Advertisements for myself

This item gives new meaning to Norman Mailer’s phrase “advertisements for myself.” From the August 27 installment of Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American:

Sam Stein of The Bulwark reported yesterday that the Trump campaign is about to start running ads in the area around Mar-a-Lago. Trump insiders say the campaign has paid almost $50,000 to run ads to make Trump and local donors feel good. On August 14, Kevin Cate, former spokesperson for President Barack Obama, predicted that Trump would spend his first television dollars “in Florida (for his ego and against his team’s advice). And that’s how you’ll know we’re in landslide territory.”

They’d better start running these ads soon. A glance at Donald Trump’s Truth Social posts and reposts suggests that he’s becoming ever more unhinged, if he’s even still hinged at all: God, Q, and military tribunals.

Here’s a link to the Bulwark story.

Feeling seen

Jonathan Capehart, as PBS closed its coverage of the Democratic National Convention tonight. For context: he was holding a handkerchief that was a present from PBS NewsHour co-anchor Amna Nawaz:

“Yesterday I said, in politics people want to be seen. They want to be seen in the way their politicans talk to them and talk about them. And when I pulled out my Amna hankie, it was when Michelle Obama said that Kamala Harris — we never have the grace of failing forward; we never have the benefit of generational wealth; if things don’t go our way, we don’t get to complain. That’s how Michelle Obama lived her life — lives her life; that’s how Barack Obama lives [his] life. That’s how I live my life. And to hear that, coming from the former First Lady, is just too — and I’m sorry, but I feel seen. And I think people in this hall feel seen. And I’m certain that millions of Americans feel seen. I’ll leave it there.”

*

Wednesday morning: You can watch and listen here.

Oof!

Michelle Obama, just now: “Who’s gonna tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those Black jobs?”

It’s Tim Walz

From The Guardian: “Kamala Harris names Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor, as running mate.”

An excellent choice, making a ticket very much like Obama–Biden in affect.

Our household has been having fun reading the BigDadEnergy stuff at Threads.

“Black jobs”

“Folks, I know what a ‘Black job’ is: it’s the vice president of the United States. I know what a ‘Black job’ is: the first Black president in American history, Barack Obama”: Joe Biden, on fire this afternoon, addressing the NAACP convention in Las Vegas.

[Context, if you need it: Donald Trump’s claims that undocumented immigrants are taking “Black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs.”]

How to improve writing (no. 122)

Elaine received yet another political text, and she noticed a pronoun:

Hi Elaine, it’s George Clooney. I’m proud to support President Biden and Vice President Harris, and I’m asking you to join me. Pitch in today for a chance to meet myself, Julia Roberts, President Biden, and President Obama.

There’s nothing wrong with me. George Clooney can meet himself only in a mirror, or in, say, a doppelganger-themed screenplay.

But that sentence is tricky: it’s customary to place me at the end of a series. Here though a terminal me might suggest a terminal case of egotism: Julia Roberts, President Biden, President Obama, and me. Me! So what might be a fix?

Hi Elaine, it’s George Clooney and Julia Roberts. As proud supporters of President Biden and Vice President Harris, we’re asking you to pitch in today for a chance to meet President Biden, President Obama, and the two of us.

Related reading
All OCA How to improve writing posts (Pinboard)

[This post is no. 122 in a series dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

Marian Robinson (1937–2024)

Marian Robinson, mother of Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson, has died at the age of eighty-six. From the New York Times obituary:

Raised on the South Side of Chicago, Ms. Robinson was known as a loving, down-to-earth matriarch who became an emotional ballast for her daughter and granddaughters, Malia and Sasha, but also for Mr. Obama, who had rocketed to political superstardom and whose family, at times, had to scramble to keep up.

When Mr. Obama became the first Black man to win the presidency in November 2008, he sat and watched the returns alongside his mother-in-law. Their hands were clutched together as they watched their family’s future change alongside the course of American history.

Elaine and I met Michelle Obama when Barack Obama was running for the United States Senate. And our whole family met Barack Obama later in that campaign. I wish we could have met Marian Robinson too.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Ben Zimmer. At its center, a trio of stepped thirteen-letter answers and a thirteen-letter answer running down. To the left and right, two fifteen-letter answers running down. But I found the puzzle not especially fun. Too many proper names for my taste — seventeen of sixty-six answers. The nadir: 47-D, four letters, “Czechia’s second city.” I filled in four letters and thought must be. And it was. But when I told Elaine about that clue, she knew the answer instantly.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

3-D, fifteen letters, “Rapper who wrote for 30 Rock.” I did not know that.

11-D, fifteen letters, “Did a swift scan.”

