Weird Al was born this way.

And as for Lady Gaga, maybe she was born that way.

ADDED: The link on "that way," above, was wrong. Try it now! It's funny.

"Trump becomes the 'new Sarah Palin.'"

Headlines the Quad-City Times.

Time for him to get a better wig. ← requisite Trump hair joke. (Surely, you can do better.)

Finally some good news for Democrats.

A fortuitous head-stomping lifts lefty hearts.

ADDED: I'm trying to understand the scope of the political theater depicted in the video and reported here. The woman, a Moveon.org employee, came to the debate to create a scene, we're told, by presenting a joke "award" to Ron Paul.

In the video from CNN affiliate WDRB, several men wearing Rand Paul shirts or stickers are seen ripping a blonde wig off the head of Lauren Valle and pushing her to the ground. One of the men stomps on her shoulder with his foot, which then lands on the side of her head.

Are the men in the T-shirts also from Moveon.org? Who were they? There were no arrests and though there was a crowd, no one bothered to have detained these men. Did they just melt back into the night? It's very convenient that these bad actors were wearing labels identifying them.

"We don't know the suspect. We're in the process of trying to review the video tapes," said Lt. Edward Hart. "Where this took place, there were no police officers."

All of the people who accosted Valle in the video are subject to charges, Hart said.

Valle, who complained of soreness to her temple, told police she would seek medical attention herself.

So her head was on the curb and her neck was stomped, but she will go off and take care of herself?

I'm skeptical!

AND: Perhaps the reason the crowd did not detain the men is that, in person, it did not look as brutal as it seems in the short video clip — a clip that has the words "head" and "stomp" near it. What was the woman doing before the men activated themselves to stop her? Also, look closely. There is no head stomp. The head is on the curb, but the foot presses down on the shoulder. That ends pretty quickly. That restraint might be a reason to speculate that the men were part of some Moveon.org theater, but it could also mean that the men felt they needed to stop her — because she was in disguise and rushing toward the candidate? — and they reacted quickly. There is force, but they soon back off. I'm not endorsing their judgment about what amount of force was appropriate, but perhaps I can see reason to think that they may have been motivated not by their preexisting propensity toward violence, but by the purpose of protecting the candidate.

UPDATE: The "stomper" comes forward. He's a real Rand Paul volunteer, and he's apologized. I'm really glad he's come forward:

Paul supporter Tim Profitt said video of the scuffle made it appear worse than it was and he chided police for not stepping in....

"I'm sorry that it came to that, and I apologize if it appeared overly forceful, but I was concerned about Rand's safety," Profitt told The Associated Press....

"A friend of mine went up to three policeman before Rand got there, and told them about the girl who was standing there with that wig on and that she was getting ready to do something," Profitt said. "The policemen looked at him and said that's not our job."

UPDATE 2: Day 2 of this discussion begins here.

"Naomi was the first. She was the great ambassador for all black people. She broke down all the social barriers."

Naomi Sims, the model, dead at the age of 61.

Two images of Ms. Sims — one from the 1967 Times fashion magazine cover and the other from a 1969 issue of Life — are in the current Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition “The Model as Muse.” In a catalog, the curators Harold Koda and Kohle Yohannan wrote, “The beautifully contoured symmetry of Sims’s face and the lithe suppleness of her body presented on the once-exclusionary pages of high-fashion journals were evidence of the wider societal movement of Black Pride and the full expression of ‘Black is Beautiful.’ ”...

In 1972, the producers of the movie “Cleopatra Jones” sought to cast Ms. Sims in the title role, but she turned it down because, she said, she was offended by its racist portrayal of black people....

In 1973, Ms. Sims decided to start her own business. As a model, she often did her own hair and makeup, since many studio assistants were unfamiliar with working with darker skin. And she noticed that most commercially available wigs were designed for Caucasian hair, so she began experimenting with her own designs, baking synthetic hairs in her oven at home to create the right texture to look like straightened black hair. Within five years, her designs, produced by the Metropa Company, had annual sales of $5 million.

Me and Phil Specter on Twitter.

I just did 2 Instapundit posts about Twitter:

I TWEETED TWEETING. Twitter gets to your brain. In think it’s made me more Instapundit-y this go-round subbing for Glenn. Lord knows how he got so concise and spontaneous, pre-Twitter, but we’re all catching up.

Posted at 6:46 am by Ann Althouse

“MUSICALLY, IKE WAS BY FAR THE GREATER OF THE TURNERS.” Tweeted, by Phil Spector. Response #1: Nervy to say that — given Tina’s story of domestic abuse — when you’re in prison for shooting a woman to death. Response #2: If I knew I’d get a laptop and WiFi in prison, my calculation about whether to commit crimes would change radically.

Posted at 6:45 am by Ann Althouse

Copied here to get things started and so you can comment.

ADDED: Phil Spector tweets here. You can see he's only following one person. It's Yoko Ono. Think about it.

AND: "Finished reading The Book Of The Damned. About to write an angry letter to the governer demanding that they return my wig."

UPDATE: The clever Tweeter confesses he's an impostor — and adds that Twitter should learn a lesson from this. Well, you can't expect Twitter to catch impostors the instant they start, and obviously, people are going to pose as various celebrities and near-celebrities. I've had impostors myself. The important thing is to react when it is called to their attention. For example, I've complained about impostors twice. Facebook responded. Sadly, No (a blog) insisted on keeping the impostors.

Sir Archy, archy, and blogging cockroach.

In the early morning hours yesterday, this blog received a visit from our ghost commenter Sir Archy -- dead these 260 Years and more. As a ghost, he had something to say about Barack Obama's first press conference, in which the prez-elect claimed to have spoken to all the living Presidents and quipped "I didn’t want to get into a Nancy Reagan thing about doing any séances." (That quip -- for which Obama's had to apologize -- would surely have inspired warm chuckles in a law faculty room.)

In the comments, Amba said about Sir Archy: "I get him mixed up with the cockroach." By "the cockroach, she means our delightful insect commenter blogging cockroach. (Click the "blogging cockroach" tag below to see old posts with writings by the industrious arthropod.)

Amba adds: "I wonder if they aren't the same person, though, and 'Archy' is a clue." She's thinking -- I happen to know -- of archy of archy and mehitabel, the literary creations of Don Marquis:

Archy is a cockroach with the soul of a poet, and Mehitabel is an alley cat with a celebrated past -- she claims she was Cleopatra in a previous life....

