"You cannot measure a man’s character based on the words he utters before adoring crowds during times that are happy."

"The true measure of a man is revealed in his actions during times of trouble — the quiet hospital room of a dying boy, with no cameras and no reporters."

Ben Smith is still trying to get his mind around Rick Perry's manliness..

... and my mocking of him for his problem getting his mind around Rick Perry's manliness....



Smith says Perry's manliness is "shtick" which can be taken too far. There's something weirdly beta about Smith's relationship with Perry's masculinity. I notice how he lapses into light lisping toward the end of that clip when he's lauding Perry in relation to Bachmann. As I said in the previous post, Perry seems to have thrown some macho whammy on the press boys.

ADDED: I don't think Smith refers to it — though perhaps he means to allude to it — but there have long been rumors that Perry is gay. Google "Is Rick Perry Gay?" and you'll easily find the sort of stuff that's out there. Byron York might have intended to allude to these rumors when he said, in the clip above, that Perry isn't the kind of guy that is interested in Lady Gaga.

"Althouse is shrewder."

Says Andrew Sullivan. Thanks. He's saying I'm shrewder than Byron York, referring to this post, earlier today, which is up to 249 comments (on the Friday afternoon before the long holiday weekend.) Of course, the topic is Sarah Palin. Sullivan connects my post, which tweaked the "serious people," with something Rush Limbaugh said:

'The Inside the Beltway’ ruling class — the elite — they’re more oriented toward candidates they can attach the word ‘serious’ to — which is another way of saying someone who is boring, who doesn’t ruffle feathers, someone who exudes an air of formal education and sophistication — she doesn’t exude that, and I think it’s going to shake a lot of people up ... You know the effect that she has on establishment Republican people.

Later, Sullivan put up another post on the Sarah Palin/seriousness theme. Asking "Does this sound like someone not running?," he posted Palin's bus tour ad:



Wow.

"The bottom line is Sarah Palin is not going to run for president... She's making money, she's moved on..."

"... she's kind of an entertainer rather than a politician. She still has some sway with the grass roots, but she is not going to run."

So says somebody close to Romney, according to Byron York. Somebody close to Pawlenty says something similar: "I don't think she's going to run... She has faded a lot in the last few months. I look at what she's doing now and say that she's found a way to get back in the story."

These people are in the middle of raising money and attracting attention to their candidate, so it's in their strong interest to diminish the rise of Palin. York acknowledges that his unnamed confidantes may be "just spinning." But he says, these are "serious people," and they point at her "lack of a campaign operation."

"Watch what she has done," says the Republican close to Romney. "Has she contacted one major donor across the country about putting together an organization? Has she talked to one member of the Republican National Committee about working for a campaign, or one governor, or one former governor about working for a campaign? The answer is no."

Maybe these "serious people" should be called conventional people. What did these "serious people" say when Palin was doing most of her communication via Facebook? Did the serious people say that serious people do not talk to the press and the public by writing Facebook updates? Because that would be conventional. Conventional people saying you're not serious because you're not conventional. But what if Palin is out ahead of them, and they can't see it? I wonder what these serious people thought about the Tea Party as it emerged?

York sees this, sort of:

It's possible Palin is in fact running and believes she can do so in a way that's never been done before. Maybe she can. It's certainly been tried; in 2007, former Sen. Fred Thompson and a small group of aides conceived of a campaign that would rely on Internet videos, social media and lots of buzz to gain support, with less reliance on old-fashioned things like shaking hands, begging for money and courting state party chairmen. It didn't work.

Strange contradiction there: "never been done before"... it's been done before and it didn't work. If Palin has a another new way, then it hasn't been done before, and you can't say it didn't work, based on the fact that "it" didn't work. We'll have to see what Palin's new way would be. But suppose it is essentially the same as what Thompson tried. The fact that it didn't work the first time it was tried doesn't mean it won't work the second time. And, obviously Sarah is not Fred.

York sees that:

Of course, Palin is a far more ambitious politician than Thompson. 

Yet the whole point of Fred was that he was the serious person. He was the adult in the room. Palin is the one so many people like to think of as a lightweight. Fred had an old-fashioned sort of gravitas, melded, perhaps, with some new ideas about how to campaign for President. It's 4 years later and Palin is a different person, with a different relationship to new (and old) media.

