... you can talk about whatever you like... including Trump's CPAC speech, which I'll probably write about in the morning. It's my quiet time now. Probably. So: Good evening.
The speech hasn't started yet... late for some reason... but you can watch live here.
"For others, its contents may function as edible insurance policies during lean years. And there are countless other reasons for a second fridge: frequent entertaining; storing kimchi or other specialties that take time to age; a tendency toward hoarding; or simply the cost of getting rid of a refrigerator.... The Vincents have passed on their love of multiple refrigerators to their daughter, Robyn Penniegraft, 46, who lives next door. Between the two households, they have five refrigerators for five people — not to mention other appliances such as an outdoor wine chiller and a stand-alone freezer from 1972, two years before Ms. Penniegraft was born. Appliances tend to arrive in 10-year intervals to the Vincent household — the 1982 fridge, the 1992 one. Ms. Penniegraft keeps a stand freezer and her second refrigerator in the family’s garage, side by side like fraternal twins. Last fall, the freezer contained a Noah’s ark of meat for the fried chicken and signature giant lasagnas she often cooks for friends; the other once housed the products that Ms. Penniegraft, a hair stylist, and her husband, Dante, mixed up for a now-defunct hair-care line."
From the comments:
As a life-long resident of the Midwest, this article cracked me up. During my childhood in the 70's I can't think of one classmate or family friend that didn't have a second fridge and a freezer (this group of people spans all social and economic classes). And most people also had a canning celler. My husband and I still receive our beef a quarter at a time, as in, 100+lb of meat, equivalent to a quarter of a full carcass, raised by a family member. We have friends that raise chickens, slaughter once a year, so 6-10 chickens go in the freezer too. Ice cream is delivered to our house (three cheers for Schwans!), it is bought in bulk, and in the freezer. Today, I only live 25 min from a grocery store, growing up it was more than that. My husband grew up in a family of 8 kids, they had three fridges, 2 giant freezers, a walk-in egg cooler and a giant garden that provided fresh food and was also preserved and eaten year-round; they were not rich, just self sufficient. I still can fruit, salsa, and meat and freeze my own sweet corn, not because we have to but because it's so much better than store-bought....
Said Don Jr. — about the speech Trump will give at CPAC today — quoted in "Trump to speak at CPAC in first major address since leaving office, as GOP searches for path forward/Trump highly popular at annual conservative gathering" (Fox News).
The Trump speech is scheduled for 3:40 pm today (Eastern Time). Will you watch? Have you been starving for input from Trump or have you enjoyed the break? If the latter, how do you feel about the return of Trump? I'll do a survey:
"... sponsored by Comcast and Dollar Shave Club. ('How do I handle grooming below the belt?' the ad spot asks; mercifully, neither host is made to read it.)... As a cultural figure, the Boss sits in a cross-racial sweet spot, as an anointed idol for the coded white working class who pairs his aging denim with bright-blue politics. He is also comfortable playing the good white liberal without self-punishing overtures. His home town of Freehold, New Jersey, was 'your typical small, provincial, redneck, racist little American nineteen-fifties town,' he says plainly, without squeamishness.... Discussing the protests of last summer, Obama comes just short of infantilizing the activities of those who were on the ground. 'I think there’s a little bit of an element of young people saying, "You’ve told us this is who we’re supposed to be."' A guitar strums gently in the background. 'And that’s why as long as protests and activism doesn’t veer into violence, my general attitude is—I want and expect young people to push those boundaries.'... But I can understand the people who might still take comfort in hearing Obama right up against their eardrums, doing his host schtick, asking, 'Did you see the movie "Get Out"?,' referring to a memorable line that invokes his name."
From "Obama and Springsteen Are Here to Lull America" by Lauren Michele Jackson (The New Yorker).
The line in "Get Out" is: "By the way, I would have voted for Obama for a third term if I could." Read more about it in "Bradley Whitford didn't realize Get Out's Obama line was supposed to be a joke at first" (AV Club).
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"... and then killed two of them, the authorities said this week. The man, Lawrence Paul Anderson, who has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the killings, had been sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2017 for a probation violation in a drug case, but public records show that he was granted clemency last year by the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board as part of a mass commutation program."
