Faces in the crowd.

Before Jimmy Carter’s grave grows too much grass, I want to talk about his funeral a little more. It was, of course, interesting to see the seating of the first few rows, where the former presidents and other dignitaries were placed. There was a certain chatter, especially on the right-wing socials, about a shot of Obama smiling as Trump talked to him, which, depending on your degree of insanity, either means UNIPARTY or SEE THEY GET ALONG, SO PUT US BACK ON YOUR CHRISTMAS-CARD LIST. To me, it looked like polite cordiality, but that might be my own prejudice.

Melania looked utterly miserable. Karen Pence stared straight ahead and refused to look at Trump. Michelle Obama was said to have “a scheduling conflict” that could mean anything, but I’m choosing to think it meant no, I will not sit next to that racist piece of shit and you can’t make me. And I was struck by this photo:

The Quayles, Dan and Marilyn, of course. Now, we just watched “The Substance” this weekend, and I will never shame a woman for not going all-in on the insanity of cosmetic surgery, or even procedures. Part of me is glad she doesn’t give a shit about being anything other than properly presentable; I mean, she’s 75 now, and that’s a good thing, as anyone who’s checked out party pix from Mar-a-lago can attest. No one looks their best at a funeral, and it would be gross if anyone put in too much effort. It’s not about you. My only note, as we say in Hollywood, is that it’s time to rethink the hairstyle you’ve had since…at least 1984:

I haven’t thought about this woman in nearly that long. She will forever be fixed in my mind with the late ’80s, in Indiana, when she smiled sometimes but often had that who-farted look on her face. When I’m feeling empathetic, I think it must be terrible to be a smart woman who sailed through law school, and had the sort of steel-trap mind that drove her to choose induced labor for her first child, so that she could take the bar exam on schedule. (She was said to have sat on an inflatable donut.) She always seemed to be about 30 IQ points smarter than her husband, but she was imprisoned by her own politics, which called for her to be happy as a mommy and not ask for anything more. When I’m not feeling empathetic, I recall she was always kind of a bitch; I remember reading that she was distressed to learn the expensive D.C. private school she was enrolling her kids in also had the children of journalists in the student body, like our kids were common white trash who should have been happy in public schools.

It sounds like I’m saying I wish she was softer, but I’m not. I give her credit for her comment, when someone tried to imply her husband had screwed some woman he met at a golf tournament, something like: “Anyone who knows Dan Quayle knows he’d rather play golf than have sex.”

The world needs bitches, too, and this was before the modern political era, when an army of stylists would have descended upon her, dressed her in different clothes, cut and styled her hair and done their best to Stepford-ize her into something she wasn’t. People project whatever they want on you, anyway. Melania is a bitch, too, but there are millions of MAGA chuds who think she’s warm and elegant. Bottom line, Washington is a hard place to be anyone’s spouse, particularly at this level.

So yeah, we saw “The Substance.” An interesting movie overall, but very gory and, as so often is the case these days, about 15 minutes too long. Recommended for an inexpensive rental, but I’ll never watch it again. Demi Moore is naked for much of it, and Margaret Qualley ditto. Although one plays the used-up Older Woman and the other the super-hot Younger Woman, both look pretty ghastly rolling around in a white-tiled bathroom, but that is the point, I think. We rented “Conclave” on Saturday night, and it was way better than I expected.

The week ahead! Let’s enjoy it! We finally have some snow on the ground, so yay.

Posted at 2:00 pm in Current events, Movies |
 

33 responses to “Faces in the crowd.”

  1. alex said on January 12, 2025 at 2:53 pm

    Ah, Marilyn. I remember in 1984 they were making fun of her for wearing a hairstyle from 1964.

    After GHW Bush and Dan Quayle were turned out of office after one term, Marilyn and her sister Nancy Tucker Northcott went on to write conservative potboiler fiction. Their first novel, entitled Embrace the Serpent, was embraced by Theater Oobleck, a Chicago satirical troupe who made raucous fun of it and used it as the basis for a sendup of Dan Quayle’s subsequent efforts to run for president. I remember they had a Fozzie Bear puppet to play the role of David Gergen. Very slapstick and off-the-wall.

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  2. Jakash said on January 12, 2025 at 2:59 pm

    “it’s time to rethink the hairstyle you’ve had since … at least 1984”

    As someone who’s had the same hairstyle since about 1964, I resemble that remark. Once I was released to my own recognizance after an early lifetime of enforced buzz cuts, I refused to have it that short again. For a while I was in step. Then I was mystified in the ’80s or ’90s or whenever it was that I noticed my buddies’ teenage sons going for the really short look voluntarily. The general consensus is that mine has always been too long — not Bob Seger or Dave Grohl long, just mid-’60s Beatles long. Alas, my concern is not the length, but the amount missing from the top. But I refuse to even consider shaving my head, another popular option that cropped up to my mystification.

