The consequences of blushing.

1. I was reading this Wall Street Journal essay — "The Appeal of Embarrassment/Blushing, fidgeting, looking down — the more contrite a wrongdoer looks, the more likable he seems" — written by Robert M. Sapolsky, a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University and author of the enticingly titled "The Trouble with Testosterone" and "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers."

2. I don't give a damn about zebras and their freedom from ulcers. (I'll just guess that when any given zebra slips toward ulcer-producing mental activity, some lion eats him, and that's the end of that trajectory.) But I am interested in the trouble with testosterone in connection with the subject of Sapolsky's essay, which is Anthony Weiner. Something about that ravaged face. Is he using testosterone to build up those muscles he shows off in his selfies?


3. Sapolsky's essay is not, however, about testosterone, but visible signs of embarrassment, like blushing. Is Weiner one of these people who do not blush like normal people? If so, Sapolsky suggests, we shouldn't trust him. "Numerous studies have shown that autonomic responses to strong emotions are blunted in sociopaths. Thus, in individuals there is a positive and statistically significant covariance between concern about violating social norms and concern with pro-sociality." (I'm resisting inserting an old joke here.)

4. Sapolsky's essay pulled me in enough to read it, but it didn't make the cut into bloggable. Something unsatisfying about the maundering. And it's just the same old thing about Weiner, really. Why isn't he embarrassed? The Stanford prof doesn't have anything new to say: Why doesn't Weiner blush? Maybe he did blush? Was anyone checking to see if he blushed? That's how Sapolsky ends it, saying it would be "nice" if there were some kind of blush-o-meter to check.

5. I thought I could find a way into blogging the essay I'd dumped time into reading with an almost-remembered song lyric with the word "blush." Was it Bob Dylan? I do a word search at bobdylan.com I see Bob's used the word exactly once: "Now, there’s a certain thing/That I learned from my friend, Mouse/A fella who always blushes/And that is that ev’ryone/Must always flush out his house/If he don’t expect to be/Goin’ ’round housing flushes."

6. That's not helpful. This friend Mouse always blushes. I thought the line was never blushes, which might help me with the Weiner/Sapolsky quandry, and anyway, it's a dumb Dylan verse, just some off the top of his head Basement Tapes foolery, where Bob not only wasn't above rhyming "mouse" and "house" but he also double-used "flush" in his low-effort rhyme for "blush."

7. I'm not getting any good material about blushing, and I'm completely distracted by the title of the song, "Open the Door, Homer." If you've listened to "The Basement Tapes," you know it as "Open the Door, Richard." What's with the Homer/Richard switch?

8. That turns out to be a much better question than did Anthony Weiner blush? For one thing, it's perfectly answerable, via Wikipedia. "Open the Door, Richard" was an old vaudeville routine:

Pigmeat Markham, one of several who performed the routine, attributed it to his mentor Bob Russell. The routine was made famous by Dusty Fletcher on stages like the Apollo Theater in New York and in a short film. Dressed in rags, drunk, and with a ladder as his only prop, Fletcher would repeatedly plunk the ladder down stage center, try to climb it to knock on an imaginary door, then crash sprawling on the floor after a few steps while shouting, half-singing "Open the Door, Richard." After this he would mutter a comic monologue, then try the ladder again and repeat the process, while the audience was imagining what Richard was so occupied doing.

Jack McVea was responsible for the musical riff which became associated with the words "Open the Door, Richard" that became familiar to radio listeners and as many as 14 different recordings were made....

"Open the Door, Richard" was an early R&B novelty record, a song category that became a basic genre of rock and roll in the 1950s. It started the fad of answer song records. It was also the first commercial record to use a fade out ending....

The phrase "Open the Door, Richard" passed into African American Vernacular English and became associated with the Civil Rights Movement. When college students marched in 1947 to the state capitol demanding the resignation of segregationist governor Herman Talmadge, some of their banners read "Open the Door Herman." The Los Angeles Sentinel used "Open the Door Richard" as the title of an editorial demanding black representation in city government and a Detroit minister used the title for a sermon on open housing.

