"Go ahead, have a laugh, even if it is just for the camera.... Do something for others, but don't forget about #1. Yes, that is a vibrator. Gaze into your soul, but also stare into the abyss. That's joyful too."

(That was great, in my opinion.)

"It was very sexist — very sexist. People were doing crazy drugs at the time. I was oblivious. I just thought, 'Oh, wow! He's got a lot of energy!'"

Said Julia Louis-Drefus, quoted in "Julia Louis-Dreyfus opens up about her 'miserable' time on Saturday Night Live and its 'sexist' work environment" (Daily Mail). She was on SNL in the early 80s (along with Larry David, who, she tells us, hated it too).

There's no detail about what exactly was very sexist. That leap to talking about crazy drugs might be a clue or an excuse or a diversion. I'm actually pretty irritated with her for not expanding on the topic and naming names. It's a kind of #MeToo lite... very lite. Too lite to matter.

As for the drugs (quite apart from any sexism), the "oblivious" observation — "Oh, wow! He's got a lot of energy!" — is something that applies today. I'm thinking of my October 9th post, "Are almost all journalists on Adderall?" (The question is based on an assertion by Joe Rogan that almost all the journalists are on Adderall. And I said:

I like to know when someone I'm listening to is on drugs. If I don't know, and they are, they are stealing from me... [S]omebody taking drugs to get a lot of writing done? I want a warning before I spend some of my life's precious time absorbing their addled — Adderalled — verbiage. 

I don't want to be the oblivious one, like Julia Louis-Dreyfus — admiring someone for his energy while having her own energy sapped by the effort of keeping and putting up with this guy.

At the Sunset Café...

... yes, sunset!



You can talk about whatever you like.



And consider using the Althouse Portal to Amazon.

The actual sunset time today was 4:24 p.m., and that's the exact time of the second photograph. The first photograph was taken at 4:05.

Politics as high school.

ADDED: The most interesting thing here is that the show uses tropes from movies in which the viewer’s sympathy would be entirely with the character who is bullied, yet we are expected to side with the bullies, because the character getting the bullying is Trump. The audience takes the cue and enjoys the cruelty of bullies.

AND: I wonder how many people are like me and sympathize with Trump because he is bullied. I never liked Trump and I didn't vote for him, but the continual attacks on him make me sympathetic. If this were a movie, he would be the hero, and the attackers are the smug "cool" kids who will do anything and everything to humiliate him.

"But I’ve thought about the word 'hate' a lot. Not, as Nancy Pelosi said, in relation to being Catholic. But in relation to being a woman."

"The reason it upset me was that it seemed like a way to undercut legitimate concerns I had about the behavior of a president or would-be president by suggesting that strong emotions were clouding my judgment. It’s not that they are doing something wrong; it’s that you are an overwrought female. It evoked the old trope that women are vengeful and hysterical...."

Writes Maureen Dowd, in "Hating the Word ‘Hate’/Don’t mess with us, man" (NYT). It's a little hard to do the gender analysis on Pelosi's going ballistic on the word "hate," because we had Joe Biden going way over the top on the same day and getting at least as much mockery. But Dowd doesn't ignore the corresponding Biden story. She just pivots. Meanwhile, in Iowa...

In Iowa, meanwhile, surly Joe Biden erupted at an 83-year-old retired farmer who brought up Hunter Biden’s nepotistic payday from a Ukrainian energy company. The farmer had his facts twisted, mistakenly claiming that Biden had “sent” his son to work in Ukraine to sell “access” to the president....

Biden’s outburst — “You’re a damn liar, man,” he snapped — showed that he still thinks any questions about his son’s windfalls while he was vice president are out of line — even though Hunter himself has acknowledged using “poor judgment.”

It also showed that he has no answer for something that’s bound to be a big part of the general campaign, since it is at the heart of the crazy Rudy-Donny conspiracy theory that provoked the impeachment drive. If Joe Biden can’t handle an 83-year-old retired farmer without losing his cool, how can he handle a 73-year-old piranha?

Withholding $400 million in military aid to a fledging democracy under attack from Russia is in a different universe than making a quick buck off the Washington influence machine. But that farmer is not the only voter who feels a little queasy about Joe Biden not stopping Hunter from making a money grab in Ukraine while the vice president was pushing the Ukrainians to be less corrupt.

