"Trey Gowdy Says His 11-Hour Benghazi Hearing Didn't Reveal Anything New."

HuffPo paraphrases.

AND: From Amy Davidson in The New Yorker:

Clinton has been immersed in politics for decades, and yet the panel managed to make the contrast between her manner and the ways of Washington look stark. She appeared to be a sensible outsider. At 7:15 P.M., nine hours after the hearings began, Martha Roby, of Alabama, asked Clinton about her movements when she went home on the night of the attack. “Were you alone?” she asked. Yes, Clinton said. “The whole night?” Clinton started to laugh once more. “I don’t see why that’s funny,” Roby said. Not funny, perhaps, but, like the Benghazi committee itself, absurd.

"Does this article say anything I couldn't just easily guess?"

I ask Meade after he sends me a link to a MarketWatch article titled "Why men are threatened by smart women/A new study suggests men might not want to date women who are smarter than them."

He says "no," but then explains that it connects to the themes that have been raised on the blog recently. He perceives the article as advice aimed at men, advice that resembles the kind of advice that's been aimed at women over the years. He's read the article. I haven't. So I was skeptical: "Is this really aimed at men?" At the headline level, it looks like more massage for the female mind, and I'm tempted to translate the title uncharitably to: Why men avoid you: You're smart! A new study suggests that the men who don't want you are not good enough for you.

Okay, now I've read the article. In the study, men were prepped for an encounter with a woman by being told that the woman scored higher than he did on an intelligence test. The men then met the woman and judged her to be relatively unattractive.

MarketWatch asked psychologists about how men can overcome bias (if they have it) against smart women.

This supports Meade's perception that it's advice for men. (It is, at least, if you get all the way to the last 3 paragraphs of a 13 paragraph article.) One psychologist tells men to focus on "appreciating" the woman and to "realize that this is an issue with your own self-esteem." Another psychologist says men could try to become more intelligent and to concentrate on other "areas of your self-concept."

This article was really aimed at...

Men, and it worked rather well.

Men, but men aren't going to listen to this.

Women, of course. Seeming to talk to men is an effective angle in talking to women.

Women, but it may lose them by failing to be all about them.

Both! Men who want to work on their flaws and women who want to help them.

 

pollcode.com free polls

Edward Klein quotes a "campaign aide" calling Hillary "child-like," "shrill," and "even violent."

I don't know who this unnamed individual is...

"Hillary’s been having screaming, child-like tantrums that have left staff members in tears and unable to work,” says a campaign aide. “She thought the nomination was hers for the asking, but her mounting problems have been getting to her and she’s become shrill and, at times, even violent.”

... but if I were Hillary, I'd give him a "shrill" kick out the door. What contemptible disloyalty! And "shrill" is a word too characteristic of sexism to be used by competent politicos.

But, assuming this aide exists, isn't Klein paraphrasing? No one will step up and say, you didn't quote me precisely.

Strip away the exaggerated language and there's nothing abnormal here. There's nothing wrong with Hillary getting angry and yelling. There's no detail to what she said that "left staff members in tears and unable to work." You'd think staff members would be plenty tough and able to serve as sounding boards as the candidate ventilates. As for "even violent," what does that mean? Are we talking about physical assaults? If not, don't use that word.

And, yes, I know there's a long history of stories about Hillary throwing things at Bill:

Here’s our best re-creation of how the Hillary-throwing-stuff trope emerged. It seems to have first appeared in print in late February of 1993, when the Chicago Sun-Times reported that the new first lady broke a lamp “during a heated late-night argument” at the White House with her husband. The attribution? The delicious-sounding “wicked Washington whispers.”

The story quickly metastasized, with Newsweek soon thereafter reporting that “Washington dinner parties were buzzing with stories of Hillary throwing — take your pick — a lamp, a briefing book or a Bible at Bill.” However, the magazine noted that there was “no evidence” to support the tales. Prevailing theories at the time had it that the source of the rumors were Secret Service agents, with whom the Clintons were thought to have testy relations.

I'm sure Klein would love to get resonance off that old junk, which at least named the object thrown. Klein's "she’s become... violent" — without more — is utter trash.

"In Paul Theroux’s new book, 'Deep South,' the superficial stereotypes pile up at once."

"In the first scene, it’s a 'hot Sunday morning' in Tuscaloosa, Ala., and there’s mention of snake-handling and talking in tongues, poverty, holy-roller churches, a black barbershop, gun shows, college football, the requisite Faulkner quote ('The past is not dead . . . ') and even a sassy black lady ('You lost, baby?'). So far, I haven’t left the first page."

Jack Hitt hits the rueful Theroux.

That's all very interesting, but I'm just going to say a couple things about that Faulkner quote, which, Hitt slightly misses, putting "not" where the dramatic and time-related word "never" belongs: "The past is never dead. It's not even past."

This line is often paraphrased, as it was by then-Senator Barack Obama in his speech "A More Perfect Union."  In 2012, Faulkner Literary Rights LLC filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Sony Pictures Classics over a scene in the film Midnight in Paris, in which a time-traveling character says, "The past is not dead! Actually, it's not even past. You know who said that? Faulkner. And he was right. And I met him, too. I ran into him at a dinner party." In 2013, the judge dismissed Faulkner Literary Rights LLC's claim, ruling that the use of the quote in the film was de minimis and constituted "fair use." 

Obama's paraphrase was: "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past."