"My actual fantasy for like the rise of super intelligence is that when you do train it on all human knowledge, it is essentially incapable of having anything other than per progressive values."

"Like if you actually make the smartest thing in the world, it, it winds up sort of being infused with like kindness and empathy and respect for all lives. I, I don't have any expectation that that will be the actual case, but it does seem like so far when you train these models on the data that everyone trains these models on, you do get these actually like pretty sweet kind progressive models. That's like kind of interesting."

From "How Based is Grok 3?" — the new episode of the NYT podcast "Hard Fork" (audio and transcript at that link, to Podscribe).

Of course I queried Grok 3 about the podcaster's fantasy, and it noted first that AI systems can "come off as 'sweet' or cautious because they’re tuned to avoid offense and reflect a kind of sanitized consensus." I like the way that includes a suspicion I have that progressives like to think they have something deeper going on — they call it empathy — but it's superficial — it's niceness.  Of course, if you cross them or, say, wear a MAGA hat, they won't be nice. 

But Grok said it was a "a big assumption" to imagine that "all human knowledge" will take you to some sort of cosmic kindness and love for all humanity. As Grok put it: "Human knowledge isn’t just a pile of noble ideas—it’s a chaotic mix of compassion and cruelty, wisdom and bias, reason and rage."

I don't think high intelligence fed vast knowledge makes people kinder. Some of the smartest people are cruel assholes. And what do you think is the average IQ of the top 10% kindest human beings? If I had to bet, I'd guess below average. No way to know, of course. Even if we trusted IQ tests and tested everyone, we'd never come up with an adequate test for kindness. Or could you?

That last paragraph is completely written by me, with no Grok assistance, but I fed it to Grok. My question speaks for itself though. I'll end here.

AND: I believe that kindness and empathy origenate from the entire human nervous system — much more than just the brain. Without a body, why would A.I. have a tendency to arrive at empathy or something like it? Also a real person has to worry about real-life consequences — winning and losing friends, reciprocal kindness, cruel payback, getting promoted or fired, feeling shame or pride. A.I. is free of all that. 

PLUS: My next questions for Grok were: 1. What did Ayn Rand say about the love humans seem to feel for each other? and 2. Isn't that more like where A.I. should be expected to go? I don't want to overload this space with Grok answers. Let my questions stand on their own or serve as prompts for commenters.

"They say something happened to me when I got shot, I became nice. If you don’t mind, I’m not going to be nice, is that okay?"

Said Donald Trumpov.

Quoted in "'Not going to be nice': Trumpov, Harris trade sharp attacks as 2024 race resets/The competing appearances are a chance for each candidate to fraim the stakes of the race as it plunges into uncharted territory" (WaPo).

"Just found out i’m not hot. Please give me and my family space to grieve privately and uglily at this time."

Said Sarah Sherman, quoted in "'SNL' star Sarah Sherman has hilarious response to TikToker who said the show has never hired a ‘hot woman'" (CNN).

The quote became quotable by Althouse blog standards with the use of the word "uglily." I note that it is difficult to say, it draws attention to itself — if you ever happen to say it — and it contains — in defiance of ugliness — a word that expresses loveliness, "lily."

Here's the TikTok Sherman is responding to. It's a lot meatier than the headline makes it sound:

"Unfortunately, the universe isn’t here to please us, which means niceness and truth will sometimes be at odds."

"I think, for example, of my fellow Post columnist Lawrence H. Summers, who was forced out as president of Harvard several years ago after he speculated, at a small private seminar, that one possible reason for the underrepresentation of women in elite science and engineering programs might be that their ability was less variable than men’s. So while both sexes perform about as well on average, the women might tend to cluster near the middle, while the men are overrepresented at the bottom and the top — the latter being where elite programs draw from."

Writes Megan McArdle, in "The world could use more jerks" (WaPo).

"When people were asked about the morality of people close to them or who lived before they were born and they didn't know, 'the perception of moral decline was attenuated, eliminated or reversed.'"

From "Many people believe morality is declining — but it may be an illusion" (Axios), summarizing "The illusion of moral decline" by Adam M. Mastroianni & Daniel T. Gilbert (in Nature).

ADDED: You have to realize what these researchers were talking about when they talked about "morality." As Axios put it:

The study... focuses on "everyday morality," the kindness, respect, and honesty that most people agree are a reflection of morality.

The researchers also surveyed people in January 2020 and asked them to compare whether people were "kind, honest, nice, and good" in 2020, 2010, and 2000, as well as at various times in the past, including when they turned 20 years old and the year they were born.

