Negotiate!

The sunglasses.

On the Tumbling Rock Trail...

... I was wearing dark glasses with yellowish lenses. On the way back, I took the glasses off and suddenly all that gray-looking quartzite rock popped into technicolor. All that purple and rose with tinges of lichen green!









What a crazy thing! Taking those sunglasses off was like dropping acid.

These pictures — all done with an iPhone — were taken at Devil's Lake.

Madonna: I am Michael Jackson.

Jackson died, and — don't you see? — it's all about Madonna. Her 5-minute speech at the MTV Video Music Awards:

Michael Jackson was born in August 1958. So was I. Michael Jackson grew up in the suburbs of the Midwest. So did I. Michael Jackson had eight brothers and sisters. So do I. When Michael Jackson was six, he became a superstar, and was perhaps the world’s most beloved child. When I was six, my mother died. I think he got the shorter end of the stick. I never had a mother, but he never had a childhood. And when you never get to have something, you become obsessed by it.

I spent my childhood searching for my mother figures. Sometimes I was successful, but how do you recreate your childhood when you are under the magnifying glass of the world?

She tells about the time she tried to befriend the ultra-strange superstar:

I asked him out to dinner, I said “My treat, I’ll drive — just you and me.”

I'll drive. Ha ha.

He agreed and showed up to my house without any bodyguards. We drove to the restaurant in my car. It was dark out, but he was still wearing sunglasses.

Just one more reason why you need to do the driving.

I said, “Michael, I feel like I’m talking to a limousine. Do you think you can take off your glasses so I can see your eyes?”

I feel like I’m talking to a limousine. Ha ha. Brilliant. I wonder if Madonna really does come up with  lines like that in real time or some great comic writer punched up the dialogue. Dead men correct no quotes.

Then he tossed the glasses out the window, looked at me with a wink and a smile and said, “Can you see me now? Is that better?”

[I]n that moment, I could see both his vulnerability and his charm. The rest of the dinner, I was hellbent on getting him to eat French fries, drink wine, have dessert and say bad words. Things he never seemed to allow himself to do. 

What a goody-two-shoes that guy was! Imagine getting lessons in how to be bad from Madonna.

Later we went back to my house to watch a movie and sat on the couch like two kids, and somewhere in the middle of the movie, his hand snuck over and held mine.

It felt like he was looking for more of a friend than a romance, and I was happy to oblige. In that moment, he didn’t feel like a superstar. He felt like a human being.

Who knew the peak moment of Michael Jackson's life was the moment Madonna made him feel — at last! — human?

We went out a few more times together, and then for one reason or another we fell out of touch. 

Dead men tell no anecdotes.

(Here's video of Madonna's speech.)

At the Sunglass Cloud Café...

... accumuluslate your thoughts.

Shame on NBC News.

At 7:26 this morning, Central Time, I received a "breaking news" email from CNN, saying "Ex-Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has died, according to media reports." After quickly putting up a post, I thought the best way to see the unfolding news would be television. To my surprise, the 3 network news shows were not covering the story. All were either running commercials or doing the usual morning show material about your family's health or some American crime scene. I shifted to CNN and Fox News. Fox had Greta Van Susteren reminiscing about the time she spoke to Benazir Bhutto, so only CNN was seriously covering the story.

After a while, I went back to see if the network shows had caught up, and only ABC had. Most shocking was the "Today Show," which I set to record on my TiVo and filmed — crudely, sorry — to show you how appalling it was:



As you can see, Matt Lauer and Ann Curry are horsing around on the street, Matt introduces the news reader, and she proceeds to tell us that Benazir Bhutto has been wounded.

The next story is about a murder investigation in Washington, followed by the tiger escape in San Francisco, a pit bull mauling, and then — replete with photos of shoppers riding escalators — the way some people go to the store after Christmas.

It goes on. There's Willard Scott with the weather. There's a festive weather map of America dotted with snowflakes and Mr. Sun wearing sunglasses. Local weather. I stop the video at this point, but the embarrassment continues.