[Charlotte] Bennett said she had disclosed the interaction with Mr. Cuomo to his chief of staff, Jill DesRosiers, less than a week later and was transferred to another job, as a health policy adviser, with an office on the opposite side of the Capitol, soon after that. Ms. Bennett said she had also given a lengthy statement to a special counsel to the governor, Judith Mogul, toward the end of June. Ms. Bennett said she ultimately decided not to insist on an investigation because she was happy in her new job and “wanted to move on.” No action was taken against the governor....
The governor did not deny that he asked Ms. Bennett personal questions; he said in the statement that he would have no further comment until the review concluded....
After seeing Ms. Boylan detail her accusations against Mr. Cuomo, Ms. Bennett shared Ms. Boylan’s account on Twitter, suggesting that people read it if they wanted a true picture of “what it’s like to work for the Cuomo” administration. The Times contacted Ms. Bennett, and she agreed to relate her own account of harassment. She said she felt an obligation to other victims of sexual harassment and wanted to counter the way Mr. Cuomo “wields his power.”
Good work by the NYT.
This morning at 6:42.
The sun looked like this:
Talk about anything you want in the comments.
Any "riot" is bad. But while traveling across US, I hear some say Congress overreacted like little kings & their experience was far milder than what many went thru in the past yr without the same fervor for hearings, to prosecute, find organizers, etc. What do you think?
— Sharyl Attkisson🕵️♂️ (@SharylAttkisson) February 27, 2021
Same vibe, different question: pic.twitter.com/9COUzYoTlU
— đź’– (@cheesus_baby) February 27, 2021
Equity = punishing kids for doing well in school. If they’re white or Asian. https://t.co/EAPbs83IRB
— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) February 27, 2021
That was Rand Paul's question to Rachel Levine, Biden’s nominee for assistant health secretary. He's quoted at "The Absurd Criticism of Rand Paul’s Rachel Levine Questioning" (National Review).
It's a precise question. If it can't be answered, why can't it be answered? If it's an outrageous question, that must be because the answer is plainly "no," so why couldn't Levine forthrightly say "no"? There are some questions where the right answer is to refuse to answer — for example questions that nose into an individual's private life — but was Rand Paul's question a question like that? Is anyone making a clear statement of why these were questions that should not have been dignified with answers?
Said R C Belaire, looking at this photograph in yesterday's Lunchtime Café:
Meade had, in fact, been troubled by the asymmetry, and, even before seeing Belaire's comment, had embarked on the project of repositioning the table. Here's Meade's photograph, to dispel all your troubles that are about window-table asymmetry at Meadhouse:
"... according to senior administration officials, despite a detailed American intelligence finding that he directly approved the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the dissident and Washington Post columnist who was drugged and dismembered in October 2018. The decision by Mr. Biden, who during the 2020 campaign called Saudi Arabia a 'pariah' state with 'no redeeming social value,' came after weeks of debate in which his newly formed national security team advised him that there was no way to formally bar the heir to the Saudi crown from entering the United States, or to weigh criminal charges against him, without breaching the relationship with one of America’s key Arab allies. Officials said a consensus developed inside the White House that the cost of that breach, in Saudi cooperation on counterterrorism and in confronting Iran, was simply too high.... Mr. Biden and his aides have repeatedly said that they intend to take a far tougher line with the Saudis than did President Donald J. Trump, who vetoed legislation passed by both houses of Congress to block weapons sales to Saudi Arabia.... Mr. Trump refused to make [the intelligence findings] public, knowing it would fuel the action for sanctions or criminal action against Prince Mohammed."
AND: From "President Biden Lets a Saudi Murderer Walk/The crown prince killed my friend Jamal Khashoggi, and we do next to nothing" by Nicholas Kristof (NYT):
Perhaps I’m biased because I knew Jamal. Some may think: It’s too bad about the murder, but other leaders have killed people, too. True, but M.B.S. poisons everything he touches. He kidnapped Lebanon’s prime minister. He oversaw a feud with Qatar. He caused the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen. He imprisoned women’s rights activists. He has tarnished his country’s reputation far more effectively than Iran ever could.
So, Mr. Biden, it’s not a human rights “gesture” to sanction M.B.S. Jamal was a practical man who didn’t believe in mushy gestures — but he did dream of a more democratic Arab world that would benefit Arabs and Americans alike. And by letting a murderer walk, you betray that vision.
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"... and their families. The American people deserve it, and we are committed to making it a reality."
