The NYT strains to find a "victory" for the Wisconsin demonstrators.

Its story today begins:

In a victory — at least a symbolic one — for Wisconsin’s public employee unions, the Capitol authorities announced on Sunday that demonstrators could continue their all-night sleepovers in the building and would not be forcibly ejected or arrested.

Well, yes. A decision was made that it wasn't worth the drama to oust these people who've been clean and orderly enough. Plus, the police are — it seems to me — sympathetic to the protest. As for the GOP politicians who dominate the state government: Why would they want to make martyrs out of the folks who've worked so long and hard to demonstrate how strongly they care? They've been hanging out in the Capitol, enduring the cacophony of their own drumming and chanting and sleeping on the hard stone floor for 10+ days. They're punishing themselves. Why not let them suffer, unmolested, and continue to generate images that disturb the Wisconsinites who voted the Republicans into office 3 months ago?

Can I get my news about Wisconsin from the New York Times?

The newspaper I'd like to rely on is leading 2 main stories about Wisconsin on its website this morning: 1. "Wisconsin Puts Obama Between Competing Desire," and 2. "Protesters in Wisconsin Say They Are Staying Put."

As for #1... yes, as usual, it's all about Obama. What does it mean for Obama? And his "competing desires"? Good, lord, it sounds like jacket copy for a romance novel.

The battle in Wisconsin over public employee unions has left President Obama facing a tricky balance between showing solidarity with longtime political supporters and projecting a message in favor of deep spending cuts to reduce the debt.

What's the best way for Obama to look best? The eternal question. Is there no real Obama? Possibly not!

“This is a Wisconsin story, not a Washington one,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director. “False claims of White House involvement are attempts to distract from the organic grass-roots opposition that is happening in Wisconsin.”

If it's a Wisconsin story, why did Obama horn in on it? He horned in and then backed out. It's this back and forth, trying to get into the right pose to look good later on. It's so difficult for him! (As for "organic grass-roots." Organic! You just know, the Tea Party was commercially grown.) I'd like to know what's really going on! Can't the NYT ferret out some real information about the behind-the-scenes national-level politics reaching into Wisconsin instead of passing along propaganda from Dan Pfeiffer?

Now, if we can tear ourselves away from always-scintillating trials and tribulations of Barack Obama, let's look at the second article...

Union leaders urged Wisconsin teachers to return to work at schools that are open on Monday...

But the Madison schools are closed, and there was a big union vote yesterday about that, as I blogged last night. "Nearly 3,000 Madison teachers, staff and family gathered at Monona Terrace," and the press was kicked out. The NYT doesn't mention that — let alone try to find out what went on.

As the protests went on through falling sleet and snow...

But hardly anyone was out in the bad weather, as my video, taken yesterday afternoon shows. The continuing protest was indoors, in our posh Capitol building.

As for that indoor crowd, are they Wisconsin school teachers, or are they UW students and teaching assistants? Is it still about the Scott Walker budget, or has it skewed into more generic left-wing causes? Here's the video I took inside yesterday afternoon, and those are the questions that occurred to me.

Why doesn't the NYT dig out some information? Who's involved in the organizing? How are they using Facebook and Twitter to maintain the presence in the Capitol? Who's sleeping there overnight? I photographed a sign on a pillar in the Capitol rotunda that says "talk to the TAA about how we can work together." Does the NYT know or care what the TAA even is let alone its role in organizing the protest?

Democrats in the State Senate, meanwhile, who are in the minority but are needed for a quorum, said Sunday that they intended to remain out of state — and far from the voting chamber — until Republican leaders agree to remove broad collective bargaining restrictions from the proposal to increase workers’ health care and pension costs.

“This is not a stunt, it’s not a prank,” said Senator Jon Erpenbach, one of the Democrats who drove away from Madison early Thursday, hours before a planned vote, and would say only that he was in Chicago. “This is not an option I can ever see us doing again, but in this case, it’s absolutely the right thing to do. What they want to do is not the will of the people.”