The serious, old-fashioned people are saying that there's a conventional, old-fashioned way to finance a campaign, and if Sarah Palin isn't using it, then she must not be running. And York is adding: If she is running, she will fail. But there may be a new way, despite what happened to Fred, and she may be doing it, and it may very well work. The Tea Party worked.

Things have changed since the days of Fred Thompson.

"Kinetic."

Is that word helping explain anything?

"Clinton's two key statements: 'We did not lead this' and 'America has unique capabilities' are not consistent with each other."

"Because of America's unique capabilities, it is in fact leading the Libyan effort.... [Vice Admiral Bill] Gortney's briefing made clear that the United States is not only leading the Libya operation but is virtually the only force involved in the operation.... And few Americans would want U.S. forces to go into combat under anything other than U.S. command. But why would the Secretary of State step onto the world stage and announce, 'We did not lead this'?"

Byron York poses a question.

ADDED: NYT:

“We are not going after Qaddafi,” Vice Adm. William E. Gortney said at the Pentagon on Sunday afternoon, even as reports from Tripoli described a loud explosion and billowing smoke at the Qaddafi compound, suggesting that military units or a command post there might have been a target.

How Pelosi handed the gavel to Boehner compared to how Boehner handed the gavel to Pelosi.

Byron York points out the difference.

One thing I noticed (and York doesn't mention) is that Pelosi made a snide remark about the size of the gavel Boehner picked out for the gavel-passing ritual:

I now pass this gavel, which is larger than most gavels here but the gavel of choice of Mr. Speaker Boehner…

Now, my ears have been tuned by decades of immersion in feminism and Freudianism, and I say that's an intentional reference to the phallus and the will toward domination it symbolizes. Nancy Pelosi intended to provoke disrespectful titters, I think — with deniability, of course.

Instead of calling Pelosi on her disrespect, comedian Jimmy Kimmel runs with the feminism and visualizes domestic* violence:



_________

* It's the House, so domestic is apt.

"No Labels, a group that aspires to build a grass-roots movement for political independents and independent-minded voters in both parties..."

Every couple of months we get something like this, don't we? It's the "Coffee Party" all over again — isn't it? — an attempt by elite Democrats to create the impression of a grass-roots movement. It never works. [Remember "One Nation"?] And "No Labels" is such a silly... uh... label. It has a certain nostalgic 60s vibe: I ain’t lookin’ to... analyze you, categorize you, finalize you or advertise you.... But I came from the 60s, and I'm sick of that vibe when it's used to advertise to me. Wasn't there some ad campaign with a sincere-looking model staring straight into the camera and saying "no labels"? Or was it "no games"? Or no some other damned thing?

On Sunday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg flatly ruled out an independent run for president in 2012. On Monday, he appeared at the national unveiling in New York of No Labels...

It’s also possible, though, that he understands something about the modern political culture that many of those speculating about the purpose of No Labels do not — that an independent not only no longer needs to spend time encouraging the formation of a party organization to run for president, but he’s also probably better off without one.

Especially if he's a billionaire!

... No Labels was created by two Washington consultants, the Democratic fund-raiser Nancy Jacobson and the Republican image-shaper Mark McKinnon, and its slick opening event featured throngs of journalists, free boxed lunches and a song written for the occasion by the pop sensation Akon. The group’s slogan, printed on T-shirts and banners, summarizes its purpose this way: “Not left. Not right. Forward.”

Hey, that's the Wisconsin motto — "Forward." And free lunch, eh? There is a such thing as a free lunch. That could be a motto. Anyway, I just don't get the enthusiasm around Mayor Bloomberg.

Some commentators have speculated that No Labels could even form the basis of a serious third party, with the mayor at the helm, something America hasn’t seen since Ross Perot’s Reform Party collapsed from a long internal power struggle in 2000.

Hmmm. Let me think. What is the similarity between Mayor Bloomberg and Ross Perot?

