Monday, April 4, 2022

Althouse

Althouse

Grateful to Nana and Pop.

Posted: 04 Apr 2022 04:52 PM PDT

"Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitt Romney of Utah on Monday become the second and third Republicans to announce support for Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the Supreme Court..."

Posted: 04 Apr 2022 04:50 PM PDT

"... clinching the votes Jackson needs to secure confirmation later this week to become high court's 116th justice — and its first Black woman."

WaPo reports.

Murkowski noted Jackson's "independence" and "important perspective," and Romney called her a "well-qualified jurist and a person of honor."

"[W]e continue to underestimate the problem of loneliness... because we define loneliness too narrowly. Properly understood..."

Posted: 04 Apr 2022 04:47 PM PDT

"... loneliness is a 'personal, societal, economic, and politica' condition—not just 'feeling bereft of love, company, or intimacy' but also "feeling unsupported and uncared for by our fellow citizens, our employers, our community, our government.'... Sociologists who are skeptical about whether loneliness is a growing problem argue that much modern aloneness is a happy, chosen condition.... Ironically... celebrating single women as avatars of modern female empowerment has made things harder, not easier, for lonely women, by encouraging the view that their unhappiness is of their own making.... [T]he plight of lonely, sexless men tends to inspire more public concern and compassion than that of women. The term 'incel' was invented by a woman hoping to commiserate with other unhappily celibate women, but it didn't get much traction until it was appropriated by men and became a byword for sexual rage."

From "How Everyone Got So Lonely/The recent decline in rates of sexual activity has been attributed variously to sexism, neoliberalism, and women's increased economic independence. How fair are those claims—and will we be saved by the advent of the sex robot?" by ZoĆ« Heller (NY Magazine).

If there's  more concern about "lonely, sexless men," it's not because there's more empathy for them. It's because we're afraid that — unpaired with women and thus untamed — they'll do destructive things.

"I can no longer keep my blinds drawn/And I can't keep myself from talking."

Posted: 04 Apr 2022 04:33 PM PDT

 

"Vibrations bounce in no direction/And lie there shattered into fragments." 

Just a song that came to mind today. It looked great on "Ed Sullivan," but the single version is sweeter. Here, I found it on Spotify and made a playlist based on it:

I've got 5 TikTok selections for you today.

Posted: 04 Apr 2022 04:11 PM PDT

1. Goodbye to Estelle Harris — George Costanza's mom. Some excellent clips.

2. An aging woman in her LSD shirt.

3. A comic interpretation of how they fire you in L.A. versus how they fire you in NYC.

4. The woman who has overheard how men talk about woman.

5. "Are we supposed to know what we're doing? No?! Great! Just checking."

At 7:02 this morning, by the shore of Lake Mendota, a bald eagle took fight.

Posted: 04 Apr 2022 01:28 PM PDT

Does Biden, posing with Mack Trucks, say "I thought I was going to get to drive one of these fuckers today"?

Posted: 04 Apr 2022 12:45 PM PDT

Here's the video I found after I was watching a bit of the event live:

 

Did you hear the line? "I thought I was going to get to drive one of these [???] today." I hear "fuckers."

I'd just run into the live event on TikTok, and I was surprised at all the abuse the TikTok users were putting in the live comments. Here's a screenshot I took: 

 

There was a very fast moving stream of comments. Very nasty. It's just by pure chance that the screenshot ends with "Where's Will Smith when you need him?"

I got some background on the event from Washington Examiner. Biden was talking about trucking as "a national priority, including improving training and employment standards." And apparently, back in 2017, Trump had an event where he was "photographed in the cab of an 18-wheeler Mack honking the horn and pretending to drive before a listening session with executives and their employees on healthcare," so that may have prompted Biden to express disappointment at not getting to sit in the truck. I'm guessing his handlers were afraid it might look weak rather than strong (like Dukakis in the tank).

Oh! I see the Washington Examiner fills in the blank with "suckers." You tell me. I think if you watch believing you'll hear "suckers," you will hear "suckers," but when I didn't have a text, I heard "fuckers" every time (and listened 10 times).

"Republican excuses for rejecting Ketanji Brown Jackson are absurd"/"The GOP won’t be honest about opposition to Judge Jackson."

Posted: 04 Apr 2022 09:24 AM PDT

Those are 2 different pieces ranking in the top 5 most-read opinion pieces in The Washington Post. 

I'm going to read them so you don't have to. Really, I want to test my hypothesis. There's frustration that Republicans aren't presenting a bigger target. The desire is to accuse them of rejecting KBJ because of her race, but there's nothing blatant, so effort must be put into teasing out the racial insinuations. Of course, Biden was blatant about race in making his choice, but that's what makes it so frustrating that Republicans aren't jumping at the bait.

Now, I'll read.

1. "Republican excuses for rejecting Ketanji Brown Jackson are absurd" by the WaPo editorial board. Overheated headline aside, this piece just says that the Senate should always confirm the President's nominee as long as basic qualifications are met. I pretty much agree with that, but it's not surprising that Republicans are paying back the Democrats for opposing President Trump's well-qualified nominees. The WaPo editors briefly acknowledge this un-absurd reality. The last paragraph asserts that Republicans will look "unattractive... in the history books," because their "almost entirely White caucus" is "rejecting the first Black woman."

2. "The GOP won't be honest about opposition to Judge Jackson" is a piece by Jennifer Rubin. She speculates "that the GOP base is so infused with white supremacy that any vote for a Black woman would simply be unacceptable to the MAGA crowd." Doesn't the "MAGA crowd" love Clarence Thomas? Rubin's last paragraph begins: "We should not be surprised that in service of making Democrats appear to be an existential threat to America, Republicans will say anything to justify their opposition — the more venomous the better." Yeah, but we also should not be not surprised when, in service of making Republicans appear to be an existential threat to America, Democrats will say anything to justify their opposition — the more venomous the better.

