“So there I was, a forty-something high-school teacher, with little kids, zero political experience, and no money, running in a deep red district. But you know what? Never underestimate a public-school teacher. Never”: Tim Walz, just now.
Wednesday, August 21, 2024
Brooklyn in the house
“Bro, we broke up with you for a reason”: Hakeem Jeffries, just now, speaking to Donald Trump.
And now I know what spin the block means.
John Gruber nails it (Peter Baker)
The language of the barroom, pool hall, and street corner makes only infrequent appearances in these pages, almost always in something I’ve quoted. As will be the case here, as John Gruber comments on a passage in a New York Times article by Peter Baker.
Here’s Baker:
It is hard to think of a more bittersweet moment for a president who spent more than a half-century on the stage only now to be involuntarily shown the exit. The warm bath of affection in Chicago, real as it may have been, could go just so far to salve the wounds of the past few weeks.Here’s Gruber:
Fuck Peter Baker. What utter bullshit the word “involuntar[il]y” plays in that lede. Of course it was voluntary. Joe Biden is the President of the United States and is comfortable with the power that title affords. He was, even after his disastrous debate performance, only a few points behind in the polls. It was his call and his call alone to step aside — for the sake of his party, and more importantly, for the sake of the country he so obviously loves. And it’s now obvious he made the right call.I began reading that Baker story and gave up — I never made it to the paragraph quoted above. But I can add to what Gruber has to say. Look at Baker’s first paragraphs (which Gruber quotes but doesn’t comment on):
Very few presidents have ever been faced with such a clear decision between the good of the nation and the drive of their personal ambition. Biden’s ambition is legendary. Biden’s response to this moment was heroic.
The Times can give Peter Baker as much ink as they want as a columnist. But they should stop calling him a “reporter”. He’s nothing of the sort, and hasn’t been for a long time.
When the crowd members in the United Center first chanted, “Thank you, Joe! Thank you, Joe!” on Monday night, President Biden looked down, fought back tears and soaked in the admiration.How does Baker know that’s what the crowd meant? And how does he know what Biden was thinking? The ease with which Baker penetrates mental states here contrasts with his careful hesitation about hearing contempt in Donald Trump’s remarks about military service:
But he knew. He might not have wanted to admit it. But he knew. They were thanking him, yes, for what he accomplished during a lifetime in public service. But they were also thanking him, let’s be honest, for not running again.
“Yeah, I mean, look, you know, he has continually and repeatedly said things that seem to denigrate military service” [my emphasis].I’m not sure if I’m happy or sad about reading what John Gruber wrote. At any rate, it finally moved me to unsubscribe from The New York Times. I can read for free via my university, and in desperate circumstances, I can read via archive.today. I assume that my three-digit Wordle streak will vanish. But enough is enough.
Related posts
Paul Harvey redux : Seeming and appearing
[I can’t believe I misspelled John Gruber’s first name. Angry typing!]
A telegram, an actual telegram
[Click for a much larger view.]
Thinking about telegrams made me remember that I have one. It appears in Ted Berrigan’s “C” magazine, vol. 1, no. 10 (1965), pasted inside a telegram-sized outline with the words “When the mercenaries ran away ...” typed along one side. I wonder what made it onto other copies of this mimeographed page.
The telegram, from Galeria Bonino, a Manhattan gallery, was sent to the artist and writer Joe Brainard. From Brazilian Bulletin, January 1, 1964:
Those who are acquainted with the Galeria Bonino in Rio de Janeiro will be pleased to know that Alfredo Bonino and Emilio del Junco have opened a new art gallery in New York City, at 7 West 57th Street. Other Bonino galleries are in Buenos Aires, Rome and Toronto.Did Joe Brainard ever have a show at Galeria Bonino? There’s nothing listed in the exhibition history in Joe Brainard: A Retrospective (2001).
Pop quiz: Why would a Manhattan gallery be sending a telegram to a Manhattan resident?
Related reading
All OCA Joe Brainard posts : telegram posts (Pinboard)
“Letters! Actual Letters!”
The latest episode of This American Life is all about real mail: “Letters! Actual Letters!” With enough human interest to fill a relay box.
Related reading
All OCA letters posts (Pinboard)
Tuesday, August 20, 2024
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?”
Psst, David Brooks
I wasn’t going to make this post. But after reading David Brooks’s baffling appraisal of the speech Joe Biden gave last night, here I am.
David Brooks didn’t like the speech. In The New York Times he writes, “I was hoping for something in the spirit of the Harris campaign — ebullient and joyful.”
I noticed ebullient twice in Brooks’s comments during PBS’s coverage of the DNC last night, each time pronounced /EB-yə-lənt/. As Garner’s Modern English Usage notes, that’s a common mispronunciation.
Has David Brooks latched onto this word for use in talking and writing about Kamala Harris? If so, I hope he gets it right. (Perhaps Jonathan Capehart can clue him in.) I will be listening and watching.
[I left a comment about ebullient on the Times piece. Maybe Brooks will see it.]
Firing the librarians
From Inside Higher Ed:
Western Illinois University is laying off all nine of its library faculty — eight of them tenured or on the tenure track — as part of wider efforts to offset a $22 million budget deficit driven by rising operational costs and a 21 percent enrollment drop since fall 2019.Western is also closing a library at a branch campus, to be replaced by a service desk at which patrons can put in requests for materials, Monday through Friday, 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. It’s all part of “a new vision” for that campus.
While the university said in an Aug. 9 news release that it’s “made every effort to minimize the impact on students,” the planned elimination of the library faculty by May 2025 has academic librarians both inside and outside the institution questioning how WIU’s library will be able to effectively serve faculty and students in the future.
“It’s quite alarming,” said Leo Lo, president of the national Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), adding that in addition to assisting faculty in their teaching and research, librarians are especially helpful to first-generation college students finding their footing in higher education. “Without libraries to help them, it may hurt student retention” and recruitment, he said.
But Alisha Looney, a spokesperson for WIU, wrote in an email Friday that the university “will continue to have adequate coverage in the library” after the layoffs.
Loony, indeed.
Related reading
All OCA library posts (Pinboard)
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