They go to commercial and return with a long story about colds and herbal tea. A long commercial break follows, and then we see Matt Lauer, sitting in front of a silver-wrapped package and silver balls, warmly sympathizing with us about the travails of celebrating New Year's. He's got a lovely lady in a low-cut top next to him on the sofa and, on the coffee table, there's a line-up of champagne flutes filled with champagne and other champagne-like drinks. Now, it's a pre-recorded segment on "all things bubbly." Back to Matt: Can he tell the difference between $5 sparkling wine from a can and $100-a-bottle Dom Perignon? That's got to be a more important question than whether Benazir Bhutto has died and what might happen in Pakistan. It is now 8:26 Central Time — an hour after the CNN email. Matt takes the taste test and guesses. The lady (Jenna Wolfe) giggles and says "Now, I don't remember which one I gave him." So they can't even get the idiotic champagne tasting right! Matt acts like it's just really funny.

Commercials. Local weather again. Commercial. Video of a cheerleader getting knocked down by football players. It's just one of many video clips that "caught our attention this year," we're told by a pretty woman sitting on the sofa, flanked by two pretty women and — over to the left — Willard Scott. Now, it's back to the story of the girl who survived the plane crash. The women murmur and coo mindlessly — "ooh," "mmm," "heartbreaking." And — you know what? — there is a coach who has helped his team overcome adversity. They chatter about what to do for New Year's. Why not cook something with your kids? They have some recipes for you. Willard says he likes to be with the family on New Year's Eve — "make cookies, drink cocoa." More weather from Willard. More local weather. Commercials. Plane crash survivor. Commercials. That coach who helped the team. Commercials. Those recipes. Commercials. Local news (about the weather). Commercials.

Finally, it's the top of the hour, 9:00 Central Time, and we see a picture of Benazir Bhutto, with the dates 1953-2007. Matt Lauer and Ann Curry are on the sofa, and Matt says he's back now with more. "In just a moment, we're going to have the latest on the suicide bombing today in Pakistan that killed former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. We're going to have a report on that in just a couple of minutes." And also more on that tiger attack. And that plane crash survivor. It's "nothing short of miraculous."

What an embarrassment!

"Argument by impressionistic psychodrama."

I have a review of Jeffrey Toobin's "The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court" in the New York Sun.

ADDED: My main problem with the book is a general problem with popular writing about law (and politics and plenty of other serious subjects). To make it readable and entertaining, you forefront the people, not the ideas, you use a lot of colorful details, and, like a novelist, you make the details seem to express deep things about the characters. Within this rhetorical style, when there are any ideas or events to describe, they seem to arise from the depths of your characters.

Toobin describes Supreme Court cases like that, and because his book is entertaining and readable, many people will get their view of the Court from it. The material analyzing the actual arguments and opinions in the cases is cut way back, as if the author wrote with constant awareness of how little patience you would have for any legal analysis. This is understandable, up to a point. But this extreme minimization of the legal material allows for much sleight of hand, and like a novelist, you are led to take the point of view of some characters over others. He's really making an argument -- an "argument by impressionistic psychodrama."

You don't get to read how Chief Justice John Roberts analyzed the equal protection precedent in deciding that the Louisville and Seattle school integration cases and how Justice Breyer saw the same precedent in a different way. Instead you feel along with Justice Breyer: "Breyer's wan longing for stare decisis will stir few hearts," Toobin writes (at page 339). Wan longing! It reminds me of something Stephen Colbert said on the first episode of "The Colbert Report": "Anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news at you." Anyone can explain the cases to you. Toobin feels the cases at us. And the reader, who's had his feeling massaged for 300+ pages, will read of Breyer's "wan longing" and think: I will be one of the few! My heart is stirred!

But you haven't been given the material to decide if the bad guys are really trashing the precedents. You're just accepting the viewpoint of the judges you've been felt at to think are the good ones. They feel sad, so it must be a calamity. "David Souter was shattered" (page 177), so Bush v. Gore was atrocious.

What is missing is the analytical substance that would let you decide for yourself. In the review, I write:

[H]uman individuals drive the law, as Mr. Toobin tells it. The story of Jay Sekulow, "a nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn" whose "ignorance" was "his best weapon," swells the 12-page chapter on the Supreme Court's religion cases, but there isn't a word about the Rehnquist Court's most important Free Exercise case, Employment Division v. Smith. Smith, written by the conservative Justice Scalia, said religion was not entitled to special exceptions from generally applicable laws. (You can't avoid the Controlled Substances Act, for example, by saying you need to use peyote in a religious rite.)