Instead of passing along a cheerleader quote from Erpenbach, how about making him tell us who's paying to house the 14 Democratic Senators in Chicago? And I want some investigation into how the protest is playing with voters around the state. Are the protests stirring up support among Wisconsinites or pissing people off? Are people outraged by the teachers taking sickout days? Are working parents struggling to find alternate childcare or leaving kids alone? Do people accept the flexible ethics of doctors giving excuse notes to protesters who called in sick and legislators who don't show up for their jobs? Are people inclined to pursue remedies like impeachment or recall? What would it take to get  actual public opinion polls?

The weather here is a dreary winter mix, and the reporting drizzling in from New York only adds to slushy mush.

In the NYT, Tobin Harshaw — who's from Madison — surveys the views of the Wisconsin protests...

... beginning with some pictures from Althouse and — after a bunch of quotes from others — ending with Althouse.

Some questions about the possible sexism of the way the NYT portrays Judy Clarke, the public defender in the Tucson massacre case.

Jared Loughner's lawyer has an "unassuming, almost motherly way," the NYT informs us. Judy Clarke, we're told, achieved an "essential act[] of lawyering... when she patted Mr. Loughner on the back in court last month, leaned in close and whispered in his ear."

Let's talk about the degree to which it's currently considered acceptable to ascribe lawyerly skills to gender.

Is the NYT being sexist? Is it okay because it's kind of subtle?  Is it okay because if there's a special goodness in femininity, it lends momentum to the progressive trend of including more and more women in the legal profession?

If the answer to the last question is yes, imagine a similar statement made about a male lawyer, suggesting that his maleness brought extra value to his lawyering: Would that not be okay? If not, is that because you can say (in so many words) that it's better to be female, but it's retrograde to say (subtly as well as unsubtly) that it's better to be male?

If you've bought into the notion that it is acceptable to say (with some subtlety) that it's better to be female, because that seems progressive, why is it progressive to promote women using the traditional stereotype of women as maternal and nurturing? Why isn't that precisely what is sexist?

Do you think, in the long run, it is helpful to the success of women in the legal profession to portray them as good at mothering and being sensitive to other people's feelings?

Why is the New York Times just noticing this?

Liberals (including President Obama) think the Supreme Court was wrong in Citizens United to say that corporations have free speech rights, but newspaper and book publishers are corporations. For some reason, the NYT is acting like it took a year to notice this hitch (which has been perfectly evident since the Citizens United litgation began in the lower courts). I guess the excuse for pretending not to see what was obvious is that it has been hoping to rely on the notion that some corporations have more rights than others. This new piece — a column by Adam Liptak — begins to concede that is an unworkable argument.

“There is no precedent supporting laws that attempt to distinguish between corporations which are deemed to be exempt as media corporations and those which are not,” Justice Kennedy wrote in Citizens United....

Eugene Volokh, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, has reviewed the historical evidence. The bottom line, he said, is this: “If ordinary business corporations lack First Amendment rights, so do those business corporations that we call media corporations.”

But Liptak's column peters out with a quote from a lawrpof who calls it a "difficult question" and...

There good arguments both ways about whether corporations ought to be covered by the First Amendment. But it is harder to say that some corporations have First Amendment rights and others do not.

Yes, yes, it's obvious what the answer needs to be, and yet the debate must go on and on because it's so important to restrict the speech of people who organize themselves into corporations. Some of them. The bad guys. Not the good guys, like the ones who take a year to getting around to half-conceding the crushingly obvious.

"2 Detained Reporters Saw Secret Police’s Methods Firsthand."

Could you please read this NYT article very carefully and explain to me how we know it was the Egyptian government's secret police as opposed to an exercise by opponents of the government, done to induce reporters to write stories antagonistic to the government?

