers no obvious harm because of the Mojave cross.

So the 9th Circuit opinion can easily be wiped away with a standing decision, or the Court can reach the merits. If it does, I predict confidently that the Court will find the cross constitutional, based upon the principle old things carved in stone should be left alone.

***

A reminder:

About my proposed Titus recording.

So I said I wanted to record — and sell — a CD of me reading some of my favorite Titus comments. I hadn't decided if I'd actually do this, so your reaction to the proposal matters to me.

Chuck b. said:

Oh my..!

I would of course include selected tracks in the music program that I play during the cocktail hour before all my dinner parties.

Like everyone else in the world is going to do once this gets in circulation!

Everyone one the coasts, I mean.

Your level of celebrity is about to tick up a notch.

So far, so good. Chuck is with me!

Palladian said:

This is a terrible idea. I can't think of anything more repellent than having to listen to Titus's comments.

But this is the way the wind is blowing around here. Apparently someone's endless commentary about their excrement and their fictive sexual encounters and their ugly dogs is what passes for interesting conversation these days.

Will you include the parts where he insults other commenters? How about when he sexually harasses female commenters, asking about their tits? What about his unfunny faux-conservative rants? Will these all be a part of the collection?

Bleh. Better to make a best-of cd of your late podcast or sell prints of your photographs or squirrel mugs or simply as for donations like Andrew Sullivan used to do?

Uh oh. I don't have Palladian! Why doesn't he appreciate Titus's absurd writings? You won't be listening to Titus. You'll be listening to me. Whatever is repellent about Titus's voice will be transformed. It won't be an attempt to impersonate him, but purely me. I think I can help you see what is so funny about it. As for prints of my photographs, anyone can download the original files and print out whatever they want under the Creative Commons license I have displayed at Flickr. As for donations, my post worked as a request for donations and I got a few. (Thanks!) I'm not desperate for money. That's not my purpose here. I really am in it for the laughs. I was reading some Titus comments aloud — the thing about the sock — and I laughed into hysteria. I'd have a lot of fun making the recording, and I only want to share the fun.... with those who find it fun.

Skeptical said:

I know why Althouse likes Titus's shtick.

Even the lame crap that Titus serves up over and over becomes performance art through his sticking to it over the long haul. When one thinks of the narrative strand that is Titus's 'I squeezed out a loaf this morning, and it had two heads,' etc., picturing it extended in time, itself like an endless loaf shat out of Titus, it has an aesthetic appeal that none of the individual loaf comments even hints at individually. So when Althouse laughs at Titus's loaf remarks, she is laughing at it not on its own, but only as a loaf-moment, if you will, in the unending loaf.

Ha ha.

John Stodder said:

I think the guy's hilarious.... [T]here is something so decorous about the way Titus expresses pride in his creations, I can't help but laugh. There's a generosity about his whole approach here. Obviously, he's one of the commenters who disagrees with the majority, but his stings are gentle and sometimes clever....

But, professor, wouldn't it just be easier for you to write a damn book? You're a pioneer blogger, a pioneer bLAWger, and a pioneer woman blogger. I'm also convinced that you've got one of the few big blogs with political content that isn't essentially dishonest.... Why don't to write a book about this blog, why you do it, what it has added to your life and career, what it's taught you?....

This is something I thought of doing and, in fact, worked on — 100 pages worth — in 2005. I abandoned the project because I didn't like the way it felt to be on the outside observing the thing I was actively doing, as if it had already occurred. To blog is to be constantly in the middle of things. I want to be the blogger, not the memoirist observing me, the blogger. That's not bloggy. This blog may seem to be about me, but it's not. You may be able to see something of me in it, and I know it feels personal. But the fact is, I don't blog about myself. I blog about whatever interests me at any given moment, and I'm not self-absorbed. I want to look out, not in.

Onparkstreet said...

I have to admit, I scroll past the Titus comments because I find them a little bit gross.

