Despite his public support for gay rights, Alec Baldwin is punished for uttering an anti-gay slur.

And he even apologized. ("I did not intend to hurt or offend anyone... Words are important. I understand that, and will choose mine with great care going forward.... Behavior like this undermines hard-fought rights that I vigorously support.")

Is that fair?


Baldwin — like many celebrities and assorted other humans — wants esteem from those whose esteem he's decided he values, those in the entertainment industry and among the American cultural elite, and these days, it's easy to see that this means that he ought to support gay rights. But that doesn't tell us how he really feels at a gut level. What pops out when he's angry and looking to express hatred shows us what he hides when he's doing his mundane PR.

Who knows how much hatred against gay people there really is out there and to what extent it's apportioned among people who support gay rights on the one hand and people who oppose gay rights on the other? I don't find it hard to imagine someone who hates a particular type of person nevertheless believing that those people deserve equal rights — because it makes sense philosophically or it fits a political ideology. I also don't find it hard to understand someone feeling no hostility for gay people and still rejecting same-sex marriage and thinking that all non-procreative sexual behavior should be discouraged.

Eagerness to support gay rights may stem from a desire to compensate for strongly felt aversion to gay people. Baldwin's problem is that this compensation cannot stand up to his intense emotionality, and paparazzi who know this have made a game out of provoking him to the point of explosion. It's actually kind of sad. He's a great actor, and since he tends to play villains — wonderfully — he doesn't even need us to think that he's a good person.

But should he have a political talk show on MSNBC? That's for MSNBC to decide, and obviously they have. MSNBC has chosen to be more genteel and respectful toward the cultural elite. It doesn't seem to know how to foster vibrant discourse about politics, and the gambit of putting on the over-passionate Baldwin was always lame, even before he embarrassed them.

"NO BID CONTRACT: Michelle O's Princeton classmate is executive at company that built Obamacare site..."

Headline today at Drudge, linking here.

The link goes to The Daily Caller, where we learn that Toni Townes-Whitley is a senior vice president at CGI Federal and also graduated from Princeton in the same year as Michelle Obama. Given that over 1,000 highly able persons graduate from Princeton in any given year, it's not that amazing that you'd find a Michelle Obama co-grad somewhere at the executive level of a large corporation, so this story seems a bit dumb, unless...

Townes-Whitley and her Princeton classmate Michelle Obama are both members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni....

... unless your point is that black people are in a cabal.

Toni Townes ’85 is a onetime policy analyst with the General Accounting Office and previously served in the Peace Corps in Gabon, West Africa. Her decision to return to work, as an African-American woman, after six years of raising kids was applauded by a Princeton alumni publication in 1998.

Jeez, the writing in The Daily Caller is bad! So Townes-Whitley decided to return to work as an African-American woman? What was she before? A white man?

Look, I'm concerned about corruption and the appearance of corruption, but this is a low-quality effort at investigative journalism. And yet think of the traffic that story is getting with the Drudge link. The rewards are there for those who are hot to get them. Fine. You like that story? Then don't whimper about lefties' expressions of contempt for right-wing media.

Politico's Todd Purdum goes on an inane rant against a statement that was apparently never made...

... but which would have been so terrible if it had. 

Purdum — referencing the TV show "The West Wing" — informs us that "the White House is a pretty awesome place." So it would really be immensely nervy if someone were to say something contemptuous to the President of the United States in the White House.

[T]he alleged dis words are so personal, so passionate, so disaffected-high-school-sweetheart in tone — “I cannot even stand to look at you” — that it’s hard to imagine any grown man saying them to another — much less to the president. 

Know what's true of many things that are hard to imagine? The way they don't happen.

It boggles the mind to think what, if anything, Obama could have said in reply....

Imagine if Boehner said X to Obama, then what would Obama say? As long as we're sojourning in Imagination Land, why aren't we imagining what Obama might have said to Boehner that would have caused Boehner to say "I cannot even stand to look at you." But Purdum's World of Imagination doesn't include concocting a context for things that weren't said that would make things that Republicans say seem any more justified. He's more about crushing comebacks that Obama could make if any GOP person had the nerve — especially in the awesome setting of the White House — to dis Barack Obama.

