How to Insult Your Friends... in Gold

My opinion on the Kennedy Center is that people should be encircling it 24 hours a day, just to make sure the regime doesn't show up with heavy equipment to start dismantling it at some odd-ball time. I'm glad there were thousands of people there last Friday evening, but it's going to take more than that.

Someone said his actions are like desecrating a grave, and I agree with that.  

But in the mean time, can we all please make fun of these?

Trump — with his fist raised — is probably recognizable, but that's supposed to be RFK Jr. at lower left and Reagan at right.

Those blobs at right are supposed to be Rocky Balboa, to go with the quote.

That's a demented Elon Musk, in case you couldn't tell. 

I hadn't heard who the "artist" is until I read this story, which attributes them to Trump donor, billionaire ex-wife, and Scientologist Patricia Duggan, who clearly exudes gold leaf, if not talent:

Duggan, who lives in Florida, gave $7 million to pro-Trump groups in 2024 and $9 million in 2020, according to the Tampa Bay Times. In 2019, the same paper reported that Duggan and her ex-husband, billionaire biotech entrepreneur Bob Duggan, had given over $360 million to the Church of Scientology, making them the church’s biggest donors.

The regime has been busy removing all of the real artwork from the Kennedy Center, much of which was sent by governments from around the world. It has been replaced with this stuff. 

Not that anyone is going in the building, since it's closed because of the regime's sham bankrupting. I'm not sure why or how a reporter got access to take photos of these framed objects. 

As We Know, He Can't Stand Reality

I try to put images of Trump on this blog as little as possible, despite the regime's egregious use of AI images to puff him up. (For example... did you see the recent one with him dressed as a general, complete with medals, standing between MacArthur and Eisenhower? The nerve of this man.)

For some reason, I feel called upon to comment on a more trivial example I saw recently. It was posted as AI being used to "touch up" this photo of him in a golf cart with retired South African pro Gary Player. 

The original:

The so-called retouched image:



And clearly, the overall engoldening of Player and the aide or caddy in the blue shirt is retouching (plus the caddy has been moved out of the frame to the right a bit for some reason). 

However, I would say the background has not been retouched, but is instead a completely new background, created with AI.

And that is also true of the image of Trump. This is not a retouched photo: It is a completely new image, generally based on the components of the other photo:


If it were only retouched, there is no reason the 45-47 on the side of his hat would have been changed at all, let alone to become what appears to be 6-41. The numbers were more readable in the original. There was also no improvement made by changing the fold of his right sleeve, or the angle of his pinky finger. 

Trump has been given an entirely new face, which is less surprising: no more dumb-gaping mouth, no more eye bags or peering squint, and his skin tone has become an even glow. It's a little extra weird that they didn't put the actual Trump golf resort logo onto his shirt. (The AI created more width on the left breast of the shirt to fit the full word TRUMP in.) 

Trump, of course, has been brought out of the shadow that originally was falling on him, compared to Player who was in full sun. And Trump's body has been recreated with a more upright posture and multiple sizes smaller than it actually is.  

And his shirt is just so smooth. You never realize how many wrinkles a shirt has until an AI makes a shirt for you.

I think it's important to keep the words "retouched" or "touch up" for removing a wrinkle here or there, or shifting color. When a completely different, imaginary version of a person has been dropped into an otherwise relatively accurate depiction of a scene... that is not retouching.

 

Letting His Inner Self Show Through

Am I losing my mind, or does he not look like the very image of a Bond villain?

Is he trying to look like one? 

June 14

It was one year ago today that a right-wing zealot shot and killed the former speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives and her husband, after shooting and severely wounding a member of the State Senate and his wife — both in their homes in the middle of the night while he pretended to be a cop. He had a list of dozens of other elected Democrats and abortion advocates in his fake cop car, along with their addresses. 

When he pleaded guilty to his crimes in federal court last week, he admitted that he followed Melissa Hortman into her house, after initially wounding her, to shoot her directly in the head, killing her. 

Today, on that first anniversary, our Dear Leader is having a party, pretending that it's in honor of the 250th anniversary of this country. But it's really because it's his 80th birthday, and also it's probably not a bad think that it's a wink and nod to the ugliest part of his base that it coincides with the first anniversary of Vance Boelter's campaign of murder. 