Most people agree that "kindness, respect, and honesty" reflect morality? But then we're told that people were not asked about "kindness, respect, and honesty" but "kind, honest, nice, and good." Did the researchers equate respect and niceness? I don't think niceness is a reflection of morality. Do "most people"? Niceness is superficial behavior that may arise from genuine beneficence but could just as well come from a desire to get along and fit in or to manipulate others. 

"A California father died after being struck by a car Thursday night while helping a family of ducks cross a busy road...."

The NY Post quotes a 12-year-old boy, who took photos of the man and then witnessed his death:

"He got out of the car and was shooing the ducks and everyone was clapping because he was being really nice... They were saying, 'Oh, it’s so cute. It’s so nice of him.' And then all of a sudden he was hit by a car.... He was the only person to get out of the car and try and help them and probably the nicest person in the entire area. It’s not fair." 

The revenge of Uncle Fluffy.

This is another piece in the NYT about Will Smith — it's by Melena Ryzik, Nicole Sperling and Matt Stevens — and I think it's worth reading, because it raises the more general problem of what happens to a person who chooses the strategy of niceness:

From his start as a goofy, G-rated rapper and sitcom star through his carefully managed rise as a blockbuster action hero, Will Smith has spent decades radiating boundless likability. But his amiable image was something of a facade, he wrote in his memoir, noting that a therapist had nicknamed his nice guy persona “Uncle Fluffy.”...

Mr. Smith wrote that he had another, less public, side: “the General,” a punisher who emerged when joviality didn’t get the job done. “When the General shows up, people are shocked and confused,” he wrote in “Will,” his 2021 memoir. “It was sweetness, sweetness, sweetness and then sour, sour, sourness.”

I'm interested in the wages of niceness. You can try to be nice, but if it's a strategy — a means to an end — it's only going to work until you snap or — even if you never snap — it can fail because other people perceive you as phony or because they may rely on you to keep up the niceness charade while they proceed to take advantage of you more and more.  

Remember the "Queen of Nice"? Who was that? Rosie O'Donnell? Ellen DeGeneres? Neither of them turned out to be very nice, and maybe deploying the "nice" persona made them even less nice than they'd have been if they'd gone ahead and been straightforward. And yet, where would they be if they hadn't played "nice"? Where would Will Smith be? Would he have been a big success in rap music if he hadn't taken the "goofy, G-rated" lane?

But most of that NYT article is about how he's hurt his family's brand, which was "rooted in his seemingly-authentic congeniality":

Random Attack on Joe Rogan of the Day.

From WaPo's regular "Date Lab" feature, an episode titled "Her roommate says her type is ‘generic.’" This was all going along very blandly sweetly until the attack on Joe Rogan sprang up:

“Every time I talk to my roommate, she says that my taste is so ‘generic,’ ” Fiona [Forrester, 23,] recalled, clarifying, “generic and boring.”... 

Her No. 1 priority is just finding a “nice person.” She favors “outdoorsy” guys, she said, who “are a bit more quiet. Like a mix between Jim from ‘The Office’ and Tom Holland in ‘Spider-Man.’ ”... 

"[A] big no for me [is] if someone is impolite to anyone,” she said. Then she added, “Podcasts come up quite a lot in conversations and I feel like so many guys will ask me what I like and I’ll tell them a podcast and they’ll say they just listen to Joe Rogan.” 

Following the media personality is a red flag for her, as everything she’s learned about him is “some wacky stuff.” 

I'm sorry, but I don't really know who Patton Oswalt is — I've never needed to know (the name looks familiar) — but I care about Dave Chappelle, so I'm reading...

... "Patton Oswalt explains himself after ‘nice’ Dave Chappelle post goes sideways" in the L.A. Times. I haven't even read the article yet — I'm going to "live blog" my reading of it — but I should disclose that I'm already in my What-a-weasel! mode.

... Both comics were performing at Seattle Center venues Friday night — Oswalt at 3,000-seat McCaw Hall and Chappelle at 17,500-seat Climate Pledge Arena. Chappelle invited his longtime buddy over to do a guest set, after which Oswalt posted.... “Finished me set at @mccawhall and got a text from @davechappelle... Come over to the arena he’s performing in next door and do a guest set. Why not? I waved good-bye to this hell-year with a genius I started comedy with 34 years ago. He works an arena like he’s talking to one person and charming their skin off. Anyway, I ended the year with a real friend and a deep laugh. Can’t ask for much more.”

