"George Graham Vest served in the United States Senate for twenty-four years, from 1879 to 1903, but the act for which he is best remembered...

"... is a speech delivered in an insignificant court case while he was still a lawyer in rural Missouri."

The lawsuit that brought him immortality concerned the shooting of "Old Drum," the best hunting dog of a local farmer. A neighbor who suspected that Old Drum was moonlighting by killing his sheep gave orders to shoot the dog if it appeared on the property again. When Old Drum was found dead near the neighbor's house, the farmer filed suit, seeking damages of fifty dollars. After a jury awarded twenty-five dollars, the neighbor successfully appealed the ruling. The dog's owner, however, succeeded in his motion for a new trial and hired two skilled lawyers, one of them George G. Vest.... Rather than discussing the details of the case, he eloquently praised the loyalty of a dog to his owner in terms that brought tears to the eyes of the jury....

Bringing tears to the eyes of the "Death Valley Days" actors playing the jury listening to the Old Drum speech, here's Ronald Reagan:

"Teacher who called military 'lowest of our low' explains himself — with little success."

"On Tuesday night, [Gregory] Salcido... sat for an hour as an overflow crowd of veterans, former students and others berated him at a council meeting, calling for his resignation, denouncing him as a disgrace to the town," WaPo reports.

While offering to apologize if he had offended anyone, he stood by his words,* and tried to say what he really meant. Salcido said he was a pacifist, “with a capital P.” He remembers, he said, looking at pictures of relatives who had gone to war on his great-grandmother’s wall and wondering “for what.”...

“My goal as it relates to my students is to get them to do everything to get through college,” he said. “It’s not just the military. I wouldn’t want them to work at a fast-food restaurant either... I don’t think it’s at all a revelation to anybody that those who aren’t stellar students usually find the military a better option. That’s as plain as that it’s Tuesday night.”

The highest-rated comment at WaPo is:

This teacher abused his position and actually seems slightly off balance. He should definitely be fired. However, I am always surprised at how many people take things so personally. “Love it or leave it” is just ridiculous. One can kneel during the National Anthem, protest a war or military actions, disagree with adding tens of millions to military defense, etc., and still love and appreciate this country and support our vets.

"Love it or leave it" is a Vietnam Era slogan. I don't hear it said these days. I hear critics of America threatening to leave it as if they'd adopted the old taunt. That commenter seems slightly off balance. The man wasn't protesting a war. He was insulting the people who choose to enlist in the military.
___________________

* There are, he'd said (reacting to a teen in a Marine Corps sweatshirt), "a bunch of dumbs–––s over there... Think about the people who you know who are over there. Your freaking stupid Uncle Louie or whatever. They’re dumbs–––s. They’re not like high-level thinkers, they’re not academic people, they’re not intellectual people. They’re the lowest of our low."

"I can’t technically take maternity leave. Because if I take maternity leave, then I won’t be allowed to sponsor legislation or vote during that time period."

Says Tammy Duckworth, the pregnant Senator.

Key word, "technically." When Senators want personal time, don't they just take it? I can understand a politician wanting to purport to exemplify problems that everyday people have, but Duckworth doesn't have the problem of needing authorization to take time off from work to deal with childbirth and the care of a newborn.

There's also the breastfeeding question:

“You are not allowed to bring children onto the floor of the Senate at all,” Duckworth pointed out. “If I have to vote, and I’m breastfeeding my child, especially during my maternity leave period, what do I do? Leave her sitting outside?”

Obviously, you bring the baby onto the Senate floor and everyone loves it (or acts like they do). It's about like the way they'd deal with the no-dogs-on-the Senate floor rule if there were a blind Senator with a seeing-eye dog. Everyone would instantly and automatically understand that there was an implicit exception to the rule. This is like the first-year law-school problem of the sign that says "No motor vehicles in the park" and the question whether a paraplegic in an electric wheelchair can go in.

But I'd love to see a Senator try to bring an emotional support animal— perhaps a bichon frise — onto the Senate floor.

"Democrats are looking to embrace the #MeToo moment and rally women to push back on President Donald Trump in the midterms—and they don’t want Bill Clinton anywhere near it."

Says Edward-Isaac Dovere at Politico.

Bill Clinton “just brings up a lot of issues that will be very tough for Democrats. And I think we all have to be clear about what the #MeToo movement was," says Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), vice chair of the House Progressive Caucus.

"I value the assets of what the Clintons can bring. He did a lot for Georgia when he was president. He carried Georgia. The personal side that is now being highlighted, we’ll have to measure," says Georgia Democratic Chair DuBose Porter.