The reporters were kept in "a plain room," where they were not beaten but they could hear what sounded like beating. What did they actually see?

We saw a journalist with his head bandaged and others brought in with jackets thrown over their heads as they were led by armed men....

A plainclothes officer who said his name was Marwan gestured to us. “Come to the door,” he said, “and look out.”

We saw more than 20 people, Westerners and Egyptians, blindfolded and handcuffed. The room had been empty when we arrived the evening before.

“We could be treating you a lot worse,” he said in a flat tone, the facts speaking for themselves. Marwan said Egyptians were being held in the thousands. During the night we heard them being beaten, screaming after every blow.

Isn't that odd? Lots of blindfolded people, and then alarming sounds coming from elsewhere? They were kept for a day and then released.

They put us in our car with orders to put our heads down. “Look down, and don’t talk. If you look up you will see something you don’t ever want to see.”

They left us that way for 10 minutes. The only sounds were of guns being loaded and checked and duct-tape ripping.

Again, the hearing without seeing. Isn't this a strange article? Seriously, I am not trying to make trouble. I just read this article and felt like the reporters could have been duped by people manufacturing disinformation.

The phony fuss over Scalia's lecture to members of Congress.

Politico writes: 

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia will speak on Monday on the separation of powers at an event organized by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and her Tea Party Caucus.

Organized by... but every member of Congress has received an invitation to attend.

The lecture is going on despite the objections of some observers. The New York Times editorial board called for Scalia to cancel his commitment.

“By meeting behind closed doors, as is planned, and by presiding over a seminar, implying give and take, the justice would give the impression that he was joining the throng — confirming his new moniker as the ‘Justice from the Tea Party,’” the board wrote in December.

The Times said it would oppose a similar event featuring a liberal Supreme Court justice and targeted at Democratic members of Congress. “The ideological nature of the group and the seminar would eclipse the justice’s independence and leave him looking rash and biased.”

Wouldn't it be ironic if that editorial left the NYT looking rash and biased? Some liberal members of Congress will attend the session. If anything fishy goes on, they'll let us know. I presume Justice Scalia will give the lecture he always gives about the proper role of courts in our constitutional system. I look forward to hearing about the supposedly outrageous statements that turn out to be entirely mundane within the set of things Scalia has been saying for decades.

What it all boils down to is: Liberals don't like it that Scalia is on the Supreme Court. They've never liked it. And the NYT is especially dedicated to making people think that his being on the Court is something untoward, some abuse of power. I'm sure there are some NYT readers who are titillated by that sensationalism, but I find it embarrassing.

"The Most Emailed 'New York Times' Article Ever."

I noticed this the other day, but Instapundit beating me over the head with it got me to read it. Hilariously apt.

The NYT picks up part of my diavlog with Glenn Loury...

... the gun control part.

Stanley Fish finds "a unity" to Sarah Palin book "America by Heart," but "it is not one Palin proclaims or works out discursively."

NYT readers will have their Sarah Palin processed through the Mind of Fish:

Rather, the unity is conveyed by the quotations that carry the argument, long (sometimes two-page) quotations from an impressive variety of authors, quotations that are strong in isolation and even stronger when they are laid next to one another. The book is really an anthology. The author does not present herself as controlling or magisterial; she gives her authorities space and then she gets out of the way. Her performance mimes the book’s lesson: rather than acting as a central authority, she lets individual voices speak for themselves. Humility is not something Palin is usually credited with, but here she enacts it by yielding the stage as others proclaims the truths she wants us to carry away.

Sarah Palin is doing something that is, perhaps, pure genius, and it takes the brilliant professor to say what she is doing so that the ideas are apparent even to New York Times readers, who are well-defended against the notion that Palin is anything but stupid. Even slapped in the face by Fish...



... they resist. I'll be the professor translating the diverse items into a unity for your easy consumption: NOOOOOOOOO! Favorite way of saying "no": surely, the book was actually written by Bill Ayers some ghostwriter.