These are the BlueSky posts I have accumulated about Trump's celebration of self over the past four days. Everything below the line is in chronological order, and is quoted from the attributed account.

___

It seems overnight the White House has been replaced by a Monster Energy Drink branded UFC cage:


Kate Klonick

I remember when “Obama watches too much basketball” was a criticism that was lobbed from the both sides of the aisle.
@chadstanton.blacksky.app

All the people crying that we need  “regular sports guy” Dems are the same people who told Obama—an absolute regular sports guy—to tone it down.
@rahulastrohl.bsky.social

The thing for me about the UFC fight is not just that it's happening and the cost, but that Trump is planning it while he continually fails to end an absolutely disastrous war. Just another weekend in the Trump White House that would have been a Presidency-ending scandal for Obama.
Gravel Influencer

Some serious Hunger Games energy right here:


Patrick Chovanec

"It's a republic, not a democracy" say the people cheering for gladiatorial combat in the capital city in a mixture of patriotic fervor and celebration of the ruler's birthday.
Jacob T. Levy

The promotion for Trump's UFC cage fight says “The most historic sporting event of all time.” The NBA Finals, the Stanley Cup and the World Cup are all going on right now. This is maybe the fourth biggest sporting event of the weekend.
Kevin M. Kruse

The perfect name for this time of oligarchs: “the Re-Gilded Age.” [Prompted by Trump's regilding of Arts of War sculptures near the Lincoln Memorial.]
Sherrilyn Ifill

I object to the stuff this administration has done to the White House because it’s ours, and not theirs to destroy. But I’m having a visceral and personal reaction to [the activities] at the Lincoln Memorial. They’re trying to usurp the rights of citizens and make us all gawking spectators to their carnival.
Anjali Dayal

Remembering a multi-day conservative freakout because Lizzo briefly played a founding father’s flute
Patrick Monahan @pattymo.com

Trump used the Armed Forces Full Honor Cordon — soldiers who escort fallen heroes and heads of state — to usher UFC fighters past Abraham Lincoln’s statue like they’re celebrities on a red carpet.
Jennifer C @thejenniwren.teamlh.social

the real political correctness is that you can’t go on the news and say that this is hick shit:


Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social

It’s funny because when kids ride dirt bikes in the city it’s taken as proof we need a totalitarian police state. 
@chadstanton.blacksky.app

Donald Trump's birthday is a great time to remember that Hillary Clinton won by a larger margin in 2016 than he won by in 2024.
Dean Baker

One Shirt – Oops

I'm not sure I would have heard about the eye-wateringly offensive T-shirt design offered by IndyCar, if Rachel Maddow hadn't covered it on Monday night.

IndyCar, which runs the Indianapolis 500 race, will be putting on a road race in Washington, D.C., near the end of August. The event is meant to be the final, grand moment of Donald Trump's glorious vision for this country's 250th anniversary. Cage matches, concerts with no one to sing at them, and yes, cars racing through city streets at inappropriate speeds, making it unusable for the people who live there: that's what this country is all about.

Anyway.

The shirt – only available in ivory – looked like this:

And it said those words. 

Here's MotorTrend's write up of the debacle. From what I can tell, knock-offs of the shirt are available for sale on line, so unfortunately anyone who wants to own the libs can still get one.

Aside from the egregious headline, I wanted to talk about the illustration. Possibly a person immersed in IndyCar culture would not see it this way, but contrast that inhumane, Boba Fett-like figure with what the real Lincoln figure looks like:

The person who created this illustration — or the people who were art-directing them — made choices about what to change from the original. They wanted to modify parts of it to look "Indy" and be what they considered clever, but still have it be recognizable as the Lincoln statue. 

Personally, I didn't understand it as referring to the Lincoln Memorial statue when I first saw the shirt on Maddow's show because the figure is so transformed, it thought it was some kind of pilot in a science fiction show. The arms of the chair were not enough of a signifier for me to get the reference right away. In addition to the space-suit-like clothing and the helmet, the figure's body arrangement is part of the reason.

These are small things, but the way the Indy figure's hands and legs are portrayed diverge from the original: both hands are draped, while one of Lincoln's lightly grasps the chair arm and the other rests in a loose fist; the Indy figure's legs are splayed open as wide as they can go within the space, with feet even — something any woman will recognize as manspreading — in contrast with Lincoln's legs, which are parallel to his body, right foot farther forward. 

