"In 'Selected Amazon Reviews,' Killian adds yet another Kevin to the list. This Kevin spends his evenings with his wife curled up on the couch..."

"... with their two cats, Ted and Sylvia, watching Katharine Hepburn movies, or knitting, decorating cakes, and hanging pet-themed ornaments on the Christmas trees, as in his five-star 2007 review of Pet Pawprint Hanging DIY Keepsake Ornament. But Kevin Killian in the review section was not the real Kevin Killian, at least not exactly. Did Killian have children, as he claimed in several reviews? No. Did he enjoy fine foods? No. (According to friends, he lived on a diet of only microwave meals and Tab.)... Did that twelve-color set of ballpoint pens really trigger a memory of attending school as an American boy in rural France, where his classmates had 'beautiful pens that were almost family heirlooms?'..."

Writes Oscar Schwartz, in "A Portrait of the Artist as an Amazon Reviewer/Between 2003 and 2019, Kevin Killian published almost twenty-four hundred reviews on the site. Can they be considered literature?"

That's in The New Yorker, where they are not too careful about whether to put a question mark inside a quotation mark, and the answer to the question is no.

Killian was writing Amazon reviews as a sort of art project. Here's an Amazon Associates link to a book that collects his reviews — "Selected Amazon Reviews."

But back to the New Yorker article:

"Their existence, and my relationships with each of them, are essential to my understanding of life itself."

That's a very strangely written sentence... by M. Gessen, in "What Democrats Are Getting Wrong About Transgender Rights" (NYT). 

Context:

I am trans and I am a parent of three children, one of whom I carried. Their existence, and my relationships with each of them, are essential to my understanding of life itself. I also have many friends (none of them trans, as it happens) who never had children. I occasionally envy their freedom. They may occasionally envy me my sprawling family. In neither case is the feeling of regret — if it can even be called that — significant or particularly long-lasting. It is, rather, an awareness that life is a series of choices, all of which are made with incomplete information.

Presumably, Gessen has one relationship with each of the children, but it's possible that Gessen really does means to claim multiple relationships with each one. I suppose the grammar was a minor distraction on the way to proclaiming the superiority of a life lived without regrets. 

Anxiety about trans people and reproduction, and the laws and rules that it produces, cut both ways...

Puzzling commas again. And why choose a cutting metaphor here? Intentional prodding of our anxiety about surgery?

There's a lot more going on in the article, which was originally titled "The Secret Behind America's Moral Panic." What's the secret? And what are "Democrats... Getting Wrong About Transgender Rights"? This is the most useful passage:

"To anyone watching closely, it’s been obvious that Obama has been thinking about where he fits in today’s political mêlée and working on his public tone."

"When he joined Biden and Clinton in New York, the trio sat for a podcast interview in which Obama brought an I-can’t-believe-this-stuff-really-needs-to-be-said intonation to his explanations of the complications of the presidency and global affairs. Onstage at Radio City, after catching up with Biden on Air Force One, he took on the role of chief cheerleader.... Obama has felt most comfortable sticking to familiar themes, and though he has met with social-media influencers, he is also likely to appear in plenty of tried-and-true ads and behind lecterns on swing-state campuses.... ... Obama now comes across as having concluded that no radical rethink is necessary for his own conception of political progress or mass movements.... Obama wanted the donors to remember that 'despite having been out of office for a while, I am still the hopey-changey guy.'"

Writes Gabriel Debenedetti, in "What Obama Is Whispering to Biden/The presidents’ plan to save their legacy from Trump" (New York Magazine).

I enjoyed the profusion of diacritical marks on "mêlée." I might have done the accent aigu. But the circumflex! That is downright ornate. I approve.

Here's the Wikipedia article "Melee":

A melee... French: mêlée... or pell-mell is disorganized hand-to-hand combat in battles fought at abnormally close range with little central control once it starts.

Here's a painting from 1855 that depicts a melee that took place in 1632 (killing the King of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus): 

But of course there's an extended use. To quote the OED "a disagreement or contention; a confused or heated debate among many participants; a throng." I was going to say, don't confuse "melee" with "medley," but the OED goes on to with that extended use and says "A confusion, jumble; a medley, a mixture." That's rather tame. It's hard to think of the King of Sweden going into that 1632 melee, but easy to picture our hopey-changey guy inserting himself into the melee that is the election of 2024.

Over at The New York Times, it looks as though Trump has already won the election.

