Without hinge

Actually, the picture in the previous post does have some amusing context, as it shows the moment at the RNC immediately after West Virginia governor and senate candidate Jim Justice, who was supposed to read from the teleprompter the phrase "everything hinges" on Trump winning in November, instead said "we become totally unhinged" if Trump doesn't win. Now BlueAnon are going spare at what they see as a call to arms. It reminds me of the moment at the 2020 debate when Trump told the Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by", which almost everybody chose to treat as a request for the fascists to keep their powder dry, when it was obvious to me it was the result of Trump having a senior moment and not being able to come up with the verb phrase for what a bystander does.

The dog, I dunno.

Convention

You don't need context.

A Guy Changing His Mind About Killing the President

Invisible

For example, one parent told us that her son had a playmate named Nobby, a little invisible boy. The child also mentioned Nobby when he was asked about pretend friends, but when we asked how often he played with Nobby, he scowled and replied, "I don't play with him." We learned that Nobby was a 160-year-old businessman who visited the child between business trips to Portland and Seattle, whenever the child wanted to "talk things over." The boy's mother was as surprised as we were.

Imaginary Companions and the Children Who Create Them, Marjorie Taylor, OUP, 1999, Chapter 2, Page 21

Fantasy play of various types can play a powerful role in children's ability to overcome fear. This point was brought home to me by my daughter's reaction at age 3 to the gift of a small box described as containing a "baby ghost." Amber had developed a fear of ghosts that disrupted her sleep and made her anxious when left alone at bedtime. However, when asked if she would like to take care of the baby ghost, she was eager to do so. For more than a week she carried the box with its invisible contents with her wherever she went and was very much absorbed in this fantasy. The baby ghost and its box were eventually abandoned for other toys, but Amber was never again bothered by a fear of ghosts. Conceptualizing the ghost in the box as something weak, tiny, and in need of care seemed to remove the scariness from her thoughts about ghosts in general.

(Endnote:) The children at her day care took turns one day taking the box into the bathroom, turning out the light, and letting the ghost out of the box. In the pitch dark of the windowless bathroom, all the children were able to enjoy playing with the baby ghost.

Ibid., Chapter 4, Page 75

Sometimes the child involves family members in her game of pretense. A colleague of mine has a daughter who as a 3-year-old enjoyed fantasy games of impersonation that required the cooperation of the entire family. On her request, everyone shifted to alter identities on Wednesdays. The girl became a boy named Rainbow Cutter, the younger brother became a girl named Rainbow Cut, the mother became a little girl named Sweet Flower, and the father (who got the raw end of things, I think) became a piece of string named Hagar.

Ibid., Chapter 3, Page 50

Chatter

I had thought the slogan "America is Already Great" marked peak idiocy for the DPUSA, but this is beyond deranged.

The Democratic National Committee is considering formally nominating Joe Biden as early as mid-July to ensure that the president is on November ballots, while helping to stamp out intra-party chatter of replacing him after last week’s poor debate performance.

Legacy

Assange’s return was judged to be so momentous that the ABC broadcast it live. Led by Sarah Ferguson, David Speers and Peter Hartcher, the ABC coverage was exceptionally toxic, rehashing discredited smears, and belittling Assange’s enormous achievements. Like most of the legacy media, many ABC “star” journalists hate Assange.

Host of the 7:30 Report, Sarah Ferguson performed her hybrid interview/ambush technique on unsuspecting US congresswoman Majorie Taylor Greene, who had been lured onto the ABC to speak about why she, one of the most prominent MAGA republicans, supported Julian Assange, and why she was urging Donald Trump to pardon Assange.

Not unexpectedly, Sarah Ferguson was not very interested in the congresswoman’s views about the honesty and truthfulness of Julian Assange’s journalism. She spent the majority of the interview off topic, berating Majorie Taylor Greene over the 2016 theft of Hilary Clinton’s emails, regurgitating Clintonesque lies about Russiagate, sneakily smearing Julian Assange in the process as a Putin-loving servant of that Devil Incarnate, Donald Trump!

