The obituary does not mention the other McCallum role that made a big impact on us throbbing teenagers of the 1960s. He was the simple man who grew a big brain on "The Outer Limits":
"Your ignorance makes me ill and angry."
September 26, 2023
"With his mysterious air, his Beatle haircut and his trademark black turtleneck, Mr. McCallum was a magnet for teenage fans."
"Sent on a publicity junket for the show to Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge in 1965, he was mobbed by screaming female students and had to be rescued by police officers.... 'The Man From U.N.C.L.E.' ended in 1968, and Mr. McCallum retreated happily to lower-profile roles.... But everywhere he went, he said, the Russian secret agent stalked him. 'It’s been 30 years, but I can’t escape him,' he told The Times in 1998. 'Illya Kuryakin is there 24 hours a day.'"
"I was gonna get back to acronyms and I’m gonna withstand not doing that."
Said President Biden, quoted in "Biden fumbles acronym during Pacific Islands forum speech: 'Doesn’t matter what we call it'" (NY Post).
If you think about it — and I had to think 3 or 4 times — "I’m gonna withstand not doing that" makes sense. He "was gonna get back to acronyms," but he couldn't think of the acronym or couldn't or wouldn't say it, so he was "not doing that" — not "get[ting] back to acronyms. You just have to figure out the function of "withstand." It makes sense — and I'm a believer in "charitable interpretation" — if you see "withstand" as a determination to stand against — to successfully resist — getting back to acronyms... but, no... he said he was going to resist NOT getting back to acronyms. Well, I think you get it. He meant he's going to survive not getting back to acronyms. Because of course he will. He survives everything. He seems feeble and befuddled, but he goes on and on.
Taking stochastic terrorism seriously.
I'm reading "Trump Floats the Idea of Executing Joint Chiefs Chairman Milley
The former president is inciting violence against the nation’s top general. America’s response is distracted and numb" (Brian Klass, in The Atlantic)(analyzing Trump's Truth Social post that said Milley’s call to China on l on January 6, 2021, was 'an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH'):
Trump loves to hide behind the thin veneer of plausible deniability, but he knows exactly what he’s doing.... The suggestion is clear, and it comes from a man who has one of America’s loudest megaphones—one that is directed squarely at millions of extremists who are well armed, who insist that the government is illegitimate, and who believe that people like Milley are part of a “deep state” plot against the country.
Academics have a formal term for exactly this type of incitement: stochastic terrorism.
September 25, 2023
"Mrs. Clinton projects about projection."
Mrs. Clinton projects about projection.
— Laurence Meade (@laurmeade) September 25, 2023
Our awful gerontocracy is unleashing retrograde ageism.
That's the new New Yorker cover, by Barry Blitt, discussed at "Barry Blitt’s 'The Race for Office'/The artist discusses hernias, walkers, and the joys of old age." Or... no... he never discusses the use of aging stereotypes in this cartoon — only his own aging.
It's a well-drawn cartoon. I don't want to focus on Barry Blitt's use of walkers to express oldness. I want to raise the general topic: Our justified desire to criticize those who are clinging to power and subjecting us to a gerontocracy should not release us from the ethical responsibility to refrain from expressing contempt and disgust toward the old.
By the way, only something like 15% of those who war 80+ years old use a walker, and some of them might be safer without it. I don't think it's good to think of aging as necessarily involving the use of a mobility device. And obviously, none of the oldsters on that New Yorker cover actually use a walker... not when we're able to see them, at least. We're all getting older, and it's better not to lean toward pessimism. There are lots of things you can do every day to enhance your capacity to walk unassisted when you are 80, 90, or 100.
I'm annoyed at the gerontocracy for existing in the first place, but also for bringing negativity into the way we think about getting old.
"I've been super-critical of Trump, obviously."
Every Sam Harris podcast interview for the past 7 years summed up. pic.twitter.com/LLR1nHXxXN
— Mythinformed (@MythinformedMKE) September 24, 2023
"But Archer City never became the literary destination that he’d hoped, and his store, Booked Up, struggled financially...."
"McMurtry had followed the family tradition after all, lashing himself to a dying industry and getting his heart broken in the process. After his death, the Texas legislature passed a resolution honoring his memory; two years later, a state representative said that schools 'might need to ban 'Lonesome Dove"' for being too sexually explicit."
September 24, 2023
The form of lying and cheating that some people openly acknowledge, under their full name, in The New York Times.
I'm reading "Sharing a City Apartment With a Big Dog? Good Luck.
First, you’ll have to convince someone to rent to you" (NYT):
Natalya Haddix, 24, a marketing consultant, is one of many pet owners who have skirted housing restrictions by declaring their dog an emotional support animal. This has allowed her to share her 688-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment in Miami with a Great Dane puppy named Cair....