    I remember once, decades ago, when a woman coworker remarked upon my recent haircut. Every 4 – 6 months, I would get it presentably trimmed and then let it go wild again. I griped, “why do you always mention my haircuts and not the other guys'”? To which she replied that since my haircuts were so infrequent, they were much more noticeable. I couldn’t argue with that!

    tl;dr Mrs. Quayle’s hair is fine by me…

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  3. Jakash said on January 12, 2025 at 3:09 pm

    Tried to add this, but it didn’t work.

    What I wonder is how often Marilyn Quayle and Margaret Qualley are mentioned in such proximity to each other. 😉

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  4. BigHank53 said on January 12, 2025 at 3:25 pm

    I started shaving my head about twenty years ago. It wasn’t so much thinning hair as the fact that my hair was, itself, very thin—thin enough that it wasn’t doing anything. My scalp wasn’t any paler where the hair had been. The heck with it. I think I’ve spent about a hundred and fifty bucks on clippers over the years.

    I will grant that I was fortunate enough to have an ordinary-shaped skull and ears that don’t stick out too much.

    I do have a female co-worker who gets a military cut and then grows it out to collar length. So a haircut about every eight months or so.

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  5. Deborah said on January 12, 2025 at 3:52 pm

    I’ve got the bob haircut which I’ve had most of my life, seriously, since about 3rd or 4th grade. Every once in a while my mother gave me a perm to try to get some waves, but all it did was frizz. Sometimes I had bangs too, I called it the little dutch boy do. I’ve had it off and on long and short but I always seem to come back to the bob about chin length, no bangs. I went through a phase in my midteens when I had a Beatles, kind of bowl cut. In my later teens it was parted in the middle shoulder length in a flip, that flip was impossible to keep for a whole day. My hair color was white blond for my early years, then blond, then dirty blond, then silvery, now white, it’s been white now for about 35 or 40 years, it turned fairly early.

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  6. Jeff Borden said on January 12, 2025 at 4:21 pm

    Have you seen the photo posted by the Carter Center of all the presidents seated at the funeral…except one. The photographer used a pillar inside the cathedral to block out tRump and Melanoma. Pretty cool. No wonder they seated them at the end of the aisle. They’re horrible people. They deserve each other.

    By the way, when tRump is sworn in, who will hold the bible? Melania or Elonia?

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  7. Jeff Gill said on January 12, 2025 at 4:59 pm

    Speaking of David Gergen, just learned he is in care with dementia. His daughter was talking on some program about her father and caregiving, a subject that my ears pick up through three walls and around corners, even if I don’t register which platform I heard it on.

    Loved the interaction between Obama & W. I have no doubt when Michelle heard protocol meant she had to sit between Barack & Donald (“Isn’t this cozy? boy-girl, boy-girl?” ~ Danny Kaye, White Christmas) said “Honey, there is no way on God’s green earth I am going; I can watch it on CNN, then.”

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  8. David C said on January 12, 2025 at 5:51 pm

    Whoever holds the bible, I believe it will light up in neon saying “Replicas of this bible are available for sale for $199.98, proceeds going to my favorite charity, ME!” A sort of waving of the green flag to start the grifting.

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  9. Brandon said on January 12, 2025 at 8:45 pm

    I remember reading that she was distressed to learn the expensive D.C. private school she was enrolling her kids in also had the children of journalists in the student body

    Check out page 68 of the December 1991 issue of Spy magazine.

    https://books.google.com/books?id=HGuuh5SIk_8C&pg=PA68&dq

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  10. ROGirl said on January 13, 2025 at 4:34 am

    I watched Conclave and my mind went to the parallels between the final candidates for pope and the candidates in the presidential election. The cardinals had to decide between an empathetic humanitarian and a fiery anti-Muslim traditionalist. The final twist was the icing on the cake, the performances were good, and it wasn’t too long.

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  11. Alan Stamm said on January 13, 2025 at 7:51 am

    A Substacker named Zuri Stevens is certain that Michelle’s absence was for the reason you think:

    “She despises Donald Trump and there was no way she was going to sit there and pretend. Black women don’t do that. We cannot stand conventions that ask us to be civil to people that by their very nature aren’t.”

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  12. Joe Kobiela said on January 13, 2025 at 9:44 am

    Movie recommendation,
    If you have Netflix check our “carry on” held my attention the whole way thru.
    Pilot Joe

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  13. Heather said on January 13, 2025 at 10:54 am

    Marilyn’s hairstyle reminds me of woman’s style in the Seinfeld episode in which Elaine really wants to tell her friend that it’s outdated. They try to get Kramer to do it because he has no filter–but then he meets her and tells her he loves her hair.