Here's what Rush Limbaugh said about No Labels yesterday:

Now, what is this?  Well, let's take a look at who these people are.  Mark McKinnon, Kiki McLean, Nancy Jacobson.  I'll tell you what this is about.  It is about money.  These are political consultants.  They need candidates.  They need candidates running for office for whom they can take whatever the consultant gets, 5%, 10%, what have you.  All three founders of No Labels are Democrats.  They would love for Bloomberg to run for president.  Why?  Because he is a billionaire.  Get him to run as an independent, maybe even third party.  You know, sucker him into an independent run where they get the money, win or lose.  Whether he wins or loses doesn't matter.  They get the money.  And he would lose.  But there are always, as a friend of mine says, there are always political operatives who will tell a billionaire what he wants to hear....

We know the founders are left-wing political consultants and we know that Democrat and liberal are labels that do not help political people these days.  Of course they would want to get rid of them.  By the same token, conservative is a good label.  Naturally they would want to get rid of that.  And naturally they would find some so-called pseudo smart Republicans who would agree with them on this.  How many of these people belong to a particular religion, and why?  Because of their belief system.  Nothing wrong with labels as long as they are appropriate; as long as they are true; as long as they are properly descriptive.  It's called language.

ADDED: Here's Byron York:

No Labels was formed by a group of Democratic and Republican political consultants. On the Democratic side, there is Nancy Jacobson, a former finance director of the Democratic National Committee and veteran of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. On the Republican side, there is Mark McKinnon, who worked for former President George W. Bush and Sen. John McCain before announcing, as the 2008 general election race got under way, that he would no longer work for McCain because, as he said at the time, "I just don't want to work against an Obama presidency."

Now, after two years of an Obama presidency and a Republican opposition, McKinnon believes something is terribly wrong. "Nancy called me about nine months ago and said she wanted to start an organization to address hyperpartisanship," McKinnon says. "She had me at hello."

The event featured appearances by a number of Democratic politicians: Villaraigosa, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, and retiring Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh. For some reason, most of the Republicans who showed up were recently defeated officeholders: South Carolina Rep. Bob Inglis, Delaware Rep. Mike Castle, and Florida Gov. Charlie Crist. God knows why a group devoted to principle above politics would invite the opportunistic Crist to speak, but No Labels did.

AND: Does Bloomberg maintain that he's not running for President?

"He's a scourge on the whole profession of political science."

Yikes.

Look what I started. (Limbaugh doesn't name me but reads from the Byron York piece that plays off of a blog post of mine.)

Byron York, tipped off by a post of mine, takes aim at a UW professor.

"Political reporters often rely on University of Wisconsin political scientist Charles Franklin for expertise," says York:

If you read his quotes in mainstream publications, you'll find a series of measured statements on political trends.  Democrats appealing to the youth vote in the run-up to the midterms are "betting long odds, given the very long history of low turnout in midterms among young voters," Franklin told the Washington Post recently.  Final pre-election polls suggested "a Republican wave of genuinely historical proportions," he told USA Today.  Feingold's problems had "more to do with the mood of the country than with Feingold himself," he told the Boston Globe.

It's all pretty unremarkable stuff.  And readers would have no idea what Franklin really thinks about the voters whose opinions he's measuring and commenting on.  But now they do.

Here's the post of mine that York read, and here's the Isthmus article that I drew to his attention to Franklin's opinion of the voters ("They're pretty damn stupid.").

ADDED: Professor Franklin appears in the comments section of yesterday's post and says:

Sigh. Bill's Lueder's quote is exactly accurate. I said exactly what he says I said. Normally I would just let it go at that since once such a quote is out it will spread no matter what. The only complaint I have is that Lueder's subsequent conclusions from that quote are his own and not mine.

The context was the Senate race and the point I was making, which I've made numerous times before, was that voters embraced Ron Johnson before they knew much about him. In a June 26-27 poll by Public Policy Polling, Johnson trailed Feingold by just 2 points, yet in the poll 62% said they had neither a favorable nor an unfavorable opinion of Johnson. I've used that poll frequently to illustrate the fact that voters were ready to embrace a Republican they knew almost nothing about over a three term incumbent Democrat. The race wasn't about specific details of Johnson vs Feingold, it was a rejection of Democrats more or less regardless of what voters knew about the GOP candidate.

That was the context in which I said voters are "pretty damn stupid". Too hyperbolic indeed, but I said it and have no complaint that it was quoted when I knew I was speaking to journalists.

But I wish what I said next had also been quoted. I went on to say that despite not knowing the details of Johnson's policy positions, the voters did NOT make a mistake in choosing Johnson as the more conservative candidate and certain to be more favorable to cutting government. That was indeed the correct connection by an angry electorate, even if the details were quite vague.

