"'Now there’s an IQ test,' said another prominent Hamptons media figure. 'I’d have to be insane to let you quote me.'"

From "Newsrooms Are in Revolt. The Bosses Are in Their Country Houses/Those who can afford it left the city, shining a spotlight on class divisions in the media" (NYT).

Were media leaders in the right place to cover the horror of the early days of the outbreak, when they weren’t being kept awake by sirens? And did they overplay the violent fringes of protests, when they’ve been overwhelmingly peaceful and the city’s broader mood has been a kind of revolutionary good cheer? Walking with a television executive past boutiques on Newtown Lane in East Hampton last week, I tried to convince him that his teenage children would be fine walking around their native Upper East Side unaccompanied. During the protests, the city could look terrifying on television, and reporters on the scene faced violence, mostly from police; but the mood away from the police billy clubs was not exactly the Reign of Terror. (Though stay tuned: When The New York Times forced out the opinion editor James Bennet over a controversial column a week ago, two employees reacted in Slack with a slackmoji of the word “guillotine,” prompting internal complaints, a Times reporter said. “We encourage constructive, honest dialogue among our colleagues but there are lines that can be crossed, and this was one of them,” Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy said in response.)

"So... I don't get what's 'problematic' with Madonna's putting her son's incredible dance on Insta? Thanks, in any case, it was great to see it."

That's the first comment I read on the New York Magazine article, "What Do We Want From White Celebrities Right Now?" Here's the section that labels Madonna "problematic":

[S]ome celebs have shown up to protest. Others have “opened up their purses” and lent their voices to decry racism and support detailed and specific calls for reform. But just like the rest of us, they have some problematic colleagues: Madonna celebrating her son’s interpretive solidarity dance; Ashton Kutcher posting an incongruously emotional video about Black Lives Matter that veered off on a bizarre and lengthy tangent about parenting; Ellen DeGeneres tweeting “for things to change, things must change”; Drew Brees’s willfully ignorant understanding of peaceful protests and inability to have his mind opened by the steady murders of Black people on film.... More of these bizarre blathers will surely come....

Here's Madonna's son's interpretative solidarity dance. The son is black, it helps to know. You can judge for yourself. According to Madonna: "David Dances to honor and pay tribute to George and His Family and all Acts of Racism and Discrimination that happen on a daily basis in America." Yes, it's miswritten. She didn't mean "to honor...  all Acts of Racism," but that is what she said.

Maybe I don't understand the way dance works these days. I was driving home this morning at 5:30 a.m. and a man up ahead of me was crossing the street in the middle of the block. I drove slowly. It didn't matter to me. There was a red light up ahead anyway. Midway through his crossing, he did a little dance, complete with pirouette. Was he dancing for me? Was he honoring some abstraction?

There was this guy...



And this...

"Day 10 of protests ends with 'defund police' painted on road leading to [the Wisconsin] Capitol."

The Wisconsin State Journal reports.

Protesters painted "defund police" in giant letters on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard Monday night. The street leads from the state Capitol to Monona Terrace, passing between the Madison Municipal Building and City-County Building, at top.

We're told this was "without city permission," but I think that has to be read to mean without explicit city permission. Something that conspicuous — taking that much effort, in that location — is actively condoned. It had the tacit permission of the city.

Also at the link are other photos of the 10th day of protests. Based on the photographs, I would say that the protesters are overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly female.

If I were still the sort of person who roams around inside protests and talks to people, I would ask them how they would harmonize the #MeToo movement with defunding the police. A year ago, there was so much of a push to get men arrested for things that used to be ignored. Then, the slogan was "Time's up." We were never going back. Is time up on Time's Up?

I remember when it was a big feminist goal to force the police to take domestic violence so seriously that they were required to arrest someone when they answered a call. It became the statutory law here in Wisconsin. I'd like to ask the female protesters whether they ever supported that law and if they did whether they will now declare it to have been a mistake — a racist mistake.

ADDED: In "If they can, why can’t we?," David Blaska muses about painting over the "u" in "DEFUND THE POLICE." Changing the "U" to an "E" would flip the message: "Call it a little editing. Call it vandalizing the vandalism. Call it free speech. Call it civil disobedience. Call it a profile in courage or social suicide in the super-heated atmosphere of progressive Madison. Call a lawyer."

How many protesters does it take to "pack" Washington D.C.?

According to The Washington Post, the city is "packed" when there are "more than 10,000."



That's the WaPo headline as displayed at Memeorandum. The headline is no longer written like that. Now, it is "'Defund The Police' painted on D.C. street as tensions among protesters flare."

Now, my question is: How bad did it get for WaPo to write "tensions... flare"?

More than 10,000 people poured into the nation’s capital on the ninth day of protests over police brutality.... The cause even led to flares of tension among Washington’s protesters, with some embracing a party atmosphere while others furiously spray-painted “Defund The Police” in giant yellow letters a block from the city’s “Black Lives Matter” display....

So there was some graffiti. What else? Turns out it was just a few protesters who were irked that others weren't acting angry:

Kenny Sway, a D.C. musician who had calmed thousands a few days before with his rendition of “Lean On Me,” pushed through the crowd, yelling at everyone he could see to stop dancing and start marching.

“This is not a festival!” he shouted into a microphone. “This is not a f---ing festival!”

The dancing demonstrators mostly ignored him, except for one woman who rolled her eyes and complained to a friend.

“Who made him God?” she asked. “You can’t police a protest.”

She took a puff of what appeared to be marijuana and again swung her hips to the music.

One street over, at the corner of H and Vermont streets, Zamzam Elzain stood on her tiptoes, lofted a sign reading “Silence is betrayal” and yelled desperately at the people meandering by with strollers and cigarettes and, it seemed, little conviction....

“If this is a protest, we get an F!” she yelled at passersby. “This is not supposed to be a block party!”

A man looked up, briefly, then returned to the bag of chips in his hand.

It sounds like the tension was about the lack of sufficient tension!

Other confrontations unfolded as night fell.

So... other than the confrontation about the crowd not being confrontational enough... okay...

There's really only one more "tension" vignette: A white protester guy tells a black Secret Service agent that he ought to quit his job. The agent retorted: "What does your white privilege taste like?"

UPDATE: WaPo changed the headline again. Now, it's "Protesters throng D.C., vowing to be heard after George Floyd’s death." It still hasn't captured what's in the article! There are fascinating vignettes in the article, which I've tried to highlight. I'd like to compliment whoever wrote them. I see the article was written by "Samantha Schmidt, Jessica Contrera, Rebecca Tan, Hannah Natanson and John Woodrow Cox." But I'm going to assume that what I'm enjoying there was written by John Woodrow Cox — not because he's the only man on that vast committee — "vast" is satire — but because when I mouse over the names, his is the one that gets "Enterprise reporter with a focus on narrative journalism." I don't know what "Enterprise reporter" means, but I think what I'm enjoying is "narrative journalism."

ADDED: Wikipedia says: "Enterprise journalism is reporting that is not generated by news or a press release, but rather generated by a reporter or news organization based on developed sources. Tied to 'shoe-leather' reporting and 'beat reporting,' enterprise journalism gets the journalist out of the office and away from the traditional news makers."

And: "Narrative journalism, also referred to as literary journalism, is defined as creative nonfiction that contains accurate, well-researched information.... Mainstream newspaper publications are still wary of supporting narrative journalism too much due to time and space constraints, and will often print the occasional narrative in a Sunday features or supplemental magazine." The names Truman Capote and Tom Wolfe come up.

AND: Here's a piece written by John Woodrow Cox solo — in WaPo 3 days ago — "‘I’m black before I’m anything else’: A police officer’s passionate exchange with protesters."

“My heart walks with you guys because I’ve been this,” Watts told them, pinching his skin, “since the day I came out of my mama. … I’m proud of each and every one of you guys.”

“Keep marching,” he continued. “Do it for me. Do it because right now I’m here and I can’t do what you’re doing. But understand, my heart is over here with you guys.”