"expression is the need of my soul," declares Archy, who labored as a free-verse poet in an earlier incarnation. At night, alone, he dives furiously on the keys of Don Marquis' typewriter to describe a cockroach's view of the world, rich with cynicism and humor. It's difficult enough to operate the typewriter's return bar to get a fresh line of paper; all of Archy's dispatches are written lowercase, and without punctuation, because he is unable to hit both shift and letter keys to produce a capital letter.

"boss i am disappointed in some of your readers," he writes, weary of having to explain the mechanics of his literary output. " ... they are always interested in technical details when the main question is whether the stuff is literature or not."

Marquis' George Herriman's ink drawings are sublime. See, here is archy putting in the immense athletic effort needed to type a short column:
Now, blogging cockroach is surely a tribute to Marquis' archy, and we appreciate his explanation of the the mechanics of his literary output by computer even as we contemplate whether the stuff is literature or not. (Perhaps someone can make a drawing in the Marquis style of blogging cockroach at the computer or photoshop this drawing somehow.)

But Amba's question is whether Sir Archy is named to connect him to the cockroach. (Bonus points if you you do that drawing/photoshop and replace mehitabel with Sir Archy.) Are these writers one and the same (and, if so, are they also anybody else that we see around here)?

Well, the cockroach saw Amba's musings and dropped by the comments thread. Here is what he wrote:

well all i can say is that there are some
advantages to being a cockroach
one of them is i don t have to worry
about my hair or clothes anymore

having the transmigrated soul of a composer
i can look back at all the troubles i had
when i was a music professor
to buy the right suits and keep my shirts ironed etc
in those days they paid us a pittance
and so i drove a 56 studebaker
but had to wear a suit on campus every day
which cost me as much as the damn studebaker
i hated clothes
not to mention haircuts
i was actually kinda glad to go bald
except maybe for the combover
which frightened away my female students
damn
but now i don t worry about any of that
and other than molting now and then
life is simple
and i sure don t want to mess it up
with a powdered wig

but having spent a little time
on the astral plane myself
i can tell you archy s right about seances etc
you just settle in and some idiot
comes and bothers you
about something really stupid
reminded me of office hours
anyway one day my ex wife showed up
wondering where the key to the
safe deposit box was
now some exes hire private detectives
but mine hired a medium
tells you a lot
anyway i screamed let me out of here
let me slouch somewhere to be born
and presto the next ticket said

cockroach
cambridge mass

so here i am
maybe i ll tell you about the safe
deposit box next time

So here's another clue for you all:



Plus, cambridge mass... Harvard/MIT? Some bald professor with a penchant for nudism?

ADDED: And at last night's Crossroads Café, Chip Ahoy said:

What I know about the Kennedy administration was learned by reading.

Smithsonian used to be so interesting. My favorite part was letters from the readers remarking on articles. What an erudite bunch. It ran a couple of pages. Then they got another new editor who cut that section back to just a few letters and to about half a page. That told me all I needed to know about the new editors attitude toward his readers.

Then they ran an article in relation to the John Kennedy assassination anniversary. Readers were asked where they were when the event occurred. That series of letters then ran for several pages. All the remarks were about how glorious the age of Camelot was, how idealistic, youthful, energetic, positive, and optimistic everyone was. How amazing incredibly beautiful the time was. Every single one glowed with praise and rued a lost past.

Except for one. A response from Tom Clancy. He had a wee on their little party. He remarked the administration wasn't all that remarkable. He reminded readers of several notable failures and obvious shortcomings. He suggested had the administration lasted, it would not be remembered so fondly. This caused me adore Tom Clancy, even though he's a schmuck.

I was so put off by the whole thing, the rebuff to the readers, the hard leftist turn, the ceaseless pontificating, the whole desktop publishing look, I ended the subscription I held since junior high school.

It occurred to me though, reading through all those responses, those writers, were recalling an idealized, sanitized youthful optimism -- their own youths. Their optimism was entirely of their own making and had little to do with facts on the ground. As is their present pessimism.

And now, I'm seeing that phenomenon occurring again right before my eyes. I'm going to enjoy this. As an observer. But this will not affect my own naturally occurring cheerful optimism nor my own self-indulgent satanic pessimism. I'm just going to watch my wonderful country, the less wonderful world, willfully create their own optimism. Myth making. That's what is happening. Observe a new myth. This is how it's created. Begin by overlooking faults, dismissing them, excusing them. Next exaggerate any gain, whatever actual good there is, suddenly is really REALLY, REALLY everlastingly good. Yay! Dance! Glee! Canonize! Deify. Mythologize. Expect comparisons to Camelot, and know then you're in the arena of myth. But know also, this is all occurring within the minds of the mythologists.

But know also, optimism is very real. Just as real an uplifter as pessimism interprets into very real and actual drag. Therefore, I choose to enjoy the optimism in my fellow Americans, no matter how ridiculous it is. I could go for another Camelot myself, even though I know it's all occurring entirely within the minds of all you silly dumkopfs, present company excepted, of course. I vastly prefer my fellow citizens as silly little shits, than as obnoxious unbearable cnuts. <--- See what I did there? Letter transposition. Disguises a word unacceptable in polite mixed company, one worse even than the s word before it. This completes my remarks about ridiculously delusional self-constructed optimistic mythos. And now for something entirely different. Here's what I made for lunch.

Sorry you couldn't be here, I'm sure you'd have been wonderful lunch dates.

Go to Chip's lunch link for all the steps, but here's his last pic:



That brought the cockroach over:

yes chip ahoy that was a beautiful lunch
i adore hummus
if you don t eat those lettuce leaves completely
and leave the remains on the plate
or better yet drop one on the floor
well i ll have a beautiful lunch too

now about the beautiful
kennedy administration
i was a young grad student
when camelot happened
the main thing i remember
is seeing kennedy getting off
an airplane looking really snappy
or hot as they say today
and thinking man that guy
must get some action
then i thought naw
he s the president of the u s
that s really sick to think those thoughts
hoo boy was i wrong

And here's what Tom Clancy wrote:

I never voted for the guy. I was only 13 when he got elected. I was a junior in high school when Kennedy got whacked. I was in the Waverly Theater on Green Mount Avenue in Baltimore watching Shirley MacLame and Jack Lemmon. I had a half-day of school. It was a Friday. I heard it on the way coming out of the movie. The ticket-taker said the president got shot. Then followed four days of nothing but a dead president. They didn't even show the Colts play. He was the president of the United States, so I didn't want him murdered. I wanted him to lose the next election. I mean, what did he accomplish? He has been canonized by the media, which I think is a bit unseemly. He was a handsome guy. He had great style. He meant well. It was Lyndon Johnson who got the civil rights movement rolling. He was a patriot and he put his life at risk in World War II, and that's something to be admired, but I don't see anything historically significant that he did other than the space program. For the space program, I'd buy him a beer.