Smith doesn't fit the theory that the conservatives are out to favor religion or the proposition that the religion cases "usually come down simply to ‘What will Sandra do?'" Justice O'Connor opposed the doctrinal shift in Smith, as did the three most liberal justices: William Brennan, Thurgood Marshall, and Harry Blackmun. It was a liberal tenet that the Free Exercise Clause relieves religious practitioners from requirements the law imposes on everyone else. To bring up Smith would require Mr. Toobin to acknowledge that conservatives favor equality and liberals want to favor religion and that would mess up the narrative arc of his story.

There's something else in the religion chapter that I couldn't fit into the review. When Toobin writes that Jay Sekulow's "ignorance" was "his best weapon," he's portraying the lawyer as someone who bumbled into using the Free Speech Clause to win protection for religious activities. Toobin writes that Sekulow didn't realize that "cases involving religion were always argued under the Free Exercise Clause."

But a mere 3 pages earlier, he was praising Robert Jackson's 1943 opinion in West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette -- the case that said schools couldn't force Jehovah's Witnesses to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Toobin doesn't mention that Barnette is a free speech case and that Sekulow competently cited it.

(And what about all the cases based on the Establishment Clause? They involve religion, even if they aren't litigated by Jay Sekulow.)

The pop culture approach Toobin uses demands that the individual, not the case law, governs what happens. It's a little like the "great man" theory of history -- the inferior man theory of the law.

It is fun to read though. Jay Sekulow is "a nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn," who moved to Atlanta and out of laziness attended Atlanta Baptist College. There, accepting a challenge by a "Jesus freak" to take the Book of Isaiah seriously, he saw that the messiah must be Jesus and became one of the "Jew for Jesus." Etc. etc.... and that's why we have the recent cases that say it violates the Free Speech Clause to discriminate against the religious viewpoint.

It makes sense if you get caught up in the seductive pop culture reading that is "The Nine."

And another thing....

Writing about Barnette, Toobin enthuses about Justice Jackson's idealistic prose: "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein." But he makes Justice Kennedy seem foolish for his love of "drama and what he called 'the poetry of the law'" (page (147), "flowery language about the First Amendment" (page 167), and "Kennedyesque flourish like 'the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life" (page 223). But Toobin's not much different from everyone else there. Jackson had the knack for high-flown phrases, and Kennedy can't quite pull it off.

And I'm not completely opposed to pop culture writing about law. I do it too, and I follow my own standards of fairness. Like I think it's fair to tweak Toobin for making a big deal out of Kennedy's glasses -- how he changed from "seventies-style steel-framed aviators" to "a Euro-chic frameless model." This supposedly symbolized how much Kennedy is soaking up the influence of Europeans and European law as he travels to various conferences. What I find so hilarious is that on the back cover of the book jacket -- where there aren't any words at all, just a big picture of the smiling Jeffrey Toobin -- he's wearing rimless glasses. Meaningful!

(And aren't steel-framed aviator glasses in style right now?)

"The Road Not Taken."

As I was saying, I played the docent at the Fred B. Jones Gatehouse, which was part of a Frank Lloyd Wright tour in Delavan, Wisconsin yesterday. Here are some views of the exterior:



(That's the water tower on the left.)



But I was posted -- imagine me, a blogger, posted -- in the interior, so let's go in:




Yesterday's post has one picture of the interior, showing the fireplace, which has a space above it where the current owners have painted a line from that Robert Frost poem "The Road Not Taken." Here's a closeup of the inscription:



I showed many people through the room, and I always had to say that it was the original fireplace, but the line was not there originally, as, indeed, it could not have been -- unless, as I said once, "Frank Lloyd Wright was unusually prescient" -- because it had yet to be written in 1901 when the gatehouse was built. So I had some interesting conversations with visitors about the line. Would Frank Lloyd Wright have approved? He took the road less traveled, but the road that consists of loving that poem is very well traveled. All these people enamored of a line about nonconformity -- it's ironic. Most of the people I talked to wanted to take the road less traveled and reject the poem.

Let's hear it read by R. Frost:



One visitor said that Wright and Frost were contemporaries and that there's a good film clip out there of Wright interviewing Frost. "That should be on the internet," I said. I'm not finding it, but there sure are a lot of student films using "The Road Not Taken." Sample:



Now, when I see that line -- "I took the one less traveled by/And that has made all the difference" -- I think of the documentary "Grey Gardens." Little Edie, truly a nonconformist, treasures the old line. Part of what is so poignant about Little Edie is that she feels so deeply about some terribly shallow things, like astrology, scarves, and the VMI fight song. And so, that poem...