Generally, the Indy figure appears to be leaning back in the chair more than Lincoln is, possibly a reference to acceleration, but that reinforces my association with science fiction pilots. (The vertical red stripes may also be feeding my association with rockets taking off.) 

And I keep thinking about the feet. Because they are closest to the viewer, they're prominent. Lincoln is wearing boots so simple you almost don't notice them, and his trousers drape over the tops to obscure them further. The pants of the Indy figure, on the other hand, rise high above his ankles and make his much more detailed shoes prominent in the illustration. Which seems strange. (Maybe there was supposed to be an accelerator pedal under the right foot at some point.)

One final point: in addition to the possibly unconscious offensiveness of the headline, the very idea of replacing Abraham Lincoln with an IndyCar driver is offensive on its own. Have you been to the Lincoln Memorial? If there are any secular churches in this country, that is one of them. The thought of replacing him with something as trivial as a race car driver makes me angry, even without the headline. 

Altogether, this design is a perfect fit for the Trump regime. It: 

• shows no respect for anything about the good parts of this country or its history, 
• is unconscious of obvious racism at best or sends out racist messages at worst (take your pick, maybe some of each in this case for the different decision-makers), and 
• is embarrassing to everyone associated with it, except any die-hard believers who want to double down on the racist message.

 

Now That's Emphatic

I saw this in the blood-draw area of a clinic:

The blue thing is a recycling bin, if I'm not mistaken. Not sure what kind of paper they put in the "DO NOT Throw away" box, but it must be something they want to keep.

The funniest thing about this is that this is a newly built clinic. The building opened in 2025 — purpose-built from the ground up in a greenfield location — but they couldn't make the phlebotomy area functional for the people who use it.
 

Our Country Is Being Run by an Evil Vesion of the Franklin Mint

Talking Points Memo has gotten word that DHS is distributing one of those puerile challenge coins to agents in Minnesota for Operation Metro Surge. Here are the two sides of it:

Photos of the coin were given to TPM by someone at Whipple, the federal building on the edge of Minneapolis that is the DHS base of operations, and where detained people are taken and housed in inhumane conditions. It's also where immigration judges like Nathan Hansen do Stephen Miller's work for him.

Not surprisingly, the person who gave TPM the photos "requested anonymity to avoid retaliation." When asked for comment, the DHS spokesperson only seemed concerned about whether the coins were authorized in terms of branding, not about what they depict.

As a person who lives in the Twin Cities, let me say: we do not live in the war zone depicted here and did not, even at the height of Operation Metro Surge. There were no buildings on fire, let alone dramatically blown up as shown on the coin reverse, with roiling clouds of smoke along the horizon. 

There were way too many helicopters flying at night: that's probably the most true part of the imagery.

The masked goons we had here were generally wearing khakis or jeans and regular coats, with some random-looking camouflage they got at Fleet Farm, usually with a flak jacket thrown over that said POLICE. Their clothing didn't look at all like uniforms, and they seldom had giant guns like these. 

The deaths' heads with glowing eyes and matching guns behind are generally reprehensible, and especially in the context of a domestic operation. 

Donald Trump, of course, is shown as a chiseled version of himself that was true even 20 years ago, and the guy on the right doesn't even resemble Mr. Potato Head, Tom Homan. That's who I assume it is supposed to be, since it can't be Greg Bovino.

The whole idea of challenge coins for domestic law enforcement should not exist. Maybe they make sense for military units (I never knew these things existed until the Trump regime, which makes me think they and their designs were innocuous), but law enforcement members working among their fellow residents should not see their jobs as a game with the goal of winning a coin. No matter how good or bad its design is.

Let's Wait

I hate to say it, but I was not surprised to learn from Leah McElrath today that Trump is selling “Trump 250” merchandise. I will not bruise your eyes with the image she shared.

He's branding the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence / founding of this country as being all about him. Once again, we're in a moment where I just blink and wonder what alternate joke reality I'm living in.

But here we are.

I think this calls for ignoring this anniversary, unfortunately. Who cares that a document was signed in 1776, anyway? After all, they had to fight a war for another seven years to make it stick. 

Let's celebrate winning the final battle at Yorktown (October 1781), or the signing of the Treaty of Paris (September 1783). At one of those points, we'll be free of this fascist buffoon, and (I hope) will have defeated his theocratic, white supremacist cult. 