And, the funny thing is, I'm trained as a pathologist.

Ha ha ha. That is funny.

Palladian again:

Titus is not just a harmless minstrel in a faggot costume debasing himself for the pleasure of the straights. If you have read enough of his comments (and there are certainly a lot of them), you'll have noticed that there's a deep nasty streak underneath all the "namaste" crap. The titus project is to disrupt any attempt at reasonable conversation and drive away the intelligent commenters and readers. It hasn't totally worked fortunately, but I have to say that my interest in reading the comments on a post drastically diminishes when I see his alias...

"Always wondered why Titus was tolerated."

Unfortunately Althouse's commendable respect for free speech in her comments has allowed some bad-faith commenters to do a lot of damage to the community.

I don't understand the attraction Althouse has for titus's writing. I mean, the first few times he talked about his vapid life and his "rare clumbers" I thought it was amusing. But it quickly got old and quickly became apparent that his intentions were not good-faith performance art....

To me, titus is like a blackface minstrel amusing a crowd of upper-class white people. I'm not entirely comfortable with his clownish and repulsive depiction of a gay man. And I'm still not convinced he's not an entirely fictitious character.

So if I'm amused, then I'm not politically correct, gay-wise?

Jason (the commenter) said:

Always wondered why Titus was tolerated.

I always wondered why Palladian was tolerated. I bet they are the same person!

The plot thickens. But I know Palladian. He couldn't be playing such an elaborate prank on me.

Theo Boehm said:

When Titus writes about some place or thing I know about, it's inevitably misapprehended and cartoonish. It seems, as Palladian points out, as if he's toying with the suckers. His putative sexual escapades are along the same lines, again, per Palladian....

Part of what Titus is about, as has been said, is the making of everything he tells into clownish and unappealing grotesquerie. Althouse reading [some other commenter's porn] would certainly attract attention, but it wouldn't have the same underlying dark and hostile humor, if you want to call it that, of Titus' offerings. The point of porn is to attract; Titus' goal is to repel. I do think, however, there's something to learn in the process.

Althouse has in the past attracted to "comic" characters... who were classic long-range trolls, and whose goal was disruption exactly as Palladian describes. I think Althouse's commitment to free speech assumes that openness toward, and even, in the case of Titus, a co-opting of hostility that is the best way to handle it. She may have a point and a lesson to teach here. Or she may be incredibly naive about the motivations of disruptive people.

Among the many things I have learned in this blog these past years is to never underestimate Althouse, especially in her longstanding role as teacher.

That means a lot and emboldens me.

Penny said:

Two thumbs up for Althouse, two thumbs up for Titus and two thumbs up for Palladian and all the rest of you.

The beauty of Ann's blog is its diversity. She has created an exceptional oasis here, where those who have very different sensibilities can come for a little bit of this, and a little bit of that.

I love politics and law. I love art and photography, and humor, and commenting on headlines. I could go on and on. The best thing that Ann has brought us ALL, is a place where we can virtually sit down and hash nearly ANYTHING out, and nearly always without making those not-like-us our enemies...or worse yet, buffoons.

Face it. Most of us head out on the internet every day for hours. Some might like to spend most of their time listening to those who say EXACTLY what they are thinking. Some take some time to check out msm links, or even the political "opposition". But where the heck do we choose to plop our asses down at the end of a hard day, or a boring day or a so-so kind of day? Right the heck here at Ann Althouse's place.

And why is that? I suggest it is because Ann is OPEN to all of us being EXACTLY the way we are. It is her "gift", and our good fortune, to have found her in this world that is becoming increasingly intolerant.

Please don't screw up what our hostess, Ann, is bringing to the internet.

This fine lady will become famous for opening up her "living room" to all of us. ALL of us.

Count me as one who will be searching out Titus, right after I give Ann a great big hug for keeping us all human.

Money follows value, my dear. And YOU, Ann Althouse, are more valuable than you know.

