"... was a pointed critique of the cynicism of professional politics. 'Hi, Abe, sweetheart' begins the man from Madison Avenue, who encourages him to work in a plug for an Abraham Lincoln T-shirt. When the president says he wants to change 'four score and seven years ago' to '87,' the ad man first patiently explains they already test marketed this in Erie. Then he says: 'It’s sort of like Mark Antony saying "Friends, Romans, countrymen, I’ve got something I want to tell you."'"
Listen to the Abe Lincoln routine here (at YouTube).
I would have blogged that passage anyway, so it is by mere chance that in 2 posts in a row I'm quoting something that contains a quote from Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar." The line quoted above is from Act III, Scene II, with Antony speaking at Caesar's funeral:
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. I have come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interrèd with their bones.
In the previous post, Maureen Dowd had written that Trump, at the convention, "played the Roman emperor, like a Julius Caesar who survived that 'foul deed' and 'bleeding piece of earth,' fist in the air, sitting high in the forum, gloating, as his vanquished foes bent the knee." The internal quotes, from Act III, Scene I, are spoken by Antony over the dead body of Julius Caesar:
O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, That I am meek and gentle with these butchers! Thou art the ruins of the noblest man That ever lived in the tide of times.
"We are laser-focused on the task at hand," she says, her arms flapping nervously, as if she would like to fly away.
Last week on this blog, we were talking about comic actors doing characters. Remember? I thought a particular woman who was being made fun of might herself be a comedienne doing a character.
Freeman Hunt said, "But you usually try to take it just over the edge, amplify it a little. Therein lies the humor."
I responded, "Some of the best comic actors do not amplify it. Think of Charles Grodin and Phil Hartman." I was quite sure I'd heard a brilliant comic actor — who? — say that his trick was to copy the person exactly. Don't amplify. And watching Harris, just now — at 7:00 to 7:15 — I thought: That's it, that's what you copy. Copy that exactly. The words, the eye movements, the pauses, the arm jerks — everything. Resist all amplification. That would be hilarious. Painful too, but hilarious.
Maybe it has something to do with our socialization and inhibition. We're polite enough to refrain from laughing at real people trying to get through whatever they've got going for them, using whatever talent they have. But that restraint takes its toll, and when a comic actor takes the place of that real person, what a relief. It's finally okay to laugh.
But a comedian stepping up and giving us a chance to laugh at Kamala Harris won't bring much relief. She really is too dangerous. She's about to become President, and here she is on her Southeast Asian trip to show off her readiness to become President, and she does not project gravitas or even minimal sincerity. She seems afraid and insecure. The President is supposed to protect us, not require our protection.
UPDATE: Here's the press conference from yesterday — video, transcript. Asked whether she was "satisfied" with what was being done in Afghanistan — "not the decision itself, but the operational steps that were taken" — she repeated her one talking point — the administration is "focused" on "the task at hand" (evacuating people) — and swiveled to the fact that she was standing there in Singapore:
Yesterday, I blogged about "Pellet Ice Is the Good Ice" — a New Yorker article by Helen Rosner.
I'd read the paragraph that said "industrial pellet ice machines are the size of dishwashers, and (like most heavy-duty restaurant appliances) can cost thousands of dollars."
So when some commenters said they owned an ice-making machine called the G.E. Opal, I said: "But the main thing I'd like to know is whether this [ice] is the same thing the New Yorker writer is raving about."
Freeman Hunt gave me this gentle nudge — "The writer seems to think so" — and eventually I get around to looking back at the article. Well! The entire last paragraph — 201 words — is about the G.E. Opal...
... a hulking countertop appliance that makes a pound of pellet ice per hour and, relative to its commercial counterparts, costs a mere four hundred and ninety-nine dollars.... The G.E. Opal was an absurd purchase, unnecessary and indefensible. But it brings me the good ice....
