Althouse |
- When you write, do you work at avoiding the "second mention" and strive to achieve what Fowler mocked as the "cheap ornament" of "elegant variation"?
- "President Biden has told former President Obama that he is planning to run for reelection in 2024..."
- WaPo goes after the Twitter feed "Libs of TikTok" — tracing and revealing the name of someone who had been anonymous.
- Sandhill cranes at sunrise.
- "She recalls an airline employee who glanced at her driver’s license and said, 'Oh, Jennifer Grey, like the actress.'"
- "Joe brings impeccable news judgment, a sophisticated understanding of the forces shaping the world and a long track record of helping journalists produce their most ambitious and courageous work."
- "I want a Republican governor and I want to win," said Tommy Thompson, announcing that he will not run for governor again.
- "Maybe we shouldn't give charismatic people recommending various forms of genocide or apocalypse or self-negation or whatever — maybe you shouldn't give them a bullhorn that can reach the entire planet in a second."
- At the Sunrise Café...
- "For the past few days, much of the internet has been chuckling over clips from the second season of Tucker Carlson Originals... First, people went wild for a montage from the trailer for the episode 'The End of Men'..."
- "What Musk seemingly fails to recognize is that to truly have free speech today, you need moderation. Otherwise just those who bully and harass will be left as they will drive others away."
- "Tom Nelson, a longtime union advocate, is running for the Democratic nomination for Wisconsin’s Senate seat as a genuine populist, not the phony kind with a Harvard degree who affects an accent."
- "This crackling revival of 'American Buffalo' highlights by contrast the devolution of Mamet’s craft that coincided with the shift in his worldview, from red-diaper baby to apologist for billionaires."
- "Making new friends involves many inefficiencies: hanging out for hours on end; buying or preparing food or drinks for people who you may or may not click with; traveling to..."
- "He was a great singer and songwriter. But he had the worst stage fright of anyone I ever met. If not for the stage fright, he would have continued"
- "I was an older woman and I couldn’t get hired. I always wanted to travel the world, write and take photographs. I thought why not take 10 years and go?"
| Posted: 19 Apr 2022 04:27 PM PDT You know what I mean? What Charles W. Morton called "the 'elongated yellow fruit' school of writing." You've already written "banana," so you have to write something other than "banana." I'm reading "The Twitter Account That Collects Awkward, Amusing Writing/When writers strive for elegant variations of the same word, the anonymous Second Mentions account takes note" by Naaman Zhou (The New Yorker). Here's the Twitter account: Second Mentions. I remember laughing over a specific example of this faux fastidiousness half a century ago: A young woman, having written "small house," felt the need, on second mention, to go with "petite edifice." Zhou writes: Take, for example, Adele, who is frequently "the singer Adele" on first mention, and then maybe "the Tottenham soul-pop titan" on second mention. Cheese, if you are saying "cheese" too much, can be "the popular dairy product." A "pair of armadillos," who, for some reason, were put on a diet? "The oval-shaped duo."... [T]he Times of London [referred to] "tea" as "the bitter brown infusion." The Guardian [called] a fox who ran onto a soccer field... "the four-legged interloper."... The second mentions often border on poetry. The moon, described by the Mirror, as "the tide-changing rock." The Sun describing a sex doll as a "lust vessel."... Now that I know a name for this — "second mentions" — I think I might be able to find these elegant variations more delightful than annoying. And I have been peeved at this cheap ornament, so common in everyday newspaper writing. But they are funny foibles. Just humans trying to write. Now, I can think, oh, no, they're doing that! ADDED: Here is "Chapter III: Airs and Graces/ELEGANT VARIATION" from H.W. Fowler's "King's English" (1908). WE include under this head all substitutions of one word for another for the sake of variety, and some miscellaneous examples will be found at the end of the section. But we are chiefly concerned with what may be called pronominal variation, in which the word avoided is either a noun or its obvious pronoun substitute. The use of pronouns is itself a form of variation, designed to avoid ungainly repetition; and we are only going one step further when, instead of either the original noun or the pronoun, we use some new equivalent. 'Mr. Gladstone', for instance, having already become 'he,' presently appears as 'that statesman'. Variation of this kind is often necessary in practice; so often, that it should never be admitted except when it is necessary. Many writers of the present day abound in types of variation that are not justified by expediency, and have consequently the air of cheap ornament. It is impossible to lay down hard and fast rules, but two general principles may be suggested: (1) Variation should take place only when there is some awkwardness, such as ambiguity or noticeable monotony, in the word avoided. (2) The substitute should be of a purely pronominal character, a substitute and nothing more; there should be no killing of two birds with one stone. Even when these two requirements are satisfied, the variation is often worse, because more noticeable, than the monotony it is designed to avoid. |
| Posted: 19 Apr 2022 01:49 PM PDT "... two sources tell The Hill."
