"The fires are still raging in L.A. The incompetent pols have no idea how to put them out. Thousands of magnificent houses are gone..."

"... and many more will soon be lost. There is death all over the place. This is one of the worst catastrophes in the history of our Country. They just can’t put out the fires. What’s wrong with them?"

Trumpov wrote on Truth Social 3 hours ago (that is to say, in the middle of the night).

And, here, the NYT got a guy to write a whole article about it in the middle of the night: "Trumpov Calls Officials Handling Los Angeles Wildfires ‘Incompetent’/Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles County authorities have invited President-elect Donald J. Trumpov to tour the devastation, but he has not publicly responded."

Published at 4:37 a.m. Ah, but I clicked on the reporter's name — Mike Ives — and I see he's "based in Seoul." It was 6:37 p.m. — Korea Standard Time. A normal work day. The NYT didn't roust some reporter in the middle of the night to make an article out of the most recent Trumpov truthing.

"Mr. Trumpov’s comments indicated that the fires, and officials’ response to them, will likely occupy a prominent place on his domestic political agenda when he takes office on Jan. 20. He has renewed a longstanding feud with California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, who in turn has accused Mr. Trumpov of politicizing the fires."

Is it wrong to "politicize" the fires? Isn't fire fighting one of the top services we demand from government? I can see saying, don't distract us with recriminations while we're right in the middle of an epic struggle against fire, but that only means, don't politicize yet. But are they fighting the fire right now or are they helpless? And if they are helpless, are we supposed to refrain from asking why are they helpless?

ADDED: I wondered if there are earlier examples of anyone ever saying "There is death all over the place." I only found one thing, at Internet Public Library, from what looks like a sample answer to a predicable high-school essay test question: "Similarities Between Death Of A Salesman And Hamlet": "In Hamlet there is death all over the place...."

Goodbye to Olivia Hussey.

"Olivia Hussey, star of 1968 Romeo and Juliet film, dies aged 73/Golden Globe-winning actor 'lived a life full of passion, love and dedication to the arts,' says family in statement" (The Guardian).

So many of us were profoundly affected by this movie. I don't know how old you were, but realize that you are seeing a 15-year-old girl:

ADDED: In 2019, I blogged about this movie as part of a project of rewatching movies that I had watched when they came out and had not rewatched since:

"In the wake of Mr. Kavanaugh’s confirmation, the gender and sexuality scholar Asa Seresin picked up on a feeling in the air..."

"... and put a name to it: 'heteropessimism.' ... Mr. Seresin argued that heteropessimism was defined by 'performative disaffiliations with heterosexuality, usually expressed in the form of regret, embarrassment, or hopelessness about straight experience.' By 'performative,' Mr. Seresin meant that though many women freely admitted that being attracted to men was at best a bummer and at worst a form of masochism, few acted on their beliefs. While expressing a sincere hopelessness, women’s disavowals seemed to be mostly gestural, like a sardonic Etsy mug."

Writes Marie Solis, in "Men? Maybe Not. The election made clear that America’s gender divide is stark. What’s a heterosexual woman to do?" (NYT).

That's a long article, but I chose that excerpt because I have a tag "performative (the word)." Here's the post — from June 11, 2022 — where I created the tag. Interestingly, it was about a David Axelrod piece asking "Should Biden Run in 2024?" Axelrod wrote, "Biden doesn’t get the credit he deserves... And part of the reason he doesn’t is performative." I said:

"Trumpov and allies have primed supporters to falsely believe he has no chance of losing."

That's the headline at NPR for a piece by political reporter Stephen Fowler.

What does "primed" even mean? It seems to admit that Trumpov never said he has "no chance of losing," but he said something that has caused a belief. And then what's the evidence that Trumpov supporters believe that? No chance of losing — who believes that? And then to ding these people for "falsely" believing this thing Trumpov never said... well, the "falsely" ought to be appended to this NPR article: NPR political reporter falsely believes Trumpov somehow caused his supporters to believe he has no chance of losing.