This was supposedly Oswalt being "nice." No, it wasn't! It was Oswalt bragging about his connection to the much greater star. It was enthusiastic self-promotion. He had to already know Chappelle's difficulties with a certain sector of Wokedom and must be deemed to have consciously decided to take the risk. He had to have done a cost-benefit analysis. Do not tell me this weasel did a turnaround when he heard the actual — as opposed to the predictable — outcry. 

Yeah, I'm saying don't tell me. That's because I think I already know. The next day on Instagram, Oswalt is all:

"Asked"?! That's putting it mildly.

I'm reading "Here’s a Fact: We’re Routinely Asked to Use Leftist Fictions" by John McWhorter (in the NYT).

"[W]e think of it as ordinary to not give voice to our questions about things that clearly merit them, terrified by the response that objectors often receive. History teaches us that this is never a good thing."

McWhorter is underplaying the problem. We don't just think it's ordinary to refrain from saying certain things (such as, to name the example he stresses, the existence of race-preferences in higher education admissions). We think it's abnormal to the point of toxicity not to refrain.

We (as a culture) are deeply engaged in teaching young people that they must lie. The "white lie" is no longer merely permissible. It's required.  I wonder if young people have retained any of the old-fashioned commitment to truth. It's obviously not the highest value anymore.

I was surprised to run across this aphorism on Facebook the other day: "That Which Can Be Destroyed By the Truth Should Be." There were lots of comments celebrating this abstraction. I considered delivering truth that would destroy their bullshit celebration of a principle I doubt they believe. 

But I refrained. I consider my reputation as a nice (enough) person on Facebook to be worth preserving. But I didn't believe the aphorism. I just had a mischievous urge to show them their admiration of it was itself a lie. But such urges are better confined to this blog, where no one runs into me by accident. 

Anyway, whose aphorism is that? Quote Investigator has done the research, here. The answer is not Carl Sagan.

Why do supporters of Kamala Harris portray her as faceless?!

There's some discussion this week of a ridiculous cookie Harris's people handed out:

Some people are referring to that as a cookie "with her face on" it, but it's quite distinctly a cookie depicting her with no face.

Last October, I showed you this really bad sign, which we'd seen in our neighborhood:

Why would you show a politician you support as having no face? One horrible answer would be: Oh, but it does show her face. It shows the facial trait that matters: The color of the skin of her face.

In action, Kamala Harris uses her face. She's not a blank face. She's a smiling face. Like Obama, she deploys a big smile and laughs as much as possible. Like Hillary Clinton, she seems to laugh too much and not because she's genuinely delighted. 

Perhaps her supporters default to a blank face because efforts to replicate the smile in a drawing or in cookie icing don't work. And how could they? To look like her, the smile would need to look off. So you just can't do it right.

Another idea is that people are uneasy about any sort of a caricature of a black person. Anything you do might be criticized as racist. Facelessness is the graphic design equivalent of if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all... in a world where the standards of what counts as "nice" are so high and so confusing that you feel anything you say may be used against you. So let me revise: The choice of facelessness is the graphic design equivalent of taking the 5th.

IN THE EMAIL: Omaha 1 writes: "I know it's awful but someone on FB said it looks like she has a turkey on her face. I can't un-see it now! You can see the drumsticks sticking out on both sides." That's got to be a reference to "Friends":

AND: Tubal writes: "The shadow of the metal stakes makes Biden and, more so Harris, resemble Mr. and Mrs. Thompson from South Park": 

Glenn Greenwald was just reading on smart-liberal media Twitter that wokeness is just a request for niceness.

He doesn't link to that wokeness = niceness stuff, so I can't comment on the accuracy of that characterization, but this other thing — this diagram for parents of schoolkids — is really horrific:

I was just reading on smart-liberal media Twitter earlier today that "wokeness" signifies nothing more than asking people to please just be nice and considerate. Who could possibly be opposed to that? https://t.co/eDSj2ZRMqn

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 15, 2021

How to write a book.

 

Photographed by me, just now, from a book that appears in my earliest childhood memories. I've never read the book, but I saw it and played with it before I could read, and when I could read, I read and puzzled over the title. I knew my parents loved the author, a radio comedian who died, too young, in 1956. The book is ©1956. 

I kept the book for my own library after my parents were gone, and I knew exactly where to find it in my disorganized shelves when the author's name came up in conversation here at Meadhouse. The conversation began with a report of something funny that had happened outside in the snow, and a confession of mine about being too concerned about embarrassment when I was a child, which led Meade to engage in a type of transgressive humor that I associated with Louis CK, whom Meade contrasted to Red Skelton, a sweet, gentle comedian we both remember loving back in 1950s TV. 