ADDED: Thanks to Jeff with one "f" for correcting me about the ink drawings. I love George Herriman -- and even blogged about him back here. Mehitabel's resemblance to Krazy Kat is clear... clearer than Sir Archy's resemblance to blogging cockroach.

AND: Dear, sweet Palladian has sent me the illustration I wanted!

Ron Howard does a really cool pro-Obama thing.

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

"The tattoo community sees them as posers. It’s like going out in the 1960s to buy a Beatles wig."

Said Bob Baxter, the editor of the tattoo journal Skin & Ink, of people who get hand or neck tattoos before they've inked up the rest of their bodies.

Why I love this quote:

1. Everything's a "community" these days. There's no escape. The tattoo community. The rugged individualist community. The loner community.

2. Who knew you had to earn your neck tattoo? I'd have thought getting a neck tattoo as opposed to, say, one of those peeping-over-the-pantyline tattoos was a real demonstration of commitment. Ten (or more) years ago I stood in line at the University Bookstore behind a pretty young woman who had a tattoo on her neck of an old-fashioned, claw-footed bathtub -- complete with the extended pipe and shower-head. "Poseur" is not the word that crossed my mind.

3. The simile. It's so inapt! The whole point of a wig is that you don't have to have the hair. It's the equivalent of a fake tattoo. But in another respect, a wig is out there. What man dares to wear a wig? Look at all the men who, balding, shave their heads. They miss their hair, but they still won't wear a wig. In the 60s, guys who wanted the Beatle look but needed a professional style some of the time would comb the front part down as well as they could and not go so long that they couldn't comb it up and over.

4. When I think of an actual wig, I think of Andy Warhol -- look at him here. He was doing something men still won't do. I know there are men who dress up like women and use lady's wigs for that, and there are plenty of women who rely on wigs, but where is the men in men's wigs community, eh?

I call Barack Obama to account for picking another bland, midwestern pretty boy.

(This is assuming the choice is Evan Bayh.)

"Should Sir Robert Walpole have come to Parliament as a Fop in a Bag, instead of his habitual full-bottom'd Wig..."

"... 'twould have sent the Town into a Tizzy, more than his being seen kissing Mrs. Skerritt in the Theatre."

Sir Archy, our ghost commenter, dead these last 250 years and more, has made an appearance on this post.

Moderating Michelle — Michelle Obama to go on "The View" today. UPDATE: I live-blog the show.

There's a big effort these days to rebuild Michelle Obama's image. And today, Michelle Obama will be "one of the ladies" on "The View" — chatting with the rest of them, not as an interviewee.

"We're going to be interviewing Matthew Broderick, she will participate in that," [Barbara] Walters said. "Another segment will be what makes a good breakfast. It will be a normal show; instead of five, there will be six."

Chatter. You can learn a lot about a person by their chatter. Oh, how I would love to hear the behind-the-scenes chatter between Michelle and her handlers about going on the show. Did Michelle bitch about the need to soften herself for dimwitted American women in flyover states? Or did she think it would be fun to have a free-for-all with those smart, funny women? Did her people tell her that the important thing is just to smile and look comfortable and not say anything too smart or too stupid? Or did they tell her to be herself and enjoy this chance to let everyone see the Michelle Obama we all know?

Walters said the show was put together as normal, and guests booked in advance.

And, if today resembles the typical day on the popular daytime show, there will be plenty of give and take between the hosts on serious and not-so-serious topics.

What? Matthew Broderick was not a special selection for Michelle? I'm sorry, I find that impossible to believe. He's too perfect for the occasion, isn't he? Married, delightful, mild, warm... squishy yet masculine... white. Watch her not call him "whitey" — though the man is stark white.

And making a good breakfast? Come on! That's too perfect of a set-up for them to talk about — we all want to know! – what's Barack Obama like at breakfast?

You can really learn a lot about a man by seeing what he's like at breakfast. He's helping the girls find their mittens and testing them last-minute on their spelling words, I bet. Or is he grouchy? Is he all Why can't I just eat my waffle?



ADDED: The women walk out in pairs, with Michelle and Barbara Walters in the lead. Michelle is much taller than the others, and she looks fabulous in a fitted, black-and-white, floral print sundress. Her hair is neatly tousled, and she has pearl earrings and really pretty soft makeup. They sit at the table, Whoopi Goldberg enthuses an introduction, and Michelle says: "I have to be greeted properly. Fist bump, please."

All the ladies bump fists with her. Whoopi's all "I'm sorry. What'd that mean? Should I be worried about doing that with you?" in a Valley Girl voice. Barbara leans forward and yells: "It's a terrorist attack!" Michelle responds: "It's now my signature bump, but lemme tell ya. I'm not that hip. I got this from the young staff." Joy Behar says: "I thought it was for germ freaks." I'm thinking: good idea! And then: potential new smear: Michelle Obama, a germophobe!

Whoopi says they've got "a million questions" for her. Oh! So then, she's not just another co-host. She is being interviewed. Barbara waves the New York Times article that is the first link in this post. Is Michelle here on "The View" to soften her image after all these attacks? Michelle finesses this into the new introduction that the NYT said she is seeking. She grew up on the south side of Chicago, etc.

Barbara interrupts to ask what it causing the attacks? Michelle refers to the pervasiveness of the media and the competition of politics. And people are "tired" of all this hostility. Elisabeth Hasselbeck takes this as a cue to chatter about how the media think that she (Elisabeth) is going to be fighting with Michelle (and is enemies with the other View ladies). By this point, Michelle is visibly sweating. (If she weren't wearing a bare sundress, you wouldn't see it.) But she gamely talks about how she puts her heart out there, taking a risk by showing passion. And she's not worried. Over time, people will get to know who she really is.