"Open the Door, Richard" became a catchphrase in broader American society, as well; the line appeared in routines by Jack Benny, Fred Allen, and Phil Harris. Jimmy Durante and Burl Ives each recorded versions of the song; opera star Lauritz Melchior performed it on national radio. Molly Picon recorded a Yiddish language version; it was also covered in Spanish, Swedish, French, Armenian and Hungarian. There were "Richard" hats, shirts, and jeans, and ads for products ranging from ale to perfume incorporated references to the song....

In 1967, Bob Dylan and The Band recorded an homage to the song as part of The Basement Tapes. Entitled "Open the Door, Homer," the chorus nevertheless repeated the phrase "Open the door Richard."

9. The door never opens, I think. What's that old line, when a door closes, a window opens? I immediately remember the lyric I was searching for at stage #5:

Some people, they like to go out dancing
And other peoples, they have to work...
And there's even some evil mothers
Well they're gonna tell you that everything is just dirt
Y'know that, women, never really faint
And that villains always blink their eyes, woo!
And that, y'know, children are the only ones who blush!
And that, life is just to die!

10. Children are the only ones who blush... that's what the evil mothers tell you. The evil mothers are the sociopaths who don't blush, and they'd like you to believe that no adults blush, so you won't attribute any significance to the failure to blush when caught in a shameful act.

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Did the Pope say "allow ourselves to be smitten" by the love of Jesus?

Last night's "Smitten by his love" post brought email from ddh:

Your suspicion that the Pope did not say "smitten" is correct. After an introductory paragraph in Portuguese, the Pope switched to his native Spanish and said, according to the Vatican:

Pero la Cruz invita también a dejarnos contagiar por este amor, nos enseña así a mirar siempre al otro con misericordia y amor, sobre todo a quien sufre, a quien tiene necesidad de ayuda, a quien espera una palabra, un gesto.

I translate this sentence as:

But the Cross also invites us to let ourselves be infected by this love, it teaches us always to look at the other person with mercy and love, especially to the one who suffers, the one who needs help, the one who awaits a word, a gesture.

So, what he really said was "contagiar" or "to be infected." By the way, most native Portuguese speakers can understand Spanish without great difficulty, although not perfectly. I think for English speakers the effect is akin to listening to a Robert Burns poem.

Who is in a position to confirm whether the effect of Spanish on native speakers of Portuguese is like the effect of Robert Burns poetry on native English speakers? Perhaps no one, but I like the analogy anyway. It's poetic.

Also poetic — or so it feels to me, in translation — is the Pope's invitation to expose ourselves to contagious love. Love as disease is a very old metaphor. Lovesick. Fever. But here the idea is an outbreak, an epidemic of love spreading everywhere.

In English, "contagion" feels — at least to me — more positive than "infection," though "infection" is used positively in phrases like "infectious laughter."

Consulting the (unlinkable) OED, I see that one old meaning of "infect" is: "To instil in (someone) an opinion or belief, esp. a pernicious one, as heresy or seditious views. Of an (esp. pernicious) opinion, belief, etc.: to persuade, win over (someone); to seduce. In early use also in a good or neutral sense."

1559   J. Whyte Serm. in J. Strype Ann. Reformation (1824) I. vii. 154   Books..full of pestilent doctrines, blasphemy and heresy, to infect the people.
1588   ‘M. Marprelate’ Oh read ouer D. Iohn Bridges: Epist. 26   Being infected by him with the true knowledge of the gospell.
1660   Exact Accompt Trial Regicides 55   The end of your Speech is nothing, but to infect the People.

This metaphor is important in the understanding the value of freedom of speech. Are we susceptible to infection or does exposure build up our resistance to what is harmful?

There's no verb like "infect" for the English word "contagion," which hampers the translator of "contagiar." But I assume that the Spanish word the Pope used traces back to the Latin word that led to "contagion" and that is  con- together + tangĕre to touch. "Infect," by contrast, comes from the "classical Latin infect-, past participial stem of inficere to dye, to stain, to impregnate, to imbue, to taint, to poison, to affect with disease, to corrupt < in- in- prefix2 + facere to make, do, put.")