"She was wrapped in her fuzzy blanket, ready to listen to Taylor Swift or play Fruit Ninja on her iPod."

From an op-ed the NYT chose to publish in the wake of the Gabriel Giffords shooting. Please add this to the pile of evidence that the NYT aspires to be the newspaper for soft-hearted, soft-headed women.

IN THE COMMENTS: Mary Beth wins the thread:

I had a discussion with my daughter Amy the other day before I came here to ask her what the most important issue was....

(Link added.)

Pictured on the front page of the NYT: "Scott Walker, the governor elect, brings his lunch to work."

It's not still on the front page. That was a few hours ago. A nice image of Walker, don't you think? Flattering because he's eating lunch at his desk. It's not conventionally flattering to catch the bald spot like that, but it's politically flattering to have him bending over his work. (On the other hand, what's the big deal? I eat lunch while working almost every day. Don't you? Breakfast too, and often dinner. But I like to see my public servant working, and it's nice of the NYT to offer political support to a new governor who doesn't represent the newspaper's political preference.

Here's the article:

Mr. Walker, who has said publicly that he hopes to force public employees’ wages and benefits “into line” with everyone else’s, urged leaders against the session, saying he needed “maximum flexibility” to handle the state’s coming budgets, but Democrats argued that the contracts were not particularly beneficial to workers anyway (they included no raises and furlough time that amounted to a pay cut)....

State workers here are predicting a flood of retirements by those who will not want to bear the uncertainty of it all, and particularly the prospect of shrinking pension benefits. Some employees were already talking about moving elsewhere, getting new jobs, retiring.

I'm one of those state employees. Should I retire? (I'll be 60 on January 12th.) Is that the way to get while the getting is good?

"No, I wasn’t contacted or interviewed or given any opportunity to opine on any of it, including having my seven-year-old daughter’s picture in the paper."

"The primary story here is not that interesting... People lie and cheat and steal all the time. That’s a fact of life. But rarely does a national news organization give them an unverified megaphone to whitewash it."

Forbes interviews the husband of that woman who had her wedding story told in the New York Times. We talked about the NYT story yesterday, and (my husband) Meade, in the comments there, draws attention to the quotes that I'm using here.

[Bob Ennis, former husband of TV reporter Carol Anne Riddell], now head of the digital media practice at the investment bank Petsky Prunier, did not have a high opinion of the Times even before this incident. “I’m happy if they spell all the headlines on the front page correctly,” he says. “The idea that they’d fact-check a style story — I don’t think that’s incumbent on them. But there’s a difference between that and publishing a choreographed, self-serving piece of revisionist history for two people who are both members of the media industry.”

Oh! I love how this is turning into a Forbes vs. NYT journalism showdown — with the help of the jilted husband, who's got the help of Forbes now, getting his side of the marriage breakdown into the national press. 

Although his ex-wife said she and her new husband volunteered to tell their story to the “Vows” column partly “for our kids’ sakes,” Ennis says he is angry primarily because of the effect he sees this episode having on those same kids. 

Right. Don't forget the kids. Everyone is premising his/her self-serving statements on the kids now.

“These folks are well within their rights to tell whatever version of reality they want to tell, and if The New York Times is gullible enough to print it, that mostly reflects poorly on the Times,” he says. “The picture of my daughter is another matter. I sure as hell would have objected if they had told me they were going to print it.”

Which one is his daughter? Is it the sad-faced girl with the bow in her hair in profile at the right-hand side of the photograph? Look at her and think about how she might feel as she gazes at the brown wedding-cake about to be put asunder by the gleaming knife gripped by her outreaching mother whose hand is overclasped  by the (diamond?) ring-wearing paw of her new husband, the erst-while friend of her parents, whom she's long known as the dad of her kid-friends, who are now strangely intruded into the confusing, ever-changing zone that bears the label "family."

