"The word that got me in trouble is using the word 'clean.' I should have said 'fresh.' What I meant is: he's got new ideas."

Joe Biden is on "The Daily Show" tonight, and Jon Stewart confronts him with his dreadful quote about Barack Obama: "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy."

(I wrote about the quote earlier today. And Best of the Web wrote about it here and connected it to my earlier post suggesting that there was racism implicit in the excessive praise we've been hearing for Obama.)

So how does Biden deal with it? He smiles very broadly (while audience members boo), then says: "Well, let me tell you something. I spoke to Barack today...." Stewart butts in: "I bet you did." Another big, toothy smile from Joe, and then: "I also spoke to Jesse and Al Sharpton and uh..." Stewart butts in again: "And Michael Jordan and anybody you could get your hands on. The Jackson 5. Who else?" Biden: "Michael didn't call me. Look, what I was attempting to be was not very artfully [sic] was complimentary. This is an incredible guy. This is a phenomenon. This guy is... And look, the other part of this thing is... I... The word that got me in trouble is using the word 'clean.' I should have said 'fresh.' What I meant is he's got new ideas. He a new guy on the block. And... it's not workin', right?"

Oh, man, is that not workin' out. No one says "clean" to mean "fresh" in the sense of new ideas! It's like they took out the thesaurus and looked up "clean" to fish around for other words that he could say he meant. Yeah, "fresh" is a substitute for "clean" maybe in some ad for soap or some feminine hygiene product. But no one stumbles into "clean" when they're going for "fresh ideas." And there's no "clean guy on the block."

Stewart does a bit where he repunctuates the quote, but it's not too clever. Biden does that smile again and kids "That's what I meant to say." Stewart asks if he feels like that guy in the Maxell ad:



And Biden says "I kinda did," and then "It reminded me: Welcome back to presidential politics" -- as if the response he got was somehow exaggerated and unfair.

How hopelessly inept! Ironically, the message he wanted to get out in his interview was that Bush is hopelessly inept and the next President must be someone with the sort of practiced competence that you aren't going to find in Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, that you'll have to come to Joe Biden for. What a joke!

"American Idol," the Los Angeles auditions.

"You sound like Cher after she's gone to the dentist," Simon says to a woman who is trying to follow in her mother's footsteps. They're in Los Angeles, inviting in the Hollywood crowd, and this mother was one of the so-called "Golddiggers" on the old Dean Martin TV show. She sings a song that ends with the line "Shall I stay or shall I go?" and they scoff that they know the answer to that question. Told no, she gets down on her knees and begs, saying "I'm down on my knees, begging." She says "please" over and over, melodramatically, demonstrating that she'd also lose if this were an acting competition.

And I'm just not in the mood to describe anything else. It was a rather boring show tonight. There was a guy who used to be a backup singer who was good and seemed nice. There were a lot of quite bad people, unsurprisingly. And they had a guest judge. I hate that. Olivia Newton John. How terribly nice for her. How hideously boring for us. How it undercuts Simon's power to tell the contestants that they are hideous. To tell the truth, I'd probably have enjoyed the show a lot more if I weren't simultaneously -- Simontaneously -- trying to fix the problem with the damned feed on this blog that switching to New Blogger caused.

Perhaps I can snap out of this bad mood by watching "The Daily Show." I don't usually watch it these days, but I still TiVo it, and I see that Joe Biden is on! Watch for the new post about that. How can the poor man show his (unclean) face?

Ban incandescent lightbulbs?

This is a California idea. If I lived there and faced this ban, I'd buy my lightbulbs in another state. It's just too horrible to live in such an ugly glare. People who have no aesthetic sense don't understand how a limit like this affects people. I'd be happy to make up for it by turning off more lights or using dimmers.

Why don't you ban air conditioning?

"If I had to vote today... without a doubt... former United States Attorney and New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani."

So says Baseball Crank, who calls himself "a pro-life Reaganite conservative." His reasons:

1. We Need To Win The War....

2. We Need To Win The Election....

3. Leadership Matters....

4. We Can Hold The Line In The Courts....

Read the whole thing. If I had to vote today, I'd pick Giuliani too, but it's much easier for me, because I support abortion rights and the other liberal causes that make conservatives worry about Giuliani.

How do I get my feed to update again...

... now that I've switched to New Blogger? (I'd appreciate some help, with a very clear explanation. I know it has something to do with Feedburner... I think...)

Biden gets attention.

Everyone's talking about the interview Biden gave to the NY Observer. But I can't get through to it right now. Drudge is quoting him as saying, about Barack Obama, "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy." Clean! So, then, Biden's campaign is over, right?

UPDATE: I'm on the same page as Kos on this one.

Unfortunate...

Tattoos. And then there are the things you do to yourself that you can't hide with a shirt.

Here's a website devoted to bad tattoos. And here's one I like even better. There are different kinds of bad, though, you know, and I'm going to endorse this kind:

Meat-eating terror birds.

Run for your lives!

"Their lives overflow with dramatic possibility and struggle -- struggles that must be viewed through the prism of their gender."

David Lat defends his obsession with divas:

We will not apologize for having a weakness for divas. We have loved divas for our entire life, ever since we popped out of one's womb....

Every blogger develops his or her own idiosyncratic hobbyhorses and obsessions. Glenn Reynolds, aka Instapundit, is obssessed [sic] with "porkbusting." Dave Kopel, of the Volokh Conspiracy, is obsessed with guns. The Wonketteers are obssessed [sic] with Katherine Harris.

And then there's this post, devoted to Janice Rogers Brown (who Lat thinks looks like Wanda Sykes):

During the Q and A, we got up and asked her (among other things): "Judge Brown, you're a fabulous judicial diva. But you're stuck on a court that focuses on administrative law. Do you feel that being on the D.C. Circuit cramps your diva style?"

Tee hee. And I love the use of all-caps in her answer: "I have NEVER thought of myself as a diva."

Labels.

Now that I've converted to New Blogger, I can add labels to my posts. I could even go back and add labels to old posts. But what's the point? It adds visual clutter. I don't like that. I guess you can click on them and get old posts with the same label to appear... Are people going to do that? I suppose I could go back and add labels to posts that would get the same label as some label I've put on a new post. Like, wouldn't you love to click on the "American Idol" label and see all the old "American Idol" posts? It might be a shameful display!

ADDED: I just realized I could go to the "Edit Posts" page, do a search for a term (such as "American Idol"), then "select all" in the results, and use the pull-down "Label Actions" menu to apply a label to all those old posts. So how many old "American Idol" posts do I have? You can click on the "American Idol" label below to see them, but I'll tell you: 206! I know, some of you are thinking: Where can I click to see the blog minus the "American Idol" posts?

AND: Here's a question for you. Now that I know how to use labels to collect a particular category of posts by searching for a recurrent term, what labels would you like me to create? Remember, it needs to be a particular word, for example, a name. I wonder which individuals I've written about the most, especially the ones I've obsessed over out of proportion to their significance in the current news.

AND: I'm doing some labels for various political characters: Kerry, Obama... It was interesting to see the first opinion I had about Barack Obama:

Now here is a speaker I can stand to listen to. He's modulating his voice and he seems to have the speech memorized, so he doesn't have that awful teleprompter stare. He places some emphasis on personal responsibility....

Obama does a great job delivering the speech, even though the words of the speech are quite banal. There are many references to hope. The speech is blessedly short.

Many references to hope, but actually quite banal...

0%.

The #1 movie at the box office has a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes (i.e., not one good review). That's got to be a record.

The next four movies have very poor reviews too. It's no secret why so many bad movies are made.

"Maybe goddesses have some hypnotic effect on policy wonks...."

Linda Hirshman responds to me and Mark Schmitt on Bloggingheads.

"Some people call this 'Idol' country...."

Ah! We're in the South tonight, where -- chances are! -- we'll find the best singers.

We're in Birmingham, home of Ruben Studdard, Taylor Hicks, and Bo Bice.

Our first contestant, Erica Skye, is pleased to serve up what we know to be Simon's favorite song, except she calls it "Unchained Melodies." It's as if "Merrie Melodies" is intruding on the solemn grandeur of "Unchained Melody." She's a power singer, but ... she's not hitting the right notes. This is a deep shame that has prevented me from singing anywhere for decades, so I think it's kind of cool that a 19-year-old woman hasn't heard of this particular inhibition. But... she's crap... and she deserves the insults. "Erica, it was like a neverending torture." She's so horrendous -- yet powerful! -- that Paula is propelled off-stage. They tell Erica they hate her, and she does this little brushing gesture on her shoulder. Simon has to say, "What's that mean?" And Paula's response is bleeped.