Aw. Cool. Thanks.

Ralph said...

"Sex and the City" proved there's a market for women talking about dicks. Perhaps Althouse wants to prove there's a market for women talking about shit.

And hog.

Palladian said:

Good Evening fellow republicans and lovers of the Bush Doctrine. Here's my attempt at a titus audiobook. I took all the comments he made in yesterday's "Mauve Cafe" post and performed them in the closest approximation of my impression of titus that I could throw together in 5 minutes. I did a bit of digital post-processing to "enhance" the performance and added an appropriate backing track.

Am I a bad person if that made me laugh until tears ran down my face (even though you tried to make me feel guilty about laughing by using that "gay" voice that only homophobes are supposed to laugh at)? By the way, Palladian left out the funniest part of the sock story, the part that nearly killed me.

Jason (the commenter) said:

Palladian,

Althouse MUST do this!

I never knew you had such a sexy voice. I always read your stuff (out loud to my friends) in a monotone.

Palladian said:

Well... uh, thanks I think. But that's not really what my voice sounds like, the pitch and speed is digitally altered and I was laying on the stereotypical faggotry pretty thickly. But my voice is quite animated and modulated, not a monotone at all.

Darcy said:

Palladian, with that bit of genius, you do realize you probably just guaranteed Althouse doing this, right?

Palladian said:

My God! What have I done!?

Oh, by the way, I am The Arm, and I sound like this...."

[cough]

Jason (the commenter) said...

Palladian,

You're real voice sounds cute! You could have read what Titus wrote with your normal voice and it would have been just as funny.

Clearly, Althouse should do a compilation.

It would be amazing if Matmos could make it into a song, like Tract for Valerie Solanas.

This also shows the genius of Titus. He's growing on me.

Palladian said:

Just like tinea cruris...

Here's my LuckyOldSon/Michael voice.

Penny said:

Althouse is a leader, and shaping us all, simply with her presence.

The fucking beauty here is that she is not shaping us all in her own form.

To whoever up above asked where I came from? Same place as you. I hit a link that FINALLY makes some sense to me.

Philosophical "warrior" in need of some middle place...and YES...even better, a sometimes silly place to set my ass down when I have had enough of "all that".

Thank you, Ann, for allowing my butt to rest here.

So? Does this site make my ass look big?

TitusFreezeFrame said:

Palladian that was brillant.

Wow, the time and energy you have devoted to this is remarkable.

More please!

I laughed my ass off!

Palladian said:

Took 5 minutes each, darling.

TitusFreezeFrame said:

Regardless of how much time it took it was terrific.

I bet you even got a little chuckle doing it, didn't you?

That voice, which I know is embelished, is the voice of my comments.

I love how you pronounced burgurs the same way I spelled it. Amazing....

All and all there is a lot of love here.

And hate I guess-150 comments on me? One commenter was right I don't give a shit...obviously.

What I do think is amusing is if anyone tried to share this with someone outside of this blog.

So there is a commenter who comments about pinching loaves. I am thinking of putting it on a CD (Althouse). I am actually going to tape some of his comments in a very queeny voice (Palladian). Try explaining that to someone at your next company staff meeting.

Also, this place would be boring without me. Just another voice bitching about liberals. Ignore me, although it seems to be hard for some.

And I actually do talk to my friends like I talk on this blog. I think I have mentioned this before but I actually leave recordings on my friends voicemails of me pinching loaves with grunts and groans and everything. They in turn forward them to other friends. I have also called them when I am having sex and let them listen. The trick doesn't know but it is my little way of sharing my life with my friends.

Now I feel a virtual group hug coming on. Don't you?

"Human inadequacy."

Jac's new tag.

"You may not come in here. This is student free space. Excuse me. You're on camera. You are on camera. Do not use brutality. You may not detain us."

Student protest today.