I confess! I link to things all the time that I haven't completely read. I've always partially read these things. I don't link just based on headlines, and I'm actually quite likely to jump to the middle of articles, where, I believe, the coolest/strangest stuff is buried. But, wow, I really missed the whole paragraph about the G.E. Opal. The article now feels as though it's an embedded ad for the G.E. Opal, though I trust The New Yorker to mark it "Sponsored" if that were indeed the case. And I missed my chance — which I'll take right now — to give you an Amazon Associates link to to the G.E. Opal. The thing is $499. That was a real opportunity for me that I squandered. Such is the fast-moving world of blogging. And yet it's slow enough for me to begin a day — at 5 a.m. — with a confession of my own sloppiness and an a late-breaking shot at making a percentage of $499.
But I do see at Amazon that some buyers are complaining about the sound the thing makes: "The squeals and squeaks from my unit, are unbearable" (with video, including audio of the sound). Does it make that sound all the time? It's a bit like the sound my refrigerator makes — occasionally and briefly — in its ice-making cycle. Yes, I have an ice-maker, but I'm considering paying $499 for a bulky countertop appliance so I can get "the good ice."
In the NYT: "As restrictions across the country on restaurants and bars ease, the C.D.C. recommends owners give workers at a higher risk of getting sick a job that limits the person’s interaction with customers."
Protections for Employees at Higher Risk for Severe Illness from COVID-19
Offer options for employees at higher risk for severe illness (including older adults and people of all ages with certain underlying medical conditions) that limits their exposure risk (e.g., modified job responsibilities such as managing inventory rather than working as a cashier, or managing administrative needs through telework).
Consistent with applicable law, develop policies to protect the privacy of persons at higher risk for severe illness in accordance with applicable privacy and confidentiality laws and regulations.
The link on "higher risk for severe illness" goes to another document. There we see the reference to old people — "People 65 years and older" — and fat people — "People with severe obesity (body mass index [BMI] of 40 or higher)." There's no reference to race, but health conditions are named: "chronic lung disease or moderate to severe asthma... serious heart conditions... immunocompromised... diabetes... chronic kidney disease undergoing dialysis... liver disease."
I'm not offering legal advice, but just asking a question: Can restaurant owners, who are struggling to make their business profitable again, withhold jobs from people who fall in the "higher risk" category? Clearly, we're talking about people who are protected by laws against age discrimination and disability discrimination. Less clearly, we're talking about discriminating against black people. And if you do bring back employees who'd previously worked in the front of the restaurant, interacting with customers, how can you shunt them to the back, away from the tips?
I'm passing along, with permission, something Freeman Hunt posted on Facebook.
A friend thought I should post something my husband wrote in a message. Here 'tis.
"Today Italy had 4207 new cases and 475 new deaths in 24 hours (and they are even admitting they can't count all deaths now).
"They went into lockdown 9 days ago when they had 1797 new cases and 97 deaths in a day.
"Even my friends who have been following this asked if this means the lockdown is not working. No, it is working, but the lag time on this disease is long. It can be 14 day incubation and then is about 10 days after symptoms start before people typically take a turn for the worse if they are going to. Death typically in the third week after symptom start.
"... where spectacle and transcendence provide a type of ecstasy for its adherents. Watch clips of fevered crowds, from today or the past, chanting against 'enemies of the people'; they are malignant scenes, but ones that in no small part mimic religious revivals. Critics of democracy often claim that it offers no similar sense of transcendence. The 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche castigated democracy as a system of 'quarantine mechanisms' for human desires, and as 'such they are … very boring.' If the individual unit of democracy is the citizen, authoritarian societies thrill to the Übermensch, the superman promising that 'I alone can fix it.' Yet I would argue that all of the hallmarks of authoritarianism — the rallies and crowds, the marching and military parades, the shouting demagogue promising his followers that they are superior — are wind and hot air. What fascism offers isn’t elevation but cheap transcendence, a counterfeit of meaning rather than the real thing. [Walt] Whitman understood that democracy wasn’t 'very boring' but rather a political system that could deliver on the promises that authoritarianism only pretended it would. For the poet, democracy wasn’t just a way of passing laws or a manner of organizing a government; democracy was a method of transcendence in its own right."