Purdum came up with — as a riposte to "I cannot even stand to look at you" — "Funny, I can’t even see you!" Oh, that's good, Todd. That's good. A lesser politico-journolist might have had Obama stick his fingers in his ears and say "La la, I can't hear you." But you stayed on-track with the vision trope and came up with I can’t even see you.

Purdum concedes the unlikelihood that Dick Durbin's account of the story is true:

It’s worth noting that the only face-to-face meeting between Obama and House GOP leaders was on Oct. 10, and Durbin [who reported that the remark was made] was not present.

So why are you doing this, Todd? What good are you attempting to do, for yourself or anyone else? His last paragraph is a fascinating puzzle:

But given the bitter state of relations between Obama and the House Republicans, it’s easy enough to imagine that more than one of them went into their meeting in the Roosevelt Room feeling like the distraught Aunt Em in “The Wizard of Oz,” who told the Toto-taking Miss Gulch: “For 23 years, I’ve been dying to tell you what I thought of you. And now, well, being a Christian woman, I can’t say it!"

Even in Washington — especially in Washington — it may be best to let some thoughts rest — unexpressed.

This notion of morality, impressed deeply onto the brain of Purdum in childhood — the lesson of Auntie Em — somehow is not enough to stop him from writing this column about a statement that was never made. Or is it that Todd's no Auntie Em? He doesn't repress his unkind thoughts, and one of them is that he thinks Republicans — if they fail to say the mean thing that he'd like to skewer them for saying — surely must have thought those mean things and the only reason they didn't say them was because they're a bunch of ludicrously over-virtuous Auntie Ems.

***

I was going to say what kind of grown man has "The Wizard of Oz" as his go-to reference, but damned if Instapundit didn't just whip out a "Wizard of Oz" quote. We're all Friends of Dorothy now.

Somebody's crying for attention.

"The conservative activist who gained fame during the 2012 election for 'unskewing' polls favorable to Barack Obama explained this weekend his newest revelation: the president is 'actually' gay."

Snuggling and snookering.

Was the CapTimes snookered by some web pages about "Snuggle House"? This seems absurd:

According to a recently created website and Facebook page, a new business called "The Snuggle House" is coming to Madison's east side on Oct. 1....

The Snuggle House promotes "touch therapy." Similar businesses and "cuddle parties" have promoted group and professional snuggling because of the increase in oxytocin released during the activity which can lead to a feeling of well-being and happiness....

The Snuggle House does not list an address or phone number. A Facebook message seeking additional information on where, when, why and how the Snuggle House will work was not returned on Tuesday.

If it's a real place, we could have fun mocking it, but come on. I'm stopping at critiquing the journalism on display here. Why are you promoting a (possible) business that doesn't respond to a press contact? It's lame and empty titillation, even as the purported business disclaims any sexual aspect to the services it would sell (if it were real) for $60 an hour.

"Corey Feldman threw himself a $250-per-guy birthday party with lingerie girls..."

"... and some jerk made it look kinda sad."

The problem began with the publication of VICE editor Jamie Lee Curtis Taete’s “I Went To Corey Feldman’s Birthday Party,” a firsthand account of a soiree recently Feldman threw himself in “The Feldmansion”....

Unfortunately, despite Taete’s introductory note explaining he was only allowed to attend on condition of allowing Feldman final edit of the piece—and that the story thus represented “text approved by Corey Feldman”—something about the way Taete captured his Corey’s Angels party didn’t sit well with Feldman....

“It’s called defamation of character and slander n I’m pretty sure those things r still illegal n this country,” Feldman tweeted....

Feldman approved the text, yet he's crying defamation... apparently because of the photographs. Well, go over and look at the photographs. As the headline says: some jerk made it look kinda sad.