I'm frustrated that YouTube doesn't seem to have the clip of Little Edie reciting Frost, but I did find this video of Rufus Wainwright singing his song "Grey Gardens":



[Speaking of feeling deeply about terribly shallow things, I'm remembering the Rufus Wainwright line: "There's never been such grave a matter/As comparing our new brand name black sunglasses...."]

And then, if I may bring this meandering post in for a crash landing, I found this clip of Christine Ebersole -- who plays Little Edie (and the young Big Edie) in the Broadway musical made from the documentary. She's struggling to answer the question why gay men love "Grey Gardens." At one point, her answer seems promising, but then it devolves into typical showbiz political talk about Republicans:



No, let's not end there. Let's get back to the real feeling of Little Edie:



"I always took French, but nothing ever happened there."

ADDED: I did not know when I wrote this post that there had been a terrible murder in Delavan the night before I was there. MORE: Actually, the murder was the night after the tour:

Six people, including twin infants, were shot dead Saturday night inside an apartment house. The shooting also wounded a 2-year-old girl, who was still fighting for her life Sunday....

The wounded girl was flown to the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison.

The helicopters to the hospital fly over my house. I heard a helicopter in the middle of the night last night.

Macho Pope.

This just happened:

A man tried to jump into Pope Benedict XVI's uncovered popemobile as the pontiff began his general audience Wednesday in St. Peter's Square and was wrestled to the ground by security officers.

The pope was not hurt and didn't even appear to notice that the man had jumped over the protective barricade in the square and toward the white popemobile as it drove by with the pope waving to the audience.

At least eight security officers who were trailing the popemobile grabbed the man and wrestled him to the ground. The pope didn't even look back.

The assailant "was wearing a pink T-shirt and dark shorts, a beige baseball cap and sunglasses." That says a lot.

"This significant tree."

I was walking on path down by Lake Wingra yesterday, when up ahead I saw gloriously twisted oak branches:



I have a very old oak tree in my back yard. I'm looking at it as I write this, and I've been looking at it for 20 years. I've had a long and deep relationship with my tree. (It seems absurd to call it "mine" -- this thing which has lived so much longer than I have and which will almost surely live on after me.) But that the tree up ahead...



I knew it was big when mine was an acorn.



Ah, what's this little path?



It's a path to a plaque:



"This significant tree"... alive in the time of the Founders... Your humble blogger is wearing dark sunglasses, so she does not worry that some passerby might see that she is moved to tears.

"Tell your honorable people, and journalists, to live in peace now — the people have now been rescued from the cruelty of this wild butcher."

Mullah Dadullah, the operational commander for the Taliban, has been killed.

Mullah Dadullah, an amputee, was recognizable in part from his missing left leg and thick black beard. He had been shot in the head and in the stomach, the governor said. His face and chest were bloodied. He wore traditional Afghan clothes and an ordinary shoe on his good leg.

ADDED: And check out the picture the NYT website has right next to its front-page teaser about the one-legged Dadullah:



That's a teaser for this article in the Style section about people like Sarah Reinertsen who present their disability as something cool:

Sarah Reinertsen, 31, an athlete who runs with a prosthetic leg, is a member of the hard-charging vanguard. She was a contestant on CBS’s “Amazing Race” last year (her team came in 7th of 12) and has no qualms about competing against the able-bodied.

“Believe me, I get a thrill when I do pass two-legged people,” she said.

But she said she never leaves the house without sunglasses.

“People always stare,” she said. “It’s part of human nature and it’s tough to be this animal in the zoo.”

But Ms. Reinertsen said people have stopped looking at disability as “total tragedy.” “People have changed a lot,” she said. “They ask, ‘Are you wearing one of those cool legs?’ ”

Death TV.

The last two nights of television were Death TV.

On Friday, talking heads talked for hours about the hanging of Saddam which we could watch on-line the next day). Writes Alessandra Stanley:

The news that Mr. Hussein was indeed dead came late on Friday night, and anticlimactically after hour upon hour of creepy music, blood-colored graphics and montages of Mr. Hussein’s most infamous moments, particularly his spider hole capture in 2003, when an American military camera recorded a hairy, befuddled Mr. Hussein being prodded and poked like a vagrant being searched for lice.