That will be something to celebrate.
 

F Is for Fascist

You may have heard that a new coin has been approved to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Rather than portraying some of the usual symbols of this country, the gold (gold!) coin will inflict us with the currently living president's image:

As a recent Washington Post column by Philip Kennicott (gift link) put it, 

Trump faces the viewer straight on, instead of the more traditional side angle or three-quarter view. For millennia, profile images on coins suggested an outwardly directed vision, a leader surveying the world and looking to the horizons for both danger and possibility. Trump’s image functions more like a confrontation: He stares down the viewer, forcing a choice between accepting his authority or becoming his enemy.

Various wags on BlueSky have suggested it looks as though the grim Trump is having a bowel movement. Or that his stance suggests he is holding the grips of a walker, rather than leaning on a table.

For me, as a type-oriented person, I keep looking at the way the letter "E" in LIBERTY emerges from his head in a way that all but completely hides the lowest horizontal bar. This makes it look like an F. (Maybe we can call it the F-Head coin.)

On the coin's reverse, is an

"American eagle bearing neither the usual arrows and olive branch that symbolize war and peace but the wooden yoke of the Liberty Bell — a bit like an aggressive seagull making off with your hot dog." 

It is a "bellicose eagle whose clearly rendered talons echo the forward placement of Trump’s hands."

Kennicott goes on to explain that it was Julius Caesar who first had his image inscribed on a coin, and it was controversial when he did it, too. A contemporaneous historian

included the use of his image on coins among Caesar’s most egregiously self-aggrandizing acts leading up to his assassination.

“It is this moment when you see a transition from the collective ‘we,’ meaning the Republic, to the ‘them,’ to the individual, and you start seeing emperors putting image on coins,” [an American coin curator] said.

Caesar's actions were on the minds of Congress when they passed the Thayer Amendment in 1866, which prevented inclusion of living people on U.S. paper currency. Somehow, coins were not included in their action, but living people have not been shown on coins except in one instance Kennicott cites. In that case, "A lot of [the coins] were returned and melted down" because people did not like them. 

When the Trump design was approved, 

not one member of the Commission of Fine Arts — now stacked with Trump loyalists — objected to the legality or symbolism of the coin, or its egregious breach of democratic norms. They voted to approve it, and encouraged the U.S. Mint “to make it as large as possible,” because the president likes big things.

What a child. What a buffoon. And of course, what a would-be fascist dictator. 

He deserves the F he has designed for himself. 

See the U.S.A. Through 1960s White American Eyes

I recently got a copy of this kids' coloring book at a used bookstore or garage sale (I can't remember where):



The back cover says it was recommended as a supplementary aid to grade school pupils. It's from the Bonnie Books Child Craft Series, and the copyright is 1960 by James & Jonathan, Inc. 

As the cover says, it depicts:

• PEOPLE from the pages of history
• PLACES important landmarks of our destiny and 
• EVENTS past and present. 

It was published a year after I was born. Material like this was what filled my childhood, in and out of school. It's what were we taught, what we were shown as reality about our country.

First, meet our main characters, Johnnie and Janie:

The setup is that these two are going on an unattended trip around the country, visiting various uncles and aunts who will show them historic places. They'll travel on trains and planes, alone, even though they appear to be about 6 and 8 years old. 

Mom and Dad send them off without a moment's hesitation. As you did back then, I guess. (No one in my family did anything like this.)

Their time riding on trains is the only point when Black people (who are all men) are shown in the coloring book, and they are, of course, all in serving roles:

There were four Black men in various roles on the trains.

The kids take a train from the West to Chicago, and later from Philadelphia to New York. They also fly an awful lot for people in 1960, and flying is shown to be very luxurious:







Here's a list of the historic indoctrination they are subjected to by their relatives:

• Balboa discovered the Pacific Ocean.
• Gold was found in California (nothing about what effect that had on the people who lived there before that).
• The Alamo was defended by heroic [freedom-loving implied] Texans who perished. (Not.)
• The giant oil derricks in Oklahoma... are great.
• Ferdinand de Soto discovered the Mississippi River.
• The founding fathers are to be revered, with several of them getting full-page portraits and pictures of their slave labor camp homes.
• Ponce de Leon discovered Florida.
• Peter Minuet bought Manhattan "from the Indians" for $24 in trinkets and cloth.
• The Boston Tea Party was carried out by Indians, as far as a kid could tell from the image shown, and was about paying taxes on tea. Rather than because the tea on the ship was priced to undercut tea smuggled by colonists.
• Four full pages about the Pilgrims: Plymouth Rock, religious freedom, the Mayflower, how the Pilgrims "tilled the soil," and the establishment of Thanksgiving (with no help from anyone). 
• And of course, Columbus discovered America.

