"The ochre tones of insect politics."

The podcast is up: 

 

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Fall color at dawn.

"Fifty years ago, this wreck must have been a thing of wonder. Today, what’s left is tragic."

"Trawlers dragging nets for fish and scallops have bulldozed everything. Cannon have been dragged 300 metres away. If trawlers can throw two-ton guns around like matchsticks, then the wooden hull and small finds have no chance. Archaeologists call deep-sea wrecks time-capsules. This wreck looks like a war zone. 'Wrecks should be used as museums for memory and education. In this case, the future’s chances of bearing witness to the horrors of the slave trade are fading fast. It’s a double tragedy.'"

From "Wreck of the world’s oldest slave ship at risk of destruction/BBC documentary shows fragile sunken vessel in which enslaved Africans died is being destroyed by trawlers" (The Guardian).

A wreck is not a total wreck but a thing that can itself be wrecked. 

"A Loyola University graduate took part of her bar exam while in labor, gave birth, and then finished her test...."

"Brianna Hill, 28, was taking part one of the two-part test on Oct. 5 when her water broke. The test was administered remotely this year amid the novel coronavirus pandemic... 'I started the second section and 15 to 20 minutes in, I started having contractions,' Hill said. 'I had already asked for an accommodation to get up and go to the bathroom because I was 38 weeks pregnant and they said I'd get flagged for cheating. I couldn't leave the view of the camera. I was determined,' Hill added as to why she didn't stop the exam after showing signs of labor....   After Hill finished day one of the exam, she and her husband, Cameron Andrew, eventually left for West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park, Illinois. A few hours later, Hill and Andrew's first child, a boy named Cassius Phillip Andrew, arrived, weighing 6 pounds, 5 ounces. Meanwhile, Hill was still scheduled to finish part two of the Bar the following day, on Oct. 6. Hill said her midwife and hospital staff reserved a private room for her on the labor and delivery floor so she could complete the exam.... 'The whole time my husband and I were talking about how I wanted to finish the test and my midwife and nurses were on board. There just wasn’t another option in my mind.... I took the rest of the test in there and was even able to nurse the baby in between sessions! Obviously, I really hope I passed but I’m mostly just proud that I pushed through and finished.'"

5Chicago reports.

This is what women do. It's nice to get a news story as if this is way off the norm, but I believe this is how women from time immemorial have fit pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, and childcare into a life full of other work. (And I'm saying this as someone who went through pregnancy and a C-section in my last year of law school.)

But congratulations to Ms. Hill. I can certainly see how, having studied for the bar exam, she felt determined to get that thing done when the day arrived and not shift to the alternative task of rescheduling and continuing to keep all the minute memories of picky little doctrines alive in her head while she was losing sleep caring for a newborn.

And welcome to the world, little CPA.

"They were told hours earlier to shelter in place upon calling 911 as temperatures plummeted below freezing... 'They were literally worried about being blown off the mountain.'"

From "Veteran journalist dies after 50-foot fall on Maine mountain" (NY Post).

"People like me – who have Asperger’s syndrome and autism, who don’t follow social codes – we are not stuck in this social game of avoiding important issues."

"We dare to ask difficult questions. It helps us see through the static while everyone else seems to be content to role-play." 

Said Greta Thunberg, quoted in "Greta Thunberg: ‘Only people like me dare ask tough questions on climate’" (The Guardian).

Thunberg believes her condition helps her look at the world and see what others cannot, or will not, see. She dislikes small talk and socialising, preferring to stick to routines and stay “laser-focused”. 

And her ability to concentrate fiercely is acknowledged by her father, Svante Thunberg. “She can read a book and remember everything in it,” he says ruefully. ... 

“For many years, people – especially children – were very mean to me. I was never invited to parties or celebrations. I was always left out. I spent most of my time socialising with my family – and my dogs.”...

 Meanwhile, Greta — who is not an American citizen — endorses Joe Biden:

I never engage in party politics. But the upcoming US elections is above and beyond all that.
From a climate perspective it’s very far from enough and many of you of course supported other candidates. But, I mean…you know…damn!
Just get organized and get everyone to vote #Biden https://t.co/gFttFBZK5O

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) October 10, 2020

Finally! The steaming pile of insect politics I've been waiting for!