I guess that means he thinks the other possible candidates are really not that good, including and perhaps especially his hand-picked choice to follow him, Kamala Harris. The other top choice is Pete Buttigieg. But we don't really get to see who might emerge if Biden would do the right thing and decline to run. Here's "The top 10 Democratic presidential candidates for 2024, ranked" by Aaron Blake (at WaPo), putting Biden at #1, followed by Pete Buttigieg, then Kamala Harris, then Elizabeth Warren, and Amy Klobuchar. |
| Posted: 19 Apr 2022 10:28 AM PDT
I guess Lorenz (and WaPo) think this doxxing is acceptable — and good journalism — because the person is opposed to the left and giving visibility to its TikTok videos that might otherwise escape notice. There's this implicit justification for doxxing:
Some people on the right dox, so we — a prominent and elite newspaper — can dox a particular individual who isn't accused of doxxing anyone but is popular with people on the right. Libs of TikTok has been especially effective in showing teachers who are proud of teaching children about gender and sexuality. Is it nefarious to show their videos to people who think this teaching agenda is wrong? WaPo seems to be saying: Yes. But if the answer is yes, that means this teaching agenda can't stand the light! Here's what I see as an attempt to wriggle out of that implicit admission that these sex-and-gender lessons must not be dragged out into the sunlight:
The more offensive the teaching is, the more the teachers will be abused if their work is exposed. Libs of TikTok is only drawing attention to material that has been posted on TikTok. So what is the standard for doxxing? I'd like to see WaPo state the answer to that question explicitly. Are they saying that those who highlight vile speech deserve to be stripped of their pseudonymity? Or are they saying — say it clearly, WaPo! — that when speech WaPo likes is exposed to people who don't like that speech, it becomes acceptable to dox whoever exposed that speech? Notice that WaPo poses as concerned about chilling the speech of the original TikTokker, but it is actively chilling the speech of those who draw attention to that speech. The original TikTokker chose to make something public, Libs of TikTok then shared that public speech, and WaPo publicized what had not been public, the identity of the pseudonymous sharer. I challenge WaPo to explain its ethics in viewpoint neutral terms. I'm not saying there's much chance that its ethics are viewpoint neutral. I just want to see it take the problem seriously and either try to demonstrate the neutrality of its ethics or, alternatively, defend its non-neutrality forthrightly. I'd like to know the rule that it purports to follow, because I want to be able to use it in the future. *** AND: Maybe WaPo envies Glenn's 1.8 million followers and "online influencer" is a bigger deal to them than "journalsit." Taylor Lorenz has less than 300,000 followers. Also:
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| Posted: 19 Apr 2022 08:41 AM PDT This morning, by Lake Mendota: |
| Posted: 19 Apr 2022 09:19 AM PDT "When Grey said, 'Actually, it is me,' the woman responded: 'I've seen Dirty Dancing a dozen times. I know Jennifer Grey. And you are not her.'... In the two hours she sat on a blue banquette in a Beverly Hills restaurant, matter-of-factly scooping a soft-boiled egg, spreading butter on rye toast and chatting about her memoir, only one person appeared to recognize Grey. The woman's face lit up, then softened as if she'd spotted an old friend who'd survived a terrible ordeal." What a terrible mistake it is to think that your off-the-norm feature is dragging down the rest of your good looks rather than what's making you stand out! I was just having a conversation about Gene Tierney, the 1940s actress with an overbite, who said it was in her contract that they couldn't make her get her teeth fixed. Here's her NYT obituary: With her blue-green eyes, brown hair, prominent cheekbones and what many young men of the 1940's regarded as the most appealing overbite of the day (Miss Tierney said her movie contract stipulated that her slightly protruding front teeth were never to be fixed) she won plaudits for her patrician look but some criticism for her acting. I think of her as the Freddie Mercury of actresses. Consider whether the thing that seems most wrong about you is your best asset! You're not hurting anyone with your big nose/buck teeth/whatever, and if you change it, you might look boring or lose your amazing singing range. People don't say leave well enough alone anymore. They want to tweak it and then tweak it again and again. Anyway, why were we talking about Gene Tierney? Because there's a "Young Mr. Ford" collection streaming on the Criterion Channel now, and we watched "Tobacco Road." Here, it can be streamed on YouTube. I've clipped out one crazy scene that features Tierney (sexing it up with Ward Bond):