Or is his daughter the sweet little child in the husband's arms? Imagine how her father's heart aches to see that man with one hand grasping his daughter's rear and the other hand grasping his ex-wife's hand and, inside that, a knife. The new husband and wife are performing wedding theater for the NYT photographer, and they don't know that the frame the Times will select is the one where their smiles look like predatory grimaces and everyone else in the photograph looks like they belong at a funeral.

“Maybe The New York Times has forgotten, but New York can still be a dangerous town for children of wealthy people. I want to find out from the Times how that occurred and I will expect some sort of response and if I don’t get one I’ll take further measures to achieve one.”

Ugh, the stink of a threatened lawsuit drifts into the room. But don't worry: It's for the children.

***

And don't miss the extra photograph at the original NYT story. The woman's long-clawed hand drapes over the shoulder of her conquered beast, who seems drained of life force. His ring-wearing hand lies limply on the table next to a drained bottle of beer. In the original story, when he told her he loved her, she knocked a beer "into his lap" — that is, onto his genitals. The liquids have all spilled out, and the phallic symbols are empty.

"He bounds into a room... He doesn’t walk in, he explodes in."/"She’s such a force... She rocks back and forth on her feet as if she can’t contain her energy as she’s talking to you."

The story of their marrying is told in the NYT "Vows" column, but both of them already had spouses when they fell in love. So why did the NYT present their story as if it were something to be celebrated? Or is the "Vows" column more complex than that." Okay. First, let's look at some of the details of the story:

The connection was immediate, but platonic. In fact, as they became friends so did their spouses. There were dinners, Christmas parties and even family vacations together.

So [Carol Anne] Riddell was surprised to find herself eagerly looking for [John] Partilla at school events — and missing him when he wasn’t there. “I didn’t admit to anyone how I felt,” she said. “To even think about it was disruptive and disloyal.”

Ms. Riddell said she remembered crying in the shower, asking: “Why am I being punished? Why did someone throw him in my path when I can’t have him?”

In May 2008, Mr. Partilla invited her for a drink at O’Connell’s, a neighborhood bar. She said she knew something was up, because they had never met on their own before.

“I’ve fallen in love with you,” he recalled saying to her. She jumped up, knocking a glass of beer into his lap, and rushed out of the bar. Five minutes later, he said, she returned and told him, “I feel exactly the same way.”

Before sleeping together, they told their spouses, and Partilla considered himself to be doing the "terrible thing as honorably as I could." Partilla then, as the NYT phrased it  "moved out of his home, reluctantly leaving his three children." Then he came back, then left, back and forth, feeling lots of "pain."

The pain he had predicted pervaded both of their lives as they faced distraught children and devastated spouses, while the grapevine buzzed and neighbors ostracized them.

“He said, ‘Remind me every day that the kids will be O.K.,’ ” Ms. Riddell recalled. “I would say the kids are going to be great, and we’ll spend the rest of our lives making it so.”

Riddell "came to realize" that her predicament "wasn’t a punishment, it was a gift." And in this framing of the tale, the heroine needed to "earn" the gift. How? By being "brave enough to hold hands and jump."

There are 139 comments over at the NYT, many of them very critical of the Times:

Why does the Times glorify home-wrecking? Is it a sign of our times that personal responsibility to one's spouse and children takes a back seat to selfish, self-centered love....

The notions of "Vows" has a deliciously ironic depth of meaning here - the ones they made, but the ones they felt less compelled to honor. I doubt very much there's not more than what is related here - What a rationalization as to why it's OK to "befriend" another family then break up two in one shot. "It was just love!" Methinks it's the selfishness that's big and noisy!

They not only broke up their own families. They broke up the big friendship that had interwoven the 2 families. The left-behind spouses not only trusted their own partner, they also believed that, together with that partner, they enjoyed a great friendship with a wonderful couple and their kids. All those memories of social times spent together are now to be understood in a new way.