Said Chuck Schumer, quoted in "Biden’s minimum wage increase runs afoul of budget rules/The Senate parliamentarian has issued a ruling that could jeopardize the rest of the president’s $1.9 trillion Covid relief package" (Politico).
Speaking of reality, do you think he's really disappointed? I imagine he's relieved. He and his party have the benefit of looking as though they tried and the benefit of not having the potentially deleterious policy actually imposed on us.
"... as the American Diabetes Association has urged? Or does labeling people prediabetic merely 'medicalize' a normal part of aging, creating needless anxiety for those already coping with multiple health problems?... Defenders of the emphasis on treating prediabetes, which is said to afflict one-third of the United States population, point out that first-line treatment involves learning healthy behaviors that more Americans should adopt anyway: weight loss, smoking cessation, exercise and healthy eating. 'I’ve had a number of patients diagnosed with prediabetes, and it’s what motivates them to change... They know what they should be doing, but they need something to kick them into gear.' Geriatricians tend to disagree. 'It’s unprofessional to mislead people, to motivate them by fear of something that’s not actually true.... We’re all tired of having things to be afraid of.'"
"... justifying discrimination against those deemed racial oppressors. His goal, ultimately, is to get the Supreme Court to rule that school and workplace trainings based on the doctrines of critical race theory violate the 1964 Civil Rights Act.... Rufo insists there are no free speech implications to what he’s trying to do. 'You have the freedom of speech as an individual, of course, but you don’t have the kind of entitlement to perpetuate that speech through public agencies,' he said. This sounds, ironically, a lot like the arguments people on the left make about de-platforming right-wingers. To [KimberlĂ©] Crenshaw, attempts to ban critical race theory vindicate some of the movement’s skepticism about free speech orthodoxy, showing that there were never transcendent principles at play. When people defend offensive speech, she said, they’re often really defending 'the substance of what the speech is — because if it was really about free speech, then this censorship, people would be howling to the high heavens.' If it was really about free speech, they should be."
From "The Campaign to Cancel Wokeness/How the right is trying to censor critical race theory" by Michelle Goldberg (NYT).
Here's a good comment over there: "The problem with your argument is that Critical Race Theory is presented at schools and workplace sessions as the TRUTH, not just an (unprovable) social science theory. And it would be very uncomfortable (if not career or social suicide) to question this theory in front of one’s bosses and peers."
That makes me think of Justice Jackson's famous line, one of the most important points about freedom of speech: "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein."
The problem is compelled speech. To be compelled to assert belief in what you do not believe is a severe intrusion on individual free speech, and that seems to be what is happening in these workplace training sessions. Is there some way to present the insights of Critical Race Theory as ideas to be understood and weighed against other ideas and debated instead of compelling attendance at events where the ideas are dictated and participants are forced to attest to the dictated beliefs?
"The martyrdom of Black Americans is very prevalent among particularly white liberals and we see that, I think, in how we celebrate MLK and how a lot of these folks will uphold the whitewashed and martyred idea of Dr. King without actually exploring his radical nature and radical ideology.... [It was] the typical well meaning white liberal kind of paternalistic type of racism... She called to apologize in a way and it just really rang hollow to me. It rang like somebody that, one, didn’t reflect on what she said before she heard that I was upset. She also resorted to it as an individual hurt, in saying sorry she hurt me, without an ability to see a wider level and see as what it was, racist behavior, racist mentality. And I kind of started to say that and I’m like, 'You’ve got a lot of work to do.' And she said, 'I’m trying to do that work. Maybe you could help me.' And I told her that it’s not for me, I’m not here to do the work for you. You’ve got to do it yourself."
Said Matthew Braunginn, one of the "two," in "Two Sustainable Madison Committee members resign over 'God bless George Floyd' remark" (Madison 365).
Braunginn utters a long but important phrase: "the typical well meaning white liberal kind of paternalistic type of racism." Consider how regarding Floyd as a blessed martyr is a kind of racism. Understand why Braunginn was so outraged over this that he quit his alliance with some well-meaning Madison liberals.
Said Prince Harry, quoted in "We didn’t step down, we stepped back, Prince Harry tells James Corden on The Late Late Show" (The London Times). Harry was talking about his son Archie.
