Althouse |
- "In his first post-presidential appearance, Donald Trump plans to send the message next weekend that he is Republicans' 'presumptive 2024 nominee' with a vise grip on the party's base..."
- At 6:55 a.m., I got to put the first footprints in the new snow on my favorite forest path.
- "Each novel takes him around five years: a long build-up of research and thinking, followed by a speedy first draft, a process he compares to a samurai sword fight."
- "It truly feels as though you and I have crossed an ocean of outrage together… but something tells me it’s time to rest my social media gavel and reclaim a little neurological bandwidth."
- "Lo and behold, the great philosopher’s number was listed right there, next to those of mere mortals. But who should be the one to call Rawls?"
- The "Muppet Show" disclaimer "This program includes negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures."
- At the Snowface Café...
| Posted: 22 Feb 2021 02:24 PM PST "... 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.'"  |
| At 6:55 a.m., I got to put the first footprints in the new snow on my favorite forest path. Posted: 22 Feb 2021 02:18 PM PST   |
| Posted: 22 Feb 2021 01:37 PM PST "'You stare at each other silently for ages, usually with tall grass blowing away and moody sky. You are thinking all the time, and then in a split second it happens. The swords are drawn: Wham! Wham! Wham! And one of them falls,' he explains, wielding an imaginary sword at the screen. 'You had to get your mind absolutely right and then when you drew that sword you just did it: Wham! It had to be the perfect cut.' As a child, he was mystified by swashbuckling Errol Flynn films when he first came to the UK, in which the sword fights consisted of actors going 'ching, ching, ching, ching, for about 20 minutes while talking to each other,' he says. 'Perhaps there's a way of writing fiction like that, where you work it out in the act, but I tend towards the "Don't do anything, it's all internal" approach.'" From "Kazuo Ishiguro: 'AI, gene-editing, big data ... I worry we are not in control of these things any more'" (The Guardian). Ishiguro won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017.  |
| Posted: 22 Feb 2021 08:37 AM PST "If it seemed like I was ignoring my main Twitter followers here and outside the US and Canada in my quest to rid our democracy of 'Orange Julius Caesar' and his Empire of Lies, it was not my intention. I just assumed that a radicalized America is a threat to us all. When a madman grabs the wheel of the bus loaded with innocent passengers and threatens to drive it off a cliff, it tends to steal everyone's focus." Jim Carrey lets us know he's giving it a rest. He needs to get his brain back. He's not the only one. But don't get complacent. Who's driving the bus now... and is it really loaded with innocent passengers? Just because you could focus all your fear of evil on one person doesn't mean that when he's gone you've got nothing to fear. I recommend maintaining your equilibrium at all times. My link goes to a NY Post article about his tweet, but the actual tweet came in a form that made some people think he was about to kill himself:
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| Posted: 22 Feb 2021 04:09 AM PST "No one volunteered for this daunting task. So Anjan nominated me. 'You should talk to him,' he said, 'because you guys have a lot in common.' The idea that a world-famous political philosopher would have anything in common with an obscure high school sophomore struck me as ridiculous. Still, a part of me was flattered by Anjan's suggestion that I should be the one to call Rawls. So I let him persuade me. With trembling fingers, I dialed Rawls' number, half-hoping that he wouldn't be home. It turned out that Rawls was home. Somehow, I managed to work up the courage to explain who I was and ask my question [about an argument they wanted to make in a high school debate]. Rawls listened carefully, and then modestly admitted that he simply hadn't thought about that issue before. Still, he stayed on the phone with me and talked about it for more than half an hour. I didn't get much out of him that would be useful for the tournament. He really hadn't thought about our issue before. Nonetheless, I was moved by Rawls' thoughtfulness and even more by his willingness to treat a lowly high school student as an equal and take my questions seriously. He didn't become impatient even when I took issue with one of his points. I still think that most of Rawls' major ideas were probably wrong, brilliant though they undoubtedly were." Writes lawprof Ilya Somin in "A Road to Freedom," which I'm noticing this morning because Somin is calling attention to Rawls's 100th birthday, which was yesterday. See "Happy 100th Birthday, John Rawls!/Today is the 100th birthday of the most influential political philosopher of the second half of the twentieth century" (Reason). Somin also calls attention to a commemoration of Rawls by Larry Solum (at Legal Theory Blog). Excerpt:
I would especially love to see comments that connect Rawls's "Theory of Justice" to the topic of gambling. Also, feel free to imagine fictional scenarios that parallel Solum's missed opportunity: You're in some city where you intersect with a famous person who wants to do something that you wouldn't do if your usual travel companion suggested it, but you really ought to do because you'd have the chance to spend more time with this famous person. How would that go? And I'd love to hear about times when you were a high school student and you got some real conversation time with an eminent person you were surprised would talk to you at all.  |
| Posted: 22 Feb 2021 06:04 AM PST "Rather than remove this content, we want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learn from it and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together. Disney is committed to creating stories with inspirational and aspirational themes that reflect the rich diversity of the human experience around the globe." The NY Post reports, adding "It's unstated precisely what Disney considers to be offensive on the show, but some characters depict Native American, Middle Eastern and Asian people. And in season five, legendary country singer Johnny Cash is seen performing in front of a Confederate flag." "Native American, Middle Eastern and Asian people"? The ethnic group I remember getting poked fun at was the Swedish...
But who cares about the feelings of the Swedish these days? As for Johnny Cash, he took his mark within some set designer's complicated notion of what "country and western" must mean and it had a Confederate flag and a U.S. flag as wall hangings:  These shows were made between 1976 and 1981. Basically, during the Carter administration. Disney wants to be able to keep showing them and has — clunkily but wisely — slapped on a warning to fend off demands that the show be taken off the air. I'd like to give Disney some support here. They have a big old archive and they ought to make it available, not replace it all with paternalistic... maternalistic pablum. I'm seeing some criticism like: "Nothing screams offensive like fury puppets. When I think of a cultural danger to society, it's obviously Jim Henson's Muppets." I object... and not just because that critic wrote "fury" for "furry." I object because that criticism is offensive to puppets. Puppets can excel at delivering offense. Here's an example of striving to use puppets to offend:
From the clip: "[Puppets are] human enough to be believable, but imaginary enough to be convincing when they're doing things that are crazy." Read about "Spitting Image" and its U.S. counterpart "D.C. Follies." There are deliberately offensive puppets — real satire. I'd like to see more of that — satire of specific individuals. But many things done with puppets are just stereotypes. I know I had some marionettes when I was a child circa 1960. One was a clown. One was a cowboy. And one was a Chinese person. It was blatant stereotyping, similar to the idea of the Chinese seen in "Fantasia":
"Fantasia" is, of course, one of the gems of the Disney archive. There are people today who would demand that no one be allowed to see that film — that film and many other works of art. Disney seems to be trying to manage the pressure. I wouldn't just laugh at Disney for taking its problem seriously and putting up a warning. "This program includes negative depictions" — ha ha. How can you do comedy without negative depictions? Isn't that the whole idea? ADDED: "Gary, I hate to break it to you, but the world is on the brink of disaster...."
AND: Speaking of "South Park" and disclaimers, "South Park" has always — or it seems like always — begun with this disclaimer (which is also a parody of disclaimers): |
| Posted: 21 Feb 2021 05:17 PM PST
... go ahead and talk all night.  |
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