A dog-food commercial with faux Kind of Blue (specifically, "So What") as background music? Clearly, the commercial was made so that I would notice it and then say something about it.
Heather Cox Richardson, the historian who writes Letters from an American, has a book coming in September, Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America.
“The only way for users to see anything is to accept the representation of the world as offered by the corporation’s filters. I don’t know about you, but my grip on reality — incomplete and imperfect as it may be — will not improve by passing through the hidden manipulations of a two-trillion-dollar company with an insatiable need for growth.”
If I were to read one item today about last night’s indictment, it’d be this one, by Norman Eisen, Andrew Weissmann, and Joyce Vance: “How to Convict Trump.”
I think of Susan Howe’s repudiation of another writer’s characterization of Emily Dickinson: “Who is this Spider-Artist? Not my Emily Dickinson.” Who is this Nebraska nostalgist? Not my Willa Cather.
Mike Pence just said that he and his wife Karen have “the three most beautiful granddaughters ever born in the history of the world.” Grandparents everywhere know that’s not true.
I sometimes took the opportunity to play “The Girl from Ipanema” when teaching Odyssey 13, the episode in which Odysseus sees the princess Nausicaa frolicking on the beach with her maids. I played the album version, with no introduction, for greater mystery and, when the English lyrics kicked in, greater amusement.