Notice that Dowd accepts that Hunter Biden made lots of money off his father's position — "windfalls," "a quick buck," "money grab." And she thinks the Iowa guy had a good question even if it was a little defective (in saying Biden sent his son). There are millions of others who want an answer to a legitimate question, and answering questions shouldn't depend on phrasing them exactly right. I agree with Dowd that Biden's response "showed that he has no answer."

"I admit that I am extremely fortunate to have had a chance to pre-order the kindlebook version on August 12, 2019 via Amazon of Barack and Joe: The Making of An Extraordinary Partnership...."

"Some of the features of this kindlebook that is Barack and Joe The Making of An Extraordinary Partnership: the dynamics between Biden and Obama even before the 2008 election, some history on how the vice president role was seen even before Biden became Vice President by 2008 with multiple examples given..., some of the multiple reasons why former President Obama chose Biden to run and eventually be Vice President by 2008, some background information on how some of the details of family played both direct and indirect roles in both Biden and Obama’s Presidential and Vice Presidential roles, some of the details and emotions surrounding the results around the positive outcome of the 2008 election results, some of the ways that the memoir Promise Me Dad by Joe Biden relates to multiple concepts referenced in this kindlebook, various photos and pictures depicting the theme of this kindlebook, and more."

From a strangely worded Amazon review of "Barack and Joe: The Making of an Extraordinary Partnership."

Why would you consider yourself "extremely fortunate" just "to have had a chance to pre-order the kindlebook"? Because others have lost the chance, now that the book is out, and you can just download it, you don't get the rewarding experience of pre-ordering?

Anyway... the book — which I can't believe anyone wants to read — is by Steven Levingston and came out in early October. I never saw a reference to it until today, when I saw it listed as one of the "50 notable works of nonfiction in 2019" in The Washington Post. Steven Levingston is the nonfiction editor of The Washington Post!

"The Post’s nonfiction book editor delves into pivotal moments in the groundbreaking Obama-Biden 'bromance.'"

Yeesh. Who writes that stuff? The dying metaphors are killing me: delves... pivotal... groundbreaking. 2 seem to be about digging in the dirt and one seems to be about carrying a sofa upstairs. And the 2 dirt ones don't even go together because "delves" gives me a picture of the author with a shovel, digging in the dirt like something Trump wanted Zelensky to do, and "groundbreaking" creates a picture of Joe and Barack wearing hardhats and doing something like this:



Oh, no! It's Trump again. That guy is everywhere. So get rid of both "dirt" metaphors and keep the pivoting. Here: Levingston looks at pivotal moments in the Obama-Biden bromance. And I'd just picture Joe and Barack doing something like this:

Sunrise, at 7:30.

Actual sunrise time was 7:17.

The dreamy loveliness of ice skating — presented in minimalist TikTok style.

"People have speculated that Speaker Pelosi or the party leadership asked me to resign because of the photos and the allegations about me. That could not be further from the truth."

Writes Katie Hill in "It’s Not Over After All/I overcame the desperation I felt after stepping down from Congress, and I’m still in the fight" in the NYT:

In fact, one of the most difficult moments during my resignation process was my phone call to the Speaker, a woman I admire more than anyone and whom I had come to love. She told me I didn’t have to do this, that the country needed me and that she wished I hadn’t made this decision, but she respected me and what I felt I needed to do. I told her what I told everyone else when I announced my resignation: that it was the right thing to do.

Do you believe that? I think she got the Al Franken treatment — forced out, and now, on the outside, really regretting it.

I knew it was the best decision for me, my family, my staff, my colleagues, my community... [I]n the days that followed... I would start shaking, crying, throwing up....

[W]hen it got dark I drew a bath, lit candles and brought over a bottle of wine. I laid there and thought about what I’d lost.... The bath water had gone cold. The wine bottle was empty. Suddenly and with total clarity, I just wanted it all to be over. I got up and looked for the box cutter. I couldn’t find it... and I got the paring knife and got back into the cold bath.... And I realized I couldn’t do it...  I don’t get to quit...

So the next day I put on my battle uniform: a red dress suit that my mom had bought me. I put on my war paint: bright red lipstick. I stepped up to that lectern and told the world that although my time in Congress was over, I wasn’t done....

The contemplation of suicide, with some knife-wielding action, is getting the most attention, I believe. But what I think is more important here is the pro-Pelosi propaganda, and I think it's no accident that the NYT is running this very long essay now about something that happened over a year ago. [CORRECTION: No! It was only last October.]