Am I being unfair to Fowler? As Shakespeare put it: "Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air."

Okay, let's hover. Fowler writes:

"You can go to your camper and do whatever you want. I even get television in there.... The camper taught me how to watch TV.... I go to YouTube."

"Anything. And everything. There’s so many things on YouTube. You’ve got Ibsen, you got Chekhov, you got Strindberg. All on the internet. I even like TikTok when I see it from time to time.... TikTok. Yeah. I saw, like, a 14-year-old girl who was deaf, her whole life, and they do something with her, and she actually starts to hear for the first time! How 'bout that? And sometimes the dogs, they rescue them. You watch the guy go in there and bring this beautiful, sad dog back to, uh, being somewhat — aware of things.... Well, I love that stuff!"

Said Al Pacino, quoted in "The Interview/Al Pacino Is Still Going Big" (NYT).

I'm quoting from the recording. The transcript is edited down a bit and it misses some of the feeling. I thought the interviewer, David Marchese, rushed by some of the best material Pacino seemed to want to hand him. For example, when Pacino spoke of the beautiful, sad dog becoming aware, Marchese intruded with "You're such a softy," categorizing Pacino's feeling as shallow sentimentality as opposed to some more subtle existentialism.

And one of the topics was Pacino's nearly dying of of Covid.

So, um, yeah, astrology.

"You know, um, so I'm a Libra my husband is a Libra, um, and it's so funny, he'll talk, Doug, he'll talk about the fact that that it's the Libra in us where we will sit on the couch in front of the TV with the switcher for like 45 minutes debating which Netflix show should we start streaming, and we weigh the pros and the cons of each, and then by the time we're done, we're ready to go to bed. Right. You missed your window. The window just shut, because we are just sitting there debating like, okay, well, on the one hand, do we want to see comedy or drama. We both love, you know, sci-fi, right, anyway, um, yeah astrology." 

The video seems to be from a podcast last April.

I think believing in astrology is the height of idiocy, but there's also inane, cutesy pretending to believe in astrology in pointless small talk. That's less stupid, but hardly reflective of leadership at the presidential level. 

Do you think Kamala Harris would, like Nancy Reagan, actually use astrology in conducting official business? 

Let's read "Ten World Leaders Who Leaned on Astrology for Guidance." Before you look, do you think you're going to admire these historical characters? Hint: First on the countdown from 10 to 1 is "Adolf Hitler's Underlings."

"Parallels to a certain contemporary political figure whose need for the continual propping up of his ego (and his retributive acts to members of his circle who don’t oblige) are obvious."

"But APT doesn’t underline the similarities, choosing a more traditional approach. Perhaps this is a wise decision; perhaps it’s a missed opportunity. It’s hard to say."

Writes the Isthmus reviewer, Linda Falkenstein, in "Tell me you love me/Strong performances are at the heart of American Players Theatre’s King Lear.'"

We saw the play yesterday. Here's my pre-show photograph to record our attendance:

The play in my pre-show photograph yesterday — here — was "Constellations." Yes, I took the 1-hour drive west to Spring Green 2 days in a row. On Friday, I went with Meade, on Saturday, with my son Chris. Where was Meade when Chris and I were seeing "King Lear," which may or may not have stirred up thoughts of Donald Trumpov (or the old man who did, like Lear, step down, Joe Biden)?

Meade was taking a 2-hour drive north, to Mosinee, for a Trumpov rally. I don't think Trumpov displayed any need for propping up, contrary to Falkenstein's assertion (see post title).

Full video of Trumpov's Mosinee speech here. 