Next is this crazy dorky girl who talks like a baby, but her singing makes me cry. Why? The singing is desperately mannered. There is something in it. There's a person in there. That's my theory anyway. Simon says no, but Randy says yes. They drag out the tension with Paula, and Paula agrees with Randy. We're not surprised, but we love this dear girl, Katie Bernard. She's this year's Kellie Pickler.

Next is Tatiana McConnico. She sings "I never loved a man the way that I loved you..." in a way that doesn't make us wish we could hear Aretha instead. Beautiful!

Bernard Williams II. He's going to rock with us! Paula thinks he's off-key. But Randy and Simon say yes, so he needs to find the key for Hollywood.

"I've got you standing in front of me, looking like some Easter Bunny nightmare experiment," Simon says to Margaret Fowler, who looks more fowl than bunny and in no way seems 26, which is what she claims. They demand the truth and eventually she admits she's 50.

Jamie Lynn Ward... she's 16 and her father shot himself, because her stepmom was cheatin' on 'im, and he's paralyzed from the waist down. She's not good enough. But Paula says something that makes them see the part that is good, and they let this sweet child through.

Chris Sligh is next. He says people tell him he looks like Jack Osbourne. I think he looks like Mark Volman. He sings "Kiss from a Rose" and gets a rise out of Paula. He's good.

There's still a third of the show left. but really it's not worth talking about. There's a woman whose hair is extremely long, but let's just leave all the rest unsaid.

Sorry, I've been away.

Yes, I know, I was a fool to click the button to switch to "new Blogger" in the middle of the day. I have a big blog to transfer, and I didn't realize it would take three hours. But I'm back, and I'm new. Whether anything will be different, I'll have to see.

"Wa wa wee wa, is Borat in trouble again?"

The Himalayan Times reports (yeah, I'm getting my news about Sacha Baron Cohen from Nepal!):

Dovale Glickman plans to sue the Golden Globe-award winning comedian for copyright infringement...

The Israeli comedian coined the phrase ["wa wa wee wa"] 16 years ago, for a character on the hit Israeli comedy show "Zehu Zeh." Glickman further popularized the expression in a series of TV commercials for the Israeli yellow pages. It caught on and is still commonly heard on the street in Israel.

Copyright infringement for a 4-syllable exclamation? Wa wa wee wa! Oops, now I'm in trouble!

It's me and Mark Schmitt...

...on Bloggingheads! Topics:

Ann's rock-star aura of coolness

Mark wants outrage over income inequality

Hillary Clinton calculates a central position

Those impulsive, irrational women

How Obama has entered our space and organized our thoughts

Who wants to join the peace march? Not Mark and certainly not Ann

How George McGovern made us fat

Wigging out.

From bad chompers to bad hair. Watch out for the NSFW expletives.



I saw that the other day, half forgot it, then played it again today and laughed even more. I see some commenters over at YouTube think it's fake -- I disagree -- and others feel very sorry for the young woman -- and I disagree with that too. The line "you'll look back on this and laugh" is spoken in the clip, and it was never more true. But if it's not -- if the bride never looks back and laughs -- I feel very sorry for the groom.

UPDATE: Hoax! (Via Metafilter.)

Exploding head syndrome!

It's just one of a number of unusual things.

And what do "My Head is Spinning," "Now, Stand Back For Your Own Safety!,” "Okay I'll Admit That I Really Don't Understand," "Schizos (Are Never Alone)," "Television Rules the Nation," "That Tastes Horrible," "Egg Sandwich," "Thermonuclear War (Is Good For Your Complexion)," The “Batman” theme song, and "Pennsylvania 6-5000" have in common? (Answer here.)

Actually, I think I experienced exploding head syndrome once. If you don't know what it is, you may be saying, how could you possibly have it more than once, and, moreover, why are you still here?

The Self-Esteem Dentist v. A Creature Unlike Any Other.

Dentist Larry Rosenthal has had it with relationship guru author Ellen Fein:

"If she had a life, she wouldn't be harassing him," said David Jaroslawicz, the dentist's lawyer. "What kind of nut sets up something called LyingDentist.com?"

The tooth doc, dubbed the "mouth whisperer" for his New Age methods, says Fein tried to extort $100,000 from him for allegedly ruining her chompers a decade ago....

The blond author, who lives on Long Island, co-wrote a female-friendly series of dating books called "The Rules," that include nuggets of wisdom like "Be a Creature Unlike Any Other."

Rosenthal is a high-profile proponent of "self-esteem dentistry" and has sold a raft of celebrities on his smile-your-way-to-success theories....

Fein went to Rosenthal to have her teeth spiffed up in 1996. But she says he butchered a mouth realignment and gave her "gigantic" teeth.

The two will gnash it out in court.

Self-esteem dentistry? New-Age-y as it sounds, it looks like nothing more than unnecessary procedures done for the sake of beauty. The link is to Rosenthal's website, where we see pictures of him smiling toothily next to Donald Trump, Tommy Hilfiger, and Kathie Lee Gifford.

You can find the Lying Dentist website yourself. I'll link to the website for "The Rules," which were quite the thing a few years back. Check it out: the authors will consult with you by phone for $250 an hour. Or just read some Rules yourself:

Be a creature unlike any other

Being a creature unlike any other is really an attitude, a sense of confidence and radiance that permeates your being from head to toe. It's the way you smile (you light up the room), pause in between sentences (you don't babble on out of nervousness), listen (attentively), look (demurely, never stare), breathe (slowly), stand (straight) and walk (briskly, with your shoulders back). When a relationship doesn't work out, you brush away a tear so that it doesn't smudge your makeup and you move on!

It's the way you smile.... with gigantic chompers.

Why aren't we ashamed of fawning over Obama?

Slate's Tim Noah has introduced a new regular feature called "The Obama Messiah Watch," devoted to "gratuitously adoring biographical details" about Barack Obama. The first item, from the LA Times, quotes a former classmate of Obama's marveling over the conciseness of the notes he took in class ("the pithiest, tightest prose you'd ever see").

Slate has some distance from the fawning it will be serving up. We can tell that Noah is sniggering at the overenthusiasm. Yet these regular features mean something. This one invites us to partake in the adoration of a man. "Bushisms" offers endless examples of another man's supposed stupidity. But Slate is committing to the repeated presentation of Obama as godlike for accomplishing tasks that require skill within the range of mere mortals.

"The Obama Messiah Watch" is ostensibly a fun little feature, highlighting the foibles of people who just love Obama so much. But what Noah fails to talk about is the likelihood that he's picking up evidence of racism. What accounts for amazement to the point of adoration at the fact that a man possesses excellent skill at something like note taking? Is it not that he can do it and he's black? You can laugh at Noah's nuggets of gratuitous adoration, but you ought also to look at them critically and think about the implications.

IN THE COMMENTS: Working on the theory that there's racism everywhere, readers are questioning my use of the word "sniggering"!

MORE: La Shawn Barber had some similar thoughts a few months back.

"I fear that Judge Alito will ... roll over when confronted with an administration too willing to flaunt the rules...."

Yes, we need judges who dare to tell the administration to quit waving the rules about in a showy fashion.

I know it's awfully late to point out usage errors from the Alito confirmation battle, but I was just reading up on Senator Hillary Clinton. I recorded a Bloggingheads episode yesterday, and my co-head, Mark Schmitt, let loose with a remark about Clinton's great accomplishments as a Senator. I was incredulous and went looking to see if there was something I'd failed to notice. (The diavlog isn't up yet, but I'll update with a link when it is.)

These Senators. They're always running for President, and their main accomplishment is that they are Senators. And that they can get themselves reelected.

UPDATE: The episode is up. The moment referred to is at about 36:40.

"This duck has taken us all on an emotional rollercoaster."

Oh, for the love of Daffy! I hope it's only the British press -- in some incomprehensible British eccentricity -- that's covering the duck-in-the-refrigerator story:

"But once the surgeon started sewing her back up she stopped breathing again, this time for 15 seconds."

When a second thump failed to bring Perky round, veterinary surgeon David Hale tried manipulating the duck's beak, before using a needle to shock her into consciousness.

At one point the duck was given pure oxygen through a face mask, Ms May said.

"At that point the vet turned and said: 'I'm sorry, she's gone.'"

The room fell into shocked silence as those present took in the news, but then Perky raised her head and began flapping her wings.

The relief reduced everyone to tears, Ms May said, describing one of her colleagues as "extremely emotional" as she left the room.

"For the duck to have gone through all of this and then to die at that time was a real shock," Ms May said.

This is a duck shot by a hunter and put in the refrigerator, presumably, to be eaten soon enough. Manipulating the duck's beak? This should become an idiomatic expression along the lines of "pulling my leg."