I get it. You just want to do what works best as a means to the end of Democratic power. That's what you did when Bill Clinton was President, and that's what you did when you had his wife as your presidential candidate. I am completely cynical about your commitment to gender issues.

Like a sexual harasser, you're only using women.

You'd like to hide BC in '18 because it's not expedient. But you're not calling him to account, denouncing him, excoriating him, ruining him. You want to keep him safe, so you can use him later, when something other than "the personal side" will be "highlighted" and it's okay once again to be vague and fuzzy "about what the #MeToo movement was."

Was! Pramila Jayapal is already visualizing this pesky #MeToo thing in the past.

Lion's Roar, How to Survive Anything, Chicken, Mindfulness.

Those were the 4 magazines staring me in the face at Whole Foods today. I didn't buy any of these, but I did entertain myself with the fantasy that it was a multiple choice test, and I decided: Chicken.

"The full-beat face has become the ubiquitous face of the Internet, a strange mirror of Kim Kardashian’s visage but also somehow just like Internet influencer Huda Kattan’s and Kylie Jenner’s, too."

"Instagram is awash in full-beat glory.... Save for variations in skin color and precise shade of shimmering eye shadow, the women all look uncannily the same. It’s the 'Instagram look'... 'When you take a picture, you lose the dimension on your face. The light will wash it away.' Over time, savvy ’Grammers realized that with a small mountain of makeup...  you could replace the shadows and the light... [You need] 'an elongated eye, lashes, contouring, bronzing, highlighting, and sculpting'... A theatrical set of drawn-on brows. And finally... a matte lip so overdrawn that it can look like an allergic reaction.... [T]he goal is to give yourself features you don’t actually possess: brighter, bigger eyes, a narrower, daintier nose, eyes so fringed in false lashes that they look as if they can’t possibly bear the weight. 'We’re a walking painting'..."

From "Brows, contour, lips, lashes: How the ‘full-beat face’ took over the Internet" (WaPo).

These things go in cycles. I can't believe that young people won't come to associate heavy makeup with the older generation and to rediscover the special attraction of looking natural while you have the gift of youth. As for older women, I can't believe they don't see themselves as garish and clownlike in heavy makeup. Yet if people don't live in the real world but only in photographs and video, then maybe stage makeup is where we will end up. In that case, the argument shouldn't be give up the horridly heavy makeup but: Return to living in the natural world.

I have a vague hope that the new generation will acquire an aversion to photography.

Or... here's an idea for one of my unwritten books. It's science fiction: It turns out actually to be true — as some seemingly ill-informed people have long believed — that photography steals a person's soul. These poor people who have been doing those ever more exaggerated "full-beat" faces in fact lost their souls a while back, perhaps somewhere around the 1,000th selfie.

At the Fat Tuesday Café...

... eat all you want and talk about what you want.

"Take your heartthrob to a small-plates place, because fasting in the Catholic Church doesn’t mean that you go without, or with just water."

Advice from Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin, the archbishop of Newark, on how to deal with the coincidence of Ash Wednesday and Valentine's Day.

But today is Fat Tuesday, so pre-eat as much as possible.

"Ruling that graffiti... was of sufficient stature to be protected by the law, a federal judge in Brooklyn awarded a judgment of $6.7 million on Monday to 21 graffiti artists..."

"... whose works were destroyed in 2013 at the 5Pointz complex in Long Island City, Queens. In November, a landmark trial came to a close in Federal District Court in Brooklyn when a civil jury decided that Jerry Wolkoff, a real estate developer who owned 5Pointz, broke the law when he whitewashed dozens of swirling murals at the complex, obliterating what a lawyer for the artists had called 'the world’s largest open-air aerosol museum.' Though Mr. Wolkoff’s lawyers had argued that the buildings were his to treat as he pleased, the jury found he violated the Visual Artists Rights Act, or V.A.R.A., which has been used to protect public art of 'recognized stature' created on someone’s else property."

The NYT reports.

Previously blogged on December 3, 2013 and April 10, 2017:

How can the artists can win this? Relying on Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990, they claim entitlement to notice in writing 90 days before the destruction of the art, which, they say, would have given them the opportunity to remove or photograph the work. The artists are not arguing that the owner can't tear down his building.

Here's the text of the statute, which limits the act to "a work of recognized stature." That — along with the $6.7 million amount — was the important finding here: The graffiti at 5Pointz was "a work of recognized stature."

New word: "masstige."

