From Joelle Stepien Bailard on Facebook on 10/5, passing on material from Tony Michaels’s Facebook page (“The Tony Michaels Podcast: Considered ‘The Rush Limbaugh of the Left’”), also from 10/5:
A Tony Michaels fabrication (see below)
Archive for the ‘Language and politics’ Category
Revolt against the bad guys
October 15, 2025
Holy Romaine Empire
October 11, 2025🏳️🌈 👨❤️👨 🏳️🌈 National Coming Out Day, and also J&A Day, Jacques and Arnold’s wedding-equivalent anniversary (some explanation of that cooccurrence in an appendix to this posting)
The 10/8 Wayno / Piraro Bizarro strip, posted here because it’s sweetly bizarre (true to the strip’s title), complex, and cleverly goofy (like the one in my 10/9/25 posting “The flannel frontier”); something to enjoy for a moment in the midst of terrible times:
(#1) A phonologically perfect pun (Caesar the salad punning on Caesar the emperor), the pun-like Holy Roman Empire (a German political entity) playing on Roman Empire (governed by the Caesars of Rome), and a phonologically imperfect pun (romaine the salad green punning on Roman) (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page)
(The two salad puns are Wayno’s; Holy Roman Empire as a pun-like play on Roman Empire is an invention of the Roman Catholic church in Germanic lands in the early Middle Ages.)
The cartoon shows a Caesar (with laurel leaves) appearing before his people, cradling a humongous bowl of salad and waving a pair of salad servers like a weapon (Julius Caesar is often portrayed in Western art as wielding a sword). Next to him, a soldier utters a variant of the ceremonial greeting Hail Caesar! — celebrating not Caesar, but his salad.
The Crab City Darkness
August 17, 2025As Brutus is an honorable man, so The Crab City Darkness is a beacon of free speech.
A report on Facebook today from one newspaperman, quoting this (slightly edited) opinion from another:
This week marks the completion of my 39th year at [The Crab City Darkness]. Much has changed during my tenure including the policy regarding social media posts. So let me just say that I offer absolutely no criticism of the organization or owner [Dinosaur Broadcast Man] here. None whatsoever. Indeed, I am happy to have my speech restricted in this manner. Isn’t it best for all involved? I really appreciate the reassuring sense of being monitored 24/7 for content by my employer. Wouldn’t you?
Yes, of course. Please slam your boot on my neck; I feel unbearably unconstrained. Illiberty, that’s the ticket.
Socialist Park
August 17, 2025When recent chat with my childhood summer camp / Princeton / Wyomissing PA (now Golden CO vs. Palo Alto CA) friend Bill Richardson (William F. Richardson, hereafter WFR) turned to about politics in Reading PA (county seat of Berks County, where we both grew up; and where WFR’s father William E. Richardson (1886-1948; hereafter WER) was a progressive Democratic congressman from 1933 to 1937), I referred to the Socialist Park of my childhood (where we went for 4th of July fireworks):
— WFR: How do I not know there was a Socialist Park in Reading??
— AMZ: You don’t know about Socialist Park because it was in Sinking Spring, not Reading, and because Wyomissing had its own more elegant parks, while Socialist Park was more of a people’s park (with a dance hall and a roller rink).
WFR’s family had status and money, mine came out of the working class, but that was no bar to our friendship.
The art and politics of representation
August 7, 2025
Saturday, Sunday, and Monday
June 15, 2025Three days heavy in events and occasions, including my beginning to work through the amazing pile of stuff I’ve accumulated here in Palo Alto, which has to be whittled down to what I can fit into my apartment in an assisted living facility; that’s a long way away, but the task is daunting and will take months (as it did when I moved out of the house in Columbus), and you will be hearing every so often about my puzzlements.
But now Saturday (yesterday), Sunday (today), and Monday (tomorrow). Pride Month continues throughout and that’s a Big Thing in my world. It’s been a long, hard ride, and now we’re facing another round of backlash and reversals, so this is a time for conspicuously joining together, all of us — and, at the same time, being as fabulous as we can.
