Sunday was the St. Patrick’s Day parade here in Detroit. It would have been nice to go. but parades have to have at least a minimal festive atmosphere, and it was 9 degrees when I got up and barely nudged above 20 the rest of the day. So much for the parade, then. Maybe next year.

Kate and I went bike-shopping for her; my favorite used-bike shop had a lovely aluminum-frame Trek road bike, like new, on sale for a killer price, and I wanted her to check it out sooner rather than later. She took it around the block and said, upon returning, that it was a nice bike and also that she couldn’t feel her ears: “Not the outside part, the inside.”

We bought the bike. I asked them to install a second set of brake levers on it, and the guy said it might take a few days. Take your time, son; this spring is still a ways down the road.

And that was about as exciting as the weekend got, although it was lovely and restful and included dinner with friends and a trip to the market and the usual activities. The week ahead will be busy and, if all goes well, should fly. I could use a flying week. Also a warm one.

A few bits of bloggage today, starting with the obvious troll bait: The impending death of Fred Phelps. He may well be gone by the time you read this, and I hope it’s a reflection of my state of mind regarding the relative importance of Fred Phelps that I seriously couldn’t care less. I guess the Westboro Baptist Church was remarkable at one point, but they managed to alienate pretty much the entire world, both right-wing warmongers and left-wing gay sympathizers (and left-wing warmongers and right-wing gay sympathizers), and everyone in between. In the end, the Westboro Baptist Church consisted of Phelps and his extended family, and not even that — the news of his health problems was communicated by one estranged son and confirmed by a second estranged son, with the added detail that Phelps himself had been kicked out of his own tiny church sometime last year. So, mission accomplished! You went looking for rancor and found it, and will now die alone with only hospice nurses attending. May this be the last bit of attention paid to them.

More interesting, in terms of high-profile deaths, is Gene Weingarten’s brief appreciation of Joe McGinniss. It is lean and honest and absolutely correct that McGinniss was unfairly maligned by Janet Malcolm in a lengthy New Yorker profile. It also gives credit where it is due, for “Fatal Vision,” McGinniss’ famous, and infamous, examination of the Jeffrey MacDonald murder case. I’ve always said that a writer’s first duty is to tell the truth, and sometime during what was supposed to be a sympathetic examination of the wrongly convicted MacDonald, the writer became convinced otherwise. And so, as Weingarten writes, what was he to do?

What was McGinniss supposed to have done when he realized, midway through the reporting, that the man he was writing about had lied to everyone? That he had killed his wife and older daughter in a rage — and then calmly, methodically hacked to death his sleeping two-year old, stabbing her 33 times with a knife and ice pick, just to strengthen his alibi? Was McGinniss required to dutifully inform the murderer that he now believed him guilty, and invite him to withdraw his cooperation if he wished, possibly killing the book outright, but certainly killing it as a meaningful, enlightening, powerful examination of the mind of a monster?

There is an implicit covenant between a writer and a subject; in return for whatever agreement you might make for the telling of the story, the subject must tell you the truth. If he lies, all deals are off. It is impossible for a subject to be less truthful than Jeffrey MacDonald was with Joe McGinniss: he misrepresented the central fact of his story, his own guilt.

Exactly.

And while we’re tangentially on the subject of God’s feelings about fags, I also recommend this piece about Scott Lively, the American evangelical minister behind Uganda’s draconian anti-gay laws:

Lively is not the only US evangelical who has fanned the flames of anti-gay sentiment in Uganda. As they lose ground at home, where public opinion and law are rapidly shifting in favor of gay equality, religious conservatives have increasingly turned their attention to Africa. And Uganda, with its large Christian population, has been particularly fertile ground for their crusade.

His influence in Uganda is bad enough, but this is the clown behind this charming bit of amateur historical research:

Opponents likened Lively and his colleagues to Nazis and lobbed bricks wrapped in swastika flags through the windows of businesses supporting the measure. OCA’s aggressive campaign, likening gays to pedophiles, was also blamed for a steep uptick in gay hate crimes. In the end, Measure 9 was defeated by a 13-point margin. Undeterred, OCA began promoting measures barring special protections for homosexuals on the city and county levels. Lively, who bristled at the Nazi comparisons, also threw himself into studying the Third Reich and eventually grew convinced that gay men—some of whom occupied senior posts in the Nazi regime—were the driving force behind the Holocaust. “Everything that we think about when we think about Nazis actually comes from the minds and perverted ideas of homosexuals,” he told an Oregon public access television station in 1994.

Surely a closet case himself.

Finally, where is the plane? Where is the plane? And happy St. Patrick’s Day. Hope it’s a little warmer where you are.