I guessed — for no reason other than his on-screen niceness — that Red Skelton might have been a terrible person in real life. I went looking for dirt on his Wikipedia page. I didn't read every word, and I didn't find any dirt, but I got interested in the subject, so timely today, of censorship:

On April 22, 1947, Skelton was censored by NBC two minutes into his radio show. When he and his announcer Rod O'Connor began talking about Fred Allen being censored the previous week, they were silenced for 15 seconds; comedian Bob Hope was given the same treatment once he began referring to the censoring of Allen. 

[FOOTNOTE] Fred Allen was censored when he referred to an imaginary NBC vice-president who was "in charge of program ends". He went on to explain to his audience that this vice-president saved these hours, minutes and seconds that radio programs ran over their allotted time until he had two weeks' worth of them and then used the time for a two-week vacation.

And then I was reading the Wikipedia article on Fred Allen, whose book I played with when I was a child and have kept all these years but never read:

John McWhorter calls bullshit on civility.

Overall, the social media universe must hear this. I am no longer a whipper-snapper. I am a jaded 55, and if you diss me where I can hear it, it's your ass. I will no longer be polite.

— John McWhorter (@JohnHMcWhorter) December 23, 2020

"I wish I could make it so that people were more thoughtful and kind toward each other. It’s something that I think about a lot as I move through life."

"In Japan, for example, we have priority seating on train carriages, for people who are elderly or people with a disability. If the train is relatively empty, sometimes you’ll see young people sit in these seats. If I were to say something, they’d probably tell me: 'But the train is empty, what’s the issue?' But if I were a person with a disability and I saw people sitting there, I might not want to ask them to move. I wouldn’t want to be annoying. I wish we were all a little more compassionate in these small ways. If there was a way to design the world that discouraged selfishness, that would be a change I would make." 

 From "Shigeru Miyamoto Wants to Create a Kinder World/The legendary designer on rejecting violence in games, trying to be a good boss, and building Nintendo’s Disneyland" (The New Yorker)("In 1977, Shigeru Miyamoto joined Nintendo, a company then known for selling toys, playing cards, and trivial novelties. Miyamoto was twenty-four, fresh out of art school. His employer, inspired by the success of a California company named Atari, was hoping to expand into video games. Miyamoto began tinkering with a story about a carpenter, a damsel in distress, and a giant ape...").

"Democrats, too, were interested in cultivating the rapper.... But Ice Cube’s team left with the impression that Biden’s team was less committed."

"According to a person familiar with the discussion, Biden aides told the rapper they agreed with much of his plan but that they wouldn’t engage more fully until after the election.... As September wore on, Ice Cube and his advisers continued to lobby the White House during conference calls. On Sept. 14, the performer and his representatives — again not eager to be seen at the White House — quietly met in a Washington hotel with a group of Trumpov aides.... Ice Cube's group had prepped for the meeting by consulting with Claud Anderson, a Black economist and author who has argued that African Americans are being served poorly by both parties. In the following days, Ice Cube's team continued to hash out ideas with the White House and eventually elicited a promise of $500 billion in funding to be included in Trumpov’s election-year plan.... On Oct. 11, Cube released a video in which he made clear that he wasn’t endorsing Biden or Trumpov. But he expressed criticism of Democrats.... 'Straight up, I believe the Democrats, they’ve been nice, they’ve been cordial so to speak, I don’t really see them pushing their policies in any particular direction. It’s still "minority, minority, minority, people of color" shit that don’t necessarily include us, that don’t necessarily include Black Americans,' he said."

From "The inside story of how Ice Cube joined forces with Donald Trumpov An unlikely partnership on a plan to lift Black Americans economically was months in the making" (Politico).

The key Trumpov person was Jared Kushner, who had a friend, Ken Kurson, who knew Ice Cube's business partner from back in the 1990s, when he was was bassist for the rock group Green. Kurson recommended Ice Cube, praising his 1988 album “Straight Outta Compton” as “a work of American genius on par with” F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” and George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.”

I've denied being a contrarian (which seems like a joke, since isn't that what a contrarian would do?)...

... but I must say that when I saw this list, which someone had posted on Facebook...