We've talked about this story before, and as one commenter said, why is it at all surprising that a duck can live in a refrigerator? They live outside. The appalling thing is that the hunter put the duck in the refrigerator in a condition that was survivable. As Meade said: "what sort of slob duck hunter fails to field dress or breast out the game upon retrieval while it is still warm?"

"Women Feeling Freer to Suggest 'Vote for Mom.'"

This is a front-page "political memo" from Robin Toner.

Today, many political strategists say women no longer have to be so defensive. Voters have grown more accustomed to women in powerful positions....

What this means, strategists say, is that motherhood and a focus on children can become one more political asset to be showcased — a way of humanizing a candidate and connecting with voters, especially other women....

National security remains a threshold issue for voters but is no longer such an automatic advantage for the Republicans because they have lost so much support on the war in Iraq, the polls suggest. And neither Ms. Pelosi nor Mrs. Clinton is neglecting these issues. On the campaign trail in Iowa on Saturday, Mrs. Clinton argued that all of this — security, maternity, affordable health care — was part of her potential-first-woman-president package.

“I’m going to be asking people to vote for me based on my entire life and experience,” she said. “The fact that I’m a woman, the fact that I’m a mom, is part of who I am.”

Well, I've already said what I think about Hillary Clinton on this one. I think she's overdone the mommy stuff at this point. But managing our feelings about women and power is a complex task. We may be "more accustomed to women in powerful positions," but it's still very complicated. And raising motherhood as a qualification is a new move, and we're not accustomed to that at all. This new rhetoric will create its own swirl of complex feelings about women and power. It remains to be seen who will be helped and who will be hurt.

"Arthur Godfrey once said that 'I'm proud to pay taxes in America, but I could be just as proud for about half the money.'"

Arthur Godfrey! You're quoting Arthur Godfrey?! Well, Governor Huckabee wins the prize for least hip candidate in the '08 race. That is beyond square. Truly weird! It was incredibly square and old to like Arthur Godfrey 40 years ago... 50 years ago!

MR. RUSSERT: You said this to the Des Moines Register: “Let’s face it. In our lifetimes, we’ve seen our country go from ‘Leave it to Beaver’ to ‘Beavis and Butt-head,’ from Barney Fife to Barney Frank.” Why, why include Barney Frank, a gay congressman, in that reference?

GOV. HUCKABEE: I think it was a matter of a rhetorical device...

Ack! Static! I can't hear anything he's saying at this point. Even the "Beavis and Butt-head" reference is old, old, old. (Note: I'm older than Mike Huckabee.) And the gay-baiting? So tawdry, however much you like traditional values. And, anyway, was Barney Fife a positive masculine role model?

Back to The Bee:

I just completed a book in which I talk about the difference between horizontal politics, where everything is left or right, everything is liberal or conservative, everything is Democrat or Republican. I think the American people are hungry for vertical politics, where we have leaders who lift us up rather than those who tear us down.

Well, you're doing a huckava job.

"Women don't decide elections because they're not rational political actors... [T]hey vote on impulse, and on elusive factors such as personality."

Linda Hirshman editorializes in the Washington Post. She interviewed some woman about Hillary Clinton:

I had such mixed feelings listening to these women describe their political selves. They're clearly idealistic, want to be good citizens, make an effort to get the information they need. It was hard not to like them. Their delight in seeing a woman so close to real power was palpable. Yet I couldn't escape the fact that they took in little of politics, especially compared with their husbands, that their decision-making seemed impulsive and that their response to Clinton's candidacy was driven to an amazing extent by personality.

They unwittingly confirmed my theory about why women don't decide elections....

The point here is that Hillary Clinton shouldn't count on women to get her elected. If she thinks women will vote for a woman because she's a woman, she's wrong.

Hirshman portrays woman as lame political actors. I get the impression that she's just exasperated that they don't reliably support liberal causes. Which, of course, wouldn't make them lame. Quite the opposite.

She seems to find it rather pathetic that they don't lock onto the political news the way men do, but that may be a perfectly sensible way to live a competent life. By contrast, it's rather crazy to be fretting about November 2008 right now. It's not so much that men are rational and women are emotional. Men just have different emotions. Male emotion tends more in the political junkie direction. "Junkie" is not the image of rationality.

Hirshman offers Clinton some advice on how to take advantage of women voters:

First, when it comes to women who vote, the political is the personal.... If the polls continue to reflect male aversion to her beyond the baseline male Republican tilt, Clinton may have to go personal to bring the women home. Maybe she could get a couch on casters.

Hirshman's contempt for women is rather shocking. She goes on to suggest that Clinton open up her personal story:

[S]he has had the soap opera story of the century with that charismatic, faithless husband. This has made her suffer, something one of the Wednesday women specifically singled out as a reason to support a candidate. Will she be willing to open that old wound to convince potential female supporters that her policies, such as universal child health care, arise out of her concern for women like them, rather than being just the usual liberal agenda?

She can't make Bill look bad now! And anyway, why would some personal sob story, even if it did show you really cared about children in some special way, make you seem as though you deserve the presidency? So you found yourself in a personal fix? Therefore we should put you in charge of the country?

The second lesson is that elections that turn on the female electorate bear an unfortunate resemblance to a popularity contest. The Republicans have succeeded with women at the polls when they've made Democrats look not just mistaken, but clownish or geeky. Reagan in blue jeans beat Jimmy Carter in a cardigan. George H.W. Bush looked like John Wayne next to Dukakis peering over the edge of a tank in a helmet. And who knows what would have happened if Kerry hadn't donned a wetsuit to go wind-surfing? Even the devil wears Prada. And women know it.

Hirshman is well on the way to convincing us that women shouldn't have the vote! On the other hand, I'm totally planning to blog about what everyone's wearing and how they look in their photo ops. And isn't Mitt Romney dreamy?

Hey, Hirshman forgot to mention that in each of the cases she described, we picked the better boyfriend. And don't forget Bill Clinton. He's the best boyfriend. And Hillary's our rival. We're going to inspect her critically, because why does she have the best boyfriend? She's just using him! Oh, why doesn't he see that she's not that pretty and she's not that nice? In short, Hirshman fails to complete that "popularity contest" thought!

Audible Althouse #77.

Oh, you've waited so long, podcast fans... if I still have podcast fans. This is just a podcast about trying to revive the joy of podcasting. There's some substance too. But I'm just hoping you'll come along for the ride as I try to discover a way to live inside the podcast again. So stuff those earbuds into your earholes and take a chance.

You can stream it right through your computer here. But the hardcore fans subscribe on iTunes:

I saw "The Queen."

I start recording a vlog, just as a way to psyche myself up to do a podcast, and though I mean to talk about blogposts, in my podcast style, I get exasperated with that effort and end up talking about going to the movies today.



Podcast to follow... presumably....

Nutritionism, the ideology that has replaced food.

Michael Pollan writes about how we got so twisted up about nourishing ourselves (as opposed to eating). He pinpoints the start of the problem. In 1977, a Senate Select Committee on Nutrition -- led by George McGovern -- told people to cut down on red meat and dairy products, then, caving to pressure from the red meat and dairy industries, revised the advice to: "Choose meats, poultry and fish that will reduce saturated-fat intake."

A subtle change in emphasis, you might say, but a world of difference just the same. First, the stark message to "eat less" of a particular food has been deep-sixed; don’t look for it ever again in any official U.S. dietary pronouncement. Second, notice how distinctions between entities as different as fish and beef and chicken have collapsed; those three venerable foods, each representing an entirely different taxonomic class, are now lumped together as delivery systems for a single nutrient. Notice too how the new language exonerates the foods themselves; now the culprit is an obscure, invisible, tasteless — and politically unconnected — substance that may or may not lurk in them called "saturated fat."

Pollan adds that the head of the Committee, George McGovern lost his next Senate election:

[T]he beef lobby helped rusticate the three-term senator, sending an unmistakable warning to anyone who would challenge the American diet, and in particular the big chunk of animal protein sitting in the middle of its plate. Henceforth, government dietary guidelines would shun plain talk about whole foods, each of which has its trade association on Capitol Hill, and would instead arrive clothed in scientific euphemism and speaking of nutrients, entities that few Americans really understood but that lack powerful lobbies in Washington. This was precisely the tack taken by the National Academy of Sciences when it issued its landmark report on diet and cancer in 1982. Organized nutrient by nutrient in a way guaranteed to offend no food group, it codified the official new dietary language. Industry and media followed suit, and terms like polyunsaturated, cholesterol, monounsaturated, carbohydrate, fiber, polyphenols, amino acids and carotenes soon colonized much of the cultural space previously occupied by the tangible substance formerly known as food. The Age of Nutritionism had arrived.