What's so bad about boring? Some things — important things — you want to be boring (for example: the operation of your internal organs). I'd prefer a boring government. I don't like people getting all emotional about politics. Rather than pumping up the pro-democracy propaganda and rhetoric, why don't we give respect to boredom. Let politics be boring so our own individual life engages our interest.
I have a tag "I'm for Boring." I started that tag here (in 2014). Reacting to a WaPo columnist who fretted about low turnout in elections, I said:
We talked about the interview yesterday, here. I didn't think there was anything in it worth reading. I just was fascinated by Page's calling attention to Trump's imitation of her boyfriend's orgasm. So I'm inclined to believe Gutfeld's "You’re the recipient of media welfare and the drooling posts after your 'scoop' prove it."
And while I'm here and talking about the attention given to the imitation orgasm, let me show you this other tweet from Jong-Fast:
Honestly, I’ve watched that clip a bunch of times and I think at this point it’s done some psychological damage. https://t.co/ZGJVtGngjW
We'd have all forgotten Trump's fake orgasm if Page and Jong-Fast hadn't dug it up and thrust it in our face yesterday. Take some responsibility.
And I think there are quite a few of us who remember having kids who suddenly needed explanations about Bill Clinton having oral sex in the White House.
But the news is the news. Keep your children away from all the news if knowing about the world as it is seems more damaging than protecting them from reality. There are so many things in the news that could hurt a youngster. Hearing a hard-breathing "I love you, I love you" from Trump is close to nothing unless the parent chooses to go graphic about it and explain what adults know. Why couldn't you just say "Oh, he's being silly and exaggerating how these 2 people were so in love with each other"?
I'm giving this my "using children in politics" tag because Hasan and Jong-Fast are just dragging children into view for their own political purposes. It's the desperate old what-about-the-children? plea.
IN THE COMMENTS: Freeman Hunt said:
Windows 10 was popping up little news notifications on our new computer, so when my ten year old logged on to math class this morning, he was greeted with the news that teens tortured a deer and a woman hung her children with a leash. The notifications are now disabled.
I think I can handle explaining Trump's impression.
But after publishing the post and clicking on the tag — "the [blank] community" — I saw that I'd used it 3 times in the last 2 years. Something about "the nice community of woke people." The notion that Amy Klobuchar gets mad about the use of "community" in press releases. And something about "the BDSM community" (who the hell was "Schneiderman" that I blogged about him without a first name?).
Before that, though, you have to go all the way back to Fall 2008 to find the tag. It flourished that season. There are 4 posts. One of the 4 posts is about about the loner community (and refers back to 2 other posts about the loner community):
"I'm here on the internet and I can't find any communities for loners."
"... I'm so deeply put-off of people from my grueling experiences with extroverts and socialites. So, I'd like to get a chance to talk to my own kind a little. I know there are a lot of people who feel the same way as me... but I can't find a message board for them."
That's a new comment on a post from last August. Perhaps you'd like to respond to the commenter, whose name is Autonomous. I'll redirect him/her to this post, so use this comments section.
Oddly, I've joked twice on this blog about "the loner community": here and here.
In the comments there, Freeman Hunt says:
I guess I'm weird around here. I'm definitely extroverted. Not in the social butterfly, small talk, loud sense--I don't like boring conversation and some of this social butterfly talk seems to imply that--but I definitely enjoy the company of people. I like people, all kinds of people, a lot. Call me crazy.
In fact, I've always hoped that there will someday be a nationwide Althouse get together. You people interest me. :)
That was responded to by Meade (whom I would meet in real life 2 months later):
I like Freeman's idea but wouldn't it be a riot if we all got together only to find out that in person we all rub each other the wrong way because in person we're all just a bunch of loud annoying energy-sapping attention-seeking opinionated extraverts who do nothing but talk over each other?
For a disquisition on whether the spelling is "extrovert" or "extravert," go here.
The original "the [blank] community" post was from the first year of the blog, 2004. I took issue with the term "the sniper community."