Forbes has a story about the controversy:

In addition to strong condemnation from numerous bloggers and many of the paper’s own commenters, the article, as a first of sorts for the Times, invited a number of questions. Why were the ex-spouses of the newlyweds not mentioned by name in the story? Did the reporter call them for comment, as basic journalistic practice would dictate? Why did the Times open up the comment board when most Vows stories are off-limits? And above all, what were the couple thinking in telling their story in a space normally reserved for feel-good, soft-focus meet-cute tales?

“We did this because we just wanted one honest account of how this happened for our sakes and for our kids’ sakes,” Riddell told me. “We are really proud of our family and proud of the way we’ve handled this situation over the past year. There was nothing in the story we were ashamed of.”

Riddell says the backlash is “sort of surprising to me. I think people are focusing a lot on the negative, but there was a lot of positive.” But, she notes, “we’ve had a lot of people say to us how brave we are to do this, how commendable it was that we were as honest as we were.” 

The things people will say... to your face.

So did the story’s author, Devan Sipher, seek comment from the exes?... [A] Times spokeswoman says, “We do not comment on the process of editing and reporting including who was and was not contacted for interviews related to a specific story. The Vows/Wedding column adheres to the standards of the Times.” The paper’s Weddings/Celebrations editor, Robert Woletz, did not return a message; nor did the exes, who, like their former spouses, both have high-level jobs in the media industry. (In both cases, the first marriage was also written up in the Times.)

That's all very complex. But I'm happy with the notion that the Times writes up marriage stories because they raise interesting issues. Happy families are all alike. Who wants to read about them?

"Obama Closes In on Big Wins in Lame-Duck Congress" — says the New York Times.

The home page looks like this:




At the link, the headline tones down the pro-Obama spin:

Could Lame Duck Be a Big Win for Obama Agenda?

Is President Obama on the verge of one of his most productive months in office?...

In the early hours of Friday morning, the president won passage of the $858 billion tax deal he reached with Republicans and he appears close to achieving approval of the landmark nuclear treaty he negotiated with the Russians. Both political parties have grudgingly agreed to do whatever is necessary to keep the federal government operating by approving an extension of the current budget authority into early next year.

And in something of a surprise, it appears there may be enough Republican support to provide Mr. Obama with a victory on a key promise: to repeal the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that bars gay people from serving opening in the armed forces.

AND: By contrast, Politico:

Democrats concede budget fight to Republicans.

Senate Democrats abruptly abandoned an omnibus budget bill for the coming year, pushing major spending decisions into the next Congress and giving Republicans immense new leverage to confront President Barack Obama priorities.

But see Krauthammer:

Remember the question after Election Day: Can Obama move to the center to win back the independents who had abandoned the party in November? And if so, how long would it take? Answer: Five weeks. An indoor record, although an asterisk should denote that he had help - Republicans clearing his path and sprinkling it with rose petals.

The conservative gloaters were simply fooled again by the flapping and squawking that liberals ritually engage in before folding at Obama's feet....

And Obama pulled this off at his lowest political ebb...

Quick! Look! Over there! It's Nixon!!!!!

Well, now you know Obama's really in trouble. The corpse of Richard Nixon is being dragged across the stage one more time.

Richard M. Nixon made disparaging remarks about Jews, blacks, Italian-Americans and Irish-Americans in a series of extended conversations with top aides and his personal secretary, recorded in the Oval Office 16 months before he resigned as president.

Disparaging Remarks! Made in 1973!! America! Wake up!!! The GOP will destroy us!

“The Jews have certain traits,” [Nixon] said. “The Irish have certain — for example, the Irish can’t drink. What you always have to remember with the Irish is they get mean. Virtually every Irish I’ve known gets mean when he drinks. Particularly the real Irish.”

...“The Italians, of course, those people course don’t have their heads screwed on tight. They are wonderful people, but,” and his voice trailed off.