What a nutty movie. The great director John Ford was dealing with a book that made the poor people seem contemptible and disgusting, and his idea was to make it as funny as possible. It's worth watching to see what an insane mixture ensued. And this was a year after "Grapes of Wrath." ADDED: In the novel "Tobacco Road," the character played by Gene Tierney in the movie — Ellie May — isn't beautiful at all. She has, as Wikipedia puts it, a "grotesque cleft lip." And speaking of noses, there's another female character — not seen in that clip — who has a facial deformity: Sister Bessie Rice has a nose that "contains no bone, and so when looking straight at her face one can see straight into her nostrils, like a pig." The freeze frame on the embedded video shows that character, played by the Marjorie Rambeau and looking reasonably nice. |
| Posted: 19 Apr 2022 06:07 AM PDT Says A.G. Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times, quoted in "Joe Kahn Is Named Next Executive Editor of The New York Times" (NYT).
I've been relying on the NYT for longer than Joe Kahn has been alive, and I have never seen anywhere better to go to follow the news and the culture. I criticize what I find in the NYT. That's the #1 thing I do on this blog, but I dearly hope for it to be as good as possible, and I wish Joe Kahn the very best. |
| Posted: 19 Apr 2022 07:42 AM PDT We saw him squander the opportunity to win the Senate seat 10 years ago, and he's 80 now, so it was absurd that he was threatening to run. His statement "I want to win" implies his awareness that he wouldn't win (or he doesn't want the blame if the Republicans lose the race for governor again). Here's the Madison.com article about his announcement. That says that Thompson says that Trump encouraged him to run. The line "I want a Republican governor and I want to win" sounds Trumpish, but that's Thompson's statement about why he's not running. |
| Posted: 19 Apr 2022 05:31 AM PDT "You should be at least allowed to have that thought — right? — like: shit, I don't know if that's the right thing to do. You know what I mean? If you saw a very charismatic dude in a park making a very convincing argument for why everyone on the planet should kill themselves, you wouldn't be like: hey, man, do you mind if I project you into the homes of everyone on the planet, so they hear your message?" "So, if you have no censorship, that is what's possible." "So, from compassion — from wanting our kids to be safe and us to be safe — there's this this thing that sounds like censorship — which it is — but the problem is just what you're saying, which is: Okay, let's do it. You're right! I don't want that weirdo, who's so charismatic, that if I listen to him just for a few minutes, I'll be like: You know what, maybe I should cut my dick off. Whatever the fuck. I don't want that guy talking to everybody." "That was the Heaven's Gate guy that castrated those dudes." "They sure did. They did. That was part of the thing. You gotta cut your dick off to get on the spaceship." "Just your balls. I think you've just got to cut off your balls." "Oh, just your balls. Whew. I misheard him. That's good news." *** That's from the Joe Rogan podcast, Episode #1806 — with Duncan Trussell. I did the transcription of the discussion that begins at 1:26:56. As you can infer, they've been talking about the problem of censorship on Twitter. The one doing most of the talking is Trussell. I've put Joe's contributions in italics. Here's a video to sharpen your memory of Heaven's Gate:
"So take a closer look... Do you notice anything about them? Their haircuts, exactly alike. Baggy clothes. No gender. And with every move, they fix their adoring gaze on one man in the room. They call him Do...." To what extent do we want free speech when the speech shoots instantly everywhere? Joe and Duncan don't mention this, but Elon Musk is a charismatic guy. With a spaceship. |
| Posted: 18 Apr 2022 04:51 PM PDT
... you can talk about whatever you want.