I was taught every one of those things in school. Except we did hear about Squanto helping the Pilgrims.  

Given the simplistic drawing style in this book, a child seeing this illustration would assume these men are supposed to be Native Americans, rather than people pretending to be. The Tea Party is generally a complicated topic to put into a coloring book. 


There isn't a lot of finished coloring in the book, and what there is was clearly done by a fairly young kid. The exception is this page showing Columbus, which was done by an adult or at least a teen or preteen. Columbus, in this person's imagination, was blond and had very light skin. It's not hard to imagine where they would have gotten that idea.

I did appreciate that Johnnie and Janie's New Yorker uncle Bill took them to Coney Island (for a whole day) by subway and bus while wearing a business suit and hat:

If this book were done now, Bill probably would have driven them there in a Cadillac Escalade.

What MBGA Looks Like

Today I saw a post showing the form anti-diversity and anti-immigrant thinking takes in the U.K. The post belittled the perspective:

The good old days when shops didn't have doors, windows had flags mounted in them, the local bakers sold baguettes and we used decimal currency?

It was posted by a British BlueSky poster named David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social. As Higham points out, the image is AI slop, which is all-too-popular with right-wingers. 

His post had a lot of comments. Here are a few of my favorites:

Whilst there are absolutely problems with the exodus of trade from high streets to out of town retail parks, these people's rose-tinted (fascist) view of this mythical past makes me want to beat their shins with a spade. (accompanied by three photos)
badly-drawn bee @soapachu.bsky.social

1970s Manchester


Finchley, 1970s


Notting Hill, 1970s

Do they realise they are free to open all these businesses and decorate them just like that if they feel their local high street would reward them with increased patronage? But that takes more than just angrily feeding prompts into an AI Generator... or learning nobody REALLY gives a shit.
The Albionist

This looks like the set they would build at Epcot Center for something called England World.
Ed Burmila

Looks a bit 15 minute town to me. Bloody Stalinists.
Rootless Cosmopolitan @brennick.bsky.social

No Bids for Noem

Yeah, yeah, I can't stand Kristi Noem for lots of reasons. Here's the latest. 

ProPublica just published what can only be called an exposé of the $220 million no-bid PR/promotion contract the Department of Homeland Security awarded to a company run by Noem's chief spokesperson's husband. They used the excuse of the imaginary border emergency for going without bids. They had to rush those ads out the door, see, because any delay would "increase the spread of misinformation, especially misinformation by smugglers." 

Right? It was an emergency that required an ad like Kristi sitting on a horse, telling immigrants they should come here "the right way." You know, that way that does not exist.

As the story begins at the ad shoot, it's the day after the government shutdown, and Noem is — as she so often finds herself — on horseback, this time with Mount Rushmore in the background:

But where there's a photo or video, there's also a big camera rig right in her face to capture this special moment:

It kind of ruins the naturalistic impression, doesn't it? Suddenly, Sheriff Kristi looks more like an actor than law enforcement.

The same publicity company, Strategy Group, worked on Noem's 2022 run for South Dakota governor, and has worked with her DHS collaborator (and supposedly paramour) Corey Lewandowski. It also did other work for her in South Dakota that was pretty suspect from a bidding perspective, and that splashed her face all through a bunch of state-paid ads and let her play dress-up on national TV before Trump appointed her in January.

Asked about the Strategy Group’s work for DHS, McLaughlin, the agency spokesperson [whose husband runs Strategy Group], said in an interview, “We don’t have visibility into why they were chosen.”

DHS claims that Strategy Group is a subcontactor to another contractor that was selected...mysteriously... It's a Delaware LLC that was formed a few days before it got the contract. Sounds legit!

Meanwhile, today, Noem's minions from CBP, ICE, or whatever other agency were once again dragging away clergy from outside the Broadview ICE detention center near Chicago. It's unclear what if any law the clergy were breaking.