15-A, eight letters, “Chinese character.” Forget about ideograms and logograms.

15-D, thirteen letters, “Offering assistance.”

22-A, four letters, “Capsule review?” I know this answer only as part of a rhyme.

27-A, six letters, “Advisor to Truman through Obama.” I think advisor here is inappropriately misdirective.

27-D, six letters, “Gentle slope (akin to an icy expanse).” For me, gettable only from the crosses, which I imagine dictated the use of this answer.

30-A, thirteen letters, “AFI’s #3 funniest film.” Ah yes, #3, not #2 or #4. Such an unimaginative way to clue a title. I’ve offered a more Stumpery clue in the comments.

33-A, thirteen letters, “Result of $5 1.5-quart ice creams.” Huh? Aren’t the 1.5-quart cartons its result? Or evidence of it?

35-A, thirteen letters, “Where house rules are followed.” Where? Not really a location.

39-A, four letters, “Nellie Bly contemporary.” I knew the answer, but see what I mean about proper names?

42-D, five letters, “High winds.” Beaufort Scale, help!

45-A, four letters, “Mandela in 2013.” See 39-A: another proper name clued with a proper name.

45-D, four letters, “He’s a citrus reversal.” Whatever you say.

My favorite in this puzzle: 37-D, six letters, “Present-day presence.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Facts and truth

Reading about Russian-textbook “history” made me recall this observation, from Robert Caro’s Working: Research, Interviewing, Writing (New York: Knopf, 2019):

While I am aware that there is no Truth, no objective truth, no single truth, no truth simple or unsimple, either; no verity, eternal or otherwise; no Truth about anything, there are Facts, objective facts, discernible and verifiable. And the more facts you accumulate, the closer you come to whatever truth there is.

Related posts
Barack Obama on facts : “Facts are stubborn things” : Longhand and a Smith-Corona : Taped to the lamp

Three passages from Michelle Obama

From The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times (New York: Crown, 2022).

On navigating the world as someone “different”:

You learn, as my family did, to be watchful. You figure out how to guard your energy, to count every step. And at the heart of this lies a head-spinning paradox: Being different conditions you toward cautiousness, even as it demands that you be bold.

On putting something small, like knitting, alongside big things:

Any time your circumstances start to feel all-consuming, I suggest you try going in the other direction — toward the small. Look for something that'll help you rearrange your thoughts, a pocket of contentedness where you can live for a while. And by this I don't mean sitting passively in front of your television or scrolling through your phone. Find something that’s active, something that asks for your mind but uses your body as well. Immerse yourself in the process. And forgive yourself for temporarily ducking out of the storm.

On seing children growing up. When the Obamas visit Malia and Sasha, who are sharing an apartment in Los Angeles, Malia produces a charcuterie board. And then:

Sasha attempted to fix us a couple of weak martinis — Wait, you know how to make martinis? — and served them in water glasses, first laying down a couple of newly purchased coasters so that we wouldn’t mark up their brand-new coffee table with our drinks.

I watched all this with some astonishment. It’s not that I’m surprised that our kids have grown up, exactly, but somehow the whole scene — the coasters, in particular — signaled a different sort of landmark, the type of thing every parent spends years scanning for, which is evidence of common sense.

As Sasha set down our drinks that night, I thought about all the coasters she and her sister hadn’t bothered to use when they were under our care, all the times over the years I’d tried to get watermarks out of various tables, including at the White House.

But the dynamics had changed. We were at their table now. They owned it, and they were protecting it. Clearly they had learned.

I still find it difficult to believe that Elaine and I had the good fortune to meet both Michelle and Barack Obama in 2004, during Barack Obama’s Senate campaign. And I still find it difficult to believe that our country went from eight years of an Obama presidency to — what? Michelle Obama, too, finds that difficult to believe.

Also by Michelle Obama
From Becoming

Another leak

Extraordinary news in The New York Times: “Former Anti-Abortion Leader Alleges Another Supreme Court Breach.” The former leader is the Reverend Rob Schenck, who has modified his view of abortion and is now, the Times says, redefining himself as “a progressive evangelical leader”:

In early June 2014, an Ohio couple who were Mr. Schenck’s star donors shared a meal with Justice [Samuel] Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann. A day later, Gayle Wright, one of the pair, contacted Mr. Schenck, according to an email reviewed by The Times. “Rob, if you want some interesting news please call. No emails,” she wrote.

Mr. Schenck said Mrs. Wright told him that the decision would be favorable to Hobby Lobby, and that Justice Alito had written the majority opinion. Three weeks later, that’s exactly what happened. The court ruled, in a 5-4 vote, that requiring family-owned corporations to pay for insurance covering contraception violated their religious freedoms. The decision would have major implications for birth control access, President Barack Obama’s new health care law and corporations’ ability to claim religious rights.