"Let’s begin with a working (and provable) premise: Women, if allowed to be fully equal to men, will bring peace to the planet."

WaPo's Kathleen Parker says, arguing that the Hillary for President message should be: "She can save the world."

Even assuming women's equality is the key to world peace, what's the big connection between a female U.S. President and the condition of women around the world? Parker notices that gap in her argument:

What does this have to do with Hillary? Quite a bit.

Rewinding the tape to 1995 at the U.N.’s Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, then-first lady Hillary Clinton empowered women as never before with just a few words: “Human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights, once and for all.”...

At the time, it was a revolutionary statement and helps explain why Hillary is one of the most recognized and revered individuals in the world.

So she read a line in a speech that was an utterly standard proposition of feminism, and she did that because she was the wife of a political leader, and... voila!... recognized and revered... therefore... ????
She became recognized because of the achievements of her husband. That has nothing to do with advancing women's rights. She's revered? Has that been established?! But let's assume she's revered. What does that have to do with advancing women's rights? Like being the wife of a powerful man, a woman's being revered isn't an aspect of female empowerment. The most traditional societies embrace the idea of a woman who inspires reverence, someone who's good and worthy of respect. The Virgin Mary is revered.

Parker continues:

While Americans obsess about Hillary’s hair and married life, others have been studying her for inspiration. To millions, she is a role model and a warrior for women’s right to self-determination. 

She's applying for the job of leading Americans, and we tend to take her married life into account when deciding whether to find her inspiring or not. But Parker tells us there are "millions," apparently not American millions, who would like to model themselves on her, who are inspired in some way that doesn't have to do with achieving prominence through marriage and enduring a husband's infidelity.

As secretary of state, she continued the work of predecessors Condoleezza Rice and Madeleine Albright, who first insisted that women’s rights be part of our foreign policy, and then pushed further. Under Hillary’s watch, Obama made permanent the Office of Global Women’s Issues and appointed longtime Hillary colleague Melanne Verveer as ambassador-at-large.

So women's rights have been part of the work of the State Department for a long time, and Hillary was the third female Secretary of State.

Whether one likes or dislikes Hillary, few dispute that she has matured in her public role. Her résumé can be topped by few and the symbolic power of electing a woman president — especially this woman — can’t be overestimated. 

We just did the symbolic power of electing a black President. Did we overestimate that? I think we did. Isn't it time for substance and not mere symbolism? We've OD'd on symbolism. What are Hillary's achievements? Lines on a résumé aren't the same as accomplishments. In fact, when you've had powerful positions, the lack of specific achievements is the opposite of inspiring.

Many doubtless shudder at the prospect of Hillary Clinton as the most powerful person in the world, but we’ve done worse.

Parker's argument has gone from "She can save the world" to "We could do worse." I can't believe how bad this column is! Why can't The Washington Post do better? Perhaps millions are inspired that a Woman has written a column in The Washington Post. The symbolic power cannot be overestimated!

Parker ends with the assertion that "the world’s women are watching" the American 2016 election "closely." Parker is big on assertions!

In 2007 when I traveled through the Middle East with then-first lady Laura Bush, every woman I met was riveted by the U.S. presidential election and wanted to talk about only this question: Will Hillary win?

Every woman was riveted by the question whether Hillary would win?

In 2008, it seemed possible. In 2016, barring a Benghazi surprise, it seems probable.

Oh, wouldn't it be terrible, wouldn't hope for the world collapse, if Hillary doesn't win, which would be undermined if there were a "Benghazi surprise"? You mean if we actually found out what happened in Benghazi?!

Remember when The Washington Post made its reputation through investigative reporting, when it worked hard at uncovering what powerful people were trying to hide?

Most Embarrassing Sentence in Major Media, 2013.

And the first nominee is:

But hanging in the air was an electrifying sense of being in the presence of an ascendant politician they believed understood the potential of the new digital world they were shaping.

"Seven cardinals but no hawks? Come on!"

"What the State Birds Should Be."