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| Posted: 18 Apr 2022 04:12 PM PDT "... which is so extremely misogynistic and homophobic that it swings around into being unbelievably gay. Then, in an hour-long special previewing the new season, Carlson chatted 'fitness professional' Andrew McGovern, who shed some light on why the trailer shows a naked dude presenting his junk to what looks like a giant, glowing, home COVID test. He suggested that if men want to 'optimize' and take their testosterone 'to another level,' they should try red-light therapy. 'Which is testicle tanning?' Carlson asked." From "In Defense of Tucker Carlson Touting 'Testicle Tanning'" (NY Magazine). One way to go viral is to give your haters what makes it very easy for them to laugh at you. What good, by comparison, is dignity... and science? Why would you heat your testicles? Aren't they there to be less warm than the rest of your body? I'm ready to believe America needs better optimized masculinity, but this seems more like Goop for men... Moop. Here's that trailer:
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| Posted: 18 Apr 2022 12:57 PM PDT Said the former Facebook public policy director Katie Harbath, quoted in "Elon Musk wants a free speech utopia. Technologists clap back. Musk's vision of the Internet is outdated and doesn't take into account the real world, they say" (WaPo). That's very well put, right down to the "seemingly." I think he does know this, and — without digging them out — I think he's made comments conceding that there will still need to be moderation. The questions are about the degree of moderation and the importance of avoiding bias in applying that moderation. Over on Facebook, one of my friends passed along a tweet that said "[Musk is] not going to encourage 'free speech' he's just going to allow people to say whatever they want, which is not the same thing." That seemed intended to evoke only mockery, so I wrote: "The assertion is correct. Musk won't cause people to become more courageous, and under the new conditions, some less than fully courageous people will restrain themselves even more than they do now." So I said: "I am free to answer your question but I am not encouraged. If that is a comprehensible statement, you know the answer. If it is not, I am too discouraged to say more."
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| Posted: 18 Apr 2022 07:49 AM PDT Writes Jennifer Rubin in "Wisconsin's Tom Nelson reminds Democrats how populists should sound" (WaPo). Who's she talking about — "the phony kind with a Harvard degree who affects an accent"? Russ Feingold??! (He went to Harvard, but he's really from Wisconsin, not faking an accent.) I've been living in Wisconsin since 1984, and I don't know which politicians have affected the accent. But maybe Rubin isn't talking about Wisconsin. She's acting like she's talking about Wisconsin though, so — speaking of phony — I'm expecting her to talk about Wisconsin. Who, exactly, is being impugned? Someone is terribly fake, apparently, but who? We're not told who this fake-accent Harvard person might be, but we are told the name of someone Nelson views as a role model: William Proxmire, who "popularized the Golden Fleece award to highlight wasteful government spending." I would emphasize that there is populism that examines root causes of the things that affect the lives of average people, making real efforts to understand and improve their lives, and there is populism that capitalizes on people's ignorance and insecurities, setting up scapegoats and treating government as the enemy, rather than a tool that can benefit people when utilized correctly. |
| Posted: 18 Apr 2022 07:24 AM PDT "How could the man who showed us how the powerless are crushed by the lessons of the powerful now argue, both in plays and on television, that the problem flows in the other direction?" From the NYT review of the current Broadway revival of "American Buffalo" — "Review: In 'American Buffalo,' Grift Is the Coin of the Realm/Sam Rockwell, Laurence Fishburne and Darren Criss star in an electric revival of the David Mamet play about capitalism in a junk shop." Here's the second-highest-rated comment over there: "No no no. I am happy to cancel this bit of culture out of my life. I will not reward this man. His insanity is detrimental to society at large. My choice. He is the epitome of a ruined legacy." And here's something from David Mamet's new book "Recessional: The Death of Free Speech and the Cost of a Free Lunch":
