The world may not be upside down, but it’s certainly tilting a bit more. Mitt Romney is marching in Washington. His words, my punctuation:
“We need a voice against racism — we need many voices against racism and against brutality. We need to stand up and say that black lives matter.”
I’ve taken to writing or drawing a thank-you on almost every piece of mail I send. Why not?
The canvas here is not a paper bag. It’s an envelope from the Muji store, cheap and good.
In today’s comics: an apple, a fork, a mask, a microscope, a shopping cart, a steering wheel. Dustin makes it all clear.
The New York Times has an account from two sources of a telephone call between Donald Trump* and Roy Cooper, governor of North Carolina. Trump* was insisting on a Charlotte convention sans social distancing, sans masks:
As the call wrapped up, the president reminded Mr. Cooper of the ways in which the federal government had come to North Carolina’s assistance during the peak of the coronavirus outbreak. “I think we’ve done a good job,” Mr. Trump said. “Testing, ventilators, we got you a lot, and that’s OK.”Everything’s a deal. I did something for you — as if medical supplies and the National Guard are gifts, personally bestowed. Now it’s your turn to do something for me. See also: “I would like you to do us a favor though.”
“We’ve been good to you,” Mr. Trump added, according to one of the people familiar with the call, who spoke anonymously to discuss private negotiations. “We gave you the National Guard. We gave you a lot,” and said to Mr. Cooper, “You and I get along good. You’ve been nice to us about it.”
What a great opening. Alexandra Schwartz, writing in The New Yorker about a Bill de Blasio appearance on WNYC:
The record for the most notorious radio appearance made by a New York City mayor has long been held by Rudy Giuliani, who, on his weekly WABC call-in show, berated a ferret-loving constituent for showing an “excessive concern with little weasels” and advised him to seek psychiatric help. The baton has now been passed.
Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Brad Wilber, is truly stumperesque. Stumpacular. Stumperiffic. I spent thirty-nine minutes coming to terms with this puzzle and was surprised that I was able to finish. I started in the southeast and traveled to the southwest, the northeast, and the northwest, with one clue in each area giving me a start: 60-A, four letters, “Blog troll’s name, often”; 58-A, “When the Common Era began”; 16-A, five letters, “‘Daily ___’ (L.A. newspaper)”; 27-A, five letters, “Global Strike Command facility: Abbr.”
Some clue-and-answer pairs I especially liked:
7-D, six letters, “Habitual pincher.” The answer always reminds me of an All in the Family storyline.
17-A, four letters, “’60s singer who sounds sylvan.” There’s an excellent documentary.
20-A, eight letters, “Sort of breaker.” OVERTIME? No.
21-D, seven letters, “Restrains, as sounds.” DAMPENS? No.
23-A, three letters, “Passage disclaimer.” A little strained. But I suppose the answer fits as it would appear in a passage.
29-A, nine letters, “Color-correcting cosmetic.” The answer broke open much of the puzzle for me.
37-D, seven letters, “Where one shouldn’t go.” One might agree that it’s a clever clue.
42-D, seven letters, “13-time leading name on Gallup’s Most Admired Women list.” I’m always happy to see her name.
56-A, four letters, “Certain calf brusher.” I was thinking tykes and pants legs. Then I figured it out.
57-A, four letters, “Not quite a calf brusher.” See previous clue.
A startling factoid: 4-D, four letters, “She turned down Swanson’s role in Sunset Boulevard.” I think of what Billy Wilder said when George Raft turned down the lead in Double Indemnity: “We knew then that we’d have a good picture.” The thought of 4-D as Norma Desmond makes my head hurt.
And one clue whose answer I still don’t understand: 8-D, “‘Don Juan’ for all time.” Meaning what, exactly? And here the puzzle’s use of quotation marks and not italics makes for a puzzle within a puzzle: is “Don Juan” a nickame, or Byron’s poem?
*
8:14 p.m.: One more, which I wrote off as another bit of bafflement. But now I understand: 34-A, three letters, “One in a sure-to-sue scenario.”
No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.
For anyone who hasn’t (or has) seen the Frontline documentary A Class Divided (1985), this would be a good time to watch (or watch again).
A local business owner is ranting in several Facebook posts. Word has spread, even among those who don’t use Facebook. A sample of rant:
Please notice that Mr. Drake invokes the two-word epithet that’s in the news right now in the murder of Ahmaud Arbery. Hardly an accidental choice, I’d say.
In another post, Mr. Drake writes, “Now to my little lib friends out there, I don’t give a flying fuck if you post that I’m a racist!” Okay. Even if we’ve never been introduced, I’ll say it: sir, you’re a racist.
Yes, on Sunday we had a march with more than two hundred people in support of Black Lives Matter. But this is where those of us who marched live.
*
5:00 p.m.: Our mayor has issued a statement condemning hate speech. And the guy who liked the post and got his name on the screenshot that’s been circulated was fired by an area business this afternoon. So that’s also where we live.
*
8:16 p.m.: I discovered by chance that there’s a Drake elsewhere whose business has the same name as this Drake’s business. So I’ve removed the name of the business from this post.
Fernando Pessoa, text 457, The Book of Disquiet, trans. from the Portuguese by Richard Zenith (New York: Penguin, 2003).
Related reading
All OCA Pessoa posts (Pinboard)
From The Washington Post: “From former presidents to religious leaders, everyone is turning on Trump.” Recall Lyndon Johnson’s lament: “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.” Trump* has lost even Pat Robertson. Though it’s not clear to me that Pat Robertson was ever all there — in possession of all marbles, that is.
The WP piece is already behind the times, as it’s missing James Mattis’s statement on recent events, which includes this stunning passage. The comparison is clear:
Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that “The Nazi slogan for destroying us . . . was ‘Divide and Conquer.’ Our American answer is ‘In Union there is Strength.’” We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis — confident that we are better than our politics.
Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.