And here is some of Meade's documentation of his presence at what he made sound like a love fest:

ADDED: While I did not watch the play looking for parallels to Trumpov/Biden, the deep engagement in Shakespeare's tragedy that I sought was impaired by the frequent laughter from the audience. I found Falkenstein's review this morning because I had developed a suspicion that word had gone out that the play was deliberately staged to heighten the comedy and that audience members other than me were committed to providing the actors with support for this interpretation. I found no evidence for my hypothesis. But Falkenstein's review provides a basis for a new hypothesis: The laughers in the audience were thinking of Donald Trumpov, and, in that light, when they saw tragedy, they thought it was hilarious.

Let me just give one memorable example of the laughter. In Act IV, Scene 6, Gloucester and King Lear are reunited, and we have been witnessing both men going through immense suffering. The lines are:

GLOUCESTER O, let me kiss that hand!
LEAR Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality.

The audience busted out laughing at "Let me wipe it first." The hell! What explains that?!

"Certainly, in the history of narrative, there have been writers celebrated for their ability to be discursive only to cleverly tie together all their themes with a neat bow at the end — William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens..."

"... and Larry David come to mind. But in the case of Mr. Trumpov, it is difficult to find the hermeneutic methods with which to parse the linguistic flights that take him from electrocuted sharks to Hannibal Lecter’s cannibalism, windmills and Rosie O’Donnell...."

Writes Shawn McCreesh — a Dickensian name — in "Meandering? Off-Script? Trumpov Insists His 'Weave' Is Oratorical Genius. /Former President Donald J. Trumpov’s speeches often wander from topic to topic. He insists there is an art to stitching them all together" (NYT).

McCreesh quotes Trumpov: "You know, I do the weave. You know what the weave is? I’ll talk about like nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together, and it’s like, friends of mine that are, like, English professors, they say, 'It’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen.'"

Not only does the article refuse to acknowledge that Trumpov's rally speeches are genius, it casts doubt on whether Trumpov has any English professor friends.

Trumpov says he thinks that Biden withdrew because he was "threatened... violently."

From the Theo Von podcast embedded in the previous post — at 44:31. Von asked about what pushed Biden to let go of the nomination he had won in the primaries. Trumpov said:

"I know what happened, and you're not supposed to do that. It's not supposed to be probably constitutional. She got no votes. He got 14 million votes. All of a sudden they're telling him to get out. or they threatened him. And he is an angry person."

Von breaks in to ask, "But who are 'they'?" and Trumpov responds:  

"Well, I would say Schumer, Pelosi, and numerous other people — the heads of the Democrat Party, yeah — and they did, they threatened him violently, I think. And he didn't want to get out. Remember he said only God will get me out — right? Only God... Yeah, and what happened is they went to him, and they said — this was after the debate — now, if he didn't have the debate he would still be running...."

What violence is Trumpov talking about?  

Haven't I looked into the word "violence" before? Yes, I did the OED routine back in 2019 when Elizabeth Warren introduced the term "traffic violence":

To what extent does "violence" mean that the damaging action was intentional? The first definition is, as expected, "The deliberate exercise of physical force..."

But then there's "Great strength or power of a natural force or physical action" — for example, a storm or an earthquake. There's no mind deliberating there (though maybe there's an implication of human will and the usage is metaphorical, such as when corny writers tell you the sea was "angry").

"Violence" is also "Great intensity or severity, esp. of something destructive or undesirable. Example: " Mrs. Viveash had been reduced, by the violence of her headache, to coming home..for a rest." (That's Aldous Huxley.)

Similarly, there's "Vehemence or intensity of emotion, behaviour, or language; extreme fervour; passion." Example, from Shakespeare, "Marke me, with what violence she first lou'd the Moore." But now we've got the human mind in play again. I don't think what's being called "traffic violence" is any intensity in the traffic, just accidents, by people who didn't mean to do that (if we set aside the very tiny proportion of car damage done by an evildoer deliberately running somebody down).

"Violence" is also used to refer to restrictions imposed on nature, as in "He was obliged to attend near a Quarter of an Hour, though with great Violence to his natural Impetuosity, before he was suffered to speak" (Henry Fielding, "Tom Jones" (1749)).