Morning has broken
June 7, 2025Praise for the singing!
Praise for the morning!
— “Morning Has Broken”
Today, Saturday, awaking officially at 4:52, but lying for maybe 20 minutes in that wonderful half-waking state, with genuinely useful ideas chasing around my head, while an Istomin / Stern / Rose recording of the Brahms trios for piano. violin, and cello (for some reason, in reverse order, ending with No. 1) played on my Apple Music — fabulously passionate, exuberant in bursts, and musically complex. The Brahms is Morning A.
One thing that I worked on in my head was a kvetch from Michael Newman (on Facebook on 6/1, with a response from me) that I didn’t get to post on yesterday, because yesterday was largely a great trial, following on the events reported in my 6/5 posting “An indescribable day”. But now I will introduce Michael and show our exchange; that’s Morning B. Which comes with the promise of a future posting celebrating Michael, singing his praises.
Then, after morning cleanup, I went to my worktable, to turn off the Apple Music, check my vital signs (good), and turn on the tv to MSNBC, which immediately presented me with this panel:
Harvard University Professor Maya Jasanoff and Ankush Khardori join The Weekend to discuss why President Tr**p keeps losing in his war against the nation’s oldest college
In which I was once again impressed with Khardori, who came across as extraordinarily bright, incisive, tough and down-to-earth, and surprisingly charming. Also, to my famously queer eye, definitely sexy; he’s Morning C.
After him, Bob Eckstein’s newsletter The Bob popped up, in a special French edition yesterday, to cap things off with a wonderfully silly cartoon — Morning D.
Morning was then broken, and the day shambled on, with variously astonishing, distressing, and alarming news breaking in one wave after another.
Stay the course
May 15, 2025Stay strong, and stay the course.
In today’s mail came my Stand Up and Stand Out t-shirt for racial justice. Deliberately designed (by me) with an understated message — Edmund Pettus Bridge — in serious muted colors and an elegant font, not in the neon colors and tough sans serif fonts of my in-your-face queer t-shirts (today’s is just a rainbow QUEER shirt, but yesterday’s was a neon pink BIG FAG, and an equally obtrusive FAGGOT is up for tomorrow):
The professor in his home lair, sun streaming in from the garden outside (photo by my caregiver J, who today had to endure my recollections of †Haj Ross from 1963 on and many more stories from my life, plus my impassioned summary of the history of American racial (in)justice from the Emancipation Proclamation through this week)
After years, the thin-skinned injustice collector extracts his revenge
May 3, 2025Today is both Opal Armstrong Zwicky’s college graduation day — 🎓 that’s a mortarboard — and also Kentucky Derby day — 🏇🏼 that’s a jockey on horseback. It also seems to be Rain Day, in both Pittsburgh and Louisville. In any case, two occasions packed with sentiment for me.
(Opal’s graduation from Pitt is straightforward on the sentiment front, but the Derby might need some explanation: Ann Walcutt Daingerfield (later Zwicky) was born — to a celebrated family of owners, breeders, and trainers of thoroughbreds — on Derby Day in 1937, and her father, Keene Daingerfield, ended his working life as the senior state steward for thoroughbred racing in the commonwealth of Kentucky, serving as a judge overseeing racing at both Keeneland in Lexington and Churchill Downs in Louisville. Note: Ann died in 1985, Keene in 1993.)
I hope to post separately about today’s Derby and about my odd long-ago life in the elite social world of central Kentucky and in the complex culture of thoroughbred racing. But today I bring you something completely different, an especially fine Bizarro cartoon, one that comes with a sting.
The 4/30 Bizarro “Chief Petty Officer” (to which Wayno gave the alternative title “Pulling Rank”):
After years, the thin-skinned injustice collector extracts his revenge (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are only 2 in this strip, and they’re easy to find — see this Page)
My comment on Facebook when Wayno posted this cartoon:
— And this is, who would’ve thought it, a political cartoon. A pointed one.