Downtown Indianapolis.

Architectural details, photographed last Saturday.

The war monument.

This is the "War" side of the State Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in Indianapolis. This closeup shows one soldier using a dead soldier to place to perch his gun...



... and pigeons, in turn, using that gun.

"Moto Fever: Dig It."

No, you dig it.



We're rolling out.

Bulldogs vs. Blue Devils.

I'm watching — out of the corner of my eye — because I'm married... to a Hoosier.

"Politics in Indiana is the old boy’s school. They’re getting ready to put one of their own in," said Tamyra D’Ippolito...

... to FireDogLake.

"My gut feeling tells me they’re meeting in a room, I don’t know if they’re smoking cigars," D’Ippolito said, basically working under the assumption that Bayh’s announcement was timed so the state party could pick the nominee by themselves. "The timing of this is amazing."

D’Ippolito told me she is the first woman to ever run for the US Senate in Indiana. Her impression from working on prior campaigns and from this one is that Indiana political culture is a "tight old boys school, it borders on sexism." In a state where the population is 52% women, D’Ippolito says "in the future, we women of Indiana are not going to tolerate" the chummy, insider culture.

Is that the way to run in Indiana, by flinging about accusations about how sexist everyone is? And FireDogLake has to walk back in an update:

The fact that Jill Long Thompson was the Democratic candidate for Governor in Indiana just two years ago would seem to cut against D’Ippolito’s suggestion that Indiana Democratic politics is ruled by men.

Ouch.

But it's an interesting situation, because  D'Ippolito has been collecting signatures to get on the Democratic primary ballot, to run against Evan Bayh:

She’s collected 3,500 of the 4,500 signatures, 500 in each Congressional district in Indiana, which are needed by noon tomorrow [February 16th] in order to qualify. D’Ippolito said that she’s particularly short in IN-08, in the Terre Haute/Evansville area of the district. Her campaign manager has contacted all of the heads of the county Democratic parties asking them if they would help her get on the ballot.

But she’s not getting the sense that they want to be helpful in that effort.

Now that Bayh is out, there's a danger that D'Ippolito will be the only candidate on the ballot, and other Democrats will need to run against her as write-ins. It's not surprising that people don't want to help her. Here's her campaign website. Read her background. She's a café owner who has never held public office (though she was once a board member of something called Women Inspire).

Why did FireDogLake operate as a brainless mouthpiece for this woman? Are they hoping for a Republican victory in the fall?

Here's Politico:

It would be something close to a nightmare scenario for Democrats: were D’Ippolito to qualify for the ballot, she would be the likely nominee and the party would be left to face the GOP with a political neophyte who said she is running in part to take on a party establishment she said practices “sexism with a big S.”...

[I]n the mad scramble following Bayh’s surprise decision, worried Democrats in Washington and Indianapolis were taking the prospect seriously.

“This would be a complete and unmitigated disaster,” said a leading Democrat in the state. “We’d be up sh—’s creek.”...

And conservatives saw it as an opportunity to wreak havoc among their foes.

"This could be fun," wrote RedState blogger Erick Erickson. "Those of you in Indiana should go out of your way to help Tamyra get the signatures he needs by tomorrow at noon."

Here's the adorable troublemaker:

Watch out, Sarah-haters, she's wearing lipstick!

She says things like: 

“I’m saying it’s an inside job. Indianagate instead of Watergate... The White House set this up, decided who they are gonna put in office, called the democratic county heads and told them to secretly get signatures. Bingo-bongo.”

Bingo-bongo!

IN THE COMMENTS: Fred4Pres croons:

Not so tall or tan, but lovely, The girl named D'Ippolito goes walking..

And when she passes, each Hoosier she passes, goes oh...
But we watch her so sadly...
Ooh! We'll be up sh*t's creek so badly...

UPDATE: D'Ippolito says she's got the signatures... and then takes it back...

"We have enough signatures and we're ready to go to court. We're ready to fight," said d'Ippolito. "And yes it's politics, and I'm sure there are certain Democrats, I hope they are the minority, I'm sure there are certain Democrats who will try those underhanded activities. I hope they would be wiser not to take that road."...