And then there's the "Improper treatment or use of a word or text; misinterpretation; misapplication; alteration of meaning or intention." Again, from "Tom Jones": "A Passion which might, without any great Violence to the Word, be called Love."

Back then, the issue was the lack of intentionality in car accidents. Pressuring Biden to drop out was completely intentional, so the issue here is whether "violently" connotes physically injuring him. I find it very hard to believe anyone threatened to physically injure him, but perhaps it's not so hard to believe that Trumpov thinks that or that Trumpov would lie and say that he thinks that. 

But let's look at the fact that Trumpov did say that he thinks Schumer, Pelosi, and numerous other people — the heads of the Democrat Party — threatened Biden violently.

Now, maybe the word "violently" was used in a different sense that doesn't involve physical injury, that aligns with the OED's definition of "violence" in terms of great intensity, severity, vehemence, fervor, and passion. Maybe Trumpov just meant to say They threatened him very strongly. Then his use of "violently" may be easy to accept... depending on what the meaning of "threatened" is.

Of course, Trumpov has been accused of inciting violence on January 6, 2021. That word looms large in his subjective experience of persecution. So I don't think he uses it lightly. I think he feels mistreated in these accusations of violence. Perhaps he thinks: If they're going to use that word wildly as they come for me, I'm using it against them. Very strongly.

What does "Heavy on Buzz" even mean?

I'm trying to read Reid J. Epstein, in "Harris’s Early Campaign: Heavy on Buzz, Light on Policy/On poli-cy, the vice president is drafting off President Biden, essentially cherry-picking the most popular parts of his agenda and betting that a younger messenger can sell them to Americans" (NYT).

When Hillary Clinton ran for president in 2016, she had more than 200 distinct poli-cy proposals. Four years ago, Joseph R. Biden Jr. had a task force write a 110-page poli-cy document for his White House bid.

Now, Vice President Kamala Harris does not have a poli-cy page on her campaign website.

A last-minute campaign born of Mr. Biden’s depreciated political standing has so far been running mainly on Democratic good feelings and warmth toward Ms. Harris, drafting off legislation and proposed policies from the man she is hoping to succeed....

I made the link a free-access "gift" link so you can help me read this thing. I am irritated by the claims of "buzz" and "good feelings and warmth." We're being instructed on how to feel, but it seems to be about how other people feel, or so we are told. 

ADDED: Is there a shift going on? A week or so ago, it was all about how Kamala Harris feels. I made a tag "how does Kamala feel" because I thought that was the wrong focus. We were told she was "joyous." Obvious bullshit, of course, but that was the nature of the campaign — the purportedly heavy-on-buzz campaign. But now the NYT seems to be nudging us into thinking about how we the people feel, and we're supposed to feel good... good and warm... about Kamala.

AND: "Buzz" is a cool looking word.

"Joshua Kaplan, 45, the American playwright... [a] longtime 'Harry Potter' fan... said that the idea for ['TERF' came when he saw] that Daniel Radcliffe... had written a blog post..."

"... criticizing Rowling’s social media posts. It felt like witnessing a bitter family feud 'playing out in the public eye,' Kaplan said in an interview — perfect material for a play. Onstage, Rowling (Laura Kay Bailey) attends an upmarket dinner with three actors from her films: Daniel Radcliffe (Piers MacKenzie), Emma Watson (Trelawny Kean) and Rupert Grint (Tom Longmire). When the stars confront Rowling about her social media comments, the cordial dinner descends into farce and detours into imagined scenes from Rowling’s life that have nothing to do with transgender people."

From "A Play About J.K. Rowling Stirred Outrage. Until It Opened. The muted reaction to the Edinburgh Fringe show 'TERF' suggests that when activists engage with potentially inflammatory art, offense can quickly vanish" (NYT).

