Remember the time Ben Carson separated the conjoined twins Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear?

Watch the clip.

"So I’ve got to tell you, a couple of days of being asked about something that you put in your books? I gotta tell you, I don’t have a whole lot of sympathy."

"He should answer the questions forthrightly and directly. If he does, the American people will accept it. If he doesn’t, then he’s got a problem.”

Chris Christie has got to tell Ben Carson.

"Did he watch what I went through in January of 2014 for months and months of relentless attacks from people in the media and in the partisan Democratic Party when it turned out that I did absolutely nothing wrong? I haven’t gotten a note of apology from anybody yet... I’ve got the scars all over my back to prove that a lot of people jumped to conclusions.... He’s got to be able to do and say what all of us are responsible for in this business, which is to be responsible for his own personal story...."

"Could there still be a lingering habit of trying to express our opinions in a certain way that doesn’t ‘offend’ or ‘scare’ men?"

"I’m over trying to find the ‘adorable’ way to state my opinion and still be likable. Fuck that."

Wrote the actress Jennifer Lawrence, trying to analyze why she hasn't received what seems to be comparable pay with male stars. She seems to admit that she doesn't drive a hard bargain...

“I failed as a negotiator because I gave up early,” she wrote. “I didn’t want to keep fighting over millions of dollars that, frankly, due to two franchises, I don’t need.”

... but she attributes her bad deal-making to the effect of the overall culture on women, the desire to be likable and not too demanding. You have to read through to the subtext here. Obviously, Jennifer Lawrence doesn't personally negotiate her deals. She's speaking as if she does to create pressure that her agents will use as they drive deals. Presumably, studios don't want the little people in the dark thinking of them as discriminating against women, and they may be willing to throw some money into that PR, even when they have the option of choosing another actress — a younger, prettier actress who'll do what you do and more and for even less, which is how you got your roles in the first place, remember?

AND: What about the invisible problem of male actors who never even get started because old, familiar actors keep getting the parts? 

"Imagine if I told you to give me your keys. And you can no longer drive, starting right now."

"I mean, what would you do? It's totally unrealistic that we think that that's an OK thing to do to older people."

"A Massachusetts barber was awarded $100,000 after a commission found he was wrongly fired — for being blind."

So begins a Daily News article about Joel Nixon, "The Blind Barber," who is legally blind, but not — at least not yet — entirely blind.

He lost his job at Tony's Barber Shop in 2012, after his boss Tony Morales noticed Nixon's condition. He had tripped over a customer's legs, and later tripped over a chair... Morales said Nixon wasn't fired because he was legally blind, but because he wasn't qualified. He said Nixon wasn't carrying his weight and was an unlicensed barber.

Elsewhere in the Daily News: Man Bites Dog.

David Etzel, 36, attacked his mother's shih tzu Cujo in April, after getting drunk and teasing the 10-pound pup....

I'm leaving out gory details. What kind of mother names her little dog Cujo?

"We will no longer participate in any football-related activities until President Tim Wolfe resigns or is removed due to his negligence toward marginalized students’ experiences."

"On Sunday, MU football coach Gary Pinkel seemed to throw his entire team’s support behind the protests, tweeting a picture of his players along with the protest’s #ConcernedStudent1950 hashtag and the message: 'The Mizzou Family stands as one. We are united. We are behind our players.' After meeting with the team this morning, it is clear they do not plan to return to practice until Jonathan resumes eating."

From a new article in The Washington Post titled "With $1 million at stake, U. of Missouri’s president now taking protests seriously."

For reference: here's the post from 2 days ago where we first talked about the hunger strike.

UPDATE, Monday morning: Wolfe resigns.

"John O’Connor was the sole first gentleman for over a dozen years. He and RBG’s husband Marty..."

"... used to joke that they were members of the Dennis Thatcher Society, which Marty described as one’s wife having 'a job which deep in your heart you wish you had.' Marty added, 'Now let me just say that in my case it is not true. Only because I really don’t like work. She works like fury all the time. The country’s better off as it is.'"

From "'Marty Was Always My Best Friend': Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Love Story," via Metafilter, which warns "Don't read this unless you're ready to sob like a baby."

Karl Rove's gratuitous and erroneous shot at Calvin Coolidge.

I don't know why this irks me so much. Something about an attack on an entirely undefended person. Something about propagating a factoid. Somehow it's my job to keep history straight and defend Calvin Coolidge.