As the deadline loomed, and commentators filled time with pronouncements like “the clock is ticking on Saddam Hussein,” even on-air personalities looked restless. After devoting his entire hour on CNN to the impending hanging, Larry King asked, “Is there something ghoulish about this?” Mr. King looked a little let down when he had to sign off before the execution, promising viewers, “It is really imminent now.”...

Fox was much less squeamish, pumping up the Friday night vigil with graphics that promised “The end is near!” and “Date with Death” and urging viewers to stay tuned to Fox News.

On Saturday, there was a long ceremony about Gerald Ford that sounded like the funeral as I overheard it from the next room where I was working. But the state funeral will be on Tuesday. Last night was a preliminary ceremony as the body was brought to the Capital rotunda:

Vice President Dick Cheney, who served as Mr. Ford’s chief of staff and was an honorary pallbearer, said, “Few have ever risen so high with so little guile or calculation.”...

Mr. Cheney praised his former boss for his “capacity to forgive” and for being “always a striver — never working an angle, just working.” He noted that Mr. Ford had been treated more kindly in hindsight than when he was in office, after he pardoned former President Richard M. Nixon.

“In politics, it can take a generation or more for a matter to settle, for tempers to cool,” Mr. Cheney said. “The distance of time has clarified many things about Gerald Ford. And now death has done its part to reveal this man and the president for what he was.”

Who can read that and not think he's pleading for respect for George W. Bush?

They say famous people die in threes, and the completion of this triad was James Brown. There was no night of television devoted to his funeral, though it too would have filled the screen:

Brown's body lay in an open-topped golden coffin in front of the stage at the James Brown Arena...

The legendary showman, known as the "Godfather of Soul," was dressed in a black suit and gloves with a ruby red shirt. Jewels sparkled on his lapels and the tips of his shoes....

"The whole world changed their beat because of James Brown," civil rights leader Al Sharpton said in a eulogy. "Nobody started lower and ended higher than James Brown did."

In a brief speech [Michael] Jackson, who wore a black leather jacket, black pants and sunglasses, said he'd watched Brown perform on television as a 6-year-old and was "mesmerized," deciding right then to follow in Brown's fancy footsteps.

"James Brown is my greatest inspiration," said Jackson, who has spent little time in the United States since being acquitted of child molestation charges in 2005....

In a passionate speech, comedian and activist Dick Gregory reminded the audience of the oppressive racial environment of Brown's early life rather than simply focusing on his music.

"We didn't get this (civil rights) out of the goodness of America's heart," he said. "We didn't get this because they sent the Marines in ... We got this because with love and willing to die we said, 'We gonna change it."'

The Rising Sun Anger Release Bar.

Where the customers -- most of them women -- "smash glasses, rant and even hit specially trained workers":

The bar employs 20 men who have been given protective gear and physical training to prepare them for the job.

Clients can ask the men to dress as the character they wish to attack....

"The idea of beating someone decorated as your boss seems attractive."

Okaaaay. That's happening in China. Want something like that in your town? Or have you got a better idea?

"I knew he loved Elvis.I didn't realize how much he loved Elvis."

Said President Bush, who thought up the idea of taking Junishiro Koizumi to Graceland:

Mr. Koizumi, whose penchant for belting out Elvis on a karaoke machine is well known, couldn't resist trying out his moves on Mr. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush as the three of them made their way through the manse, escorted by none other than Priscilla Presley, Elvis's former wife, and Lisa Marie, his daughter.

"Looove mee tenderrrrr," the prime minister crooned, as Mr. Bush, not one for letting loose in public, cracked up. When Lisa Marie Presley showed the prime minister her father's trademark sunglasses, he promptly donned them and thrust his hips and arms forward, an earnest imitation of a classic Elvis stage move.

ADDED: Video.

"Two men in one-foot-tall bee-hive wigs, huge bug-eye sparkly sunglasses, fluffy dresses, bling and long gloves chatted happily."

Fetish Night at the Cardinal Bar -- a once-a-month event, here in Madison.

Take note of a serious rumor.

