What photograph of Tara Reade do you choose?

Argument by choice of photograph...



ADDED:



Just kidding. But my Memeorandum screen grab doesn't include the photograph the NYT used for that Maureen Dowd column. Click through to that to see what the NYT got from its photographer. Looking at that photograph, I feel that Tara Reade — who is now 56 — was feeling she was getting a glamour shot, something that reflected how beautiful she was when she was 29 and — as she tells it — getting sexist attention from the powerful Senator.

"'The virus is a wake-up call,' one of my doctor friends says, standing in a white bikini on a dock by the Oslo fjord."

"It is an early spring morning and we have just been for a dip in the sea, which is 4º C (about 40º F). Now we let wind and a bleak sun dry us off. 'We have messed up nature,' she goes on. 'We have exploited it in places we shouldn’t have been.' The ice-bathing club meets more often. We need the rush, the extracted inner heat that will keep us warm for the rest of the day. We strictly observe the recommendations of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health: no more than five in a group. Only meet outdoors. Stay one meter apart. 'We are all going to get it one way or another,' says Joanna, a cancer surgeon.... 'It is only a question of time. The strategy of the government is clear: Norway wants to curb the spread so that not too many get ill at the same time.'... A friend on my street is afraid of everything. Trampolines. Carbs. Falling stocks. Bank collapse. Losing control. But nothing scares him more than the Swedish model. Sweden is the only country in Europe to have imposed no rules of restriction. The schools are open, bars serve whatever you like, even fitness centers are functioning. With a population twice as big as Norway’s, the country’s death toll by end of April was more than ten times higher. Sweden has knowingly let a large part of the population get infected in order to achieve herd immunity before a vaccine is ready. 'What do you prefer? A country run by a government that listens to medical advice and takes the responsibility?' my anxious neighbor asks. 'Or the Swedish system of experts battling one another on thin ice?... What is solidarity?... It is for us who are privileged to observe the rules. What’s so bad about lounging on the sofa for a few weeks, anyway? Can’t we just be a bit careful? When did that ever hurt?'"

From "A Virus in the Neighborhood" by Åsne Seierstad (New York Review of Books).

People are desperate to concern themselves with something other than coronavirus and Joe Biden's sexuality.

I think that's why this story has legs — disgusting spindly legs — "‘Murder Hornets’ in the U.S.: The Rush to Stop the Asian Giant Hornet/Sightings of the Asian giant hornet have prompted fears that the vicious insect could establish itself in the United States and devastate bee populations."

That's in the New York Times, where I would expect a little more care not to randomly give off whiffs of xenophobia. Why are they insisting on calling it the "Asian giant hornet"? They already had "murder hornet" and "giant hornet." Why go big "Asian"?

Dr. Looney said it was immediately clear that the state faced a serious problem, but with only two insects in hand and winter coming on, it was nearly impossible to determine how much the hornet had already made itself at home.

Must I worry about 2 insects simply because Dr. Looney — if that really is his name — finds the seriousness "immediately clear"?

That said, I am looking for more exciting articles that are not coronavirus or sex and Joe Biden.

At the Sunrise Café...

You can talk all night.

(And do any shopping you might have through the Althouse Portal to Amazon.)

(Photo taken at 5:52 this morning.)

Things no one was picturing in 2016... but we are now!

I'm going back to my old posts in early October 2016 to see what I said about Trump's Access Hollywood remarks (because I want to see how well I'm maintaining my cruel neutrality now as I process the news about Joe Biden). I was struck by this post from October 9, 2016, "Jake Tapper attempts a euphemism — and it's not 'vulva'":

So what Trump said was "And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything... Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything."

And Jake Tapper obviously didn't want to say "pussy":



If you're going to use the anatomical term to avoid the slang, use the scientifically correct term. "Vagina" for "vulva" is as much slang as "pussy." "Pussy" is at least a quote. "Vagina" is ridiculous.

No one was picturing grabbing a woman by the vagina.

No one was picturing that back then, but we are now! That's the Tara Reade allegation. We're not talking about a grabbing of the outer genitalia, but the penetration of the vagina using the hand — grabbing by the vagina — the seemingly ridiculous phrase used by Tapper.

The old post ends:

If we were, those of us who are saying that Trump was referring to sexual assault would be saying rape, not merely sexual assault.

The accusation against Biden is an accusation of rape.

"Jenzeers."