A Duck of a Basket

I decided I couldn't post anything tonight about the state of things, so I went to look for something funny or sweet I had favorited recenty on BlueSky that I could share.

And damn if there isn't really anything. It's all bad news.

This is the closest thing I could find, which was posted six days ago by @amybrown.xyz:

that's right folks, Ohio also has the former HQ of the Longaberger company. it's a seven story basket and it's empty because the company went bankrupt and nobody can figure out what to do with the building 

I remember Longaberger baskets — kind of a Beanie Baby craze among older women 20 or 30 years ago.

The building is obviously an extreme example of what architect Robert Venturi would call a duck — but usually ducks are smallish businesses or road-side attractions. Not seven-story corporate headquarters that can never be repurposed.

Oops.

Persian Cat Press Secretary

Karoline Leavitt's bald-faced lying as presidential press secretary is her true misdeed, of course, but there was something else about her that kept bugging me.

I've never been a fan of Persian cats and their flat faces. It finally occurred to me that was it, when I saw this particular picture of Leavitt, which has been making the rounds recently:

I've found the cat photo to compare, of course, but Leavitt's appearance is a purposeful creation. 

Here's what she looked like 10 years ago, pre-Trump:

With both a larger nose and mouth. Like a human being instead of a cat.

Stealing the Wrong Sculpture

Two years ago, Saint Paul unveiled a small bronze statue of local Olympic gold metal-winner Sunisa Lee. It was located in the park around Lake Phalen on the city's East Side, which is Lee's home area. 

It was a big deal, and a great honor. The statue was created by Hmong sculptor Seexeng Lee, who is part of Suni Lee's extended clan. 

The sculpture was stolen a few days ago. The base was recovered from the nearby lake, but the bronze itself is still missing. It's a terrible, shameful thing. 

So when I saw a photo of this sculpture, which is in Indianapolis, posted on John Scalzi's blog, I thought, why doesn't anyone steal that piece of dreck instead? 

Losing that misbegotten piece would improve the world, if anything, instead of making it worse.

Tressie McMillan Cottom on Beauty and Power

I've never heard of the Money with Katie Show podcast, but this past week I kept seeing links to an episode featuring sociologist and New York Times columnist Tressie McMillan Cottom, so I finally listened to it. It's about an hour and 10 minutes long, and all worth listening to, but a few parts of it really grabbed me and made me transcribe them. This is about halfway through:

TMC: Beauty is about power. Beauty is the only power that women are allowed to legitimately use but never own. It's the only political power we are allowed to pursue without being stigmatized, but we can never control it.... There's no good moral choice in a system of power where your body is the only capital you're allowed to use without sanction. There's no good beauty. There's beauty that's more or less painful. And that's not beauty's fault: beauty is supposed to be naturally available to all of us, as bell hooks once pointed out, right? There's a natural component to beauty, the sky is beautiful, nature is beautiful and that should be freely available... all of that.

But the reality is, that's not the world we built. The world we built makes everything from beautiful art to beautiful people a commodity. Your preferences are always operating within the limits of the commodity of beauty. And that's hard for people to accept because the last safe place for us to be ruthlessly racist, sexist, classist and ableist is when it comes to bodies. You can get the most dyed-in-the-wool radical leftist [man] you've ever met... and everybody they've ever dated has been blonde. And they will look you dead in your face and tell you that those two political realities have nothing to do with each other.

She then describes research on dating sites, which found men with leftist signifiers in their bios, "who only respond to 19-year-old blonde white girls who weigh less than 128 pounds."

TMC: Those are your politics. That's all I want people to understand. Those are also your politics... What you're sexually attracted to is not just natural. There's tons of research about the fact that what we find beautiful is an average of the things we've been exposed to.

School segregation, she points out, has shaped those desires. "Preferences don't matter more than power, and what we prefer is very political."

The host, Katie, cites another show guest named Jessica DeFino, who said something like, "We can't confuse what makes us feel powerful with being empowering." For instance, body modification like plastic surgery is not feminist, because feminism is liberation from gender oppression, not some feeling of empowerment.

A couple of other lines from this segment, partially paraphrased:

• Power is the ability to wield it, to define the terms.
• There's survival in accommodating, but you can't confuse it with freedom.