At the top of the front page:

 

A quick look at the 4 articles:

1. "The Resistance to a New Trump Administration Has Already Started/An emerging coalition that views Donald J. Trump’s agenda as a threat to democracy is laying the groundwork to push back if he wins in November, taking extraordinary pre-emptive actions." It's almost as though there's a conspiracy to deny the election.

"'Ultimately, no coherent case could be made that apostrophes help with clarity,' said [John] McWhorter..."

"They are merely 'a kind of decoration,' he added. Dr. McWhorter said apostrophes were the 'fish forks' of punctuation. 'They sit there, you’re not quite sure how to use them; you’re almost sure to use them wrong.' Apostrophes crept into written English for arbitrary reasons, Dr. McWhorter said. 'It’s one more way to look down on people who never quite mastered "its" and "it’s" when really we should be thinking about how effectively they get their message across.' Debates about grammar usage elicit strong feelings because language is an important part of identity, said Ellie Rye, an English lecturer at the University of York in England. Still, in the history of the English language, apostrophes are 'quite modern,' she said. They were not used to mark possession until the 16th century...."

From "An English Town Drops Apostrophes From Street Signs. Some Aren’t Happy. The move has prompted some resistance, with someone writing an apostrophe on a sign for St. Mary’s Walk. 'What’s next?' one North Yorkshire resident asked. 'Commas?'"

"Debates about grammar usage elicit strong feelings...." Okay, then, let me express a strong feeling about that phrase "grammar usage." First, apostrophes are punctuation, and punctuation is not grammar. Second, usage is something else too. It is to be distinguished from grammar. Grammar, punctuation, and usage are separate topics. To say "grammar usage" when you're talking about punctuation is an annoying error — an annoying usage error.

"RFK Jr. is a Democrat 'Plant,' a Radical Left Liberal who’s been put in place in order to help Crooked Joe Biden..."

"... the Worst President in the History of the United States, get Re-Elected. A Vote for Junior’ would essentially be a WASTED PROTEST VOTE, that could swing either way, but would only swing against the Democrats if Republicans knew the true story about him. Junior’ is totally Anti-Gun, an Extreme Environmentalist who makes the Green New Scammers look Conservative, a Big Time Taxer and Open Border Advocate, and Anti-Military/Vet…."

Blasts Donald Trump, from Truth Social.

What's with the apostrophe after "Junior"? He did it twice, so he must think it belongs.

Anyway, what I'm hearing him say is that he wants Republicans but not Democrats to know better than to "waste" their vote on an independent candidate. If RFK Jr. can be painted as far left, then Trump will have what he wants.

Trump continues with 2 more posts:

"In Finland, swinging your arms and other unnecessary sudden hand gestures are quite commonly interpreted as a sign of aggression, which should be avoided unless you want to get your ass kicked."

Writes someone in Finland in a Reddit discussion, "Do Europeans ever use their hand[s] to make 'Air Quotes' in a conversation, for example, to express sarcasm or a euphemism?"

Someone in Slovakia says "If you can't express sarcasm or a euphemism by you voice and tone, you shouldn't be allowed to do it. (I haven't seen it here, but maybe somebody does it.)"

An American says: "I did it in Italy once, and my little Italian cousins absolutely lost it laughing so hard, bc they didn't know why I was wiggling my fingers around (which I understand would look very, very strange if you don't know the meaning)." 

Someone in Italy answers: "We don't do it in Italy. Some people may know what it means because of American movies and TV series."

I know the TV series! It's "Friends":

"If Donald Trump is at the top of the Republican ticket, the risk of one-party rule by a Democratic Party captured by the progressive left is severe."

Wrote Emily Seidel, the chief executive of the Koch political network (Americans for Prosperity Action).

Quoted in "Months After Backing Haley, Koch Network Suspends Support for Her Campaign/The group’s chief executive wrote in an email to staff on Sunday that it would now focus on House and Senate races" (NYT).

Trump's response:

ADDED: Trump flaunted his status as a man of the people by deploying the grocer's apostrophe.

"At least Hanlon's razor... has something witty and memorable and real-life-applicable about it..."

Writes Rex Parker about today's NYT crossword, where the 18-across clue is "'Never attribute to ___ that which is adequately explained by stupidity' (Hanlon's razor)."

The answer to on that clue is... spoiler alert...

Having created a new tag and added it to 7 posts in this blog's archive, I list the 7 posts in an order other than chronological.