Matthew Butterick, who made a brilliant analysis of the leaked PDF of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization draft decision, has commented on Alito’s denial. From the Times:

Justice Alito, in a statement issued through the court’s spokeswoman, denied disclosing the decision. He said that he and his wife shared a “casual and purely social relationship” with the Wrights, and did not dispute that the two couples ate together on June 3, 2014. But the justice said that the “allegation that the Wrights were told the outcome of the decision in the Hobby Lobby case, or the authorship of the opinion of the Court, by me or my wife, is completely false.”

And Butterick:

Unfortunately, this is the kind of denial that raises more questions than it answers due to the deliberately narrow phrase “were told”. The denial would remain true even if, say, Ms. Alito had put a copy of the draft opinion on the table, allowed Ms. Wright to look it over, and then taken it back — no “telling”, just showing.

You can read Butterick’s analysis on the PDF and his comments on the Schenck story here.

I am moved to poetry:

Did Samuel Alito
Think it was neato
To spill SCOTUS beans in advance?

He’s gotta deny it,
And say he kept quiet,
But what’s that I smell? Burning pants.

[Note: I am not saying that Alito is not telling the truth.]

Good going, Carhartt

A notable development at the intersection of COVID-19 and culture: Carhartt is requiring that its employees be vaccinated (Detroit Metro Times). Customers who tilt to the right are already tweeting about boycotting the company.

Indeed, the Carhartt brand is often seen on people who tilt to the right. (Look at photographs from January 6.) But both Sarah Palin and Barack Obama have been photographed wearing Carhartt.

The Metro Times says the brand is beloved of “both blue-collar workers and hipsters.” I’m neither — I just like good pants. I’ve been wearing Carhartt B18 jeans and B324 carpenter pants for many years. They’re both amazingly durable, and the B324’s right-leg pocket solves the perennial question of where to put my phone.

I hope that those who are planning to boycott Carhartt because of the company’s stand on vaccination will soon need to boycott all consumer goods.

Casualties

Dear Ana Cabrera:

Barack Obama’s birthday party is not a “casualty” of COVID-19. The casualties of COVID-19 are those whose lives have been ended or upended by the spread of a contagious disease. Birthday parties don’t count.

[CNN is on in the background.]

Today’s Newsday Saturday

Today’s Newsday  Saturday crossword, by Matthew Sewell, is themeless, but it verges on Stumper territory, or turf, or Sturf. Sturf’s up! Not as difficult as last week’s puzzle, but still plenty difficult, with many clues that lead in no one direction. Take 15-A, eleven letters, “Prepared to make contributions.” RAISEDAHAND? VOLUNTEERED? No. Or 20-A, eight letters, “Treatment in oils.” PORTRAIT? Uh-uh. It wasn’t until I hit 56-A, eleven letters, “Early workplace for Gershwin,” that I was able to get a section of the puzzle more or less done.

Some entries I especially liked:

1-A, eleven letters, “Latter-day quackery.” The reality-based community says “Thank you.”

6-D, three letters, “Setting for the Winnipeg Folk Festival.” One of several wonderful clues for very short answers.

9-D, five letters, “Actor whom Obama called ‘big-eared and level-headed.’” A nicely self-deprecating touch.

26-A, three letters, “Spreads threads.” See 6-D. An inspired clue.

36-D, five letters, “Rugged or ragged.” I just like the alliteration.

44-A, three letters, “Elf (per se or a prefix).” Huh? I thought this must have been a cryptic clue. I learned something.

54-D, four letters, “Changes visible wavelengths.” Defamiliarization at work.

62-A, eleven letters, “Walks, for example.” Where to? A highly indirect clue.

One clue I take issue with: 38-D, four letters, “‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ scheme.” No, that’s not the scheme. I will offer a minor spoiler: the scheme in question is a rhyme scheme. For “Twinkle, Twinkle,” it’s not AABB; it’s AABBAA. To say it’s AABB is like saying that the rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet is ABABCDCD. A better clue for AABB might be “Couplets.” Or perhaps “Rhyme lines.”

Thinking about the incomplete rhyme scheme makes me remember Ralph Kramden’s Social Security number: 105-36-22.

No other spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

*

An afterthought: for AABB and a children’s song, how about “‘Itsy Bitsy Spider’ scheme”?

Twelve movies

[Or eleven movies and one mini-series. Surely a seven-episode Netflix series equals at least one movie. One to four stars, four sentences each, no spoilers.]