I don’t think it’s any secret that most people who write for a living eventually want to write books. At least one, anyway. There’s something about that ISDN ISBN number that says: Ah, immortality.

But alas, it seems your best shot at author-hood these days is to be a troll. From Amy Chua to the Princeton Mom, the path to success is: Needle the shit out of people. Chua:

The “triple package” is touted as the combination of magic ingredients that enable certain ethnic groups to achieve extraordinary success in modern America. Chua and Rubenfeld identify three key qualities: a superiority complex, a sense of insecurity and “impulse control”.

It should not surprise you to learn that both Chua and her husband, who is Jewish, both come from certain ethnic groups that achieve extraordinary success in modern America. They just want to help! As to the Princeton Mom, aka Susan Patton, well, she’s a real piece of work:

“Marry Smart” (which Patton plans to follow with Parent Smart and Work Smart) advocates starting the husband-search during the college years. Its advice ranges from practical (“plan for your personal happiness with the same commitment and dedication that you plan for your professional success”) to old-fashioned (“it’s the lonely cow that gives away free milk”) to charmingly kooky (an ode to her “lifelong imaginary friend” Caroline Kennedy) to shockingly offensive (a chapter entitled “Birds of a Feather” denounces interracial and interfaith relationships). She also questions the legitimacy of date rape. “‘Date rape’ is like ‘politically correct,’” Patton tells me, as she holds out a bone for Lucille. “Either something is correct or it isn’t. Saying something is ‘politically correct’ is like saying you ‘almost won.’ You ‘almost won’? That means you lost.”

What helpful advice for young women. What a penetrating, forward-thinking insight for a rapidly diversifying culture. What crap.

Oh, but why start the weekend off on a sour note? My workplace officially moves to the D today, it’s Pi Day, and there’s no reason not to spend some time thinking about, oh, the missing Malaysian 777, for instance, which now could be en route to Mars, for all the rest of us know.

The search for a missing Malaysian jetliner with 239 people on board could expand west into the Indian Ocean based on information that the plane may have flown for four more hours after it dropped from radar, U.S. officials said Thursday.

A senior American official said the information came from a data stream sent directly by engines aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. If the two engines on the Boeing 777 functioned for up to four additional hours, that could strengthen concern that a rogue pilot or hijacker took control of the plane early Saturday over the Gulf of Thailand.

The sea is so, so big. Who knows where the thing is?

As to the Ban Bossy movement, I have nothing profound to say, only that any writer who voluntarily gives up standard language ought to get their card pulled. What a waste of time. Maybe that’s Sheryl Sandberg’s next book.

Finally, I bid you all a great weekend. I think I will…pine for spring.

OK, OK, I know: Too much bitching about winter this year. But now that we’ve finally had a few days of thaw, when all of the season’s accumulated trash and dog crap and uncollected leaves are daring to emerge — let’s call it The Season of Muddy Paws — guess what’s in store for tonight?

At this point, I’m too numb to complain. And I’m not entirely convinced this will even arrive; seven inches just feels like garden-variety sky-is-falling weather terrorism at this point, but who knows? I’ve been getting up early to exercise the last couple of weeks, and I’m setting the alarm. Swim today, spin tomorrow. It’s good to start your day knowing you already got the physical jerks out of the way. (EDIT: I turned off the alarm and slept another hour. Not sorry I did, either.)

Yes, it’s another of my occasional flirtations with the pool. It’ll be the best thing ever until it isn’t anymore, but I’m paid up at Kate’s old middle school to swim twice a week for half an hour through the middle of June. Gotta get my money’s worth.

So. The internet exploded yesterday when the video of the president meeting with Zach Galifianakis dropped. You can watch it here if you weren’t one of the 7 million who watched it yesterday. I will cop to laughing, mainly because I’m a longtime fan of public-access television, and “Between Two Ferns” is a better parody than “Wayne’s World” by a long shot. I thought the only thing that could have made it funnier was a piece of freestanding lattice with a light aimed at it, casting shadows on the seamless paper behind them, because Depth. My earliest instruction in television, at WARL, my high school’s closed-circuit station, included lessons in how to add depth to the set, and if ferns weren’t involved, ficus trees were, and yes, there was a lattice. So already I’m giggling, and then the pixelated graphics came up, and without the president opening his mouth, I’m pretty much in his pocket.

Of course, not everyone was. According to Wonkette, Jim Avila of ABC News asked this question at the daily White House press briefing:

“How much discussion was there in the White House about the dignity of the office and whether or not, in order to reach these people who don’t watch us at 6:30, or who don’t watch this briefing … how much the dignity of the office might be lost? This is an interview like no other probably ever done by a president.”