Voter's often act on little information and can be astonishingly unaware of things one might consider "facts". A post-election Pew poll finds less than half (46%) know the GOP won only the House but not the Senate. And at times voters appear to vote for candidates who are likely to take positions at odds with the voter's interests.

But in the Johnson-Feingold race, I think despite lack of details about Johnson, a majority of Wisconsin voter's picked the guy they wanted, and for basically the right reason. Dems may be astonished at the rejection of a favorite son, but in making this choice I think voter's properly expressed their preferences and matched them to the right candidate.

So I wish I had phrased this differently but that's my bad, no one else's. But I do not agree with the conclusion that voter's were "stupid" to pick Johnson over Feingold. In fact I believe a majority got the Senator they wanted, and that is always good for a republic.

"If we learned anything tonight it's that New Yorkers are as mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore."

Said Carl Paladino. And if they don't feel quite so mad, they can have good old Andrew Cuomo as their governor.

Regardless of whether Paladino can pull off another upset, his victory Tuesday night served as a wakeup call to the state's Republican establishment.

"The old party leaders can do one of two things," he told reporters after his victory speech. "They can do what the people want - or they can quit."

Meanwhile, in Delaware, Christine O'Donnell is hearing that the National Republican Senatorial Committee isn't going to fund her campaign, because she's not sufficiently competitive with the Democrat, even though she just smashed Republican Party regular Mike Castle.

The story today is the complacency of established Republicans who imagined they could waltz in and take over after people got horrifically sick of Democrats. As if there were nowhere else to go. And maybe there isn't. (Are Paladino and O'Donnell suitable heirs to the immense power Democrats have been abusing?) But that doesn't make the Republicans any more enticing.

When you have to break up with your abusive, hot boyfriend, it's not as if you want to go out with the dweeb you wouldn't be seen with before. Or... no. That's a terrible analogy, because politics should not be that emotional or that big a part of our lives. The Tea Party seems to embody anger at government, but its candidates need to be serious and competent now.

Al Franken responds.

A bhtv commenter notices something:

"The first lady's falling numbers stand in opposition to the still-strong belief among some Washington political insiders that she will be a big asset for Democrats on the campaign trail this fall."

Byron York on Michelle Obama:

After the Spain trip brought the first extended bad press of her time as first lady, the White House, and some of its allies in the press, pushed back by claiming Mrs. Obama will still be much in demand. News accounts suggested her "sky-high popularity," her role as "cultural and fashion icon" and her "incredible force" will boost Democrats across the country.

Key words: "of her time as first lady." Michelle Obama got bad press galore during the 2008 campaign. She got her image readjusted — feminized, really. She became the wonderful mom, fashion icon, and purveyor of vegetables. You can just imagine how much she liked doing that. But as she stretched out within the hyper-feminine role imposed on her, she got into the manifestation of femininity that rubs people the wrong way. Too much shopping and free-spending on superficial, materialistic pleasures. It's the classic feminine protest against confinement in a feminine role. Don't like it? Then don't limit powerful women that way. But if Michelle Obama isn't limited, most people won't like her. We saw that in 2008. I mean, I liked her, but it didn't play well generally.

What word frequently found in profusion in Obama's speeches is entirely absent from his Fort Hood speech?

I.

Also missing: me, my, mine.

I heard the criticism — from my husband Meade who is reading the speech alongside me — that the Fort Hood speech needed another draft, because there was too much use of the passive voice. I suspected that a special effort had been made to eliminate the first person singular. Obama is often criticized for using the word "I" too much. There are Obama critics who will count the word "I" in speeches and triumphantly announce the number. This criticism is a bit superficial. More significant is the way Obama speaks as if everything is all about him. Just this morning, I just knocked him for exactly that. Whoever wrote the Fort Hood speech must have been hyperfocused on protecting Obama from the usual criticisms. Appropriately so. It was a memorial for the dead. It would have been especially embarrassing for Obama's personal egotism to show on this occasion. But the intense effort to avoid it shows. He could afford to avoid it less conspicuously, and he ought to avoid it more consistently.

IN THE COMMENTS: With a fine eye for detail, Brian noted:

There was one self-referential moment. At Fort Hood he says: "You may remember the stories of a grandfather who marched across Europe..."