    I don’t know if anyone here is a fan of Neil Gaiman, but there’s a pretty horrifying article out today in New York Magazine about how he abused women sexually. The news broke a while ago but this is the first in-depth investigative piece.

    I was never a total devotee, but I loved The Sandman comic series and his book The Ocean at the End of the World (which according to the article may have been an attempt to deal with his own child abuse). Just depressing how many famous men are revealed to be total creeps, but not surprising. Many men already feel invulnerable and fame and power only make them more so. Just look at who we elected president.

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  14. Jeff Gill said on January 13, 2025 at 11:05 am

    Having been remarkably unfortunate in my mentors over the years*, I thought I had developed a fairly cautious approach to hero worship or role models (as in don’t, and carefully). After Jean Vanier & Alice Munro’s respective stories came out, I realized I can only safely admire my wife; the rest of you? Bless y’all, and I will simply try to regard everyone else with a bemused and compassionate skepticism. (Yes; you, too.)

    *To be clear, I never had to deal with molestation or abuse myself, but people I’d looked up to kept being revealed later to have done so, in some cases horrifically and in volume. It’s an odd feeling; you almost wonder why you were passed over, but it’s a known fact that predators are skilled at identifying the vulnerable, the isolated, and those unlikely to ever reveal what’s going on, and I probably was just much less any of those things. Yet I learned some positive skills from awful people, which comes to mind almost every time those gifts are put into use by me. An odd feeling.

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  15. Julie Robinson said on January 13, 2025 at 1:19 pm

    As I understand it, the Gaiman rumors have been swirling for years, and films based on his books have been canceled. I’m not going to seek out the article because I have limits on how much crap I can absorb in any given day.

    Family in Woodland Hills are now threatened by the fires. Helicopters are delivering water and fire retardant, but winds are getting high again so they may be grounded. Our nephew at UCLA has been evacuated and the school is online this week. LAMary, is your area still safe?

    At the risk of incurring JC’s wrath, I’m going to repeat some of my post from yesterday right before Nancy posted, because it encouraged me. Our Congressman, Maxwell Alejandro Frost, came to our church yesterday, and spoke of the need for progressive Christians to fight back against Christian nationalism. He played drums, asked for prayers for Congressional staffers, and when he spoke to individuals, he gave them 100% of his attention.

    He’s most impressive, and while he’s under no illusions about what he’s facing, he gives me hope.

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  16. Peter said on January 13, 2025 at 1:47 pm

    Oh my God I had no idea that was Dan and Marilyn Quayle. I’m all for everyone keeping natural for as long as you can, but she looks like she could be cast as Frau Blucher in a Young Frankenstein remake, or the nanny in Heidi (and I checked IMDB – the character’s name is Frau Rottenmeier).

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  17. Dexter Friend said on January 13, 2025 at 2:38 pm

    I never could have ID’d 43’s VP. I do remember when Quayle finished his schooling he had the draft board to deal with. He and I applied about the same time for the Indiana National Guard. I was told there was a years-long wait , Quayle was accepted on day one. He fucked around in Indiana while many thousands of working class men were sent off to Viet Nam, yerz troolie included. No sour grapes, that’s privilege and politics, and marrying into Indianapolis Star family percs.
    We are one week from a real shit-storm. Batten down the hatches. Trump sent Vance out to tone down the pardon-them-all edict.
    Many pundits are saying most of Trump’s promises are just bluster. We shall see.

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  18. Scout said on January 13, 2025 at 2:53 pm

    I am experiencing an undercurrent of dread. No matter how many people tell me that he and his minions are all too incompetent to do half of what they threaten, no matter how diligently I avoid social media and political sites I used to frequent… I haven’t slept, I’ve lost weight and nothing feels right in the world these days.

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  19. JodiP said on January 13, 2025 at 3:12 pm

    I’ve drastically cut my news consumption since the election.

    My die hard listens are the Marketplace and Marketplace tech podcasts. This morning, as they began talking about the LA fires, I got incredibly anxious and turned it off. I couldn’t even eat breakfast. I don’t even read Heather Cox Richardson any longer.

    I finally ate breakfast at 11:30.

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  20. susan said on January 13, 2025 at 3:34 pm

    Jennifer Rubin resigned from WaPo, as of this morning, and is now part of a growing substack group of many dismayed journalists and other worried and vocal democracy citizens.