It was "Fox News Sunday" this morning, and "GOP strategist" Karl Rove was asked whether Donald Trump's appearance on "Saturday Night Live" helped or hurt him. Rove says:

It helped. Everybody got their moment last night. He got to be marked by the Saturday Night Live crowd, and he got a chance to say he's a good sport and could take it in stride. I think we ought to go back and blame this, however, all on Calvin Coolidge, who was after all, the first president to appear on the White House lawn in an Indian headdress. And since then presidents have felt compelled to go out and occasionally mock themselves, and now presidential candidates have gotten in the habit of mocking themselves. It was, however, I have to say, not very funny.

There's laughter, and the moderator Chris Wallace says "Are you talking about Calvin Coolidge?" and Rove says, "No, I'm talking about last night."

Now, maybe some home viewers said: "The first president to appear on the White House lawn in an Indian headdress — were there others?" But I said: "That wasn't on the White House lawn! That was in South Dakota!"

Calvin Coolidge famously posed in a headdress:



This happened on June 23, 1927:

Coolidge, who was celebrated for signing the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, spent the summer of 1927 in the Black Hills region of South Dakota, working out of an office in Rapid City High School. When Sioux Chieftain Chauncey Yellow Robe, a descendant of Sitting Bull, learned the President would be there, he suggested he be adopted into the tribe. The Sioux County Pioneer, a weekly publication that came out every Thursday, reported that Yellow Robe... said: “The Indians are like anybody else, they are also anxious to see him come. Our population of more than 20,000 Sioux Indians, the first people of the Hills, will also open their hearts with most sincere and hearty welcome of President Coolidge to the land of the Dakotas and if the occasion should permit, President Coolidge will be adopted into the Sioux tribe. We hope he will find in these beautiful Pahasapas (Black Hills) rest, peace, quiet and friendship among us.”

Why, exactly, is it supposed to be funny for him to wear that headdress? In any case, this did not take place at the White House and it has nothing to do with present-day appearances in pop culture settings like "Saturday Night Live."

On the bike in the woods in the fall.

I didn't know Meade was over there photographing me.

"Donald Trump gives SNL its biggest ratings in years."

"According to NBC, SNL had a whopping 6.6 household rating on Saturday night..."

.. easily beating the season’s previous high: the 41st season premiere last month, hosted by Miley Cyrus and with a guest appearance by none other than … Hillary Clinton. In fact, Trump’s overnight rating was 47 percent higher than the Miley/Hillary episode.

Donald Trump questions the single belt buckle theory and the pyramid theory.

On "Meet the Press" this morning, Donald Trump was asked about Ben Carson:

Well, I feel badly for Ben. I've gotten to like Ben. And it's a tough thing. I mean, he writes a book where he went after his mother, hit her on the head, or wanted to hit her on the head with a hammer. Hitting a friend in the face with a lock, with a padlock, hard in the face, stabbing somebody, only to be broken up by a belt buckle. Which, if you know about belt buckles, they turn and they twist. I don't think they're going to stop a knife with the force of a strong man. And when he writes that he has pathological disease in a book, now he obviously wrote this book prior to thinking about running for office, I assume. But he said he has pathological disease.... Well, if you have pathological disease, that's a problem. I mean, he wrote it. I didn't write it. But he's going to have to explain a lot of things away. The scholarship situation, the dinner with Westmoreland when Westmoreland wasn't there. And the pyramids. You know, a pyramid is a solid structure, essentially. Other than a little area for the pharaoh. And you don't put grain in a pyramid because it's all solid.

He used the same material on "Face the Nation":

When you are talking about hitting your mother over the head with a hammer -- and I'm sure you never said that. And I never said that or thought that. And hitting a friend in the face with a lock, with a padlock, and stabbing somebody, and, you know, lots of -- and saying you have psycho -- when you have pathological disease, which he said. And now the whole thing comes out about West Point, where he was talking about scholarships at West Point. And, you know, I have been -- I know a lot about West Point. West Point doesn't do the scholarship thing. So, a lot of -- a lot of questions are being raised. And the pyramid situation is a little bit different, because, frankly, if you know anything about the pyramids, you know they are pretty solid structures. They don't have -- they didn't have steel, where they would span it and they would create a big vacuum underneath. Those are solid structures. So, you're talking about storing grain in the pyramids. Well, they have very little space. They have space for small rooms, where the pharaohs had their coffins and where the pharaohs were buried, essentially. So, a lot of -- a lot of things are going on. And I don't know. I just don't know what to think. I hope it -- I hope it works out fine for Ben. I just don't know what to think....

