"Music that comes out of an enclosed, close-knit world is qualitatively, profoundly different from music that comes from a very diverse, open world."

"That’s the essence of the difference between country and rock ’n’ roll. I use the example of the saddest country song of all time to talk about how it could never have been a rock ’n’ roll song. Rock ’n’ roll is just incapable of speaking that kind of emotional language."

Says Malcolm Gladwell. He's teasing an upcoming podcast, and he doesn't name the "the saddest country song of all time." I haven't listened to country music all that much over the years, but I immediately assumed the song is "He Stopped Loving Her Today."

I guess I should wait until I can hear Gladwell's full argument about the difference between country and rock ’n’ roll, but his generalizations kind of irk me. I think what bothers me is the us-them of it and how it feels so much like the political liberal's distancing from the "deplorables" — those bitter clingers in their enclosed, close-knit world, those little people, so different from us — we who are thriving and flourishing in a very diverse, open world.

The Gladwell interview is mostly about something else, and I'm going to use that in the next post, so please, in this comments thread, only talk about the quote about the difference between country and rock ’n’ roll. Did it irk you too? For the same or a different reason? And is there any question that I've named the saddest country song?

Yes, it's not Springtime for Hitler anymore.

"Poll finds Trump’s standing weakened since springtime."

(Washington Post headline.)

NYT headline: "Soviet Veteran Who Met With Trump Jr. Is a Master of the Dark Arts."

The article is about Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian-American lobbyist.

What are the "dark arts" and how is he "a master"?

According to the first paragraph, Akhmetshin has often told journalists not to use email to send information that you want kept secret. That's something everyone should know though, right? That can't rate the "dark art" label? Just because someone as smart as Hillary Clinton didn't seem to know something doesn't mean it's ultra-sophisticated knowledge. It's something everyone functioning in the modern world ought to know.

A little further down, we see that Akhmetshin has done a lot of "opposition research" — he "was a skilled practitioner in the muscular Russian version of what in American politics is known as opposition research." Does it become a "dark art" because it's "muscular" and "Russian" and he's "skilled"? Opposition research is a normal part of American politics. What's "dark" about his "version" of it?

The article says that in Russia, opposition research uses "stolen or fabricated documents," "pilfering private information through hacking and physical intrusion into offices and filing cabinets." I think we have that in America too. And I'm not seeing Akhmetshin accused of doing any stealing or fabricating, only that he "has acquired a reputation for obtaining" these things. Again, is that unusual? The NYT is famous for publishing the Pentagon Papers. Is it practicing a "dark art" when it "obtains" information other people have broken the law to get?

Very well into the article we get this (boldface added):

There is no evidence that Mr. Akhmetshin’s efforts on behalf of any of his clients, whether they had close or hostile relations with the Kremlin, were illegal. Nor is there evidence that he personally engaged in the technical aspects of hacking himself....

Maybe he's so good at the "dark arts" that he leaves no evidence. Anyway, I'm disturbed by the headline and the straining to tar this man.

And I do understand that the phrase "dark arts" is used in the area of spying. For example, from 2013 (in ZDNet): "GCHQ's dark arts: Leaked documents reveal online manipulation, Facebook, YouTube snooping/A fresh set of documents leaked by Edward Snowden show how the UK intelligence agency can manipulate online polls and debates, spread messages, snoop on YouTube and track Facebook users."

But I'm uneasy and skeptical when I see this term used in a headline and the definition and support for it are not apparent. It's as if journalism is some sort of... dark art.

IN THE COMMENTS: Freeman Hunt said: "Trump Jr. met with a witch!"

The NYT crossword has BALLS and DICK at the top of the puzzle grid today.

And Rex Parker is angry.

Did he have a bet with his friends as to how much sexual material and innuendo he could cram in here. ARSE and SEX and KNELT and BLEW (!) and, I don't know, MELON? Ugh. SO BAD. Actually, more SAD than bad...

All the boldfaced words there are in the puzzle. The BALLS and DICK in the top row are actually AMAZEBALLS and DICK. DICK is clued as "Veep between Al and Joe." (ARSE, by the way, is clued as "Seat in Parliament.")

Here's the NYT column about the puzzle. The puzzle's author, Zach Spitz, is 20 years old. He writes:

I made this puzzle last summer, after watching too much of the Republican National Convention. I don’t think I consciously tried to make a Trump-themed puzzle...

Trump themed! Not frat-boy-sex themed. Trump themed.

... but let’s just say that my seed answers were TAX EVASION up top and TWEET STORM down below. Given that, I’m especially pleased with the bottom right corner, which turned out very ... presidential. 25-Across!

25-Across is SAD.

I can only assume that the editors sensed the vibe, because they changed my original clues for 25- and 28-Across [ATROCIOUS] and made them both “Deplorable.”...

