Dana Milbank says "Marco Rubio was a bundle of nervous energy" who "poked his tongue into his cheek, he clenched his jaw, and he licked his lips."

"[A]s he waited his turn to speak about the bipartisan immigration plan he had helped to draft... He fiddled with his suit-jacket button once, then again, then a third time. He rubbed his fingers together, then interlocked them."

And I'm a bundle of nervous energy, poking my tongue this way and that, clenching my jaw, licking my lips, fiddling with buttons, rubbing and interlocking my fingers, as I watch to see how the media goes about accomplishing its plan to destroy Marco Rubio.

Lip reader figures out what John Boehner said that made Michelle Obama roll her eyes.

In the conversation, with Obama and Boehner leaning back to converse behind Michelle's head: "Boehner asked President Obama — a longtime smoker who claims to have kicked the habit — if he’d had a chance to have a cigarette before the luncheon. The speaker, a chain smoker, then quipped, 'Somebody [Michelle] won’t let you do it.'"

Judge Michelle's famous eye-roll now.
	Totally justified and good for her.
	She should have appreciated the ribbing and laughed graciously.
	She should have been wary of the cameras and maintained a dignified demeanor.
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Politicians and their wives... chez Drudge.

Right now, at Drudge, at the top of the middle and left columns:



The message of the juxtaposition seems to be: Powerful political wives dominate their husbands. Or: Bow down to women, O ye men!

Here's the story about Carla and Nicolas moving to — of all places to avoid taxes — the UK. You know taxes are harsh when England seems like the way out. (Didn't the English rock stars use to move to France to avoid taxes? (Back in the days when The Beatles contributed to the protest-song genre with "Taxman.")

[Nicolas Sarkozy] and his former supermodel third wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy would be likely to settle in an affluent district like South Kensington – so becoming the most high profile Gallic celebrity couple in the city.

But the former president is under investigation for corruption in France, and if he does cross the Channel there will be outrage.

Oh, to be relatively young and super high profile! Carla is waving bye-bye. We'll see what her getaway looks like. (How "Gallic" is Carla Bruni? She was born Carla Gilberta Bruni Tedeschi, in Turin, Italy. How coupled is she? She famously cheated on Eric Clapton with Mick Jagger.)

Meanwhile, in America, I've got no criticism of Barack Obama bowing to his wife as he invites her to dance. Or do you think anytime he bows, he calls up the old bowing-to-dictators meme?

"Watch Michelle Obama Throw World-Historical Shade at John Boehner."

I can't believe she had to sit next to that guy.

"Rehearsals sap my pep... tell me what I have to do and I'll do it."

Said the actress Clara Bow (in 1929), who did it like this:



... in "Kittens" (1926). And this:



... in "Wings" (1927), which was the first movie to win the "Best Picture" Oscar. Bow said it was "a man's picture and I'm just the whipped cream on top of the pie." When Bow was criticized for her bohemian ways and "dreadful" manners, she said :

"They yell at me to be dignified. But what are the dignified people like? The people who are held up as examples of me? They are snobs. Frightful snobs... I'm a curiosity in Hollywood. I'm a big freak, because I'm myself!"

In 1931, when she was 26, she got married and retired from acting. She moved to a ranch in Nevada, and lived until 1965.

I'm reading about her this morning, after clicking to her Wikipedia page from the Wikipedia page "Pin-up girl," which has a list of "Notable pin-up girls" sorted by decades, beginning with the 1920s. I was researching the topic of pin-up girls after Meade called attention to this current ad:



We had a conversation about the nature of 1950s pin-up style, and it got me looking for the classic Betty Grable pin-up, which I think it emulates — peeking back over a raising shoulder and smiling as if to say Go ahead and look at my ass. Grable's pic is the one pic that appears on the Wikipidea "Pin-up girl" page, but I was interested in seeing the first pin-up, and the first couple names on the 1920s list didn't click through to a pin-up style picture. Clara Bow's did. If you count this:



Tell me what I have to do and I'll do it. She's only 15 there. Can you just hear the photographer directing her how to arrange her fingers and where to move her shoulder and even her eyeballs?

