March 18, 2024
"If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with, no more appeasement."
Later he said the remark was a "figure of speech" and that anyone who took it seriously was "neurotic." Within a few days, four students were shot at Kent State.
I ran across that because I'd noticed that the NYT was spelling "bloodbath" as 2 words — "Trump defends his warning of a ‘blood bath for the country" — in its current reporting. I had 2 theories about why:
1. A compound word takes a long time to become standard. When we see "bloodbath" as one word, it feels more like a stock term. Trite. By spacing it out as 2 words, you might get people to think that Trump put it together in his own fervid brain. But maybe...
2. The NYT has a style guide, and it decided long ago that "blood bath" was the correct configuration, and people at the Times are meticulous about writing it the same way every time.
To narrow my 2 ideas about twoness and oneness down to one, I searched the NYT archive for the 1-word form. I found many examples of "bloodbath," including Reagan's crazy idea of sticking it to the students. There was also Russell Baker making jokes about Richard Nixon's "bloodbath" theory of Vietnam (in 1970, deploying a fictional character he called "Dandy"):
"Donald Trump told an appellate court here Monday that he can’t obtain a bond for the full amount of the civil fraud judgment against him — more than $450 million, including interest..."
Bloodbath.
This is the third post of the morning and, like the previous two, it has a title consisting of one word that's in the news this morning. I can see from the comments in those other posts and in last night's open thread, that people especially want to talk about "bloodbath."
I feel so pushed to talk about "bloodbath" this morning that I balk at churning out a "bloodbath" post. You already know what you want to say. Is it my job to expound on "bloodbath" as it relates to the free-speaking raconteur Donald Trump and his gasping, raging antagonists?
I'll just feed your bloodbathlust with my favorite "bloodbath" quotations from the OED:
Jawbone.
"Oh, Jawbone, when did you first go wrong? Oh, Jawbone, where is it you belong?" — The Band.
"Jawboning"... is the use of authority to persuade various entities to act in certain ways, which is sometimes underpinned by the implicit threat of future government regulation. In the United States, during the Democratic administrations of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, officials tried to deal with the mounting inflationary pressures by direct government influence or jawboning....
From an amicus brief in National Rifle Association v. Vullo, one of 2 free-speech cases up for oral argument in the Supreme Court today:
Bully.
[A 5th Circuit panel] said the [Biden administration] officials had become excessively entangled with the platforms or used threats to spur them to act.... [The administration argues] that the government was entitled to express its views and to try to persuade others to take action.
“A central dimension of presidential power is the use of the office’s bully pulpit to seek to persuade Americans — and American companies — to act in ways that the president believes would advance the public interest,” Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar wrote.
In response, lawyers for the states wrote that the administration had violated the First Amendment. “The bully pulpit,” they wrote, “is not a pulpit to bully.”
We're also told: "In later use sometimes understood as showing bully n.1 II.3a." That meaning of "bully" is:
Originally: a man given to or characterized by riotous, thuggish, and threatening behaviour; one who behaves in a blustering, swaggering, and aggressive manner. Now: a person who habitually seeks to harm, coerce, or intimidate those whom they perceive as vulnerable; a person who engages in bullying.
I want to add that what is said behind the scenes is not from the pulpit at all. A pulpit is an elevated and conspicuous platform. One thing about social media posts is that they are out there, in public, and perfectly conspicuous. If the President (or the shadowy people behind him) want to use the"central dimension of presidential power" that is the "bully pulpit," let them step up onto a conspicuous platform and proclaim opinions they intend us to find righteous.
March 17, 2024
"A forced sale of TikTok within 180 days, as House-passed legislation requires, would be one of the thorniest and most complicated transactions..."
From "House TikTok bill gives ByteDance 6 months to sell. That’s unlikely. A deal probably would be too complicated and costly for such a short time frame, experts say. Opponents of the bill say that means the app would probably be banned under the legislation" (WaPo).
"[T]hey agreed on basically everything, including that new human life is not a gift but a needless perpetuation of suffering."
It's sad to see the NYT framing the fight for freedom of speech as a perverse force.
Academic researchers wrestled with how to strengthen efforts to monitor false posts. Mr. Trump and his allies embarked instead on a counteroffensive, a coordinated effort to block what they viewed as a dangerous effort to censor conservatives....
Waged in the courts, in Congress and in the seething precincts of the internet, that effort has eviscerated attempts to shield elections from disinformation in the social media era.
It tapped into — and then, critics say, twisted — the fierce debate over free speech and the government’s role in policing content.... Facing legal and political blowback, the Biden administration has largely abandoned moves that might be construed as stifling political speech.... Social media platforms now provide fewer checks against the intentional spread of lies about elections....
Much more at the link, including discussion of the case to be argued tomorrow in the Supreme Court (which "accuses federal officials of colluding with or coercing the platforms to censor content critical of the government").
"The 150g tins — enough for a single meal — will cost roughly £1 and contain a chicken dish created without harming a single animal."
From "Britain’s first lab-grown meat: it’s for cats/Tinned chicken cultivated from cells taken from an egg will be marketed to owners who want to supply a normal diet without the guilt. Its vegan creator explains" (London Times).
With cats in the picture, I'm inclined to read "lab-grown" to involve Labrador retrievers.
"A long time ago, I got an email from a troll saying he could draw better than me with his penis."
Said Hilary Price, creator of the comic strip “Rhymes With Orange,” quoted in "Female artists are disappearing from print comics at chain newspapers/Creators are thriving in other mediums. Are print comic strips nearing the end?" (WaPo).
"'I told them about my inside-out approach to dressing,' she said. She asked each of the women to identify three words..."
From "Your clothes no longer serve you. Now what? Lyn Slater, the 70-year-old former fashion influencer and author of ‘How to Be Old,’ offers lessons on what to wear for your next act in life" (WaPo).
"I did everything by the book the whole time. They changed the rules, and I should be grandfathered in. I shouldn’t have to abide by them."
He was 11 feet long, 750 pounds heavy and 34 years old, and until this week, he lived in a pool house attached to his owner’s home in Hamburg, N.Y., about 13 miles south of Buffalo.
The [New York State Department of Environmental Conservation] said that Albert’s owner, Tony Cavallaro, had a license for the alligator, but it expired in 2021. In an interview, Mr. Cavallaro, 64, said that while visitors to his home did sometimes take pictures with Albert, they never swam with him or rode him. Instead, they would briefly get in the water for a quick photo with the animal, often when he was sleeping, Mr. Cavallaro said.
Cavallaro bought Albert as a newborn and believes "the poor thing loves me."
I'm interested in the law here, the always enticing notion that the law doesn't apply to you. Cavallaro also seems to believe that the law of nature — the dangerousness of alligators — does not apply to Albert.
But what's missing from this article is any mention of the comic strip that was once central to our culture: Pogo. There's an alligator named Albert, and you don't cite Pogo?
ADDED: The Wikipedia article linked above describes Albert Alligator as "An exuberant, dimwitted, irascible, and egotistical alligator."
March 16, 2024
"Tonight was wild…. no hard feelings, Extinction Rebellion Crew. Michael is on your side, but Mayor Stockmann is not. Much love."
"Actors were called to leave the stage while the protestors were removed, but many remained in character throughout the disruption, with [Jeremy] Strong and Imperioli reacting to Extinction Rebellion as if the interruption were part of the script...."
Lucid.
Published more than five years after her 2018 congressional testimony, Blasey Ford’s new memoir, “One Way Back,” is an important entry into the public record — a lucid if belated retort to Senator Chuck Grassley’s 414-page, maddening memo on the investigation — but a prosaic one.
The book is important, lucid, belated, and prosaic, we're told.
Why should we trust the purchaser of TikTok to keep it going? Remember when NBC bought and then killed Television Without Pity?
Paul Simon loathes feeling groovy.
March 15, 2024
"New York prosecutors said Friday that they expect to get an additional 15,000 pages of potential evidence in Donald Trump’s hush money case...."
WaPo reports.