Michelle is asked if she thinks there was any sexism against Hillary Clinton, and she says, "Yes, there's always a level of... people aren't used to strong women... We don't even know how to talk about 'em. So, yeah, there was obviously that. There was also, um, you know, there were elements of racism and that will go on." But she resisted veering into the subject of racism and, wisely, kept to the subject of sexism but ended on a positive note. Hillary had cracked the glass ceiling, and had made it so "my girls, they won't have to feel it [sexism] as badly."

Barbara asks if, then, Hillary should be the VP nominee. Michelle insists that she willl have "nothing to do" with the decision. Elisabeth breaks right in an offers an opportunity for Michelle to talk about getting away from politics and paying attention to the kids. A commercial break swiftly descends.

Sherri Shepherd wants to interrogate Michelle about her toned arms. Michelle is always going sleeveless, setting a trend that is rough on women who are flabby. But the subject is immediately shifted to how long it takes for a woman to do her hair and makeup in the morning. Whoopi starts riffing about how up until now all the black women we've seen on the news are toothless or have gold-rimmed teeth. (How many people did she just insult?!) What she's trying to say is that Michelle with be a good role model. Joy Behar has the classic "who farted?" expression on her face.

Barbara raises the hot topic of pantyhose. They say not wearing pantyhose makes you look young, so she (Barbara) went without pantyhose to some event and someone yelled "No pantyhose!" Funny, especially since Barbara Walters is nearly 80. But the point here is: Michelle Obama is not wearing pantyhose. Michelle says: "I stopped wearing pantyhose a long time ago because it was painful."

Much talk of raising the kids. Barack and Michelle think about their daughters "every single day." She quotes 10-year-old Malia saying — when asked how she deals with going in front of a big crowd — "I'm just a kid... They just think I'm cute, so I just wave and I smile and then I'm outta there."

There's talk about Barack Obama's Father's Day speech. Michelle says she's most touched when Barack says that "the greatest gift he can give to his kids is to not be who his father was."

Barbara asks if Michelle wanted Barack to run for President, and she says she didn't even want him to go into politics, because it's "a mean business":

I knew the man that I loved. He was sweet and pathetic. I thought...

Pandemonium! I think each of the 5 view ladies exclaims "Pathetic!" Michelle's all: "Right, I know, he's pathetic." She does a dismissive hand wave. I take a few TiVo passes at the chaos, there's a reference to a comma, and I figure out she was saying:

He was sweet, empathetic.

Whoopi spells out the whole word to the camera and makes big hand gestures to get the point across: Empathetic.

After the break, they bring out Matthew Broderick. I think he's wearing a bad wig. He's got a bulky black suit on and a red tie. He fist bumps everyone, and they sit down on little puffy gold chairs. He crosses his legs just like Joy Behar. He's not wearing pantyhose, but white and black striped socks. He has largish feet.

It's established that Broderick's 4-year-old son supports Barack Obama. Why? "He likes the man to beat the lady." Michelle makes a cute grimace then distances herself from that remark. Kids are drawn to Barack Obama, she says. Some think his first name is Baracko.

Michelle must sit through the promotion of 2 Matthew Broderick movies, which is slightly painful, especially since they show a clip that has him talking to a young woman who's prating about how easy it is to be a stripper. Michelle basically keeps her mouth shut here.

Fortunately, they go to commercials, and when they are back, Michelle, Joy, and Sherri are standing with some woman under a big orange sign that says "Best of BREAKFAST." The woman — Elizabeth Somer — has written some New York Magazine cover story about breakfast and she starts ranting about how people who eat breakfast are better than other people. She's a raving breakfastist. Guess what you can eat for breakfast? A bowl of cereal with milk in it. And have you heard? You can put fruit on your cereal and also drink a glass of fruit juice. Michelle asks a question about pomegranate juice. She looks uncomfortable, and she doesn't get a straight answer, just a warning about apple, grape, and pear juice. Michelle munches a nugget of Autumn Wheat cereal and pronounces it good.

Joy asks Michelle what she has for breakfast, and she says:

"Toast, fruit, and I do my protein as: bacon. We're bacon people."

Joy does a mini-cheer: "Bacon! Bacon!" The audience shows enthusiasm. Somers in all seriousness says if you're going to have bacon, you should have Bob Evans Canadian Bacon. Michelle and just about everyone laughs at her for that absurd suggestion. Somers also recommends turkey bacon and "smart bacon" — and much grumbling is heard. "Smart bacon" is soy. Michelle is all "soy, sounds good" as she elbows Joy Behar. Those 2 seem to be bonding over bacon. Whoopi sneaks over to join the group: "I'm just going to say leave the bacon alone. We'll eat anything, but don't touch the bacon." Ha ha. The health nannying is shot to hell. "Does Obama eat bacon?" Joy asks. Michelle: "He will eat the bacon." Ha ha.

Final shot at the table. Everyone's looking happy. I find myself smiling. Okay. Worked for me. Broderick and Somers were stodgy and dull, but Michelle was just lovely and excellent. Her one little flub/nonflub ("pathetic") was hilarious.

Time for me to go get some bacon.

ADDED: Plenty of video here.

Are you watching HBO's "John Adams"?

Beldar is:

He's shown as a gentleman farmer who can relish teaching young John Quincy the utter necessity and joy of going elbow-deep while hand-mixing the contents of the manure-cart, and yet who immediately thereafter, upon hearing the boy's stated desire to become a farmer, firmly announces that it's to be the schoolbooks and "then the law" for the lad. (Some of you will see this — manure-spreading and lawyering — as entirely uncontradictory, just not in the same way Adams himself would have.)

It's a long slog through these episodes, even as the big events of American history pop up with regularity. Just when you think it's dull — let's palpate poop and pontificate — suddenly there's a famous battle right at their doorstep. Or there's John (Paul Giamatti) hunched over his extremely slow-walking horse, and around the next corner is the Boston Massacre. Watch men sweat and bore each other with tedious orations in the candlelight and — hold on — they'll get around to signing the Declaration of Independence. Then HBO will require you to gaze into the earnest, profound, somber visage of Paul Giamatti for several minutes to make sure you don't forget to think, think, think about what it all means. So it is overbearingly serious, but I can take it. If those little kids could put up with having the juice of a dying man's smallpox pustule jabbed into their arms, I can put up with the televised longueurs. Good will come of all this, one hopes.