Am I the only one who recognizes this perfectly silly remark as a Princess Margaret joke? I've blogged this before, from the hilarious book "Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret":
The Princess liked to one-up. I have heard from a variety of people that she would engineer the conversation around to the subject of children’s first words, asking each of her fellow guests what their own child’s first words had been. Having listened to responses like ‘Mama’ and ‘doggy’, she would say, ‘My boy’s first word was “chandelier”.
Three syllables. Chandelier... crocodile... what's the difference? The difference is what the "spare" chose to do with her/his life.
"The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN picked up the story of a young female student harassed by white workers. The American Civil Liberties Union, which took the student’s case, said she was profiled for 'eating while Black.' Less attention was paid three months later when a law firm hired by Smith College to investigate the episode found no persuasive evidence of bias. [Oumou] Kanoute was determined to have eaten in a deserted dorm that had been closed for the summer; the janitor had been encouraged to notify security if he saw unauthorized people there. The officer, like all campus police, was unarmed. Smith College officials emphasized 'reconciliation and healing' after the incident. In the months to come they announced a raft of anti-bias training for all staff, a revamped and more sensitive campus police force and the creation of dormitories — as demanded by Ms. Kanoute and her A.C.L.U. lawyer — set aside for Black students and other students of color. But they did not offer any public apology or amends to the workers whose lives were gravely disrupted by the student’s accusation... 'It was appropriate to apologize,” [Smith president Kathleen] McCartney said. 'She is living in a context of ‘living while Black’ incidents.'... Ms. McCartney offered no public apology to the employees after the report was released... Anti-bias training began in earnest in the fall.... [C]afeteria and grounds workers found themselves being asked by consultants hired by Smith about their childhood and family assumptions about race, which many viewed as psychologically intrusive.”
From "Inside a Battle Over Race, Class and Power at Smith College" by Michael Powell (NYT).
The article quotes Mark Patenaude, whom Kanoute accused of racism. He was a janitor at Smith, but not on the job at the time of the incident. He now says: "We used to joke, don’t let a rich student report you, because if you do, you’re gone.... I was accused of being the racist... To be honest, that just knocked me out. I’m a 58-year-old male, we’re supposed to be tough. But I suffered anxiety because of things in my past and this brought it to a whole ’nother level." As for all the training sessions in race and intersectionality, he said: "I don’t know if I believe in white privilege. I believe in money privilege."
Said MadisonMan, in the comments to the post with video of Meade grinding hard red winter wheat. Meade answered "Arthur" with a link to "Recurring features in Mad (magazine)" (Wikipedia), and then, later, took this picture of the tree and me.
I'm there, I suppose, for scale.
The hat is not an affectation, but a needed shield for my eyes as I work in front of the big window, but it's funny to see it in the picture, because I just finished writing a post on the NYT obituary for the artist Barry Le Va, and the obit has the line, "Mr. Le Va became known for his ever-present Borsalino hat," and that's what my hat is, a man's Borsalino hat.
Here's how Arthur looked in May 2019, after we drove home from Utah in one day to save him from a mid-Spring freeze. And here he is in October 2015, when he was 2.
"... at Ohio State University in 1969. Here he ran repeatedly at full speed into opposite walls of a gallery until he was unable to proceed. The recording was then played in the open gallery, leaving visitors to deduce his actions from sound alone: footsteps, impact and slowing pace. He allotted 30 seconds for each run. In one interview he said he had kept it up for an hour and 45 minutes (more than 200 sprints), at which point friends ended the performance, fearing for his health. The recorded piece is in the collection of the Centre Pompidou in Paris. By contrast, some Le Va works were overtly gentle, even serene. An especially beautiful example, from 1968-69, was made entirely of chalk dust.... The material, gathered into dunelike drifts, resembled an indoor earthwork. It was swept up and discarded when the show closed this month...."
From "Barry Le Va, Whose Floor-Bound Art Defied Boundaries, Dies at 79/Extolling horizontality, he made sculptures from felt, flour, glass sheets and even meat cleavers. Elsewhere, in a performance piece, his body was a sprinting projectile" by Roberta Smith (NYT).
ADDED: The "puns" tag is for something Meade says. I make a remark that presumes familiarity with a song that I'm just going to make sure everyone is familiar with:
"Conservatives have argued for years that liberals don't actually care about science and only pretend to when it's convenient for the advancement of their political agenda. It appears that they had a point."
A commenter named Jadon writes, at "School Closures Have Failed America’s Children As many as three million children have gotten no education for nearly a year" by Nicholas Kristof (NYT).