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| Posted: 18 Apr 2022 05:34 AM PDT "... unfamiliar places or homes at appointed times, even when you're not in the mood; commuting to the gym or the neighborhood park instead of working out at home. Not to mention, maintaining existing friendships also takes work and emotional investment — without any guarantee of a return. If your goal is optimization today, tomorrow or this week, it almost always makes sense to push friendship-building and maintenance down the list of priorities. But I'd suggest that the more important cost-benefit analysis to do is the longer-term one: If your goal is to be grounded and fulfilled over the course of a lifetime, then there is nothing more important than nurturing our essential bonds.... Like so much else about emerging from this pandemic, the key is pushing through the resistance and making a first step.... Is there pleasure — and a certain nobility — in solitude? Of course, especially for introverts like myself. But [Buddha, asked whether] 'good friendship, good companionship, good comradeship' make up half of the spiritual life [said] 'This is the entire spiritual life... good friendship, good companionship and good comradeship.'" From "One Part of Your Life You Shouldn't Optimize" (NYT). |
| Posted: 18 Apr 2022 05:11 AM PDT Said David Bromberg, about Paul Siebel, quoted in "Paul Siebel, Singer Whose Career Was Notable but Brief, Dies at 84/He arrived on the Greenwich Village folk scene in the mid-1960s and drew comparisons to Dylan. But he left the music business not long after" (NYT).
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| Posted: 18 Apr 2022 06:39 AM PDT "If I run out of money and I'm not a famous writer, I'll come back and be a Starbucks barista or a Walmart greeter." Said Heidi Dezell, 57, quoted in "Want to Retire in Portugal? Here's What to Know, as Americans Move There in Droves. Retirees are drawn by a low cost of living, healthcare, a sunny climate and tax incentives" (Wall Street Journal).
We're being updated on trends by a newspaper that can't spell "Californication." They're writing about laughing while not perceiving the contents of the portmanteau. Maybe the Americans who laugh too much for Milwaukeean taste are getting more of the jokes. I think every person in this article is female. It ends with the story of Linda Correll, 52, an Ohioan who found a small apartment in Porto where "When it rains heavily, all the water comes into my apartment."
She says "for some reason," and then she, unwittingly, gives the reason. You're leaving your home country for some very bland comforts and no excitement. But maybe this article will prompt some older male Wall Street Journal readers to quit their job now and retire to Portugal. There are lots of health-and-safety-loving Midwestern ladies there longing — in their leaky apartments — for a man maybe something like you. ADDED: For those who think the Red Hot Chili Peppers coined the word "Californication," here's the Wikipedia article, "Californication":
On November 7, 1972, in a statewide referendum, Colorado voters rejected a bond issue to fund the hosting of the 1976 Winter Olympics. The venue for the games would have been spread over 150 miles (240 km), and was widely viewed as license for unbridled development. As part of the opposition to the bond, the slogan "Don't Californicate Colorado" was coined, appearing on bumper stickers and placards across the state. This rejection by Colorado voters followed a trend in the western states to blame California-style "mindless development" for the urban growth problems experienced in states like Colorado, Montana, New Mexico and Oregon.[7] The Chili Peppers' album and song "Californication" came out in 1999. Anthony Kiedis was 4 years old in 1966. So was Flea. The 2 little Peppers were 10 in 1972. |
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