The new tag is "Edmund Morris."

The list:

1. September 4, 2004 — Studying the recent spike in the phrase "barking mad," I quote Edmund Morris's reaction to Maureen Dowd's calling him "barking mad" — "Like all barking mad people, I feel perfectly normal."

2. November 28, 2010 — That time Edmund Morris reamed Bob Shieffer on "Face the Nation," and I compared him to Peter Finch in "Network" and Marisa Tomei in "My Cousin Vinny."

3. December 4, 2023 — President Theodore Roosevelt waded naked in Rock Creek in full view of onlookers, described by Edmund Morris.

4. November 16, 2023 — TR's smelling of arsenic, as described by Edmund Morris

5. June 24, 2004 — Edmund Morris has a theory about how Ronald Reagan came to think the way he did: "Not until he put on his mother’s spectacles, around the age of thirteen, did he perceive the world in all its sharp-edged intricacy."

6. December 1, 2023 — TR's "cyclonic" personality, as described by Edmund Morris.

7. April 25, 2004 — "Edmund Morris gives a pretty bad review to the brilliantly titled book about punctuation, 'Eats, Shoots & Leaves.'"

"'You mean, that’s it?' I gasped. 'We have Zach again?' I added incredulously. If the worst thing humanly imaginable happened—i.e., Donald Trump’s reëlection—I will not sound more disbelieving or distraught...."

Writes Adam Gopnik, in "No, Not Aaron Rodgers! It’s hard to name a position in the history of sports so manifestly cursed as that of quarterback for the New York Jets" (The New Yorker).

I love the way Donald Trump intrudes himself even into an article about football almost as much as I love the diaeresis in "reëlection" and the screwy use of "happened" in "If the worst thing...  happened... I will not sound...."

I wonder: Rewrite that headline.

If you puzzle: A command is not a wondering, you see my problem — one of my problems — with the headline "Why hasn't Sam Bankman-Fried already been forced back to the US for FTX fiasco, critics wonder: 'Lock him up'/SBF's father, Joseph Bankman, notably helped Sen. Elizabeth Warren draft tax legislation." (Fox News).

1. Whether you're a "critic" or not, you can't "wonder" "Lock him up." You might wonder why he's not locked up. But you can't wonder an imperative.

2. I guess you could ignore the colon — which indicates that what the critics wonder is "Lock him up." Then you could see the critics as wondering why SBF hasn't been "forced back to the US." That is something that can be wondered. A question mark might help.

3. I find it hard to believe anyone is wondering that. There are no charges against SBF — not yet. I found that article because I was googling to see if SBF was actively fleeing from legal consequences. Isn't that what most of us would expect him to do — what we would do under the circumstances?

4. And that subheadline! What's the point of that if not to insinuate that SBF has political connections that are the reason he's not already extradited and locked up? It's such a weak insinuation. SBF's father is eminent enough to have some connection to drafting a tax bill, and — if you go to the link in the article — you'll see it was just about simplifying tax filing.

5. If you go on to read the article, you'll see it's not really about what "critics," plural, are saying. It's just about what Judge Jeanine Pirro said on Fox News, on "The Five." And Jesse Watters "agreed."

6. Here's something to wonder: Why is Fox News so trashy?

"TikTok has made it very clear they want their platform to be this joyous, silly, content app, but they outgrew that so long ago."

"There’s a lot of reporting on TikTok: newsworthy content, activists speaking up about movements. And yet they’re worried they can’t even use the correct language … or they’ll get taken down."

Said When Belle Ives, "a freelance photographer in Los Angeles who uses they and them pronouns," quoted in "Sorry you went viral TikTok’s explosive stardom has created a new kind of celebrity. But nothing goes viral like rage" (WaPo). 

Ives had videos taken down by TikTok. One showed 2 women kissing, which supposedly broke a rule against "predatory or grooming behavior." Another called a Pride Month cake "gayke," which TikTok deemed "hate speech." 

"Good writing, I think, ultimately exists between the twin goal posts of as-few-words-as-you-need and as-many-words-as-you-want."

"I, a natural natterer, lean toward the latterer. But one must draw the line somewhere. I recommend striking out 'actually' at every opportunity, unless it’s in a discussion of the movie 'Love Actually,' in which case we might want to focus on the title’s confounding commalessness. Similarly, though I would never fault the supreme lyricist Johnny Mercer for the gorgeous 'You’re much too much / And just too very very,' I am on constant alert for 'very,' always looking for the chance to dispose of it."