"... the only one on my floor. A signed photograph of the Governor appeared in my closed-door office while I was out. These were not-so-subtle reminders of the Governor exploiting the power dynamic with the women around him. In 2018, I was promoted to Deputy Secretary for Economic Development and Special Advisor to the Governor. I initially turned the job down — not because I didn’t want the responsibility or work but because I didn’t want to be near him. I finally accepted the position at the Governor’s insistence with one requirement — I would keep my old agency office and remain on a separate floor from him and his inner circle. The Governor’s pervasive harassment extended beyond just me. He made unflattering comments about the weight of female colleagues. He ridiculed them about their romantic relationships and significant others. He said the reasons that men get women were 'money and power.' I tried to excuse his behavior. I told myself 'it’s only words.' But that changed after a one-on-one briefing with the Governor to update him on economic and infrastructure projects. We were in his New York City office on Third Avenue. As I got up to leave and walk toward an open door, he stepped in front of me and kissed me on the lips. I was in shock, but I kept walking. I left past the desk of Stephanie Benton. I was scared she had seen the kiss. The idea that someone might think I held my high-ranking position because of the Governor’s 'crush' on me was more demeaning than the kiss itself...."
From "My story of working with Governor Cuomo" by Lindsey Boylan (Medium).
There's also, "The Andrew Cuomo Show Has Lost the Plot/Is bullying fellow Democrats part of the New York governor’s brand, or just a print storyline that didn’t make it to the screen?" by Alex Pareene (The New Republic).
From "Fanne Foxe, ‘Argentine Firecracker’ at center of D.C. sex scandal, dies at 84" (WaPo).
Standing near the car — drunk and bleeding — was her paramour, 65-year-old Wilbur Mills, the gravelly voiced chairman of the tax-writing U.S. House Ways and Means Committee and a man esteemed as a pillar of Bible Belt rectitude and respectability. The Arkansas Democrat, an ascetic grind who shepherded Medicare and other influential legislation through Congress, was also widely regarded as the most powerful man in government after the president. “I never vote against God, motherhood or Wilbur Mills,” a Democratic colleague once told a reporter.
But on that October morning, Ms. Battistella’s eyes were bruised. Mills’s Coke-bottle glasses were smashed, and his nose was badly scratched. He reeked of alcohol. And his 16-year hold on the federal purse strings was suddenly imperiled....
ADDED: "Ms. Battistella" = Annabel Battistella AKA Fanne Foxe.
... and a new head too. A tiny head... but a head nonetheless:
When I was in college, 50 years ago, the student group devoted to gay rights was called "The 10 Percent Society." The name was based on the broadly held belief that 10% of the population is gay. That wasn't even counting bisexual or transgender. Just gay and lesbian. Not too many people were open about it back then, but we were told to think that gay people were all around — 1 in 10 people.
So I think 5.6% is a surprisingly low number. And most of it — 3.1% — are identifying as bisexual. Only 1.4% are gay men, and only 0.7% are lesbian.
The LGBT percentage goes up within each generation. Baby Boomers are 2.0% LGBT and Gen Z is 15.9%. But, again, that includes people who are saying they identify as bisexual. 72% of those LGBT-identifying Gen Zers say bisexual. And women are far more likely than men to identify as bisexual.
I went out running this morning to catch the dawn...
... and as I was running, I was thinking about the post I'd just put up at 6:23. (The photograph was taken at 6:45.)
The post talked about a WaPo columnist who had pasted together a ramshackle argument that rested absurdly heavily on a couple things Trump's nominee for ambassador to Germany had said about how women look — that Hillary Clinton was "starting to look like Madeleine Albright" and that Rachel Maddow ought to "take a breath and put on a necklace."
I was thinking while running about how it's important to be able to talk about the way people look. Life is — in great part — visual, and we're going to think about looks, we live within looking, and looks are not entirely superficial, they speak of depths, and even what is superficial is crucial to the feeling of being alive. We're not morally obligated to blind ourselves. We want to see and to talk about what we see.
But what did it mean to say that Rachel Maddow ought to "take a breath and put on a necklace"? The man who said it was Richard Grenell, who is himself gay and therefore at least presumptively nonhomophobic. But the old tweet is deleted, so I can't search for the context. I only see it used against him. Example:
According to the pro-LGBTQ Washington Blade, Grenell’s history of insulting women on sexist and homophobic grounds is long and toxic. He has written that Rachel Maddow, an MSNBC lesbian news anchor, “needs to take a breath and put on a necklace.”