A while later, they discuss the transformation of Kristi Noem. 

After describing Noem's propaganda photo trip to El Salvador, including photos not usually shown that reveal how much of a setup the whole thing was (shared by Jeff Sharlet), they switch to talking about the MAGA fetishization of exaggerated femininity from plastic surgery:

Katie: There is this very stunning physical transformation [Noem] undergoes. We know it takes a tremendous amount of labor and money. Typically with things like plastic surgery, aesthetic performance as a woman, there's a game you're playing where you want it to look natural enough. If you are upper class your work should be so good that people wonder. I think the overtness she's putting on is the point, the detectability is the point, that she's signaling, "I'm willing to do the work."

TMC: That's right - which is the ultimate achievement of allowable womanhood, allowable femininity. The safest femininity is to say that you are a willing participant in being shaped by the male gaze and its expectations: I will conform. One of my favorite studies is about the power of makeup. They did a study — they measured people's response to women who wear makeup in the workplace. And one of my favorite conclusions there is that even when women's makeup is bad — meaning super obvious, not flattering — they still get a bump in likability from the person judging them because at least they tried. What women are judged on is their effort to conform, then. You don't even have to be attractive.

The fat positivity movement (and Lizzo in particular), they say, were unacceptable because they were inherently "trying" not to be attractive. Beauty has to look like effort, to the Right... like a cartoon. Trump judging a beauty contest was perfect for him, TMC says.

TMC: What always matters is how close are you to power? And Donald Trump understood that. If I get enough power, I can get people to reject all these things they said they believed in: looking natural, being a good person, believing in diversity. Everybody gave that up immediately when he became president because  all that matters is power, Donald Trump proves that. And women like Kristi make a career out of being able to accurately decipher what powerful men want and give it to them.

Kate Manne calls it "conspicuous compliance."

The Reign of His Parade

The fact that Trump is obsessed with having a military parade in his honor, when he was worse than a draft-dodger, is an obvious problem that any fair-minded person should be able to see with his June 14 plans. Another is that we just don't have preemptive parades with tanks and military gear on display in this country.

There was a letter in the Star Tribune a few days ago that raised an additional problem with Trump's plans:

Since 1993 the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (paid for by private donations) has sponsored the “In Memory” program for those who served in the war and died later due in some part to their service. My late partner is one of this year’s inductees. It always occurs on Father’s Day weekend and this year the “In Memory” inductee program has been scheduled for June 14 for over a year. It takes place on the Washington Mall and families and friends (as of now, over 3,000) of this year’s inductees are invited and attend the ceremony. The name of each of the 2024 inductees will be read aloud by one of those family members. This involves months and months of planning and work on the part of the staff of the VVMF. Hotels, shuttles, coordinating information and schedules with those visitors, preparation of materials, etc., are parts of that work.

With only a month’s notice, and clearly no contact with nor consideration for any of the veteran memorials on the Washington Mall, President Donald Trump has decided to have a costly military parade on the same date that will likely go by the Vietnam Memorial. This has forced the staff of the VVMF to scramble. An alternate location and total changes to shuttles, equipment and repeated updates to attendees are likely necessitated. Families have had flight and hotel reservations in place for months, so rescheduling this longstanding event is not feasible.

Interesting that this last-minute celebration for the birthday of the U.S. Army also coincides with Trump’s birthday. I wonder if he plans similar celebrations for the 250th birthday of the Marine Corps in November. Had heel bone spurs not prevented Trump from serving in the Vietnam War, or if any of his children had served in the military, perhaps he would have more consideration for the families of these men. I am a staunch supporter of veterans but given the massive cuts to programs supporting veterans’ needs, having a parade costing millions of dollars seems disingenuous at best and certainly inappropriate.

Janet Grieder, Maple Grove

As usual, Trump has no consideration for anyone else, and would never have thought to see what other events might be scheduled that weekend. His wants come first.

I have a fourth problem with the plan. Trump claims the parade is a celebration of the Army's 250th birthday. We have just entered what will be a long list of 250th anniversaries for the founding of this country, which started recently with the battles of Lexington and Concord. That seems like the thing that might have had a big commemoration if you wanted to do a kickoff. Or (we can assume) the Independence Day in 2026 will be the biggest one. It's probably too much to ask that those celebrations will not be cringe-worthy.