The NYT art critic wrote an elaborate review of the new Whitney Biennial. The review was published 4 days ago. It has a comments section. There isn't one comment.

Posted: 04 Apr 2022 09:01 AM PDT

Here. See for yourself.

That's some amazing apathy. I'm sure the critic, Holland Cotter, said some provocative things. I mean, I scanned the text and looked for something. I was thinking maybe...

As the curators have emphasized in statements about the show, the idea of boundaries, and getting rid of them, were important to their thinking about this biennial, starting with questions (also addressed by the 2019 edition) of how to break down the geopolitical borders that have traditionally defined and delimited the Whitney's version of "American art." 

The idea of boundaries, and getting rid of them.... 

You know what's a boundary? A museum. We're just not traditionally defined and delimited enough to care.

ADDED: The indented material is one sentence. We could diagram it. Let's see. You start with the subject and the object: idea | were — oops! That's a grammar error. I mean, I see a defense you could make but I reject it. You'd have to say that it's a plural subject consisting of "idea" and "getting," but I think it's the idea "of boundaries" and of "getting rid of them." I think I'd write: "the idea of boundaries — and getting rid of them — was important...."

When you write about doing away with boundaries, you still need punctuation and subject/verb agreement.

AND: I mean, really, the whole sentence needs rewriting. Did anyone care about any of this, including the curators, who've been making emphatic statements about boundaries since 2019? It's so ludicrously dull.

The NYT checks in on Wisconsin: "An unmown lawn in Appleton, Wis. By letting the grass grow long, plants typically identified as weeds were able to flower, providing important spring food for bees."

Posted: 04 Apr 2022 08:09 AM PDT

I'm quoting a caption for a photograph that shows a lot of dandelions blooming and going to seed.

The article's headline is "In Wisconsin: Stowing Mowers, Pleasing Bees/Can the No Mow May movement help transform the traditional American lawn — a manicured carpet of grass — into something more ecologically beneficial?" 

Appleton's No Mow May initiative had a clear purpose: to save the bees — and not just honeybees (which are European imports), but also native bees, such as bumble bees, mining bees and sweat bees. Lawns typically provide poor habitat for bees. But if allowed to flower, lawn weeds — perhaps better characterized as plants other than grass — can provide rare spring food for bees emerging from hibernation.....

I think dandelions are a special problem. Why not sow clover?

Joni at the Grammys.

Posted: 04 Apr 2022 07:53 AM PDT

 

It's a long walk across the stage with a cane, but she finds a way to dance.

"Musk, who last month challenged President Putin to 'single combat' over Ukraine, appeared to take exception to the word 'peace' attached to the nightclub’s façade..."

Posted: 04 Apr 2022 06:10 AM PDT

"... in big letters stuck along a row of windows. 'They wrote PEACE on the wall at Berghain! I refused enter,' Musk claimed on Twitter. He later tweeted philosophically: 'Peace. Peace? I hate the word. Those who do care about peace (myself aspirationally included) don't need to hear it. And those who don't care about peace? Well…'"

From "Elon Musk joins fetish crowd on tour of Berlin clubs" (London Times).

Berghain is a nightclub in Berlin.

Looking that up, I stumbled upon some much more important news about Musk: "Elon Musk Takes 9.2% Stake in Twitter After Hinting at Shake-Up" (Bloomberg).

"We won a victory so big that you can see it from the moon, and you can certainly see it from Brussels."

Posted: 04 Apr 2022 05:56 AM PDT

"The whole world has seen tonight in Budapest that Christian democratic politics, conservative civic politics and patriotic politics have won. We are telling Europe that this is not the past, this is the future." 

Said Hungary's nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban, quoted in "Hungary's pro-Putin PM Orban claims victory in national vote" (AP).

Also: "In a surprise performance, radical right-wing party Our Homeland Movement appeared to have garnered more than 6% of the vote, exceeding the 5% threshold needed to gain seats in parliament." (Yes, I know, that word, but it's too awful for such trivial notations.)

Zelensky at the Grammys.

Posted: 04 Apr 2022 06:28 AM PDT

 

"Our musicians wear body armour instead of tuxedos. They sing to the wounded in hospitals — even to those who can't hear them. But the music will break through anyway. We defend our freedom to live, to love, to sound. On our land, we are fighting Russia, which brings horrible silence with its bombs — the dead silence. Fill the silence with your music. Fill it today to tell our story. Tell the truth about this war on your social networks, on TV."

Does a world leader belong on an awards show? Who knows?! You could criticize the logic: Why would the glamorous celebrities at their awards show be the ones to tell what Zelensky calls "our story"? He's inviting others to appropriate his people's story. And yet, as he says, they are silenced, so he chooses to rely on others to get the story out. Whether they can do it skillfully or not, he is desperate, and he means to convey desperation. Stop what you are doing — enjoying the pleasures of peace and freedom — and make my cause yours!

And there is a music tradition of singing about the needs of others.

 

ADDED: I wanted to call up a Spotify playlist that highlights white artists in the 1960s who sang in support of the civil rights movement, but that's not easy to do! The list I've embedded has many black artists, and I think if I want an all-white playlist of civil rights movement songs, I'd have to put it together myself. 

HERE: I made a modest effort:

BUT: Maybe Zelensky only meant: Use your social media to write about the war, not your music talent. Your musical ability is what got you a huge following on Twitter and Instagram. That's why you matter. I want you to pass things along. 

There's no reason to believe these music stars will get things right as they attempt to do politics (and propaganda). If you subtract the music, what do you have?
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