"This is classic Act V behavior. The forces are being picked off and the tyrant is holed up in his castle and..."

"... he’s growing increasingly anxious and he feels insecure and he starts blustering about his legitimate sovereignty and he starts accusing the opposition of treason.... If there are these analogies between classic literature and society as it’s operating right now, then that should give us some big cause for concern this December. We’re approaching the end of the play here and that’s where catastrophe always comes." 

Said Jeffrey R. Wilson, author of "Shakespeare and Trump," quoted in "Trump’s Final Days of Rage and Denial/The last act of the Trump presidency has taken on the stormy elements of a drama more common to history or literature than a modern White House" (NYT).

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The Trump rally in Georgia.

You can watch here:

"The fashion pendulum inevitably swung away from giant sunglasses into almost comically tiny territory, which means it's just about time for that bug-eyed look to return."

Fashionista explains fashion succinctly. 

Everything that goes out of style is just waiting around in exile until its badness has ripened into oblivion and somebody cool can then wear it and make it sing again. In this case, with the giant bug-eye sunglasses, we've got the Olsen twins looking just perfect and making you think you can wear those things again. 

Meanwhile, what's been in style becomes seeable as ridiculous, which it always was, and the least cool people are the last to notice, which sends these things off into exile where they can wait until they're forgotten again. So save your "comically tiny" sunglasses — if you were ever in fashion enough to have acquired them — because you'll get the cue some day that they're snazzy again.

James Corden denounced for doing "gayface" in the Netflix movie of the Broadway show "The Prom."

Gone are the days when a nongay actor won praise for playing a gay person. I guess this is like the way they don't stage "Othello" with a white actor in dark makeup and that old-time performance would be called "blackface." A nongay actor playing gay is doing "gayface." 

But what's the gay equivalent of dark makeup? Arguably, it's worse than a white actor putting on dark makeup to play a black person, which is mimicking an objective, outward trait. It's an affectation of stereotypical gestures and speech patterns and so forth. 

What do you need to do to read as gay? Has the answer become just don't do it?

I'm reading "James Corden Under Fire For ‘The Prom’ Performance: 'The Worst Gayface in a Long, Long Time'" (Decider). Here's the trailer. Corden is the actor playing a fat gay man. I don't think he's in what might be called "fatface" (that is, he's actually fat and not wearing a fat suit, I believe).

 

Here's the Vanity Fair review by Richard Lawson: "James Corden Should Have Been Banned from The Prom/Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman are merely wasted in Netflix’s Broadway musical adaptation—but Corden's performance is insulting." 

Corden, who is straight, is so bad in The Prom—somehow both appalling and terminally bland—that it had me thinking maybe the hardliners were right along. Forget the whole case-by-case thing: No more straight actors playing gay men until the sins of The Prom are properly atoned for. [The director, Ryan] Murphy, a gay man, has led some straight actors into fertile gay territory before.... But Corden, flitting and lisping around in the most uninspired of caricatures, misses all potential for nuance, and thus never finds even a hint of truth in the role. And this is in a movie that’s supposed to be about empowering queer people!

It's hard to believe that the era of straight actors playing gay people is over. Look at all the actors who have in very recent years won awards for doing just that. Maybe the problem is the stereotypical gay character. It's one thing for Rami Malek, a straight man, to play Freddie Mercury, a gay man — a grand narrative about a specific person — but quite something else to have a generic gay guy clowning for cheap laughs.

"California certified its presidential election Friday and appointed 55 electors pledged to vote for Democrat Joe Biden, officially handing him the Electoral College majority needed to win the White House...."

"The electors named Friday will meet Dec. 14, along with counterparts in each state, to formally vote for the next president. Most states have laws binding their electors to the winner of the popular vote in their state, measures that were upheld by a Supreme Court decision this year. There have been no suggestions that any of Biden’s pledged electors would contemplate not voting for him. Results of the Electoral College vote are due to be received, and typically approved, by Congress on Jan. 6. Although lawmakers can object to accepting the electors’ votes, it would be almost impossible for Biden to be blocked at that point." 

The NY Post reports.

Why is ice hockey the one youth sport producing outbreaks of coronavirus?

"One critical way hockey differs from other contact team sports is how players do line changes — substitutions of groups of players — and are expected to sprint for nearly the whole time they are on the ice. Experts say it probably leads to heavier breathing, resulting in more particles being exhaled and inhaled. Jose-Luis Jimenez, an air engineer at the University of Colorado, speculated that the spaces occupied by rinks keep the virus suspended, perhaps six to nine feet, just above the ice. Similar outbreaks have been documented in other chilly venues — meat processing factories and at a curling match earlier in the pandemic. 'I suspect the air is stratified,' he said. 'Much like in a cold winter night, you have these inversions where the cold air with the virus which is heavier stays closer to the ground. That gives players many more chances to breathe it in.'...... Surrounded by plexiglass not only to prevent errant pucks but also to keep the airflow stable so the ice can remain cold, there’s little ventilation and humidity by design in ice rinks.... In higher humidity, the virus attaches to bigger droplets that drop faster to the ground, decreasing the chance that someone will inhale them. The drier the air, the faster droplets will evaporate into smaller-size particles that stay in the air, increasing the concentration..."