Maybe you read David McCullough's book. I did not. I subjected myself to his "Truman," and I did not want to read another tome stuffed with way too many pages depicting what a good relationship some great man had with his wife. (Are McCullough's books the opiate of the married?) But I trust HBO, so I'm watching the mini-series. Still, every time I see tableaux of Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney (John and Abigail) smiling wanly, heads tilted together, fingers entwined — there are many! — I confirm my decision to skip that book. (But the Anchoress loved it.)

Let's look for commentary.

Lawprof Rick Garnett:

There were more than enough stirring "rule of law" and "importance of zealous counsel for the accused" moments [in episode 1] to justify recommending the episode to first-year law students. The episode ended with a dramatic speech on "liberty" by Adams (in a church), and with his departure for (I gather) the First Continental Congress. So far, the show seems to be doing a good job of highlighting Adams's struggle to keep-in-balance his "conservative" (that is, his unease-with-revolution) instincts with his "liberty" commitments.

Garnett seems intent on staying in character as a "prawfsblawger." (He's a law professor and he blogs about law — even if he's watching television.)

Paul Silver "swelled with pride and awe at the courage, tenacity, inspiration and skill of our founding parents." Is it okay for us to feel pride at what they did? I kept thinking that we never go to such trouble for anything today. I was feeling more ashamed, thinking I — and maybe everyone I know — would be on the side of the argument that said the war was a foolish risk and we need to bear with things a lot longer and hope for the best from the king. (By the way, didn't you think of Jeremiah Wright when someone said "God save the King" and one of the patriots responded "God damn the King"?)

The Television Without Pity discussion is good and irreverent, as usual:

Mmm, juicy pustules! (Imagine convincing people it was a good thing--especially when they were barely past believing in witchcraft.) I found it pretty dry, and I admit I was doing the Sunday bill-paying, work prep routine so wasn't wholly focused. But Tom Wilkinson was wonderful (although seemed tall for Ben Franklin, I don't know why). The Declaration reading sequence was pretty darn great, realistic or not, though. Sad but not surprising that the founding of Our Great Republic was so beset with bureaucracy and tit-for-tat....

[Tom] Wilkinson was rather good - I was worried about the scenery chewing, but then [Ben] Franklin was probably a smart alecky scenery chewer in real life so the acting fits. I'm neither here nor there on the fake nose, but [David] Morse [as George Washington] is doing rather well also.... One of my favorite scenes was after the vote to declare independence with the room so quiet - the collective thought of "what the hell did we just do? Yeah we really are doing this" just hanging in the air.

Ha ha. Well put. TWoP is such a refreshing read. There really is way too much pity everywhere else.

Oh, I forgot to check mainstream media. Well, here's Tom Shales for the Washington Post

Dramatizing America's colonial and revolutionary years is full of pitfalls and has resulted in many a leaden movie -- from the cartoon buffoons of the musical "1776" to the British-as-mad-fiends hysteria of Mel Gibson's imbecilic "The Patriot." Mythic historical figures can come across as strutting, one-dimensional impersonations. But shrewdly adapting a book by the dedicated David McCullough, writer Kirk Ellis and director Tom Hooper have created characters who live and breathe and also, on occasion, bleed. They talk in complete sentences -- a charming habit long since abandoned here in the Colonies -- and yet the dialogue never seems stiff and unwieldy, as often happens in historical productions.

And here's Alessandra Stanley for the NYT:

[I]n this historical drama, Mr. Giamatti is a prisoner of a limited range and rubbery, cuddly looks — in 18th-century britches and wigs, he looks like Shrek.

And that leaves the mini-series with a gaping hole at its center. What should be an exhilarating, absorbing ride across history alongside one of the least understood and most intriguing leaders of the American Revolution is instead a struggle....

This series has a “Masterpiece Theater” gravity and takes a more somber, detailed and sepia-tinted look at the dawn of American democracy. It gives viewers a vivid sense of the isolation and physical hardships of the period, as well as the mores, but it does not offer significantly different or deeper insights into the personalities of the men — and at least one woman — who worked so hard for liberty.

If Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton had been bald, would we have elected them?

Look at pictures, and be honest. But isn't Fred Thompson different somehow? Isn't he "good bald"? Or is it just that I'm used to seeing him bald and shocked at the revelation of how Clinton and Reagan would look? Perhaps Thompson's face is so elaborately creased with character that the blank dome provides needed balance. Hair would seem fussy.

Yet maybe we're moving into a time when a shaved-down scalp will look best on a man and the politician's hair we've been seeing for the last quarter-century will look absurdly wig-like and repellent.

But to look good bald, you need a well-shaped head. One reason Reagan and Clinton look so stupid in the caricatures at the link is because the artist has given each of them a narrowing cranium, a pointy ridge of a head. Compare Thompson's head: high, big and rounded. It may be that Reagan and Clinton had similarly well-shaped heads.

Come to think of it, wouldn't you like to get a look at a man's head before electing him President?

This last question has me off and searching for a picture of Zippy the Pinhead. A cool thing about the Zippy website is this page with a clickable map of the United States, which lets you find old strips set in whatever state you want. Zippy, not being a presidential candidate, has not yet visited Iowa. But here's a strip from Wisconsin. Interestingly, the last panel may give a clue what it is we fear about the bald head.

"A wig, a trenchcoat, adult diapers, BB gun, a steel mallet, some rubber tubing, and garbage bags."

When Astronauts Attack.

Oh, come on, haven't you at least thought of wearing a Depends to get you through that long, fast car trip... like when you're off to murder somebody?

The amazing mileage Jeffrey Rosen gets from an interview with John Roberts.

Lawprof Jeffrey Rosen has an interview with Chief Justice John Roberts. It starts off as a very interesting examination of Roberts's approach to his role on the Court:

Some of the least successful chief justices, Roberts suggested, had faltered because they misunderstood the job, approaching it as law professors rather than as leaders of a collegial Court. Harlan Fiske Stone, a former dean of Columbia Law School, was a case in point. Stone “was a failure as chief, because of his misperception of what a chief justice is supposed to be,” Roberts said, gesturing to the justices’ private conference room through an open door of his office. “It’s his desk out there that is separate from the conference table, and he … sat at his desk, and the others were at the table, he almost called on them and critiqued their performances. They hated that.” Roberts laughed. “As a result, he was a failure as a chief justice.”...

... Roberts declared, he would make it his priority, as [Chief Justice John] Marshall did, to discourage his colleagues from issuing separate opinions. “I think that every justice should be worried about the Court acting as a Court and functioning as a Court, and they should all be worried, when they’re writing separately, about the effect on the Court as an institution.”