Did you know the politics of why we're so fat and sickly? It's McGovern's fault! Everyone started scarfing down Snackwell’s and pasta. Later, reacting to that disaster, everyone freaked out about carbohydrates and went on the Atkins diet.

By framing dietary advice in terms of good and bad nutrients, and by burying the recommendation that we should eat less of any particular food, it was easy for the take-home message of the 1977 and 1982 dietary guidelines to be simplified as follows: Eat more low-fat foods. And that is what we did. We’re always happy to receive a dispensation to eat more of something (with the possible exception of oat bran), and one of the things nutritionism reliably gives us is some such dispensation: low-fat cookies then, low-carb beer now.

In the end, the advice is to eat real food and to eat less. Actually, he's got 9 points of advice at the end -- well worth reading -- but it's mainly eat real food and eat less.

***

Interesting idea: "the Okinawans practiced a principle they called 'Hara Hachi Bu': eat until you are 80 percent full." Funny! I don't think Americans could even grasp the concept of identifying the 80 percent point. It's hard enough for us to notice the point at which we are full. We don't even know how to be put off by the gross portions that are set down in front of us in restaurants.

When I go to steakhouses here in Madison, I always order the smallest size -- "petite" -- and it's 6 ounces. I never want to eat the whole thing, and then I feel silly bringing home a 3 ounce portion. But, you know, 3 ounces is considered -- by some official standard -- to be one portion of meat. So I go to a restaurant, order the dinky size, and it's a double portion. It's very hard to develop common sense about how much to eat under such conditions. If you pay $30 for a steak, you don't want to leave $15 worth of it! You push yourself to eat even though you aren't hungry, and it becomes second nature.

Hear Hillary sing "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Actually, I think it's pretty cute:



Yeah, she sings badly, but she never said she could sing well, and bad singing is an American (Idol) tradition. She's a little off on the words. You can ding her for that.

We will still have Kerry to kick around.

I thought he was withdrawing from the political fray, but apparently, he was redeploying. Here he is, botching up a storm. The long national nightmare continues.

Anticipated next scene: Kerry proffers some mind-bending explanation of how his use of the words "international pariah" didn't mean what Fox News manipulated unintelligent plebes into believing.

"He can enter your space and organize your thoughts without necessarily revealing his own concerns and conflicts."

Some superheroes leap tall buildings with a single bound. Barack Obana enters your space and organizes your thoughts without revealing anything about himself!

(Same link as the previous post. The amazing and cool quote is from Harvard lawprof Charles J. Ogletree Jr.)

What a fabulous superpower, so perfect for a political actor. But, you realize, of course, that if you were writing a novel and giving that trait to a character, he would be your villain. He might make a wonderful diplomat, bringing all sorts of people together, yet we'd be crazy to give him the power to work his will before we knew what he was really about. But this ability to enter our space and organize our thoughts may be just the thing to make us that crazy, with our thoughts organized into the belief that he is the great man who will save us.

"I was born in Oslo, Norway, the son of a Volvo factory worker and part-time ice fisherman."

"My mother was a backup singer for Abba. They were good folks.... [In Chicago,] I discovered I was black, and I have remained so ever since." So goes the satirical script, written by Barack Obama's Harvard Law School classmates.

He proved deft at navigating an institution scorched with ideological battles, many of which revolved around race. He developed a leadership style based more on furthering consensus than on imposing his own ideas. Surrounded by students who enjoyed the sound of their own voices, Mr. Obama cast himself as an eager listener, sometimes giving warring classmates the impression that he agreed with all of them at once.

Friends say he did not want anyone to assume they knew his mind — and because of that, even those close to him did not always know exactly where he stood....

Why did his fellow law review editors elect him to lead them, to serve as their "president" (most law journals say "editor-in-chief")?

The election was an all-day affair with the ego-crushing drama of a reality TV show. Inside Pound Hall, the editors picked apart the intellectual and social skills of the 19 contenders, eliminating them in batches. At the last moment, the conservative faction, its initial candidates defeated, threw its support to Mr. Obama. “Whatever his politics, we felt he would give us a fair shake,” said Bradford Berenson, a former associate White House counsel in the Bush administration.

Read the whole article. With all those lawyers to interview and all the jealousy Obama must have inspired with his success at Harvard, it's notable that nothing nasty comes up.

But then maybe this article -- in the NYT -- is a puff piece and some juicy quotes got clipped out.

Madison Saturday politics.

The problem with a woman running for President.

I'm watching Hillary Clinton doing her town hall meeting in Des Moines, Iowa. A man -- Representative Leonard Boswell -- is introducing her. He ends by waving his arm around and saying: "We wish you every success." Not a peep out of the audience. He goes on: "Let the conversation begin!" Still nothing! He adds "God bless ya... we're glad to have you here" and, finally, elicits a cheer.

"Thank you all," she yells in that harsh tone her voice gets when she's going for volume. "Well," she says, now properly modulated and holding her hands out, palms up. "I'm Hillary Clinton." She leans forward and laughs, like it's a big joke that she actually is Hillary Clinton. The crowd laughs, either because they get the "joke" or they actually are jazzed up at the experience of witnessing the grand personage in the flesh.

"I'm running for President, and I'm in it to win it." Has she been going around saying "I'm in it to win it"? This sounds clever for half a second, and then you get distracted thinking about what other possible reasons might lead a person to run for President. And then I find myself in a pit of irrelevance musing about the mind of Dennis Kucinich...

She has some material about how ordinary people aren't making enough money these days, unlike rich people, who make too much money. Democrats are required to say this. To me, it sounds like patronizing the audience. You folks are the good, deserving people. Elsewhere, there are bad people taking way more than their share.

Next, she talks about how a woman can be President. Americans are "good at breaking barriers, and I wanna see us get back to doin' that." Droppin' those gs is really gettin' to me. Kerry did that too, didn't he?

"We need strong leadership and smart solutions to deal with our problems."

Okay, enough generalizations. It's time for the town hall questions... the conversation...

The first question is about whether a woman can be President. Clinton's response sounds natural and decent enough, and I'm thoroughly bored with this issue now. Of course, a woman can be President, but we shouldn't elect her President just to prove the point. She's a specific person, now get on with it.

The second question comes from a doctor who wants to know what she's going to do about obesity and diabetes in the United States. I pause the TiVo and the expression on her face seems to show exasperation at having to respond to this sort of thing. I unpause and see the gears click into place: It's time for Universal Health Care tape loop. The system is screwed up because it's easier to get insurers to pay if you need to have your foot amputated than if you'd like to visit a nutritionist.

There's a question about education from a teacher, who informs us that her job requires her to deal with "raging pubescent hormonal individuals" -- 8th graders -- and the hard thing is she's going through menopause. She says this in a stand-up comedian style, and I get the feeling that she thinks Hillary is going to offer her some special menopausal camaraderie. Hillary does not. Bill may have told us about his underpants, but Hillary isn't going to let us in on the extent of her need for Tampax.

The next woman complains about how "women's work" -- she does air quotes -- is underpaid. "How do we change the culture" to value this work? The obvious answer is: not through the presidency. Hillary talks at length about women's work, the culture, etc.

How I'd have loved to hear something like: You know, what's ironic here is that I'm a woman, and you're undervaluing me, asking me questions about women's things, and not treating me like someone who is offering to take on the work that genuinely belongs to the office I'm seeking. How is a woman supposed to become President if all you ever picture her doing is taking on the caregiving responsibilities that have typically belonged to women?

I can't endure the whole event, not in one sitting... but I do vlog about it...

ADDED: Wait, it will take me a minute to get the vlog up. Meanwhile, the show was almost over, and I did watch it to the end. All the questions were on womanly subjects. I predict trouble if HC can't get people to think of her outside the traditional role while she's trying to get hold of a nontraditional role.

HERE:

The Peace March.

Here's the peace march that took place today at about 1 p.m. on State Street in Madison, Wisconsin. This clip shows the whole length of the parade. Note the man at the front, just behind the banners, who is holding a sign that says "Vive Saddam." (It's the third sign from the right.) The entire clip -- which I shot while walking in the opposite direction -- is about 3 minutes long. It includes a large dove puppet and a large papier maché skull.



ADDED: The march reminds James Wigderson of "the sham gunfights I saw in Tombstone, Arizona, to show off for the tourists." Oh, I don't know. If they were just acting the part, they'd have had it together for the chant a little more. The people at the front are all "Bring them home. Now." The middle is just "Peace. Now." mixed with "No more war." Behind them is the original chant, shortened to "Bring them home." And did you notice the guy who's marching while talking on his cell phone?