D'Ippolito said the people of Indiana should choose the candidate, not a party committee. "And this is what the machine in Indiana does not want to happen, because they want to choose the candidate, they want to put another Blue Dog in there," she said. "It's a different body than Evan Bayh, same thing, different face, Blue Dog. We don't want any more Blue Dogs. It's bye-bye Bayh, and bye-bye Blue Dogs in the state of Indiana."

I asked d'Ippolito about the possibility that Republicans may have given her a hand. Erick Erickson, for example, personally encouraged his Indiana readers to sign her petitions. "God bless him, because anybody can sign the petition," said d'Ippolitio. "Republican, Democrat, independent, teabag person, any registered voter with a warm pulse can sign."...

Late Update: After telling TPM that she already had the necessary signatures collected, d'Ippolito is now denying to Greg Sargent that she has them yet, saying instead that she would have them in time.

Oh, she's cagey! Oh! But they watch her so sadly....

UPDATE #2: Sketchy reports that she failed to meet the deadline.

Q: "So is the battle of Tippecanoe the most important historical event that ever took place in Indiana?" A: "That and the birth of Evan Bayh."

A conversation that took place this past Saturday in front of this mural...



... in the Tippecanoe County Courthouse, in Lafayette, Indiana.

And now, Evan Bayh is moving on from the Senate to... ???.

Greetings from Lafayette, Indiana.

At the Driving Through Indiana Hotel...

... we feel what really is.

"Something very important happened here."

That's the title of this picture in my Flickr photostream:



It was blogged as "Althouse on the road" a year ago:

Somewhere in America. In the heartland.

It's the Greyhouse Coffee & Supply Co. in West Lafayette — the site of the momentous second date of Althouse + Meade. We're here now, for our Valentine's Eve anniversary.



Beyond the edgy excitement, it's even more beautiful. Cozily married. A weekend in Indiana. Bliss!

"Ooh, baby, baby, it's a wild world. It's hard to get by just upon a smile..."

Cat Stevens sang that:



And we were talking about smiling. Do you use that tremendously effective device, the smile? It's hard to get by just upon a smile, but it could work as part of a repertoire. Here in Wisconsin, the smile is deployed. And go to Indiana. You'll find some heart-melting smiling amongst the Hoosiers.

But what of people who don't rely on smiling? There are places — maybe places where they call Wisconsin and Indiana "fly-over country" — where people not only don't try to get by just upon a smile; they don't smile at all. And they mistrust those who do rely on smiling. Do you think those people are surly? They think you are unsophisticated. For example, Dick Cheney doesn't smile.

Oh, yes, he does!

Uh! Wow. Now, I need to rethink this. Hmmm. Not sure I know what to do with that smile. Don't try to get by just upon that!

Hey, Cheney is getting blogged like mad today. What the hell did he say?

“[W]e are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren’t, it makes us less safe.... Why doesn’t he want to admit we’re at war? It doesn’t fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office. It doesn’t fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency — social transformation — the restructuring of American society.”

Obama wanted to smile at the whole world:

But it's hard to get by just upon a smile.

You can become President just upon a smile... and not much more. But then what do you have?

You're not the world's nice guy. It's not a cocktail party. It's real, and we're the United States.

"As I’ve watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war. He seems to think if he has a low-key response to an attempt to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of people, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if we bring the mastermind of Sept. 11 to New York, give him a lawyer and trial in civilian court, we won’t be at war.

“He seems to think if he closes Guantanamo and releases the hard-core Al Qaeda-trained terrorists still there, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gets rid of the words, ‘war on terror,’ we won’t be at war. But we are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren’t, it makes us less safe. Why doesn’t he want to admit we’re at war? It doesn’t fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office. It doesn’t fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency — social transformation — the restructuring of American society. President Obama’s first object and his highest responsibility must be to defend us against an enemy that knows we are at war."

Back to Cat:

"That's fried mush, baby! You're a Hoosier now."

1. Meade makes mush ... apropos of all that grits talk in the Whole Foods threads (1 & 2). And yes, we bought the corn meal mush at Whole Foods.

