Althouse

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• 5:12 a.m.
• "It was Yang’s answers on homelessness and mental health at the final debate that finally settled it for me."
• Me, at sunrise.
• "Think of Pearl Street in Boulder, with its winding paths, large trees, public art, live music and abundant outdoor cafes."
• "Who cares about a parenting memoirist’s removal from a law-school teaching roster?"
• Who breaks up with you by telegram?
• "Mr. Midgette, his hair painted and powdered silver-white and his face covered with pale makeup, passed himself off as Warhol at several colleges with Warhol’s blessing..."
• I stay out of the woods in a thunderstorm, but a Reddit user caught Madison's sunrise today.

5:12 a.m. Posted: 20 Jun 2021 07:03 AM PDT

"It was Yang’s answers on homelessness and mental health at the final debate that finally settled it for me." Posted: 20 Jun 2021 06:42 AM PDT "Every other candidate spoke of homelessness as a disaster for the homeless. Yang discussed it as a quality of life problem for everyone else. 'Yes, mentally ill people have rights, but you know who else have rights?' he asked. 'We do: the people and families of the city.' For Yang, I suspect, a successful mayoralty would mean restoring Michael Bloomberg's New York, an extremely safe, pleasant place for tourists and well-off families like mine, but one where many poorer people were financially squeezed and strictly policed. Even if Yang could, as a political novice, stand up to the N.Y.P.D., he'd have little reason to, since his remit would be safety at almost any cost."   Writes Michelle Goldberg in "Eric Adams Is Awful. I'm Putting Him on My Ballot" (NYT). The passage I've quoted gets very strong pushback in the comments at the NYT. I'll just quote one: The big piece of evidence Michelle Goldberg uses against Yang is an answer to the homeless crisis that I happen to agree with, and I'm a liberal Democrat. Of course, the homeless need to have workable options of where to go. But progressives are just wrong to defend the rights of the "unhoused" against anybody who would dare challenge their apparent belief that they can set up camp on any square of sidewalk that they declare to be their own. I can't be the only non-conservative person in America who would like to stop the trashing of our public spaces. I mean, is that really the worst you can say about Andrew Yang? Seriously?

Me, at sunrise. Posted: 20 Jun 2021 06:04 AM PDT Video by Meade:

"Think of Pearl Street in Boulder, with its winding paths, large trees, public art, live music and abundant outdoor cafes." Posted: 20 Jun 2021 05:57 AM PDT "That's the kind of exciting destination that could help bring back [Madison's] State Street — and go beyond what it has been. Instead of a river of concrete for buses to rumble down, State Street could be a walkable park for people, who would be prioritized over vehicles. The mayor last week brushed off support among Downtown business owners for taking buses off State Street, calling them desperate and willing to try anything. That might be true, given how devastating the pandemic, weak economy, protests against police, smashed windows and looting were for store owners last year. But just as likely is that business owners have a better sense for what will work than the mayor. Rhodes-Conway also cited changing retail trends, with more people shopping online. But why is that a reason to run buses down State Street?... The mayor wonders aloud if keeping buses off State is an attempt to keep poor people away.... The mayor isn't about to bring back regular vehicle traffic to State, she said. So in that sense, she does support a pedestrian mall the entire length of State Street — as long as it's centered around buses. That vision is stale and unexciting compared to the popular and long-standing idea of creating a grand promenade and park." From "Don't pit fast buses versus a State Street promenade — Madison can have both," an editorial in the Wisconsin State Journal). I've lived in Boulder as well as Madison, and I love Pearl Street and have long wished that State Street could be like Pearl Street, especially since State Street is already halfway there, closed to almost all traffic... other than these giant buses that must barrel down the street, disrupting the playful, peaceful mood.  But it should be conceded that State Street is a very different place from Pearl Street. State Street has the University of Wisconsin at one end and the State Capitol at the other. Pearl Street is a few blocks away from campus (the University of Colorado), and there's nothing like a state capitol anywhere in the city. So there are far more intersecting interests connected to State Street.  Pearl Street is a nice little enclave over there, a place for visitors and city residents to shop and eat and fool around. There are some people who prefer a funkier downtown, and State Street is absolutely, centrally downtown.

