"Many in New York’s professional and cultural elite have long supported President Obama’s health care plan."

"But now, to their surprise, thousands of writers, opera singers, music teachers, photographers, doctors, lawyers and others are learning that their health insurance plans are being canceled and they may have to pay more to get comparable coverage, if they can find it."

It is an uncomfortable position for many members of the creative classes to be in. “We are the Obama people,” said Camille Sweeney, a New York writer and member of the Authors Guild. Her insurance is being canceled, and she is dismayed that neither her pediatrician nor her general practitioner appears to be on the exchange plans. What to do has become a hot topic on Facebook and at dinner parties frequented by her fellow writers and artists.

“I’m for it,” she said. “But what is the reality of it?”

Isn't that cute? For it, but what is it? Dear, sweet, oh-so-creative Camille the Writer, seemingly flipping the old Groucho Marx lyric:

I predict we'll all — most of us — go to Helle.

You think she's off the norm — the gleeful, man-magnetizing Prime Minister of Denmark Helle Thorning-Schmidt, who took the famous funeral selfie with Barack Obama and David Cameron leaning into the shot.

But I think this is where we are going. Years ago, we scoffed or cried out in horror at the man who walked down the street talking on a cell phone. Why, he seemed like those crazy people who walk and talk to phantoms. Doesn't he know how ridiculous and presumptuous and into himself he looks? Can we even remember how intensely we experienced that disapproval of walking cell-phone talkers?

Helle Thorning-Schmidt — love the name! — assures us the mood in the stadium was "festive," and it was not wrong to take a selfie, and, indeed, she thinks all the fuss is "funny."

Thorning-Schmidt declined to talk about the way Michelle Obama looked. Me, when I look at the famous photo of the photographing — the second one down at the link — I see Michelle existing in the old world — where most of us are — and the other 3 having entered the next stage. Some day, we'll look back and think we're all relaxed and free to quickly record the occasion, even if it's a funeral. After all, lots of people come together at funerals. They are great reunions and celebrations of the life that has ended. We see the life in ourselves and in each other on these occasions, and perhaps this is the last time we will be here together like this. Take the selfie!

Picture yourself in the casket and: 1. Take a selfie now before it's too late, and 2. Ask yourself if you'd like the people who showed up for your funeral to feel they need to sit stiff and grim like poor last-century Michelle or if you prefer Helle?

"My Tumblr was once a collection of evidence, convincing the world that something very strange actually existed, but now everyone believes..."

"... and everyone has seen, and Thorning-Schmidt has the evidence on her phone. So it was time to do the only sensible thing: It was time to declare victory, to revel in drawing a line from the bottom to the top."

The creator of the blog Selfies at Funerals declares victory and ends the project after Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt gets British Prime Minister David Cameron and U.S. President Barack Obama to pose alongside her in the selfie she made at the Nelson Mandela memorial service.

AND: There's a strange amount of talk about Michelle Obama's look of seeming disapproval (caught not in the selfie but in the photograph of the selfie getting taken). At Salon, Roxane Gay collects and reacts to the reactions to the First Lady's reaction.

More than anything, the response to these latest images of Michelle Obama speaks volumes about the expectations placed on black women in the public eye and how a black women’s default emotional state is perceived as angry. The black woman is ever at the ready to aggressively defend her territory. She is making her disapproval known. She never gets to simply be...

But none of the responses Gay quotes refer to race or talk about Michelle Obama as anything other than one individual reacting to one particular thing on one occasion. But Gay seems so sure that it's those other people who are failing to perceive Michelle Obama as an individual: "On and on the punditry goes, ascribing very specific, historically racialized narratives to what Michelle Obama is thinking and feeling in one candid moment."

Now, it's not just the selfie. At The Daily News, there's a whole string of photos showing Michelle looking grouchy while Obama seems to be enjoying his interactions with the pretty Danish Prime Minister. But still, there is no reference to race. The closest reference to race is at the rather scurrilous website Gawker:

[T]here is a new sexy spy prime minister in town... and she is maybe kind of pretty if you are into “tall” and “blonde” and “pretty.” You know who does not seem to be that into “tall” and “blonde” and “pretty”? Michelle Obama, that is who! That is some side-eye not seen since the one time John Boehner grabbed her ass at lunch and slurred something about shayna tushies before falling face-first into his organic grassfed triple martini lobster bisque.

I had to go to the "that one time" link to see what that John Boehner incident was and was highly amused to see that Michelle Obama reacted to John Boehner with exactly the look look I described in the previous post as the best response to someone who makes a sexist remark in a social situation.