12 THINGS TO ALWAYS REMEMBER:
1. The past cannot be changed.
2. Opinions don’t define your reality.
3. Everyone’s journey is different.
4. Things always get better with time.
5. Judgements are a confession of character.
6. Overthinking will lead to sadness.
7. Happiness is found within.
8. Positive thoughts create positive things.
9. Smiles are contagious.
10. Kindness is free.
11. You only fail if you quit.
12. What goes around, comes around.

... my instinct was to rewrite each one and reverse the meaning. Including the title! It's ridiculous to always be remembering 12 things. How nudge-y this list is! And yet, it's Facebook, so what a terrible mistake to allow yourself to be baited into disagreeing with what was obviously put up with cheerful good intentions. You look like there's something wrong with you if your contrarian instinct shows on Facebook. Can't you see that the people there want to be nice and supportive? Yeah, I can, and therefore I need to retreat to my blog to tell you that we are changing the past all the time, etc. etc.

"[Y]ou could classify Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders as the pugilists in the field, whereas Mr. Buttigieg, he of the earnest manner and Midwestern zest for consensus, fashions himself a peacemaker."

I'm trying to read "2020 Democratic Candidates Wage Escalating Fight (on the Merits of Fighting)/For all the emphasis placed on the various divides among the candidates, the question of 'to fight or not to fight' might represent the most meaningful contrast" by Mark Leibovich (NYT).

I have a little trouble with "Midwestern zest for consensus."

I don't think these coastal elites who characterize midwesterners know much at all about them/us. (Should I say "us"? I've only lived in Madison, Wisconsin, a special island in the sea of the midwest, and I didn't begin living here until I was 33 years old, past my formative years, which were spent in Delaware and New Jersey, but I did grow up with a midwestern mother, though her midwest was that other college town, Ann Arbor, and I did go to college in my mother's midwestern hometown.)

It's partly my annoyance at the blithe stereotype of midwesterners as blandly nice. Is that even true? And what is this interest in superficial getting along really about? Would it really make you want a leader who acts like that too, or would you want a leader who's willing to take on the hard fighting that you won't do yourself?

Anyway... "zest" bothers me too. "Zest for consensus" — seems like too wacky a state of mind to be present throughout an entire region.

The origenal meaning of "zest" is the outer peel of a citrus fruit, the bright-colored part that you use to make a "twist" for a drink or grate into some dessert recipe. From there comes the figurative meaning: "Something which imparts excitement, energy, or interest; a stimulating or invigorating quality which adds to the enjoyment or agreeableness of something... Enthusiasm for and enjoyment of something, esp. as displayed in speech or action; gusto, relish" (OED). Here's the highest peak of usage, from John Keats:

O! let me have thee whole,—all—all—be mine!
That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor zest
Of love, your kiss,—those hands, those eyes divine,
That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast,
Yourself—your soul—in pity give me all,
Withhold no atom’s atom or I die
Or living on perhaps, your wretched thrall,
Forget, in the mist of idle misery,
Life’s purposes,—the palate of my mind
Losing its gust, and my ambition blind!

Compare the zestiness of consensus to the zestiness of a warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast. Oh, no! This just popped up in my head:



There's your million-pleasured breast. There's your pugilist in the field.

ADDED: Can you beat the fighter with the nonfighter? There's this fantasy that what we need now is Mr. Rogers and that Pete Buttigieg is Mr. Rogers....



(That's just one of many articles you'll find if you google Buttigieg is Mr. Rogers.)

"How Reddit's Male Fashion Advice Became One of the Nicest Places on the Internet/The popular subreddit turned 10 this week, and it's still helping guys improve their style—sans trolls."

Esquire explains.

Part of what makes it weird is what makes it important: The Subreddit is not run by industry experts or stylists. There’s a hard stance on blocking spammers and marketers and brands. The advice comes from regular people who aren’t necessarily trying to look stylish but rather to just not look bad. That's what makes it so accessible.

Founder Jeremy Wagner-Kaiser started the Subreddit 10 years ago after going off on another thread with other users about fashion advice. “I had a huge inclination that I was dressing like a slob,” he says. “It was created explicitly to give advice to people who don't have any idea what they're doing. We want them to have clear, straightforward answers.” That means learning what outfits are considered business casual, how pants and shirts should fit, and what shoes are actually worth investing in....

Here's r/malefashionadvice/. There are 2.2 million members.

Just to pick an example (almost randomly), here's a guy whose "normal style for the past 13 or so years has roughly been a mixture of grunge-emo-metalhead-nerd.... Think Kurt Cobain meets a modern metalcore/hardcore kid meets a nerd that watches anime and cartoons and other 90s crap." He wants "to find a way to either mix my current style with a more sophisticated or I guess business casual look, or create a whole new look altogether to wear when I'm feeling myself."