When all else fails, invoke the Dignity of the Office, yes. Because Bill Clinton never played sax with Arsenio Hall, and George Bush didn’t walk an aircraft carrier flight deck in a jumpsuit– or should I say junksuit? And never mind the nominees — Bob Dole in a Viagra commercial and all the rest of it. Yes, by all means, sitting down with a comedian is leagues different from sitting down with Jay Leno, because he’s practically like David Frost, right?

I liked the plaintive little line about “these people who don’t watch us at 6:30,” too. I haven’t watched network TV news in probably decades. It’s not just the kids, Jim.

That Wonkette post includes a great visual punchline, which I encourage you to check out.

OK, so what else? I see a few of you picked up on Neil Steinberg’s excellent blog yesterday, but if you don’t read the comments, you missed it, so click. It’s a second-day column on the reader reactions to his first-day column about guns. Word:

This is, at bottom, a religious issue, if not religious, then certainly a matter of faith. Their faith is not in law, not in God, not in society, but in guns. There is certainly a religious fanaticism to all this. It’s a passion, almost sexual in nature. No wonder they don’t want anyone drawing attention to it. They are like onanists caught in the act, blustering through their embarrassment, hurt and humiliation, shouting at the intruder. Go away. So faith and a kind of twisted psycho-sexual fixation. Guns give comfort and security to people who obviously sorely lack both. You can’t argue that. Guns are owned by people who feel they need guns. I know gun owners on my block. Lots of guns. Yet we live in the same peaceful place. We’ve talked about it. Nobody is going to yank that blankie from them. One reader wrote to me that Obama was to blame for the sale of 100 million guns, and I wrote back asking why, given that he has done absolutely nothing to restrict gun sales and no rational person believes he ever will.

And the reader said, not realizing how right he is: yes, but they were afraid he might.

My favorite silly blog, Animals Talking in All Caps, took a months-long break a while back, while its proprietor moved to Scotland and began a new life there, but it appears to be back, oh it’s back and it’s so, so wonderful.

One for you cat lovers.

Also, don’t miss Ta-Nehisi Coates on the singular gall of Condi Rice and especially — especially — Emily Bazelon, who read the briefs in support the Hobby Lobby birth-control case so the rest of us don’t have to. These people are out there, folks:

The Beverly LaHaye Institute, the research arm of Concerned Women for America, drives home this point, arguing that the government should have considered:

the documented negative effects the widespread availability of contraceptives has on women’s ability to enter into and maintain desired marital relationships. This in turn leads to decreased emotional wellbeing and economic stability (out-of-wedlock childbearing being a chief predictor of female poverty), as well as deleterious physical health consequences arising from, inter alia, sexually transmitted infections and domestic violence.

And so, as the AFLC argues, contraceptives of all kinds aren’t medical or related to health care at all. They are “procedures involving gravely immoral practices.” Protected sex demeans women by making men disrespect them. (Just as Pope Paul VI did decades ago, the AFLC presents this as true inside marriage as well as out.) By separating sex from childbearing, birth control is to blame for the erosion of marriage, for the economic difficulties of single motherhood, and even for the rotten behavior of men who beat their girlfriends and wives. Birth control is the original sin of modernity. Its widespread availability changed everything, for the worse.

Whew. I’ve known some anti-birth control activists in my life. An amazing number had fertility problems in their own marriages. Not too Psych 101 there at all.

The week is at its midpoint! The snow? We shall see..

Oh, how awful it is to read the interview with Peter Lanza, Adam’s father. Heaven help the parent of the oddball kid who runs this far off the rails:

All parenting involves choosing between the day (why have another argument at dinner?) and the years (the child must learn to eat vegetables). Nancy’s error seems to have been that she always focussed on the day, in a ceaseless quest to keep peace in the home she shared with the hypersensitive, controlling, increasingly hostile stranger who was her son. She thought that she could keep the years at bay by making each day as good as possible, but her willingness to indulge his isolation may well have exacerbated the problems it was intended to ameliorate.

And:

Peter has offered to meet with the victims’ families, and two have taken up his offer. “It’s gut-wrenching,” he said. “A victim’s family member told me that they forgave Adam after we spent three hours talking. I didn’t even know how to respond. A person that lost their son, their only son.” The only reason Peter was talking to anyone, including me, was to share information that might help the families or prevent another such event. “I need to get some good from this. And there’s no place else to find any good. If I could generate something to help them, it doesn’t replace, it doesn’t—” He struggled to find the words. “But I would trade places with them in a heartbeat if that could help.”

