"... but refused. Instead, she responded with profanity and offensive conduct, including further exposing her buttocks."
Six Flags responds to the woman who Facebooked her outrage at being asked to leave the amusement park because her shorts were extremely short.
From the Facebook post: "Then [the park police officer] proceeded to follow me and grabbed my shoulder to turn me around and proceeded to tell me my shorts were 'too short.' I committed no crime and proceeded to walk to my boyfriend as I am autistic and have a hard time talking to officers. She followed me yelling and calling for backup... [W]e were about to leave and were blocked by your female officer from leaving and she pulled out her cuffs and demanded my ID. When we asked for probable cause their answer was 'because they are the police.'"
Video clip at the link, showing part of the interaction with the cop. Without the full context, I'm not going to opine on what the cop did. I'm wary of these videos that begin after conflict has escalated. But I support the park's requirement that guests keep their buttocks in their pants! By the way, the woman with the shorts is a petite and pretty white woman. The cop is a large black woman. Whatever the buttock exposure policy is at Six Flags, it has to be the same for whites and blacks, for the slim and the fat. Enforcing the policy on this woman is, I think, evidence that Six Flags is treating all its guests the same. Rules are rules. No exceptions.
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....
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."
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."
That's at Etymonoline (where I was just checking whether commenters, here, were doing folk etymology on the word "window").
I guess all those words were of interest because of coronavirus. A lot of people may be wondering if "pandemic" (not on the list) has something to do with "pandemonium" (#5 on the list):
1667, Pandæmonium, in "Paradise Lost" the name of the palace built in the middle of Hell, "the high capital of Satan and all his peers," and the abode of all the demons; coined by John Milton (1608-1674) from Greek pan- "all" (see pan-) + Late Latin daemonium "evil spirit," from Greek daimonion "inferior divine power," from daimōn "lesser god" (see demon).
Transferred sense "place of uproar and disorder" is from 1779; that of "wild, lawless confusion" is from 1865.
I can see why people are looking for "draconian," "hunker," and "curfew." These all seem coronavirus-related. But what's up with "subcontract"? A Google news search produces "Contracts, the law and coronavirus" (Washington Technology):
Disruption to the supply chain especially for IT products, many of the basic components of which come from China, could cause substantial backorders and long delays in meeting government delivery deadlines.... Most commercial contracts do contain a force majeure clause that excuses delay. Those same clauses, however, may or may not have the same protections as in prime contracts. Subcontracts also may not prohibit prime contractors from seeking goods and services elsewhere if a subcontractor cannot fulfill their obligations....
ADDED: I suspect that many people — especially with time on their hands and the internet at their disposal — wonder what it really means to "hunker" down? What exactly do you do when you hunker down? Are we crouching and squatting? Does it have to do with haunches... whatever haunches are...? Do I need a hunk to do it? I would like a hunk to do it... So many things to think about.
AND: Speaking of thinking about things... A "haunch" is "a buttock and thigh considered together." I'll consider a buttock and a thigh at the same time. Is it one thing or 2 things? There's a philosophical question for you. If you believe the buttock and thigh are a single thing, then "haunch" is your word. You're a haunchist. That doesn't mean you tend to see things as unified rather than distinct. It has more to do with whether you see the distinctions on a horizontal or a vertical plane.