Pressed by the moderator to admit this material is "quite secondary":

Well, I think when you say that you stabbed someone, and was saved by a belt buckle -- and that's pretty unlikely, because a belt buckle will turn. You know, a belt buckle is not going to stop a knife. The belt buckle itself will turn. And when you say you hit your mother over the head with a hammer, or tried to, those are pretty -- and when you write in book that you have pathological disease, pathological disease is not cured. And, you know, you had dinner with Westmoreland -- now, I hear Westmoreland may not have been in the area where the dinner took place at that time, according to his schedule. So, I don't know about that. And maybe it's right and maybe it's wrong, but those are pretty tough charges. And they were written by him himself. The pathological stuff was written. That's very serious, pathological disease.

Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry... WaPo is soooo so so so sorry Donald Trump was on "Saturday Night Live."

I went over to The Washington Post to read "Trump’s sorry night on ‘SNL’: An overhyped bummer for us all" and I couldn't help noticing the sidebar:



Nothing like showing us how you really feel. I get it. You hate Trump and you're irked that he got the platform of "Saturday Night Live" to pose on — just like Hillary Clinton a few weeks ago and all the many other politicians who've had a shot at hosting over the years. What was so bad about the episode?

Hank Stuever, the WaPo TV critic calls the episode "an anemic and halfhearted dud" and a "boring and misspent episode," but based on what? He says that the cast members seemed to lack the "desire to participate" or "play with him." There was one sketch that was about the cast doing a sketch while Trump was tweeting about them and feeling bad about that, and maybe that signaled how they really felt about him, but that doesn't make the show halfhearted and dull. That showed them going meta with whatever distance they felt they needed, which isn't necessarily dull.

Stuever seems to demand that the show do sharper political mockery, but the failure to insult and abuse a guest host doesn't mean there won't be stronger satire on other occasions or that the comedy we did get wasn't good. So what was such a "sorry" "bummer"? Well, Stuever didn't like the "You're a racist" yell from Larry David in the cold open. But that was great! And:

From there it was one dud after another — some of it featuring Trump, much of it not, the minutes slowing to a crawl. A sketch set in 2018, in a wildly successful Trump White House, fell apart quickly. “Weekend Update” did a fair job of playing a little offense.... The “Update” segment also made good use of Bobby Moynihan’s “Drunk Uncle” character — turns out he’s the ideal demographic for the Trump message...

I'm sorry, Stuever, you have not marshaled the evidence that this was a sorry, boring, dud bummer. You're just pissed that Trump was showcased.

ADDED: Here's my earlier post on what I thought of the show.

NPR interviews the rap artist who provided the rap for that Ben Carson ad that has come up for a certain amount of mockery.

NPR provides the text of the answers, but the questions are summarized. I recommend listening to the audio to get a sense of whether there's condescension toward the black Christian Republican (whose name is Robert Donaldson (stage name: Aspiring Mogul)). This was the best part, where he responds to the question whether it's condescending to use rap music to appeal to "a certain constituency":

When Obama ran for president and the whole music industry made a song — from Will.I.Am to Alicia Keys to Common Sense and everybody — "Yes, I can! Yes, I can!" That was definitely a rap song. And so for me, I see it as the exact same thing. So [Ben Carson] did a rap ad — he did a country ad, too! Is that a knockoff to people who like country music, because he has a country song that represents him? ...

What I'm basically saying is: What genre of music is sufficient to use for a presidential ad? Is it only classical music? Is it pop music? I never said that this is an ad to get the black vote. That was the way they marketed it; I wrote the song because Ben Carson inspired me. And if they're using it for that reason, I'm now talking to you and have this opportunity to have this conversation. So the song has done, to some degree, the goal that I initially intended to begin with.

Ben Carson's house is a monument to himself.

Or so it looks in these pictures in The Guardian.

Maybe that's just the museum wing.

The man's been in the inspiration business for 2 decades. How many motivational speeches has he given over the years? What plaques and statuettes and medals have been handed to him on these occasions? What effect has that journey had on his brain? Not as much as surgery, I take it, but still, what is his judgment like after all of that fol-de-rol?