Seeing it for the first time today as a new entry in the OED. It's a portmanteau of "mass" and "prestige," and it means "A class of mass-produced, relatively inexpensive goods which are marketed as luxurious or prestigious." Examples:

2005 Fashion (Canada) Oct. 70/1 It bags were templates for a hot new category, called affordable luxury or ‘masstige’, fusing mass and prestige.

2006 Time Out N.Y. 14 Sept. 51/1 Luxury designers Sophia Kokosalaki, Thakoon Panichgul and Vivienne Westwood each created a limited-edition line for masstige footwear label Nine West.

I thought "It bags" was a typo at first, but I assume it's "it" as in "It girl," which actually has its own OED entry. It means "A woman who is very famous, fashionable, or successful at a particular time, esp. (chiefly U.S.) a glamorous, vivacious, or sexually attractive actress, model, etc., or (chiefly Brit.) a young, rich woman who has achieved celebrity because of her socialite lifestyle." Interesting. Didn't know "it girls" in Britain were different from "it girls" in the U.S. The original "it girl" was Clara Bow, who starred in a movie called "It."



And here, in the unlinkable OED, I see "it," the adjective, identified as coming from "it girl" and "Designating a person who or thing which is exceptionally fashionable, successful, or prominent at a particular time, as it bag, it couple, it gadget, etc." and the oldest example is an "it bag":

1997 Sunday Times 2 Nov. x. 12 Her range of It Bags are attracting a loyal following, especially among supermodels.

And, by the way, in very old speech or regional dialect, "it" was used as a possessive adjective the way we use "its." Shakespeare's "King Lear" has the line "It had it head bit off beit young." And the King James Version of the Bible had "That which groweth of it owne accord..thou shalt not reape." In 1986, there were at least some Scots who'd say things like "It had a mouse in it paw."

"Anyone who thinks that the value of 2,000 hogs transcends that of a human soul made in the image of God himself... is so obtuse that likely no argument would be effective in unscrambling the discombobulation within his skull."

The use of the plural pronoun "they" — by the non-gender-binary performance artist Emma Sulkowicz — reminds me (writing in the comments to this post of mine) of the Biblical story of the man who said "My name is Legion... for we are many." Jesus, we're told — in a passage I quote in full — speaks with demons who request and are given permission to relocate into some nearby pigs — 2,000 of them — and the pigs suddenly run into the lake where they drown.

I ask some questions, get few answers, restate questions and get accused of mockery and called stupid by one of the regular commenters. So I look for and find a serious effort at answering some of my questions, which ends with the kiss-off I've used as the post title.

I'm stunned by the horribleness of that statement. For one thing, animal cruelty does matter, and driving 2,000 hogs into a suicidal frenzy is not explained by saying that human beings are more important than animals. For another thing, if you think human beings are so precious, why do you rush to conclude that they are not worth talking to? Human beings are made in the image of God... with scrambled skull contents.

Ugh! What an image. Scrambled brains. Everyone knows you're supposed to fry brains.

Trump is "a numbers guy."

I need to show you a second quote from Omarosa on "Big Brother": "Don't get me wrong, Obama's administration was aggressive about deportation too... I've seen the plan. The roundup plan is getting more and more aggressive... He's a numbers guy. He wants to outdo his predecessors."

I have an old post about Trump the numbers guy, and this post would be a better post if I could dig it out of the archive. Since I can't, I'll just leave this post in "stub" form.

Why would anyone say "I’m Christian, I love Jesus, but he thinks Jesus tells him to say things"?

The speaker is Omarosa  (talking to her "Big Brother" housemates), and the "he" is Mike Pence.

The full quote is: "As bad as you think Trump is, you would be worried about Pence... We would be begging for days of Trump back if Pence became President. He’s extreme. I’m Christian, I love Jesus, but he thinks Jesus tells him to say things that are not —— and like, Jesus ain't sayin' that. Scary."

The video, with a truncated transcription, appears at Entertainment Weekly. EW ends at "he thinks Jesus tells him to say things," which made me write the post title — which I will leave in its original form — and I was going to do a poll. But the left-off "things that are not —— and like, Jesus ain't sayin' that" completely changes the meaning from a religious perspective, as I see it. And the poll I had wanted to do is not appropriate.