"I'm amused that right after 'potato, my penis droops' up pops Quayle."

I say, in the laughing-in-bed first-post-of-the-morning. 

Quayle is a regular commenter here, but — who knows, on the internet? — it might be Dan Quayle.



Quayle responds: "I carry the blood of polygamists in my veins. So one should expect that sort of thing, I guess." He adds: "I took the name from my great grandfather, pictured here surrounded by some new friends."



That's a photograph of taken at the Utah Penitentiary in 1889, showing men arrested under the Edmunds-Tucker Act, explained here. Included in the photo is John C. Bennett, who "taught a doctrine of 'spiritual wifery'":

He and associates sought to have illicit sexual relationships with women by telling them that they were married "spiritually," even if they had never been married formally, and that the Prophet approved the arrangement.

That wasn't the correct doctrine, and Bennett got excommunicated, and then he "toured the country speaking against the Latter-day Saints and published a bitter anti-Mormon exposé charging the Saints with licentiousness."

Here's John C. Bennett in happier days...



... posing like Napoleon:

How should we celebrate the 100th birthday of Richard M. Nixon?

It's today.

Ideas:

1. Tell us your favorite thing about Richard Nixon. (It's his birthday. No need to trot out all the usual hatred.)

2. When you encounter someone today, instead of saying "hi," do that 2-arms-raised-with-V-for-victory-fingers gesture.



3. For lunch: Ketchup on your cottage cheese.

4. Work Nixon phrases into conversations, e.g. "the lift of a driving dream."

5. When you put on your coat, call attention to the fact that it's a "cloth coat," as if that's remarkable, as if anyone would ever expect anyone these days to have a fur. If people look at you funny, double down by calling it "a respectable Republican cloth coat." If somebody gets the jump on you and calls their coat a "cloth coat" first, show that you get it by saying, "As I always say, you'd look good in anything."

6. At some point today, when you're with someone who never kneels to pray, insist that they get down on their knees and pray with you.

7. Wearing a dark suit and wingtips, take a walk on the beach.

8. Secretly record all your conversations. (Or is everyone already doing that?)

9. If anyone happens to say "pardon me," say: "Pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section II, I grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto you for all offenses."

10. When you leave a room, turn to anyone who remains in it — or even to an empty room — and proclaim: "I leave you gentlemen now. But as I leave you I want you to know, you won't have [your name] to kick around any more."

11. This is special for lawprofs and other law folk. If anyone mentions Rehnquist, act like they got the name wrong, and faux-correct them with "Renchburg."

12. From Ron in the comments: Play ping pong. Watch Dr. StrangeKissinger. Just for the hell of it say, "Sock it to me?" Just for today call your closest friend "Spiro." Play Checkers.

13. If you find yourself in the kitchen with somebody, strike up a debate and at some point, start needling them about being a Communist.

All over the world, women are self-comforting...

... grasping their skirt hems and rolling, rolling them upward, absent-mindedly.

Meanwhile, women eat cupcakes, cupcakes, which were ranked among the 10 most overrated things in the world, which made me say:

The only reason cupcakes are popular is because people have forgotten actual cake, which is moist and tender. Cupcakes have way too much edge... and that fluting doubles the already-too-much edge. But if you never eat real cake, you don't notice. It's like how good crackers are if you never have bread or how good a popsicle is if you never get a nice big dish of ice cream.

But people won't go back to cake, because you can't get a slice of cake and carry it around with you on the street. How would it be presented? It can't be sliced and left out on the shelves like cupcakes. You'd need some saran wrap or something to keep it from getting dried out.

So here, lonely ladies of America, here's your pre-dried-out cake: cupcake.

It sounds like something an old-fashioned guy would call you if he thinks you're pretty, so maybe you're thinking about him as you walk down the street licking icing and choking down dry cake... and tears.