A moment later, Nixon returned to Jews: “The Jews are just a very aggressive and abrasive and obnoxious personality.”

Apparently, these are newly released recordings — 265 more hours of Nixon talk — but it sounds like stuff we've heard a thousand times before.  But what a lovely distraction for us on this wintry weekend, when we might otherwise be wondering who, among the living, doesn't have his head screwed on tight.

"Adam Liptak has a somewhat puzzling critique of Supreme Court opinions in the New York Times..."

Says Orin Kerr, taking it all very seriously.

A dubious theme: "Independents Turn on One of Their Own: Feingold."

This — by Katharine Q. Seelye of the NYT — seems a bit off:

The irony was lost on no one. Senator Russ Feingold, a liberal with a fierce streak of independence who crusaded against the influence of money in politics, was toppled Tuesday in a campaign awash in the kind of unregulated cash he had struggled to keep out of the system.

And in a poignant twist, the loss came, in part, because independents flocked to his opponent, despite Mr. Feingold’s record of one maverick vote after another.

It's not the same kind of independence. Feingold's independence was to the left of the Democrats in Congress. The independents who determined the outcome were voters — including me — whose politics lie in between Republicans and Democrats. Feingold made no effort to get in that zone. 

He was the sole senator to oppose the Patriot Act after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. He also broke with President Obama on several occasions, opposing the expansion of the war in Afghanistan, the bailing out of financial institutions in 2008 and the regulation of Wall Street this year, saying the restrictions did not go far enough.

See? That's my point.

Most prominently, he battled his colleagues to overhaul the campaign finance system...

A few paragraphs separate that from this:

...Mr. Feingold raised and spent more money than Mr. Johnson...

Mr. Feingold had raised $18.2 million and spent $16.2 million by the middle of last month, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Mr. Johnson raised $12.8 million, and spent $10.5 million, pumping in more than $8.2 million of his own money.

Feingold's campaign finance law wasn't a limit on a candidate spending his own money. In any case, Feingold spent much more money than Johnson.

It is not clear what he will do next. In a brief speech Tuesday night, he told the 300 supporters gathered in a hotel here in his hometown, “It’s on to the next fight, it’s on to the next battle, it’s on to 2012 and it is on to our next adventure, forward.”

He then raised his fist in the air and left the stage.

"Forward" is the state motto and the informal name of the 15-foot sculpture on top of the state Capitol building and the official name of another statue at the east entrance to the Capitol. I've watched the video of Feingold's concession speech, and his hand is a little off-screen at this point, but I bet that's not a fist but an outreaching hand meant to invoke the "Forward" statues.

ADDED: Here's a photo of the "Forward" gesture:



AND: Ron Johnson ran a pretty effective ad saying that Feingold is not the "maverick" he claims to be.

The NYT finds it appropriate to praise a blatantly racist YouTube parody about President Obama.

I watched the video "Head of the State" because the Times sent me there, and now — in addition to fighting nausea — I'm marveling at the embarrassing writing made possible by the newspaper's perversely politically correct need to appreciate rap music and culture:

It’s first-rate parody, and also untested waters. Mr. Obama was a favorite of comedians even before he was elected president, but typically his stiffness and aloofness are their targets. In reimagining the President as an off-duty, fun-chasing tough guy, Baracka Flacka Flames is a different proposition.

On the one hand, it’s witty and incisive parody, as fluent in Mr. Obama’s tics as in hip-hop manners. The clip was filmed in front of an abandoned house in South Central Los Angeles and echoes the video of Waka Flocka Flame’s original song.

As well, it’s seemingly an acknowledgment by the filmmakers that racial stereotypes still shape how some people perceive the first couple, and that many divergent stripes of blackness can be collapsed into one idea.

As well, you have taken leave of your senses!

The NYT is hoping the GOP sticks its fingers in the fan.

There's no other explanation for choosing that photograph to illustrate this article.