...

Compared to the pages of vitriol and venom directed against Assange in The Australian the next day, Hartcher and Ferguson seemed almost benign. Michael Ware and Justine Rosenthal are two Americans, who were described by The Australian as award-winning documentarians. Their hate-filled rant, Fittingly pathetic end to tawdry tale of a traitor, about the plea deal Assange was forced to make to end his ordeal began, “Finally, at long last, Julian Assange has confessed to being a traitor.” What is it about Americans that they don’t comprehend you can’t be a traitor to a country unless you are a citizen of it?

Rich or poor they are all equal now

The people speak

Incomprehension

Humans have various ways of not facing the violence they perpetrate. The first consists in degrading the oppressed: they are not truly human. Consequently, the harm done to them is not really evil and innocence is preserved. Undoubtedly the most powerful and most common is denial. This is what the term 'terrorism' is used for. It is a category designed to prevent thought, in particular the thought that ex nihilo nihil: that nothing comes from nothing. That events do not fall from the sky. That there is an economy of violence, which functions on the basis of a negative reciprocity. And that it could be summed-up by a paraphrase of Lavoisier’s principle: nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything returns. The countless acts of violence inflicted on the Palestinian people were bound to return. Only those whose sole intellectual operation is condemnation were guaranteed not to see anything coming beforehand or understand anything afterwards. Sometimes incomprehension is not a weakness of the intellect but a trick of the psyche: its categorical imperative. You have to fail to understand to fail to see: to fail to see a causality you are part of – and therefore not so innocent.

Just listen

Last Thursday, in the music humanities class I teach at Columbia University, two students were giving an in-class presentation on the composer John Cage. His most famous piece is "4'33"," which directs us to listen in silence to surrounding noise for exactly that amount of time.

I had to tell the students we could not listen to that piece that afternoon because the surrounding noise would have been not birds or people walking by in the hallway but infuriated chanting from protesters outside the building. Lately that noise has been almost continuous during the day and into the evening, including lusty chanting of "From the river to the sea." Two students in my class are Israeli; three others, to my knowledge, are American Jews. I couldn't see making them sit and listen to this as if it were background music.

I like McWhorter as a linguist, but he has an extraordinary talent for saying remarkably stupid things about any other subject. (Is this a linguist thing? I'm thinking of Pinker.) And his incomprehension of the point of "4'33" is the least stupid part of the column, of course.

Update: Somebody set him to music.

Metaphor

So what are the rich people up to?

This year's dress code for the Met Gala is based on The Garden of Time, a 1962 short story by J.G. Ballard...

Actually, a bunch of airhead celebrities and trust-funders basing their masque on a J.G. Ballard story is a J.G. Ballard story. Personally I'd rather see them go with "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan", but I'm not known for subtlety.

The story is about the good-looking, sophisticated Count Axel and his wife, who live in a beautiful villa full of rare books, fine paintings, busts and vases. They live a decadent life on their beautiful estate, which includes an exquisite pool and garden. But outside the walls, the landscape is empty as far as the eye can see – until an unruly rabble appears in the distance. Each time Count Axel cuts a flower from his garden, however, time spools back, and the brutish mass recedes behind the hills.

... nope, can't think of a sarky remark that enhances that.

To keep the crowd at bay, the husband tries to turn back time by breaking off flower after flower, until there are no more blooms left. The mob arrives and ransacks the estate, and the two aristocrats turn to stone.*

Again, some jokes tell themselves.

The vivid, thought-provoking short story is often seen to act as a metaphor for the evolution of human history and the endless cycle of creation and destruction...

Perhaps, but this year's Met Gala using the story as a theme is a metaphor for something else, I think you'll find.

Other articles on the ball, like, undoubtedly, the guests, very much focus on the flowers thang.

[* This quote is from NYT rather than Harper's Bazaar.]

St George

Everybody in this picture looks so happy they should be wearing ponchos.