"It's not surprising that we're so bitter, and we cling to hand grenades and Anglican religion and we use Va-a-a-a-se-line."

That quote ends the previous post, which you need to absorb — perhaps with a piece of toast — to ready yourself for the following exercise in photo comparison.

We have here 2 famous expressions. The first is "Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park" (in the 1962 Diane Arbus photograph) and the second is President Obama, enjoying the perks of the presidency, doing the "not impressed" pose with McKayla Maroney:


(Click photos to enlarge.)

What's the point?

Drudge has everyone pointing:


(Click to enlarge.)

"'HE'S A BULLSHITTER'" goes to a Weekly Standard item, quoting Obama:

As we left the Oval Office, executive editor Eric Bates told Obama that he had asked his six-year-old if there was anything she wanted him to say to the president. … [S]he said, ‘Tell him: You can do it.’ Obama grinned. … ‘You know, kids have good instincts,’ Obama offered. ‘They look at the other guy and say, “Well, that’s a bullshitter, I can tell.”’

Nothing wrong with the word "bullshitter" in casual speech, and nothing special about a politician characterizing another politician as a bullshitter. It takes one to know one, and these politicians are all bullshitters. How could they be otherwise? What major-party candidate has ever not been a bullshitter?

But it is odd to imagine a 6-year-old child thinking "Well, that’s a bullshitter, I can tell." He was paraphrasing. Come on.

There's nothing here!

Now, quit pointing.

Quit pointing at nothing.

"Do you think the campaigns made an agreement that the candidates would have the exact same interaction at the beginning and end of each debate?"

"They always pat each other on the side of the arm while laughing, as if one of them had said something funny in the previous split-second."

"A candidate who actually nods when his opponent makes a powerful counterargument—as Obama did several times during the last debate—is a rare bird."

So wrote Slate Culture Critic Meghan O'Rourke on October 28, 2008, in a collection of short statements by various Slate writers, explaining who they were about to vote for and why. For some reason, this article isn't available on line anymore, but it turns up in a Google search as a "doc" file that downloads. I had the text to Google because my son John had blogged it back in '08, and he remembered it and emailed me about it after I blogged today about how I hadn't interpreted Obama's looking down and nodding in a negative way.

Here's O'Rourke's entire statement of why she was voting for Obama:

For his charisma, his cautiousness, and his cool. In a time of high stakes, we need someone who can sort out the best course of action without bridling in anger. A candidate who actually nods when his opponent makes a powerful counterargument—as Obama did several times during the last debate—is a rare bird. Of course, Obama is untested in many regards. My main concern about him is this: How will he deal with making an unpopular or tough decision? Can he keep his cool then without losing confidence in himself? I believe so, and that's why he has my vote.

If you Google that text, you'll get to the document that has the many statements of various writers. I predict there's a lot of raw material for analyzing the state of affairs today. State of affairs... the state of America's affair with Barack Obama.

If you love a man, his passive nodding means one thing. If you've fallen out of love, it's something else. Obama's demeanor at the first debate didn't diminish our affection for him; our reaction to it was evidence of how we already felt.

What can he do now? Act some different way at debate #2? If my hypothesis is correct, it doesn't matter what he does. We won't like it.

ADDED: I'm rooting around in that Slate document. Here's Tim Wu, evincing the classic '08 madness:

Most of all, I like his obvious inner calm. It suggests that his decisions will come from somewhere other than expediency, anger, or fear. It's like electing Obi-Wan Kenobi as president.

And here's some prescience:

Emily Yoffe, "Dear Prudence" Columnist: Obama

Please, please, Barack, don't become another Jimmy Carter.

Drudge calls attention to Obama's stance during the debate.

We noticed the foot position here at Meadhouse and Meade said "He's standing like a girl," which made me say "If only he had stiletto heels."

That photo is juxtaposed with the headline "Lost, bewildered without his teleprompter..."

Did Scott Brown staffers make anti-Indian gestures at a rally?

