Something called ‘Republicans Voters Against Trump’ is running this ad in South Carolina, North Carolina, and DC. DC is safe Democratic, so that’s just to be annoying. SC is safe Republican, but I guess it’s there to embarrass Graham. NC is a battleground state.
(I presume the quotes are from four years ago.)
This painting by French artist Josse Lieferinxe depicts an intercession by St. Sebastian during an outbreak of the plague.
For a good time, see Ada Palmer, Ex Urbe, Black Death, COVID, and Why We Keep Telling the Myth of a Renaissance Golden Age and Bad Middle Ages. Warning: It’s kinda long by web standards, but well worth the read.
It begins:
“If the Black Death caused the Renaissance, will COVID also create a golden age?”
Versions of this question have been going around as people, trying to understand the present crisis, reach for history’s most famous pandemic. Using history to understand our present is a great impulse, but it means some of the false myths we tell about the Black Death and Renaissance are doing new damage, one of the most problematic in my view being the idea that sitting back and letting COVID kill will somehow by itself naturally make the economy turn around and enter a period of growth and rising wages.
I got an unexpected package yesterday.
It came with a note:
This reminds me of the time that Rachel Regalado sent me an apple when she was running for school board. (Teachers, apples, geddit?) At the time I thought someone had too much campaign money. Now, I don’t know whether to salute non-traditional COVID campaigning, or what.
I do love Cuban coffee, but it used to be a going-out treat back in the days when we went out — too much sugar for every day; in fact, I don’t actually have an espresso maker. If you have an espresso maker and got left out, don’t worry, the Shalala for Congress campaign will gladly sell you a package or more and ship it too.
I can’t imagine how the Trump campaign answers this except by trying to change the subject.
Pointing out that Biden makes verbal slip-ups all the time won’t help, since the numbers are wholly different orders of magnitude. Even Biden’s famous biographical plagiarism of Neil Kinnock was a long time ago. Plus generally whoever strikes first on a issue owns it. Karl Rove taught us that.
Update: This one is good too!
I’m old enough to remember how Michael Dukakis got pilloried for this photo op he staged of him riding around in a tank:
There were a lot of reasons for it: Dukakis looked uncomfortable; the public became convinced that he was being a fake — acting against type, doing something he didn’t really believe in — and there was, I always suspected, a tinge of resemblance to the late Alfred E. Newman.
I think there’s a good chance, assuming we’re not under occupation at the time, that we’ll look back at this week’s Trump photo op in the same way. I’m talking about the one where, after having police clear out lawful protestors from across the White House, in which he holds aloft some random Bible (Q: “Is that your Bible?” A: “It’s a Bible”) while looking — like Dukakis did — as the answer to What Does Not Belong in This Picture?
Acting against type, doing something he doesn’t really believe in. Not a good look, it turns out.
Recent Bluessky Posts
Jotwell Blenderlaw