This has been the most depressing post I have ever put together. Three robins but no blue jay? Seven cardinals but no owls or hawks? Five filthy mockingbirds? This is what we pay taxes for, folks.

People who live in the city are apparently so frazzled...

... that there need to be articles explaining the information that it's relaxing to take a walk in the park. 

A walk in the park is a cliché that signifies an extremely easy activity. If you don't know a walk in the park is relaxing, how on earth do these city people survive in the hectic, harried environment I keep reading about?

In other cliché-based advice to frazzled city folk, let me suggest a picnic and a piece of cake. But remember: You can't eat your cake and have it. (Which is often, confusingly, put in reverse chronological order as You can't have your cake and eat it, or as we coddled Baby Boomers like to think: "You can have your cake and eat it too.")

Which is the oldest of those 4 clichés? It's You can't eat your cake and have it, going all the way back to 1562, according to the (unlinkable) OED:

1562   J. Heywood Prov. & Epigr. (1867) 79   What man, I trow ye raue, Wolde ye bothe eate your cake, and haue your cake?

A walk in the park is traced back to 1937:

1937   Amer. Speech 12 155/2   A walk in the park is their [sc. golf caddies'] facetious way of referring to a nine-hole round.

A piece of cake goes back to 1936:

1936   O. Nash Primrose Path 172   Her picture's in the papers now, And life's a piece of cake.

Picnic, in the colloquial figurative sense, is a little older:

1870   J. J. McCloskey Across Continent in America's Lost Plays (1940) 81   Oh, wouldn't that fellow be a picnic for me!

"Left-wing feminists are protesting the Barbie Dreamhouse Experience — a 27,000-square-foot lifesized pink estate — opening in Berlin...."

"'They present an image of cooking, primping and singing, as if it were in some way life-fulfilling,' Socialist Alternative editor Michael Koschitzki, 27, told German newspaper Der Spiegel. 'The Barbie Dreamhouse is the expression of a conventional role model that isn't OK,' he said.

The Berlin movement has led to an "Occupy Barbie Dreamhouse" page on Facebook, which displays a cover image of a dark-haired girl saying, "I can't stand pink!" in German.

Ich habe kein Bock auf Pink! That's from the Facebook page. Google translate would have gone with "Ich kann es nicht ertragen pink!" All I can say is that I am now confident that I know how to say "pink" in German. Google translates "Ich habe kein Bock auf Pink!" as "I have no mood to Pink!" — which reminds me: I have no mood to socialist alternative male German feminists. Ich bin nicht in der Stimmung für eine sozialistische Alternative männlichen deutschen Feministinnen.

Now... how do you say "The Barbie Dreamhouse is the expression of a conventional role model that isn't OK" in German? Der Barbie Traumhaus ist der Ausdruck eines herkömmlichen Vorbild, das nicht OK.

I'm quite sure I know how to say "pink" and "OK" in German. Okay? Ok, raus, Deutsch pinko feministische Männer.

"Two bisexual activists... recommended casual 'water cooler' ways of bringing up your sexual identity through current events."

"'I was thrilled to hear that Clive Davis came out as bisexual, being bisexual myself,' or 'Did you hear that same-sex couples will soon be able to marry in Delaware? It means a lot to me since I’m bisexual.'"

From a NYT column attempting serious advice about how to "come out as bisexual at work." I copied those quotes because I could picture a comedy sketch giving those lines to a character who has no clue about how to sound casual around an office water cooler.

"We asked voters whether they thought hipsters made a positive cultural contribution to society or whether they just 'soullessly appropriate cultural tropes from the past for their own ironic amusement.'"

We = Public Policy Polling.

23% of voters said they made positive cultural contributions while nearly half – 46% – went with soulless cultural appropriation.

Come on. Doesn't everyone know that an amusing and colorful phrase is going to influence the answer? Ridiculous nonsense.

ADDED: The (unlinkable) Oxford English Dictionary traces "hipster" back to 1941.