From "Writers, be wary of Throat-Clearers and Wan Intensifiers. Very, very wary" by Benjamin Dreyer (WaPo).

Here's Dreyer's book: "Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style."

And here's that song (which is about not being able to come up with words to express how marvelous this person is):

 

As for the missing comma in "Love Actually," I think there's some widely held belief that commas in titles are too fussy and you should strike them without worrying about the rules of punctuation. But "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" even has an Oxford comma.

"And though sex differences in sports show advantages for men, researchers today still don’t know how much of this to attribute to biological difference..."

"... versus the lack of support provided to women athletes to reach their highest potential. 'Science is increasingly showing how sex is dynamic; it has multiple aspects and also shifts; for example, social experiences can actually change levels of sex-related hormones like testosterone in our bodies in a second-to-second and month-to-month way!' Sari van Anders, the research chair in social neuroendocrinology at Queen’s University, in Ontario, told me by email."

From "Separating Sports by Sex Doesn’t Make Sense/Though school sports are typically sex-segregated, a new generation of kids isn’t content to compete within traditional structures" by Maggie Mertens (The Atlantic).

I was surprised that the research chair in social neuroendocrinology used an exclamation point! But what is social neuroendocrinology? I don't know! Is it more like sociology?

Here's something from a clearly identified sociologist:

Everybody wants to rule the... Dane County Farmers Market.

That's live marimba being played as the crowd parades with its usual and unavoidable slowness. I make a mental note to arrive much earlier if I'm ever going to try to do this again.

Speaking of notes, here's my "Overheard at the Farmers Market" collection:

"Can I use 'It/It’s' as gender pronouns?"

A Quora question.

I see 2 extra problems — extra problems beyond the usual issues surrounding pronoun preferences.

First, you're requiring other people to use a word that is dehumanizing, that portrays you as a thing and not a person.  

I noticed this problem in the context of attempting to answer the question, "What's with the weird, kinda ominous music on the Barron Trump video? Sounds like the music you'd hear on a true crime documentary about the hunt for the Sheep Ranch Killers or something."

I said, "I think it's trying to say: Look, there's a duplicate Trump, and it's bigger and stranger...." I used the word "it" to convey the thinking of someone who regarded Barron Trump as not human but a monstrous thing. 

Second, you're going to force other people to get the punctuation wrong? It's? Not its? 

"[O]n Oct. 4, 1969, everything changed... 20-year old Diane Linkletter jumped to her death from the window of her Los Angeles apartment after allegedly trying acid."

"Her grieving father, TV and radio host Art Linkletter, told the press, 'She was murdered by the people who manufacture and sell LSD.' The newspapers ran wild with Linkletter’s take: 'LSD KILLED DIANE.' Later, when news of her clean toxicology report made the rounds, Linkletter blamed the jump on an '“acid flashback.' President Richard Nixon — in the midst of launching his War on Drugs — invited Linkletter to the White House. Nixon knew that a story like this could galvanize the anti-drug movement more than any fact or figure could.... It was the perfect moment for a book like 'Go Ask Alice.'... The fact that the author was anonymous only heightened the buzz. 'Alice' could be anyone, even your daughter. The media ran with it — everyone from The New York Times to the Library Journal presented the book as a verified teenager’s diary. A million copies sold nearly overnight. Avon Books published the paperback and two years later, in 1973, ABC aired a TV adaptation of the book. That, too, was a supersonic hit, with nearly a third of all US households viewing it...."

From "1971 druggie diary ‘Go Ask Alice’ was made up by a suburban housewife" (NY Post).

People believe what they want to believe. Too good to check! I wanted to see how embarrassing the NYT coverage of this ridiculous book was. Here, from 1973: "Diary of a Schoolgirl En Route to Death." It's a review of the ABC TV movie. 

"Now, after the leak of a Supreme Court draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, entrepreneurs and activists are floating ideas for an abortion-focused DAO."

"They see it as a way to provide money to women in more than two dozen states where abortion services may soon be severely restricted or banned — a kind of 'Underground Railroad for abortion,' as Reshma Saujani, the founder of Girls Who Code and a host of the 'De-Broing Crypto' podcast, put it in an interview."