2. Enlarge for details — but don't think you'll be able read the papers. I've blurred out all the text.

3. To answer the question I'm sure is coming first: Yes, the bacon is Nueskes. And you can't buy that at Whole Foods.

4. Answer to that other question: Ate Berries in the Canaries.

5. Note the hinge defect. Unpropped, the thing lies flat. I've heard of the much-rumored Apple tablet, but the Air should not pretend to be one.

6. That stool is a Swopper. (Buy one: here.)

7. Popcorn.

When Chief Justice John Roberts was a vox clamans in terris... about Michael Jackson.

"I recognize that I am something of a vox clamans in terris in this area, but enough is enough. The Office of Presidential Correspondence is not yet an adjunct of Michael Jackson’s PR firm. 'Billboard' can quite adequately cover the event by reproducing the award citation and/or reporting the President’s remarks. (As you know, there is very little to report about Mr. Jackson’s remarks.) There is absolutely no need for an additional presidential message. A memorandum for Presidential Correspondence objecting to the letter is attached for your review and signature."

Ha ha ha. What a character! The wise Latin! The voice of a terrified clam!

And later:

I hate to sound like one of Mr. Jackson’s records, constantly repeating the same refrain, but I recommend that we not approve this letter. Sometimes people need to be reminded of the obvious: whatever its status as a cultural phenomenon, the Jackson concert tour is a massive commercial undertaking. The tour will do quite well financially by coming to Washington, and there is no need for the President to applaud such enlightened self-interest. Frankly, I find the obsequious attitude of some members of the White House staff toward Mr. Jackson’s attendants, and the fawning posture they would have the President of the United States adopt, more than a little embarrassing.

It is also important to consider the precedent that would be set by such a letter. In today’s Post there were already reports that some youngsters were turning away from Mr. Jackson in favor of a newcomer who goes by the name “Prince,” and is apparently planning a Washington concert. Will he receive a Presidential letter? How will we decide which performers do and which do not?

A newcomer who goes by the name "Prince." Yeah, don't want the Prez bowing down to bogus royalty.

And I love the resistance to ad hoc decisionmaking and the demand for neutral rules of general applicability. Put that man on the Supreme Court!

Equal justice under law.

And still more Roberts vox clamans in the White House:

I recommend that no such letter be sent. The Jackson tour, whatever stature it may have attained as a cultural phenomenon, is a massive commercial undertaking. The visit of the tour to Washington was not an eleemosynary gesture; it was a calculated commercial decision that does not warrant gratitude from our Nation’s Chief Executive. Such a letter would also create a bad precedent, as other popular performers would either expect or demand similar treatment. Why, for example, was no letter sent to Mr. Bruce Springsteen, whose patriotic tour recently visited the area? Finally, the President, in my view, has done quite enough in the way of thanking and congratulating the Jacksons, and anything more would begin to look like unbecoming fawning.

Patriotic? I see the dawn's early light of a non-neutral rule.

Undoubtedly, Roberts was thinking of the song "Born in the U.S.A.," which was popular at the time. Yet a close reading of the text — as opposed to an empathetic response to the sound of the repetitious refrain — would show that it's not at all patriotic, something conservatives seem to have had a hell of a time figuring out:

[T]he widely-read conservative columnist George Will, after attending a show, published on September 13, 1984 a piece entitled "A Yankee Doodle Springsteen" in which he praised Springsteen as an exemplar of classic American values. He wrote: "I have not got a clue about Springsteen's politics, if any, but flags get waved at his concerts while he sings songs about hard times. He is no whiner, and the recitation of closed factories and other problems always seems punctuated by a grand, cheerful affirmation: 'Born in the U.S.A.!'" The 1984 presidential campaign was in full stride at the time, and Will had connections to President Ronald Reagan's re-election organization. Will thought that Springsteen might endorse Reagan, and got the notion pushed up to high-level Reagan advisor Michael Deaver's office. Those staffers made inquiries to Springsteen's management which were politely rebuffed.

Nevertheless, on September 19, 1984, at a campaign stop in Hammonton, New Jersey, Reagan added the following to his usual stump speech:

"America's future rests in a thousand dreams inside your hearts; it rests in the message of hope in songs so many young Americans admire: New Jersey's own Bruce Springsteen. And helping you make those dreams come true is what this job of mine is all about."