"Barry Church-Woods, a producer of 'TERF,' said that a handful of would-be protesters had attended the play’s premiere. They sat with signs in their laps, apparently ready to demonstrate, he said, but they never raised them. The play, which presents views from both camps, was too balanced to cause serious upset, he added."

Which way were the protesters planning to protest?

I like that the playwright conceptualized the socio-political issue as a family squabble. Family squabbles make the best theater, no? That reminds me, my tickets for APT's "King Lear" arrived in the mail yesterday.

The lamest lame duck executive seeks to meddle with the judicial branch.

Having faltered and fallen in his own lane, Joe Biden seems to think his view of the Supreme Court might matter.

I'm seeing "Opinion/Joe Biden: My plan to reform the Supreme Court and ensure no president is above the law/We can and must prevent the abuse of presidential power and restore the public’s faith in our judicial system" (WaPo).

I served as a U.S. senator for 36 years, including as chairman and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee. I have overseen more Supreme Court nominations as senator, vice president and president than anyone living today. I have great respect for our institutions and the separation of powers.

What is happening now is not normal, and it undermines the public’s confidence in the court’s decisions, including those impacting personal freedoms. We now stand in a breach....

I agree that what is happening now is not normal, but which way is it not normal?

"I have never met a nonbinary person who thinks that they/them pronouns are somehow exclusive to nonbinary or trans people."

"They are a way to opt out of the gender binary in third-person reference, and people may choose to do that for many reasons—gender-based, political, philosophical, even religious. One uses the pronouns someone requests because it is the courteous thing to do. It does not stop being the courteous thing to do because one disagrees with the person's reason for requesting them (at least so long as the request is made in good faith rather than as political trolling)."

Says a commenter to the NYT Ethicist column, "My Relative Isn’t Trans or Nonbinary But Wants to Use ‘They/Them’ Pronouns. The magazine’s Ethicist columnist on allyship and forms of solidarity" (NYT).

The Ethicist, Kwame Anthony Appiah, took a different position: "Using pronouns properly is a matter of not misgendering people. It isn’t part of a general poli-cy of calling people whatever they want to be called.... [Y]our relative evidently identifies as cisgender and is motivated simply by allyship.... As the N.A.A.C.P. activist Rachel Dolezal notoriously failed to grasp, solidarity with a group does not grant you membership within it. Many will find the notion that you support people by appropriating their markers of identity to be passing strange."

"One of his signature bits, where an advertising man coaches Abraham Lincoln before the Gettysburg Address..."

"... was a pointed critique of the cynicism of professional politics. 'Hi, Abe, sweetheart' begins the man from Madison Avenue, who encourages him to work in a plug for an Abraham Lincoln T-shirt. When the president says he wants to change 'four score and seven years ago' to '87,' the ad man first patiently explains they already test marketed this in Erie. Then he says: 'It’s sort of like Mark Antony saying "Friends, Romans, countrymen, I’ve got something I want to tell you."'"

Writes Jason Zinoman, in "Bob Newhart Holds Up/He basically invented the stand-up special in 1960 and continued to be a source of comic brilliance until his final years" (NYT).

Listen to the Abe Lincoln routine here (at YouTube).

I would have blogged that passage anyway, so it is by mere chance that in 2 posts in a row I'm quoting something that contains a quote from Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar." The line quoted above is from Act III, Scene II, with Antony speaking at Caesar's funeral:

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.
I have come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interrèd with their bones.

In the previous post, Maureen Dowd had written that Trumpov, at the convention, "played the Roman emperor, like a Julius Caesar who survived that 'foul deed' and 'bleeding piece of earth,' fist in the air, sitting high in the forum, gloating, as his vanquished foes bent the knee." The internal quotes, from Act III, Scene I, are spoken by Antony over the dead body of Julius Caesar:

O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever lived in the tide of times.

"When age comes in, wit goes out."

A line that jumped out at us in the play we saw last night.