WaPo reports. 

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"The old Southern Democrats maintained the allegiance of poor whites by making sure those poor whites felt they could look down on blacks."

"The modern Democratic Party maintains the allegiance of ­upper-middle-class whites by making sure they can look down on lower-class whites. By ­humanizing those lower-class whites, Netflix’s 'Hillbilly Elegy' calls the whole enterprise into question. Humanizing the working class was once what Democrats were about. But no longer.... In America, class war is disguised as cultural war, and cultural war is often waged under the guise of fighting racism. Thus, the Deplorables had to be cast as racists...."

Writes Glenn Reynolds at "‘Hillbilly Elegy’ critics show they still despise ‘deplorables’" (NY Post).

"This might have been a holy-shit speech, but it came in the 'yeah, whatever' phase of Trump’s lame-duck Presidency...."

"The temptation is to look away, to move on, to cringe and avert your gaze. That is exactly what the Republicans in the Senate, who have stood by Trump through impeachment and other ignominies, have done this week, pivoting so seamlessly into bashing the new Biden Administration that they never even stopped to acknowledge its existence.... Do Republicans think they have a free pass to pretend that the past four years never happened? Do they think they can simply return to the partisan status quo ante, complaining about nasty tweets and potential conflicts of interest, without anyone bringing up the current President? I don’t think this was what Biden meant when he said, during the campaign, that his Presidency would mark a return to normal."

From "The President Is Acting Crazy, so Why Are We Shrugging It Off?/The dangerous 'yeah, whatever' phase of Trump’s lame-duck Presidency" by Susan B. Glasser in The New Yorker.

With Kamala Harris looking on and imperiously smiling, Biden reveals a plan to suddenly "develop some disease and say I have to resign."

Joe Biden is asked about his disagreements with Kamala Harris on certain issues:

"Like I told Barack, if I reach something where there's a fundamental disagreement we have based on a moral principle, I'll develop some disease and say I have to resign." pic.twitter.com/SLcvrwaPCA

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) December 4, 2020

I don't want to criticize a bona fide speech impediment, but it is valuable to notice what triggers an intense bout of stammering. It's right when he's about to reveal too much.

The elegance of Edward Snowden.

Mr. President, if you grant only one act of clemency during your time in office, please: free Julian Assange. You alone can save his life. @realDonaldTrump

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) December 3, 2020

"START THE DAY HERE: Hackers are targeting the vaccine supply chain. Iran eyes boosting uranium enrichment. Purple coffee goes viral."

CNN tells me where to start the day. Too late. I'm already 2 cups of nonpurple coffee into the day. Just getting around to looking at a tab I opened up an hour ago: "CNN Exclusive: Biden says he will ask Americans to wear masks for the first 100 days he's in office." 

Apparently, Joe Biden did an interview (with Jake Tapper) on CNN yesterday, and that's the hottest news item that could be extracted — we will be requested to wear a mask, but only for 100 days, and only beginning over a month from now. Why not start now? Because Biden isn't President yet? But he's just going to ask for our cooperation, so what's the difference?!

There's also new info about Biden's foot:

"The little pup dropped the ball in front of me for me to grab the ball ... and I grabbed the ball like this, and he ran, and I was joking running after him to grab his tail. And what happened was that he slid on a throw rug, and I tripped on the rug he slid on. That's what happened," Biden said with a smile. "Not a very exciting story."

Don't grab a dog's tail! Isn't that one of the first this you teach children about how to behave around a dog? Yes:

It’s probably one of the first things you learn when you are introduced to a dog: don’t pull his tail! A dog’s tail is an appendage, not just a bunch of hair shaking from side to side like a cheerleader’s ponytail....

Oh! And I was just thinking about Biden going after the hair of young women!

"Christ is king in this country. We don’t want illegal aliens from Mexico or outer space. So let’s tear this bitch down."

Says the man in the video that I found through Vice, which says "Mysterious Monolith Update: Racists Destroy California Monolith, Proclaim Christ Superior to Space Aliens/A group of men shouting 'Christ is King' and 'America First' destroyed a new monolith and replaced it with a wooden cross."

Notice that this was not the Utah monolith that we were talking about recently. It's a different monolith, in California. And I don't know how to tell whether these are real racists or pranksters. To my ear, the words I've quoted in the post title seem like a joke, and who would make such a joke... while tearing down a dumb sculpture in the desert? 

Vice calls them "a group of right-wing young men."

"Based on your risk profile, we believe you’re in line behind 118.5 million people across the United States. When it comes to Wisconsin, we think you’re behind 2.1 million others who are at higher risk in your state."

"And in Dane County, you’re behind 150,900 others. If the line in Wisconsin was represented by about 100 people, this is where you’d be standing...." 

I took the survey at "Find Your Place in the Vaccine Line" (NYT). Here's a portion of the line they've visualized for me:

I would not have put myself ahead of essential workers, teachers, and prisoners, because I am free to self-isolate.

"It's getting better all the time."

 

It's a podcast. 

Topics: "An old aphorism, comic strips, John Lennon, toxic positivity, Biden’s rhetoric, Biden’s dogs, Cher’s elephant, emotional support animals, COVID restrictions on religious schools and figures on New Yorker covers." 

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