At 2004 Dem convention he said: "The day after Pearl Harbor my grandfather signed up for duty; joined Patton’s army, marched across Europe."

Ah! Truly, someone went over this speech very carefully to scrub it of the first-person singular.

When President George H.W. Bush gave a speech to school children, congressional Democrats denounced him...

"... they also ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate its production and later summoned top Bush administration officials to Capitol Hill for an extensive hearing on the issue."

Was Obama's only education accomplishment "legislation to teach 'comprehensive sex education' to kindergartners"?

Byron York says yes, defending this McCain ad (which is probably one of the ads Obama called "sleaziest"). York says:

The legislation in question, a bill in the Illinois State Senate that was supported but not sponsored by Obama, was, according to Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton, “written to protect young children from sexual predators” and had nothing to do with comprehensive sex education for kindergartners....

The bill in question was Senate Bill 99, introduced in the Senate in February 2003. Its broad purpose was to change and update portions of Illinois’s existing laws concerning sex education....

When the bill was introduced, a coalition of groups including the Illinois Public Health Association, the Illinois State Medical Society, the Cook County Department of Public Health, the Chicago Department of Public Health, the Illinois Planned Parenthood Council and others issued a press release headlined “Coalition of Legislators, Physicians and Organizations Bring Illinois Into the 21st Century with Omnibus Healthcare Package.” It was a three-part campaign; Senate Bill 99, covering “medically accurate sex education,” was the first part, with two other bills addressing “funding for family planning services for women in need” and “contraceptive equity in health insurance.”

According to the press release, Senate Bill 99 required that “if a public school teaches sex education, family life education, and comprehensive health education courses, all materials and instruction must be medically and factually accurate.” The bill’s main sponsor, Sen. Carol Ronen, was quoted saying, “It teaches students about the advantages of abstinence, while also giving them the realistic information they need about the prevention of an unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.” The release contained no mention of sexual predators or inappropriate touching....

Among other things, the bill removed what York calls "value-laden language" that in the old law, such as:

"Course material and instruction shall teach honor and respect for monogamous heterosexual marriage.

"Course material and instruction shall stress that pupils should abstain from sexual intercourse until they are ready for marriage…

"[Classes] shall emphasize that abstinence is the expected norm in that abstinence from sexual intercourse is the only protection that is 100 percent effective against unwanted teenage pregnancy [and] sexually transmitted diseases…"

In key language that Obama must now depend upon heavily, the bill provided that "all sex education courses that discuss sexual activity or behavior…be age and developmentally appropriate."

The bill does also have a provision about unwanted touching:

"Course material and instruction shall teach pupils to not make unwanted physical and verbal sexual advances and how to say no to unwanted sexual advances and shall include information about verbal, physical, and visual sexual harassment, including without limitation nonconsensual sexual advances, nonconsensual physical sexual contact, and rape by an acquaintance. The course material and instruction shall contain methods of preventing sexual assault by an acquaintance, including exercising good judgment and avoiding behavior that impairs one’s judgment. The course material and instruction shall emphasize personal accountability and respect for others and shall also encourage youth to resist negative peer pressure. The course material and instruction shall inform pupils of the potential legal consequences of sexual assault by an acquaintance. Specifically, pupils shall be advised that it is unlawful to touch an intimate part of another person as specified in the Criminal Code of 1961."

York thinks that provision doesn't seem to be about teaching the youngest kids to avoid sexual predators:

The wording of that provision suggests lawmakers were at least as concerned with protecting children from each other as from adults, and it doesn’t seem directed toward the youngest children, as Obama maintained. But there is no doubt that the bill did address the question of inappropriate touching. On the other hand, there is also no doubt that, looking at the overall bill, the “touching” provision did not have the prominence that Team Obama has suggested it had, and it certainly wasn’t the bill’s main purpose.

York describes his efforts to interview Illinois legislators who could give an account of what the legislation was intended to do.

“We know that young children, very, very young, have things happen to them that they don’t speak about,” [state senator Iris] Martinez told me. “It’s important that we teach our young kids very, very young to speak up.”

