Developments in the Michael Cohen case

The New Neo Posted on by

Today there’s been a big flurry of coverage of the report that Michael Cohen (remember him? Trump’s attorney and “fixer”?) will be cooperating with Mueller, since Cohen is about to part company with his lawyers.

My first reaction was: I’d like Andrew C. McCarthy’s take on this, although I couldn’t find any commentary yet from him about it. My second though was to wonder whether the report is even true. So many things have been predicted, with the information coming from supposedly informed and yet anonymous sources, that have turned out to be so much garbage.

As Allahpundit at Hot Air wrote:

No quotes, no named sources, not even a “Cohen reportedly told friends.” It seems based on an assumption: Because Cohen is about to be momentarily lawyer-less, he must be preparing to roll over. Maybe he’s lining up new representation, though, inspired by his boss’s weird habit of cycling through attorneys every few months.

Or maybe not.

Clear as mud, as an old boyfriend of mine used to say.

And then we have this from the WSJ, which says that Cohen and his present lawyers will be saying bye-bye but:

Mr. Cohen doesn’t yet have a replacement law firm but is searching for a federal criminal lawyer in New York, people familiar with the matter said. Mr. Cohen wants to hire a lawyer with close ties to the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, the people said.

Mr. Cohen hasn’t yet decided whether he will cooperate with prosecutors in the case, according to one of those people. He hasn’t been charged with any crime.

I get tired of articles based on rumors, but the MSM doesn’t get tired of writing them. What percentage turn out to be true? Certainly some—but is it any more than one might expect from chance?

Ah, if only women were in charge of the world, what a wonderful world it would be

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Not.

Suzanna Danuta Walters, the author of the piece in that link, is a professor of sociology at Northeastern University as well as director of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program there and editor of a gender studies journal called “Signs.” So she’s not just some random person writing an op-ed. She’s a person entrusted with molding, shaping, and informing young minds, as well as supervising an entire program at a major university. And although she’s a bit unusual in that she’s going mainstream with a clickbait article in the WaPo, her views are hardly among the most extreme in her chosen field.

I’ll save you the trouble of reading the Walters article, although I encourage you to do so. It’s full of virtue-signaling jargon such as “transnational feminists” and “intersectional,” but Walters’ bottom line is that men are hateful violent creatures with “a masculinity built on domination and violence.” And what would she like men to do about it? Well, if you want to prove to the feminists of the world that you’re serious about being nice guys and don’t want the Suzanna Danuta Walterses of the world to hate you, then you should voluntarily turn over the reins of power to women:

So men, if you really are #WithUs and would like us to not hate you for all the millennia of woe you have produced and benefited from, start with this: Lean out so we can actually just stand up without being beaten down. Pledge to vote for feminist women only. Don’t run for office. Don’t be in charge of anything. Step away from the power. We got this. And please know that your crocodile tears won’t be wiped away by us anymore. We have every right to hate you. You have done us wrong. #BecausePatriarchy. It is long past time to play hard for Team Feminism. And win.

I wonder whether Walters realizes the contradictions inherent in what she’s written. She states that men are incorrigibly violent oppressors of women the world over, and then says that they should voluntarily give up power to women, while mocking men’s feelings (“crocodile tears”) and expressing her own hatred for men.

Walters’ last two sentences are especially ludicrous. “It is long past time” for who to “play hard for Team Feminism”? Women? How is asking men to voluntarily give up power, to “lean out so that women can actually stand up without being beaten down” playing hard for feminism? That’s a characterization of the problem as only being soluble by the actions of men, not women, and suggests that women are helpless victims. Or does Walters mean that it is men who will be “playing hard” for “Team Feminism” by thus stepping aside? That’s “playing hard”?

And who will be the ones “winning” by all this? Certainly not men. I don’t see how women would be winning either (in the highly unlikely event that it ever actually occurred), except in the leftist/Marxist sense of women’s now holding the reins of official power. Good luck with that.

In other words, if Walters truly believes her characterization of males as violent and oppressive, why would men voluntarily step aside to make way for the dominance of women who hate them and have contempt for them? Do violent and oppressive people ordinarily do that in response to the entreaties of victims?

Walters isn’t even doing a “Lysistrata“—threatening men with the loss of sexual access to women if men don’t comply. Walters seems to only be offering relief from feminist hatred to cooperating men, but the depth of that hatred hardly seems likely to abate no matter what men do.

Nor would I want the likes of Walters in charge of anything—including the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Northeastern University. But alas, that’s exactly where she is, and all across the country similar posts are manned—womanned—by many people who share her opinions.

I also wonder how Walters thinks the human race would continue if men were to do what she asks. I’m not talking about any lack of evidence that women would create a better world if they were completely in charge—although I see absolutely no reason to believe any such thing, and in fact I often think it would be a worse world, with more compulsion and far less humor. I’m talking about procreation itself. It’s a fact that generally women are not sexually attracted to men who are, for want of a better word, wimps.

Walters probably is unfamiliar with the concept of the yetser ha-ra, the Hebrew word for the evil inclination:

Jewish lore tells a tale of a time when Evil was actually captured (B. Tal. Yoma 69b). Now, one might think that if Evil could really be physically contained, the most sensible thing to do with it would be to destroy it right away. So much for sensibility. It turns out that Evil’s captors paused before they acted on their first instincts.

Evil was held captive for three days, during which time its fate was debated”¦ And then, someone made a startling realization. During the time of Evil’s imprisonment, all chickens in the land stopped laying eggs. It was as if they had gone on strike.

Had folks looked further, they would have realized that other strange things had been occurring ”“ or more precisely, not occurring, during those three days. No houses were built. People didn’t show up for work. No marriages took place. No homework was done”¦ and I suppose that no lawns were mowed, no leaves were raked, no trash taken out, and no gutters were cleared either.

The reason was obvious. The Evil Inclination is that which causes God’s creations to act aggressively and acquisitively. Building houses, and families, and careers ”“ these are activities that require healthy, yet well controlled, measures of both aggressiveness and acquisitiveness.

Folks realized that the Evil Inclination could not be obliterated. It couldn’t even be held captive forever. For Evil’s own source is also the source of creativity and productivity.

Radical feminists, beware.

[NOTE: And Walters is certainly no Cole Porter. See this.]

Anne Frank’s diary in Japan

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s extremely popular, but not for the reasons you might imagine:

The popularity has little to do with interest in Judaism, let alone with the Holocaust. It is Anne’s personal story that draws most readers in, particularly young female readers. The diary’s rich description of teenage emotions resonates unusually strongly with 13-, 14-, and 15-year-olds in Tokyo, Osaka, and Hiroshima””despite the wholly dissimilar circumstances of their lives.

“More than being Anne Frank the Holocaust victim she’s Anne Frank the teenager here,” said Makiko Takemoto, a Japanese scholar who specializes in modern German history. “The fact that Anne was killed as a result of the Holocaust is rather forgotten.”

“Anne Frank is not even Anne Frank for most people,” said Ran Zwigenberg, an Asian-studies specialist at Penn State University who has written about Japanese perceptions of the Holocaust. “She’s just ”˜Anne,’ a figure of femininity and an early teenager, and everybody learns about her very private non-Holocaust-related life.”

Zwigenberg pointed out that the diary was one of the first books in Japan to talk openly about menstruation. “Drawing on this image, a Japanese feminine-hygiene company actually made a tampon called Anne Tampon, and ”˜Anne’s day’ became a euphemism for a woman’s period.”

You never know how something will be received in a different culture. For the Japanese, the historical aspects of the diary seem to have virtually no meaning. But the universal aspects—the story of a teenage girl as told in her own words—seem to resonate nevertheless.

Propaganda 101: to Kim, from your new bestie, Donald

The New Neo Posted on by

I have no idea if Kim is the least bit susceptible to propaganda—he is a movie buff, they say—but this is a fascinating piece of video persuasion that was shown to him in Singapore in a Korean language version. It emphasizes the positive benefits of joining the world and appeals mightily to his vanity and youth. You might say it’s easy to see through as propaganda, and it is. But it’s also very seductive if there’s any seducing to be had:

This may not work, but it’s certainly thinking outside the box.

[Hat tip: American Digest.]

The Trump/Kim document

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s the text of the document both Trump and Kim signed in Singapore.

As expected, it is general and breaks no new ground whatsoever. The ground-breaking aspects were the meeting between the two and the visuals, and we have no idea whether that will lead to a positive change, no change at all, or advantage Kim.

Interesting times. But jaw-jaw is better than war-war.

[NOTE: The quote in that last sentence is usually attributed to Churchill. But apparently he didn’t say that, at least not exactly:

Winston Churchill’s official biographer, Sir Martin Gilbert, speaking of this quote, noted that Churchill actually said, ”˜Meeting jaw to jaw is better than war.’ Four years later, during a visit to Australia, Harold Macmillan said the words usually””and wrongly””attributed to Churchill: “Jaw, jaw is better than war, war.” Credit: Harold Macmillan.

And here’s a link to an interview with Trump. A lot of talk about what a great guy Kim is, which I think is some sort of tactic rather than what Trump really thinks.

We’ll see…]

Election 2016 and race: this is certainly not common knowledge

The New Neo Posted on by

Much of what people think they know about the 2016 election and race is wrong:

Trump actually won a smaller share of the white vote than Mitt Romney. He was nonetheless able to win because he won more Hispanics and Asians than his predecessors, and more black votes than any Republican since 2004.

…In other words, the problem wasn’t that Donald had extraordinary support among whites (he didn’t) ”“ but instead that Clinton was significantly less popular than Obama among minority groups.

In fact, contrary to predominant narratives about the election, Obama significantly outperformed Clinton with whites as well. Hillary got the lowest share of white voters of any Democrat since 1984. But again, most of these votes did not go to Trump (who did worse than Romney among whites, and about the same as George W. Bush in 2004). Instead, as with Democrats’ lost female votes, many whites (especially young people) opted to vote for third-parties instead.

Clinton was a really, really poor candidate.

As for the prospects in 2020, it’s a long way away. But there’s this, which could become very significant:

Anyone who thinks Trump’s decision to pardon boxer Jack Johnson and commute Alice Johnson’s unfair sentence wasn’t part of a greater plan is delusional.

Donald Trump is wooing black voters…

While the Democratic Party is sleeping, focused on winning November’s midterms rather than uniting behind a single 2020 candidate to challenge Trump, the president is wooing black voters with the help of Kim Kardashian, who’s married to the Mad Rapper and has 60 million Twitter followers, many of whom are black…

If they’re not careful, the Democrats will look up and realize that the black base they’ve taken for granted for decades, might not be as enthusiastic as in the past.

The author is most definitely not a Trump supporter, so she is writing the column as a warning to Democrats. But I doubt she’s aware that some of the defection of black voters had already occurred in 2016.

In April, when Kanye West drew attention for his Trump-friendly words, I wrote a post on the subject. Here’s a quote:

This sort of thing and the possibilities it suggests must be staggeringly frightening to the left. If they ever lost the black bloc of voters, or even a significant portion of that monolithic group, the left would have a great deal of trouble winning elections. That is their fear, and it is a valid one.

The fear seems to be rising.

That Merkel/Trump G7 photo: and in the next moment…

The New Neo Posted on by

…this is what happened:

Shaping the preferred narrative with selected photos that show a passing moment in time.

[Hat tip: vanderleun]

[NOTE: You might want to look at this earlier post from today if you haven’t already seen it.

Also, it’s unclear how much later—or even earlier—this photo was taken compared to the other, because the Japanese PM isn’t in this one. So it couldn’t have really been a moment’s difference between the two. But the point is that it’s the same occasion, different mood conveyed. There were probably an almost infinite number of moods and reactions from which to choose when publicizing a photo of the event.]

What was Robert De Niro thinking?

The New Neo Posted on by

You may have heard about actor Robert De Niro’s standing O performance at last night’s Tony awards. It was bleeped from the broadcast but is readily available:

And so, to the question in the title of this post, you may answer in kind “who gives a f*** what De Niro was thinking?” Or: “nothing at all.”

My answer is that I care because it’s symptomatic of the breakdown of civility on the left and in the acting profession as a result of TDS, which is completely rampant. The most interesting thing is not really De Niro so much as the overwhelmingly positive reaction of the crowd.

We already know that the vast majority of people in the arts are on the left. We know they hate Trump; that’s no surprise. But the relish with which so many of them (not all, but many) applauded De Niro’s essentially mindless, contentless display of expletive-laced hatred has no point except as mob virtue-signaling. But what is the “virtue” in yelling the f-word at someone? Wouldn’t a sentence or two as to what’s wrong with Trump, why one might oppose him or his policies, have been better?

The problem is that an approach like that wouldn’t have gotten much press. But what De Niro did went viral.

That had to have been his goal. De Niro was a great actor in his prime, but his prime is long past. That happens to the best of us, and it’s not always easy to take. In this case he had a bully pulpit for a change and chose to use it to get attention for an exceptionally juvenile show.

It also reminded me of this:

Early in the life of the blog (January 2005, practically ancient history) I wrote a post entitled “The fine art of insulting half your audience.” Part of it read like this (here I’m writing about authors, but it could be someone in any of the arts):

The Bush-dissing will be thrown in when you least expect it, just to let the reader know””well, to let the reader know what, exactly? To let the reader know that the author is hip, kindly, intelligent, moral””oh, just about everything a person ought to be. And that the reader must of course be a member of the club, too””not one of those Others, the warmongers, the selfish and stupid and demonized people who happen to have voted for Bush…

Authors, do you really want to do this? Because, with a single sentence, you’ve managed to alienate and offend (not to mention insult) up to half your audience.

I don’t think this even occurs to you. I think you just assume that anyone perceptive and intelligent and downright nuanced enough to be reading your fabulous work couldn’t possibly””no, say it isn’t so, Joe!!””support that disgusting, repulsive, lying POS Bush. Or maybe you just don’t care. Maybe you don’t want people like that for your audience…

And this from people who consider themselves culturally and morally superior, although this sense of superiority doesn’t seem to reside in their needing to prove themselves to be well-informed or logical or knowledgeable about the issues””just in letting the world know that they’re on the right side of them (which would be the left side, naturalment).

Nothing has changed except that it’s gotten far worse in every way, and of course it’s no longer about Bush, although if he were to somehow re-enter public life, that would start up again, too.

Quite a few people have pointed out that the footage of De Niro and that audience standing up could make a very good campaign ad for 2018 or 2020. The hatred that our cultural betters (in their humble opinion) have for the people who attend their plays is strikingly apparent, and it doesn’t sit well with middle America. And yes, middle America is a big big part of the audience for Broadway shows. People come to New York on vacation and plan ahead, getting tickets that put them back quite a pretty penny. They don’t like to think they’re being entertained by people who have contempt and even hatred for them.

[NOTE: By the way, the big winner at the Tonys was the musical “The Band’s Visit.” I’ve seen it, loved it, and highly recommend it. Among other things, the show completely avoids all politics in a plot that could have been very political indeed: it’s about an Egyptian band that takes a wrong turn and winds up in a town in the Israeli desert where nothing ever happens. It’s a quiet, contemplative, funny evening of theater about adults whose lives contain some disappointments, featuring beautiful music, thoughtful lyrics, and a performance by Katrina Lenk that will knock your socks off.

And if it seems strange that I talk up that show in the context of this post—well, I loved “The Band’s Visit,” I used to love theater, and I don’t think every single person in that crowd applauded De Niro or should be punished for what he said.]

The Trump-Kim show begins…

The New Neo Posted on by

…in just a few hours:

Ever since U.S. President Donald Trump accepted Kim Jong-un’s invitation for a one-on-one summit meeting ”” a meeting scheduled to take place within 12 hours of this article being published ”” Korea-watchers had been quick to point out the dangers that lie embedded in that all important word “denuclearization.” The term, taken alone, means very different things to North Korea and the United States.

With just hours to go, there’s little evidence that U.S. negotiators have managed to extract a commitment from North Korea to anything but an ambiguous commitment to denuclearization. Indeed, the necessity of a last-minute meeting between the U.S. and North Korean summit negotiating teams led by Sung Kim, a former U.S. special representative on North Korea policy and an experienced negotiator, and Choe Son-hui, North Korea’s top diplomat for dealing with the United States, suggested that the agenda has yet to be fixed up.

The article goes on to state that “Trump has said that the summit will be the start of a process.” That’s pretty ambiguous, but I think it just about covers it. The whole thing seems like a surreal development to me, and there are enormous pitfalls possible, one of which is giving Kim the prestige he yearns for. But I think the talks are the most hopeful things that have occurred regarding North Korea in many a long year.

That isn’t saying all that much; there have been no hopeful things that have occurred regarding North Korea in many a long year.

Trump’s tariff war…

The New Neo Posted on by

…is a high-stakes gamble:

If President Trump succeeds in getting other countries to cut their tariff rates, that would be great. But if his actions lead other countries’ governments to raise their tariff rates, then, within a few years, we could have a substantially less-free-trade world to contend with.

The old line is that a reputation takes decades to build and can be destroyed in an hour. Free trade is not that fragile. But it may be more fragile than many of Donald Trump’s supporters believe. I hope they are right, but I fear and, more important, I believe they are wrong.

That’s correct, I think. Trump supporters think he can pull a rabbit out of that hat, as he often does. Trump opponents think he’s a loose cannon, playing with fire. I have no idea which it is in terms of tariffs—perhaps both. It really depends on the outcome.

For quite some time now I’ve thought that Trump’s trade proposals are the most problematic policy area of his presidency. However, I confess to the fact that understanding trade policy and the effect of tariffs (although I’ve read about the topic and studied it to a certain extent) is a pretty weak area of my own knowledge base.

[Hat tip: commenter “Cornflour”]

Merkel vs. Trump: in the eye of the beholder

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s the photo of a G7 moment tweeted by Merkel:

First of all, let me say it’s a great photo. Merkel is of course (she’s the one who tweeted it) the supposed hero (heroine? is that an outdated word?), standing up against the stubborn mule of a Trump.

Merkel and the world against him. That’s the idea.

And that’s what those who detest Trump will see, and it’s not an invalid interpretation. Trump’s views are not especially popular in Europe or Canada, to say the least (Merkel is here flanked by Marcon and May, of France and Britain respectively, although you can’t see May very well). And Trump is indeed a stubborn guy.

But the photo is far more complex than that. Look at the range of emotions, and the two sides arrayed against each other. For Trump is hardly alone, either. If you look at it as a composition, you will see that the Japanese PM Shinzo Abe is mirroring Trump’s posture, which in body language is usually taken to mean some sort of alliance. Macron, on the other hand, is mirroring Merkel’s posture—although, strangely enough, so is Trump advisor Larry Kudlow, at least to a certain extent. He is on the far left.

And of course Bolton is standing near Trump as ally, although that hardly counts as an international supporter, since he’s an American advisor to Trump. But Bolton tweeted the very same photo with a different take:

As for me, when I looked at Trump’s expression, one thing that came to mind was Churchill’s stubborn bulldog look:

Churchill was often isolated, too—although believe me, I’m not saying Trump is a Churchill. What I am saying is that stubbornly standing your ground against a group is not necessarily bad, and going along with a group (particularly Western Europe) is not necessarily good.

And then there’s this, which I find fascinating:

The other photos are somewhat jumbled and neutral—far less dramatic—and don’t tell much of a story at all.

Chase Johnsey: the male ballerina

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: commenter “ColoComment”]

Chase Johnsey is a man identifying as “gender fluid,” but he dances female corps roles for the English National Ballet. In modern times, it’s not unheard of in ballet for men to dance as women, but it’s usually—actually, virtually always till now—been done either for comedy or when the role is magical, such as a witch.

When I wrote about my wonderful dance teacher Stanley Holden, I included this clip of him in the travesti role he originated in Britain (he was a Brit) in “La Fille Mal Gardee,” danced in comic British music hall style. Just for fun, I’m including it here; I think Holden is absolutely brilliant. By the way, in real life he was most definitely male without any hint of femininity:

But that’s most definitely not the sort of thing that Johnsey is doing now, although Johnsey used to dance for the Ballet Trockadero of Monte Carlo, which is a male troupe dancing traditional female roles, mostly to comic effect. But now that he’s with the English National Ballet he’s dancing it straight, in a manner of speaking.

Here is Johnsey in one of his slightly-comic Trock performances (“Yakatarina Verbosovich” is his Trock nom de dance). He’s very close to looking and dancing like a woman—probably as good as a man pretending to be a female ballet dancer could ever be—but the limitations of his abilities are obvious, particularly in the feet but also in the relative lack of flexibility in the back:

It may seem odd to non-dancers that men’s feet are very different from women’s, but they are, at least in terms of what’s needed for pointe work. Johnsey’s foot is very flexible for a man, but his arch just does not have the same sort of exaggerated curve as a modern female ballet dancer’s, and that deficit shows in particular when he tires. There is something slightly too-much about the definition of the muscles in his legs, too, and his waist is just a trifle thick. He’s very thin, and female dancers are so thin that they tend to have virtually no breasts and their muscles are very obvious also, but still, their muscles are not usually quite as solidly defined as Johnsey’s are.

But the question is: why does he bother to do this? Well, as a man he’s probably much less noteworthy a dancer than he is as a woman. As a man playing a woman, he’s probably one of the very best in the world, whereas as a male dancer performing male roles he probably would be just so-so (that’s a guess; I haven’t seen him do such roles).

Johnsey is quoted as saying “I want to be seen as a ballerina…I am able to do female roles and look the part, so that is artistically what I do.” If he wants to do that, fine. And if a ballet company wants to hire him to do it, fine also. I believe that in the all-female corps he would probably blend in fairly well and not be all that noticeable, although I’m not sure. But will he be anything more than a curiosity, a novelty act? Is there artistry there? I don’t see it.

And what of the interplay between man and woman that is so much a part of the classical pas de deux repetoire? Isn’t that lost when we know he’s a man?

[NOTE: I’ve previously written about the pas de deux in ballet, and how the differences between the sexes are emphasized or less-emphasized in the work of different choreographers and by different dance pairings.]