Anyway, let's critique the "Bring them home" chant. It's a chant that made sense for Vietnam, a war for which men were drafted. I very much understand the resistance and shock and desperation that was felt for the young men who were forced to go to Vietnam, feelings that would make many people say, quite simply, "Bring them home." But for Iraq, everyone has volunteered. Everyone who's there made a profound decision to do something. The chant "Bring them home," in that context, seems to be shouting disrespectfully in their face that they made a blunder. There are people who chose to do something and are working very hard to accomplish it. While it is true that our leaders owe them the right decisions about how to win the war, the individuals who volunteered deserve respect for the choices that they made. The chant omits the honoring of that choice.

We know how to make coffee in Wisconsin.

Intriguing, no?

A possession of mine.

Discussed here.

Things I read/watched but don't quite feel like blogging about this morning.

1. People kind of hate real estate agents.

2. Maybe you really don't have to save that much for your retirement.

3. A developmentally disabled guy reacts to opposition to a group home for the developmentally disabled.

4. An autistic woman demonstrates what she considers to be her language.

5. One night, back in the 60s, Bob Dylan did a call-in advice show on the radio.

6. Allen Shawn wrote a book about his phobias, but maybe he's not all that phobic.

7. A law and economics professor did a study that correlates earnings to skin tone.

8. Professor Bainbridge gives up on the "magazine" format for his blog.

9. The Swampland bloggers are squabbling.

10. Hillary Clinton needs to get some more votes in Iowa.

11. Powerline is at a conservative summit of some sort.

12. People don't like to shop at The Gap so much anymore.

13. Seminary students don't necessarily feel like becoming ministers.

14. An episcopal rector mocked parishioners and got in trouble.

15. An ugly incident upset people on a campus.

16. Elia behaved badly on "Top Chef."

17. People are talking about Libby and Rove and Cheney.

18. Bush is resigning himself to an Iraq resolution.

19. A guy had amnesia.

20. Angelina Jolie might be in a bad mood.

The government is here to help you with your body image problems.

Here's a story about how Spain is standardizing clothing sizes for women "as part of a government drive to ease pressure on young girls over their body size":

The change of sizes will be led by Spain's National Consumer Institute, which will measure more than 8,000 Spanish females between the ages of 12 and 70.

Spanish fashion houses will then try to fit clothes to them, rather than the other way round.

Last year Spain's main fashion show banned designers from using so-called "size zero" women to model their collections.

Now designers aiming for commercial markets should be encouraged to "promote a healthy physical image that conforms with the reality of the Spanish population," the ministry said in a statement.

It's one thing to standardize the sizes. I can't see objecting to that. The standardization of weights and measures is central to free trade. A pound of sugar from one manufacturer should weigh the same as a pound of sugar from another. Clothes sizes are much the same. I suppose you could say that the proportions should be variable. If the average woman is pear-shaped, will it be illegal to design for the apple-shaped woman? But basically, it doesn't bother me that manufacturers won't be allowed to manipulate the numbers to get the jump on their competitors.

But weren't they putting smaller numbers on larger clothes? I don't know about Spain, but here in the United States, they didn't use to have size 0 or even size 2 in ordinary women's departments. I should think reality-based sizing would have women shocked to learn what their real size is. But at least it won't vary from shop to shop. Some women might get upset not to fit into a size they were used to fitting into. Whether that sends them into crash dieting is another matter.

The bigger issue is whether government should demand that clothing manufacturers participate in the promotion of healthy bodily images. I don't much like government efforts to improve people's thought processes. It puts me in a bad mood.

Hey, why not ban black clothes? They're depressing and worn by people who are depressed. Let's mandate pastels and snappy prints!

***

The reason I'm blogging about this is that I got a phone call this morning asking me if I could go on the radio to talk about this story -- which I hadn't yet read. Wanna talk about it for 5 minutes, like 8 minutes from now? Okay.... Anyway, so I did that. This blog post is just a byproduct.

The pen is mightier...

... than the mountain lion.

"Ms. Fanning’s commitment to this material is unwavering in its creepiness."

NYT film critic Manohla Dargis writes about the movie "Hounddog," saying something that resonates with me:

“Hounddog” and the media storm that accompanied its world premiere on Monday expose the contradictions that grip Sundance, which insists on its commitment to quality even as it continues to program work that suggests otherwise. A Southern gothic about a white girl (Ms. Fanning) who learns how to sing the blues from a kindly black man after she is raped, the film had earned censure sight unseen from the likes of Sean Hannity on Fox News Channel.

(Oh, so it's also another one of those movies about how white people learn the meaning of life from idealized black people? Can't we retire that cliché?)

As sincere as it is stupid, “Hounddog” is pure art-house exploitation, as evidenced by the images of its 12-year-old star dressed in a wet T-shirt and panties, of her writhing on a bed and of her awkwardly grinding in a hootchy-kootchy pantomime to the Elvis Presley song of the film’s title. As in “The Accused” (the Jodie Foster rape movie), the film’s narrative momentum builds to the rape, which is discreetly staged; unfortunately, it is also presented with some of the same tropes of the classic movie love scene: there is a shot of the girl’s clutching hand and, after the assault, a close-up of her face. Ms. Fanning’s commitment to this material is unwavering in its creepiness.

Dargis obviously can't stand Sean Hannity and his ilk, but she's not letting that keep her from seeing what's wrong with this. By contrast, read this wrongheaded blather by Meghan O'Rourke in Slate, which concludes:

The problem for an American audience weaned on this waif, and chock-a-block with repressed feelings about adolescent sexuality itself, is that Dakota Fanning the actress (if not the character she plays) has chosen to take on this graphic a role. She has opened Pandora's box. Once she has become part of the sexual economy of adolescence—about which Americans are so clearly conflicted, living as we do in a hypersexualized era that is also peculiarly hyperprotective of children—she can't go back.

Sorry, Meghan, those of us who do not want to see a 12-year-old girl dressed in a wet T-shirt and panties... writhing on a bed and... awkwardly grinding in a hootchy-kootchy pantomime are not repressed and conflicted and hyperprotective.

Questioning "dignity."

Peter Singer has a NYT op-ed about the "Ashley Treatment" (which we discussed recently here). The idea is to restrict the girl's growth and prevent her from reaching puberty because she is, mentally, a baby and will always be. Singer:

A Los Angeles Times report on Ashley’s treatment began: “This is about Ashley’s dignity. Everybody examining her case seems to agree at least about that.” Her parents write in their blog that Ashley will have more dignity in a body that is healthier and more suited to her state of development, while their critics see her treatment as a violation of her dignity.

But we should reject the premise of this debate. As a parent and grandparent, I find 3-month-old babies adorable, but not dignified. Nor do I believe that getting bigger and older, while remaining at the same mental level, would do anything to change that.

Here’s where things get philosophically interesting. We are always ready to find dignity in human beings, including those whose mental age will never exceed that of an infant, but we don’t attribute dignity to dogs or cats, though they clearly operate at a more advanced mental level than human infants. Just making that comparison provokes outrage in some quarters. But why should dignity always go together with species membership, no matter what the characteristics of the individual may be?

What matters in Ashley’s life is that she should not suffer, and that she should be able to enjoy whatever she is capable of enjoying. Beyond that, she is precious not so much for what she is, but because her parents and siblings love her and care about her. Lofty talk about human dignity should not stand in the way of children like her getting the treatment that is best both for them and their families.

Are you so ready to throw out the "dignity" talk?

Look into my eyes.

You know you can't resist the sexy, ultraviolet glow.

Is it getting obvious that Sharpton can't stand Obama?

The two men pose in front of a painting of Thurgood Marshall:



Click on the (terrific) picture to enlarge it. Can you read the body language? The priceless expression on Sharpton's face?

Sharpton also met with Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton yesterday... and declined to make any endorsements.

Obama said the two talked about their shared agenda of fighting for the dispossessed. "I assured him that I not only want to hear his views and thoughts and policy recommendations, but publicly any of us who step into this fight for the nomination have to be held accountable and speak to these issues," he said.

Sharpton said they talked about economics, health care and education issues. "We are going to keep talking and he knows I'm talking to everybody," he said.

The normally loquacious Sharpton was unusually curt and cut off further questioning by saying he was behind schedule. But he told reporters who followed him that he would decide about his own candidacy "once I see what these guys do or don't do."

The normally loquacious Sharpton was unusually curt...

Is it getting obvious that Sharpton can't stand Obama?

MORE: Here:

“I left the meeting a little curious, feeling that he was noticing our civil rights agenda, but I didn’t understand what his civil rights agenda is,” Mr. Sharpton said.