IN THE COMMENTS: Great White Father George said:

Montessori-educated, slipper-wearing, Obama-sticker plastering, Phish listening, Black History Month loving, anti-bullying program attending, journal keeping, personal "space" needing, Apple loyal, 'time-out' disciplined, CNN listening, organic carrot-stick nibbling children whose parents never imposed any rules on them.

Your mascot is a nut! Your mascot is a meaningless puppet!

Andy Van Sistine wants to know what's wrong with you schools.

Does it say something about a university when they invent a mascot, give it a name and then trail off when someone asks what the hell that thing is?

Speaking of meaningless puppets, the Western Kentucky red blob thing still boggles my mind. He is like a short, red version of Grimace, the McDonalds character on Happy Meal boxes....

Big Red’s sad blue cousin from Xavier is no better. Affectionately referred to as “The Blue Blob,” I cannot figure out why the Musketeers choose to have this guy roaming around their sports arenas as opposed to a swashbuckling swordsman. He looks like an oversized Cookie Monster who got a bucket of hydrochloric acid dumped on his head. What it is and what relevance it has to Musketeers or the greater Cincinnati community, I would sure love to know....

I have no answers to these questions. I don't follow sports. But I'm going to theorize that somewhere along the line, a lot of people watched way too much Muppets and smoked too much pot. And isn't this the original culprit?

"Woke up from dream I was starring in reality TV game show with ambiguous rules that I could not figure out."

Chuck b. has a dream. Reality shows aren't really too real. And dreams are not real. Make it a lucid dream and go all Jeff Probst and simply announce and impose some rules. Go from there. Is your life a reality show with ambiguous rules? Make some rules! Identify someone with permission to break the rules. Proceed!

Socks died.

Famous cat ... kaput.

That orange with a straw stuck in it.

It meant a lot to people. They liked that thing. Probably because it was a sex symbol. So Pepsico had to go back to the old symbolic genitalia for the Tropicana carton.

Live-blogging the Oscars.

Hang out and watch with me.

7:28: I'm loving Tim Gunn gushing over the lady actors.

7:28: Hugh Jackman, he can sing and run around desperately on the stage, and oh! that gorgeous white foam in the corners of his mouth.

7:43: Best Supporting Actress ... a stripper need never take off her dignity with her clothes... blah blah... bullshit. Ugh! this is boring. So so stilted. But yay! Penélope Cruz, won. I love her.

7:52: "They're making the announcing of the nominees into a religious ceremony," IMs Chris (my son). Yes. Indeed. Good lord, it's deadly. This may go down as the most embarrassingly bad Oscars show of all time.

7:58: "Milk" wins original screenplay, and we get some mawkish bilge about the gays.

9:02: Sorry, my interest flagged...

9:09: Heath Ledger wins Best Supporting Actor and everyone acts all sanctimonious and morosely glum. Seriously, folks: Don't encourage suicidal behavior. The man had some talent. He performed a role. And he threw it all away. How about rewarding the living? I'm taking a break. Carry on without me. I find tonight's Oscars insipid and sickly. I'd rather live than sit through this embalming.

9:45: I went off and lived the real life for over an hour. Came back to the TiVo and found Jerry Lewis maundering about himself.

10:11: The Parade of the Dead. Marching to the tune of Queen Latifah singing "I'll Be Seeing You." She doesn't have the pipes for this song. It's painful. But take heart. The dead can't hear her. The agonizing death of this song has me rethinking my beliefs about euthanasia. Finally, we get to Paul Newman. We hear the only spoken word in the death sequence. The big difference between people, Paul says, is between those who have had "pleasure in love" and those who haven't. True enough. So turn off the fucking television and love somebody.

10:18: Danny Boyle wins Best Director. Appropriate. I agree. He hops up and down. He says it's in "the spirit of Tigger."