The police said that four people, including three men and one woman, had been taken into custody....
A 17-minute video posted to social media appears to show part of the attack. The clip, ... may have been taken from a helmet camera worn by a gunman.... “There wasn’t even time to aim, there was so many targets,” he says at one point...
Before the shooting, someone appearing to be the gunman posted links to a white-nationalist manifesto on Twitter and 8chan, an online forum known for extremist right-wing discussions. The 8chan post included a link to what appeared to be the gunman’s Facebook page, where he said he would also broadcast live video of the attack.....
In his manifesto, he identified himself as a 28-year-old man born in Australia and listed his white nationalist heroes. Writing that he had purposely used guns to stir discord in the United States over the Second Amendment’s provision on the right to bear arms, he also declared himself a fascist. “For once, the person that will be called a fascist, is an actual fascist,” he wrote.
ADDED: Why would a right-wing fascist want to "to stir discord in the United States over the Second Amendment’s provision on the right to bear arms"? I understand that the man is (he says) Australian and may not understand American ideology and politics and there may be something wrong with trying to make sense of the thinking of a mass murderer, but it seems to me that discord over the Second Amendment boosts the cause of limiting the right to bear arms. When Americans are not under stress, our resting state is to accept widespread gun possession.
IN THE COMMENTS: MayBee said:
Someone posted the video he took of his own shootings on a thread in Twitter. I didn't want to see it. It just started playing.
The gunman, who identified himself as Brenton Tarrant from Grafton, New South Wales, Australia, named [Candace Owens] as his biggest influence in his 74-page manifesto [posted on Twitter]. [He] said that Owens helped 'push me further and further into the belief of violence over meekness' - but claimed some of the 'extreme actions' she calls for are 'too much, even for my tastes'.
Owens is getting attacked for reacting to that tweet with a laughing emoji. She also reacted in words (including "LOL"):
'I’ve never created any content espousing my views on the 2nd Amendment or Islam. The Left pretending I inspired a mosque massacre in...New Zealand because I believe black America can do it without government hand outs is the reachiest reach of all reaches!! LOL!' she said.
She continued to tweet over the next several hours that she refused to be blamed for the massacre. When followers pointed out the impropriety of her response, she was indignant.
'Laughter is not the response one would expect after these murders,' one follower said.
Owens shot back: 'No. But a bunch of racist white liberals flooding my mentions is almost exactly what one would expect. You guys will never de-platform me.'
It's a mistake to use laughter as opposed to straight outrage.
MORE IN THE COMMENTS: Freeman Hunt said:
I actually read his screed. He's not a right winger. He's an eco-fascist. He's not a fan of capitalism or conservatives or Marxists. He wants the United States to have a civil war and thinks that will come about by provoking people to fight over the Second Amendment.
"Any teacher who spends three decades in the classroom, speaking extemporaneously for hours on end to a roomful of teenagers, is going to have awkward moments. [Ben] Frisch might have had more of them, and they may have been a bit more awkward. But that was how he connected, and it was perhaps a way of connecting that is no longer possible. 'Everybody knew this guy was off — weird behavior, quirky,' said one parent who, fearing retribution against her child, insisted on anonymity. 'Maybe in the ’70s that would have been O.K., but not when you’re paying $45,000 a year in tuition.'"
From "A Teacher Made a Hitler Joke in the Classroom/It Tore the School Apart" (NYT). The joke was saying "Heil Hitler" after he noticed that his arm — in teaching a pre-calculus lesson involving angles — was in the Hitler salute position. "Frisch is a practicing Quaker, but his father was Jewish, and two of his great-grandmothers were killed at Auschwitz."
[Bo] Lauder [the principal at Friends Seminary] did not consider the “Heil Hitler” episode a close call. “Personally, I was appalled,” he told me. “I couldn’t imagine, even as a joke — and I grew up watching ‘Hogan’s Heroes’ — that in a class that had nothing to do with history or World War II or Nazism or teaching German language that an incident like that could happen.” I asked Lauder why he felt he needed to go so far as to fire Frisch. “One of our pledges is to make all of our students feel safe,” he replied. “And that is something that I take very, very seriously.”
That no one has accused Frisch of being an anti-Semite was beside the point: His invocation of the Nazi salute in a classroom full of high school students, regardless of his intentions, was enough to end his career. On today’s campus, words and symbols can be seen as a form of violence; to many people, engaging in a public debate about the nuances of their power is to tolerate their use. “I asked one of our lawyers, ‘How can I do this in a more Quakerly way?’ ” Lauder told me. “And he just looked at me and stated the obvious: There is no way to make a firing a Quakerly event.”
IN THE COMMENTS: Freeman Hunt said:
Isn't it making fun of the salute rather than promoting it?
Yes, but it's the Era of That's Not Funny, because how is a student ever able to be sure that the device of making a joke is not really a way to say the otherwise forbidden thing? I mean, what if a lot of students started greeting one another in the hallways of Friends Seminary with a big old Nazi salute and a hearty "Heil Hitler!" Would it be hilarious? Would it roundly make a mockery of Nazis?
You know what it would be?, I suddenly realize. It would be a real "I am Spartacus" moment! If all the students who think Mr. Frisch is getting an unfair punishment would greet each other henceforth with a Nazi salute and a hearty "Heil Hitler!" — what a protest that would be!
Here's the Wikipedia article on the Nazi salute, which I looked up because I wanted to see the extent of efforts to drain it of power by turning it into a big joke. I thought there'd be a substantial list under the "In popular culture" heading, but there are only 3 things, one of which is "Hogan's Heroes," the 1965-1971 TV show that the Friend's Seminary principal says he "grew up" watching:
• In a running gag in Hogan's Heroes, Colonel Klink often forgets to give the Hitler salute at the end of a phone call; instead, he usually asks, "What's that?" and then says, "Yes, of course, Heil Hitler." In the German language version of the show, called Ein Käfig Voller Helden (A Cage Full of Heroes), "Col. Klink and Sgt. Schultz have rural Gomer Pyle-type accents," and "stiff-armed salutes are accompanied by such witticisms as "this is how high the cornflowers grow." The "Heil Hitler" greeting was the variant most often used and associated with the series; "Sieg Heil" was rarely heard.
• On August 11, 2017, Jeffrey Lord was fired by CNN for tweeting "Sieg Heil!"
He was joking.
• A similar gesture was used by the fictional Nazi-affiliated organization Hydra, with both arms outstretched and the phrase "Hail Hydra" uttered by members of the organization.
There must be more pop culture examples. I can think of "Dr. Strangelove":
AND: Of course, there's "The Producers" ("Springtime for Hitler" is loaded with Nazi salutes):
ALSO: I know that's the more recent, more musical version of "The Producers." I thought the clip was excellent and used it, even though I'd gone searching for in the original 1967 movie, which you can see here. In that movie, Dick Shawn played the ridiculous Lorenzo St. DuBois (L.S.D.) who was intentionally miscast as Hitler in the so-bad-it's-good show "Springtime for Hitler." I love Dick Shawn in that movie, and went to read his IMDB page, and was fascinated by this:
Shawn won a huge fan base... touring in one-man stage shows which contained a weird mix of songs, sketches, satire, philosophy and even pantomime. A bright, innovative wit, one of his best touring shows was called "The Second Greatest Entertainer in the World." During the show's intermission, Shawn would lie visibly on the stage floor absolutely still during the entire time. By freakish coincidence, Shawn was performing at the University of California at San Diego in 1987 when he suddenly fell forward on the stage during one of his spiels about the Holocaust. The audience, of course, laughed, thinking it was just a part of his odd shtick. In actuality, the 63-year-old married actor with four children had suffered a fatal heart attack.
What an ending!
AND: Here's Dick Shawn on Johnny Carson in 1986, doing a comedy routine about how you can't do jokes anymore, because everything is dangerous:
It was already the Era of That's Not Funny as far as he was concerned.
I said, "The word 'haunt' is way overused. I should do a post about that." So this is that post.
The first thing I see is that 14 years ago, in the early months of this blog, I wrote a substantial post about the word "haunted" and the way it is overused.**
Next, I see that the verb "to haunt" did not begin as a powerful, ghost-related word. It simply referred to frequency and habit, such as going to a particular place. The OED has very old quotes — as old as the 13th century — that speak of ships haunting harbors and people haunting taverns.
In the 16th century, there was talk of thoughts, memories, and feelings that frequently occurred and thus "haunted" a person. Shakespeare wrote: "Your beauty which did haunt me in my sleepe: To vndertake the death of all the world" ("Richard III" 1597). And Shakespeare used the word to speak of the habitual visits of ghosts:
1597 Shakespeare Richard II iii. ii. 154 Some haunted by the ghosts they haue deposed.
1600 Shakespeare Midsummer Night's Dream iii. i. 99 O monstrous! O strange! We are haunted. Pray masters: fly masters: helpe.
Reading the OED makes the word feel much weaker to me. A "haunting question" is nothing more than a question that keeps coming back to you, not necessarily anything spooky. Is it no different from a "nagging question"?
But I see ghosts in "haunting." Are there horses in "nagging"? No, "nag" (the verb) comes from Scandinavia — "nagga" — to gnaw, irritate, grumble. "Nag" the horse comes from Dutch — "negge" — a small horse. Oh! And I see that in this horse lineage, "nag" was once a slang word for "penis":
1598 J. Marston Scourge of Villanie B2 Hence lewd nags away, Goe read each poast,..Then to Priapus gardens.
1655 Mercurius Fumigosus xxxvi. 284 He by his Eloquence Converted her Gleab into pasture, and put his Nagg to grasse in her Coppice.
1707 in H. Playford Wit & Mirth (new ed.) III. 56 What is this so stiff and warm... 'Tis Ball my Nag he will do you no harm.
Goe read each poast... that's what I always say.
__________________
* Freeman Hunt continued, riffing on deGrasse Tyson's tweet, "If Bears were in charge, after they hunted us to near-extinction, I wonder if they’d invent a candy called Gummy Human":
Quite a few people are asking this question, e.g., Vox:
Swift does have grounds to appear on the cover: She was at the center of a sexual assault trial this summer that in retrospect seems like a precursor to our current post-Weinstein moment.... In 2013, Taylor Swift was groped by radio DJ David Mueller, who grabbed her butt during a meet-and-greet photo session. Swift told Mueller’s boss, who fired him following an investigation. Mueller then filed a defamation suit against Swift, saying that he never touched her and that she ruined his reputation and cost him his job. So Swift filed a countersuit, claiming assault. She sought — and won — an award of just $1, saying through her lawyer that she wanted to “serve as an example to other women who may resist publicly reliving similar outrageous and humiliating acts."...
Swift’s appearance also raises the specter of those not included on the Time cover who were arguably more central to the #MeToo moment. Rose McGowan, who led the charge against Harvey Weinstein and his associates, is relegated to the interior....
It might have something to do with who was willing to sit for the portrait Time wanted for the cover. Maybe McGowan didn't want to be in that group or didn't like the words Time wanted to use or the strange aesthetics of the cover — with the women all draped in black and looking grim.
Notice that the names of the women do not appear on the cover, and I'm sure that caused many people (including me) to say I know that one's Taylor Swift but who are these other women?
I can see why Time was eager to include the very famous Taylor Swift on the cover. Swift was in the running for Person of the Year in her own right as an individual, and she did very well on Time's poll to find out who readers wanted to see.
I can think of all kinds of things that may have caused McGowan to decline to participate. Maybe she's just angry that the silence-breaking has taken so long. Why didn't Time Magazine apply its journalistic resources to breaking the silence itself long ago? Now that others have done the work, Time wants to reap rewards from doing its traditional end-of-the-year cover. I can see resisting that.
But let's see what Rose McGowan herself may be saying. Ah!