1941   J. Smiley Hash House Lingo 31   Hipster, a know-it-all.
1946   M. Mezzrow & B. Wolfe Really Blues 374   Hipster, man who's in the know, grasps everything, is alert.
1948   Partisan Rev. XV. 722   Carrying his language and his new philosophy like concealed weapons, the hipster set out to conquer the world.
1956   Observer 23 Sept. 2/5   ‘Hipster’ is modern jazz parlance for ‘hep-cat’.

A perfect display of lameness at the Washington Post.

"Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News, a persistent voice of media skepticism on Benghazi" — The Washington Post puts that article under its "Style" heading — and teases it along with "Met Gala 2013 goes punk," "What to wear to a summer wedding," and "Wedding gift ideas."



This is the main front-paged story on Benghazi this morning in The Washington Post, inviting readers to admire a feisty female:

“I’m a political agnostic,” she says. “I don’t think about who’s good and who’s bad. I just go where the story leads.... People can say what they want about me, I don’t care. I just want to get the information out there.”

But Attkisson, who holds a third-degree black belt in taekwondo, takes a fighting stance when she feels she’s being stonewalled. Which is exactly what she thinks the White House has done to her on Benghazi. In particular, she is irked by the administration’s non-response to a petition for documents that she filed in November under the Freedom of Information Act.

The lady is irked! Irked! She stomps her well-shod foot and looks pretty when angry, I presume. What nonsense! Where was the WaPo's once-legendary investigative reporting? Why the hell are we looking at the Benghazi story today from the perspective of Sharyl Attkisson?

The story has made Attkisson — strong-willed, supremely confident and often controversial — a kind of Rorschach test among journalists.

Oh? She's a Rorschach test? Well, then let me unload my brain — my female and presumably wedding-fashion-gifts-ridden brain — on this WaPo article. I think they're saying hey, look at this lady so we won't look at that other lady: Hillary Clinton, whose actions in the Benghazi affair really do need looking into.

On the home page, WaPo does tease a second Benghazi-related story. It's tucked under the Sharyl Attkisson!!! thing and in fine print: "Republican probe of Benghazi attacks turns to Hillary Clinton."

To Democrats, the efforts amount to a baseless and less-than-subtle crusade to tarnish the credentials of Clinton, one of the country’s most popular political figures and the overwhelming favorite for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination....

Clinton also emerged largely unscathed in January when she testified before Congress about Benghazi.

“She was very smart — at some level because she’s been through so many of these kinds of situations in the past — not to say or do anything that was inaccurate or would in any way be inconsistent with the enormous credibility she earned as secretary of state,” Democratic strategist Chris Lehane said. “Because she protected her credibility, their ability to make a bigger issue out of it is very limited.”

Nothing to see here. Just those terrible Republicans being terrible again, trying to get the jump on 2016, and as for what happened in 2012, well, what difference, at this point, does it make? And take a look: Sharyl Attkisson!!!!

"There are so many different things put under the heading homophobic."

"But I think the personal privacy question of whom one feels comfortable taking a shower with deserves distinct treatment. Maybe tough guys should be tough and not care who sees them naked, but the notion that you don't want anyone looking at your body who is sexually attracted to that kind of body isn't about hating others. It's about personal privacy. Maybe it's lame. I note that the French word for shower is douche."

I'm quoting myself, commenting in a Facebook discussion that began when Jaltcoh (my son) quoted something that I blogged yesterday. Sorry for the excess of me in all that, but I felt the urge to go big with my little French joke.

"If Candice had been in the bottom, she would be gone and we would be on the way to a stretched out final."

"The fact that they are combining the votes says it all. I just hope that when they get their Angie/Amber final they choke on it."

If you understand what that refers to, you have my sympathy.

Solidarity Singers seek recognition as "Longest continuously running singing political protest."

"If the category sounds a little weird... The Guinness website features such idiosyncratic categories as: Longest singing marathon (by an individual): 105 hours."