I turned on the car radio and CNN was talking about "Jenzeers." Jenzeers, in the aftermath of the coronavirus lockdown, were going to decide whether to abandon New York City and leave it hurting for population and economic vigor.

Jenzeers... Jenzeers... who the hell are Jenzeers?
Gen Z-ers.

The story I was hearing on the satellite radio corresponds to this text news report at CNN.com: "Coronavirus is making some people rethink where they want to live":

After years of growth, New York City's population had started to slowly decline in 2017. Chicago and Los Angeles also saw their populations dip in recent years as the economy picked up in the suburbs and elsewhere. Other big cities have seen growth virtually stagnate.

"It's not just a New York thing," says William Frey, a demographer and senior fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. "It's a kind of softening of growth among cities all over the country.... People have always come back to cities during some of the biggest disasters we've had in our history. ... When we look ahead in the next year or two, I'm not so concerned that we're going to see decline in city populations long-term"...

Immediately after the Great Recession, millennials flocked into cities and spurred a period of growth and revitalization. And in the aftermath of this unfolding economic crisis, Frey says Generation Z could take a similar tack.... "If they follow in the footsteps of millennials during a similarly dim period, they could help invigorate city growth -- especially if opportunities dry up elsewhere," Frey wrote in a recent analysis on the Brookings website....

Lifelong New Yorker Chloé Jo Davis never imagined leaving her beloved city -- until now. Davis and her husband were already used to working from home, but weeks spent cramped inside their rented two-bedroom apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side -- homeschooling their three young sons and caring for four rescue pets -- have changed her calculation.... 

Four rescue pets... that got me. They had 5 human beings in a 2-bedroom apartment and they bring in 4 pets. That's got to be either dogs or cats, don't you think? There aren't rescue goldfish or rescue gerbils. We're talking about sizable mammals that have the run of the place and shed hair and vomit and let you know how they feel.

Anyway... city life. I've done it myself... done NYC for about 11 years of my life. I like it, but adding children — more than one — and throwing pets on top... that already makes it hard to breathe. And then you throw in a dangerous respiratory disease... At some point you've got to want out, and if the job you have is one you do from home — you and your mate.... You're so free to leave.

And yet people don't leave. I understand how some folks are about New York. Every place else seems too not New York to be acceptable. I lived in New York City because I married a person who came from New York and his preference for the place was so overwhelming compared to anything I in my head. I didn't want to go back to Delaware or New Jersey. My ideas were vague — drifting over the general landscape like a line in a Johnny Rivers song ("She wants to live in the Rockies/She says that's where we'll find peace...") — so of course, New York won.

"Joe Biden’s most effective campaign strategy has been to lie low and let people vote for whatever imagined version of Joe Biden congealed inside their heads."

"On Friday, he went on MSNBC’s Morning Joe to discuss the Tara Reade allegations. It was not a good argument for changing this strategy.... In the face of mounting evidence that Reade’s allegations are more than the baseless smear his campaign has dismissed them to be, Biden has mostly faded into the background, while his surrogates, supporters, and some pundits went to bat for him, deploying timeworn canards about sexual assault victims and what circumstances justify disbelieving them, or dismissing Reade outright before a fuller picture sees daylight.... [C]olumnists from the New York Times to the Nation stepped up to discredit her, and politicos from Stacey Abrams to Nancy Pelosi reaffirmed their support of the vice-president. Even Kirsten Gillibrand, who drew ire from within the Democratic Party when she pushed for Al Franken to resign after evidence of his misconduct surfaced in 2017, doubled down on her support.... [Biden is] largely staying true to the strategy that’s guided his campaign since early on, which holds that the winningest Biden is one to be imagined, not seen, heard, or even thought about too hard. His staff recognizes that the less its candidate speaks, the less opportunity his supporters have to neglect evidence that undermines their faith — in his competence, his election odds, and, increasingly, his innocence. If there’s one thing for which the Democrats have yet to punish Biden this cycle, it’s his silence in the face of lingering doubt. To change that now would be to change the very foundation of his campaign’s success."

From "Tara Reade Is Making It Harder to Hide Joe Biden" by Zak Cheney-Rice (in NY Magazine).

I don't think Cheney-Rice mentions the coronavirus lockdown that's helping Biden hide. Biden doesn't have the option to come out of hiding by doing events surrounded by supporters who make him seem comfortingly normal. He can only do that face-in-the-camera sort of appearance from his basement, and he's not that great at that — and, in fact, no political candidate is good at campaigning like that.