Ronan Farrow. Investigator of the Year. Writer of the Year. #MyTime
"The torrent of #MeToo stories reveals just how much time we spend dealing with this shit," writes Joan Walsh in The Nation.
The last 2 paragraphs confused me:
Then I think about a couple of consensual experiences with men hugely my superiors. The come-ons took me by surprise, and flattered me, and seemed real. Like, of course I deserve this attention! I’m great! Or at least pretty great, right? In none of these instances was I chasing a job, or an affair either. I was flattered by the unexpected attention of a powerful man I respected. I knew I could learn from them; I enjoyed spending time with them. Also, by the way, they were married, so it was safe, right? I confidently spent time alone with them, believing they were interested in my mind and my work. Who wouldn’t be?
They weren’t. I would eventually learn that there was no actual relationship offer on the table, and no professional benefit either. And again I felt like: I am a fucking fool.
That sounds like she accepted a date and wanted a relationship (and even liked that the guy was an adulterer). Let's not mush everything together! This #MeToo stuff could get really stupid. At least she announces I am a fucking fool. I know, she means back then. But she's using the present tense.
IN THE COMMENTS: Freeman Hunt said:
Yeah, a married guy who chases after young women is safe--who thinks this way?
Absolutely no one. Joan Walsh, who is 59 years old, is still selling herself as a naive, innocent girl. She was going out with some other woman's husband, as far as I can tell. Look, we're in an important moment, when women can come together and support other women. Don't mess it up with bullshit like this.
What are the "dark arts" and how is he "a master"?
According to the first paragraph, Akhmetshin has often told journalists not to use email to send information that you want kept secret. That's something everyone should know though, right? That can't rate the "dark art" label? Just because someone as smart as Hillary Clinton didn't seem to know something doesn't mean it's ultra-sophisticated knowledge. It's something everyone functioning in the modern world ought to know.
A little further down, we see that Akhmetshin has done a lot of "opposition research" — he "was a skilled practitioner in the muscular Russian version of what in American politics is known as opposition research." Does it become a "dark art" because it's "muscular" and "Russian" and he's "skilled"? Opposition research is a normal part of American politics. What's "dark" about his "version" of it?
The article says that in Russia, opposition research uses "stolen or fabricated documents," "pilfering private information through hacking and physical intrusion into offices and filing cabinets." I think we have that in America too. And I'm not seeing Akhmetshin accused of doing any stealing or fabricating, only that he "has acquired a reputation for obtaining" these things. Again, is that unusual? The NYT is famous for publishing the Pentagon Papers. Is it practicing a "dark art" when it "obtains" information other people have broken the law to get?
Very well into the article we get this (boldface added):
There is no evidence that Mr. Akhmetshin’s efforts on behalf of any of his clients, whether they had close or hostile relations with the Kremlin, were illegal. Nor is there evidence that he personally engaged in the technical aspects of hacking himself....
Maybe he's so good at the "dark arts" that he leaves no evidence. Anyway, I'm disturbed by the headline and the straining to tar this man.
But I'm uneasy and skeptical when I see this term used in a headline and the definition and support for it are not apparent. It's as if journalism is some sort of... dark art.
IN THE COMMENTS: Freeman Hunt said: "Trump Jr. met with a witch!"
"The 10 regular writers who got the most abuse were eight women (four white and four non-white) and two black men. Two of the women and one of the men were gay. And of the eight women in the “top 10”, one was Muslim and one Jewish. And the 10 regular writers who got the least abuse? All men."
They have a section where you mark comments as Allow or Block to see how your moderating would compare to theirs.
This revealed, in my opinion, that their methodology is flawed. Take this for example, which they mark as "sexist" and block worthy:
“THERE IS NO GENDER PAY GAP! Just more feminist crap portraying women as victims and men as perpetrators. Even worse is the lie we live in a rape culture with one in five women raped over a lifetime. Sure if you re-define what constitutes a rape including a drunk girl gives consent but regrets it next day.”
It may be be wrong. It may be off topic. It is not, however, sexist.
They did this study by tallying up comments they blocked. If they're blocking that kind of thing, I'm not sure that their data is particularly meaningful.
