224 > 205

From Business Insider: Jen Psaki held more formal press briefings during her fifteen months as White House press secretary (224) than the defeated former president’s press secretaries held in four years (205).

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Stella Zawistowski, is about half as difficult as the last two Stumpers. Difficult, yes, but not sitting-at-the-kitchen-table-for-half-an-hour difficult. I began by filling in five letters of 14-D, seven letters, “Disgorge.” And the last letter made 33-A, six letters, “Nethermost” easy to see. 51-A, four letters, “French Toaster Sticks brand” was a gimme (though not a breakfast food I’d choose for myself), and that made 42-D, seven letters, “Largest Arab country by area” and the rest of the southeast corner relatively easy to work out. The toughest part of the puzzle: the northeast corner. 11-D, five letters, “Where to grab your spears”? My first thought was of asparagus.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-A, seven letters, “Acting appallingly.” Improves a familiar crossword word.

8-D, six letters, “Fancy footwork.” Not really. Footwork is in the origin, but the word’s meanings in English leave the feet behind.

19-A, five letters, “Take over.” A bit forced.

30-A, three letters, “How Timon of Athens originated.” If I understand this clue, the answer is exceeedingly forced.

36-A, four letters, “Use soap and water.” A word I learned from reading Nabokov.

36-D, eight letters, “Order to proceed.” A nice clash between the dignity of the clue and the abandon of the answer.

37-A, six letters, “Brit billiard player’s outerwear.” I don’t know why I know this word.

37-D, seven letters, “Hard to hobnob with.” Why bother?

45-A, seven letters, “‘Eighter from _____’ (casino dice roll).” Sounds like something from a Frank Sinatra–Dean Martin movie.

53-D, four letters, “Call it.” It wouldn’t hurt to have added a pronoun.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

“Indefensible”

Twenty-five paragraphs into a twenty-nine-paragraph Washington Post article about Samuel Alito’s (virtual) appearance at George Mason University: the news that Alito called the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, which protects LGBTQ persons from workplace discrimination, “indefensible.” Or rather, he called the use of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as a basis for the decision indefensible:

While he said he wasn’t defending past actions, Alito said it was clear Congress at that time allowed and practiced discrimination.

“It is inconceivable that either Congress or voters in 1964 understood discrimination because of sex to mean discrimination because of sexual orientation, much less gender identity,” Alito said. “If Title VII had been understood at that time to mean what Bostock held it to mean, the prohibition on discrimination because of sex would never have been enacted. In fact, it might not have gotten a single vote in Congress.”

In other words, past discrimination justifies continued discrimination.

That is what’s indefensible.

Sunshine of my mondegreen

I’ve been mishearing the words since the Atco 45 rpm days:

It’s gettin’ near dawn, when light grows a tiger’s eye

No: “when lights close their tired eyes.”

And:

I’ll stay with you till my seeds are dried up

No: “seas.” Though “seeds” makes a sort of sense.

I’m glad I finally thought to check the lyrics.

My own personal mondegreens
“And Jupiter collides with Mars” : “Blowin’ through the chasm in my mind” : “Sweet Loretta Modern”

“Music from Nancy”

[“Music from Nancy,” by Steve Sweet, Steve Cunningham and Jesse Poimboeuf.]

Thanks, John.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

Separated at birth

  [Chico Marx and Robert Walden. Click either image for a larger view.]

We were watching Lou Grant, and Elaine saw the resemblance.

Also separated at birth
Claude Akins and Simon Oakland : Ernest Angley and Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán : Nicholson Baker and Lawrence Ferlinghetti : William Barr and Edward Chapman : 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 : Adam Driver and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska : Bonita Granville and Cyndi Lauper : Charles Grassley and Abraham Jebediah Simpson II : Elaine Hansen (of Davey and Goliath) and Blanche Lincoln : Barbara Hale and Vivien Leigh : Pat Harrington Jr. and Marcel Herrand : 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 : Markku Luolajan-Mikkola and John Malkovich : William H. Macy and Michael A. Monahan : Fredric March and Tobey Maguire : Elisabeth Moss and Alexis Smith : Jean Renoir and Steve Wozniak : Molly Ringwald and Victoria Zinny

“Striking similarities” between commencement speeches

At Duke University, a commencement speech that bears “striking similarities” to one delivered at Harvard University eight years ago.

One way to ensure that your commencement speech will not bear striking similarities to someone else’s commencement speech: don’t carefully “reword” (as they say) passages from that other speech.

The awkward question to ask: How likely is it that this commencement speech marks the first time the speechmaker has taken someone else’s words and ideas, made slight alterations, and presented the result as her own work?

*

May 13: Here’s a side-by-side video comparison.

Related reading
All OCA plagiarism posts (Pinboard)

“Coming back as a cat”

William Russ, sixty-one, gravedigger:

Ronald Blythe, Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village (1969).

Also from Akenfield
Davie’s hand : Rubbish : “Just ‘music’” : “Caught in the old ways” : “The blue rode well in the corn” : “I began in a world without time”

A pencil truck

In Somerville, Massachusetts, a giant (non-working) pencil atop a truck.

Another vote from Mary Miller

My (nominal) representative in Congress, Mary Miller (R, IL-15), was one of fifty-seven House Republicans to vote yesterday against additional emergency appropriations for Ukraine. There’s something about Mary.

Related reading
All OCA Mary Miller posts (Pinboard)