"If you spend a lot of time in a harsh environment worrying about your safety, that’s the kind of stress that brings on illness and remodels your brain."

"That’s also true of a political climate in which groups of people endlessly hurl hateful words at one another, and of rampant bullying in school or on social media. A culture of constant, casual brutality is toxic to the body, and we suffer for it. That’s why it’s reasonable, scientifically speaking, not to allow a provocateur and hatemonger like Milo Yiannopoulos to speak at your school. He is part of something noxious, a campaign of abuse.... On the other hand, when the political scientist Charles Murray argues that genetic factors help account for racial disparities in I.Q. scores, you might find his view to be repugnant and misguided, but it’s only offensive. it is offered as a scholarly hypothesis to be debated, not thrown like a grenade. There is a difference between permitting a culture of casual brutality and entertaining an opinion you strongly oppose.... [W]e should have open conversations and vigorous debate about controversial or offensive topics. But we must also halt speech that bullies and torments. From the perspective of our brain cells, the latter is literally a form of violence."

Writes psychology professor Lisa Feldman Barrett, author of "How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain," in a NYT op-ed titled "When Is Speech Violence?"

No comments permitted on that piece for some reason. I'd like to see some responses from other experts on the brain.

I mean, isn't all our hearing, thinking, and remembering done with brain cells? It's freaky, if you think about it, the way everyone who speaks to you is doing something deep inside your most precious internal organ, at the cellular level, but it's just crazy — my brain cells are getting remodeled by this thought — to think that everyone who says something to you is having a physical impact on you, the equivalent of a touching, and that those who speak in a way that isn't nice enough are committing physical violence.

By the way, the NYT doesn't say this, but Lisa Feldman Barrett was (if Wikipedia is correct) born and educated in Canada, where free speech is less well valued and protected.

"A self-professed 'slow' mathematician, Mirzakhani’s colleagues describe her as ambitious, resolute and fearless in the face of problems others would not, or could not, tackle."

"She denied herself the easy path, choosing instead to tackle thornier issues. Her preferred method of working on a problem was to doodle on large sheets of white paper, scribbling formulas on the periphery of her drawings. Her young daughter described her mother at work as 'painting.' 'You have to spend some energy and effort to see the beauty of math,' she told one reporter. In another interview, she said of her process: 'I don’t have any particular recipe [for developing new proofs] … It is like being lost in a jungle and trying to use all the knowledge that you can gather to come up with some new tricks, and with some luck you might find a way out.'"

From the Stanford University press release, about the death — at the age of 40 — of Maryam Mirzakhani, the only woman ever to have won the Fields Medal.

(I chose the quote for the title in spite of its bad grammar error. I don't know why an important university, delivering profound and ponderous news, would not take great care to copy edit, but that's how it is.)

Vogue Magazine apologizes for saying "Gigi Hadid and Zayn Malik are Part of a New Generation Embracing Gender Fluidity."

The Daily News reports.

"The story was intended to highlight the impact the gender-fluid, non-binary communities have had on fashion and culture," the statement read. "We are very sorry the story did not correctly reflect that spirit - we missed the mark. We do look forward to continuing the conversation with greater sensitivity."...

Throughout the article, Hadid and Malik are quoted engaging in light chit-chat about how they enjoy going through each other's closets and finding new pieces to wear, regardless of whether they were marketed to men or women.

"I like (your shirt)," Malik says to Hadid. "And if it's tight on me, so what? It doesn't matter if it was made for a girl."

"Totally. It's not about gender," Hadid responds. "It's about like, shapes. And what feels good on you that day. And anyway, it's fun to experiment."

So what exactly did Vogue do wrong here? It seems Hadid and Malik are not real gender-fluid people, but just a couple of kids wearing each other's clothes.  I'm not seeing the word "appropriation," but it seems like an appropriation problem. Gender fluidity must be understood as an inward condition, and your inside should match your outside or you are just playing with appearances.

Of course, Vogue is a fashion magazine, and fashion really is about the outside, but it's often the case that you speak about fashion as an expression of what you are inside. And yet fashion is not always about getting the inside to match the outside. Sometimes one dresses against one's inner feelings. Fashion magazines often rave about a very feminine woman in menswear tailoring or a tomboy-type suddenly getting up in a frou-frou dress.

Isn't it funny that the excitement about gender fluidity is manifesting itself in disciplining other people about keeping strict conformity between interior and exterior? You'd think fluidity would take us somewhere liberating, but it seems to bring new censoriousness and restriction.

But I do understand how irritating it is when fashion magazines pick up on some new social phenomenon, something you think has substance and depth, and turn it into a lightweight trend for the pretty people to have their shallow fun with.

Here's how my favorite fashion blog — Tom & Lorenzo — reacted to the cover story. Just a bunch of pictures (including Hadid and Malik standing in water wearing horrendous orange-brown corduroy suits). The top-rated comment over there — where the comments are excellent — is: "they are both HIGHLY ridiculous, but I love them. I'm iranian-american and it's nice to see these two -- both half middle-eastern, zayn open about his muslim faith -- being adorable and in love. and for real that track jacket portrait is hilarious."

Oh! The gender-fluidity police went after a Muslim! A crash in the crossroads of intersectionality.

At the Impudent Flower Café...

... you can talk about whatever you like, including which flowers you like and dislike. Do you like those lilies? They're huge, by the way, and, right now, all over my favorite local garden, Allen Centennial Garden. I don't find them aesthetically pleasing, not in the garden anyway. They look like they belong in a flower shop or a church. And I loathe the colors, a combination that might be found in a poorly tended bathroom wastebasket.

And perhaps you need a bathroom wastebasket, crickets for your ice cream, an LED pumpkin, or a dufflebag that can stand up to getting hurled over a nontransparent wall. If so, consider using The Althouse Amazon Portal.

The most interesting observation in "Talking Donald Trump: A Sociolinguistic Study of Style, Metadiscourse, and Political Identity."

He doesn't tend to begin sentences with "well." (WaPo link.)

Trump started his sentences with “well” less frequently than other Republican contenders during the 2016 GOP primary debates, [said Jennifer Sclafani, an associate teaching professor in Georgetown University’s Department of Linguistics]....

“When we hear ‘well’ coming from other candidates, we’re more likely to perceive their responses as being dodgy,” she said. “And when we hear no ‘well’ from Donald Trump, we don’t notice that there is no ‘well’ there, but by contrast he comes off as sounding more straightforward and more direct.”

"The grasshoppers add a nice crunch and subtle spice to the sundae, which is boozy and delicious."

"It’s actually the perfect vehicle to try bugs for the first time, as the sugar rush and comforting nature of ice cream soften the blow."

Annoying thing about the linked article: Using the words "crickets" and "grasshoppers" interchangeably.

IN THE COMMENTS: tcrosse wrote:

Recently I took a friend with only a high school degree to lunch. Insensitively, I led her into a gourmet sandwich shop. Suddenly I saw her face freeze up as she was confronted with sandwiches named “Cockroach” and “Cicada” and ingredients like grasshoppers, crickets and a locust baguette. I quickly asked her if she wanted to go somewhere else and she anxiously nodded yes and we ate Mexican.

"Expansive, engaging, even at times ebullient...a loose, good-humored side of Mr. Trump" — described in the NYT today.

... in an article by Mark Landler and Maggie Haberman title "Dropping the Bluster, Trump Revives Banter With Reporters."

It was a loose, good-humored side of Mr. Trump that the public rarely sees amid the fusillade of angry speeches and venomous tweets that have characterized the president’s first six months in the White House. And it came to light only because he retroactively put the session on the record, asking a reporter the next morning why she had not quoted his remarks....

In some ways, Mr. Trump has reversed the usual dichotomy between the public and private president.

“One of the great differences between Trump and more successful politicians, like J.F.K. and F.D.R., is that they would vent their spleen in private, but in public, they would project a more humorous and civilized face,” said Robert Dallek, a presidential historian....

He's getting some great press from the NYT here. But maybe it's a trick. Loosen him up, get him on record. He'll speak freely and... well, what? What will be worse than what he already says in rallies and on Twitter? I don't know, but this made me laugh:

For reporters who covered Mr. Trump before he became president, there was a familiar discursive rhythm to his remarks.... They ranged from quirky boasts... They revealed a man getting a crash course in the world... but one who still sees things through a real estate prism.... And they showed someone who recognizes that his observations occasionally edge into the surreal. “As crazy as that sounds,” Mr. Trump said, after explaining why the border wall with Mexico needed to be transparent: to prevent drug dealers from throwing 60-pound sacks of drugs over it and hitting unsuspecting Americans on their heads.

I read that and wanted to tell Meade why Trump thinks the wall needs to be transparent and I was laughing so hard I could not say the word "heads."

IN THE COMMENTS: Bob Boyd points to this CNN article from a few months ago: "Drug-slinging catapult seized on US-Mexico border."

Accident or staged publicity stunt? Does the artist benefit from this "selfie domino" that is said to destroy $200,000 of artwork?

There's video of the incident:



Very entertaining (if it's really an accident).

The NYT carries the story — of a show I don't think it would have covered otherwise — under the headline "Oops! A Gallery Selfie Gone Wrong Causes $200,000 in Damage." Which got my attention. Why was 1 row of that exhibit — which looks easily replicable — worth $200,000?

The video, which went up Thursday, "has racked up nearly 300,000 views," according to the NYT on Friday. Right now, it has over 2 million views, including mine, and I'm encouraging you to have yours.

It is possible this was staged. The video was uploaded by someone who claims to know [the artist Simon] Birch and its description ends with a plug: “The rest of The 14th Factory is one of its kind. .... Go visit before it closes end of July (or before a few more pieces break).”

But in an email, Mr. Birch said it was a true accident. Still, he said, he would not be putting signs up urging visitors to be careful. “We trust people.” Mr. Birch said. “Crowns are fragile things. They are symbols of power. Perhaps it’s ironic and meaningful that they fell.”

If it adds meaning for the plinths to topple and the crowns to break, that supports the theory that the incident was intended. Even if the artist didn't stage that particular woman's behavior, the whole place seems staged for something like that to happen, with video, the news stories, and the artist's quote about how meaningful it all is.

The selfie angle is extremely popular with new media, because what's this world coming to, what's wrong with these kids today?

The NYT has run 1,186 stories with the word "selfie" and 1,185 of them are post-2012. (The one outlier is a story about Chinese prisoners from 1971, and that's just a false positive. The word isn't really there. The OED has the word originating in Australia, first detected in an online forum in 2002: "Sorry about the focus, it was a selfie."

Museum selfies are a special newsworthy category. The NYT has 187 stories with the words "museum" and "selfie." I haven't counted how many of those are about problems caused by museum/gallery visitors taking selfie, but obviously it's something the NYT is following (thus making it predictable that selfie-caused damage to artwork will get publicity).

In the "Oops!... $200,000 in Damage" article, the NYT goes on to tell us of other incidents, beginning with this one:

Our Los Angeles woman is hardly alone in the annals of the selfie-clumsy. At the “Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors” exhibition at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, a huge hit featuring immersive mirrors, part of the museum closed for three days after a patron shattered a glowing LED pumpkin in February.

I'm singling that one out, because it goes with a hilarious correction at the end of the article:

An earlier version of this article misstated the value of a glowing LED pumpkin that was shattered in February at the Hishhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington. The value was negligible; the pumpkin was not worth $800,000.

Ha! If the damned pumpkin was overvalued by a factor of — what? — 200,000, maybe the NYT should rethink that assertion of "$200,000 in Damage" in its headline. Compare it to my headline: "said to destroy...."

And, I mean, look at that video. The crowns don't break. (What are they made of?) The plinths can be set right again. What damage is there at all? Notice that the voices on the video don't seem the slightest bit upset at the incident. Why did the NYT pass along this patently spurious number as a fact rather than an assertion?

But I will give the NYT credit for not working Donald Trump into the story. The fragility of power, the meaningful falling. That had to be tempting.

At the Mendota Café...

... you can talk all night.

(And remember The Althouse Amazon Portal if you've got some shopping to do.)

"Texas has always had a burlesque side to its politics."

"The columnist Molly Ivins made a national reputation as a humor writer by lampooning the people we elect to office. One of my favorites in this category was Mike Martin, a state representative from Longview. In 1981, someone shotgunned the trailer he lived in during his months in Austin. Martin was inside, and was slightly injured. He declared that the shooting was in reprisal for an investigation he was pursuing involving a satanic cult. Later, his cousin admitted that he had fired the weapon at Martin’s behest, ostensibly to gain Martin sympathy votes. (Martin was running for reëlection.) Martin fled Austin, but, as Ivins noted, the police 'tracked him to earth at his momma’s house, where he was found hiding in the stereo cabinet.' She added, 'He always did want to be the Speaker.'"

From "America’s Future Is Texas/With right-wing zealots taking over the legislature even as the state’s demographics shift leftward, Texas has become the nation’s bellwether," by Lawrence Wright (in The New Yorker). I'm just quoting a paragraph I found very interesting (even before I got to the spectacular punchline). The title and subtitle of the article are a far more accurate indication of what's in the big article.

"An in-depth analysis of the false allegations and misleading claims made against the 45th President since his inauguration."

At Snopes!

Broadly speaking, most of the falsehoods levelled against Trump fall into one or more of four categories, each of them drawing from and feeding into four public personas inhabited by the President. They are:

• Donald Trump: International Embarrassment
• Trump the Tyrant
• Donald Trump: Bully baby
• Trump the Buffoon.

Some of these claims are downright fake... But the rest... provide a fascinating insight into the tactics and preoccupations of the broad anti-Trump movement.... Generally speaking, we discovered that they are characterized and driven by four types of errors of thought:

• Alarmism
• A lack of historical context or awareness
• Cherry-picking of evidence (especially visual evidence)
• A failure to adhere to Occam’s Razor — the common-sense understanding that the simplest explanation for an event or behavior is the most likely.

Much detail at the link.

At the Greenhouse Café...

... you can talk about anything you want.

(And here's where I encourage you to use The Althouse Amazon Portal when you do your shopping.)