Did he mean women should all adopt a feminine fashion style? I don't know. I'd object to that, even though I think we should be able to talk about how people look. But you ought to let them choose how they want to present themselves, so don't criticize them for failing to do something they're not trying to do. If a woman is going for a boyish look, talk about whether it's a nicely done boyish look. You're a jerk to talk about how it's not feminine.
If that's what Grenell meant by "put on a necklace." Maybe it had something to do with Maddow's high school yearbook photo....
That got press in 2010, and Grenell made his remark in 2011.
I was running along, thinking about looks and the importance of the visual world and, specifically, that necklace, and these lyrics came up in the song I was listening to: "I was thinkin’ about turquoise, I was thinkin’ about gold/I was thinkin’ about diamonds and the world’s biggest necklace."
What is the world's biggest necklace? Is it this?
There's a limit to how big a necklace can be, since it's not a necklace unless it can be worn around the neck. A colossal statue could have a neck and thus a necklace. You could get around the limitation that way. In Dylan's song — which I quote in part, above — he leaves his wife, who is named after an an Egyptian goddess, Isis. I'm picturing colossal Egyptian statues. In the song, Dylan meets up with "a man in the corner" and they go riding off until they come to the pyramids.
Theoretically, the "world's biggest necklace" could be there, in the world's biggest tomb. In the song, the tomb is empty, and I take that to be a reference to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In light of Jesus, the "world's biggest necklace" seems to relate to the parable of the pearl: "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it."
Public health officials get kind of attached to the power they get in epidemics. They don’t want to lose it.
— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) February 23, 2021
"... but I can’t remember seeing it for a while now. (And I deliberately say 'see' it instead of 'hear' it because I’ve only ever seen it written, never heard it out loud.) Could it be that the word started to seem out of touch because we’ve been realizing how fragile we all are?"
Writes my son John on Facebook, and I think he's suggesting something about our heightened awareness of death and illness during the pandemic.
I responded over there:
Based on my search for "white fragility" in the NYT, with the results ordered newest first, I'd say it was very common up through October. Since October, there's only one appearance, in a little thing in December about what books New Yorkers read in the past year: "As nationwide discussions erupted over the summer around race and racism, demand for books on the subjects surged across the country, a trend reflected in the city’s libraries. Titles like 'White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism' by Robin DiAngelo were among the most popular in some boroughs." What changed after October? To ask the question is to make the answer obvious.
Before that December item, there were articles containing the term "white fragility" on October 29, October 22, October 6, September 27, September 17, September 6, September 1, August 31, August 11... You get the picture.
But "fragility" was a vogue word before last year's obsession with Robin DiAngelo's book. Even if the election — the answer I thought was obvious — explains the disappearance of "white fragility," we might also be seeing a disappearance of interest in "fragility" as used in the book "Antifragile" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. If so, I'm inclined to guess that the over-prominence of DiAngelo's concept tired us all out.
And that's the irony of being fragile about fragility that John was musing about.
I've been writing under the tag "civility bullshit" for years. It represents my longstanding opinion that calls for civility are always bullshit. Certainly in the area of politics, calls for civility always come out when the incivility is hurting your people. When somebody is deploying incivility effectively for your side, you hold your tongue and enjoy the damage.
But let's consider the Neera Tanden problem. Her incivility is in the past. People on her side enjoyed the damage she inflicted at the time and I don't think any of her people tried to pull her back with calls for civility. It's just that now she's Biden's nominee to head the Office of Management and the Budget, and the old incivility makes her seem like too much of a political hack to be trusted in that position.
Nobody bellyaches about incivility when it's working as a weapon for their side, and the charge of incivility is another political weapon, whipped out when the other side is landing incivility punches on you.
Here's the Karen Tumulty piece:
With the defection of Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, [Tanden's] nomination looks to be sunk in the evenly divided Senate if she cannot win the support of at least one Republican.... [Manchin's] stated reason, the “toxic and detrimental impact” of Tanden’s “overtly partisan statements,” is hard to take at face value.