This is a singing group — documented on this blog a few times — that assembles, sings for a while, then goes home, and comes back again another time. That's nothing like one person singing for 105 hours. That's just a singing group that meets regularly. I'll bet there's a singing group somewhere that has met regularly for half a century. The SS only go back to the Wisconsin protests of 2011.

This group is hungry for publicity, seeking publicity for applying to Guinness with a ludicrous proposal of a new category consisting of the particular thing that they have done and plumping up the category name with a silly misuse of the word "continuously."

The (unlinkable) OED defines "continuous" to mean "Characterized by continuity; extending in space without interruption of substance; having no interstices or breaks; having its parts in immediate connection; connected, unbroken."

ADDED: Here's my video from March 14, 2011, showing the singers, with shots of the songbook and real-time critique by me.



As I said at the time, this was "edited to heighten the absurdity of appropriating the civil rights song 'We Shall Overcome' (about not being free) and that 'Stickin' to the Union' song (about facing union-busting violence). ... The protests have been on behalf of well-paid people with excellent jobs — better jobs than the average Wisconsinite's....  I know they have their complaints, but they are not even the bottom sector of the Wisconsin economy."

"Williams-Sonoma Pulls Pressure Cookers Off Shelves 'Out of Respect.'"

This is like eschewing box-cutters after 9/11.

Kids playing "Humans Versus Zombies" with Nerf guns are criticized by the police for wasting "police resources"...

... after somebody called in to report an automatic weapon on campus. The police are informed in advance that the game is going on, and hundreds of students have had fun with this...

But with heightened suspicions after the Boston bombings, poison sent to the White House, and a concerning powder found at a Beloit health clinic, police will consider whether to allow "Humans Versus Zombies" to continue in the future, [Marc Lovicott, a UW Police spokesman said].

On campus, about a dozen students wearing orange bandannas played outside Sterling Hall on Thursday afternoon.

"I wouldn't think that any of the Nerf blasters would confuse anyone for a real weapon, because most of the new ones are bright yellow or blue," said Steven Brandt, a UW freshman on the zombie team.

"Most school shootings happen from people who are isolated and on their own," he said. "With 'Humans Versus Zombies,' I've made a whole bunch of friends -- it brings people together."

Yes, before you end "Humans Versus Zombies" based on a completely nonexistent threat, consider whether "Humans Versus Zombies" might be saving lives — drawing erstwhile loners into the group and transforming their aggressive ideation through play.

I was walking to school the other day and saw some teenage boys running along after each other wielding bright-colored plastic guns. I commented at the time, nostalgically, about how back in the 1950s there were always lots of kids running around the neighborhood shooting toy guns at each other. It was great to see something like that again. Our guns, back in the 1950s, were real metal and loaded with red paper rolls of caps.

Shutting down the whole game because of a couple stupid calls to the police? Ridiculous. As if all of life must be toned down so nobody ever "wastes" the police's time. This is Madison, Wisconsin, where the police are also intent on ending an early-May block party that's been a big tradition here since 1969... right about the time when terrorists bombed the above-mentioned Sterling Hall.

MEANWHILE, in Boston: Maybe no one is ever supposed to go outside again.

Why we should leave Justin Bieber alone about what he wrote in the guestbook at the Anne Frank Museum.

He wrote: "Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a belieber."

Writing about this causes him to be the main/first thing millions of young people think of when they hear her name. There are, I'm sure, many kids who are hearing about her for the first time in connection with their pop idol, and it's the only thing they know about her. These 2 characters shouldn't have this bond in the mental space of those who don't know much about history. Don't lock in that link!

ADDED: How outrageous is it for Bieber to imagine her as a fan? Have you been to the Anne Frank house? I have. Preserved behind plexiglas on her bedroom wall are pictures of movie stars. (I remember Greta Garbo and Ray Milland.) Based on seeing her room, it was entirely rational for Bieber to think, if we had been contemporaries, she'd love me. Teenage girls do love their pop idols, and remembering the living, not-yet-captured girl does honor her.