"Who cares about a parenting memoirist’s removal from a law-school teaching roster?" Posted: 20 Jun 2021 06:34 AM PDT "The answer is, in part, because this story manages to touch on seemingly every single cultural flashpoint of the past few years. Chua's critics see a story about #MeToo—because of her husband, but also because Chua supported the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, even after he was accused of sexual assault. Meanwhile, Chua's defenders see a morality tale about liberal cancel culture. 'What they've done to you is SOP'—standard operating procedure—'for conservative allies but chills me to the bone nonetheless,' a supporter tweeted at her, earlier this month. Megyn Kelly weighed in, tweeting, 'Make no mistake: this is retribution for her support of Brett Kavanaugh, & it is disgusting.' Chua's allies have also suggested that anti-Asian bias is involved. 'The woke academy reserves a special vitriol for minority faculty who don't toe the line politically,' Niall Ferguson, a historian, tweeted. Chua and her husband aren't politically conservative—she says that [her husband Jed] Rubenfeld has historically been 'very left-leaning,' whereas she is a 'solid independent'—but they are provocateurs." From "What Is Going On at Yale Law School?/The prestigious institution has tied itself in knots over a dispute involving one of its most popular—and controversial—professors, Amy Chua" (The New Yorker). There's not much new in this article. It's bringing New Yorker readers up to speed on something I've already blogged about a few times, as you can see by clicking the "Amy Chua" tag. It was new to me that — as Chua tells it —Chua's daughter Lulu pushed her to go big: "She's, like, 'You have to fight the narrative,' so I just did something shocking," Chua said. She wrote an open letter saying that she'd been falsely accused and described a Zoom call with the Yale Law dean in which she'd been treated "degradingly, like a criminal."... "I sent it to my entire faculty, and I tweeted it," Chua said. "Ever since then, it's been kind of an escalating nightmare." If you choose to do "something shocking," aren't you seeking "an escalating nightmare"? I guess the something shocking is what she aimed at others and the escalating nightmare is what she found happening to her. Let me rephrase that: the something shocking what she now says she did and the escalating nightmare is her description, to be published in The New Yorker, of how her life feels to her now.  And it worked. She's got a big New Yorker story about her. Look at that headline — parse it — and look a the nice photo of her perched on a glossy, empty desk. This is good press.

Who breaks up with you by telegram? Posted: 20 Jun 2021 05:03 AM PDT I'm reading "50 Reasons to Love Joni Mitchell's 'Blue'/The singer-songwriter questioned everything on her fourth album. Twenty-five musicians speak about the LP's enduring power on its 50th anniversary" (NYT), and there's this, from Graham Nash: Obviously there are a couple of songs on the record that I recognize, from when she would write them in the house, that involved me. "My Old Man," "River." She finished the album after we parted, but for many months I saw her there writing this stuff. It was a fascinating process to see, I must confess. It's as if she tore her skin off and just released all her nerves into music. I was repairing the house in Laurel Canyon, I was actually laying the kitchen floor when I got a telegram from Joan saying that our affair was over, officially. And she put it in a very interesting way. She said, "If you squeeze sand in your hand, it will run through your fingers." I thought, got it. And that was it. When was the age of telegraphy? I'm 70 years old, and I've never sent or received a telegram. I remember telegrams only as a way of communicating that someone had died. Maybe there's some poetry in using a telegram to convey the information that the relationship has died.

"Mr. Midgette, his hair painted and powdered silver-white and his face covered with pale makeup, passed himself off as Warhol at several colleges with Warhol’s blessing..." Posted: 20 Jun 2021 04:43 AM PDT "... fielding questions after showings of Warhol films.... Mr. Midgette pulled off his impersonation at a time when Warhol's reputation had begun to spread beyond New York City but when, to most of America, he was still more of a vague concept than a recognizable personality.... 'The one thing I knew about Andy was, you could answer any question any way you liked and it would be fine,' he said... 'It might not have been the same thing he would say, but it would make as much sense... It made me realize how, in life, people just presume a lot of things.... Just because you've met Andy twice, does it mean you remember exactly how he looked, and how he would look under different circumstances? If you're being told it's Andy and everyone else is accepting it, you'll go along with that. It shows you how people just aren't very curious about what's in front of them.'" From "Allen Midgette, an Ersatz Andy Warhol, Dies at 82/In a prank, or perhaps a piece of performance art, Mr. Midgette pretended to be the famed artist on a lecture tour in 1967" (NYT). Andy Warhol said, "He was better than I am.... He was what the people expected. They liked him better than they would have me." When are you such a thing that a fake you would be more you than you? We have one solid answer: Andy Warhol.

I stay out of the woods in a thunderstorm, but a Reddit user caught Madison's sunrise today. Posted: 19 Jun 2021 06:22 PM PDT

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