I'm trying to read this (in the NYT): 

 

"DAO" means decentralized autonomous organization, and "broing" doesn't rhyme with "boing," but with "Boeing." Yes, a hyphen would help — "bro-ing" — but they wanted the prefix "de-," so the helpful hyphen would give us "de-bro-ing," so presumably that's why the decided against it. 

Anyway, I'm not enough of a fan of de-bro-i-fication to put effort into understanding crypto. I just want to say that it's silly to personify "crypto" and portray it as "joining" something called "the abortion conversation." That whole conceptualization sounds creepy to me — and I proudly own the femininity of my reaction.

Here's another feminine and completely non-bro-y reaction: I don't like the new logo-ization of the female reproductive organs. It looks like an elephant, that inclusion of the ovaries, fallopian tubes, and the vagina. Is the uterus alone too hard to recognize?

The only other thing I'd like to mention is the phrase "a kind of 'Underground Railroad for abortion.'" This isn't the first place I'm seeing the idea to be deprived of access to abortion is slavery. Is it okay — is it good — to equate present-day demands for rights to the 19th-century struggle to abolish slavery? Is it accurate? Is it moral? Is it effective political speech? I would say no to all those questions, and I have always supported a woman's sovereignty over her own body and the consequent right to access to abortion. 

ADDED: The idea of crypto participating in a conversation is a variation on the old trope "money talks."

ALSO: To state what ought to be obvious, fugitive slaves had to hide. They could not legally leave their bondage, and even if they got to a "free" state, they could be captured and, under the law, returned to their owners. If abortion becomes illegal in your state, you don't lose your right to travel. You can openly travel to another state and get an abortion. Your path is completely above ground. Yes, it's more troublesome and expensive. But don't overdramatize. It's as bad as it is but no worse than it is. You are not in the position of a slave, and you should not want to diminish the cruelty of slavery by portraying yourself in that light.

"Yesteryear’s 'ball-point pen' became the 'ballpoint,' 'wild-flowers' evolved into 'wildflowers,' and 'teen-age” found acceptance as 'teenage' in most outlets..."

"In modern times, the hyphen has sown controversy. [Pardis Mahdavi, author of 'Hyphen'] tells the story of how Teddy Roosevelt, in his outrage at losing the Presidency to Woodrow Wilson, in 1912, appealed to Americans’ xenophobia. He was an 'anti-hyphenate.' Mahdavi writes, 'Referring to the hyphen between the name of an ethnicity and the word "American," hyphenism and hyphenated Americanism was seen as a potentially fracturing and divisive force in an America on the brink of war.' Irish-Americans, German-Americans, Jewish-Americans, and Chinese-Americans were all suspect. In 1915, Teddy Roosevelt made some remarks that formed 'a turning point in how the hyphen became demonized both orthographically and politically.' He said, 'The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic.' (Victims of anti-hyphenism might be gratified to know that during the pandemic the equestrian statue of Teddy Roosevelt was removed from in front of the Museum of Natural History.)"

From "How to Use (or Not Use) a Hyphen/Plus: a brief digression into why The New Yorker hyphenates 'teen-ager'" by Mary Norris (The New Yorker).

Those are 2 very different issues with the hyphen. One has to do with the evolution of a compound word. It's about helping readers see what they're looking at. There must have been a time when people, looking at "wildflower" might have taken an extra moment to decide the second part is "flower" and not "lower" (what are "wildfs"?) The second issue is whether we're going to use this concept at all. To prefer "American" to "Irish-American" is to cast aside the Irish part. It's more like deciding we'll just call all these things "flowers" and not pay attention to whether they are "wild" or not... speaking of xenophobia!

What makes a flower "wild" anyway? All flowers are rooted somewhere and incapable of emigrating:

"Wildflower" is not an exact term. More precise terms include native species (naturally occurring in the area, see flora), exotic or, better, introduced species (not naturally occurring in the area), of which some are labelled invasive species (that out-compete other plants – whether native or not), imported (introduced to an area whether deliberately or accidentally) and naturalized (introduced to an area, but now considered by the public as native).

It's the human point of view or activity that creates an occasion for the concept of wildness. 

In the Dolly Parton song "Wildflowers," the "wildflower" is able to migrate: "So I uprooted myself from my homeground and left/Took my dreams and I took to the road...."

I thought I remembered a Disney cartoon that had flowers that pull themselves out of their place and dance around. I'm surprised I found it — "Flowers and Trees" — because the flowers are what these days we'd call racist: