One more impression I have of Ann Althouse. I don’t know her personally, so it’s just a sense I get from her writing. I think that, if you’re ever read Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, her writing conjures up his idea of lightness as opposed to heaviness.

I don’t know much about her, but she struck me as someone who (unlike neo) did not have the courage of her convictions. So much so that she wouldn’t even draw her own convictions to their obvious conclusions.

Not only is the tempo painstakingly slow, it’s such a bleeding simple song! What a 1st year, 11 year old piano student would come up with after studying arpeggios for a week. Sometimes simple can be great (“Fur Elise”), but sometimes simple is just rudimentary and immature. Even the lyrics. Junior High stuff.

And it’s so out of place from a rock band that did such complex (for rock) arrangements. But then Peter Cetera joined the band and it became painfully obvious that the group was fully capable of embracing Junior High chords, melodies and lyrics.

I knew the Pankow’s were brothers, but how and why I cannot relate, lest the real Rufus behind my nom de plume (nom de la machine à écrire?) is revealed*.

*I don’t want to oversell it. I have never met either brother, but I have a close friend who has a very tangible tie to their upbringing. (And, although I am a big fan of Chicago’s early stuff, and trombone is one of the instruments I play, I loathe “Colour my World.”)

(I guess one could blame, you know, William the Conqueror…or maybe King Harold…or both(?))

Sounds reasonable.

I suspect Althouse may be more in the game for attention than pursuing truth or partisan gain. She’s killed off her comment section a couple of times now, only to bring it back.

That’s OK.

Every little star must shine.

I’ve been in a Chicago state of mind lately.

I can’t read that title without flashing back to Chicago’s song, “Colour My World,” on their second album:

–Chicago II, “Colour My World” (1970)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWkXmx-0phc

I’m enough of a maniac to want to know why the Brit spelling, “Colour.”

James Pankow, the songwriter, a trombone player and founding member of the band, was an American from St. Louis. Maybe James was spelling-challenged.

Weirdly, I saw the name Pankow and thought of Ira, actor Paul Reiser’s brother in the “Mad About You” sitcom.

Son of a gun, James Pankow is the older brother of John Pankow who played Ira in “Mad About You.”

You’ve now learned something you had no need of knowing.

Here’s how I see Althouse’s appeal. She like to surprise people; keep them on their toes, say the unexpected in an unexpected way. She also doesn’t tend to say things in a straightforward way but rather a somewhat playful way so that people are never quite sure where she stands. That can be entertaining. She has eclectic interests. And as you say, she’s not afraid to step outside the liberal box, either, so she’s hardly woke or PC. Conservatives are the ones most likely to appreciate her particular quirks and strengths.

Barry Meislin:

I read Althouse for a while, but I never got her irony calibrated. Nor how she sorted her politics.

She taught law at UW-Madison. She voted for Obama. She was doctrinaire second-wave feminist. But she also pricked liberal/progressive bubbles routinely.

Perhaps most tellingly, she wound up with a mostly conservative comment section.

How does that all add up?