Althouse

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• At the Sunrise Café...
• "One of his most famous installations, erected in 1976 — the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence — is 'Clothespin,' a 45-foot-high, 10-ton black steel sculpture..."
• "Just 16% of U.S. adults now say they have 'a great deal' or 'quite a lot' of confidence in newspapers and 11% in television news."
• "Among people of color, 45% now approve of Biden’s overall performance, down from 54% in the spring."
• "An epidemic of Spanish-language right-wing disinformation that spiked around the 2020 election on social media platforms, and in some big-city AM radio stations, is revving up again..."

At the Sunrise Café... Posted: 18 Jul 2022 05:24 PM PDT ... you can talk about whatever you want.

"One of his most famous installations, erected in 1976 — the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence — is 'Clothespin,' a 45-foot-high, 10-ton black steel sculpture..." Posted: 18 Jul 2022 02:56 PM PDT "... of precisely what the title indicates, complete with a metal spring that appropriately evokes the number 76. The work stands in stark contrast to conventional public sculpture, which Mr. Oldenburg, impersonating a municipal official, said was supposed to involve 'bulls and Greeks and lots of nekkid broads.'... 'My intention is to make an everyday object that eludes definition.... I've expressed myself consistently in objects with reference to human beings rather than through human beings,' he said....While Mr. Oldenburg's work is most often linked to the Pop Art of the 1960s, he saw his monumental versions of humble objects as more than just celebrations of the mundane. 'A catalog could be made of all such objects... which would read like a list of the deities or things on which our contemporary mythological thinking has been projected. We do invest religious emotion in our objects. Look at how beautifully objects are depicted in ads in Sunday newspapers.'" From "Claes Oldenburg Dies at 93; Pop Artist Made the Everyday Monumental/Taking ordinary objects like hamburgers and household items, he sculpted them in unfamiliar, often imposing dimensions — what he called his 'Colossal Monuments'" (NYT). It's a beautiful idea — that common objects can be monumental. And what monumental devotion to this idea! This gets my "big and small" tag, which is, perhaps, my favorite tag.

"Just 16% of U.S. adults now say they have 'a great deal' or 'quite a lot' of confidence in newspapers and 11% in television news." Posted: 18 Jul 2022 02:30 PM PDT "Both readings are down five percentage points since last year." Gallup reports, displaying this gruesome graph:

"Among people of color, 45% now approve of Biden’s overall performance, down from 54% in the spring." Posted: 18 Jul 2022 02:24 PM PDT "That decline includes a 6-point dip among Black adults and a 9-point decline among Hispanic adults. Biden's approval ratings for handling the economy and inflation now break negative among Black adults, who have been among the President's strongest backers (47% approve and 52% disapprove on the economy, while 34% approve and 65% disapprove on inflation)." From "CNN Poll: Most Americans are discontented with Biden, the economy and the state of the country" (CNN).

"An epidemic of Spanish-language right-wing disinformation that spiked around the 2020 election on social media platforms, and in some big-city AM radio stations, is revving up again..." Posted: 18 Jul 2022 11:59 AM PDT "... ahead of the fall midterms. Two years ago, before the 2020 presidential election, Spanish-language videos and news stories smeared Joe Biden as a communist. After the election, disinformation campaigns accused Black Lives Matter of spurring the Jan. 6 insurrection and bolstered the lie that Biden stole the election.... Conspiracy theories, easily debunked false narratives and outrageous lies spread quickly and take hold among Spanish-language users... [because] social media sites, including Facebook, do little fact-checking on foreign-language pages... [F]ake news videos often spread via large group chats among families and friends on WhatsApp, which is hugely popular among Latinos and is encrypted.... 'If your father sends you a video, you will trust your father. This is what makes us extraordinarily susceptible. We have very strong family ties.'... [W]e Latinos need to do our part. Don't be shy about asking Abuela where she got that information she mentioned on WhatsApp...."   Writes Lizette Alvarez, in "Fake news speaks many languages, but it's particularly fond of Spanish" (WaPo).

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