In Roberts’s view, Marshall’s success in unifying the Court was a reflection of his temperament. “He gave everyone the benefit of the doubt; he approached everyone as a friend. The assumption was … ‘This is someone I’m going to like unless proven otherwise,’” Roberts said. “He was convivial, he took great pride in sharing his Madeira with his colleagues … [He was not] the artificial glad-hander type; it was just in his nature to get along with people. I think that had to play an important role in his ability to bring the Court together, to change the whole way judicial decisions were arrived at, to really create the notion that we are a Court—not simply an assemblage of individual justices … It was the force of his personality. That lack of pretense, that openness and general trustworthiness, were very important personality traits in Marshall’s success,” Roberts observed....

Roberts praised justices who were willing to put the good of the Court above their own ideological agendas. “A justice is not like a law professor, who might say, ‘This is my theory … and this is what I’m going to be faithful to and consistent with,’ and in twenty years will look back and say, ‘I had a consistent theory of the First Amendment as applied to a particular area,’” he explained. Instead of nine justices moving in nine separate directions, Roberts said, “it would be good to have a commitment on the part of the Court to acting as a Court, rather than being more concerned about the consistency and coherency of an individual judicial record.”

Keep reading, and you'll see that Rosen is honing these insights into a sword to use against two (or three) Justices. I'm skipping a lot to get to the juiciest part (and adding some boldface):

Roberts recognizes that much of his success or failure will be determined by his colleagues, and their readiness to embrace his vision of consensus and political neutrality....

The focus on justices as personalities—demanded by the public and cultivated by some justices—directly challenges Roberts’s view that justice itself should be impersonal. “What you’re trying to establish—wearing black robes and, in earlier times, wigs—[is] that it’s not the person; it’s the law.” To persuade individual justices to resist the pressures to promote themselves rather than the interests of the Court as a whole, he will have to appeal, in different ways, to their respective self-interests, and to a broader understanding of their judicial role. Roberts understandably declined to criticize his colleagues by name. But when he objected to justices who act more like legal academics than members of a collegial Court, it was hard not to think of Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, who seem more interested in demonstrating their jurisprudential consistency by writing opinions that read like law-review articles than in finding common ground with their colleagues.

Now, Rosen is on his own:

Roberts could, in theory, appeal to justices like Scalia and Thomas—and their counterparts on the liberal wing of the Court—in the following terms: In important cases, on this evenly divided Court, neither the four liberals nor the four conservatives can confidently expect to prevail. Surely it would be in the best interest of each side if it could win half the cases by a unanimous vote, rather than trying to win slightly more often by a 5–4 vote, since a unanimous victory would be harder, in the future, to overturn. Of course, the justice who would be most resistant to this kind of bargain would be the swing justice—at the moment, Anthony Kennedy, who naturally enjoys his unique opportunity to determine the outcome of the most controversial cases on his own. When the swing justice is as self-dramatizing as Kennedy, even the chief’s most skillful appeals to the Court’s common interests may fall on deaf ears. But Kennedy, like most of the justices, also cares deeply about his own reputation as well as the Court’s. So perhaps the best way for Roberts to appeal to Kennedy and his colleagues is by invoking the lessons of history.

I love the way Rosen uses his freshly honed sword against fellow lawprofs:

“I think judicial temperament is a willingness to step back from your own committed views of the correct jurisprudential approach and evaluate those views in terms of your role as a judge,” [Roberts] said. “It’s the difference between being a judge and being a law professor.”...

The history of the Court confirms this insight. On the Court, the brilliant academics are less successful, over time, than the collegial pragmatists. The self-centered loners are less effective than the convivial team players. The resentful braggarts wear less well than the secure justices who know who they are. The narcissists wield judicial power less sure-handedly than the judges who show personal as well as judicial humility. The loose cannons shoot themselves in the foot, while those who know when to hold their tongues appear more judicious.

It's obvious that he means Scalia, and it's just so hilarious that he's insulting the hell out of law professors in the process. But you know, some of us law professors have congenial colleagues. And some of us value pragmatism and balk at over-pure theory.

The ideological purists are marginalized on the Court, while those who understand when not to take each principle to its logical extreme are vindicated by history. Justices who view cases in purely philosophical terms are less sure-footed than those who are aware of a case’s practical effects. And those with the common touch win broader support than those who live entirely in abstractions.

This, of course, resonates with me. (See the uproar I caused when I criticized some people who were too in love with abstract theory.) Rosen seems to say it's all well and good for law professors to be self-centered, resentful, bragging, narcissistic, reckless loners, but something different is needed from judges. I find it objectionable in law professors. (And I'm not the only law professor who does.)

But judges do have their hands on power, and they can do a lot of damage. Still, each Justice is only one of nine, and I think it's good that there are different kinds of judges talking to each other, contributing to a decision. I wouldn't want all nine to be flexible pragmatists. Having a hardcore originalist or two in the mix is a moderating safeguard. But don't give me five of them!

I think it's funny that Rosen is so eager to make Roberts's words into a weapon that he goes on to use so specifically against Scalia and Thomas. Here's Rosen, bringing his argument in for a landing:

Throughout its history, Roberts argues convincingly, the Court has best served itself—and the nation—when its individual justices have been willing to subordinate their own agendas in the interest of building judicial consensus and institutional legitimacy. Whether he will be able to resurrect John Marshall’s vision in a polarized, unbuttoned, and personality-driven age remains to be seen.

Scalia, of course, cares about institutional legitimacy. He just thinks it's founded on a specific interpretive theory. And Scalia thinks adherence to the theory of original meaning is the way to remove personal preference from decisionmaking. But it can't be denied that Scalia goes about in the world calling attention to himself as a personality. And it's not so clear that Roberts refrains from presenting himself as a personality, though certainly the Roberts persona is built on the "modesty" theme and executed in a style that would never fit Scalia.

Anyway, a nicely done article. Read the whole thing. He's got a long, substantial interview with the Chief Justice... and he knows how to use it.

Don't squick Oprah!