Up the Down Staircase (dir. Robert Mulligan, 1967). I never tire of this movie: I adore Sandy Dennis, and I admire the indefatigable optimism that Miss Sylvia Barrett brings to the work of teaching in the trenches. I will also admit to admiring her students’ quickness to leap at any occasion for comedy: witness “There is no frigate like a book.” It didn’t register with me until this viewing that the movie confirms Hazard Adams’s description of the nonlife stereotype of the teacher: we see nothing of Miss Barrett’s life beyond her school and the block that she walks from and to the bus stop. Best scene: the trial: “I’m me.” ★★★★

*

Impact (dir. Arthur Lubin, 1949). A captain of industry and devoted husband (Brian Donleavy) finds his life turned upside down when he gives his wife’s “cousin” a ride. Donleavy and Ella Raines are wooden; Helen Walker, the story’s evil schemer, is far more compelling. Good scenes of small-town life and a wild chase through narrow San Francisco streets. My favorite line: “I’ll never think of our moments together without nausea.” ★★

*

Shadow of a Doubt (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1943). I’ve written about this movie before, so I’ll limit myself to some noticings here. When we first see Charles Oakley (Joseph Cotten), lying fully dressed on a bed, he looks embalmed, save that he’s smoking. The number of his rooming house: 13. Young Charlie Newton (Theresa Wright) is described as “the smartest girl in her class,” and we see her in what looks like a high-school graduation photograph, but her future is never even suggested. The scene in the ’Til-Two bar is a poignant picture of worlds colliding: goody two-shoes Charlie and sultry but tired waitress Louise Finch (Janet Shaw): “I never thought I’d see you in here.” ★★★★

*

The Naked City (dir. Jules Dassin, 1948). The only place to go before or after you watch all 138 episodes of the television series. The plot is meh, and the actors, good though they may be, are almost superfluous, but so what: this movie is all about New York: El stops, swank shops, ratty tenements, crowded luncheonettes. “You got any cold root beer?” “Like ice.” ★★★★

*

Uncovering “The Naked City” (dir. Bruce Goldstein, 2020). One film lover’s exploration of the film’s locations and production. Bruce Goldstein is beyond knowledgable, about The Naked City and about Manhattan then and now. The detail that most amazed me: he tracked down the days for filming a scene from the changing titles on a theater marquee. A Criterion Channel exclusive. ★★★★

*

David Copperfield (dir. George Cukor, 1935). A feast for actors, especially character actors: Freddie Bartholomew and Frank Lawton as David the boy and man, Basil Rathbone as grim Mr. Murdstone, Edna May Oliver as Aunt Betsey, Lionel Barrymore as Dan’l Peggotty, and Maureen O’Sullivan as Dora. The three standouts: W. C. Fields as Mr. Micawber, Lennox Pawle as Mr. Dick, and Roland Young as Uriah Heep. Such a raft of talent. The most poignant scenes: David and Dora. ★★★★

*

The Christmas Bow (dir. Clare Niederpruem, 2020). Lucia Micarelli and Michael Rady star in a story of violins, injury, disability, shortbread, recorders, festive-themed dishes, street musicians, and Christmas socks. Oh, and a grandfather who comes out of retirement to give a young boy the gift of music. And speaking of music: since when do professional violinists spend their time on unaccompanied renditions of Christmas carols? I am taking away a star because the leads kiss long before the last two minutes of the movie: that’s just wrong. ★★

*

The Queen’s Gambit (dir. Scott Frank, 2020). Isla Johnston and Anya Taylor-Joy are eerily similar as Beth Harmon, child and young adult, a Kentucky orphan and addict with a dark past and the strong sense of pattern recognition that makes her an intuitive genius of chess. Taylor-Joy’s background as a model is unmistakable: Beth’s nerd vibe goes haywire every time we see her walk, runway-style, to a chessboard. Lots of nonsense to savor in the picture of the 1960s: check out the magazines for sale at the Lexington drugstore (which also happens to sell Café Bustelo and Malta Goya). Among the supporting players, Moses Ingram (Jolene), Marielle Heller (Alma Wheatley), and Harry Melling (Harry Beltik) are particularly good. ★★★

*

Strange Cargo (dir. Frank Borzage, 1940). Strange indeed. Lust and love and an escape from a penal colony, starrring a “waitress,” Julie (Joan Crawford), and a prisoner, Verne (Clark Gable), whose only name for Julie is “baby.” Peter Lorre lurks sinisterly in the background. What makes the movie really strange is the presence of Cambreau (Ian Hunter), a Christ-like figure performing miracles and bringing prisoners to redemption. ★★★