He was noticing our civil rights agenda ... Noticing! Come on, that's harsh!

That power-grabbing President.

I love this collection of newspaper cartoons from 1937, portraying Franklin Roosevelt's aggressive view of executive power. (via Instapundit.)



This web-resource would be SO much better if you could get a separate address for the cartoon. Unfortunately, the graphically uninteresting block of explanatory text comes along with the vivid image.

Let's Google for a more workable source of FDR cartoons. How about this? Here's a favorite (which I especially enjoy after spending the first week of classes teaching Marbury v. Madison in two different classes, to 1Ls and to 2- and 3Ls):

Here comes your "national nervous breakdown."

Oh, who's to blame?

• Bush schadenfreude. Partisan pleasure in George Bush's pain dates to the anguish of the contested 2000 election loss. The Democrats have run against something called "Bush" for so long that this sentiment is now bound up in any act or policy remotely attached to the president. Iraq's troubles, or Iran or North Korea, are merely an artifact of crushing this one guy.

• The Iraq Study Group. The ISG report wasn't defeatist, but it enabled the vocabulary of defeat. Its warning of a "slide toward chaos" was re-defined as the current Iraqi status quo. They called their bipartisan solution "phased withdrawal," but it was a euphemism for defeat. Momentum was already building in this direction, and the ISG propelled it.

• The leadership vacuum. The administration never rallied the nation behind the war in a concrete way. A young Marine officer recently returned from combat in Iraq told me this week he is taken aback at how disassociated the American people seem from Iraq, no matter how constantly it's in the news. He says it's as if the problem is not so much what is actually happening in Iraq but that the war is "annoying" to Americans, as if to say: Can't it just go away or not be on the front page all the time? Rallying a nation at war is a president's job.

• The opposition vacuum. One reason the negative mood in politics is so disconcerting is that the opposition's alternative vision is nonexistent. On joining the opposition recently, GOP Sen. Norm Coleman announced, "I can't tell you what the path to success is." Joe Biden says the "primary" Iraq strategy should be to force its leaders to make the political compromises necessary to "end the violence."

"Is Barack black enough to beat Hillary?"

Bob Wright and Mickey Kaus talk about that on Bloggingheads in a segment that begins with Mickey calling John Kerry a "terminal doofus" but gets around to the promised topic.

And here's the link to Kausfiles on that topic, which discusses this essay by Debra Dickerson that asserts that Barack Obama isn't (the right kind of) black. Bob Wright and I talked about the same subject in a segment of Bloggingheads last week, which was based on this blog post of mine, talking about this news article about black leaders not (yet?) supporting Obama.

ADDED: WaPo has a big story on the general subject today:

The question of how Obama chooses to define and approach race looms large as he moves closer to formally launching his campaign next month....

Melissa V. Harris-Lacewell, a Princeton University professor who has followed Obama's political ascent, said that he may be forced to choose: "You can be elected president as a black person only if you signal at some level that you are independent from black people" -- a move she said would be "guaranteed" to make black people angry. "He is going to have to figure out whether there is a way not to alienate and anger a black base that almost by definition is going to be disappointed," she said.

"We have to have the stomach to finish the task."

Dick Cheney faces down Wolf Blitzer:

BLITZER: Here's what Jim Webb, Senator from Virginia, said in his Democratic response last night. He said:

"The President took us into the war recklessly. We are now, as a nation, held hostage to the predictable and predicted disarray that has followed."

And it's not just Jim Webb, it's some of your good Republican friends in the Senate and the House, are now seriously questioning your credibility because of the blunders, of the failures. All right, Gordon Smith --

CHENEY: Wolf, Wolf, I simply don't accept the premise of your question. I just think it's hogwash. Remember --

BLITZER: What, that there were no blunders? The President himself says there were blunders --

CHENEY: Remember, remember me -- remember with me what happened in Afghanistan. The United States was actively involved in Afghanistan in the '80s supporting the effort against the Soviets. The Mujahideen prevailed, everybody walked away. And in Afghanistan, within relatively short order, the Taliban came to power, they created a safe haven for al Qaeda, training camps were established where some 20,000 terrorists trained in the late '90s. And out of that, out of Afghanistan, because we walked away and ignored it, we had the attack on the USS Cole, the attack on the embassies in East Africa, and 9/11, where the people trained and planned in Afghanistan for that attack and killed 3,000 Americans. That is what happens when we walk away from a situation like that in the Middle East.

Now you might have been able to do that before 9/11. But after 9/11, we learned that we have a vested interest in what happens on the ground in the Middle East. Now, if you are going to walk away from Iraq today and say, well, gee, it's too tough, we can't complete the task, we just are going to quit, you'll create exactly that same kind of situation again.

Now, the critics have not suggested a policy. They haven't put anything in place. All they want to do, all they've recommended is to redeploy or to withdraw our forces. The fact is, we can complete the task in Iraq. We're going to do it. We've got Petraeus -- General Petraeus taking over. It is a good strategy. It will work. But we have to have the stomach to finish the task.

BLITZER: What if the Senate passes a resolution saying, this is not a good idea. Will that stop you?

CHENEY: It won't stop us, and it would be, I think detrimental from the standpoint of the troops, as General Petraeus said yesterday. He was asked by Joe Lieberman, among others, in his testimony, about this notion that somehow the Senate could vote overwhelmingly for him, send him on his new assignment, and then pass a resolution at the same time and say, but we don't agree with the mission you've been given.

BLITZER: So you're moving forward no matter what the consequences?

CHENEY: We are moving forward. We are moving forward. The Congress has control over the purse strings. They have the right, obviously, if they want, to cut off funding. But in terms of this effort, the President has made his decision. We've consulted extensively with them. We'll continue to consult with the Congress. But the fact of the matter is, we need to get the job done. I think General Petraeus can do it. I think our troops can do it. And I think it's far too soon for the talking heads on television to conclude that it's impossible to do, it's not going to work, it can't possibly succeed.

"The more we play God or try to improve on Mother Nature, the more damage we are doing with all kinds of experiments that... turn into nightmares."

That sounds like the alarmism of a religious fundamentalist, but hostility to scientific research comes from the progressive side when the question is the source of sexual preference.

That quote is from Martina Navratilova, who is one of the many critics of Charles Roselli, a researcher who is studying why some male sheep have a sexual preference for other males. Roselli tells his critics that he hates the idea of trying to manipulate the sexuality of human beings and claims that his real interest is in fact sheep.

Don't we accept the idea of sheep breeders doing what they can to get sheep who will in fact breed? Should someone who objects to efforts to cure human beings of homosexuality resist efforts to manipulate sheep? Assuming you don't care about the individuality and personal fulfillment of sheep -- and note that PETA started the campaign against Roselli -- don't you have to admit that any learning about sexual orientation will be applied to thinking about human beings?

But shouldn't we want to know the truth? Shouldn't gay rights advocates care when they sound like the religious fundamentalists they usually deride?

"American Idol" goes to NYC.

Yes, they're in NY, but they don't look any more urbane/hip/sophisticated than the people in all those other cities. They're all from Queens, right? Queens, Long Island, New Jersey.... Or anywhere really. They just need to show up in NY.

The worst thing about today's show is revealed at Minute 2. There's a guest judge. That never works out well. What's-her-name -- Carol Bayer Sager -- is given the Paula seat between Randy and Simon, and our girl Paula is all the way over on the left. Boo! We see pictures of Sager glammed up in 80s hair and makeup -- almost, but not, Pat Benatar. Well, she looks like Pat Benatar in the stills, and Joan Collins in the real-time photography. Who is she? She's written various songs -- "Groovy Kind of Love" -- and she was once married to Burt Bacharach. Big deal! She's not going to say anything interesting.

First up is Ian Benardo, who, we're told, has a sense of entitlement. In profile -- I don't wanna be mean, but... --- he looks like Zippy the Pinhead. He's funny when he says that after people see him, they're going to forget about "Taylor Who?, Carrie Under Where?" (Underwear!) When Simon Cowell asks him the classic question "Why are you here?," he gives the answer everyone could give, a big sarcastic "Duh" face and then "To try out for 'American Idol.'" He sings "Gloria," but it's not "she comes around here about midnight" "Gloria." It's some other "Gloria." Simon tells him it's "rubbish," and he's all what is that some British expression? Rubbish? Who even says that?

In the second segment, we get some truly annoying contestants. A 19-year-old woman who lies to her father and skips school to pursue her "dream" gets too many minutes on screen crying about her ordeal, including a phone conversation with said dad where he learns she's "going to Hollywood" and just basically says wow, great. So much for that problem. Then we get a woman who seems to think Greek ethnicity is enough. She doesn't make it. Neither does Ashanti, a young woman who's actually gone to Hollywood in two past seasons, and wants to snag a slot again this year. When they tell her no, she goes into the hammiest pleading ever... fortunately, to no avail.