I saw that the NY Post hated it — "'SNL’ somehow screwed up the VP debate fly" — but I — an intense fan of the Jeff Goldblum version of "The Fly" — think it's truly great:

 

That guy in the Post objected to the use of Jim Carrey as Joe Biden combined with Jeff Goldblum — characterized it as "this strange, aspiring 1980s East Village performance art piece." I'll just guess he doesn't know the movie "The Fly." How can you have missed "The Fly"? And I mean the Jeff Goldblum "Fly." Nothing against the Vincent Price "Fly." That's also great. But come on, if you're going to review American satire, there's a certain baseline of experience you need to have in your brain. 

Kudos to "SNL"! Every one of the actors did a fine job and the material was even politically balanced. The only thing I'd change is the color of Kate MacKinnon's lipstick. She played the moderator Susan Page in pretty bright red lipstick, but Susan Page had on a color that made me laugh:

Just a little missed opportunity. They perked Susan Page up a bit. And Kate MacKinnon is already way perked up compared to the hilariously dull Susan Page. Anyway... other than that — excellent. Thanks, "SNL"! 

ADDED: Here's the very best thing in "The Fly" — the part about "insect politics" (and by they way, Kate MacKinnon would make a great Geena Davis, if the Geena Davis part had found its way into the sketch):

 

"Have you ever heard of insect politics? Neither have I. Insects... don't have politics. They're very... brutal. No compassion, no compromise. We can't trust the insect. I'd like to become the first... insect politician. You see, I'd like to, but... I'm afraid, uh... I'm saying... I'm saying I - I'm an insect who dreamed he was a man and loved it. But now the dream is over... and the insect is awake... I'm saying... I'll hurt you if you stay."

("SNL" did not use the "insect politics" material.)

At the Sunrise Café...

... you can write about anything you like.

On the Overlode Trail in Blue Mounds.

Beautiful fall colors today. Perfect weather. Sublime conversation. What did you talk about today? 

"We, the Unimpeachably Great Hooples."

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"We don't want to make 'em too unhappy, James... Would you teach all the action kids... would you teach us all to do the James Brown boogaloo?"

That's James Brown in 1964, found in an NPR article from last May, "Who Owns 'Boogaloo'?" which I got sidelined into while trying to find out if there was a special 1970s meaning to the word "boogaloo." This is a question I had researching the song "All the Young Dudes"... and let's take a minute to listen to Mott the Hoople: 

 

Wikipedia informs us that David Bowie — who wrote the song — offered "All the Young Dudes" to Mott the Hoople after they rejected "Suffragette City." "All the Young Dudes" was a big hit single for Mott the Hoople — their biggest. The answer to the question what's a "hoople" is: "Hooples... 'make the whole game possible, Christmas Clubs especially, politics, advertising agencies, pay toilets, even popes and mystery novels.' Obviously they're squares...."

But I'm thinking about "All the Young Dudes" this morning because I used the song title as a framework from the title of my podcast yesterday: "All the dangerous dudes are on the other side." There are some tricks to devising titles for episodes of the Althouse podcast, but I use things that are in the podcast and fit them together, sometimes using the form of a song title. In that case, the podcast discussed the Google Adsense policy banning "dangerous and derogatory" material, the line from the Wisconsin protests "All the assholes are on the other side," and the use of the word "dude" by a man who was arrested in an alleged plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan. Approving comments this morning, I saw that Joe Smith had recognized the presence of "All the Young Dudes" in the podcast title, and it made me want to read and understand the lyrics, something I've never done, even though I'd listened to the song — the David Bowie version — as I was working on the podcast.

Reading the lyrics at Genius.com, realizing I've never paid attention to the words, I'm surprised to see "boogaloo" in the chorus:

All the young dudes

Carry the news

Boogaloo dudes

The annotation says "In the 50s, “boogaloo” referred to a type of Latin music. But by the 70s, it referred to this..." And "this" is a video that is currently unavailable! And that's why I was looking for the 70s meaning of "boogaloo." I lived through the 70s. My memory of it is that the boogaloo was a dance. I'm stunned to see James Brown doing it all the way back in 1963. The reason the show host says "We don't want to make 'em too unhappy, James" is that after James did a joyous boogaloo, he was asked to do a sad boogaloo, which of course, he could also do and did so well that it could be a joke that he could make us — or whoever the "action kids" were — unhappy... and not just unhappy but too unhappy.

I'm just going to guess that the 70s meaning, the one referred to in the song, is the sexual meaning you can see at Urban Dictionary:

What that says about the right-wing terrorists of the 2020s is something I might riff on when I read this post out loud later today for the podcast. 