The NYT gushes: "Hillary in History/Win or lose, she is the perfect transitional figure."

That's the teaser on the front page, leading to the Gail Collins column, "Hillary in History."

No sooner did I write "The NYT gushes" than I began to doubt whether it is gushing. Yes, "perfect" sounds like high praise, but: "transitional figure." It's almost an oxymoron. If it's perfect, why are we progressing through this stage, transitioning? She's not the fully formed female President, but she's perfection as a way station on the road from here to there. She isn't where we really need to be, and so the perfection is imperfection.

[O]ne of the running subtexts in this story... is that when it comes to women winning political office, there’s a long line of wives in the cast of characters. [Elizabeth] Dole is married to the former presidential candidate Bob Dole. Margaret Chase Smith was both wife and office manager for Congressman Clyde Smith of Maine, and she took his seat after he died.

The first woman governor, Nellie Tayloe Ross, won a special election in Wyoming to succeed her husband in 1925. The first female senator was Hattie Wyatt Caraway of Arkansas, who was initially appointed to succeed her husband....

Collins had Hillary Clinton on the telephone, and Hillary told the old joke about a "successful businessman" who tells his wife that if she'd married her old boyfriend she'd be the wife of that gas station attendant and the woman says — as Hillary flattens the punchline — "No, if I’d married him he’d be a big success like you." Is that what Hillary thinks of Bill? That's my question. Collins didn't ask that and she sure didn't ask my next questions: If Bill got to be President because of you.  wouldn't electing you now be like giving you a third term as President? Haven't you already had your full constitutional share of presidential terms?

Clinton — the wife of a former president, with the longest résumé in the room — is a perfect transitional figure, whether she wins or not. Maybe there had to be a heroic Senator Smith with a muffin recipe, too. Maybe — and this is taking a really huge jump — there also had to be a “Ma” Ferguson, who became the first woman to be elected governor of Texas in 1925 after her husband was convicted of financial corruption. Ferguson did promise voters “two for the price of one” long before Bill Clinton thought of the phrase.

So the perfection Collins flogs is status as a wife of a former President?! In that framework, Hillary is only "the perfect transitional figure" if you believe America is mired in its travels on the road to female equality in some godawful backwater town where a woman cannot make it on her own. Did Mary Tyler Moore throw her hat in the air for nothing?



That was Minneapolis in 1970, and I am not buying that a woman in 2015 needs to make it by riding alongside her successful husband. That's not where we are, and I can't believe Gail Collins isn't embarrassed to talk about the United States that way.

Donald Trump's "Saturday Night Live" stint.

1. This was the best part:



That's very funny even without knowing the original video that it spoofs, but you can watch that here. Spoofing that isn't original. It's already much spoofed.

2. For the commenter who asked at 11:05 PM last night, "Why aren't you live blogging SNL?" You have no idea how early I go to bed! I was up at 5, however, and I watched the DVR of the show over breakfast.

3. We loved seeing Ed Grimley! Too bad they had to put "Ed Grimley" in big letters on screen... presumably to help the kids out there whom they must have imagined all saying "Who's that guy?" Here at Meadhouse, Ed Grimley is imitated approximately every other day.

4. Trump did a nice job. He wasn't just a good sport about getting flanked by 2 Trump impersonators in the opening monologue. He seemed to enjoy it. And he accepted Larry David yelling "You're a racist!" at him. Laughing at the idea of being considered a racist. That's edgy. [ADDED: "A Hispanic advocacy group had offered anyone in the SNL audience a $5,000 reward if they called Trump a 'racist' during his opening monologue."]

5. I skipped over the musical act, but Sia stole my 1965 hairstyle.

6. Lots more Larry David in the cold open. David owns the Bernie Sanders impersonation. I wonder if that was the first time the line "It's Saturday Night!" was skipped. Cranky old Larry/Bernie says "Live from New York, eh, you get it."

7. Late in the show there's a fake ad for Donald Trump done by aging porn actresses. The punch line is Donald Trump walking on and saying "I'm Donald Trump and I in no way, shape, or form approve of this message," but the most interesting thing is the shot at Bill Clinton that comes at about 3:00. One of the messed-up ladies dreams of getting to visit the White House: "I haven't been there since the 90s," and the other says, "Oh, yeah, I hit my head on the desk." For a show that's seemed so in-the-tank for Hillary, that's some serious balance.