I wish we knew better how to deal with people like Adam Lanza. I wish we didn’t live in this fucked-up world where a woman living on a $325,000 annual alimony payment in one of the safest cities in the country still feels so endangered she has to fill her house with weaponry.

Yeah, you can tell it was a Monday. A beautiful Monday, though — it almost hit 50 degrees. Wendy and I went for a walk, splashing through the puddles. They won’t be puddles long, though, because we’re getting another warm day tomorrow and then, Tuesday night? Four more inches of snow!!!!!!

Let’s cut this short, then.

The woman at the center of an anti-Obamacare ad running here has been knocked around pretty bad; it turns out the facts in the Americans for Prosperity were, well, not factual. Now, it’s getting worse, as it’s turning out…well, let the newspaper tell it:

A Dexter cancer patient featured in a conservative group’s TV ad campaign denouncing her new health care coverage as “unaffordable” will save more than $1,000 this year under the plan, The Detroit News has learned.

Julie Boonstra, 49, starred last month in an emotional television ad sponsored by Americans for Prosperity that implied Democratic U.S. Rep. Gary Peters’ vote for the Affordable Care Act made her medication so “unaffordable” she could die. Peters of Bloomfield Township is running for an open U.S. Senate seat against Republican Terri Lynn Land.

Boonstra said Monday her new plan she dislikes is the Blue Cross Premier Gold health care plan, which caps patient responsibility for out-of-pocket costs at $5,100 a year, lower than the federal law’s maximum of $6,350 a year. It means the new plan will save her at least $1,200 compared with her former insurance plan she preferred that was ended under Obamacare’s coverage requirements.

Oh, well, whatever. The new AFP ads will feature actors, according to Stephen Colbert, and I think he’s actually correct.

Bad news for Rails to Trails. SCOTUS says when the railroad loses its easement, the property has to revert to the owners of the parcels they were carved from. Fuck yeah, freedom! Go ride your bike somewhere else, hippie.

If you can make any sense of this Stephen Breyer quote at all, do clue us all in, though:

“I certainly think bicycle paths are a good idea,” he said, but “for all I know, there is some right-of-way that goes through people’s houses, you know, and all of a sudden they are going to be living in their house, and suddenly a bicycle will run through it.”

The week is officially underway.

It’s difficult to write about not being beautiful. It’s so easy to sound envious. Or self-pitying. People want to leap to your defense: Yes, you are! You’re a beautiful person! That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking physical beauty, the kind that gets you voted Hot rather than Not, the mathematic formulas that make up the perfect proportions of your body parts. I’m not talking about making the best of what you’ve got. I’m talking gorgeousness that comes from being kissed by the angels.

I’ve probably told this story before: Sometime in maybe week three of the Princess Diana Worldwide Mourning Tour, I wrote a column suggesting maybe, just maybe, the world had gone a little nuts and it might be a good time to step back and ask ourselves what, exactly, we were so upset about. A reader responded in a letter: “I wonder if you wrote that because you are envious of the attention Princess Diana is getting, because you are so plain.” This is what people think un-beauty is worth: That it makes you envy the dead. The beautiful dead, anyway.

Another story I’ve probably told before: Once, many years ago, I attended a horse show with a friend at the time, one blessed with the whole package — tall, slim, lovely,  great eyes. The show was at a hunt club in Snootyville, and I was happily surprised to find people were anything but. It was a gray, chilly, drizzly day, and we were watching one class at ringside, next to a large pickup truck parked at the rail. The door opened. “Would you ladies like a warmer seat?” the man inside said, inviting us in. My friend took the front seat and I slid into the back. It was a minute before I realized the man behind the wheel, now paying a great deal of attention to my friend, was judging the class. In the middle of doing a job he was being paid for, he’d taken the time to offer aid to the leggy beauty out in the rain. Her, and her less-attractive friend.

It was like that all day — merchants gave us close, helpful attention in the sales tents, the waiter at the restaurant where we ate lunch performed outstanding service with a smile. It took hours before I realized Snootyville was so welcoming not because we were wrong about the place, but because one of us had the sort of face and body that just makes people…nicer.

Over the years, I’ve seen great-looking women get extra everything — attention, praise, career advancement, and as to this last, I stand firm. I’ve seen it happen so many times I simply won’t argue it anymore. It happens, and it happens a lot.

If Princess Diana had led the exact same life she did, but looked like Princess Anne, would the world have collapsed in mourning her death? Would Sarah Palin be known outside Alaska if her looks hadn’t bewitched Bill Kristol? Do we even have to ask these questions?