I wasn't going to mention it, but Eric Muller writes "I just got a hit to this blog via the google search 'Is Samuel Alito Jewish.'" Muller chuckles over what he's perceiving as one clueless Googler. But look at my Site Meter's ranking of recent search words. I've been getting numerous hits from "samuel alito jewish" and "alito jewish" in the last two days. Here are my current top hits:

36 ann althouse
27 althouse
11 samuel alito jewish
8 rapex
5 kate moss naked
4 therefore symbol
4 pamela anderson roast
4 ann althouse blog
4 althouse blog
3 seamus farrow
3 alito jewish
2 wsj photos halloween
2 tyler durden sunglasses
2 sexy comedy
2 sexplay
2 sam alito jewish
2 pajama media
2 oogle
2 let it be dvd
2 kate... naked
2 judge samuel alito
2 federalism
2 ann althouse wisconsin
2 "ann althouse"

Put my name aside, ignore my usual traffic over "kate moss naked" and the "therefore symbol" (what this blog is all about, right?), and you can see that the question whether Alito is Jewish is a web trend of the last 24 hours. There's a serious rumor churning up out there, I would guess. Where did it originate?

"He is rarely seen without a wig and a pair of sunglasses, a homage to Andy Warhol that began as a Halloween costume last year."

That's a description of Merlin Bronques, "an elusive character who has made a boldface name for himself among scenesters on both coasts by photographing bared flesh, provocative outfits and gross exuberance at clubs and private parties."

I have been wondering for decades why Andy Warhol-style wigs do not become the fashion for men. Wigs for men seem so awful, of course, but the least hip thing to do is to wear a toupee and try to act as though no one can tell. Why after all this time has it not become the thing to do to wear what is intentionally a wig? Warhol did it. Why has the potential for hipness and coolness never come to fruition when Warhol did it? Come on, guys. It will be really fun! Why all the somberness about that hair problem? Head-shaving turned out to be a great idea. Following the same reasoning, wear the Warhol wig!

What to wear for a sentencing walk.

You might not control what you wear on a perp walk, but you may be able to style yourself for a sentencing walk. WaPo's fashion writer Robin Givhan comments on what Judith Miller and Li'l Kim wore:

[Kimberly] Jones emerged from Manhattan federal court dressed in a blue-gray blazer and trim trousers with a simple white blouse. A belt with a large decorative buckle hung low around her hips. She was carrying a rather large blue Louis Vuitton handbag -- Le Fabuleux. It is $3,200 worth of goatskin and brass hardware that says "fabulous." One can imagine that a cell phone, a lipstick and a tin of Altoids make up its entire contents.

Jones's hair, which during her trial was often worn in a prim bun or sweet ringlets, hung loose and straight down her back. Her jaw was set. She did not look angry or sad as much as she looked resigned. (Indeed, her face displayed more emotion when she arrived -- and before punishment had been meted out -- and she had to squeeze through the crowd to get into the courthouse.) To use a description often used in the context of hip-hop, Jones looked hard. She released a statement in which she thanked her fans for their support and noted that her prison sentence was just one more hurdle in her short but difficult life. No worries; she would persevere.

In contrast, Miller arrived at U.S. federal district court dressed in black trousers, a quilted black jacket, a yellow shirt and tortoise frame sunglasses. She was clutching a wad of papers and the usual wireless, digital gear. She was also carrying a black shoulder bag whose most distinguishing feature was its ability to keep a multitude of writing tools within easy reach. In essence, it was an elaborate form of pocket protector. Miller was smiling. It was a pleasant smile. And it was still spread across her face as she was driven off to jail.

The women seemed acutely aware that the sentencing walk -- like its predecessor, the perp walk -- defines them in the public's mind. In its execution, it is not enough to stand straight and hold one's head high. This is a powerful visual image capable of conveying subtleties and broad strokes. Both women were playing to their fans.

Givhan goes on to describe the effect serving time will have on the two women's careers. Since Li'l Kim is a rap artist, according to Givhan, it can only help. For rap fans: "The prison term seems less an ordeal than a right of passage." Well, you can argue about whether that's politically incorrect, but it sure is a usage error. Where are the WaPo proofreaders?

The iPod and the art museum.

I love these new iPod museum guides, which rival those pompous, official museum audio-tours.

[David Gilbert, a professor of communication at Marymount Manhattan College wants] to teach his students to stop being passive information consumers - whether through television, radio or an official audio guide - and to take more control, using as his model the guru of so-called remix culture, Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Stanford Law School.

"It's not incumbent on us to, you know, praise the art necessarily," Dr. Gilbert said recently at the museum, wearing neon-green sunglasses and leading a group of students through the underground tour. "That's part of the playfulness and fun of this project. If we want to say something irreverent or something scathing about the art, that can come out." ...