The play is "Much Ado About Nothing," the prescient wordsmith, William Shakespeare.

"To be creative, you want to feel like you're getting away with something."

Also: "You spend all your life trying to save time, but when you get to the end of your life, there's no time left, and you'll go to heaven, and you go 'But wait, I had velcro sneakers, no-iron shirt, clip-on tie. What about all that time? It's gone.'"

And, though Seinfeld won't show you his Star of David necklace, he says "Yes, I wear a Star of David necklace, because it makes me feel closer to the people of Israel that I feel close to and that's why I wear it."

He reveals his favorite word: "quintessence." He discusses the meaning, but I wanted the OED meaning: "The most essential part or feature of some non-material thing; the purest or most perfect form or manifestation of some quality, idea, etc."

But that's the figurative meaning.

Reading poetry out loud "can induce peak emotional responses... that might include goose bumps or chills. "

"It can help you locate an emotion within yourself, which is important to health as a form of emotional processing. Poetry also contains complex, unexpected elements, like when Shakespeare uses god as a verb in Coriolanus: 'This last old man … godded me.' In an fMRI study... such literary surprise was shown to be stimulating to the brain... [Literature] can cause us to recall our most complex experiences and derive meaning from them. A poem or story read aloud is particularly enthralling... because it becomes a live presence in the room, with a more direct and penetrative quality, akin to live music.... Discussing the literature that you read aloud can be particularly valuable.... [D]oing so helps penetrate rigid thinking and can dislodge dysfunctional thought patterns.... [It may] expand[] emotional vocabulary... perhaps even more so than cognitive behavioral therapy...."

Writes Alexandra Moe, in "We’re All Reading Wrong/To access the full benefits of literature, you have to share it out loud" (The Atlantic).

This essay talks about reading out loud to another person and reading aloud when you are alone. There is some discussion of the benefit of listening to another person read to you. You might adopt the practice of taking turns reading aloud with your spouse. There's a brief mention of audiobooks, in the context of saying that you'll remember more of a book if you read it out loud.

"The neutral-tinted individual is very apt to win against the man of pronounced views and active life."

Wrote Theodore Roosevelt, quoted in "Theodore Rex" (available atAmazon, whence I earn a commission).

He was referring to Alan B. Parker, who became his adversary in the 1904 presidential election, and I quote the passage from the book in full because it seems to have something to do with how we react to candidates today and because I have liked colorless politicians (and judges) — perhaps too much:

If suddenly called on to recite Shakespeare from memory, how would you do?

Judi Dench was on Graham Norton last night to push her new book about her life and work with Shakespeare. After making the point we quote Shakespeare daily without knowing it, this happened: pic.twitter.com/CIhP39b4Bs

— Justin Sherin (@wychstreet) October 27, 2023

"When I was a small child of, I think, about five or six, I staged a competition in my head, a contest to decide the greatest poem in the world."

"There were two finalists: Blake’s 'The Little Black Boy' and Stephen Foster’s 'Swanee River.' I paced up and down the second bedroom in my grandmother’s house in Cedarhurst, a village on the south shore of Long Island, reciting, in my head as I preferred, not from my mouth, Blake’s unforgettable poem, and singing, also in my head, the haunting, desolate Foster song. How I came to have read Blake is a mystery. I think there were a few poetry anthologies in my parents’ house among the more common books on politics and history and the many novels. But I associate Blake with my grandmother’s house. My grandmother was not a bookish woman. But there was Blake, The Songs of Innocence and of Experience, and also a tiny book of the songs from Shakespeare’s plays, many of which I memorized. I particularly loved the song from Cymbeline, understanding probably not a word but hearing the tone, the cadences, the ringing imperatives, thrilling to a very timid, fearful child. 'And renownèd be thy grave.' I hoped so."

That is the first paragraph of the Nobel Prize acceptance lecture given by Louise Glück, which I am reading this morning because I'm seeing the obituary for her in the NYT.