10:30: Best Actress. It's torture listening to presenting actresses' leaden praise of the actresses who longingly ache for the little gold man. The presenters are hogging camera time by talking slow slow slow. Thank God the Oscar goes to Kate Winslet because we're all tired as hell of hearing about how Kate Winslet has not won the Oscar yet. She gives a cheeseball speech about how as a little girl she pretended to do her Oscar acceptance speech with a shampoo bottle.

10:40: Now, the religious ritual for the Best Actor. Oh! It's so slow and dumb. This is the worst Oscar show ever. I have some things to do, but I'm hanging on to the end (after fast-forwarding through the whole rotten (I presume) center. Come on, give Mickey or Sean the damned man. And it's Sean! I approve!

10:44: "You commie, homo-loving sons of guns," says Sean. I'm going to pack it in now. I'm going to assume "Slumdog Millionaire" gets the Best Picture, and if it doesn't, I'll find out in the morning. So carry on without me, my friends.

Come on, everybody!

Let's go into the woods!



Ooh.... nice doggy!

I don't particularly understand these men who say they don't like women who "play games."

What's wrong with games? Maybe you need better games. Like you know you go over to one friend's house and they have Scrabble and Risk, and then you to to another friend's house and the best game is something like — what's the crappiest kid game? — Ants in the Pants.

IN THE COMMENT: Chip Ahoy said:

This question, amusing as it is, suffers the equivocation fallacy whereby the use of a term with more than one meaning is switched.

The men who complain about women who play games, ridiculous on the surface because men play games too, are referring to emotional games of the sort one of my sister excels. Having such a sister has taught me what to look for here, she glees at her ability to provoke observable emotion in her subject. Jealousy? That'll do. Anger? That works. Rage? Best of all possible observable emotions.

Our hostess knows this, and we know she knows this, but she playfully switches the term from emotion games to formal games within the proposition. So the answer is, "Yes, of course, better games would be an improvement." Games like Lawn Darts at Forty Paces, or Horseshoes Without the Poles, Naked Barbed Wire Twister, Paintball Without Armor, Cowboys and Indians with Real Weapons, Pack One Another's Parachute, Ski the Grand Canyon, Boxing With Gauntlets, Riding Lawn Mower Rodeo, Human Piñata, Hunting on the Island of Doctor Moreau, Beanbags Filled with Nails, Barefoot Jellyfish Collecting, William Tell, Ninjas VS. Ballerinas, Survive the Viper Pit, Chainsaw Badminton, Grenade Tennis, Komodo Dragon Roundup, Geisha High Wire Race, Find the Short in the Flooded Basement, Hide and Go Seek in the Shark Tank, White Water Rafting Tag.

An Althouse blog fund-raiser.

I write this blog for pure love and expression, as you must know by now, but, nevertheless, I think it's good for writers to be paid. Everyone seems to love to quote Samuel Johnson's line "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." It's a good way to tweak writers, and, really, why not tweak writers? Most of us are full of ourselves. Why do we think the world owes us because we give verbal form to our thoughts? You've got thoughts too, and we ought to be grateful that you are reading at all.

You could hit my PayPal button and make a donation, but that rarely happens, and I can't conceive of badgering you to just give me money. I could write a book or do a photography collection and push it to you, but really, time has proved that I'm not going to do that. My energy is in writing the blog, and I'm not going to do anything that dissipates that energy.

But last night I got an idea for a fund-raiser. I was reading the comments on "At the Mauve Café" and I nearly died laughing reading the stuff Titus wrote. I said, I should make a CD of me reading Titus comments — from that post and others, the funniest stuff, which I'd select. Price of the CD to be determined Now, Titus did the writing so I need him to willingly, eagerly, and open-heartedly donate the license to me to use his comments this way, in support of my writing on the blog. Okay, Titus?

All this desolate emptiness.

I realize there is a certain desolate emptiness on the blog today. I'm not personally desolate. Quite the opposite, in fact. But that photograph shows the spooky windswept look of Lake Mendota, seen from the end of Picnic Point yesterday.