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  21. alex said on January 13, 2025 at 3:37 pm

    Okay, I finally have no reason to continue subscribing to the Washington Post. Jennifer Rubin is quitting. I’ll subscribe to her new publication though:

    https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/13/media/jennifer-rubin-norm-eisen-contrarian-washington-post/

    That Spy magazine article on the Quayles was a hoot and I recommend reading the entire thing. I’d forgotten what a good publication it was. It was Spy that published pix of Schwarzenegger’s itsy-bitsy naughty bits way back before he got caught with them stuck in the maid.

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  22. Jeff Borden said on January 13, 2025 at 3:37 pm

    Shit already is hitting the fans. tRump goons are questioning members of the National Security Council about who they voted for in 2024, who they’ve donated money to and whether any social media posts slurred tRump. Our childish little felon and rapist is so very, very sensitive, you know.

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  23. Dave said on January 13, 2025 at 4:23 pm

    For years, we’ve watched the evening news, either ABC or NBC, and sometimes both via recording. After the election, we had to quit because every single day, that fool would show up on the screen and we just couldn’t stand it.

    My brother-in-law, my wife’s only sibling, is suffering from poor health, he’s only four months younger than me but he’s had bad health for years and ended up back in the hospital yesterday. Every morning, he gets up and watches that phony news network until his wife makes him turn it off, they are diametrically opposed in their political views, this from a marriage over fifty years now. We fear for his health and I don’t know where I’m going with this but my wife wonders how her brother came to be this way. OTOH, I’ve two brothers and two sisters and suspect three of the four are almost as bad.

    One has to wonder who is going to be left at The Washington Post.

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  24. jim h said on January 13, 2025 at 4:45 pm

    Alexandra Petri, but she just announced she’s taking parental leave.

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  25. Julie Robinson said on January 13, 2025 at 5:26 pm

    And Dorothy’s daughter, I believe.

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  26. alex said on January 13, 2025 at 6:31 pm

    I’ll miss Eugene Robinson, but as long as I have free articles to gift I might as well share some schadenfreude:

    https://wapo.st/40vYN91

    Bannon and Musk are bitchfighting over who gets to be with their sugar daddy.

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  27. Sherri said on January 13, 2025 at 7:05 pm

    I’m having trouble sleeping, and I’m being very careful with my news consumption. I’ve got a mid-back strain, which is interfering with my lifting, which is making it more difficult for me to manage my stress. I could probably clear up the back strain if I could blast it with ibuprofen for a few days, and I thought I was going to be able to, but then my kidney doctor had me do some bloodwork and was unhappy with the results. So now we’ve switched my blood pressure meds to see if that improves my bloodwork, but she wants me to hold off using any ibuprofen for now (she had given me clearance to use it for no more than three days in a row and no more than six days a month, because of my high blood pressure.)

    I try to do all the right things, and I still have all these chronic conditions to manage, we’re in the no sunshine part of the year here, the GOP wants to attach conditions on aid to California, and a convicted felon and insurrectionist is going to be sworn in as president on MLK Day. Things are just great!

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  28. Suzanne said on January 13, 2025 at 7:27 pm

    I read one Neil Gaiman book, American Gods, and thought it perfectly awful. There was so much disgusting behavior and gratuitous violence and sex that I couldn’t grasp why it’s so well regarded. It’s tone leaves me able to realistically believe that he’s been up to some creepy behavior.

    I, too, am trying to keep my head above water but it’s a struggle. I truly believe things will be much worse than most people can grasp. I canceled my WaPo subscription a few months ago. It’s sad to see a once great paper go down the tubes so fast.

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  29. Carter Cleland said on January 13, 2025 at 7:49 pm

    To any of you who have Apple+ or MAX, I highly recommend Jimmy Carter: Rock N’ Roll President. It came out in 2020, and has loads of great moments with the 39th President, the musicians who raised money for him, and some of his poetry. It’s really great, and a reminder of what a decent and compassionate man he was. As was Roslyn.

    (Personal Note. I’m sitting in on a WNUR.org (Northwestern Univ.) radio show tomorrow, Tuesday, at 12:00, where my friend Lou, and I will be “unpacking” the doc.)
    https://www.jimmycartermovie.com/

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  30. alex said on January 14, 2025 at 7:39 am

    Another gift article before I deep-six my subscription — Jack Smith’s report on the January 6 insurrection:

    https://wapo.st/3E3OJLD

    In scrolling through the document, I’m most struck by how inured we’ve all become to what was once considered shocking.

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  31. Jeff Gill said on January 14, 2025 at 8:07 am

    A little light criming. Nothing to see here, move along.

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  32. Suzanne said on January 14, 2025 at 8:51 am

    RIP United States of America
    Cause of death: Suicide

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  33. SusanG said on January 14, 2025 at 5:37 pm

    Breaking news-Michelle Obama will not attend the inauguration. Either she and Barack are divorcing, or she just can’t stand being in the presence of Trump.

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