Monday, June 20, 2022

Althouse

Sunrise with milkweed.
A very special selection of TikTok videos for you today. Let me know what you like.
"At the time of my history with the Germans, there was a whole generation of young girls that missed out on their medals, their trophies, their awards, their chances of careers because the IOC did nothing."
"Nearly everyone I talked to who knew DeSantis commented on his affect: his lack of curiosity about others, his indifferent table manners, his aversion to the political rituals of dispensing handshakes and questions about the kids."
"Many zoos use Prozac and other psychoactive drugs on at least some of their animals to deal with the mental effects of captivity."
"To indict Mr. Trump for these and other acts, Mr. Garland must make three decisions, each more difficult than the previous, and none of which has an obvious answer...."
"Coupling the fortunes of feminism to celebrity might have been worth it if it had led to meaningful political victories...."

Sunrise with milkweed.

Posted: 20 Jun 2022 05:15 PM PDT

Here's how the sun looked at 5:22 on this, the last day of spring.

And it's time for a new wildflower to take the lead. The golden alexander is fading, and milkweed is on the rise:

Write about anything you want in the comments.

A very special selection of TikTok videos for you today. Let me know what you like.

Posted: 20 Jun 2022 03:52 PM PDT

1. Bob Dylan sings "Happy Birthday" to Brian Wilson! (Wilson turns 80 today. Dylan preceded him in octogenarianism by 1 year, so he knows whereof he sings. Perhaps I should also mention that Paul McCartney turned 80 two days ago. Let us marvel at the greatness of octogenarian men! Thanks for hanging on all these years, o, fabulous heroes!)

2. Pieface. Not a pie in the face. A pie face.

3. One lady crosses the street in the flood, so shouldn't the second lady?

4. How you pass someone on a hiking trail compared to how your dad does.

5. "If European Americans were the cultural other: Performative Holiday Merch Edition."

6. The Italian husband is told "Use your noodle."

7. The way Mike Wallace spoke to Maria Callas in 1974.

8. Do you mean to tell me there are people who use washcloths?

9. The way department stores talk to each other.

"At the time of my history with the Germans, there was a whole generation of young girls that missed out on their medals, their trophies, their awards, their chances of careers because the IOC did nothing."

Posted: 20 Jun 2022 03:55 PM PDT

Said Sharron Davies, who won a silver medal swimming in the 1980 Moscow Olympics, when the East Germans used drugs that were the equivalent of "putting girls through male puberty."

Quoted in "Sharron Davies: 'The trans debate is toxic. It's made my life hell. But female athletes must speak up'/The former swimmer, still driven by the injustice of not winning 1980 Olympic gold, wants an uprising from athletes to ensure swimming's transgender ban extends to all sports" (London Times).

At the Moscow Olympics... East Germany claimed 90 per cent of the women's swimming medals. "And nobody did anything," she says, incensed. "I have friends who came fourth in the Moscow Games and no one ever has heard their names. The reason I am so vocal is I could not sit by and let that happen again."...

[T]hose East Germans with whom she competed and who won the medals that she believes should have been hers — she regards them as the victims too. Because of the drugs regimes they were unknowingly placed on, they suffered horrific multiple health issues in their adulthood.

The woman who finished ahead of Davies in 1980 "has heart problems, fertility problems." "These young girls were guinea pigs," Davies says.

"Nearly everyone I talked to who knew DeSantis commented on his affect: his lack of curiosity about others, his indifferent table manners, his aversion to the political rituals of dispensing handshakes and questions about the kids."

Posted: 20 Jun 2022 01:59 PM PDT

"One former associate told me that his demeanor stems from a conviction that others have advantages that were denied to him. 'The anger comes more easily to him because he has a chip on his shoulder,' she said. 'He is a serious guy. Driven.'"

Writes Dexter Filkins, in "Can Ron DeSantis Displace Donald Trump as the G.O.P.'s Combatant-in-Chief? A fervent opponent of mask mandates and 'woke' ideology, the Florida governor channels the same rage as the former President, but with greater discipline" (The New Yorker).