In the truncated form, Omarosa seems to be mocking all the people who believe that Jesus speaks to them. What kind of person claims to be a Christian but doesn't even tolerate the belief that some Christians have that. in some way, Jesus is communicating with them and guiding them toward saying the right thing? But in the completed quote, you can see that her problem with Pence is that the things he is saying, which he attributes to Jesus, are not what Jesus would say. That is, Pence is wrong in believing that Jesus is speaking to him because Pence conveys messages purportedly from Jesus that are — in Omarosa's opinion — obviously not things Jesus would say.

Her mockery comes in the line EW left off: "Jesus ain't sayin' that." I'd say that EW doesn't understand Omarosa's religious perspective and has hurt Omarosa by portraying her doing something that maybe the people at EW do: mocking the common religious belief that prayer is a 2-way communication. She's not denying that belief. She's just saying what Pence understands as the message from Jesus can't be the real message, because it's not the Christian message.

I don't know what specific words Omarosa feels she knows can't be from Jesus, and really I don't know whether the entire riff is reality-show bullshit. She's playing a game, so she has a motive to con the other contestants, and she has other plans for the future — notably a book to sell. She's thinking about potential audiences. Pence — whatever he may have said on this subject — may also have been lying, exaggerating, taking poetic license, or simplifying — conning the contestants in the game of winning the next election.

But Omarosa's main point — and it's a good point whatever you think of Omarosa — is that a person who believes he didn't think up his own ideas but had them handed to him by God is dangerous. He's impervious to reason and evidence and advice from experts and pleas for mercy and his own urges toward empathy and self-preservation.

Gently filtered afternoon light on a freshly groomed cross-country ski trail.

We are so enjoying the February snows. There had been no occasion to ski until the last few days, so we've been getting out on this familiar trail every day. I'm determined to maintain my skill, which is only at the level called "easy." I don't expect ever to get better at skiing, but am proud of the accomplishment of plateauing, which is something you can do — you should do — when you are old.

Feel free to use this post as a "café" (i.e., an open thread), and remember the old Althouse Portal when you're going to Amazon.

"Sulkowicz wants to change behavior, too, but thinks that punishment is more efficacious than tweaks to campus life."

"When Columbia settled the lawsuit filed by the man Sulkowicz accused of rape, it put out a statement, noting that his 'remaining time at Columbia became very difficult for him and not what Columbia would want any of its students to experience.' But Sulkowicz believes that what he went through had a salutary effect. 'He’s been scared shitless,' they said.*... 'It’s about finding a way to make your institution, and the people who run it, more human.'"

From "Is There a Smarter Way to Think About Sexual Assault on Campus?/A team of researchers at Columbia believes that small changes to college life could make campuses safer" by Jia Tolentino in The New Yorker.

I'm interested in the enthusiasm for harsh punishment and for deterring bad behavior by scaring people shitless. That's the common stereotype of a right-wing mindset. Most of that New Yorker article is about understanding the behavior of college students and tracking them away from bad sex, that is, looking for root causes, which is the classic mindset of the liberal. Torentino asked Sulkowicz about that approach (which led to a program at Columbia called "SHIFT"):

Sulkowicz had not heard about SHIFT before, and was politely resistant to the idea: “My view in this whole thing is that, the more that Columbia can retreat behind ‘Here’s a program, here’s a study, here’s a process,’ the less that any human that finds themselves in this machine will ever be incentivized to act based on their moral compass.”

What if, I asked, the idea behind the study was tinkering with the machine, figuring out how to reorient that moral compass?

“That makes me think of asking someone to wash the dishes, and they tell you, ‘I’ll try,’” Sulkowicz said. “I think that’s the difference between spending two million dollars to try to understand the conditions that create a community that’s conducive to sexual assault versus just doing the right thing—expelling people who sexually assault other students.”

 That's an attitude I've always heard called right-wing.**
_________________

* I was confused at "they said," even though I'd read, earlier in the article (and had not forgotten) that Sulkowicz "identifies as non-binary, and uses the gender-neutral pronouns 'they' and 'them,'" and I had already struggled with confusion when I read "in the midst of sex, the student anally penetrated and choked them while they struggled and told him to stop" and "carrying a fifty-pound, twin XL mattress around campus... was a performance project: they would stop carrying it, they said, when the student who had raped them was expelled."

** The new thing is to care passionately and be right-wing.

"So when a male art instructor asked London-based artist Alex Bertulis-Fernandes to 'dial down the feminism,'in her work, she took some time for self-reflection..."

... and came back with this:

Last week one of my art teachers suggested I 'dial down the feminism.' Today I showed him my newest piece: pic.twitter.com/VrnB4oJ8Cz

— AlexBertulisFernande (@alexbertanades) February 7, 2018