Let me just transcribe Oprah's intro to her show today:

I'm very particular about where I bathe, you know, and the soaps, and I mean, 'cause there are a lot of people that don't change their soaps when you come to their house, and so if you go in there and if you're one of them, and you go into their house and you go to bathe and there're teeny tiny hairs on them that don't belong to you. Yleh, I hate that. So I was spending that night at a friend's... uh... relative's house, okay, and the pillow, the pillow, the pillow... I don't know if things were growing in that pillow or had they made a home in that pillow, so actually, I came back and I was talking about, when was the last time that pillow was changed? And I actually called them back and said, when is the last time you changed that pillow? 30 years. How can you sleep on the same pillow for 30 years?

ADDED: Okay, I watched this show so you don't have to. Do I watch "Oprah"? No. I set the TiVo to record it a while back when Madonna was on, and it's been collecting things, like the way your disgusting pillow has been collecting dust mites. But for some reason, I clicked on today's show. I'm not simulblogging this. Let me just say that if you've got kids with stuffed animals, you should be vacuuming those toys at least once a week.... .... .... yeah, I thought so. Forget about it. Who cares? There are bacteria and other microscopic things everywhere. Forget about it! If you try to kill them, you'll only leave the nastiest ones to take over. Get on with your life! This was a show about ooh-icky! You've got better things to do with your life.

YET MORE: Oddly, part of this show was about women who let their hair grow very long. In the intro, Oprah threw in the question, "How often do you cut your hair?" The question wasn't how often do you wash your hair, but simply letting your hair grow long was treated as if it were another squicky thing. Then it turned out that they had about six women on the show who hadn't cut their hair in many years, including one who had never cut her hair. There was nothing dirty about these women. In fact, they were coming forward to get their hair cut to donate their hair for wigs for young girls who had gone bald. This subject really had nothing to do with the other, but Oprah just combined the two topics as if they were related.

The long-haired women didn't complain, of course, They were on Oprah, and they got makeovers. In the end, they came out showing off their haircuts, with Oprah exclaiming about how much better they looked. They all acted thrilled as if they had discovered how deluded they'd been. They'd been dressed up in new clothes, and they twirled around looking delighted as we heard Oprah name the various department stores that had provided the garish duds. Oprah told us they looked just great, updated. But I thought they all had looked lovely in jeans and long-sleeved tops and with hair hanging well below their waists. Yet there was Oprah telling us what to think, and she never said they'd made a sacrifice for the purpose of helping others. These were just deluded women who let their hair grow, to go along with that woman who used the same sponge for a year.

A little girl wearing one of those real-hair wigs was sent up for Oprah to embrace in the closing moments of the show, and we were left to wonder how many dust mites were in that wig, how often should you throw out your wig, and why is Oprah willing to have that thing right next to her.

"Parents could be forced to go to special classes to learn to sing their children nursery rhymes."

That's the idea of UK Children's Minister Beverley Hughes -- who looks remarkably like Ross Perot in a wig:

Those who fail to read stories or sing to their youngsters threaten their children's future and the state must put them right, Children's Minister Beverley Hughes said.

Their children's well-being is at risk 'unless we act', she declared.

And Mrs Hughes said the state would train a new 'parenting workforce' to ensure parents who fail to do their duty with nursery rhymes are found and 'supported'.

Amusing quotes on "supported."

The call for state intervention in the minute details of family life followed a series of Labour efforts to reduce anti-social behaviour and improve educational standards by imposing rigorous controls on the lives of the youngest children.

Mrs Hughes has established a national curriculum to set down how babies are taught to speak in childcare from the age of three months.

Her efforts have gone alongside a push by other ministers to determine exactly how parents treat their children down to how they should brush their teeth.

Tony Blair has backed the idea of 'fasbos' - efforts to identify and correct the lives of children who are likely to fail even before they are born - and new laws to compel parents to attend parenting classes are on the way.

Fasbos? Apparently, these are "Foetal Anti-Social Behaviour Orders."

This autumn is likely to see an extension of parenting orders that can force parents to attend parenting classes so that they can be used on the say so of local councils against parents.

For the first time, parenting orders are likely to be directed against parents whose children have committed no criminal offence.

The threat of action against parents who fail to sing nursery rhymes was unveiled by Mrs Hughes as she gave the first details of Mr Blair's 'national parenting academy', a body that will train teachers, psychologists and social workers to intervene in the lives of families and become the 'parenting workforce'.

How utterly alien! That could never happen here, right?

I refrained from singing to my kids because I believed that I sang off key and that I would cause them to have a poor sense of pitch. Was I right or wrong? I don't know. But I used my judgment. I also refrained from playing children's songs after I got the idea that rock and roll songs from the 50s and 60s were kind of like children's songs but were much more appealing. I can just imagine how I would have flipped out if some government functionary had tried to instruct me that I was wrong.

Of course, the government agent would have no intellectual depth about what was good and bad and no ability to discuss it. She -- it would be a she, don't you think? -- would only insist that I follow the instructions. And if the day comes when the experts decide that children need to learn how to think for themselves, will there be anyone around who even knows how to do it?

"All of this blogging-in-drag is bewildering and appalling."

Wow, David Lat -- the erstwhile Article III Groupie, who's now blogging at Above the Law -- is getting doubly slammed over there at Feminist Law Professors. Belle Lettre has this:

All of this blogging-in-drag is bewildering and appalling. I just don’t understand the prurient interest some have in watching an otherwise impressively credentialed or politically opinionated “woman” degrade “herself” by trivializing her politics or profession. Is this the appeal of watching Ann Coulter in her mini-shorts?

Speaking as a female blogger, who writes a “blawggish” blog at that, I am personally offended. I think these poseurs, cheeky and satiric as they intend to be, bring down the image of serious female bloggers everywhere. It’s not that I argue that my blog is entirely serious–I do run personal posts about poetry, the occasional blog meme, etc. But this is not exactly trivial gossip....

[B]logs like those by David Lat and Libertarian Man of Mystery make me a very self-conscious and cautious blogger. I feel trepidation about writing on non-serious or even non-legal things, even though it is perfectly within my prerogative to do so. I’m not saying that I would like to engage in snark, vitriol, gossip, or triviality....

David Lat and Libertarian Man of Mystery do no favors to women (and especially women bloggers) when they pose as women or caricature “female triviality” to suit their own ends. Even as they continue this “cheeky” style of writing with their genders and identities open, it never fails to be a nudge nudge wink wink at how salacious and saucy writing can be if done in the “female voice.” I happen to think my own “female voice” is quite intelligent and serious, thanks. And there are plenty of women bloggers (and blawggers) like me, who can write about our lives and our work, without being sexed up fembots or saucy wenches. There will be no nudging and winking here, not for your amusement, and definitely not to ours.

