Timely lines from a Lowell

[Kid Glove Killer (dir. Fred Zinnemann, 1942).]

Lines from James Russell Lowell’s “The Present Crisis”: “Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, / In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side.” Or as Florence Reece asked, “Which side are you on?”

The writer of the anonymous op-ed in The New York Times needs to choose. To stay is not to “resist” but to enable.

Ego sum, ergo sunt

Our president, speaking a few minutes ago in response to an anonymous New York Times opinion piece by a senior official in his administration. My transcription:

“If I weren’t here, I believe The New York Times probably wouldn’t even exist. And someday, and someday, when I’m not president, which hopefully will be in about six-and-a-half years from now, The New York Times and CNN and all of these phony media outlets will be out of business, folks, they’ll be out of business, because there’ll be nothing to write and there’ll be nothing of interest.”

There’ll be nothing of interest, except: what happened to the missing strawberries?

Donald Trump is not a well man. In late July I thought that we were seeing the beginning of the beginning of the beginning of the end. I think we’re now seeing the beginning of the beginning of the end.

[“I am; therefore, they are.” I hope the Latin’s fine.]

Killing craft

Brett Kavanaugh said this morning that he was not involved in “crafting” a program of enhanced interrogation techniques or its legal justifications. “Crafting” a program of torture: how polished, how urbane. If Kavanaugh’s use of craft doesn’t make someone, somewhere, reconsider using this vogue verb, I don’t know what will.

Related posts
Craft vogue : Words I can live without

[Maybe this post will.]

Antecedent trouble

[The Washington Post, September 5, 2018.]

Arial? Or Helvetica?

A quiz: So you think you can tell Arial from Helvetica? (via Michael Tsai).

[I scored 17 of 20. When I had to guess (all caps), I chose what looked better to my eye. And that turned out to be Helvetica.]

Separated at birth

 
[Charles Grassley and Abraham Jebediah Simpson II, aka Grampa Simpson.]

After watching the Brett Kavanaugh hearing for an hour or so today, I began to see a resemblance. Neither of these images is from today’s hearing.

Also separated at birth
Nicholson Baker and Lawrence Ferlinghetti : Bérénice Bejo and Paula Beer : Ted Berrigan and C. Everett Koop : David Bowie and Karl Held : Victor Buono and Dan Seymour : Ernie Bushmiller and Red Rodney : John Davis Chandler and Steve Buscemi : Ray Collins and Mississippi John Hurt : Broderick Crawford and Vladimir Nabokov : Ted Cruz and Joe McCarthy : Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Gough : Henry Daniell and Anthony Wiener : Jacques Derrida, Peter Falk, and William Hopper : Elaine Hansen (of Davey and Goliath) and Blanche Lincoln : Barbara Hale and Vivien Leigh : Harriet Sansom Harris and Phoebe Nicholls : Steven Isserlis and Pat Metheny : Colonel Wilhelm Klink and Rudy Giuliani : Ton Koopman and Oliver Sacks : Steve Lacy and Myron McCormick : Don Lake and Andrew Tombes : William H. Macy and Michael A. Monahan : Fredric March and Tobey Maguire : Jean Renoir and Steve Wozniak : Molly Ringwald and Victoria Zinny

[Grassley is older.]

Facebook fakes

An instructive New York Times feature: “Can You Spot the Deceptive Facebook Post?”

I went four for four. Gee, maybe I should sign up for Facebook!

Proust in cartoons

From Liana Finck, cartoonist: An Incomplete Biography of Marcel Proust (Paris Review). An excerpt:



Bonus trivia: the drooler is Madame de Cambremer, the same character whose head turns into a metronome when she listens to music.

Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)

[Finck writes that her work owes “a debt of information to Edmund Wilson’s biography,” but she means, of course, Edmund White’s biography. I e-mailed to let her know. Now the first panel has White’s name.]

REAL ESTATE

[Hi and Lois, September 4, 2018.]

I am always happy to see signage in the Flagstons’ world moving in the right direction, or in the left-to-right direction. REAL ESTATE sure beats ETATSE LAER, ECNARUSNI, and KCIUQ TRAM. And in Beetle Bailey’s world, NUB N’ NUR.

There is though something in today’s strip that needs fixing — in addition to the cost of housing. The colorist must have run out of paint when nearing the end of the job. Here, I have a can and a small brush.


[Hi and Lois corrected, September 4, 2018.]

Related reading
All OCA Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

Bundyville

From Longreads and Oregon Public Broadcasting, a seven-part podcast series, Bundyville. I knew the story in outline, sort of. But I had very little idea what lies behind it — what it means, for instance, when a politician or talk-radio host says that the Constitution is “hanging by a thread.” Highly recommended.