Manchin, after all, voted in 2018 to confirm Richard Grenell as ambassador to Germany. He was apparently unconcerned — as were 55 of his Senate colleagues — with the diplomatic skills of a social media troll who in the past had tweeted that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “is starting to look like Madeleine Albright” and that MSNBC host Rachel Maddow should “take a breath and put on a necklace.” Grenell’s social media lowlights also included mocking the hairstyle of Callista Gingrich, who was later named Trump’s ambassador to the Vatican.
A nominee for Ambassador to Germany said a few things about how women look. Is that it?
Nor has sharp-elbowed partisanship previously been a disqualifier for budget directors.
Sharp-elbowed partisanship? Are we changing the topic?
Mick Mulvaney, confirmed 51 to 49 in 2017, helped found the hard-right Freedom Caucus in the House during his time as a South Carolina congressman.
Seems like the topic changed to political extremism. Tumulty cites no incivility, just the problem of being too radically political. And isn't that really the problem with Tanden's old tweets? They demonstrate that she's too much of a politico for the position.
The lone Republican dissenter [on Mulvaney] was Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who cited Mulvaney’s past votes to slash defense spending — a legitimate difference over policy. It seems fair to wonder whether sexism is a factor working against Tanden in the male-dominated Senate....
And now the topic shifts again. Now, the idea is sexism. This column is petering out into incoherence. I'll just quote the last 2 sentences, which are good old-fashioned civility bullshit:
[G]iven the general climate on social media, Republicans would do well to worry what might happen to a GOP president’s nominees in the future. If senators really want to usher in a new standard of civility, the first thing they might want to consider is whether it should begin with forgiveness.
Said Barack Obama, quoted in "Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen Join Many Men Before Them, Launch a Podcast" (NY Magazine).
... journeys... stories... a way to connect our own individual searches for meaning and truth and community with the larger story of America...
I don't know. That must appeal to some people but it sounds perfectly silly to me.
I love the photograph, which I'll copy because it's Spotify's picture (by Rob DeMartin) and they seem to be trying to promote the podcast, so I'm only helping them:
The 2 men and their environment are so ideal... and yet... where are the masks? Did they really do the podcast there on abutting sides of that delicate table? Does Bruce really use wheelie chairs on those loose, blanket-like rugs? That's not going to work. Did they just happen to cross their arms and legs in the same way? More importantly, do this guys have a good podcast-y way to talk back and forth?
ADDED: I am actually going to attempt to listen to this. I'll let you know how it turns out.
UPDATE: My effort ended 14 minutes and 27 seconds in. I found it of no interest whatsoever.
"There is a bright blue hospital tent with white bunk beds inside. A legal services trailer has the Spanish word 'Bienvenidos,' or welcome, on a banner on its roof. There are trailers for classrooms, a barber shop, a hair salon. The facility has its own ambulances and firetrucks, as well as its own water supply.... he most colorful trailer is at the entryway, where flowers, butterflies and handmade posters still hang on its walls...."
From "First migrant facility for children opens under Biden" (WaPo).
I wonder how those sentences would have been written if this "facility" had opened under Trump.
I'll just list some words in the order that they would be most likely to be deleted/replaced if Trump were President when this place opened: butterflies, encircle, bienvenidos, flowers, handmade, colorful, welcome, bright, salon, basketball, soccer, blue, beige, firetrucks, facility, classrooms, barber shop, white, banner....
My favorite of those words is "encircle." They're talking about beige trailers. C'mon, beige trailers, let's form a big happy circle around the giant white dining tent!
IN THE COMMENTS: Bob Boyd accepts the challenge to rewrite the passage as it would have been written if Trump were President:
Crowded into less than 70 acres, dusty trailers huddle around a military style mess tent, a few basketball hoops and what we were told is a soccer field. There is an ominous, blue medical tent crammed with narrow, sterile bunk beds of the type one associates with mental wards of the last century. A legal services trailer with a banner on its roof reads 'Bienvenidos,' or welcome, an irony that could hardly be lost on those kept here away from family, friends and the promise of America. In a half-hearted gesture towards the basic needs of its young inmates, trailers never designed for the job have been pressed into service as makeshift classrooms, a barber shop and a hair salon. A grim-looking ambulance and firetrucks stand ready in recognition of the inevitable. The camp's water trickles reluctantly from hurriedly drilled, shallow wells. Standing out in this largely beige world, one trailer near the entryway has been ham-handedly decorated with cheap posters featuring butterflies and flowers, their once bright colors fading rapidly under the glaring sun.