Ren and Zach Glass sidestepped disaster when they won a housing lottery in 2016 for a small two-bedroom apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, only to discover that the building did not accept dogs. They registered their shepherd-collie-pit bull mix, Trolley, as an emotional support animal.... After Trolley died, a little more than a year ago, they adopted Cosmo, a 50-pound pit bull mix....
"The suit turns a man into a compact, easily readable visual unit over which the eye skims quickly, uninterrupted by embellishments or intricacies of silhouette."
"Suits, therefore, homogenize men’s bodies, making variations of weight, even height, less noticeable, focusing attention on the face. Men’s suits say 'we are heads, not bodies.'... Women are still the adorned, visible, bodily sex whose physicality gets staged by clothes. Accordingly, women’s fashion — including even business attire — requires a near-infinity of daily micro-decisions from head to toe.... Leisure wear for women risks depriving them of gravitas, making them look 'off duty,' and hence outside the space of authority.... [W]omen’s dignity and authority remain, alas, more socially precarious than men’s — harder to construct sartorially and far easier to lose. Taking away the dress code might exacerbate this inequity. What’s more, formal business attire offers some of the most gender-neutral fashion options, thereby enhancing sartorial equity for nonbinary individuals...."
Writes Rhonda Garelick, in "What We Lose When We Loosen Dress Codes/Allowing senators to wear what they please on the Senate floor may seem like liberation, but abandoning the dress code could wind up symbolizing the failure to achieve consensus" (NYT).
I understand that to mean that John Fetterman's dressing in a sweatshirt and shorts is an exercise of male privilege.
Dylan at Farm Aid.
For more info: "Bob Dylan Suprises Crowd at Willie Nelson’s 2023 Farm Aid Festival in Indiana/In July 1985, the singer's remark onstage at the Live Aid charity mega-concert inspired [Willie] Nelson to create his first benefit for America's family farmers in September of that year" (Billboard).Quick clip from Bob Dylan's surprise guest appearance with The Heartbreakers at Farm Aid tonight. "Maggie's Farm" — first time he's played it in over a decade: pic.twitter.com/ck3LVqw0gj
— Ray Padgett (@rayfp) September 24, 2023
ADDED: Full set.
"Behind the scenes, Biden has also started telling more jokes about his own age, hoping to defuse the concerns..."
"...of many voters and party leaders. 'I know I look like I’m 30, but I’ve been around doing this a long time,' he said at an event at a private home on Thursday. He has also stepped up his attacks on Trump, describing his continued shock at the thought of the former president sitting in the private dining room next to the Oval Office and doing nothing to stop the rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol in his name on Jan. 6, 2021. 'He tells his supporters, and I’m quoting him, "I am your retribution,"' Biden said at another donor event in New York this week. 'What a hell of a good way to run.'"
I'm reading "Biden campaign is off and running against Trump — out of public view. Top supporters of the president are urging the party to move on from doubts over Biden’s age," by Michael Scherer.
"Move on," not from Biden, but from doubts about Biden... and not all the doubts, just that one doubt that surely cannot be the only issue, the doubt over his age. It's absurd that the substance of the campaign has been less than nothing — merely attempting to eliminate one negative.
Anyway, I was interested in the reference to the dining room — Trump "sitting in the private dining room next to the Oval Office" on January 6th. What's special about the thought of him sitting in that particular place? Is there some idea that we'd be more outraged if we pictured Trump in the dining room? It feels like a game of Clue: Mr. Orange with the lead pipe in the dining room.
The dining room detail jumped out at me because it was in last Sunday's "Meet the Press" transcript:
"I'm actually in favor of immigration—legal immigration. High fences, wide gates."
"Politicians in the past have appealed to xenophobia and bigotry in calling for a tough border policy. My call for a tough border comes from a different place. It comes from compassion and humanitarian conscience.
I call upon all Americans, of every party and political persuasion, to face facts. President Biden's loose border policy has been a disaster. Under Biden, it's easier for migrants to enter illegally than legally. His policy is tantamount to "narrow gate, no fence.'"
Writes Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in "Biden's Border Policies Have Made Every U.S. City a 'Border Town'" (Newsweek).
Out there lying about what is outlying.
From the WaPo article:When was the last time a major paper declared its own poll an "outlier"? https://t.co/1rOPfmuBYl
— Mickey Kaus (@kausmickey) September 24, 2023
The Post-ABC poll shows Biden trailing Trump by 10 percentage points at this early stage in the election cycle, although the sizable margin of Trump’s lead in this survey is significantly at odds with other public polls that show the general election contest a virtual dead heat. The difference between this poll and others, as well as the unusual makeup of Trump’s and Biden’s coalitions in this survey, suggest it is probably an outlier....
We're told in the second paragraph, that "more than 3 in 5 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say they would prefer a nominee other than the president."
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