The carrots tag.

Meade read the previous post — which ends with the old University of Michigan "cooked carrots" test — out loud, helping me proofread, and said, "Carrots! We know what carrots mean to Althouse," and I said, "Yeah, the carrots tag. There's a lot of great stuff under the carrots tag."

I was scrolling through the taggage, looking for the thing Meade was referring to, and I found this guy...



Here's another reference to the cooked carrots test, which "purported to place everyone on a spectrum from very masculine to very feminine, and perhaps the authorities imagined that they could identify the homosexuals."

What were the questions? — you may wonder. Famously, one question was do you prefer cooked or raw carrots. In my family, we only ate raw carrots, so I'd always regarded cooked carrots as gross. I suppose that made the University regard me as more of a lesbian. I seem to remember a question that asked what would you rather do, where one option was to take apart a clock and then put it back together again. I don't know what the other choice was, but I suspect that clock project skewed a lot of the boys gay.

I wonder what these sexuality authorities would have thought of Jeff Bezos's grandiose clock inside a mountain that ticks once every year for 10,000 years. Most macho man ever?

Here's what Meade was referring to, my analysis of a Hillary Clinton ad:

Bill says "No onion rings?" and Hillary responds "I'm looking out for ya." Now, the script says onion rings, because that's what the Sopranos were eating in that final scene, but I doubt if any blogger will disagree with my assertion that, coming from Bill Clinton, the "O" of an onion ring is a vagina symbol. Hillary says no to that, driving the symbolism home. She's "looking out" all right, vigilant over her husband, denying him the sustenance he craves. What does she have for him? Carrot sticks! The one closest to the camera has a rather disgusting greasy sheen to it. Here, Bill, in retaliation for all of your excessive "O" consumption, you may have a large bowl of phallic symbols! When we hear him say "No onion rings?," the camera is on her, and Bill is off-screen, but at the bottom of the screen we see the carrot/phallus he's holding toward her. Oh, yes, I know that Hillary supplying carrots is supposed to remind that Hillary will provide us with health care, that she's "looking out for" us, but come on, they're carrots! Everyone knows carrots are phallic symbols. But they're cut up into little carrot sticks, you say? Just listen to yourself! I'm not going to point out everything.

Some cranks chided me, but I doubled down with "Let's take a closer look at Bill's carrot and Hillary's onion ring."

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Phallic symbol of the day.

Oh, come on now. And this is under a headline containing a double-entendre word: "Hedge Funds Are for Suckers."



Thanks to the reader who sent me that link, with the comment: "That graphic is pretty interesting. It’s a male world in finance I guess and can’t help but wonder what a female comparable graph might elicit in the way of comments."

ADDED: What would the female image even be? Quite aside from the challenge of making the person look like someone involved in hedge funds, you'd need a deliberately sexual presentation. But I think the reader — referring to what the comments would be — means to refer to the way various media pundits would be critical if they saw a female ludicrously sexualized as a way to say something about money. And I take this to be sounding the old "war on men" theme. Why can you make fun of men and not women?



The answer, as far as I'm concerned, is that it's more acceptable to make fun of whoever is powerful and dominant — the rich and not the poor, the gloriously healthy and not the sick, white people and not black people. Alternatively, we could just never have fun with anything. Or we could be scrupulously equal in how we dish it out. But inhibition isn't too good for comedy. So what we do is: We have a lot of easy targets — the rich, the men, the white people — and then we have the more difficult topics that create a place for especially capable comedians to be edgy.

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Naked Bob Dylan Robot has something to say about the meaning of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat."

As channeled by betamax3000:

Well, you look so pretty in it
Honey, can I jump on it sometime?

The Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat Represents the Stylish Repression of the Sexual Urges of the Hat-Wearing Woman -- the Hat is a "Pillbox", thus referencing both Birth Control and Containment --, and How those Urges Create a Corresponding Attraction in the Male, as the Leopard-Skin Pattern Stimulates Animal Urges. This Becomes More Obvious in the Following Lines, where the Titular Hat is Compared to A Mattress:

Yes, I just wanna see If it's really that expensive kind
You know it balances on your head
Just like a mattress balances
On a bottle of wine
Your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat

That the Mattress is Balanced On a Bottle of Wine Implies that the Man is Contemplating the Use of Alcohol to Achieve the Goal of "jump(ing) on it sometime."

However, this Desire Remains Unrequited, as Evidenced in the Following lines:

Well, if you wanna see the sun rise Honey,
I know where We'll go out and see it sometime
We'll both just sit there and stare
Me with my belt Wrapped around my head
And you just sittin' there
In your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat

Notice that they Will "Sit and Stare": there is No Jumping Upon the "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat". Furthermore, The Man Now Has a Belt Wrapped Around His Head, Indicating Restraint of His Hat-Jumping Thoughts, and -- Possibly -- Implying a Restraint Around His Phallic Head. Meanwhile, the Woman is "just sittin' there" and there is no further mention of a Mattress.

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