The campaign press immediately expressed skepticism that Reagan knew anything about Springsteen, and asked what his favorite Springsteen song was; "Born to Run" was the tardy response from staffers.

Just picture Ronnie and Nancy out riding through mansions of glory in suicide machines, chrome-wheeled, fuel injected and stepping out over the line. Did you know Washington, D.C. rips the bones from your back? Well, I guess it does!

***

By the way, Michael Jackson and John Roberts were/are both Hoosiers. I love Hoosiers. Nobody has to be ashamed of being a Hoosier:

"Hoosiers do all right. Lowe and I have been around the world twice, and everywhere we went we found Hoosiers in charge of everything.... Lincoln was a Hoosier, too. He grew up in Spencer County.... I don't know what it is about Hoosiers... but they've sure got something. If somebody was to make a list, they'd be amazed... We Hoosiers got to stick together... Whenever I meet a young Hoosier, I tell them, 'You call me Mom.'"

Let's parse Obama's Cairo speech.

Full text.

I'm on the road. Somewhere in Indiana. Obama's with the Egyptians, and I'm with the Hoosiers. Start the parsing without me.

"I heard a couple new-sounding tunes on the tubes and they blasted me sky-high..."

I was thinking about that lyric from the Lovin' Spoonful song "Nashville Cats" this morning as we were talking about the old days when you might stay up late at night to pick up the signal of a distant radio station that played music that you couldn't hear during the day.

In that song, John Sebastian sings of a radio station that captivated him when he was 13:

And the record man said every one is a yellow Sun
Record from Nashville
And up north there ain't nobody buys them
And I said, but I will

And so the boy from the north fell in love with country music. Me, back in the mid-1960s, I liked some college radio station that came in from Fort Wayne, Indiana. I heard songs they didn't play on WABC in New York City. Indiana seemed like a cooler place than NYC. (Oddly, I still think that sometimes.)

I used to write down the names of the artists they played that I'd never heard before. I remember, listening that way, late at night, hearing "I Got You Babe" for the first time and wrote down "Sonny and Cher."

That was my little experience. Did you have anything like that?

Consider this:

Dewey Phillips was on the air in Memphis around 1950. He was an anomaly at the time: a white DJ spinning regional rhythm and blues hits for black audiences. Rick Wright says Phillips and his African American contemporaries up the dial on Memphis' WDIA helped elevate disc jockeying to an art form.

People like Nat Turner, a young B.B. King, and, one of Wright's favorites, Rufus Thomas. "Now, Rufus comes in, 'Hey baby, this is Rufus Thomas, WDIA Memphis, Tennessee, where you can cop a smile about a quarter mile provided you've got time and don't mind this drive time line we're gonna try.'

Wright says that one Nashville station, WLAC Nashville was owned by the Life and Casualty Insurance Company - L-A-C. He says that that station would take this music and this DJ style to places it had never been. He says the course of American cultural history was changed one Saturday.

"And they were playing, basically, records by Guy Lombardo or whatever and it was that era of a 50,000-watter trying to find itself with no audience," says Wright. "And there were some African American students from Fiske University who had gotten past the security and got up to the station and brought a bunch of 78s with them."

And they walked into the studio and started talking to the DJ. "Mr. Nobles, can you play some of our folks' records on your radio show?"

And Nobles said sure, hand them over. Records of Fats Domino and Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Etta James, Laverne Baker.

And he played them.

"All of sudden," says Wright, "the phone started to ring, and the letters and cards were coming from all over the place. And they established that night, one of the real, first, mainstream R&B formats on a major powerhouse radio station. WLAC 1510 Blues Radio Nashville, Tennessee. The only full time R&Ber at night with 50,000 watts."

At night, 50,000 watts get you very far. Bob Dylan has said he owes much of his musical inspiration to listening to WLAC as young teenager all the way up in Minnesota.

***

It was the "Moonstruck" clip that I blogged last night that set me off thinking about Cher and the first time I ever heard her sing. It was observed that I love Cher, and I confessed to my longstanding affection for the durable diva. I loved Cher since the first time I heard 'I Got You Babe' on a radio station from Fort Wayne, Indiana, I said.

I remembered answering some questionnaire at the time about what famous person I would like to be. It was 1965, so I was 14. I said Cher. And it wasn't just that I wanted to be a female pop star. I was entranced by the strong affection that Sonny and Cher showed each other when I saw them on TV.