I'm not saying it was good or wise for them to make the "tomahawk chop" gesture while yelling in a way that the news report characterizes as an "Indian war whoop." And Scott Brown has said he doesn't condone that sort of acting out, but I just want to specify that the staffers' gesturing and noise-making doesn't count as antagonism toward Native Americans.

Someone doing the "tomahawk chop" is himself playing the role of Indian. This Indian character making a stereotypical gesture can't be read as expressing hostility toward Indians. The Indian is his hero. At a certain level of political correctness, the tomahawk chop is considered offensive to Native Americans, but somehow it's not offensive enough to have stopped Atlanta Braves fans from doing it.

Anyway, these fake Indians, the staffers, are pretending to be real Indians, miming an attack on Elizabeth Warren on the ground that she's a fake Indian. There's a lot of fakery in there, but no one is expressing the view that it's bad to be Indian. That's all I wanted to say, and I do understand how real Indians might prefer not to be represented as stereotypical characters. And maybe they'd object even more if a non-Indian got a great job from an employer who was practicing affirmative action in hiring or self-promoting by claiming diversity.

Grand gesticulations over things small and large.

At Drudge just now now (click to enlarge):



In the right column, we've got Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day swearing and gesticulating over his show time getting cut down to 1 minute.

In the middle column, it's Senate candidate/lawprof Elizabeth Warren:

DOES ELIZABETH WARREN HAVE A LAW LICENSE PROBLEM?

If you keep scrolling, beyond my screen grab, there's also:

... On defensive again over heritage claim

And a picture of a stink bug...



... "Feds brace for historic stink bug outbreak..."

"Next time someone is wasting your life with their voice, any look from this rainbow of options ranging from passive-aggressive..."

"... to aggressive-aggressive will help ward them off. Some might call you insensitive or rude, but to those haters, just shoot any other one of these looks right back at them. If you are continually criticized, just keep bitchfacing. Forever. And ever."

From "How to Bitchface" in "Rookie," the online magazine built on the persona of Tavi Gavinson, who started a fashion blog when she was 11 and is now 16 and profiled in this long NYT Magazine article.

In reaching out to young girls like herself, Ms. Gevinson seems to be positioning Rookie as a kind of antidote to what they are reading elsewhere.... [S]he criticized one of her competitors, Seventeen magazine: “I feel like if I followed their articles about boys and truly believed it was as important to do certain things or avoid certain things as they say, I would probably go crazy. Sometimes their ‘embarrassing’ stories are literally about boys finding out that you have your period.”

Indeed, it’s possible to see Rookie as a rejoinder to a teenage culture overrun by synthetic pop confections like Justin Bieber and “Twilight.” In her (decreasingly) eccentric attire and deadpan prose, Ms. Gevinson has carved out a distinct countercultural voice, the kind that existed in full force during the bygone decades she celebrates.

"Wisconsin Recall Amnesia: Why aren't Democrats running against Scott Walker's union reforms?"

Asks the Wall Street Journal:

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, the front-runner, has focused his campaigns on jobs, education, the environment and "making communities safer." One of Mr. Barrett's ads singles out "Walker's War on Women," with nary a mention of collective bargaining. Former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk is heavily supported by union groups, but even her issues list makes only passing reference to collective bargaining.

The Governor's office has estimated that altogether the reforms have saved Badger State taxpayers more than $1 billion, including $65 million in changes in health-care plans, and some $543 million in local savings documented by media reports. According to the Wisconsin-based MacIver Institute, Mayor Barrett's city of Milwaukee saved $19 million on health-care costs as a direct result of Mr. Walker's reforms. Awkward turtle.

Wait. Pause. "Awkward turtle"? Is this an expression everyone's supposed to already know? Google says yes. It was the Urban Dictionary Urban Word of the Day 5 years ago.



Okay. Resume Wisconsin stuff. Blah blah blah. Walker reforms working...

All of this is making an impression on Wisconsin voters. According to a Marquette University Law School poll released Wednesday, only 12% of Wisconsin voters say "restoring collective bargaining rights" is their priority, which explains the Democratic decision to fight on other issues.

