Thanks to the dictionaries

“I sort of felt like I had them in the crosshairs”: John Mikhail, Georgetown law professor. He and Genevieve Bentz, a law student, examined every definition of emolument in dictionaries of English published between 1604 and 1806, and in dictionaries of common law published between 1523 and 1792. The conclusion: for the framers of the United States Constitution, emolument had a broad definition: “profit,” “advantage,” “gain,” or “benefit.”

Mikhail and Bentz’s dictionary work was a crucial factor in a federal court’s decision this week to allow an emoluments-clause lawsuit against Donald Trump to proceed.

A related post
Word of the day: emolument

[Thanks to the Dictionary: a 1932 prose work by Louis Zukofsky, published in 1961.]

“When one really knows a village”

Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896).

That’s the opening paragraph. You can find a copy of the 1896 edition at archive.org. Later editions have additional stories. I read this novel in a 1991 David R. Godine paperback and ended up ordering the Library of America volume of Jewett’s work. The Country of the Pointed Firs is that good.

Thanks to Pete Lit, whose post about the novel mentioned Willa Cather’s high praise of it. In a preface to a 1925 edition of Jewett’s fiction, Cather named The Scarlet Letter, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and The Country of the Pointed Firs as “three American books which have the possibility of a long, long life”:

I like to think with what pleasure, with what a sense of rich discovery, the young student of American literature in far distant years to come will take up this book and say, “A masterpiece!”

Yes, a masterpiece.

“How did that happen?”

Hannah Gadsby, in Nanette (dir. Jon Olb and Madeleine Parry, 2018), recounting her mother’s explanation of what she regretted in raising her children:

“The thing I regret is that I raised you as if you were straight. I didn’t know any different. I am so sorry. I’m so sorry. I knew, well before you did, that your life was gonna be so hard. I knew that, and I wanted it more than anything in the world not to be the case. I now know I made it worse. I made it worse because I wanted you to change, because I knew the world wouldn’t.

“And I looked at my mum in that moment, and I thought, ‘How did that happen? How did my mum get to be the hero of my story?’”

What my transcription doesn’t convey is Gadsby’s timing and her shift in tone, as this deeply emotional anecdote ends in playful snark.

Nanette is a filmed performance, a monologue, in which comedian Hannah Gadsby talks about gender, sexuality, homophobia, misogyny, mental illness, sexual assault, art history, coming out, the cost of comedy, and the difference between jokes and stories. I highly recommend Nanette. If I were still teaching, I’d offer a warning about language and show it to a class. Instead I’m making this post.

I began reading a New York Times article about Hannah Gadbsy and Nanette and didn’t get very far before deciding to watch. Nanette is streaming at Netflix.

“The Latest!”

[Henry, July 26, 2018.]

Or as it’s now called, the stingy brim. Everything old is new again, except for the cliché itself.

*

August 10: Earlier this week I realized that this year’s Henry strips are last year’s strips. And today I realized that I posted this panel last August. That’s enough Henry.

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Déjà rocks

 
[Zippy, May 6, 2013, July 26, 2018.]

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Scenes from a marriage

On Air Force One, Melania Trump was watching CNN. Donald Trump was angry:

He raged at his staff for violating a rule that the White House entourage should begin each trip tuned to Fox — his preferred network over what he considers the “fake news” CNN — and caused “a bit of a stir” aboard Air Force One, according to an email obtained by The New York Times. The email, an internal exchange between officials in the White House Military Office and the White House Communications Agency last Thursday, also called for the ordering of two additional televisions to support Beam, a TiVo-like streaming device, to make sure the president and first lady could both watch TV in their separate hotel rooms when they travel.

Rage about television channels, separate bedrooms (each with a television): I’d hate to be a partner in such a marriage.

Soy what?

The Washington Post reports that the Food and Drug Administration will forbid the use of the word milk in the names of plant-based products: “as the head of the FDA said last week, ‘an almond doesn’t lactate.’”

[My milk: Silk, soy.]

Rosetta?

Robert Costa, on NPR this morning, commenting on the Michael Cohen–Donald Trump tape: “This tape is a Rosetta stone. It’s open to interpretation.”

This metaphor puzzled me. Merriam-Webster defines “Rosetta stone” as ”one that gives a clue to understanding.“ If the emphasis falls on “open to interpretation,” I’d opt for “Rorschach test.” What does one see — or hear — in it?

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“Kokomo”

The terrible, horrible, no good, very bad “Kokomo” is thirty years old.

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Ministries of Truth at work

The Atlantic reports that the White House transcript of the Putin–Trump press conference alters the meaning of a key exchange. The Russian government’s transcript omits the exchange altogether.

Thanks, Elaine.