But the anniversary of the Army? It's obviously an excuse, and a militarized one at that. 

In 1975, did we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Army in a big public way, leading up to the very-much-choreographed Bicentennial? There may have been an internal commemoration, but it wasn't part of the whole shindig, and there definitely wasn't a parade with tanks rolling down the street. 

Even 16-year-old me would have remembered that.

Screaming Defensiveness

As I've stood along a state highway demonstrating in front of a Tesla showroom for most of the Saturdays since mid-February, I've noticed that the drivers of a particular type of vehicle are by far the most likely to give us the finger or yell at us.

If you need to guess what general category that type of vehicle falls into, this is a hint:

Some of my fellow demonstrators were just commenting on their assessment of this fact two days ago. I didn't bring it up, I swear.

Tonight, Dave Roberts posted this on BlueSky, and it lines up with these drivers' need to

The bloated pickup truck really does perfectly represent the US right now. It's "powerful," in a blundering, thoughtless way that hurts innocent bystanders, but it's antiquated, fits poorly in modern cities, and above all *screams* defensiveness and overcompensation. 

I just smile and wave at the angry drivers and hope they don't run us down.

__

Oh, and all this reminds me of one of my past posts.

Stay Gold, Donny Boy

Art historian and art dealer Bendor Grosvenor posted a thread to BlueSky analyzing Trump's recent redecorating of the Oval Office. I had noticed the gilding of the fireplace directly behind the two chairs that are often used for meetings, but that's not the only change.

He provided photos from multiple times for comparison, and I've added one.

First, the Reagan era:


Note the green plant — a Swedish ivy given to JFK by the Irish ambassador — on the fireplace mantle.

The last days of the Biden presidency. The Swedish ivy, much grown, is still present. The carpet is now blue. Different sofas and chairs, a few more paintings. Probably different wallpaper but similar in effect:



February 2025, not long after Trump's inauguration:


More paintings and mirror added with fancier gold frames, flags with gold eagles finials, and the Swedish ivy is gone, replaced by seven gold vases or trophies. And the fireplace is flanked by gold side tables, and the carpet is lighter… basically also gold.

March 13:


Fake gold decorative flourishes have been added to the front of the fireplace…though the flags are gone. The paintings have been rearranged, though there are still a lot of them.

Last week with the dictator of El Salvador:



Two more fake gold decorative flourishes have been added to the wall on either side above the fireplace, as if there wasn't enough gold up there already, and gold flourishes have been added near the ceiling below the crown molding. 

All of this is in line with Trump's general taste in decorating, but it also fits with the way monarchs "have long used excessive decoration to signal status," as Grosvenor puts it. "Crowns are an obvious example; blingy, lavish items only the richest – and most powerful – person could wear." 

Of course, it's in bad taste in a democracy (or even a republic!) to decorate your place of work as if you were a king, but in the case of Donald Trump it signals his intentions. The fact that most of it is fake, and likely purchased from China, adds to the crassness and makes it more appropriate in an odd sort of way.

A Bargain in OK City

Bloomberg reporter Stephen Dennis freestyles on BlueSky on the #FridayNightZillow hashtag, where he posts photos of the most outrageous houses he can find on the Zillow listings.

Last Friday he posted about a $16.5 million house outside Oklahoma City, currently owned (and I assume built) by a defense contractor/marijuana processor. Interesting skills confluence!

The buildings are more than 50,000 square feet, and are on 36 acres. There's a party barn where the owners can park their extra vehicles and boats, play basketball indoors, and host concerts on the built-in stage. The house has a bowling alley, and there's a pool and outdoor basketball court.


The color scheme is, as one commenter said, more Nickelodeon Studio than anything else:


The comments on the thread are almost better than the photos:

First thought: "who dusts that?" Bet her name is "Conchita," and her immigration status is... complicated.
Petrarca

That's an interesting business pairing, considering DOD employees cannot legally consume cannabis.
Joe Wolf

It's like Walt Disney and a Playmobil designer shared shrooms and bad muscatel when working on this together.
Oxfords not Brogues @tancred1098.bsky.social

The interior design "mood board" was just some cocaine on a skateboard.
Greg Murphy

We don't tax the rich enough.
American Fietser

The price has been knocked down by $10,000, so let's not all wait too long: this baby is going to move fast now.