"I opened a packet of Reefer’s peanut butter cups at his preschool fund-raiser and stunk up the place. But pot wasn’t just an occasional funny thing for me to do on weekends. I got stoned the day my son came home from the hospital and stayed that way, with few breaks, for a decade and a half.... In March of 2017, my mother died. The hour before she passed, I was outside the hospital, getting a shipment of medical gummies from a friend. I was high when I watched her die, I was high at her funeral, and I was high every day for the next eight months. To say I was 'self-medicating' to deal with grief would be too kind. My addicted self took grief as a no-limits license to get stoned...."
Which is it? I'm hearing "advice and consent" — the nouns — but I write "advise and consent" — the verbs. I prefer the sound of "the Senate's advise-and-consent role" (which I wrote here and here).
Kavanaugh, testifying, told the Senators, "You have replaced ‘advice and consent’ with search and destroy." He said "advice," even at the cost of losing parallelism. "Search and destroy" are verbs. If nouns and not verbs are called for, he should have said "You have replaced ‘advice and consent’ with searching and destruction."
A big reason to say "advice and consent" is that the Constitutional text — Article II, Section 2 s— ays:
[The President] with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint... Judges of the supreme Court....
So maybe text should trump grammar, but if the text should so dominate how we speak, let's start saying "Judges of the Supreme Court." None of this "Justices" foolery.
Anyway, lest you think I'm a stickler for grammar, that's not why I've been preferring "advise and consent." I figured out the grammar after the fact, and I'm ready to hear anyone's explanation that I'm wrong about the grammar. I'm saying "Advise and Consent" because I read the 1959 best-seller "Advise and Consent" and I know the 1962 Otto Preminger movie!
Here's Wikipedia's plot summary of the book, which I'm setting out because there's some resonance with the recent activity in the Senate (boldface added):
A U.S. President decides to replace his Secretary of State to promote rapprochement with the Soviet Union. Nominee Robert Leffingwell, a darling of liberals, is viewed by many conservative senators as an appeaser. Others, including the pivotal character of Senator Seabright (Seab) Cooley of South Carolina, have serious doubts about Leffingwell's character. The book tells the story of an up-and-down nomination process that most people fully expect to result in a quick approval of the controversial nominee.
But Cooley is not so easily defeated. He uncovers a minor bureaucrat named Gelman who testifies that twenty years earlier then-University of Chicago instructor Leffingwell invited Gelman to join a small Communist cell that included a fellow traveler who went by the pseudonym James Morton. After outright lies under oath by the nominee and vigorous cross examination by Leffingwell, Gelman is thoroughly discredited and deemed an unfit witness by the subcommittee and its charismatic chairman Utah Senator Brig Anderson. The subcommittee is ready to approve the nominee.
At this crucial moment in the story, the tenacious Senator Cooley dissects Gelman's testimony and discovers a way to identify James Morton. Cooley maneuvers Morton into confessing the truth of Gelman's assertions to Senator Anderson who subsequently re-opens the subcommittee's hearings, thus enraging the President. When the President's attempts to buy Anderson's cooperation fail he places enormous pressure on Majority Leader Robert Munson to entice Anderson into compliance. In a moment of great weakness that Munson will regret the rest of his life, Munson provides the President a photograph, acquired quite innocently by Munson, that betrays Anderson's brief wartime homosexual liaison.
Armed with the blackmail instrument he needs, the President ignores Anderson's proof of Leffingwell's treachery and plots to use the photo to gain Anderson's silence.The President plants the photo with leftist Senator Fred Van Ackerman, thinking he will never need to use it. But the President has underestimated Van Ackerman's treachery and misjudged Anderson's reaction should the truth come out. After a series of circumstances involving Anderson's secret being revealed to his wife, the Washington press corps, and several senators, Anderson kills himself. Anderson's death turns the majority of the Senate against the President and the Majority Leader. Anderson's suicide and the exposure of the truth about Leffingwell's lies regarding his communist past set in motion a chain reaction that ends several careers and ultimately rejects Leffingwell as a nominee to become Secretary of State.
You can add this book to your Kindle for $10. I think I read it because it was assigned reading in my high school history class in the late 1960s. I believe it's considered to be one of the best novels about the workings of American politics.
"Freud theorized that humor serves as a way to dissipate sexual or aggressive tension in a socially acceptable way. Thomas Hobbes argues in the Leviathan that laughter arises from feeling superior, and that it's an extension of a feeling of 'sudden glory' arising from recognizing someone else's comparative defect or weakness.... The brain gets its wires crossed when confronted by someone else getting hurt. As a pain-filled situation unfolds, a witness doesn't experience the negative emotional valence that the person in pain does, but the brain still registers an emotional arousal. It can mistakenly categorize the sudden spike in emotion as positive....."
From "FYI: Why Is It Funny When A Guy Gets Hit In The Groin?" — a 2013 Popular Science article — which I'm reading this morning after blogging about last night's "SNL" cold open which featured "Joe Manchin" punching "Chuck Schumer" in the balls. There was a lot more in that sketch, and I didn't find any of it too funny, but in the comments to my post, Meade wrote: "in this era of That's Not Funny, at least we still have male-on-male sexual assault to laugh at."
Is hitting a man in the balls a sexual assault? It depends on the meaning of "sexual." I remember the definition of "sexual behavior" used by Rachel Mitchell (the prosecutor) in questioning Brett Kavanaugh. It specified the outward behavior and excluded intent. If you were doing the behavior — e.g., rubbing your clothed genitals against another person's clothed genitals — it didn't matter if you weren't doing it for sexual gratification. It could be mere "horseplay," and it would be "sexual behavior." That's adopting a broad view of "sexual," and that was done, I think, to take the perspective of the person on the receiving end of the behavior.
What about the man on the receiving end of a hit in the balls? First, are we talking about real life or a comedy scene? Getting hit in the balls is extremely common in comedy — it has a TV Tropes article* — and that's one reason to avoid it. But let's think about whether it should be avoided because it's not taking sexual assault seriously. We don't laugh to see a woman hit in the genitals. I don't think I've ever seen that used in comedy. It's not a cliché, but why isn't it a hilarious twist on the old cliché? We know it's not. Violence against women! And now, remember the 1970s feminist ideology about rape: It's a crime of violence, not sex. Rapists are not doing something sexual. See how that fits with Rachel Mitchell's definition of "sexual behavior."
Now, let's get back to the Popular Science article:
Besides the Freudian implications of the aggressive and sexual tension in the situation, there's also the suddenness with which a blow to the 'nads can take down even an otherwise big, strapping man.... Add that to the theories already at play with physical humor—benign violations, mistaken commitments, aggression, emotional arousal....
And you don't have women to tell you "That's not funny." It's male on male and the men are free to laugh fraternalistically.... until the women crack down on that too. And why wouldn't we? You're not taking sexual violence seriously. Or do you think it's not sexual? Maybe if we get you to think of it as sexual, you guys will stop laughing at other men's pain. And don't try to fend off the ire of women by purporting to take pride in man-on-man sexuality. The sexuality is on the rape continuum and therefore not funny in the Era of That's Not Funny. _____________________________
* It was all the way back in 1995, that "The Simpsons" was trying to instruct us that this form of humor is so bad that only Homer Simpson is laughing:
ADDED: A reader sends a link to this example of a woman getting kicked in the crotch:
"King of the Hill" felt it could get away with that, I suspect, because: 1. It's a cartoon, 2. The woman is portrayed as stronger than men (not having balls is a super-power).
The cold open shows GOP Senators celebrating their Kavanaugh victory in sports-locker-room style and "Chuck Schumer" weakly whining over the Democrats defeat and then getting punched in the balls by "Joe Manchin":
You can watch the whole sketch if you scroll back to the beginning, but I'm setting it to start at the depiction of Susan Collins, who, of course, can't be shown as a strong, principled woman who gave the best speech anyone can remember a Senator giving. No, she's a witless patsy, just vaguely realizing she's been had:
If it were funnier, I'd make a new tag, Kavanomedy. But it isn't funny. The main idea is that the American people were overwhelmingly opposed to Kavanaugh and are ferociously angry now and will let the clueless Senators feel their wrath in the midterm elections. If the Kavanaugh-haters who watch the show could really believe that, maybe they'd laugh, but there's no evidence that's what's happening out there in the real world. Oh, what am I saying? Who needs evidence?! Live within the fantasy for as long as you can, and "SNL" wants to be inside your bubble. Not much comic potential there, but who cares? It's the Era of That's Not Funny.
IN THE COMMENTS: gilbar — quoting my "SNL" wants to be inside your bubble — links to the "SNL" sketch that acknowledged the bubble within which it pictures its audience:
1. [+210, -3] There's also this one. They asked Bona to do the "oppa-ya" aegyo and Bona said, "but there's no oppa here?" ㅋㅋㅋㅋ Those ajussis need to stop doing this to female idols.
2. [+154, -0] Appropriate joke to this situation.
3. [+121, -0] ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ She targets them nicely~
4. [+57, -1] Tak Jae Hoon and Leeteuk's hosting is so boring ㅠㅠ My bias was on the show and the MCs kept cutting the flow with boring jokes, ugh.
5. [+49, -0] Am I the only one who doesn't find Leeteuk funny?
6. [+32, -0] So funny ㅋㅋㅋㅋ Sistar members are all girl crushes.
"... that wouldn’t even fill the first couple of rows of our Kansas Rally, or any of our Rallies for that matter! The Fake News Media tries to make it look sooo big, & it’s not!"
Also at Twitter, I'm seeing Jordan Peterson promoting (but not necessarily endorsing) the idea that Kavanaugh, confirmed, should step down. Responding to him is Scott Adams, who says, "This feels like a terrible idea to me, but because smart people are saying it, I’m open to hearing the argument."
Peterson replies: "I'm not certain that is the right move. It's very complex. But he would have his name cleared, and a figure who might be less divisive might be put forward."
And Adams says, "Quitting would clear his name? I'm not connecting any of these dots."
I agree with Adams and would add that a "less divisive" figure is a fantasy. If the Democrats dream of stopping Kavanaugh were to come true, they would be fired up to use any means necessary to stop the new nominee. I'm reminded of this passage in the Susan Collins speech:
The President nominated Brett Kavanaugh on July 9th. Within moments of that announcement, special interest groups raced to be the first to oppose him, including one organization that didn’t even bother to fill in the Judge’s name on its pre-written press release – they simply wrote that they opposed “Donald Trump’s nomination of XX to the Supreme Court of the United States.” A number of Senators joined the race to announce their opposition, but they were beaten to the punch by one of our colleagues who actually announced opposition before the nominee’s identity was even known.
From the Marijuana Harvest Festival on the UW Library Mall today. The video ends abruptly when one of the men on the stage calls out to me, "Ann!" I put the lens cap on the camera.
Actually, the camera continues to run, so I had audio of my reacting to getting run into by a man in an electric wheelchair, who came up behind me, ran into my foot, and kept his motor running with his wheel ramming into my foot as if to say, move your foot, I'm coming through.
Transcription from the audio: "Oh! Oh! Oh! Hey! Hey! Don't run into me. That's a crime. Don't run into people with a motor vehicle. That's wrong! That's wrong! You could be arrested for that! You need to be careful! There are children! There are animals! Don't do that! Don't do that!"
I really cared about impressing him that he could not drive like that on the pavement. He was acting like someone that other people let get away with whatever he wants to do, which I also think is wrong and, frankly, dehumanizing. Either he's capable of driving a motor vehicle or he isn't.
"If Kavanaugh is approved tomorrow it will only be the beginning of sustained mass movement that will come for more than the rapists and misogynists they put and hold in power. Down with Trump, down with Kavanaugh, down with the GOP, down with the patriarchy and down with capitalism!"
There are a lot of people milling around downtown Madison. It's a Farmers' Market day on the square. It's a big football Saturday, and the game's not until this evening. And there was the big annual Marijuana Harvest Festival right on Library Mall.
And this is what the Socialist flooding of the street looked like.
It's not as if anyone was gravitating toward the Democratic Party. People cut a wide swath around this table:
That's the Socialist crowd in the background. A few feet away the mall was teeming:
The Libertarians were there, hoping to divert the marijuana-oriented passers-by:
... just as soon as these protesters can be cleared out of the gallery.
AND: That's it! Kavanaugh has survived the ordeal. 50-48, confirmation.
I was touched that Senator Murkowski withdrew her "no" vote in deference to Senator Daines who wanted — needed — to be present at his daughter's wedding, so that he did not need to rush back in the middle of the day to register the "yes" vote that was his to give.
Article: 'YG Electronics', fans enraged by excessive self-diss... "Mocking the artists?"
Source: Star Today via Nate
1. [+1977, -39] So there's been no YG celebrity who completed active military service ever since YG was established in the 1998? Lee Chan Hyuk will be the first one to do so ㅋㅋ
2. [+1072, -21] What the hell is YG doing... This isn't going anywhere.
3. [+1042, -20] Yang Hyun Suk must've been desperate ㅋㅋ
4. [+93, -1] YG is going reckless now. This isn't even an agency, it's a pharmacy. They don't even write songs for Lee Hi anymore. No wonder why Gummy moved to CJ and she's doing even better with OSTs. The male celebrities always get sick for some reason and then serve in the public service. Do they not know how things work these days? Celebrities do well after completing their military service, come back with good projects, and promote without controversies. They must be full of idiots.
5. [+72, -3] Seungri is overdoing it. Instead, he should've enlisted with the hyungs and then have a group comeback. I don't know why he's doing this.
1. [+587, -12] YG must think this is cool but it's not trendy at all. These days, making sexual jokes or insulting others' looks can get you into big trouble. Eun Jiwon's part was also too much.
2. [+264, -10] You can't just use and mock artists who didn't even appear on the show. I can't believe they're doing things that hateful commenters and antis would do in their self-produced show. They need to edit Eun Jiwon's part out before it gets spread.
3. [+229, -3] Where are their manners for their artists? Do they think it's cool to make insults under the excuse of black comedy? Can the producers be sued for this? Before suing the hateful commenters, they should get rid of their inside enemies.
4. [+198, -5] This article is spot on. Insulting and mocking their own artists and calling it a B-level variety show is too much. I'm very disappointed with YG.