Two kind of nice and pretty best friends both make it through, and we're tipped off that their friendship will get tested in Hollywood.

A really great singer named Kia Thompson does Aretha Franklin and is proclaimed the best of the day.

Then it's Day 2... there were a few more singers, including a nice opera-singer girl who gets through. There were some delusionals and another medley of bad singers. But I was getting bleary-eyed in the second hour. Enough already! These 2-hour shows are killing me!

ADDED: Here's the TWOP recap, which makes me want to add that those best friends are named Amanda Coluccio and Antonella Barba, and that dad-calling girl is Sarah Burgess. Now what was Opera Girl's name? I like her, but apparently not enough to remember her name.

Some names to memorize: Jenry Bejarano (he's 16, he's black, he's adopted, and his mother's Bolivian), Jory Steinberg (she was Canadian, but now she's Santa Monican), Porcelana Petino (she worked out to get in shape for the show and wore the lowest cut jeans you can wear on TV without a digital blur... in front!), Chris Richardson (a decent-looking white guy is good so they rave... blah blah blah... Timberlake!), Nicholas Pedro (he quit in Hollywood last year because he forgot the lyrics to "Build Me Up, Buttercup," and now he's back).

Kerry gets the hint.

We don't have the joke-botching Senator to kick around anymore.

"Systematic abuse of prosecutorial discretion."

New ethics charges against Duke lacrosse team prosecutor, Mike Nifong.

"God bless."

I like this device in the NYT that lets you search for words in the text of all of President Bush's State of the Union addresses and displaying the results graphically. They've done a few key words -- "Iraq," "democracy," "oil" -- for you already. I decided to search for "God" (as they say....). The results show the only use of the word in an anecdote about Dikembe Mutombo, who, we're told, "believes that God has given him this opportunity to do great things.”

What? Bush didn't end with "God bless America"?

I check the full text. It ends this way:

This is a decent and honorable country, and resilient too. We’ve been through a lot together. We’ve met challenges and faced dangers, and we know that more lie ahead. Yet we can go forward with confidence, because the state of our union is strong, our cause in the world is right, and tonight that cause goes on.

God bless.

Somehow those last two words got left out of the "interactive graphic."

But it's interesting that Bush just said "God bless." Didn't he always say "God bless America"? Let's look:

2001: "Good night and God bless."

2002: "May God bless." (Said shortly after "God is near.")

2003: The most religious ending: "Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity. We Americans have faith in ourselves, but not in ourselves alone. We do not know -- we do not claim to know all the ways of Providence, yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving God behind all of life, and all of history. May He guide us now. And may God continue to bless the United States of America."

2004: "May God continue to bless America."

2005: "[M]ay God bless America."

2006: "May God bless America."

2007: "God bless."

He seems to have come full circle. The blessing started out short, took its fullest form in the grandiloquent 2005 speech, then got small again. Reading the different blessings, what strikes me the most is that in 2001 he used, word for word, the tag line Red Skelton always ended his show with.



I would have thought that if Bush was going to switch to saying "God bless America," it would have happened in 2002, given the prominence of the song "God bless America" after the 9/11 attacks. But it's the 2003 speech, the one with the elaborately religious ending that introduces "God bless America" to Bush's State of the Union style. He adopts the long form: "may God continue to bless the United States of America." This is the speech that immediately precedes the invasion of Iraq. The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity. Ah! It was Bush's tragic mistake to believe that. God behind all of life, and all of history. May He guide us now. Ah! To think such a thing!

"Not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the guy that was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others."

So read the note from Dick Cheney, translated for the jury by Scooter Libby's lawyer Ted Wells, paraphrased by Michael Isikoff:

The vice president was not going to allow Karl Rove to be protected and Libby to be sacrificed. Libby had stuck his neck “in the meat grinder” because he had been authorized by President Bush himself to talk to reporters and rebut what the White House considered unfair criticism by Wilson that the intelligence about Iraq had been “twisted.” And the “incompetence” Cheney was referring to was by the CIA which, he claimed, was responsible for whatever the White House had gotten wrong about Iraq’s purported weapons of mass destruction.

It looks like the trial is going to be quite a meat grinder. Per Isikoff:

Well’s argument was both brilliant and complex-and perhaps difficult for non-news hounds on the jury to follow. But it raised the prospect that the Libby trial will now turn into a horror show for the White House, forcing current and former top aides to testify against each other and revealing an administration that has been in turmoil over the Iraq war for more than three years.

"So much for the right to marry; so much for sexual autonomy; so much for consenting adults deciding whom to love...."

Eugene Volokh has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about how bizarrely hard it is to get a date with a dental hygienist in the state of Washington.

"To quote the titular song, 'You said you was high class/Well, that was just a lie.'"

The movie "Hounddog" -- about which such a stir was kicked up -- is a dog:

"Hounddog" is from the overheated and overacted school of Southern drama, filled with stereotypical characters, pseudo-poetic dialogue, and heavy symbolism ("Hounddog"'s biggest deviation from formula is that it features a killer R&B band that plays into the dead of night, presumably on call should 12-year-old girls need help with their personal problems). Fanning stars as Lewellen, a girl obsessed with Elvis who lives with her no-good father (David Morse) and her strict grandmother (Piper Laurie).

Piper Laurie! I'd be waiting for li'l Dakota to start making all the kitchen knives fly through the air!



Oh, sorry, I got distracted thinking about a time when movies were such great fun. And deep too!



Say it!!!

Back to "Hounddog," with its hangdog earnestness (and 12-year-old actress in a simulated rape scene):

Fanning plays the character as a cross between an innocent child and a wise strumpet; as a whole, "Hounddog" seems conceived simply to give her a role to flex her pre-teen acting chops.

The film has generated its share of controversy due to a scene in which Fanning's character is raped (it's handled without exploitation). Kiddie porn it isn't. Unfortunately, "Hounddog" isn't much of anything. It doesn't really resonate as a coming-of-age story, a family drama, or an exploration of the 1950s Southern experience, leaving precious little left but the controversy.

Ultimately, "Hounddog" is pretty mangy.

Well, I guess I'm glad the movie's bad and hope it goes nowhere. I would hate to see it get traction out of getting a rise out of social conservatives with something that good feminists should/used to care about. But the issue is still not dead. The fact that the movie isn't "kiddie porn" or that the scene as edited into the movie is "handled without exploitation" is no answer to the problem discussed at length in this post and its many comments. The problem was the use of the child actor to film the scene. The final cut of the scene and how it looks to movie viewers is a separate matter from how the child was treated on those days when she was filming the movie. This is a matter covered by statutory law and by moral principle, and there's no special exception for high-class films or overheated and overacted Southern dramas posing as high class.

MORE: Here's Orlando Sentinel critic Kathleen Parker:

[In Hounddog,] we witness a real 12-year-old portray a girl waking up as her naked father climbs into bed with her; "dancing" in her underwear while lying in bed; and getting raped by a teenage boy.

We are, in other words, voyeurs to a young girl acting out a sexual predator's fantasies. If we have a problem with that, we're told these are real issues that beg honest exploration. No, amend that. We're lectured -- by a 12-year-old, who, we're reminded, is a sophisticated actress.

"You know, I'm an actress," Fanning patiently explained to The New York Times. "It's what I want to do, it's what I've been so lucky to have done for almost seven years now. And I am getting older."

Does anything quite equal the ennui born of being scolded by a too-precious child?

Far be it for anyone to suggest that adults know more about such things than children. At least some of them do. Fanning's parents support their daughter's decision to play the rape scene, noting that this could cinch an Oscar for the child star.

Even Marc Klaas -- the ubiquitous been-there father of his murdered daughter Polly -- has given his nod to the film, vouching for its sensitive, supportive treatment of Fanning.

Only the actress' face is shown during the rape scene, which reportedly has been tastefully executed.

It's hard to get enough of tasteful rapes, I admit. Unless you're a real child rapist, the bunch of whom doubtless will be sufficiently stimulated by Fanning's rape-face, as well as her panty-dance and her little visit from bad Daddy.

But it's Art, so relaaaaax. And it's real, so get with it.

Hey, that was awfully minimal State of the Union blogging...

You're not one of these people who watched "American Idol" and not the State of the Union...

Are you?....

Because obviously you did watch "American Idol"...

Well?...

What the hell is going on in this country? Doesn't anybody have any sense anymore?

Makes perfect sense to me!