NOTE: I did not get caught up in the Katie Hill story last year. I only wrote about her after she resigned, and I said "Katie Hill shouldn't have resigned! She Frankened!" I said:

I think there's too much willingness to resign and get out of the way. You got elected by a set of people. Are they asking you to get out or are you letting members of Congress tell you to get out of their way? They're not you're constituents. Don't Franken!

ADDED: Well, I was wrong about when the Katie Hill defenestration happened, so I must turn my suspicion of the NYT way down. But I still do not believe the assertions about Pelosi, the woman Hill purports to "admire more than anyone."

I'm wary of things I'm told "could not be further from the truth." That's never true — that the asserted thing is the farthest thing from the truth. Why obviously exaggerate right at the point when you're pressuring us to believe you?

I'm catching up on Rudy Giuliani's tweets about Ukraine.

I won't do links for each tweet. Here's his Twitter page. I'm just crushing everything together. The relevant tweets are from December 5 to December 7.

Part of blogging is choosing what not to blog.

There's one thing in the last few days that so many people seemed to think needed to be blogged (or tweeted or Facebooked) about, and I knew not to be part of the virality. It's nothing that involved anyone dying or anything evil, just something where I could see people were accepting a cultural con and doing free PR for somebody. There's an additional development that makes it more obvious that it was that sort of thing, but many people are doing another post about that. I'm pleased with myself for passing on this story, which I won't identify because that's my point. I didn't let myself be used in someone else's promotion. Didn't do it before, and won't do it now.

ADDED: I said "I won't do it now," when "now" was 4:57 a.m., but I will do it now, at 2:58 p.m., because the post did get people guessing, and I want to recognize the winner, who posted at 8:11 a.m.  The winner is dustbunny, who said: "The duct-taped banana art scam."

At the Saturday Night Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

And please consider using the Althouse Portal to Amazon.

The photo shows a western view, 3 minutes after the official sunrise time.

"[M]oderate Democrats are worried that liberals in their own party are going to put forward articles of impeachment that are hard to vote for and even harder to explain voting for..."

"Democrats in politically difficult districts tend to favor writing charges that most closely hew to the Ukraine affair and might be most easy to explain to voters, while lawmakers from more solidly Democratic turf are feeling more adventurous and tend to want to reach out toward former special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe and other matters.... 'Judiciary’s not really reaching out to the people' whose political fates could rest on their impeachment votes, one senior Democratic aide close to party moderates said. 'There are 31 Democrats who are going to have to live, breathe and die this vote for the next year.'... Meanwhile Republican-aligned outside groups... have been trying to influence Democratic lawmakers by running advertisements and conducting polling in their districts..."

From "Why moderates are holding back on impeachment/Analysis: Some Democrats say they don't want to commit to articles they haven't seen" (NBC).

Phallic Outrage of the Day.

BREAKING: Photos show Trump's ridiculously large salt and pepper shakers

“Obama, Bush, and Clinton used the same size shakers as their guests.”

Solid reporting @businessinsider !

https://t.co/bnco2DqYtS

— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) December 7, 2019

"7,700 people have lost their jobs so far this year in a media landslide."

Business Insider reports. Wow! If you're hearing a lot of desperation channeled at you through media, maybe it's the media's own pain.

At the link, there's a ton of specific detail about numerous media entities.

Elon Musk — sued for defamation by the man he called "pedo guy" — has won at trial.

CNBC reports.

In his testimony during the defamation trial this week, Musk apologized to [Vernon] Unsworth and said he did not believe the cave explorer was a pedophile....

Musk and his employees developed a device that they billed as a mini-submarine or escape pod, and which they thought could transport the [trapped Thai] kids out of the caves.... After the rescue, Unsworth was asked during a television interview on CNN about the mini-sub and Musk. He said Musk could “stick his submarine where it hurts,” and viewed the escape pod as “just a PR stunt.” Lashing back, Musk called the caver a “pedo guy”...

Musk’s lead attorney, Alex Spiro, in closing arguments characterized Musk’s offensive tweets as merely insulting and not statements of fact.

He argued that "pedo guy" was just a slang way to say "creepy old guy."

Spiro also said that Unsworth was telling the court, “I’ve been horribly damaged. Pay me lots of money,” but then failed to prove he had been damaged at all. Referencing the fact that Unsworth had earned a little money for speaking engagements since the cave rescue, he asked, “You wanna award damages? How about one dollar?” And he implored the court not to engage in policing speech.