"I pledge to be a servant to our President."

From January 2009, offered today for your amusement/outrage/nostalgia.



Meade pointed me to that just now, and it made me laugh (and cringe). I knew I'd already talked about an Obama nostalgia movement — here, 3 days ago — but I see I was talking about it as far back as October 2011.

I know you may scoff and say that every single reference to the abstractions and fuzzy feelings of 3 years ago will only draw derision and intensify the pain. But there's so much pain... At some point, won't people want to take the drug that worked so well that other time. What intense pleasure! What brilliant hallucinations! It calls to you.

Ouch. At the time, the old video I highlighted was Michelle Obama's 2008 line "Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."

Barack will never allow you to go back.... But what if you want to go back... back to the day when a line like Barack will never allow you to go back did not feel like a warning... but you can't go back... Barack will never allow you to go back... 

Writing this, I played an old song in my head:

I think I'm goin' back
To the things I learned so well in my youth
I think I'm returning to
Those days when I was young enough to know the truth

The rodeo clown speaks.

"I didn't do this to do any hating on anyone. I did it to be funny. I did it to be a joke."

This bit, this clown bit has been around for generations. And I didn't think anything more of it than what we've done 15 years ago, 10 years ago, five years ago, when we've done it with Bush and Clinton and Ronald Reagan.

I actually think that a lot of people have lost their ability to laugh. Look at the country as a whole. There's a lot more to be mad at than a rodeo clown at a rodeo trying to make somebody laugh.

Oh, this is the civil rights issue of our time. Good to see Obama's on it.

"Obama Comes Out Against Dog Breed-Specific Legislation, Joins The Fight For Pit Bulls."

"Excommunicated from the clown community."

"'Excommunicated' is our word, but there really is a 'clown community,'" writes James Taranto, who's apparently a community unto himself, judging by his use of the first person plural.

Judy Quest, author of a CNN.com op-ed titled "A Real Clown Wouldn't Mock Obama"... informs us of the existence of "international clown organizations," a "strict code of ethics" governing "the craft" of clowning, and "clown journals," for which Quest, who's been a clown for 32 years, "writes regularly."

But does the Clown Code of Ethics forbid dressing up as a particular President of the United States and appearing to have your life threatened? Taranto says:

[N]one of the Clown Commandments forbid political humor, so that it would appear to be permissible to pantomime truth to power. 

Yes, but do clown ethics forbid making comedy out of a physical threat to the President? What truth is spoken by saying Wouldn't it be funny if the President's life were in danger?

If you've wondered why I hadn't previously blogged about the rodeo clown, these questions reflect my reasons for avoiding what might seem like such a tempting story. I favor free speech, and I'm sorry this guy lost his job. He shouldn't have received so much attention, which is why I'd refrained from giving him more. But an employer is justified controlling the speech of employees. The speech expressed by the rodeo is the speech of the business that is the rodeo. It's not the individual speech of any particular performer. But I suspect the guy got scapegoated. Did the employer approve of this kind of performance before the nation's spotlight fell on this one clown?

"I don't think President Obama is here tonight... But I'm sure he's listening in."

Said Mick Jagger.

"Obama said 'chill, you gonna get me impeached'/But you don't need this shit anyway/Chill with me on the beach."

Jay-Z in his "Open Letter" which is — according to the NYT — "lash[ing] out at members of Congress who have raised questions about the legality of his recent trip to Cuba with Beyoncé, his wife."

On Friday, Representatives Ros-Lehtinen and Diaz-Balart said in a letter to Adam Szubin, director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control, that the trip looked like a tourist visit. “Despite the clear prohibition against tourism in Cuba, numerous press reports described the couple’s trip as tourism, and the Castro regime touted it as such in its propaganda,” the letter said.

But the Treasury Department responded that site-seeing [sic] was allowed during the off-hours on an educational visit and Jay-Z and Beyoncé had fulfilled their educational obligations by meeting with the La Colmenita theater group and talking with students at the Superior Art Institute.

I'm reading these lyrics, and I don't think he's (just) lashing out at the critics in Congress.

Politicians never did shit for me
Except lie to me, distort history

Do the "politicians" include Obama? Reread that part I put in the post title. I think he's challenging Obama to drop the charade. Imagine Obama taking Jay-Z's advice, deciding he's not a politician and he doesn't need this shit, and he should just say and do everything he really wants, get himself impeached and move on to better things, AKA the beach.