I asked [Ron DeSantis Sr.] what Ron was like growing up. "He was stubborn," DeSantis said. "If he set his mind to something, you couldn't shake him." DeSantis pointed into the street, where he and his son used to play catch; there were ball fields nearby, where he had coached Ron's Little League teams. "I tried not to favor him, and Ron didn't like that," he said. Early on, his son had read "The Science of Hitting," by Ted Williams, the baseball great, who advised young hitters to take care in choosing pitches to swing at. "I must have thrown a half million pitches to Ron, and I think he swung at about five hundred of them," he said. "I wish he would have never read it." In 1991, when DeSantis was twelve, his team made it to the Little League World Series.

"Many zoos use Prozac and other psychoactive drugs on at least some of their animals to deal with the mental effects of captivity."

Posted: 20 Jun 2022 08:59 AM PDT

"The Los Angeles Zoo has used Celexa, an antidepressant, to control aggression in one of its chimps. Gus, a polar bear at the Central Park Zoo, was given Prozac as part of an attempt to stop him from swimming endless figure-eight laps in his tiny pool. The Toledo Zoo has dosed zebras and wildebeest with the antipsychotic haloperidol to keep them calm and has put an orangutan on Prozac. When a female gorilla named Johari kept fighting off the male she was placed with, the zoo dosed her with Prozac until she allowed him to mate with her."

From "Modern Zoos Are Not Worth the Moral Cost" (NYT).

"To indict Mr. Trump for these and other acts, Mr. Garland must make three decisions, each more difficult than the previous, and none of which has an obvious answer...."

Posted: 20 Jun 2022 08:27 AM PDT

Writes lawprof Jack Goldsmith (in the NYT):

First, he must determine whether the decision to indict Mr. Trump is his to make. If Mr. Garland decides that a criminal investigation of Mr. Trump is warranted, Justice Department regulations require him to appoint a special counsel if the investigation presents a conflict of interest for the department and if Mr. Garland believes such an appointment would be in the public interest....

If Mr. Garland opens a Trump investigation and keeps the case... the second issue is whether ... Mr. Trump's acts constitute a federal offense and "the admissible evidence will probably be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction."... The two most frequently mentioned crimes Mr. Trump may have committed are the corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding (the Jan. 6 vote count) and conspiracy to defraud the United States (in working to overturn election results). Many have noted that Mr. Trump can plausibly defend these charges by arguing that he lacked criminal intent because he truly believed that massive voter fraud had taken place. Mr. Trump would also claim that key elements of his supposedly criminal actions — his interpretations of the law, his pressure on Mr. Pence, his delay in responding to the Capitol breach and more — were exercises of his constitutional prerogatives as chief executive....

If Mr. Garland concludes that Mr. Trump has committed convictable crimes, he would face the third and hardest decision: whether the national interest would be served by prosecuting Mr. Trump.... Indicting a past and possible future political adversary of the current president would be a cataclysmic event from which the nation would not soon recover. It would be seen by many as politicized retribution. The prosecution would take many years to conclude; would last through, and deeply impact, the next election; and would leave Mr. Trump's ultimate fate to the next administration, which could be headed by Mr. Trump....

"Coupling the fortunes of feminism to celebrity might have been worth it if it had led to meaningful political victories...."

Posted: 20 Jun 2022 08:00 AM PDT

"Pop feminism's Achilles' heel is a faith in the power of the individual star turn over communal action, the belief that a gold-plated influencer plus a subscription list plus some viral content can be alchemized into mass activism.... If pop culture can make being a feminist a 'cool' personal identity, can't that translate into doing feminism and thereby advance old-fashioned shoe-leather organizing? Perhaps. But the new individualist style of feminism so often cast itself as an alternative instead of as an aid to the old-fashioned communal activism.... It's hard to gussy up pocketbook issues in sequins, and celebrity feminism has preferred to focus on problems of sexuality and identity over bedrock economics...."

Writes Susan Faludi in "Feminism Made a Faustian Bargain With Celebrity Culture. Now It's Paying the Price" (NYT).

I'm trying to extract the meat of this overlong opinion piece. I think my quoted portion has done that, but I can shorten it even more. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think what Faludi is trying to say — and won't say with gut-punch clarity — is pop culture celebrity is inherently right wing.

There's something fundamentally incoherent about mixing left-wing politics and celebrity. These celebrities can mouth left-wing concepts, but they are individualistic — they are the winners in an ongoing tough, meritocratic competition — and left-wing politics is a matter of "old-fashioned communal activism."

Something else that peeks out from Faludi's verbiage: Feminism might be right wing.

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