*

Becoming (dir. Nadia Hallgren, 2020). A documentary: Michelle Obama, her book, and her book tour. I tried to imagine our current First Lady asking questions of and listening to young people as Michelle Obama does here: it’s just impossible. I still find it remarkable that I met Michelle Obama in 2004 in downstate Illinois, where she had come to campaign for her husband. I’m as giddy now as some of the people in this movie waiting in line to get their books signed. ★★★★

*

Vice Squad (dir. Arnold Laven, 1953). Elaine and I had the same thought: multi-tasking! This police procedural begins with a killing of an officer, goes off in all directions, and ends with a bank heist and hostage-taking. Edward G. Robinson is Captain Barnaby, the calm center in a story whose focus shifts every few minutes (as Yeats said, “The stone’s in the midst of all”). Among the nice turns: Paulette Goddard as the owner of an escort service, Percy Helton as a crackpot troubled by “television shadows,” Byron Kane as a professor who unmasks a phony Italian aristocrat (“His flat a s and his hard r s betray a background of the middle west”), and perennial bad guy Adam Williams as an increasingly desparate suspect. ★★★★

*

Beware, My Lovely (dir. Harry Horner, 1952). An unnerving tour de force for Ida Lupino and Robert Ryan. Lupino is Helen Gordon, a war widow (it’s 1918); Ryan is Howard Wilton, a psychotic handyman who comes in for a day’s work waxing the floors. The movie does a deft job of having Howard’s condition reveal itself ever so slowly, as Helen’s kindness changes to wariness and then desperation as she becomes a prisoner in her house. Close calls, near escapes, and some dramatic camerawork by George E. Diskant — watch for the reflections in the Christmas tree ornaments. ★★★★

Related reading
All OCA film posts (Pinboard)

[The nonlife stereotype is described in Hazard Adams’s The Academic Tribes (1988): “Either he is in his office or his classroom or he is nowhere.”]

Obama pens

In The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani interviews Barack Obama about reading and writing. We know from an excerpt from his first volume of memoir that Obama writes his drafts in longhand on legal pads. In this Times piece, he opens up about pens:

He says he is “very particular” about his pens, always using black Uni-ball Vision Elite rollerball pens with a micro-point, and adds that he tends to do his best writing between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m.: “I find that the world narrows, and that is good for my imagination. It’s almost as if there is a darkness all around and there’s a metaphorical beam of light down on the desk, onto the page.”

“With a micro-point”: the anti-Sharpie.

Related reading
All OCA Barack Obama posts (Pinboard) : Obama revisions

Barack Obama, writing by hand

Barack Obama, in “an adapted and updated excerpt” from A Promised Land, his forthcoming memoir:

I still like writing things out in longhand, finding that a computer gives even my roughest drafts too smooth a gloss and lends half-baked thoughts the mask of tidiness.

His tools of choice: a pen and a legal pad.

One great mistake in college comp classes: equating writing with word processing.

Related reading
Obama revisions : OCA posts about writing by hand

“What? What?”

Whatever our current misery, I feel fortunate to have had eight years of life with this man as president. And to have him campaigning for Joe Biden now. Barack Obama, a few minutes ago at a drive-in rally in Philadelphia:

“You’ll be able to go about your lives knowing that the president is not going to retweet conspiracy theories about secret cabals running the world or that Navy SEALs didn’t actually kill Bin Laden. Think about that. The president of the United States retweeted that. Imagine. What? What?”

Honk! Honk!

Stalling vs. declining to act

Curious phrasing in the Illinois news segment dropped into NPR’s Morning Edition this morning: Senate Democrats are seeking to stall any nomination to the Supreme Court. But: In 2016, Senate Republicans declined to act on Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland. The verbs caught my ear.

Merriam-Webster gives the following definitions of stall. As an intranstive verb: “to play for time,” “delay.” As a transitive verb: “to hold off, divert, or delay by evasion or deception.”

To stall a nomination: that phrasing is far more unsavory than decline to act. But Mitch McConnell and company did not decline to act in 2016: their inaction was of course itself a form of action. And a form of stalling: they refused even to start the car.

Finding a brother

“Twelve years ago, when I began my search for a vice president, I didn’t know I’d end up finding a brother”: Barack Obama, speaking tonight to the Democratic National Convention.

And:

“This administration has shown it will tear our democracy down if that's what it takes to win. So we have to get busy building it up — by pouring all our effort into these seventy-six days, and by voting like never before — for Joe and Kamala, and candidates up and down the ticket, so that we leave no doubt about what this country we love stands for — today and for all our days to come.”