"When the music does take a moment to catch its breath, a mellifluous voice emerges."

So reads the Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages, writing about Cougar, a musical group with a "post-rock's tone" and "a pedigree in jazz":

Turns out that Cougar's "vocalist" is none other than ubiquitous constitutional law commentator Ann Althouse, a professor at the U of W. "Trent was a law student," Skogen laughs. "We picked her lectures because she's got such a cool cadence of speech. The timbre and phrasing of her speech all sounded so nice."

Here's "my" group:



Hey, all you current students, I hope when you're putting up with me going on and on about sovereign immunity or some such thing, you appreciate the cool cadence of speech, the timbre, and the phrasing. You've got to pause now and then and think, man, this is mellifluous.

(Here's an earlier post of mine about Cougar. Here's their MySpace page, showing lots of upcoming shows in the next few weeks, including one in Madison.)

"I know that for me, I need to get over the fear..."

Says Melinda Doolittle, auditioning for "American Idol." She's a background singer, taking a chance, stepping forward, and they reach out and offer her a hand, as she sings Stevie Wonder, "For Once in My Life." "You walk in," Simon says, "with no confidence, no attitude, and yet you are... a brilliant singer... You are... what it's all about."

Yes, there was a whole hour show, and, in fact, I did watch it, but I'm just going to leave this little message for Melinda. We're looking for someone to love. And we love you.

"This rite of custom brings us together at a defining hour – when decisions are hard and courage is tested."

The State of the Union.

ADDED: "How'r'ya doin'" our President says, turning to Nancy Pelosi. He begins by taking credit for the new step of saying "Madam Speaker."

MORE: That "added" part was on the wrong post (the previous one), I see the next morning. I couldn't get Blogger to publish last night, so this went up -- as far as I could see -- after I went to bed. And the idea of simulblogging the speech went out the window. Sorry!

Rent a protester.

Pick a young and pretty one.

"Although I harbor endlessly reverberating regret about the abortion I had..."

"... I've always resisted the consolation industry, the people who show up with Kleenex after plane crashes, or hold 'post-abortive' workshops allowing you to 'grieve, forgive yourself, and move on.'" Amba writes:

This movement encourages [deeply troubled women] to pinpoint their abortion(s) as the fountainhead of all their disturbance, a devastating act they committed in powerlessness and ignorance, one foisted on them by a no-good man, by an evil lying abortionist who told them it was only a "blob of tissue," by a callous culture. Writer Emily Bazelon concludes the article:

And then there is the relief in seizing on a single clear explanation for a host of unwanted and overwhelming feelings, a cause for everything gone wrong. When Arias surveyed 104 of the prisoners she had counseled in 2004, two-thirds reported depression related to abortion, 32 percent reported suicide attempts related to abortion and 84 percent linked substance abuse to their abortions. They had a new key for unlocking themselves. And a way to make things right. “You have well-meaning therapists or political crusaders, paired with women who are troubled and experiencing a variety of vague symptoms,” Brenda Major, the U.C. Santa Barbara psychology professor, explained to me. “The therapists and crusaders offer a diagnosis that gives meaning to the symptoms, and that gives the women a way to repent. You can’t repent depressive symptoms. But you can repent an action.” You can repent an abortion. You can reach for a narrative of sin and atonement, of perfect imagined babies waiting in heaven.

It's complicated. Yes, female powerlessness is a major cause of unwanted pregnancy and abortion: women are forced into sex or are afraid to say no or they try to trade sex for love; they find themselves pregnant with bad, irresponsible boyfriends, no job, no money, and at best fragile plans to complete their education and make something of themselves. Sadly, choosing to end a pregnancy in such circumstances sometimes gives a woman almost the only feeling of power she's ever had. Other times, she wants to hold on to the pregnancy (I did), but is pressured out of it by the man.

Nonetheless, I think, to try to coddle the woman and encourage her to think of herself as another innocent victim is to disempower her all over again....

... I don't want to forgive myself. First of all, guilt is not what I feel. I feel regret, which is appropriate and irrevocable. I don't torture myself or suffer psychological disturbance as a result of having had an abortion; I'm too healthy and probably too pagan for that. What I suffer is barrenness for myself and loneliness for someone who should have been literally as close to me as my own heart, whose face I never saw and whose voice I never heard. (The latter struck me only recently, and I wondered why I hadn't thought of it before.) What I suffer is being alone in the world and disconnected from life in the most primitive way. And that is appropriate. That is a fact. Those are the consequences of the choice I made.

Read the whole thing.

Fox smears Clinton and Obama in one broad stroke.

Is there any other way to look at it?

Oscar nominations...

Did you watch the announcement live? I did. Poor Salma Hayek was devastated that "Volver" didn't get a Best Foreign Language Film nomination. I was glad Alan Arkin got nominated, even though I didn't think much of "Little Miss Sunshine." I do like him.

Lots of the usual suspects in the Best Actress Category. Meryl Streep and Kate Winslet are in some long contest for most nominations ever. Then there's Helen Mirren and Judi Dench. Makes you want to be for Penelope Cruz, doesn't it?

Here's the full list of nominees.

UPDATE: Drudge writes: "'DREAMGIRLS' LEADS PACK -- BUT SNUBBED IN FILM, DIRECTOR CATS..." Oh! The poor cats! What did those sweet little kitties ever do to deserve such treatment from the Academy?

"Effort to 'Humanize' Clinton Is Underway."

That's the hilarious teaser on the home page of the Washington Post, leading to this article.

The effort to "humanize" Clinton, as her advisers have put it, was in full swing just two days into her presidential campaign.

Oh! So it's her advisors who are supplying the term that implies that she is not human. Wouldn't want the WaPo editorializing. But since it's her advisors... well, let's just have a laugh at the ineptitude of political advisors. Come on, you fools, just humanize her. Don't tell the press you're trying to humanize her!

Dressed in the same pastel jacket for all her appearances, Clinton sat on a sofa against a soft backdrop of bookshelves and a yellow curtain for her Web chat. She was joined by her campaign's blogger, Crystal Patterson, who read viewer questions aloud. Almost all of the inquiries were from women, and nearly one-third were from New York. One question was about the role Chelsea Clinton will play in the campaign (unclear, her mom said).

She hedged on her favorite movie, saying that, as a child, she had loved "The Wizard of Oz," only to discover "Casablanca" in college and law school, watching it so often that she memorized the lines. (Her passion for the Meryl Streep-Robert Redford classic "Out of Africa" came later, she said.) But she was clear about her own conviction that she can become president.

Can't you just picture the robotic brain gears turning, trying to think of a movie that would say just the thing she needs said? Oh, why didn't she have a "favorite movie" planned before she went into this on-line chat to humanize herself? "Wizard of Oz," can't go wrong there.... except it's childish, and not very imaginative or distinctive. "Casablanca"! That's a great movie everyone loves. Possibly more sophisticated than "Wizard of Oz." But anyone could think of "Casablanca." I need something that would have at least some individuality to it. Was there ever anything that ever stirred me? Damn it, I've been busy. I haven't been sitting around like you cookie-bakers staring at screens, waiting for some damned moving image to stir some -- what is it you people have? -- emotion. Oh, hell, there was that thing.... "Out of Africa"!

Plot summary (with spoilers):

Karen Blixen [Meryl Streep], a Danish woman, marries a friend for the title of Baroness and they move to Africa and start a coffee plantation. Things unfold when her husband begins cheating on her and is away on business often, so she's at home alone, working on the farm and bonding with two men she met in her first day in Africa. She eventually falls in love with the one, Denys Finch-Hatton [Robert Redford] and goes on safari and whatnot with him. Later, she begins to want more from him than the simple friendship/relationship they have and pushes marriage, but Denys still wants his freedom.

No, no, damn you, bloggers! You're so eager to bring up my problems with Bill. Don't you be digging up my problems with Bill. Don't you bastards say that I picked "Out of Africa" because I empathized with Karen Blixen! Who the f*ck do you think you are? How dare you dredge up this scurrilous suggestion that I am............................. human.

Baraboo High School bans the "U.S.A., U.S.A." chant.

It's considered an obscenity:

The "U.S.A." some of the students were chanting stands for a three-word insult, an unsporting acronym the first letter of which stands for "You."

Fans at athletic events have been trying to sneak a few such cheers with double meanings past officials, leading administrators to tighten enforcement of WIAA rules and causing some students and parents to wonder what's wrong with a little team spirit.

So, kids, if there is something you don't like, make up a second meaning for it, pass it around, have a few laughs, and make the adults go nuts and ban it.

I remember the fun we had in 9th grade biology by deciding that the word "mutate" would refer a particular rude bodily function. What are you kids laughing about??!!