That "impregnate" makes me ideate about things Popes say against the use of birth control and the similarity of opening oneself to the contagion of love. But let's not get distracted. The concrete image within "contagion" is touching, and "infection" connotes putting in. That makes "contagion" sound like what women do, and "infection" seems like the way of the man.

But the Pope said "contagiar," so let's look at "contagion," which has as its oldest meaning "The communication of disease from body to body by contact direct or mediate." Figuratively, we see it defined as "Hurtful, defiling, or corrupting contact; infecting influence," a usage that goes back to Chaucer in the 14th century:

c1386   Chaucer Second Nun's Tale 72   My soule..That troubled is by the contagioun Of my body....
1776   Gibbon Decline & Fall I. xxi. 591   His mind was tainted by the contagion of fanaticism.
1836   C. Thirlwall Hist. Greece II. xiii. 190   The contagion of these vices undoubtedly spread through the nation.

A second old figurative use is "Contagious or spreading moral disease; moral corruption," and then, in a positive way, closest to the Pope's meaning, "The contagious or ‘catching’ influence or operation of example, sympathy, and the like."

1781   Gibbon Decline & Fall II. 117   The contagion of loyalty and repentance was communicated from rank to rank.
1863   A. P. Stanley Lect. Jewish Church I. xviii. 397   A contagion of goodness, of enthusiasm, of energy..almost impossible to resist.

ADDED: Some attention should be paid to the idea of "invitation." God/Jesus/the Cross does not infect or produce contagion on its own. Its action is to invite. We have to accept the invitation to get the contagion/infection. It's voluntary. The human mind counts. But if you allow yourself to be touched/impregnated, then you will have something that surpasses the rational mind. These images are very helpful in thinking more generally about freedom of speech and the right to receive the speech of others. Censorship represents the fear of contagion, but if you see the speech as an invitation and the human mind as capable of deciding which beliefs to accept, contagion is less fearsome.

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"Smitten by his love."

"The cross of Christ invites us also to allow ourselves to be smitten by his love, teaching us always to always look upon others with mercy and tenderness," said Pope Francis, in Brazil. I don't think he was speaking English. But... smitten.

It's just the past participle of "smite," which is a strange old word that we associate with God striking someone dead. We think of it used comically, affecting an old-time locution.

Here are some uses of "smitten" I found in the (unlinkable) OED:

1819 Shelley Lines Castlereagh Admin. ii, The abortion with which she travaileth Is Liberty, smitten to death.

1671 Milton Paradise Regain'd iv. 559 But Satan smitten with amazement fell.

1848 Thackeray Vanity Fair xvii. 149 Young..Lieutenant Spatterdash..was evidently and quickly smitten by Mrs. Crawley.

Here's the Shelley poem in full:

Lines Written During The Castlereagh Administration.

1.
Corpses are cold in the tomb;
Stones on the pavement are dumb;
Abortions are dead in the womb,
And their mothers look pale--like the death-white shore
Of Albion, free no more.                                   5

2.
Her sons are as stones in the way--
They are masses of senseless clay--
They are trodden, and move not away,--
The abortion with which SHE travaileth
Is Liberty, smitten to death.                              10

3.
Then trample and dance, thou Oppressor!
For thy victim is no redresser;
Thou art sole lord and possessor
Of her corpses, and clods, and abortions--they pave
Thy path to the grave.                                     15

4.
Hearest thou the festival din
Of Death, and Destruction, and Sin,
And Wealth crying "Havoc!" within?
'Tis the bacchanal triumph that makes Truth dumb,
Thine Epithalamium.                                        20

5.
Ay, marry thy ghastly wife!
Let Fear and Disquiet and Strife
Spread thy couch in the chamber of Life!
Marry Ruin, thou Tyrant! and Hell be thy guide
To the bed of the bride! 

ADDED: After receiving email about the Spanish words spoken by the Pope, I wrote another post.