So far, the unofficial guides cover only a few of the [Museum of Modern Art's] works - by artists like Pollock, Cindy Sherman, Francis Bacon, Picasso, Max Beckmann and Marc Chagall, whose well-known "I and the Village" comes in for a critical pummeling by Jason Rosenfeld, a Marymount professor of art history, who calls it "the worst, most reductive kind of art" and blames Chagall for all the "ugly menorahs" and tacky stained-glass windows in modern synagogues.

"It's the worst style that ever developed in the history of art," he declares.

Art museums can be so stuffy, so entombed. I love the idea of walking around with some brilliant, witty character talking in your ear. I don't even necessarily want someone knowledgable talking to me. Just say something interesting that goes with the experience of seeing the picture. It can even be counterpoint. Talk about life or talk about art. Riff on the images or gossip about some person you happen to see while you're there.

Next time I go to a museum, I expect to see people with white "earbuds" laughing inappropriately in front of serious masterpieces. Those who want to experience the art museum as a religious pilgrimmage are going to be disturbed, but let them buy a tiny iPod Shuffle and load it with Gregorian chants or Bach and they won't have to hear any of the irreverence that would spoil the spiritual ambience.

UPDATE: The Times article gives two websites to download these podcasts. I went to the Wooster Collective site and listened to a little of the Basquiat commentary mentioned in the article. This commentary had the same kind of problems that those Adam Curry soundseeing podcasts have: the people don't have much to say and aren't articulate. If the "uhs" don't drive you away, maybe you'll stay around long enough to notice that these people seem to have a vocabulary with only one adjective: "interesting." This was like having people near me in a museum who would cause me to look at paintings in a different order to avoid hearing them. I was imagining much better speakers!

Uh, here we are, uh, on our, uh, way, over to the, uh, show, which is really interesting, uh...

Let's try the other site mentioned in the Times article, Art Mobs. I'm listening to the Chagall one, the one that the Times singled out as sharp and witty:

That was the problem with Russia, is that it was full of orthodox religiosity and Christianity. That's why, you know, Lenin (a great Jew), Marx (a great Jew), had it right... Or was Lenin Jewish? ... I don't think he was, but we'll claim him, because he was a good egg... is because they wanted to get rid of religion, you know, religion was the opiate of the masses to Marx, who was a self-hating Jew, I guess, essentially. But my point about this painting is ...

You may find us screaming or groaning in front of those paintings and not laughing, I'm thinking.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Podcasts undoubtedly have their share of idiotic and contemptible statements. But you can't Google for them or see them in Technorati or link to them and critique them. I happened to transcribe one just now, but that's not much different from transcribing something I heard someone say down at the coffeeshop.

Thus, podcasting is not like blogging. It lacks the inherent structural safeguards that make the blogosphere work in service to the truth.

"American Idol" -- songs of the past few years.

The "theme" tonight is songs of the past few years, and with only six contestants left, we're going to while away the extra minutes going back to their home towns and hearing what the townsfolk have to say about how fine a person their favorite son/daughter is.

First we go back to a one-stop-light town in Oklahoma to learn that Carrie Underwood loves fuzzy-wuzzy wittle kwitters and has a mom who tears up just saying Carrie is a good girl. Said good girl trots out in tight jeans and bleats an endless, featureless country thing that involves long-held notes and that teeter-tottering dance done in a spread-legged, bent-kneed stance that the camera forces us to view from the least small-town, mom-pleasing angle. Still, it's all very chaste. And dreadful. Randy takes ten minutes telling her she was off-pitch. Paula murmurs incoherently, but seemingly in agreement. Simon -- acknowledging the ABC exposé in the offing -- says "I don't think anything you say tonight is going to make much difference, to be honest with you," then adds, "Mind you, that applies to every week."

Before the commercial, we see Bo Bice, wearing a dashiki and sunglasses, which makes me think he's decided to go a little Constantine and not take himself so seriously. Back from the break, we see Clay Aiken's in the audience. He has nothing much to say. He's "nervous." Next to him is a woman with black hair in a bun who makes a big point of turning her head away from him. Does that mean she's with him or not with him?

We learn Bo's from a small town in Alabama. He's got a house, a girlfriend, and parents named Nancy and Earl. He seems to be just the complete southern, rocker boy. There's a startling picture of him as a very skinny, guitar-playing teenager. I don't recognize this song either. Some generic rock thing. Randy and Paula praise his authenticity, which ties to the lyrics of that song I don't know.