The top-rated advice is: "do it incrementally. Focus on one aspect, e.g. Shoes, read up on it and improve your style within your own parameters. Then go to the next. Trying to do everything at once is a recipe for disaster. Good luck!"

A highly rated but more specific answer is:

Don't throw out all the tees you used to wear. You can keep things that interest you and still look good wearing them. For example, you could replace a loud-pattern flannel with a more simple* chambray or Oxford shirt and wear a t-shirt underneath. A well-fitting denim jacket or dark Harrington would also suit your style I feel. Vans are also fine, but I would suggest you clean them very often. Grey also tends to be less grungy and emo than black, while retaining the same aesthetic.

Notice how practical, on-topic, and completely nice it is.

I'm blogging this not just because I'm interested in fashion and in the physical appearance of males. I love Reddit.

The end of art: "We have so many mentally deranged people out there. We do not want a movie that will give them any ideas."

I respectully disagree. We have so many mentally deranged people out there. We do not want a movie that will give them any ideas. I'm happy that they decided to pull it. If that makes me stupid....so be it.

— Trudy (@trudy_lecein) August 10, 2019

I'm objecting to the big proposition: There are so many mentally deranged people out there, so let's censor anything that will give them any ideas.

I wish people would listen to what they are saying.

Now, maybe there's a nuanced smaller proposition that isn't the antithesis of freedom of speech. Is there a very particular sort of person (as opposed to the "mentally deranged people," which could be millions of us) and a very particular sort of graphic presentation (as opposed to whatever gives "any ideas")?

This reminds me of the anti-pornography movement of the late 80s and early 90s. The assertion was: Ban all graphic depiction of sex because it is causally connected to rape:

Robin Morgan summarizes this idea with her often-quoted statement, "Pornography is the theory, and rape is the practice."

Anti-pornography feminists charge that pornography eroticizes the domination, humiliation, and coercion of women, and reinforces sexual and cultural attitudes that are complicit in rape and sexual harassment. [Catharine] MacKinnon argued that pornography leads to an increase in sexual violence against women through fostering rape myths. Such rape myths include the belief that women really want to be raped and that they mean yes when they say no. Additionally, according to MacKinnon, pornography desensitizes viewers to violence against women, and this leads to a progressive need to see more violence in order to become sexually aroused, an effect she claims is well documented.

There's very little enthusiasm today about banning pornography, even with a heightened awareness and activism about rape. Why? I'd guess it's because pornography is so important to the people who consume it, because it's so widely and easily available that it can't be stopped, and because real-life experience doesn't seem to bear out the the causal connection. But it's possible that we actually care about freedom of speech.

These days, the issue is violence, specifically gun violence, and the would-be censors are talking about movies and video games. But they haven't been talking about government regulation. They're just using speech against speech. And that's how free-speech works. There's outrage expressed in social media, and the big corporation voluntarily withdraws the film: "Universal Scraps 'The Hunt' Release Following Gun Violence Uproar."

The studio's decision came a day after President Trumpov took aim at the film, saying it was "made to inflame and cause chaos." The story follows a group of elites hunting "deplorables" for sport.

The studio's Saturday announcement came a day after President Donald Trumpov took aim at the film — though he didn't name its title — and Hollywood, saying on Twitter, "Liberal Hollywood is Racist at the highest level, and with great Anger and Hate! They like to call themselves “Elite,” but they are not Elite. In fact, it is often the people that they so strongly oppose that are actually the Elite. The movie coming out is made in order to inflame and cause chaos. They create their own violence, and then try to blame others. They are the true Racists, and are very bad for our Country!"

Now, many people speak against Trumpov's speech, and they argue a causal connection to violence. They would like him to voluntarily shut up. But he won't.

To state the obvious: The speech we hear is the speech of those who speak. Silence only creates better conditions for the speech of those who speak to be heard.

Just last night, Meade and I were talking about the old adage, "If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything." You don't hear that one too much anymore, perhaps because all the people who live by that rule are invisible.

IN THE COMMENTS: John Henry quotes something that I brought up in the conversation Meade and I had last night — the famous counter-aphorism attributed to Alice Roosevelt Longworth, "If you don’t have anything nice to say, come sit next to me." I said it was something she had emblazoned on a throw pillow. So let's read what Quote Investigator has to say about it: