"The new '... nevertheless, she persisted'?"

Writes my son John about the statement "She got exactly what she wanted, which wasn't to speak.... She wanted to cause a scene...."

The statement appears in an L.A. Times article, "A state senator is removed from the chamber for her comments about Tom Hayden and Vietnam":

After trying to make a statement about the late Tom Hayden and his opposition to the Vietnam War, Sen. Janet Nguyen (R-Garden Grove) was removed from the floor of the state Senate on Thursday, a tense scene that ended in a slew of angry accusations from both Republicans and Democrats.

Nguyen, who was brought to the United States as a Vietnamese refugee when she was a child, said she wanted to offer "a different historical perspective" on what Hayden and his opposition to the war had meant to her and other refugees....

In the statement which she later posted on her official Senate website, Nguyen criticized Hayden for siding "with a communist government that enslaved and/or killed millions of Vietnamese, including members of my own family."

A procedural rule was cited as the basis for wanting shut Nguyen up. She was ruled "out of order" for using a "point of personal privilege." Nguyen had refrained from airing her opinion during a remembrance of Hayden that had occurred earlier in the week.

If Omarosa didn't say "dossier," let's lob a new epithet: "Nixonian."

[POST TO COME. SORRY I ACCIDENTALLY PUBLISHED AFTER WRITING THE HEADLINE. CONCERNED THAT YOU MIGHT BE DISTRACTED BY IT ALREADY, I WON'T TAKE IT DOWN. THE BODY OF THE POST WILL ARRIVE SOON.]

I hate when that happens! There's some keystroke that publishes a post. I'm still not sure what it is, but I manage to hit it from time to time. Now, you're wondering what the hell this post title means. And the previous post title is enigmatic, so perhaps you think I've lost my mind.

Here are the 2 Washington Post articles I am reading:

1. From February 13th: "Journalist says Omarosa Manigault bullied her and mentioned a ‘dossier’ on her."

2. From February 14th (referring to the same juournalist, April Ryan): "‘This is . . . Nixonian’: Reporter was taped by White House in heated exchange."

Both articles are by Paul Farhi. The first article describes a dispute between Manigault and Ryan, and you can see that the headline highlights Ryan's version of the story. This is from the middle of Farhi's article:

In October, Manigault sent Ryan an email raising questions about whether Ryan was being paid by Hillary Clinton’s campaign — a claim Ryan vigorously denies. Manigault included a link to an article from the Intercept ["EXCLUSIVE: New Email Leak Reveals Clinton Campaign’s Cozy Press Relationship"]...

Ryan's name was in the Intercept article, and Manigault pushed Ryan to protect her "legacy" and "integrity."

Ryan said she was devastated by any intimation that she was unethical. “It’s just ugly,” she said. “She’s trying to harm my integrity and my career. I’ve been [covering the White House] for 20 years. I plan to be here for the next 20 years. You don’t mess with someone’s livelihood.”

I don't understand why Ryan is attacking Manigault for something that was in The Intercept. Was The Intercept right or wrong? Attacking Manigault makes it look like The Intercept got it right. Farhi doesn't explore that puzzlement. Here's his next paragraph:

During their altercation...

How did the "altercation" start? Suddenly, there's a face-to-face encounter? We're just plunged into the middle of things!

... Ryan said Manigault told her that she was among several African American journalists who were the subject of White House “dossiers.” Manigault has previously said that Trump is keeping “a list” of opponents, though at the time she was referring to Republicans who voted against Trump.

Ryan said she dismissed the idea of any such dossiers. “I said, ‘Good for you, good for you, good for you.’ ”...

What makes it into the headline is the idea of "dossiers." (An interesting word, given the fake-news Trump dossier of 4 weeks ago.) It sounds very creepy and scurrilous, the keeping of dossiers on journalists. Why it sounds... Nixonian.

One day later, the news is that the conversation was recorded and the word "dossier" isn't there. Ryan's story is shot to hell. And what's in the headline? Ryan's using the word "Nixonian" to describe the practice of recording conversations.

Ryan said she was not aware that her run-in with Manigault last week was recorded. “I didn’t know she was taping it,” she said. “This is about her trying to smear my name. This is freaking Nixonian.”

Manigault said the White House’s press staff recorded the encounter and that its contents make clear she never threatened Ryan or mentioned “dossiers.”

“She came in [to the White House press-staff area] hot,” hurling insults at her, Manigault said. “She came in with an attitude. For her to characterize me as the bully — I’m so glad we have this tape … because it’s ‘liar, liar, pants on fire’ ” in Ryan’s case, Manigault said.

It may be Nixonian to record conversations, but this incident shows it was smart, since it gives Manigault a way to defend herself.

Farhi tells us that Washington D.C. has a "one-party consent" law, which would mean that Manigault recording Ryan without her knowledge is not illegal, but:

Several veteran White House reporters said interviews are sometimes recorded by officials but that it was unheard of to do so without a reporter’s prior knowledge.

I'd like to hear more about the etiquette of recording. If it's done surreptitiously, that might explain why reporters do not hear of it. Maybe what's special in this case is how quickly Manigault offered the assertion of the existence of a recording to defend herself. One reason to do that would be if there actually is no recording and Manigault is simply trying to force Ryan into changing her story. But that's extremely unlikely given that Farhi writes that "a handful of reporters" have heard the recording. One of them, Fox News White House reporter John Roberts, said that he heard "some terse words and accusations... but it didn’t amount to a confrontation," and that he did not hear the word "dossier."

Ryan stood by her account and charged that Manigault “selected pieces” of their exchange. “She wants to spin it like it’s a catfight, but she edited that tape,” she said. “You don’t hear her screaming. This is about her smearing me.”

And that's where we stand. Ryan got some big press and now she's on the defensive. Why did The Washington Post help her go on the offensive on February 13th and then again boost her on the 14th, calling Manigault "Nixonian"? When does Manigault get fair balance in The Washington Post? 

There will be 5 minutes today between the 114th Congress and the 115th Congress — will Obama try to use the recess appointment power to put Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court?

This Fox News report tells us "there’s no active chatter" on the subject, but if there were the plan, maybe there would be enforced quiet.



It's quiet. Too quiet.

The drama is over at noon.

Or is it?

Why has the father not spoken to the mother for more than 18 years?

The wife speaks to her husband in a normal way, and the husband speaks to other people in a normal way. The couple live together in close quarters and in apparent peace and have had 3 children together. The 18-year-old son seeks help from a TV show that solves people's problems for them. Here's the video. The answer to the puzzle of the father's silence is revealed:



Via Metafilter, where the discussion is at odds with the spirit of the video. I don't recommend reading that, especially before watching the video.

On "Face the Nation" today, the panelists seemed to be playing a game called: Talk about Trump as much as you can without talking about Trump.

The moderator was John Dickerson, and his actual question was: "You are an assignment editor. And you have to assign coverage for the year 2017. How do you deploy your forces? What’s the story?" Obviously, the story you've got to cover is President Donald Trump. But they're not going to say Well, duh, John, we've got to cover the damned Trump presidency.

Our first contestant is Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic:

JEFFREY GOLDBERG:  Well, the story is-- there’s one overarchingly huge story. A very big league story, as Michele might say. The-- the-- the story is-- the-- the story is the upending of American politics. The story is of the outs coming in and the ins going out. --The story is trying to explain to the American people what’s happened to their two main parties. And-- and the deeper story, also, I don’t want to forget this -- the deeper story is globalization, and technological disruption, and anxiety born of-- of rapid change, rapid, destabilizing change, the fragility of institutions. All of that is-- is there undergirding the larger, more immediate story, which is how did Donald Trump become president of the United States....

Bzzz. Goldberg mentioned Donald Trump. He had a great run going — the outs coming in and the ins going out... anxiety born of-- of rapid change, rapid, destabilizing change, the fragility of institutions... Great stuff. There's overarching and undergirding — construction to go along with the destruction. It was mindbending. I was ready to give him the prize, but then he said the name. Wipe out.

Let's get the next contestant up here. Michele Norris, a journalist affiliated with something called the Race Card Project:

"Shots like this are challenging because it’s tempting to jump to conclusions about her economic situation... but all that we do know is that she has a wonderful eccentricity."

"I don’t know what kind of comments are appropriate for a photo like this other than something like 'more power to her.' Photographers like Lissette Model and Diane Arbus made their careers shooting people on the fringes of society but I wonder if those type of photos today feel informative or exploitive?"

From the comments: "Were you unable to talk to her? I imagine that all of your questions would’ve have been answered or at least a simple conversation would’ve revealed a few things. I think you may have answered your own question about informative vs. exploitive."

Trump speaks directly to the people with a no-frills YouTube video.

Stylistically, this is startlingly primitive. YouTube may be up-to-date technology, but it's always had a DIY feel to it. You can propagate very polished video with it if you want and as Trump did in his final campaign ad. But this new message has the stilted, unrefined look and sound of a middle-of-the-night infomercial on cable TV. That doesn't mean this is not a slick move. The decision to go rough can be slick.

The new message is the second video posted on a new YouTube channel called "Transition 2017." (Those of you who love to say Trump is a narcissist who can't resist slapping his name on everything should observe that the word "Trump" does not appear in the channel name.) The first video was the cheesy "My Dad," which is good if you like photos of long-haired blond boys and sentimental, tinkly piano noodling.

Oh, do you want to talk about the substance of the message? Below is a transcript to help you with that. What's most important is what's left out, which can be hard to notice. So, I'll just say: immigration.

I got played by the NYT — the headline is "Obama Criticizes F.B.I. Director: ‘We Don’t Operate on Leaks.'"

Then I watched the video:

'We don't operate on innuendo' — President Obama discusses Hillary, emails, and the FBI in an exclusive interview with NowThis pic.twitter.com/0J6tJyEYSh

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) November 2, 2016

That didn't come across as Obama turning around from the restrained, out-of-the-fray position he took yesterday, but the NYT has:

President Obama sharply criticized the decision by his F.B.I. director to alert Congress on Friday about the discovery of new emails related to the Hillary Clinton server case, implying that it violated investigative norms and trafficked in innuendo.

Where's the sharp criticism?!

Note that Obama, speaking very carefully, says:

I made a very deliberate effort to make sure that I don’t look like I’m meddling in what are supposed to be independent processes for making these assessments.

Interesting stress on how things look. But I think he means to keep looking like he's not meddling.

Now, Obama also says:

We don’t operate on incomplete information. We don’t operate on leaks. We operate based on concrete decisions that are made.

But he's speaking generally, not directly at Comey, and not purporting to say specifically that anything Comey has done constitutes "operating" on "incomplete information." You'd have to put that together yourself — or trust the NYT to do that for you.

Bob Dylan says he'll attend the Nobel Awards ceremony: "Absolutely. If it’s at all possible."

This comes in an interview with The Telegraph's Edna Gunderson:

And as he talks, he starts to sound pretty pleased about becoming a Nobel laureate. “It’s hard to believe,” he muses. His name has been mentioned as on the shortlist for a number of years, but the announcement was certainly not expected. When he was first told, it was, Dylan confides, “amazing, incredible. Whoever dreams about something like that?”

In which case, I can’t help but ask, why the long public silence about what it means? Jean-Paul Sartre famously declined the award in 1964, but Dylan has these past weeks seemed intent on simply refusing to acknowledge its existence....

For his part, Dylan sounds genuinely bemused by the whole ruckus. It is as if he can’t quite fathom where all the headlines have come from, that others have somehow been over-reacting. Couldn’t he just have taken the calls from the Nobel Committee?

“Well, I’m right here,” he says playfully, as if it was simply a matter of them dialling his number, but he offers no further explanation.

AND: Does he think his work belongs in the Nobel literature category? Gunderson reminds him of what's being said about Homer and Sappho and how their poems were written to be sung, but we still read them apart from whatever that music was supposed to be, and Bob Dylan's words could be read.

“I suppose so, in some way. Some [of my own] songs – “Blind Willie”, “The Ballad of Hollis Brown”, “Joey”, “A Hard Rain”, “Hurricane”, and some others – definitely are Homeric in value.”

The absence of narcissism in Bob Dylan.

"What really set me apart in these days was my repertoire. It was more formidable than the rest of the coffeehouse players, my template being hard-core folk songs backed by incessantly loud strumming. I’d either drive people away or they’d come in closer to see what it was all about. There was no in-between. There were a lot of better singers and better musicians around these places but there wasn’t anybody close in nature to what I was doing. Folk songs were the way I explored the universe, they were pictures and the pictures were worth more than anything I could say. I knew the inner substance of the thing. I could easily connect the pieces. It meant nothing for me to rattle off things like 'Columbus Stockade,' 'Pastures of Plenty,' 'Brother in Korea' and 'If I Lose, Let Me Lose' all back-to-back just like it was one long song. Most of the other performers tried to put themselves across, rather than the song, but I didn’t care about doing that. With me, it was about putting the song across."

Bob Dylan,  "Chronicles: Volume One" (pp. 17-18).

IN THE COMMENTS: traditionalguy said: "Bob was one hell of a communicator in the 1960s. Even today his silence speaks louder than most." Made me think of this:

"For almost a quarter of a century... the Nobel committee acted as if American literature did not exist — and now an American is acting as if the Nobel committee doesn’t exist."

"Giving the award to Mr. Dylan was an insult to all the great American novelists and poets who are frequently proposed as candidates for the prize. The all-but-explicit message was that American literature, as traditionally defined, was simply not good enough. This is an absurd notion, but one that the Swedes have embraced: In 2008, the Academy’s permanent secretary, Horace Engdahl, declared that American writers 'don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature' and are limited by that 'ignorance.'"

Writes the poet/critic Adam Kirsch (in the NYT). (Here's Kirsch enthusing over Philip Roth, who is, I suspect, in Adam Kirsch's basket of insulteds.)

Kirsch doesn't read Dylan's silence as a response to what Kirsch reads as an insult to to all the great American novelists and poets.

No one knows what he intends — Mr. Dylan has always been hard to interpret, both as a person and as a lyricist...

Don't criticize what you can’t understand...

So Kirsch goes back to Jean-Paul Sartre who refused the Nobel Prize for Literature and, unlike Bob, explained himself (at length, here). And beyond that, Kirsch finds explanation in Sartre's "Being and Nothingness," which talks about "bad faith... the opposite of authenticity":

Bad faith [is] possible because a human being cannot simply be what he or she is... [B]ecause we are free, we must “make ourselves what we are.” In a famous passage, Sartre uses as an example a cafe waiter who performs every part of his job a little too correctly, eagerly, unctuously. He is a waiter playing the role of waiter. But this “being what one is not” is an abdication of freedom; it involves turning oneself into an object, a role, meant for other people. To remain free, to act in good faith, is to remain the undefined, free, protean creatures we actually are, even if this is an anxious way to live.

And I answer them most mysteriously/“Are birds free from the chains of the skyway?”

ADDED: From Bob Dylan's great book "Chronicles: Volume One," here's something that cuts the other way from Kirsch's idea that Bob is about keeping himself for himself and not wanting to be the thing that is meant for other people. Page 16:

I could never sit in a room and just play all by myself. I needed to play for people and all the time. You can say I practiced in public and my whole life was becoming what I practiced.

"Bob Dylan's failure to acknowledge his Nobel Prize in literature is 'impolite and arrogant,' according to a member of the body that awards it."

Well, it's impolite and arrogant to say that too, isn't it?

Academy member Per Wastberg told Swedish television: "He is who he is," adding that there was little surprise Dylan had ignored the news. "We were aware that he can be difficult and that he does not like appearances when he stands alone on the stage"...

Mr Wastberg called the snub "unprecedented", but... Jean-Paul Sartre in 1964 [rejected the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964].

And here's the very cool video of Doris Lessing climbing out of a cab and getting confronted with the news that she just won the Prize:



I especially love the artichokes.

And why did Sartre refuse the Nobel Prize? Here's his explanation, translated and published in The New York Review of Books in 1964:

[M]y refusal is not an impulsive gesture, I have always declined official honors...

This attitude is based on my conception of the writer’s enterprise. A writer who adopts political, social, or literary positions must act only with the means that are his own—that is, the written word. All the honors he may receive expose his readers to a pressure I do not consider desirable. If I sign myself Jean-Paul Sartre it is not the same thing as if I sign myself Jean-Paul Sartre, Nobel Prizewinner....

The writer must therefore refuse to let himself be transformed into an institution....

That is the "personal" reason for refusing. There are also what he calls the "objective" reasons:

The only battle possible today on the cultural front is the battle for the peaceful coexistence of the two cultures, that of the East and that of the West.... I myself am deeply affected by the contradiction between the two cultures: I am made up of such contradictions. My sympathies undeniably go to socialism and to what is called the Eastern bloc, but I was born and brought up in a bourgeois family and a bourgeois culture. This permits me to collaborate with all those who seek to bring the two cultures closer together. I nonetheless hope, of course, that “the best man wins.” That is, socialism.

This is why I cannot accept an honor awarded by cultural authorities, those of the West any more than those of the East, even if I am sympathetic to their existence....

I love the illustration, by the great NYRB caricaturist, David Levine. 



And suddenly, I want to link to this article that I just saw on the front-page of the NYT website: "Campaign Aims to Help Pepe the Frog Shed Its Image as Hate Symbol."



ADDED: Making a Doris Lessing tag and applying it retroactively, I discover that I commented on that Doris Lessing video clip back in 2007 in a post called "Why did Doris Lessing say 'Oh, Christ' on hearing that she won the Nobel Prize?" At the time I said:

I think she was annoyed that this was going to be the video clip that everyone would watch forever. She'll always have her hair like that, her face like that — however she happened to end up after she'd been dragging herself around town all morning. And now she has to say something, and it better be good, because everyone will quote it. Oh, Christ, I have to go through this whole thing right now.

And it worked out for her. Everyone thinks "Oh, Christ" means so much. It's profound. But, really, it's not as if she could have squealed like an actress winning the Oscar. You don't think she was thrilled, inside?

Or maybe she was kind of pissed, and said "Oh, Christ" in the sense of: So, now, finally they get around to me... after all those second-rate hacks who got the prize all those years when I was ready with my hair done and my makeup on and a nice quote ready to go.

A single line on a back page of Bob Dylan's website was the sole indication from his side that he sees he's won the Nobel Prize literature.

That was in the news yesterday, and we talked about it here.

But now that line is expunged:

The simple words “winner of the Nobel prize in literature”, which appeared on the page for The Lyrics: 1961-2012, have now been removed. Bob Dylan, Nobel laureate, is once again plain Bob Dylan.

Dylan... has always stepped away from attempts to corral him into being something he does not want to be.

In 1965, at the height of his fevered elevation from singer to spokesman for a generation, he was asked at a San Francisco press conference whether he thought of himself primarily as a singer or a poet. “Oh, I think of myself more as a song and dance man, y’know?” he replied.

In July 1966, following a motorcycle crash at the peak of his fame, Dylan disappeared from public view. Though it was claimed he had broken several vertebrae, he was never treated in hospital, and he later admitted in his autobiography, Chronicles: “I had been in a motorcycle accident and I’d been hurt, but I recovered. Truth was that I wanted to get out of the rat race.”

Whether the latest twist in the Dylan-Nobel saga is the result of an administrative foul-up or a deliberate choice is unknown – stars’ websites are usually run with extremely limited input from their notional owners, and it’s entirely possible Dylan never knew either that his site had made reference to the prize or removed it....

I love the enigma. We love you, Bob. You don't have to make anything any clearer...

Lyric:

And I tried to make sense
Out of that picture of you in your wheelchair
That leaned up against....
Her Jamaican rum
And when she did come, I asked her for some
She said, “No, dear”
I said, “Your words aren’t clear
You’d better spit out your gum”...

"The Swedish Academy says it has given up trying to reach Bob Dylan, days after it awarded him the Nobel prize in literature."

"So far the American troubadour has responded with silence since he won the prize on Thursday."

The British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn answers the question what's his favorite "biscuit"?

He was doing an interview with Mumsnet — a website for British mothers — and the what's-your-favorite-cookie question is routine. Past answers include:

David Cameron was ("Oatcakes with butter and cheese"). Gordon Brown was ("Anything with a bit of chocolate"). As were Ed Miliband ("Jaffa Cake"), Nicola Sturgeon ("Tunnock's Caramel Wafer") and Nick Clegg ("Rich Tea if dunked. Hob Nobs if not").

You see the gentle, mum-friendly style other politicians have used. Corbyn said:.

"I'm totally anti-sugar on health grounds, so eat very few biscuits... But if forced to accept one, it's always a pleasure to have a shortbread."

The mums were displeased:

"That's the most miserable response to the biscuit question I've ever read," sighed one. "Forced to eat a biscuit you're politically opposed to."

ADDED: We have cookie politics in the U.S. too. Read: "The blatantly sexist cookie bake-off that has haunted Hillary Clinton for two decades is back":

Now it’s time (again) for the Family Circle Magazine Presidential Cookie Poll, a head-to-head cookie-baking challenge that has become a fixture of US presidential campaigns, even as some rail against it, characterizing it as a calcified indicator of lingering sexism in American politics.

The competition—in which the contender for Republican first lady pits her cookie recipe against one submitted to the magazine by the potential Democratic first lady, for readers to bake, taste, and vote upon—began as a response to an off-the-cuff remark Clinton made in 1992....

"I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public life."

"Fulfill my profession" is such a funny way to put it. When someone speaks uses an expression that unnatural, you should ask what's the normal thing to say there, and that may show you why the unnatural expression happened. Here, "fulfill my profession" takes the place of "fulfill my ambition" or "fulfill myself."

AND: It's the spouse that offers the cookie recipe, so it should be Melania Trump versus Bill Clinton. But the Clinton campaign just submitted the same one that beat Barbara Bush's recipe in 1992 and they're not calling it Bill's recipe but "Clinton Family's Chocolate Chip Cookies." The Trump campaign submitted "Melania Trump's Star Cookies." Whether Melania bakes cookies, I don't know.

Speaking of not saying the name — I'm seeing these Hillary signs that won't say "Hillary" around my part of Wisconsin.

On normal "Hillary" yard signs, the arrow points to "Hillary" or "Clinton/Kaine," but there are these signs that are intended to be read as Hillary signs. The familiar arrow is there, but it points at "Wisconsin." What is the aversion to saying the name? Is it something like what we were discussing one post down — the taboo on saying the name of the beast that might hunt you down if it heard you say its name?

Bear in mind: the "mead paw."

I've got "bear" in mind today, because I'm teaching District of Columbia v. Heller — the main case about the right to bear arms. I was looking up the word "bear" on the theory that it connected to the word "embarrass," which comes up in older constitutional law cases about the power of Congress, including McCulloch v. Maryland, also in today's assignment. When the people gave Congress its various powers, Chief Justice Marshall says in McCulloch, they couldn't have meant "to clog and embarrass its execution by withholding the most appropriate means."

But the "-bar-" in "embarrass" isn't like the "bear" in "bear arms." It comes from "baraço" which was the kind of cord or leash you'd use to restrain an animal — perhaps a bear. But the "bear" in "bear arms" is an extremely old root that has always referred to carrying a burden. "Bear," the animal, takes us somewhere else entirely, to the word "brown." Northern Europeans took to calling a bear "the brown one," disconnecting from the Latin "ursus" because — the theory goes — hunters had a taboo on saying the names of wild animals.

Wanting to know more about this taboo, I found a blog post that caught my eye because it inadvertently said the name of my husband: "'Mead Paw' the Original 'He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named'":

... Bronze-Age hunters came to believe that using the bear’s true name allowed the animal to hear and comprehend the hunter. This would allow the bear to either elude the hunter or come seeking him, who would then become the hunted. The bear was the only really dangerous animal in the great Germanic forest, so to reduce this danger, men changed the rules....

In the Slavic lands, a similar taboo deformation resulted in the Russian name медведь (from *medu-ed) meaning ‘honey-eater’. This compares with our familiar Beowulf which literally means ‘Bee-wolf’ – an obvious poetic euphemism for Bear, in light of the bears notorious liking for honey. Beowulf is ‘bear-like’ in his great strength....

Of all the animals, the most sacred was the bear, whose real name was never uttered out loud. The bear (“karhu” in Finnish) was seen as the embodiment of the forefathers, and for this reason it was called by many euphemisms: “mesikämmen” (“mead-paw”), “otso” (“wide brow”), “kontio” (“dweller of the land”), “lakkapoika” (“cloudberry boy”).

That post proceeds the issues of not saying the name of God and the Harry Potter taboo on naming Lord Voldemort, but my mind wandered to the subject of Donald Trump. It was just 2 posts down that I was writing about an Andrew Sullivan essay, which I had searched for the word "Trump" and, finding nothing, praised for not mentioning Trump, and which I had to come back to and update when I realized that Sullivan was treating Trump as one who must not be named. It was right there in the one paragraph I'd excerpted: "a walking human Snapchat app of incoherence."

Suddenly, I realized that I'd started out doing the same thing. I would not accept the existence of Donald Trump as a candidate for President. Look at this post from June 16, 2015:

Look at that tag: Nothing! June 16th. I wouldn't say the name. That was this day:

Um, how the hell do you know?

"Does body language really give Trump insight into intelligence operatives’ thoughts? Um, no."

Says WaPo's Peter W. Stevenson, using the infuriating — and taboo on some websites — intro "Um."

When NBC's Matt Lauer asked Donald Trump on Wednesday night about the classified intelligence briefings he now receives as a major-party candidate for president, Trump was careful not to divulge anything he's learned so far. But he did say he learned one thing that surprised him: That the intelligence officials briefing him "were not happy" because "our leaders did not follow what they were recommending."

How did Trump come to that conclusion? By reading the body language of those intelligence officials.

"You know, I'm pretty good with the body language," he assured the audience. Um, what?

Um, consider the possibility that you are the stupid one. Oh, the supercilious elite! How about trying to understand why Trump has been successful? Do you really think people don't have aptitude — varying aptitude — for reading other people and knowing what they are really thinking?

Shhhh!

"Study Says Lazy People Are Smarter."

IN THE COMMENTS: rehajm said (efficiently): "Natural efficiency."

Tim Maguire said: "The smart people we've heard of aren't lazy." And by that, I assume he means that the smart and lazy people are being efficient by not drawing attention to themselves. The workplace is often administered by people who want to see that you're hard at work. The stupidest waste of time is looking busy, but it would be stupid to attract the supervision of somebody who will impose the requirement of looking busy when you have worked out ways of getting things done efficiently and want to benefit from your cleverness, not cede all the benefits to your overseer.

I have been in situations where a colleague will go on about how stressed out and terribly busy she is and assert that so are we all. The dead silence in a roomful of professors is ludicrous. You know damned well that many — I hope most — have figured out ways to work very efficiently and enjoy the freedom and flexibility of the job. But no one with an eye on self-protection will stand up and admit to not being a workaholic. And so stressed-out, busy-busyness is the atmosphere that prevails because the ones who talk are the ones who haven't found the lazy-smart path (or they have and want to deny its legitimacy for some sadistic reason).

ADDED: I recommend "Essays in Idleness" by the Buddhist monk Kenko, "In Praise of Idleness" by Bertrand Russell, and "An Apology for Idlers" by Robert Louis Stevenson. That last one begins:

BOSWELL: We grow weary when idle.

JOHNSON: That is, sir, because others being busy, we want company; but if we were idle, there would be no growing weary; we should all entertain one another.

Just now, when everyone is bound, under pain of a decree in absence convicting them of lèse-respectability, to enter on some lucrative profession, and labour therein with something not far short of enthusiasm, a cry from the opposite party who are content when they have enough, and like to look on and enjoy in the meanwhile, savours a little of bravado and gasconade. And yet this should not be. Idleness so called, which does not consist in doing nothing, but in doing a great deal not recognized in the dogmatic formularies of the ruling class, has as good a right to state its position as industry itself....

Gasconade... There's a word you haven't used in a sentence recently, I'll bet.

Did you notice what Trump refrained from saying when he was asked what he has "sacrificed"?

You've noticed, I'm guessing, that at the Democratic convention, a man named Khizr Khan asserted that Donald Trump has "sacrificed nothing and no one." Khan's son had, as he put it, "sacrificed his life."

"Sacrifice" means to give up something of value to obtain some higher value, and it's interesting to think about when we use that word — in religion, in baseball — but Khan used it in a way that's conventional in wartime: to elevate death.

There are reasons — good and bad — for using a word that makes it seem as though the dead person chose to die in exchange for a higher good rather than to say that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country. A good reason is that it eases the pain of those who loved the person who died. A bad reason is that it cuts off the line of responsibility that runs to those in power who made the decision that put the person in the place where he died.

But Khan went further than to say that his son sacrificed. He went on the attack — attacking a presidential candidate (and not the one who had anything to do with putting the son in the place where he died) — and antagonized Trump, telling him, in a statement that purports to have knowledge that Khan could not possibly possess: "You have sacrificed nothing and no one."

It was memorable rhetoric, and it was not surprising that George Stephanopoulos used it to question Trump:

STEPHANOPOULOS: He said you have sacrificed nothing and no one.

Trump did not say, yes, I have. He examined the question:

TRUMP: Well, that sounds -- who wrote that? Did Hillary's script writer write it? Because everybody that went out there....

And then he didn't complete his thought, but I think he meant everybody who went out there on the convention stage. I guess he was considering saying that Khan's speech didn't sound like a private individual's personal thoughts, but like part of the convention rhetoric, that is, the Party's propaganda.

Trump switched to talking about General Allen, who "went out... ranting and raving." It's much better to attack the general than the private citizen. The DNC wanted you to empathize with the father, not to question the warmakers, so Trump re-aimed the question well. When Stephanopoulos brought up Hillary's line "you don't know more than the generals," Trump lit into the generals:

TRUMP: Well, I tell you, the generals aren't doing so well right now. Now, I have a feeling it may be Obama's fault. But if you look at ISIS, General MacArthur, and General Patton, they're spinning in their graves. The generals certainly aren't doing very well right now.

See my Patton quote above, in italics. Stephanopoulos refocused on sacrificing: "How would you answer that father? What sacrifice have you made for your country?" And this time, Trump offered an answer:

TRUMP: I think I have made a lot of sacrifices. I've work[ed] very, very hard. I've created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, built great structures. I've done -- I've had tremendous success.

Stephanopoulos needled him: "Those are sacrifices?" Is hard work a sacrifice? Trump seems to have swapped in the idea of doing good in this world. He makes no mention of giving anything up to pursue his line of work, though he could have. When people work long hours, they sacrifice leisure time. That's what the word means — giving up something of value for a higher value — but it's not politically wise to say that in response to a man who seems to be saying my son sacrificed his life for the greater good.

But there's something else Trump might have said, and it's something he says frequently, something that was expressed at the GOP convention — by Ivanka Trump:

In his own way, and through his own sheer force of will, he sacrificed greatly to enter the political arena as an outsider.

And Here's Trump himself (last May): "I’ve given up a tremendous amount to run for president. I gave up two more seasons of Celebrity Apprentice." And how many times has he said — at rallies — I didn't have to do this. I had a great life?

I'm not surprised Trump didn't deploy this theory when Stephanopoulos asked him the "sacrifice" question, but I'm rather sure he thought of it and chose not to say it. A lot of people seem to think he just blurts out everything that pops into his head, but it's hard to notice unsaid things like this one, and I want to give him some credit for restraint.