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"Is this really the message we want to send to the rest of the world? That this is Wisconsin? A place where people can’t come and express themselves in their state capitol? That’s bologna."

So said state senator Bob Jauch, about the arrest of 22 of the "Solidarity Singers," for singing in the Wisconsin Capitol building without a permit. This singing has been a regular event since the big protests in 2011. The arrests followed a singalong that defied the police chief's message — posted on a sign — "I have determined that your group does not have the required permits. I am declaring this an unlawful event. Please either move outside or disperse immediately. If you do not, each participant is subject to arrest."

By the way, I think it's funny to write "That’s bologna." Normally, one sees the spelling "baloney," when the reference is to humbug/nonsense. My authority is the (unlinkable) Oxford English Dictionary, which gives the alternative "boloney."

1928   Sat. Evening Post 28 Nov. 21   Gee, that's a long shot. Boloney! That's not the ball—it's the divot.
1935   Discovery Dec. 378/2   He even suggests that much of modern psychiatry is ‘hooey’ and ‘baloney’.
1935   E. Weekley Something about Words 64   Boloney must surely be for Bologna sausage (whence also the English polony, dating from the 18th century), influenced perhaps by the contemptuous sense associated with the German wurst.

"Bologna" is the spelling for the sausage, which is notable for its large size. Here are the OED's historical examples:

1596   T. Nashe Haue with you to Saffron-Walden sig. R2,   As big as a Bolognian sawcedge.
1833   ‘M. Dods’ Cook & Housewife's Man. (ed. 5) iii. i. 267 (note) ,   Real Bologna sausages labour under the imputation of being made of asses' flesh.
1850   Knickerbocker XXXV. 23   Relishing ‘Bolognas’, will he plead that a jelly-eyed roaster is disgusting?
1916   C. Sandburg Chicago Poems 24   The dago shovelman finishes the dry bread and bologna.

First, I love the spelling "sawcedge." Second, dago shovelman?

The dago shovelman sits by the railroad track
Eating a noon meal of bread and bologna.
     A train whirls by, and men and women at tables
     Alive with red roses and yellow jonquils,
     Eat steaks running with brown gravy,
     Strawberries and cream, eclaires and coffee.
The dago shovelman finishes the dry bread and bologna,
Washes it down with a dipper from the water-boy,
And goes back to the second half of a ten-hour day's work
Keeping the road-bed so the roses and jonquils
Shake hardly at all in the cut glass vases
Standing slender on the tables in the dining cars.

I love the way Sandberg empathizes with the worker, all the while calling him a "dago."

"Dago" is in the OED, in case you're wondering. It's defined as "A name originally given in the south-western section of the United States to a man of Spanish parentage; now extended to include Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian people in general, or as a disparaging term for any foreigner." The word is a corruption of the proper name Diego. Some historical examples:

[1723   Bumstead in New-Eng. Historical & Geneal. Reg. (1861) XV. 199   The negro Dago hanged for fiering Mr Powell's house.]
1832   E. C. Wines Two Years in Navy (1833) I. vi. 145   These Dagos [of Minorca], as they are pleasantly called by our people, were always a great pest...
1904   T. Roosevelt Let. 2 Sept. in H. F. Pringle T. Roosevelt (1931) 294   It will show these Dagos that they will have to behave decently....
1909 H. G. Wells Tono-Bungay iii. iv. 406 'E's a foreigner... That's what E is—a Dago!

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Some people don't quite get the polls I put up around here.

Here's recent, typical criticism, aimed at the poll called "Althouse without comments." The aggrieved emailer writes:

I wanted to point out that you chose the options for the attitudes we might have towards your new policy. Exactly two of those choices implied that the new policy was detrimental, and both of those choices were framed in terms of emotionally negative or dismissive attitudes. You did not, for example, provide a choice like "I loved reading and writing comments, I will miss them, and I don't see how the blog can be the same without them." You gave us "I am aggrieved and grudging" and "the blog is nothing to me." You then pointed out that the only people who objected to the change were negative soreheads, and good riddance. OK, have it your way.

The sentence that begins "You then pointed out" is (badly) paraphrasing what I wrote here.