ADDED: The NPR article says the James Brown clip is from 1964 (or 1963), so I excluded the possibility that "the action kids" were the extras on the Dick Clark TV show "Where the Action Is," because that wasn't on TV that early. The years in the 1960s are very fine-tuned in my memories! The show debuted in 1965, and, as Wikipedia verifies, the extras on the show were, in fact, referred to as "The Action Kids"! So James Brown is dancing in 1965 or later.

 

AND: And in the 1970s — as as Leo Sayer sang in the 70s — before you can eat, ya gotta dance like Fred Astaire:

In financial stress from the pandemic, "Museums Sell Picasso and Warhol, Embrace Diversity to Survive."

Bloomberg reports.

Museums are not only selling works long off the market but acquiring pieces by female, Black and Latino artists, and -- they hope -- gaining new visitors who will see themselves reflected in the hushed halls.... 

This week at Christie’s, Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York, sold its sole Jackson Pollock painting for $13 million and Springfield Museums in Massachusetts offloaded a Picasso for $4.4 million.... 

“Museums have amazing power,” [said Adam Levine, the new leader of the Toledo Museum of Art] “When we put something on the wall, it becomes unimpeachably great.” It also becomes unimpeachably valuable, and museums are under pressure to give power and value to those who’ve been underrepresented. Levine’s first acquisition was Black artist Bisa Butler’s large-scale quilted portrait of Frederick Douglass, whose title alludes to his speech to abolish slavery.

Oddly, Bloomberg fails to tell us the title, but let it be known that it refers to his "speech to abolish slavery." (By the way,  "speech to abolish slavery" is also bad writing.) I looked it up. It's called "The Storm, the Whirlwind, and the Earthquake" and it was made just this year. But once it's on a wall in the Toledo Museum of Art it's "unimpeachably great," so what an admirable acquisition by the museum!

Indeed, every acquisition of the museum is "unimpeachably great," at least in the amazing power of the mind of Adam Levine.

In Baltimore, the city’s encyclopedic museum is selling three signature works -- by Clyfford Still, Brice Marden and Warhol -- to raise $65 million.

These are all white men made unimpeachably great by the hanging of their painted rectangles on the walls of museums. Take them off the wall... and then what?! Dump them on the market — while all the other erstwhile great junk floods the market — and use the proceeds not to keep museum workers on the payroll — these people are losing their jobs like mad — but to heed the call of an "imperative" wafting through the cultural air:

A key Abstract Expressionist who spent the final decades of his life on a Maryland farm, Still gave his “157-G” painting to Baltimore as a gift. It’s estimated to sell for $12 million to $18 million and some funds are to be used to buy works by women and people of color. “The imperative to act and address decades of inaction around equality in the museum is enormously important,” said Christopher Bedford, museum director. He says the emphasis on diversity will “ensure that the story we are narrating is the full and true story.”

Yes, ensure, please, ensure. Here, Andy, quick, paint this: 

Ah! The fullness! The trueness! 

ADDED: I've replaced the link at the top of the post with one that shows various artworks, including the painting Clyfford Still gave to the Baltimore museum, presumably to establish his unimpeachable greatness:

Is the museum somehow ethically obligated to hang onto that, when it can be converted into a 4296-foot-tall stack of one dollar bills? That's my conceptual art: a 4296-foot-tall stack of one dollar bills — representing the low-end estimate of the sale price of that Clyfford Still — 12 million dollars.

At the Truth-and-Life Café...

 

 ... you can talk about whatever you like.

"The Plot Against Gretchen Whitmer Shows the Danger of Private Militias/These groups have no constitutional right to exist."

Let's read this NYT piece by Mary B. McCord, identified as "legal director for Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection and a visiting professor" and "the acting assistant attorney general for national security at the Department of Justice from 2016 to 2017."

The real target of this 25th Amendment talk is... Joe?!

Crazy Nancy Pelosi is looking at the 25th Amendment in order to replace Joe Biden with Kamala Harris. The Dems want that to happen fast because Sleepy Joe is out of it!!!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 9, 2020

In Wisconsin, the libertarian is polling at 4%. Very strange, considering how crucial the Biden/Trump choice is here.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports on the new Marquette poll: 

Biden leads Trump by 46% to 41% among likely voters surveyed, a shade better than his 4-point advantage last month. For the second poll in a row, Libertarian candidate Jo Jorgensen was backed by 4%.... The margin of error for the full sample was plus or minus 4.2%