Vonzell Solomon is from Fort Myers, Florida. She delivers mail and does karate. We see her music teacher and her two handsome brothers who are wearing big T-shirts with Vonzell pictures on them. The brother wearing the baby Vonzell picture breaks down and cries trying to say how much he loves his sister. Another song I don't know. She doesn't seem up to the range and loses some low notes entirely, but she does that end-high-and-big thing. Actually, it was pretty awful. I think she's going home this week. Randy and Paula seem to love it though. Simon? "I have a horrible feeling that wasn't as good as [Randy and Paula] thought." Yes. Too bad. I (heart) Vonzell, but I think she's going, unless Anthony or Scott falters -- which is a decent possibility.

Heather Locklear is here, with her daughter Ava. Ryan Seacrest asks Ava if she's "a big fan of the show" and she pauses: "um..." Good lord, the little girl is still a human being! She's thinking about whether it's true! She has yet to be absorbed into the vast mind of celebritydom. Fight it, Ava! Fight it! "Say yes," they tell her, and she says "yes!" Ava! Fight it! There's still hope!

Anthony Federov is from a small town in Pennsylvania, but originially from Ukraine. We see his parents Natalia and Vladimir, and Vladimir has an old boom box on his lap and he presses "play" to let us hear a recording he made of the first time Baby Anthony sang. You might think I'm totally inured to sentiment on this show by now and that I'm going to say something snide, but I'll admit that at this point, I broke down and cried!

Vladimir is almost like an Andy Kaufman imitation: "He's singin' about long, long time ago." And here's the impossibly blond and blue-eyed sweet boy, aged maybe five, standing in front of a Christmas tree. The baby voice is still playing, and now we see Vladimir wiping tears from his eyes as the camera closes in on him. Natalia (sounding like a Meryl Streep imitation): "He's our dream. His dream: our dream. I can't believe, our dream came true." Now we see the dream boy, sitting on the stage. He, too, sings a song I don't know. Face it, I don't know any of the songs of the last few years.

"I surrender"? He hits a big high note and I just want Vladimir and Natalia to be happy. Ack! This is all so sincere! Apparently, that was a Celine Dion song. Simon says: "You're a very brave man. I personally hated it." See, that's why I love Simon. His point -- basically the same point he made to Carrie -- is he hates that kind of music, but there are voters out there who love it and they'll love you.

"Fans of pouting, stay where you are. That nice freak boy is live after the break." Freak boy? Rewind! Oh, Greek boy. It's Constantine. So Scott goes last: what does that mean? Either Scott has something great this week, and they really do mean to slough off Vonzell, or they are hanging Scott out to dry.

Finally, somebody from someplace big. Constantine Maroulis, born in NYC. His father [ADDED: brother, probably] is the coolest looking guy, like somebody Egon Schiele would draw. I want to draw Constantine's dad. Constantine's dad reminds me of my father. [YET MORE: I "watched it back" and can tell you that guy who looked so much older than Constantine, but so much younger than Constantine's mother, was definitely Constantine's brother.]

Constantine, too, sings a song I don't know. He's dressed in black, wearing various chains, and he keeps kicking his foot at the low-angle camera. Let it be said, at this point, I am completely for Constantine. The question isn't whether he embodies what "American Idol" is, but that "American Idol" must embody whatever it is he is. He's completely serious and completely not serious at the same time. I love that! The judges crab about the performance. What?

Finally, Scott Savol. He's from Shaker Heights, Ohio. Aw, big Scott was a cute kid who sang "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus." You can tell from the clips Scott is the one with the poorest, hardest life. They try to put a nice slant on that, but you can tell it wasn't nice. His mom says: "He's the average Joe." Most moms go at least a few levels higher with the praise, even when there's nothing special at all.

Another song I don't know. I guess I haven't listened to new things in the last few years. It's another bland, featureless song, and within a few notes I feel they've put Scott in the last position to hang him out to dry. Scott will go home this week. A sigh of relief for Vonzell. Let's hear the judges try to bury him. Simon: "I'd pack your suitcase."

So, it will be goodbye to Scott this week. The others in the bottom three? Vonzell. Who else? I guess that's the really interesting question to be answered tomorrow night. Regular readers know who I want to see there.