"[Michael] Imperioli... shouted at another, 'Go back to drama school!' But [Jeremy] Strong, remaining in character, said, 'Let them speak.'"
Because the second half of Henrik Ibsen’s play begins at a raucous town meeting, concerns poisoned water and, in this production, already involves audience participation, many in the theater believed the shouters were a part of the show.
One audience member, Ashley Wolfgang, wrote on X, “You know you’ve seen too much experimental theatre when you immediately assume climate protestors in the middle of ‘Enemy of the People’ is part of it.”
Yeah, I've seen plays where someone sitting in the audience starts talking, seemingly interrupting the actors, and it's part of the show.
You can see video of the disruption, here, at Reddit.
I usually decline to blog about these protests that leverage art to get attention. I'm blogging this because of the way the actors — 2 actors I greatly respect — rose to the occasion and stayed in character and used their own brute strength to oust the asshole. Michael Imperioli (Christopher from "The Sopranos") is 57 years old. Good for him! He took the lead. Jeremy Strong (Kendall from "Succession") is 45. Look how vulnerable they are to random jerks. Where was security?!
"Small clips of his craziness can be too easily dismissed as the background noise of our times."
Writes Susan B. Glasser, in "I Listened to Trump’s Rambling, Unhinged, Vituperative Georgia Rally—and So Should You/The ex-President is building a whole new edifice of lies for 2024" (The New Yorker).
"Judge Says Fani Willis Can Stay on Trump Case, but Only if Former Romantic Partner Leaves."
The ruling by Judge Scott McAfee of Fulton Superior Court cut a middle path between removing Ms. Willis for a conflict of interest, which defense lawyers had sought, and her full vindication, with the judge sharply criticizing her behavior....
Judge McAfee said that no “disqualification of a constitutional officer necessary when a less drastic and sufficiently remedial option is available.”... Either “the District Attorney may choose to step aside, along with the whole of her office” or “Wade can withdraw” allowing the case to proceed without further distraction....
Mr. Trump and his co-defendants could appeal the judge’s ruling, as could Ms. Willis, further delaying the proceedings and leaving the matter unresolved indefinitely. ...
ADDED: Here's the text of the opinion.
"Every right that the government has ever taken away from citizens was removed under the pretense of national security."
"Every young person deserves to have the fundamental right and freedom to be who they are, and feel safe and supported at school and in their communities."
March 14, 2024
"These attacks against an individual’s right to make decisions about their own body are outrageous and, in many instances, just plain old immoral."
Too early to call the election?
In the CNN electoral map, Donald Trump already has enough votes to win.
— Chris Cillizza (@ChrisCillizza) March 14, 2024
This map is 272 Trump, 225 Biden. pic.twitter.com/QuB8ieUpTl
"Less than two weeks before Donald J. Trump is set to go on trial on criminal charges in Manhattan, the prosecutors who brought the case proposed a delay of up to 30 days..."
"The judge presiding over the classified documents case in Florida denied Donald Trump’s motion to dismiss charges based on unconstitutional vagueness...."
CNN reports.
"Tara McGovern, a transgender musician who was arrested last fall after protesting a speaker on the University of Iowa campus, was acquitted Wednesday..."
"You’re not leaning toward anyone? Because...."/"I'm leaning away...."
Don Lemon Questions Elon Musk About Meeting Trump: ‘Did He Ask You for Money?’
— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) March 14, 2024
MUSK: "I was at a breakfast at a friend's place and Donald Trump came by. That's it."
LEMON: "Are you going to loan him money to help pay his legal bills?"
MUSK: “I’m not paying his legal bills in… pic.twitter.com/IiJTfegguV
"In recent months, Mr. Kennedy and his camp have approached at least a half-dozen people... to gauge their interest in serving as his running mate."
From "Aaron Rodgers and Jesse Ventura Top R.F.K. Jr.’s List for Running Mate/Mr. Kennedy said he had been speaking with the Jets quarterback 'pretty continuously' for the past month" (NYT).
Hiking with @AaronRodgers12 and his amazing Achilles ⛰️ pic.twitter.com/zBbJWUdOS7
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) February 21, 2024
"Selling TikTok to a big tech company such as Google, Meta or Microsoft — after all, who else could afford its estimated price of $84 billion? — would not make U.S. users’ data more secure."
Writes Julia Angwin, in "TikTok Could Disappear but the Problems It Poses Remain" (NYT).
History-making.
"In history-making visit, Harris plans to tour Minnesota abortion clinic" (WaPo).
"Kamala Harris Will Visit Abortion Clinic, in Historic First" (NYT).
"I made a joke and said, ‘We have to quit talking like this. I can barely type through the tears.'"
"One day I opened my eyes from a deep sleep and looked around for something, anything, familiar. Everywhere I looked was all very strange."
"We’ve seen many people through the end of life. It’s never dramatic, like Snagglepuss..."
Writes Anne Lamott, in "Age is giving me the two best gifts: Softness and illumination" (WaPo).
Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep,As for Snagglepuss... I'm old enough to get the reference, and I thought it would be easy to find a YouTube clip of the ham-actor lion on stage overdoing a death scene. I began to suspect that YouTube was censoring death. I don't know. I did find this collection of bad actors dying:
He hath awaken'd from the dream of life;
'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife....
March 13, 2024
"Across most of the battleground states, President Biden’s re-election campaign is trailed by worrisome polling, gripes about a slow ramp-up..."
I'm reading "Trailing Trump in Polls, Biden Can Be More Bullish in One Battleground/The president faces lagging energy in many key states. But in Wisconsin, which he will visit on Wednesday, rolling clashes over abortion rights and democracy have kept Democratic voters fired up" (NYT).
"The House overwhelmingly passed a measure Wednesday to force TikTok to split from its parent company or face a national ban, a lightning offensive that materialized abruptly..."
WaPo reports.
"They coerced her into carving their screen names deep into her thigh, drinking from a toilet bowl and beheading a pet hamster..."
From "On popular online platforms, predatory groups coerce children into self-harm/Vulnerable teens are blackmailed into degrading and violent acts by abusers who then boast about it" (WaPo).
"In a surprise move on Wednesday, a judge in Atlanta quashed six of the charges against former President Donald J. Trump and his allies..."
From "Judge Quashes Six Charges in Georgia Election Case Against Trump/The ruling said charges that Donald Trump and allies solicited public officials to break the law were not specific enough; it left the rest of the case intact" (NYT)(free access link).
“These six counts contain all the essential elements of the crimes but fail to allege sufficient detail regarding the nature of their commission,” Judge McAfee wrote in his ruling. “They do not give the Defendants enough information to prepare their defenses intelligently, as the Defendants could have violated the Constitution and thus the statute in dozens, if not hundreds, of distinct ways.”...
Read the full text of the judge's order here.
Dinkwads.
"It feels like you’re almost handling it badly in an impressive way at this point."
John Oliver is wondering what’s going on with Kate Middleton! #WWHL pic.twitter.com/vNAxWzj5Uc
— Watch What Happens Live! (@BravoWWHL) March 13, 2024
Biden and Trump clinched the nominations last night and Elon Musk posted this video of Joe Rogan more or less endorsing Trump:
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 13, 2024Meanwhile, "Neil Young says he's returning to Spotify , 2 years after exit over Joe Rogan."
March 12, 2024
"To make 'thoughtfulness' a requirement of any universal right is to taper that right into an exclusive privilege."
Writes Andrea Long Chu, in "Freedom of Sex/The moral case for letting trans kids change their bodies" (New York Magazine).
David Sedaris is such a great talk-show guest.
"The judge later tried... to argue that the jury 'implicitly' found Trump liable for rape...."
The dishonesty of Stephanopoulos' interview is striking. He says 10 times that Trump was found 'liable for rape' in the E Jean Carroll case. He says that the jury found Trump 'liable for rape.' In fact, the jury specifically found Trump *not* liable for rape. It found him liable… https://t.co/AGr0WWnaMS
— Byron York (@ByronYork) March 10, 2024
"The transparency of the pants..."
From "See-Through Baseball Pants Have Fans, and Brands, Pointing Fingers/A redesign of M.L.B.’s uniforms has put Fanatics and Nike at the center of a debate about performance versus quality in sportswear" (NYT).
March 11, 2024
"Where have all the emus gone? We have about a quarter as many as we did two decades ago..."
Asks Andrew Van Dam, in "The great American llama (and ostrich and emu) collapse" (WaPo).
Did any of you "invest" in wacky animals?
As in any investment strategy shaped like a pyramid, exotic livestock schemes rely not on selling animal products like milk, eggs, wool, meat or leather, but on selling the animals themselves to a new sucker.... [T]he classic mark for these dubious investments probably would have been a couple who had just retired or moved to the country and had a few extra acres burning a hole in their pockets.... During the boom years... every month as cadres of savvy bird brokers would spot new money the instant they walked in and bid up prices accordingly.... More dumb money flowed in as friends and neighbors worried about missing out on the ostrich-and-emu game.... [F]resh rounds of new rural residents [would] convince themselves it made sense to pay $40,000 for an emu....
ADDED: Is it true that the stress was on selling the animals and not on the products that could be made from them? I seem to remember the touting of emu meat. Here, there's this from 1992 in the NYT: "Emus and Ostriches Studied as Future Food":
"There is a huge market for ostrich hides, feathers and meat," said Dr. Kenneth Page, an avian venterinarian who has been working with Georgia's rapidly growing ostrich and emu industry for more than a year. It is $100 million to $200 million-a-year industry.
"The meat is red and it tastes just like steak, but it doesn't have any cholesterol," Dr. Page said. "In California, especially, it is becoming the new yuppie food." Ostrich and emu meat is also higher in protein and lower in fat than beef, he said....
And it wasn't just the seemingly amazing meat:
Ostrich feathers are used in the clothing industry and their hides are used for everything from billfolds to belts. "I like cowboy boots," Dr. Page said, "so I picked up a pair of those darn ostrich boots in October, for $695, and I understand that was a cheap pair."
Oil extracted from the emu, which is slightly smaller than an ostrich, standing close to six feet tall and weighing 110 to 115 pounds, can also be used as a pain reliever, its proponents say. Besides, said Charles F. Powell, the president of the Georgia Emu Association: "It's one of the best moisturizers on the market. When you put it on, it goes right down into your muscles without a greasy film or anything."
But there was still the worrisome news that the business had mostly to do with selling the birds (to suckers?):
[It] is essentially still a breeder's market. Because of the lucrative potential of the birds, nearly all are sold to people eager to raise ostriches or emus for themselves. A pair of mature breeding emus sell for $15,000 to $20,000, while an ostrich couple are close to $50,000....
"In the early days of online life, there were 'flame wars,' performatively absurd and vitriolic debates among the people who posted messages on various bulletin boards."
Writes Jay Caspian Kang, in "Arguing Ourselves to Death/To a degree that we have yet to fully grasp, what rules our age is the ideology of the Internet" (The New Yorker).
"The male body is not a joke" — that was the joke, last night at the Oscars.
I understand the humor — I remember the streaking incident from 50 years ago — and I think John Cena played his part well, but I find the body very weird, so weird that I googled whether he was wearing some sort of nakedness body suit. Is that the male ideal these days? Swollen and devoid of hair? And he couldn't have side-stepped out barefoot? He needed Birkenstocks?
Note: He was wearing panties.
March 10, 2024
"In theory, the recent push for racial representation in elite America should have made the establishment more attuned to the concerns of nonwhite voters."
"There’s a part of me that doesn’t have anything to say, and so I try to festoon myself with things I think are interesting."
But the passage in the Jeremy Strong interview that I really wanted to highlight is this discussion of something in the book "Diaries, 1898-1902," by Alma Mahler Werfel:
"People want to regain their agency, their sense of control, and do something to match their fears to their actions."
Researchers say the number of preppers has doubled in size to about 20 million since 2017. Much of that growth is from minorities and people considered left-of-center politically, whose sense of insecurity was heightened by Donald Trump's 2016 election, the COVID-19 pandemic, more frequent extreme weather and the 2020 racial justice protests following the murder of George Floyd....
"It can’t be. It can not be! If he is, he wins the election. You won’t be on this show anymore. He’ll come looking for me. You know, there’ll be things that happen that none of us can imagine...."
"But I think that the strongest one is the one who looks at the situation, thinks about the people and has the courage of the white flag, and negotiates."
Said Pope Francis, quoted in "Pope says Ukraine should have 'courage of the white flag' of negotiations" (Reuters).
"Snippets of speeches, impersonations, and other organic content involving Trump routinely rack up tens of millions of views on TikTok."
The Nelk Boys, for example — hosts of a podcast Trump has appeared on twice — boast a staggering 4.6 million followers on TikTok...."
From "Inside Trump's TikTok flip-flop" (Axios)(looking into why Trump isn't against TikTok anymore).
"Saturday Night Live" satirizes Katie Britt and — wow! — it's Scarlett Johansson.
March 9, 2024
"In his oddly charmed political life, Trump has benefited mightily from what political scientist Brian Klaas calls the 'banality of crazy'..."
Writes Charles Sykes, in "Donald Trump, the luckiest politician who ever lived" (WaPo).
"Residents who dare leave their homes stumble across bodies that have been left where they fell."
From "Haitians shot dead in street and there’s no one to take the corpses away" (WaPo).
"Under a policy called 'Slant' (Sit up, Lean forward, Ask and answer questions, Nod your head and Track the speaker), the students, aged 11 and 12, were barred from looking away."
From "'You Can Hear a Pin Drop': The Rise of Super Strict Schools in England/Inspired by the academic success of schools like the Michaela secondary school in northwest London, some principals are introducing tight controls on students’ behavior" (NYT).
"We don’t have a candidate. And it’s possible in the end we won’t find a suitable candidate."
Said Matt Bennett, a co-founder of the Democratic-centrist group Third Way, quoted in "Leaked Audio Shows No Labels Has Zero Idea If It’ll Find a Candidate/There was a lot of palaver about how courageous and patriotic they all are. But if you listened closely, there were also admissions that the way forward is very murky" (The New Republic)("Third Way, along with a coalition of other groups, has warned for months that a No Labels ticket would be most likely to siphon votes away from President Biden...").
"Former President Donald Trump on Thursday signaled his opposition to a TikTok ban being considered in Congress, arguing that it would help Facebook..."
The NY Post reports.
"The National Guard are our neighbors; these are moms and dads from our communities....They are just there as a deterrent to those who might think..."
Said Governor Hochul, quoted in "Hochul defends deploying National Guard in NYC subways after 'war zone' backlash" (NY Post).
"Angela Chao, Sen. Mitch McConnell’s billionaire sister-in-law, spent her last minutes alive frantically calling her friends for help as her Tesla slowly sank in a pond..."
The NY Post reports.
"At least 'some' football fans, who attended January's bitterly cold Kansas City Chiefs playoff game, suffered extreme frostbite and eventually needed amputations...."
From "Some attendees of frigid Chiefs game forced into amputations following severe frostbite, Kansas City hospital says /The Jan. 13 wildcard victory over the Miami Dolphins might have come at a terrible price for some spectators who endured sub-zero cold" (NBC News).
"It was the fourth coldest football game in NFL history with the famed"Ice Bowl" of Dec. 31 1967 still serving at the frozen gridiron standard."
"It is theoretically possible, I suppose, that an 81-year-old teetotaling Catholic has suddenly embarked upon a drug-fueled lifestyle."
1. All Trump did was post, at one point during the SOTU, "THE DRUGS ARE WEARING OFF."
How to try to achieve racial diversity without trying to achieve racial diversity.
March 8, 2024
Sunrise — 6:43.
"The UK’s first transgender national news anchor has reported 'Harry Potter' author JK Rowling to the police for 'misgendering' her as a 'man' on social media."
The New York Post reports.
"After I did Steve Bannon's War Room, so many listeners asked me for a link they could send to friends or family members who they argue with about politics."
This might be the best interview in the history of War Room.
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) March 7, 2024
Newsweek editor Batya Sargon talks to Steve Bannon after she blew up the Bill Maher show last weekend.
'I'm a banned leftist because I tell the truth about Democrats.' pic.twitter.com/D5EprAkkEr
"Donald J. Trump on Friday posted a nearly $92 million bond in a defamation case he recently lost to the writer E. Jean Carroll..."
"There were no gyms open... and so every day, I swam miles aimlessly in the lake. I'd put on a wet suit..."
"Saudi Arabia's First Male Robot Touches Female Reporter, Sparks Outrage."
During its introduction at DeepFest, Muhammad, the first bilingual male Saudi Arabia-made humanoid robot, declared, "I am Muhammad, the first Saudi robot in the form of a man. I was manufactured and developed in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as a national project to demonstrate our achievements in the field of artificial intelligence."This isn't just a case of special Saudi Arabian standards of keeping men and women apart. The Muhammad robot grabs her by the buttock:
Saudi Arabia unveils its man shaped AI robot Mohammad, reacts to reporter in its first appearance pic.twitter.com/1ktlUlGBs1
— Megh Updates 🚨™ (@MeghUpdates) March 6, 2024
It's like "Saturday Night Live." Hard to believe I'm not watching a comic actor.
a snippet from Katie Britt's overly dramatic rebuttal. i will say that she is the best Alabama senator. pic.twitter.com/9Fm8h4yUA8
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 8, 2024
"In perfect sync with his much-hyped generation, Keith... adored the Monkees more than the Beatles and was briefly a Jesus freak...."
Why I didn't watch the State of the Union address live last night and why I probably will never watch the recording of it.
Despite hit filmed programs such as I Love Lucy, both William S. Paley of CBS and David Sarnoff of NBC were said to be determined to keep most programming on their networks live. Filmed programs were said to be inferior to the spontaneous nature of live television.
Take away the magic of live television, and what is the State of the Union address? We are perfectly free to watch the entire thing on YouTube the next day. Or never. Or in sliced out snippets — a highlight reel or a collection of verbal slips or biggest applause lines. Or we can just read about it. Did anything happen? Did some grieving mother hear her daughter's name said aloud? Was the name precisely correctly pronounced? Did the President hold up a button? Did he recharge his campaign?
Was he feisty?
***
"Feisty," the OED tells us, is based on the familiar word "fist." It's a punch-in-the-nose concept. Fisty. Definition: "Aggressive, excitable, touchy." We're told it's American slang, originally dialect, and the OED has the quotes to prove it:
1913 Feisty means when a feller's allers wigglin' about, wantin' ever'body to see him, like a kid when the preacher comes. H. Kephart, Our Southern Highlanders 94
1926 That-there feisty bay mare jumped straight upwards and broke the tongue outen the plow. E. M. Roberts, Time of Man 152
1965 Luther gets a little feisty after a few drinks, and he began to argue with him. ‘D. Shannon’, Death-bringers (1966) xiii. 162
1968 He couldn't shake her loose—she hung on to his arm, feisty as a terrier. J. Potts, Trash Stealer xiii. 148
***
Post-sunrise opinion: The morning after, it is possible to see that the SOTU was a campaign speech. Every morning, there was a campaign speech yesterday.
In the comments: I'm getting a lot of pushback on the etymology of "feisty." It's not the fist that is the hand in an aggressive clench? It's a dog, you say? Well, let's go back to the OED. I see I made an assumption. What I was seeing at the OED entry "feisty" was:
I had not clicked on the boldface "fist." But if I had, I would not have gone to the entry for the kind of "fist" that is the clenched hand. I'd have gone to a separate entry, with 3 things together: a fart, a puffball fungus, and a dog:1. A breaking wind, a foul smell, stink. Obsolete....
2. The fungus usually known as puff-ball.... Obsolete....3. U.S. dialect. A small dog....
The etymology pointed us to #3, so — no matter how much we might enjoy thinking "feisty" means farty — we must accept that the comparison is to a small dog. Yappy, hopping around, over-excited. Still farty though. You see the connection. It's always the dog.