At the Tangled-Up-in-Purple Café...

... there's music tonight and revolution in the air.

"I did not want to run as a black candidate; I did not want to run as a military candidate..."

"... I wanted to run as an American candidate and win the respect of the people."

Allen West, one of the 2 new members of Congress who are black and Republican... and Tea Party. The other is Tim Scott. They're from South Florida and South Carolina, respectively.

ADDED: Will they join the Congressional Black Congress?

11.

11!

Keith Olbermann seems to be some sort of authority on the expression of anger... or at least Joe Biden thinks he is.

Submitting to Deborah Solomon's questions — in bold — he says:

One of the big flaws now is that there is all this noise on the right. When I yell there is a reason for it. There is a political and factual discernment behind it. I am not doing it gratuitously...

I once had a conversation with the man who is now the vice president when he was still in the Senate, who asked me for advice about how to turn anger into righteous inspiration.

Joe Biden took you to lunch to ask you for tips on getting angry?

He said, ‘‘I just come across like I’m angry and out of control, and you seem to focus it and make it look useful and expressive.’’

Controlled, useful-looking anger. Yes, exactly how does one give that appearance and when is it appropriate? And more importantly, how do we on the receiving end of anger defend ourselves against speakers who would love to leap into the primal dimension of our minds and manipulate us by tapping the feelings we felt when we were children, inspired and intimidated by our parents?

Our #1 defense, it seems, is that we've learned to perceive the angry speaker as having taken leave of his senses. Biden sought the secret — which he imagined Olbermann possessed — for getting around that defense. He wanted to know how to seize the power of the patriarch.

In the middle of writing about pessimism, David Rakoff finds out that the burning pain in his shoulder, that pinched nerve...

... is a tumor. Here he is — bald and hilarious — talking about his book. Watch for the reference to the Roberts Court...

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
David Rakoff
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Rally to Restore Sanity

You can buy the book — "Half Empty" — here. I highly recommend the audio version. His reading style is very funny — and also easy to sleep to (which is 2/3 of the reason why I buy audiobooks).

I discovered that book after watching David Sedaris on "The Daily Show" and going off to buy "Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk" — which you can buy here. Again, the audiobook is highly recommended — but "Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk" isn't easy to sleep to because it's tricked up with a lot of music... and also actors read some of the stories and actors try so hard. It's wakefulness-provoking.

That time George Bush — at the dinner table with his wife and parents — said "What is sex like after 50?"

From an interview to air Monday:

"So I'm drunk at the dinner table at Mother and Dad's house in Maine. And my brothers and sister are there, Laura's there. And I'm sitting next to a beautiful woman, friend of Mother and Dad's," says Bush. "And I said to her out loud, 'What is sex like after 50?' "

After that, one could hear a pin drop. It was "total silence," says Bush. "And not only silence, but like serious daggers" from my mom and my wife.

He says that, with a case of "after-dinner remorses," he later called the woman to apologize. But she got the last laugh. Bush says that on his 50th birthday, when he was Texas governor, the woman sent him a letter reading: "Dear Governor, Well, what's the answer?"

Why can't adults talk about sex? This is only a story about the depredations of alcohol... but why? Why must conversation be so boring that an interesting question draws "serious daggers"?

You think you have a problem with U.S. News...

... but U.S. News has problems of its own.

"He's a figment of her imagination. An eggment of her imagination."

He doesn't have ego. He has eggo.

ThinkProgress festoons itself with updates of shame.

I'm willing to believe there's something screwy about MSNBC's suspension of Keith Olbermann, but Think Progress's eagerness to blame a conservative resulted in an elaborate post that is now so studded with backtracking updates as to be unreadable.

The Arkansas Supreme Court orders a new hearing in the case depicted in the documentary "Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills."

"While there is a significant dispute in this case as to the legal effects of the DNA test results, it is undisputed that the results conclusively excluded Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley as the source of the DNA evidence tested," wrote the court.

Here's the trailer for the (excellent) film:

"The first generation of children born with H.I.V. are now entering adulthood."

"What is it like to be a child with H.I.V.? How does it affect your relationships and your outlook?"

"An Unmarried Woman" — the most annoyingly 1970s movie I can name.

Really, it pains me to watch this clip. I remember exactly how this felt at the time and how important this portrayal of womanhood was imagined to be:



The actress is Jill Clayburgh, who died today — after 21 years of chronic leukemia — at the age of 66. Her husband was the playwright David Rabe.

"I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary."

Said Valerie Jarrett:

He knows exactly how smart he is. ... He knows how perceptive he is. He knows what a good reader of people he is. And he knows that he has the ability — the extraordinary, uncanny ability — to take a thousand different perspectives, digest them and make sense out of them...

So this "sense" you refer to.... it's the end result of a digestive process?

... and I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually. ... So, what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but somebody with such extraordinary talents that had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy. ... He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.

Oh, my lord. This is the way the people have buttered him up his whole life, I'm afraid. How will he deal with the rude affront he received last Tuesday? Is there an Obama that fits the changed circumstances or was his entire being formed through relationships with sycophants?

"Honestly Monica, the web is considered 'public domain'..."

"... and you should be happy we just didn't 'lift' your whole article and put someone else's name on it!"

Via Instapundit.

The stolen article begins with the line: "'As American as apple pie' isn’t." Ah, funny! Just yesterday, I was saying: "Americans say: as American as apple pie."

IN THE COMMENTS: Paddy O says:

The Cooks Source Facebook page is hilarious now.

Ha! Poetic justice.

"It isn’t irrational to accept the testimony of eyewitnesses to miracles," said Justice Scalia.

"What is irrational ... is to reject a priori, with no investigation, the possibility of miracles in general and of Jesus Christ’s resurrection in particular — which is, of course, precisely what the worldly wise do."

"[I]t is absurd for any government to prevent people from growing a naturally-occurring plant that requires no processing to provide humans with pleasure."

"It's pretty basic, actually. This is a core freedom for human beings and requires an insane apparatus of state control and police power to prevent it from occurring. All you have to do is burn a plant and inhale the smoke. If humans are not free to do this in the natural world in which they were born, what on earth are they free to do?"

Andrew Sullivan, pushing back Josh Marshall, who writes:

... I just don't know if I think marijuana should be legalized at all. Maybe it's that I'm getting into my 40s. And maybe I'm a hypocrite.... But [my Dad] had this very contradictory and hard to rationalize position which was that he was fine with people smoking pot but keeping it at least nominally illegal kept public usage in some check. Again, how to rationalize that in traditional civic terms? Not really sure. But frankly, I think I kind of agree.

So, for Marshall, it all comes down to who's skittish or formal about law? This is a pleasure that is open to everyone except those who adhere to the law. Everyone else can go ahead, but — perhaps as a sop to the rule-followers — they'll have to feel uneasy about it.