When I asked Martinez the rationale for changing grade six to kindergarten, she said that groups like Planned Parenthood and the Cook County Department of Health — both major contributors to the bill — “were finding that there were children younger than the sixth grade that were being inappropriately touched or molested.” When I asked about the elimination of references to marriage and the contraception passages, Martinez said that the changes were “based on some of the information we got from Planned Parenthood.”

After we discussed other aspects of the bill, I told Martinez that reading the bill, I just didn’t see it as being exclusively, or even mostly, about inappropriate touching. “I didn’t see it that way, either,” Martinez said. “It’s just more information about a whole variety of things that have to go into a sex education class, the things that are outdated that you want to amend with things that are much more current.”

So, I asked, you didn’t see it specifically as being about inappropriate touching?

“Absolutely not.”

York notes that "nearly all commentators" have accepted Obama's assertion that he voted for the bill because he was concerned about protecting young children from sexual predators, but:

The fact is, the bill’s intention was to mandate sex education, especially concerning contraception and the prevention of sexually-transmitted diseases, for children before the sixth grade and as early as kindergarten. Obama’s defenders may howl, but the bill is what it is.

If you still think the McCain ad lies about Obama, please explain why, using the text of the ad.

It seems to me that all the McCain ad does is decline to accept Obama's self-serving characterization of the reason why he voted for the bill. But study the text and the legislative history of the bill, as York has, and try to explain how it can possibly be considered a lie to say that he voted for comprehensive sex education for kindergartners.

"But what good suggestions for McCain. He might visit a foreign country — Has he ever done that?"

Prime York snark.

"Today Is Fitzmas for Mickey Kaus."

Says Byron York.

ADDED: This stuff is painful:

Shocked to see a reporter, and without saying anything, Edwards ran up the stairs leading from the hotel basement to the lobby. But, spotting a photographer, he doubled back into the basement. As he emerged from the stairwell, reporter Butterfield questioned him about his hookup with Rielle.

Edwards did not answer and then ran into a nearby restroom. He stayed inside for about 15 minutes, refusing to answer questions from the NATIONAL ENQUIRER about what he was doing in the hotel. A group of hotel security men eventually escorted him from the men's room, while preventing the NATIONAL ENQUIRER reporters from following him out of the hotel....

"He was clearly surprised that we had caught him at this very late hour inside the hotel.

"Some guests up at this late hour watched the spectacle in amusement from a staircase nearby."

Amusement.

"Oppo Research in the Tradition of Einstein."

Byron York finds a WaPo article "unintentionally amusing."

And disturbing:

But the article has a pretty clear subtext, and it is that the exchange of such information on the Internet should be controlled.

ADDED: The phrase "a scholar with two Ph.D.s" impresses some folks more than others.

"I find this very much akin to what we did with C-SPAN about 25-30 years ago."

HuffPo has a piece about Bloggingheads.tv — including the news that C-SPAN founding chairman Bob Rosencrans is putting money into it:

Rosencrans said he was instantly charmed by Bloggingheads TV when longtime friend Wright introduced him to it last November. "It got better and better as I watched it, and seemed like something really unique," said Rosencrans...

Though contributors will continue to vlog for free, [Bob] Wright says he hopes to someday be able to pay them (and points out that he himself draws no salary, and has invested his own capital.) So far Heads like Matthew Yglesias, Ezra Klein, our own Arianna Huffington, Spencer Ackerman, Jonathan Chait, Joshua Marshall, Glenn Reynolds and the Alts — Eric Alterman, Ann Althouse and Jonathan Alter — don't seem to mind, nor does the still-ubiquitous and generously-browed [Mickey] Kaus.

The Alts!

Though obviously enthusiastic about the venture, Rosencrans said he has no plans to meddle in its success. "Bob has control - it's important that it's done based on his integrity and his vision," he said. "I find this very much akin to what we did with C-SPAN about 25-30 years ago — let it run, let it develop and the right people will take it on. Their integrity is the key to developing a very solid business." Also reminiscent of C-SPAN is its emphasis on substance over flash: "I love the civility of the discussion," he said. "That's unique on television." (That could just be because it's very difficult to imagine yelling at the mild-mannered and highly-respected Wright.)

I guess he didn't see the one with Byron York and David Corn. And I think Mickey kind of yells at Bob sometimes, doesn't he? It's not all that mild-mannered -- at least not all the time, isn't it? And there's some flash. Like that time Bob put a pencil in his ear.