About that neckace.

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."

Image there's no Trump/It isn't hard if you/Are a conservative WaPo columnist/With Biden pulling you through/Image Scranton, PA/Ooh Ooh Ooh Ooh...

Watching @HillaryClinton speak you cannot avoid imaging what might have been. Also her account of @JoeBiden pulling her through his boyhood home in Scranton, PA is priceless

— Jennifer Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) April 28, 2020

ADDED: I didn't watch Hillary's endorsement of Joe Biden, so I was challenged not merely to "image" her as President but also to "image" what was so "priceless" about whatever she said about getting "pulled" through Scranton. I found the transcript though. It's nearly an hour long, and my time is not priceless. I would watch it for $1,000 and let you know what I think. But I will scan the transcript... perhaps only for the word "Scranton"... I'll "scran" the transcript... okay:

So for me, this is a moment that we need a leader, a president like Joe Biden.... And we share a common experience and a love of Scranton, Pennsylvania. When my great grandparents came from England and Wales, they ended up in Scranton and my grandfather and then my father grew up in a house on Diamond Avenue and while the randoms were living on Diamond Avenue, the Bidens were over on North Washington Street. And I’ve had a lot of time to visit Scranton, talk about Scranton with Joe and one memorable occasion we were there together and he said, “Hey, let’s go see the house that I lived in when I was a little boy.” And if you know Joe Biden, you know the words were out of his mouth and we were racing to get there. And of course we got there and he talked his way in.

Ugh! Ever had former owners of your house show up one day and try to talk their way in? Ever gone to a house you used to live in and try to talk your way in? On question 1, my answer is sort of. They weren't very direct about it, and they did not get in. On question 2, I have gone to look at the 3 houses I grew up in and each time I considered how hard it would be to go inside and realized that there was no way I would even go up to the homeowner and let them know I lived there when the house was new and I was a little child. As for trying to get an invitation to go inside... hell, no!

It wasn’t hard because the woman who was at home immediately recognized him and knew him.

And when you're a star, they let you do it.

And then we went through the house with Joe regaling me with these great stories about his dad, Joe Sr. And his mom Gene [sic, should be Jean] and the neighborhood. He was pointing out the window telling me who lived where when he was growing up. He told me one story that I loved. He said he was getting ready to go to a junior high school dance and he didn’t have any cufflinks. And so his very creative mother [Jean] got him a nut and bolt, and made a pair of cufflinks for him. But I think he said he was mortified by that. And he’s told her that and she just looked at him and she said, “Joey, if somebody says something to you about your cufflinks, you just say, what? You don’t have a pair like that.” It was that kind of love of family, that unconditional support that led Joe to be the extraordinary family member and father that he’s been through all the tragedy that so many of us have followed from afar, but know how deeply he connects with people who have similarly suffered a tragedy....

WAIT A MINUTE: "while the randoms were living on Diamond Avenue"?! Must be the Rodhams...

Hilarious. Hillary and her family were randos.