Jay-Z calls himself "the Bob Dylan of rap music" and riffs on the "Idiot Wind" lyrics:

Idiot wind, the Bob Dylan of rap music
You're an idiot, baby, you should become a student
Oh, you gonna learn today
Where the fuck have you been
The world's under new management
The new role model, fuck this Zoolander shit

Here are the lyrics to Dylan's "Idiot Wind" if you want to compare them to Jay-Z's "Open Letter." They are so much more elaborate and interesting that it makes the phrase "the Bob Dylan of rap music" sound as though it were meant as an insult to rap music.

But more importantly: "fuck this Zoolander shit" is directed at Obama, isn't it? Is it mocking Obama as phonily posing, like the movie character the male model Derek Zoolander?

I've never watched that movie past the first half-hour or so, but now, I'm reading the plot summary, and I see "Zoolander" has a political assassination plot!

[T]he fashion industry has been behind several political assassinations, and the brainwashed models are soon killed after they have completed their task.... As Derek takes the runway, Mugatu's disc jockey starts playing "Relax", activating Derek's mental programming....  

So what's Jay-Z talking about? I don't like seeing even oblique references to assassination in statements about the President.

Also in the Jay-Z song: "Wanna give me jail time and a fine/Fine, let me commit a real crime...."  And: "You know whenever I'm threatened, I start shooting, bark/Catch a body, head to Houston." Bark? Does he really say "bark"? Does that mean "Barack"? At least he said "Houston" and not "Dallas."

"Let's face it, who does not love this music?" asked Obama, referring to Memphis soul...

... which apparently includes Justin Timberlake. Oh, I am cynical enough to think that Obama really wanted to bring Timberlake over to the house to sing for his young daughters, and the Memphis soul business was constructed around that project to give it the needed air of dignity, worthiness, and tribute.

Obama said the unique blend of musical styles created in segregated Tennessee in the 1960s was special because it "played an important part in our history." He also noted the music sought to bridge racial divides and "create a little harmony with harmony."

I was impressed by how smoothly the webstream flowed. It looked crisp and utterly unhinky on my desktop monitor. I know that costs money, presumably taxpayer money, and that's inconsistent with the suffering-under-the-sequester political meme pursuant to which White House tours have been cancelled. But if they're going to have these concerts at all, in these days of the internet, they owe a quality stream to us, the people.

How much could that cost, anyway? I loved the live unedited feed, like when Queen Latifah had to realign herself after some technician pointed out the tape marks on the floor, and how Malia and Sasha looked stone-faced on either side of their parents (who were incessantly bopping their heads), and how some aide came in to lean over and consult with the frowning, deep-in-thought Obama (in political theater that made me say out loud "A plane has struck the second tower").

I want the feed. Feed us!

"Make us your slaves, but feed us."

"SEQUESTER SOUL SHOW LIVE FROM WHITE HOUSE! LEAVE YOUR TROUBLES BEHIND."

Drudge mocks and embeds...

UPDATE: I've changed the link to the Drudge archive site so you can see how the page looked at the time.

"But Lupe Fiasco was not 'kicked off stage' for an 'anti-Obama rant.'"

"We are staunch supporters of free speech, and free political speech. This was not about his opinions. Instead, after a bizarrely repetitive, jarring performance that left the crowd vocally dissatisfied, organizers decided to move on to the next act."

Got that? A rapper was bizarrely repetitive and jarring and he had to go. A puzzling statement. You may think how could a rapper being repetitive and jarring amount to bizarre? I take it that's a nice way to say he was bad and going on too long.

But spinning it as censorship is such good PR that I suspected he went really offensive in order to get attention. Having watched the video, I've abandoned that hypothesis. It's insufficiently offensive. "Obama didn't say shit" when "Gaza strip was getting bombed," and "that's why I ain't vote for him." Come on. It's not like he said he didn't vote for Obama because he would prefer stricter control of federal spending or originalists on the Supreme Court or some such outrage.

"President Barack Obama and Psy shared the stage in Washington on Sunday but didn’t dance 'Gangnam Style' together."

"Obama has said he thinks he can do 'Gangnam Style' — Psy’s signature dance — but hasn’t proven it yet."

The 2 mega pop stars just shook hands, and nothing (apparently) was said about that inconvenient lyric of his that goes:

Kill those fucking Yankees who have been torturing Iraqi captives
Kill those fucking Yankees who ordered them to torture
Kill their daughters, mothers, daughters-in-law, and fathers
Kill them all slowly and painfully

"GangnamStyleHatesAmerica."

Oh, no, the fun is over, and just when Obama was having a Christmas party.