One of Barrett's other issues is civility. We need to restore civility in Wisconsin... because, you know the way Scott Walker caused everyone to become so uncouth.

139 human individuals... mostly Pakistani soldiers....

... buried under 70 feet of avalanched snow.

The Siachen Glacier, known as the world's highest battleground, is 6,300 meters (20,670 feet) high and spans 77 kilometers (47 miles) across the Line of Control that separates India- and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir...

"It's a very massive scale slide," Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said Saturday. "They are under the slide, but we haven't lost hope. The rescue work is on, and we are keeping our fingers crossed."

Fingers crossed? I didn't want to say anything about how religious people might perceive an giant avalanche that buries the soldiers on one side of a conflict that exists for reasons I have not studied. But I'm surprised to hear a Pakistani general say "we are keeping our fingers crossed," referring to what I've always thought was a Christian gesture. I presume the remark was translated, and I wonder what the general really did say, and what other images and gestures of hope stand in for crossed fingers around the world.

And yet:

[O]ne theory goes that during the various times when Christianity was illegal, the crossing of fingers was a secret sign for Christians to recognise each other. Yet whilst the Sign of the Cross has evolved into a good luck symbol and retained its Christian meaning, Fingers Crossed has lost any Christian connection.

This change of emphasis may have begun during the so-called 'Hundred Years War' between France and England (1337-1457). An archer would cross his first and second fingers, pray or wish for luck, and then draw back his longbow string with those same fingers. Maybe.

Another theory suggests that the sign pre-dates Christianity, when it was believed that benign spirits dwelt at the intersecting point of the cross, as in the Solar Cross. In Europe, the sign was made by two people; the first to make the wish and the second to support it. Linking their fingers firmly would squeeze and energize the spirits into beneficial action. Maybe.

In China, crossing the index and middle fingers is the sign for the number ten, which happens to coincide with the Chinese and Japanese written character for ten....

A Drudge photo juxtaposition, presented for your intepretation.

You've got Obama, turning to his right, gleefully chomping a chocolate-dipped strawberry, with the heading "Obama Ready to Eat the Press." (The linked article is about the White House Correspondents' Dinner tonight.) The photo underneath Obama is his father, turning in the opposite direction, a pipe clenched in his teeth. (The heading beneath that pic is "Obama's father forced out at Harvard...," linking to an article referring to Harvard's "difficulty... figur[ing] out how many wives he had.") The third picture freezes Mitch Daniels in a gesture that gives the impression — to my eye — of being quite rude.



Come on, Matt. What's this supposed to mean? A wider view may flesh out the meaning:

Obama is bowing again.

This time to the Japanese emperor.

Power Line says:

Obama's breach of protocol is of a piece with the substance of his foreign policy.

Breach of protocol? Obama is establishing the protocol here. It is what he intentionally does, I would think. But it is fair to tie the gesture to Obama's general message:

He means to teach Americans to bow before monarchs. He embodies the ideological multiculturalism that sets the United States on the same plane as other regimes based on tribal privilege and royal bloodlines. He gives expressive form to the idea that the United States now willingly prostrates itself before the rest of the world. He declares that the United States is a country like any other, only worse, because we have so much for which to apologize.

That's rather exaggerated. To bow is not to prostrate yourself. Prostration looks like this:

The image of prostration is a religious one — and it is closely, though not entirely, associated with Islam. Did Power Line intend that association?

Bowing is a more modest gesture of greeting and respect, more like the American handshake. If a foreign emissary shakes hands in our country, I don't see the problem with our President bowing in a country where bowing is conventional. The question is whether he bows to a potentate who does not bow to him. Emperor Akihito did not bow to Obama, did he? And Obama did that extra-low bow, not that Japanese businessman thing or... oh, hell, what do I know of the details of Japanese bowing?! Here, it's a little complicated, but you'll be able to figure out exactly what sort of bow Obama did and what, perhaps, he ought to be doing....