The study might ironically show that The Guardian is sexist. It may be that The Guardian thinks it's necessary to protect female writers from vigorous pushback but sees the male writers as able to sustain attacks and defend themselves.
IN THE COMMENTS: Freeman Hunt asked, "How could anyone not like her?," and I answered:
There's something robotic and trancelike about her demeanor. It's interesting to me that people don't dislike her for that glossy, plastic, stage-y quality, which actually reminds me of Hillary Clinton. I don't myself dislike her, but I'm fascinated that people don't call her out for the Stepford Wives aura that so many political women have been mocked for.
But Jackie Kennedy was a similar case. People loved it in her. I guess if you read as beautiful and you don't misbehave, people will accept a woman who seems anesthetized.
And AReasonableMan says, "Drudge's front page currently featuring Ivanka is pretty funny." Here's the part he means, with Ivanka in the middle — looking like a sensibly beautiful woman — flanked by Madonna displaying elongated Jayne-Mansfield-style breasts and some absurdly plastic-surgeried human Barbie doll. Click to enlarge:
Firstly he is an adult, and secondly he is a person who for many years has organized a beauty pageant, socialized with the most beautiful women in the world. It is hard to believe that he ran to a hotel to meet with our girls of a low social class, although they are the best in the world. But finally, you know, what I want to say, prostitution is a serious, ugly, social phenomenon, young women do this connected to the fact that they cannot survive any other way and that is a problem of society but people who order false information and spread this information against the elected President, who fabricate it and use it in a political fight, they are worse than prostitutes.
Ah! This pithy statement proceeds in stages:
1. Defense of Trump: He's got so much access to the most beautiful women that it makes no sense to think he'd consort with low women.
2. Defense of prostitutes: Our prostitutes are great prostitutes!
3. Feminist/left-wing critique: Don't speak of prostitution in terms of low women choosing a degraded way of life. Society forces them into it, and society deserves the blame, and we must improve it.
4. Attack on the purveyors of fake news: Worse than prostitutes!
IN THE COMMENTS: Lyssa quoted "It is hard to believe that he ran to a hotel to meet with our girls of a low social class, although they are the best in the world" and asks: "Did Trump craft this statement? It sounds so much like something that he would say. Maybe he'll fire back at the perceived slights to America's prostitutes."
Freeman Hunt scripts tweets for Trump:
"Even prostitutes are poor in Russia. Sad! American prostitutes at all income levels. Bad work but more money in US!"
"Poor women forced to hook in Russia! Sad! Americans prostitutes by choice. Some big $$$! Against law though. Don't do it! Gross!"
"Americans richer than Russians. No need to be prostitutes! Russian prostitutes better because American prostitutes lazy. Just guessing!"
"Putin wrong. American prostitutes best in world! Have heard. No experience. Always gotten from classy women free. Not prostitutes!"
"Of course those who believed this nonsense had never experienced real insanity first-hand. They only knew about it from reading bullshit authors like Ken Kesey, R.D. Laing, Charles Reich, and Theodore Roszak, among others. Pirsig was not a bullshit author but it seems that most of his readers (myself included) misinterpreted his writing and placed him in the 'madness-is-subversive-and-liberating' crowd. The fact that his descent into madness was a function of his study of the Tao greatly enhanced his appeal, since Eastern religions and philosophies enjoyed great cachet at the time. Which is to say, it was very hip of Pirsig to be driven crazy by the intensity of a mystical experience induced by his Taoist studies. Most people had to swallow heavy doses of LSD to have that experience, and he did it 'naturally'! What a lucky guy! What silly, frivolous, dangerous times those were. What a stupid time."
There's also discussion of "man caves" that begins with "Guys are so desperate to find a place to get away from women that it has come to this. How come we never hear about 'woman caves'?" and moves on to "There are no 'women caves' because women dominate every other space in the universe." Which incites Freeman Hunt to say: "I thought it was because women aren't so gauche as to demand a room in the limited space of the house that is only for themselves."
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