I searched YouTube for an early appearance — perhaps their first national TV appearance — when the two were singing IGYB while sitting at a little table. They were petting and kissing — a real public display of affection. There are, of course, a lot of clips of them doing that song, but I couldn't find that one or any other where they were transgressively pawing at each other, the PDA I'd seen when I was just 14.

So let me go in a completely different direction and show you this instead:

I GOT YOU BABE

In which of the states is it easiest to talk to strangers?

I haven't traveled to all the states, but I've been to most of them. And while there is a lot of variety among people in different places, you can tell that there is something of a local personality. You may not notice it when you live there, but it really stands out when you travel through. For example, a few years ago, I traveled back to Wilmington, Delaware, where I grew up (and my father grew up). I was struck by how taciturn the people were. I wanted to strike up conversations. I grew up here! I ate in this restaurant in the 1950s! But I couldn't get a response from anyone. Crazy lady from out of town thinks she can talk to me. At least it helped me understand my father better.

But what's the best state if you want to travel through and have some nice, random conversations with strangers — where they won't just be polite and pretend they like you because that's the right way to act or because they want your business, but where they truly openly and easily just go right ahead and roll right into a conversation about any number of things, not boring you with their life story or problems or anything like that, but laughing at your little observations and offering up little morsels of things they happen to know? I'm going to say: Indiana!

ADDED: All this talk of Indiana made me want to dig out this passage from Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle":

Crosby asked me what my name was and what my business was. I told him, and his wife Hazel recognized my name as an Indiana name. She was from Indiana, too.

"My God," she said, "are you a Hoosier?"

I admitted I was.

"I'm a Hoosier, too," she crowed. "Nobody has to be ashamed of being a Hoosier."

"I'm not," I said. "I never knew anybody who was."

"Hoosiers do all right. Lowe and I've been around the world twice, and everywhere we went we found Hoosiers in charge of everything.

"That's reassuring."

"You know the manager of that new hotel in Istanbul?"

"No."

"He's a Hoosier. And the military-whatever-he-is in Tokyo . . ."

"Attaché," said her husband.

"He's a Hoosier," said Hazel. "And the new Ambassador to Yugoslavia . . . "

"A Hoosier?" I asked.

"Not only him, but the Hollywood Editor of Life magazine, too, And that man in Chile . . ."

"A Hoosier, too?"

"You can't go anywhere a Hoosier hasn't made his mark," she said.

"The man who wrote Ben Hur was a Hoosier."

"And James Whitcomb Riley."

"Are you from Indiana, too?" I asked her husband.

"Nope. I'm a Prairie Stater. 'Land of Lincoln,' as they say."

"As far as that goes," said Hazel triumphantly, "Lincoln was a Hoosier, too. He grew up in Spencer County."

"Sure," I said.

"I don't know what it is about Hoosiers," said Hazel, "but they've sure got something. If somebody was to make a list, they'd be amazed."

"That's true," I said.

She grasped me firmly by the arm. "We Hoosiers got to stick together."

"Right"

"You call me 'Mom."'

"What?"

"Whenever I meet a young Hoosier, I tell them, 'You call me Mom."'

"Uh huh."

"Let me hear you say it," she urged.

"Mom?"

She smiled and let go of my arm. Some piece of clockwork had completed its cycle. My calling Hazel "Mom" had shut it off, and now Hazel was rewinding it for the next Hoosier to come along.

Hazel's obsession with Hoosiers around the world was a textbook example of a false karass, of a seeming team that was meaningless in terms of the ways God gets things done, a textbook example of what Bokonon calls a granfalloon. Other examples of granfalloons are the Communist party, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the General Electric Company, the International Order of Odd Fellows--and any nation, anytime, anywhere.

As Bokonon invites us to sing along with him:

If you wish to study a granfalloon,
Just remove the skin of a toy balloon.

IN THE COMMENTS: EDH says:

I'm from Massachusetts, and if you ask me, the people around here are too god damn friendly.

So, I don't know where all these bastids get the silly idea that people from Massachusetts aren't friendly.

What the fuck are you look'n at?

(A dramatization.)