This dread of triviality, does it hurt? I wonder if Belle has considered whether this grim, censorious, humorless -- nay, humor-phobic -- attitude helps women. I know you want to be taken seriously, but being so intent on being taken seriously is one of the main things that make people want to mock you. And not just you, but feminism.

Belle is piling on after an earlier post by Ann Bartow, who decided to pick on David for running a search for the "hottest ERISA lawyer in America." Here's her criticism:

Possibly Lat doesn’t understand that being celebrated for her looks is not known for being a ticket to career success in the legal world for a female attorney.

The idea that people are now going to be nominated without their knowledge, and that Lat will not honor their requests for withdrawl if they do find out, frankly strikes me as both mean and sickening. I was present when a hard driving female attorney won a satirical “Miss Congeniality” designation during a “jokey” awards luncheon, and I watched her muster a tight little smile as she accepted a sash and tiara to a sea of derisive laughter, and I saw her crying in the bathroom later, too. I have little doubt that certain kinds of lawyers will take a golden opportunity like this to try to heap ridicule upon colleagues or competitors they dislike, or want to see put in their place. But who cares, as long as Lat is amusing himself and his buds, right?

Is frat boy asshole really the right stereotype for Mr. Lat? Since you're doing stereotypes... It's a little tricky to wield stereotypes while criticizing stereotypes, but the idea must be that it doesn't count if you evoke the privileged white male. But what really irks me is going on and on about Lat without showing familiarity with his judicial hotties contest, the way Article III groupie specially focused on the hotness of males, and how Judge Kozinski offered himself up as the hottest judge. Here's how The New Yorker saw it:

A3G, as she calls herself, writes like a boozy débutante, dishing about the wardrobes, work habits, and idiosyncrasies of the “superhotties of the federal judiciary” and “Bodacious Babes of the Bench.” The author is keen on the new Chief Justice, writing, on one occasion, “Judge Roberts is lookin’ super-hunky tonight, much younger than his 50 years. . . . The adorable dimple in his chin is making A3G dizzy.” In contrast, she had doubts about Harriet Miers, posting a “Hairstyle Retrospective” and noting, “If Harriet Miers wins confirmation, maybe Supreme Court justices should start wearing powdered wigs.” Her posts on the new Supreme Court nominee, Samuel Alito, have included a report—a “judicial sight-ation”—of the Judge stopping in at a Newark pizza shop, and a sizing up of Alito’s teen-age son: “Since he’s 19, A3G is permitted to say: he’s a hottie!”

This refocus of the hotness question onto males was a much better strategy for smashing sex stereotypes than insisting on being taken seriously and trying to deny the visual aspect of life.

Why we love "Project Runway."

Entertainment Weekly has a big cover story on "Project Runway." I'm thinking you might need to subscribe to actually go to it. They try to puzzle out why the show is so great, why lots of people who weren't already interested in sewing or fashion love it so much. They come up with five reasons:

1. It never should have worked in the first place....

But the producers gave it a chance anyway on the condition it didn't end up being "people in black, talking about designing a gown with, you know, a birdcage and a clock woven into someone's Marie Antoinette wig."

2. It features the smartest, most creative challenges on TV....

3. The judges reward actual talent....

As the guy with the tattoo on his neck, Jeffrey Sebelia, puts it ''We're not eating cow's balls or having to survive in the jungle with one book of matches and a bottle of water.'' Exactly! Yeah, there's no career in "cow" ball eating. Aw, leave our darling tattoo boy alone! It's not that it's hard to tell a cow from a bull, but it's funny to act like you don't give a damn.

EW probes into the question whether the producers pick the winners and whether the choice has to do with the entertainment value of characters like Santino and Vincent. Nina Garcia assures us that she'd "mutiny" if the producers pushed her around.

4. The contestants aren't pathetic, fame-seeking narcissists.

Except the ones who are. The work is too hard and specialized to bring in lightweights.

5. Tim Gunn makes it work.

Of course, Tim Gunn. (Here's Project Rungay's tribute to him.) We like those other regulars too, though, don't we? Aren't you a Nina Garcia fan? And what about Heidi? I was asked if I liked her. I said I didn't know, but she was just such a part of the show -- like Ryan Seacrest on "American Idol" -- that I just don't like to think of the show without her. I want to hear her piercing voice to announce the next loser. It seems like it has to be.

Possible topic for the comments: personages on TV that you're not sure are all that good, but epitomize the show in some way that makes you completely attached to them.

"It's only the losers named Dave that think having an unusual name is bad..."

"... and who cares what they think. They're named Dave." Says Penn Jillette, if you challenge him about the fact that he named his daughter Moxie CrimeFighter.

But while middle-class parents increasingly trade in standard names like Karen and Joseph for fancier ones like Madison and Caleb, movie stars seem compelled to push the baby naming further. The names may be merely distinctive (say, Maddox, Angelina Jolie's Cambodian-born adopted son) or bizarre, like Makena'lei Gordon, Helen Hunt's daughter, inspired by a place name in Hawaii. Celebrities may not so subtly be saying that for them ordinary rules need not apply.

If celebrities are the new American aristocracy, the exotic baby name can sometimes function as the equivalent of a royal title, a way for a privileged caste to bestow the power of its legacy on future generations.

"There's a sense of 'I'm special, I'm different, and therefore my child is special and different,' " said Jenn Berman, a clinical psychologist in Beverly Hills, who has worked with actors. "It's unconscious, but they think, 'We're a creative family, you have the potential to be creative, so here, I bestow you with the name 'Joaquin,' " Dr. Berman said.

Which celebrity started it? Frank Zappa?

Just as Frank Zappa proved himself the classic hippie prankster by naming his children Moon Unit and Dweezil in the 1960's....

Frank Zappa was a hippie? I guess the past looks fuzzy from such a great distance!

Think I'll just DROP OUT
I'll go to Frisco
Buy a wig & sleep
On Owsley's floor...
I'm completely stoned
I'm hippy & I'm trippy
I'm a gypsy on my own...
I'm really just a phony
But forgive me
'Cause I'm stoned...

Frank Zappa was a hippie?

Sorry, I got sidetracked. Anyway, you middle-class losers with kids named Dave, how about showing a little imagination? And, to get to the really important question, what do you think Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie will name the little pittster they're cooking up for the endless amusement of the world?