"... in some contexts. Mike Pesca, the host of 'The Gist,' a podcast on news and culture... made his argument during a conversation last week with colleagues on the interoffice messaging platform Slack. In a lengthy thread of messages, Slate staff members were discussing the resignation of Donald G. McNeil Jr., a reporter who said this month that he was resigning from The New York Times after he had used the slur during a discussion of racism while working as a guide on a student trip in 2019.... Jacob Weisberg, Slate’s former chairman and editor in chief [said]... 'I don’t think he did anything that merits discipline or consequences, and I think it’s an example of a kind of overreaction and a lack of judgment and perspective that is unfortunately spreading'... Joel Anderson, a Black staff member at Slate... disagreed. 'For Black employees, it’s an extremely small ask to not hear that particular slur and not have debate about whether it’s OK for white employees to use that particular slur,' he said."
ADDED: If a place of business wants to have zero-tolerance rule that says you will lose your job if you ever say the syllables of the n-word, that's one thing. But I don't see how the policy can be, as Joel Anderson suggests, that it only applies to white employees. That's overt and unsubtle race discrimination, and it would, I think, be hard to argue that it's not a violation of statutory law. Would Anderson support a rule that required the firing of black employees who happen to slip into say the word? I don't think I've ever heard anyone push for a rule like that. So I think the employer would be well advised to take the context of the saying of the word into account.
AND: A race-neutral zero-tolerance rule would create a much greater risk for black people. I think it's very easy for white people to avoid ever saying the word. Some just don't think we should be so repressed and sensitive about the word — as opposed to its use as an insult. But if the rule is you'll be fired if you ever say it, regardless of context, white people will abide by the rule.
Words by Edvard Munch in tiny letters in the most famous version of "The Scream," The Art Newspaper reports.
Can we be sure that the artist wrote these words? Mai Britt Guleng, the curator of Old Masters and modern paintings at the National Museum of Norway, says yes. First, the handwriting matches up to other samples of Munch's handwriting. Second, the writing is tiny:
“Had this been an act of vandalism by another person, the size of the letters would probably have been larger and the whole text more striking when you stand in front of the work."
Third — though I think this is a fact that could cut either way — the words are not painted over.
“There has been strangely little attention to the inscription.... some researchers have taken it for granted that it was written by Munch, but they haven’t discussed why and when. From 2008 it has been generally accepted that the writing was made by another person, without any discussion at all."
Guleng notes that Munch heard criticism of his work and was "confronted about his mental health" on one occasion. Why would that motivate him to write on his own painting? That's more interesting than the question whether he or some vandal wrote it. Let's assume Munch wrote it. Why did he write it? Don't assume he was judging and doubting himself. There are other possibilities: he was satirizing his critics, he was inviting us to contemplate whether only madmen paint like that, or he was celebrating himself as a madman.
***
This is the 9th post with the tag "The Scream."
The oldest post with the tag is "Shimmering shining shriek/scream" from April 2005. Excerpt:
Later, I watched the DVD of "After Hours"...
Paul [looking at Kiki's papier maché sculpture]: It reminds me of that Edvard Munch painting. What is it? "The Shriek"?
Kiki: "The Scream."
Googling for a picture for "The Scream," to illustrate this post [that was already] about how things go together, I hit a Reuters story from one hour ago, saying they've just today arrested a man for the theft of "The Scream." (The painting was stolen last August.) I love that feeling of things seeming to converge. I know it's only an illusion.
"... top Trump allies tell Axios.... A longtime adviser called Trump's speech a 'show of force,' and said the message will be: 'I may not have Twitter or the Oval Office, but I'm still in charge.' Payback is his chief obsession.... Trump is expected to stoke primary challenges [in 2022] for some of those who have crossed him, and shower money and endorsements on the Trumpiest candidates.... Many Trump confidants think he'll pretend to run but ultimately pass. He knows the possibility — or threat — gives him leverage and attention.... Trump plans to argue in the CPAC speech that many of his predictions about President Biden have already come true. Look for Trump to lay into 'the swamp' and Beltway insiders in a big way. The Trump source said: 'Much like 2016, we’re taking on Washington again.'"
Cat Moonblack gold PU adalah salah satu series yang mengandung partikel kecil seperti crystal yang dan memiliki effect lebih gelap sehing...