I wrote back:

The polls are a form of expression for me. No one has to take them, and I make no claim that they are anything but a kind of poem that I've written that you're allowed to play with.

Do you see how Althouse thinks of her polls?
	Yes, like everything at Althouse, they're dishonest and all about her.
	Yes, the individual lines, like this one, are as lines in a poem.
	Yes, she thinks she's an artist and has no insight into whether her work is crap.
	No, because there's really no "thinking" to speak of.
	No, because I'm preoccupied with what I think and Althouse won't talk about that.
	No, because if the lines don't rhyme, I haven't got time.
pollcode.com free polls

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"The Naked and the Nude."

I was just talking about the naked/nude distinction, a propos of some blather on NPR. The NPR position, which I called "so NPR" was: "In fine art, the female body is a nude. In not-so-fine art, she's naked."

A reader emailed:

From my high school days, I recall a line from a poem contrasting naked and nude. Through the magic of the Internet, I am able to retrieve the entire poem. Note that the poet, Robert Graves no less, takes the exact opposite view of the article you cited in your most recent post.

Robert Graves has been in his grave for almost 30 years, and he was born nearly 120 years ago, and yet copyright law is such that I feel I shouldn't copy the whole poem. Counteracting that feeling — and isn't law a feeling? — is the fact that the poem can be found all over the place on the internet, including — I see now — in the comments at the NPR story. So, with all due respect to Sonny Bono and with near certainty that I'm doing the heirs of Robert Graves a favor, let's read the poem. Remember, the question on the floor is whether Graves takes "the exact opposite view" from NPR.

The Naked and the Nude

For me, the naked and the nude
(By lexicographers construed
As synonyms that should express
The same deficiency of dress
Or shelter) stand as wide apart
As love from lies, or truth from art.

Lovers without reproach will gaze
On bodies naked and ablaze;
The Hippocratic eye will see
In nakedness, anatomy;
And naked shines the Goddess when
She mounts her lion among men.

The nude are bold, the nude are sly
To hold each treasonable eye.
While draping by a showman's trick
Their dishabille in rhetoric,
They grin a mock-religious grin
Of scorn at those of naked skin.

The naked, therefore, who compete
Against the nude may know defeat;
Yet when they both together tread
The briary pastures of the dead,
By Gorgons with long whips pursued,
How naked go the sometime nude!

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Does anyone in the Bible ever say "hello"?

It's all translation, if it's in English, and "hello" is a pretty recent English word. (The OED puts its earliest use in the year 1827.) I spent some time with the various translations at BibleGateway, and I found at least one that has "hello" — the Contemporary English Version, within which "hello" appears exactly twice:

Job 17:14 Then I could greet the grave as my father and say to the worms, “Hello, mother and sisters!”

Matthew 26:49 Judas walked right up to Jesus and said, “Hello, teacher.” Then Judas kissed him.

Great material! Job and Judas come across as a couple of darkly edgy comedians.

Why was I looking for "hello" in the Bible? I got caught up — after writing this post — in the meaning of "hail" in "Hail Mary." I was puzzling over whether or not there should be a comma between "hail" and "Mary," which I was reading to mean basically "Hello, Mary." But the Contemporary English Version of the Bible doesn't use "Hello, Mary" in the relevant verse (which is Luke 1:28). (It has: "The angel greeted Mary and said, 'You are truly blessed! The Lord is with you.'")

A common alternative word for "hail" in that verse is "rejoice." I'm also seeing "Greetings!" which seems pretty close to Hello. I thought about other uses of "hail." Meade — who grew up in West Lafayette, home of Purdue — brought up "Hail Purdue." That made me, an alumna of the University of Michigan, think of "Hail! to the victors valiant." And then there's "Hail to the Chief" and "Hail to thee, blithe spirit!" (beginning Shelley's "To a Skylark").

What does "hail" mean beyond "hello"?

"Heil Hitler" is translated as "Hail Hitler." It's not "Hello Hitler," which seems edgily absurd. You could sing it to the tune of "Hello, Dolly," which has a comma, I might note, unlike Hello Kitty.

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What is the sight of one hand hidden? The zen koan of a NYT headline.

I'm getting a late start this morning. Only yesterday — ah, yesterday! — I had my first post up at 6:21. It contained the memorable Drudge headline "Big Sis Wants to See Under Your Clothes." Today, the blog didn't get going until 8:45 (and that's Central Time). If I wanted a cover story — a story that you can't see under even with your National Surveillance X-Ray Robot Eyes — I'd say I needed to meditate for hours upon encountering — on the front page of the NYT — the equivalent of the old what is the sound of one hand clapping? zen koan.

Having achieved oneness, what is its sound? In other words, how does it reverberate? How does it go out into the world and function? If we're just being "one" with our own hand, what have we accomplished? If it's all about our own private experience, it's nothing but a hand job!

Are you ready now for the headline? It's: "In Second Term, Obama Is Seen as Using 'Hidden Hand’ Approach."

If it's a hidden hand, how is it seen? Some unnamed entity/entities are seeing, but they are hidden by the hidden hand of the headline writer using the passive voice. The passive voice is evidence of the unseen hand of another hand job for President Obama.

Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.

The leaves of the newspaper are trembling with the wind that passes through, and thus do we "see" the unseen. But what is this wind? The underlying article, written by Peter Baker begins like this:

In the nearly two weeks since Egypt’s military seized power, President Obama has promoted a better federal bureaucracy, given a medal to George Lucas of “Star Wars” fame and had former President George Bush to the White House for lunch. What he has not done is publicly address the violent upheaval in Cairo.

Try not. Do or do not. There is no try.

That is not to say Mr. Obama is uninvolved. In the privacy of the West Wing, away from the cameras, he has made calls to leading figures in the Arab world and has met with advisers trying to influence the crisis. But his low public profile on issues like immigration, Syria and health care underscores a calculated presidential approach that admirers consider nuanced...



... and detractors call passive.

When we see nothing, how can we know that the person who would be expected to act is choosing to act by not appearing to act, in some deliberate "hidden hand" approach? Quite aside from whether that is a wise and workable approach, is it even something he's doing? Peter Baker cites no inside sources for the proposition that Obama claims to be using a "hidden hand" approach. The old inside phrase was "leading from behind," and it would be interesting to analyze a shift from "leading from behind" to "hidden hand." (Is the hidden hand goosing the behind?)

Peter Baker's quoted sources are — I kid you not — Jim Newton, author of "Eisenhower: The White House Years," and Dwight Eisenhower's granddaughter Susan. These are the seers seeing.

Some compare Mr. Obama’s approach to the “hidden hand” style of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who often steered events behind the scenes without being public about his role....

Some... If you use the notoriously shifty sentence subject "some" you'd better have at least 2.

“In those senses, Obama does appear to me to be taking a page from Eisenhower’s playbook,” Mr. Newton said. “What I don’t know, however, is how aggressively Obama is working out of view on these matters. The essence of Eisenhower’s hidden hand, of course, is that there was real work going on that people didn’t know at the time. If that’s true now, then Obama really is emulating Ike. If, on the other hand, he’s simply doing nothing or very little, that would be passivity, not hidden-hand leadership.”

Susan Eisenhower, a granddaughter of the late president, said it might be too soon to tell. “Eisenhower’s hidden-hand means of meeting his objectives was not really evident until his papers were opened, many decades after he left office,” Ms. Eisenhower said.

So Susan Eisenhower is not even seeing the hidden-hand. She's just talking about how hard it can be to see what is hidden. And Newton — who must be thrilled at the invitation from the NYT to push his book — is (as I see the unseen) responding to Baker's effort to get him to endorse the hidden-hand theory that has no theorists. And he doesn't. The Newton quote is studded with weasel words: appear... if... if... 

What unseen things were seen by the some who saw none?

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"The last time I had dinner with David, about six weeks before he died, he was so weak..."

"... that it was impossible to imagine him mustering the strength to work. But he was so close, he said. 'I need to finish it, and then I’ll be ready.'"

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