Being born beautiful is like being born with a great deal of money. Like money, beauty comes with its own problems, but they’re problems anyone with the opposite set of problems would trade for. A gorgeous woman may complain that she never really knows if a man likes her for her, or for her face and body. The next time someone says this, suggest she go to a plastic surgeon and have some lumps of fat added to her thighs, or a bump to her nose, or maybe she could just shave her head or put on 35 pounds. Ha ha! Will never happen. You probably couldn’t even find a doctor who’d do such a thing.

Which brings me to Kim Novak, again. As much as I liked Farran Smith Nehme’s excellent take on the pathetic sight of Novak, now 81, showing up at the Oscars with her wrecked face, a tiny part of me was not kind. Poor pretty lady isn’t pretty anymore and can’t stand it, boo fucking hoo. If you’re invited to the Oscars at 81, you show up in a nice dress and you read from the cards, because if you can’t get over yourself by 81, what’s the use of anything?

But then I read Laura Lippman’s equally excellent take on Novak, on faces of both genders, on the way we see and don’t see ourselves.

I am generally unhappy with all photographs of myself these days. I look older, fatter, messier than I am in my head. When I pick up my iPad or iPhone, the reflection I see in those devices makes me shudder.

…Yes, beauty isn’t exactly my stock in trade and I am only a semi-public person. I am ridiculous. So all I could think was, God love you, Kim Novak. We criticize women for aging. We criticize women for not aging. We criticize women’s bodies. We criticize women for bad plastic surgery.

You know who doesn’t get criticized? People who look great and pretend they’ve never had surgery. Come on, someone must be getting terrific results or no one would do this. I wish that every person who walks a red carpet was annotated or wore a label, detailing exactly how much work they’ve had done. Not to shame them, quite the opposite. We need to stop lying about how people age. We need to own our Botox, our fillers, our nose jobs, our liposuction. Remember that crazy alibi in Legally Blonde, when the fitness guru accused of murder was getting liposuction and would rather go to jail than admit it? That happens in real life. Not the alibi, but the lipo.

I’m with Laura that we should probably all ease up on ourselves, starting with Kim Novak. But I’d like to reserve the right to be a little judgey about those of you were were kissed by the angels. I’d like you to come out and say, Yep, I’m very lucky, and I got that promotion because I batted my baby blues at my boss and he liked the shape of my ass. You probably deserved that job. Sorry-not-sorry. The friend who went with me to the horse show? She married her way richer boss. I found her on Facebook a while ago, a little wrinkled, a touch of gray, but with the same killer cheekbones. Lucky.

So, some bloggage:

What’s it like to walk across eight miles of Lake Michigan ice to North Manitou Island? It’s like this. Great photos.

What I said the other day about appreciating fashion as art? One aspect is how it relates to the times in which it is made. A good piece on the fashions of the 1930s.

Finally, Charles Pierce on Sarah Palin. A gas.

A long entry for what promises to be a long week. Expect scantiness later. We shall see, but onward we go.

Texas and Arizona are getting all the ink, but Michigan is having its own gay-rights moment this week. A lesbian couple is seeking to overcome the state constitution’s same-sex marriage ban in federal court, so they can get hitched and formally adopt the three special-needs they’re raising together. They’re already a family, but the children had to be adopted by each woman as singletons, which puts their custody at risk should one of them go the way of all flesh.

This family is right out of 21st century Central Casting, and absolutely adorable.

I predict the state is going to lose. Their central argument is that the ban is valid because being raised by gay people is objectively worse for kids than by straight ones, and they’ve got the experts to prove it:

In meetings hosted by the Heritage Foundation in Washington in late 2010, opponents of same-sex marriage discussed the urgent need to generate new studies on family structures and children, according to recent pretrial depositions of two witnesses in the Michigan trial and other participants. One result was the marshaling of $785,000 for a large-scale study by Mark Regnerus, a meeting participant and a sociologist at the University of Texas who will testify in Michigan.

The judge has telegraphed his thinking before; he continued the case for several months until the SCOTUS cases were decided, and with no jury, a lot of people see this as yet another domino ready to fall.

And so we arrive at the end of the week; how long was it, exactly? Twenty days, or forty? Wendy’s going to the vet tomorrow, as she has not shaken her malaise. It’s supposed to be 7 below by daybreak and more snow is coming over the weekend. Can you see why I’m not exactly energetic at the keyboard these past few days? Let’s have a good weekend, all.

Huh. Well, isn’t this interesting:

Federal health authorities on Tuesday reported a stunning 43 percent drop in the obesity rate among 2- to 5-year-old children over the past decade, the first broad decline in an epidemic that often leads to lifelong struggles with weight and higher risks for cancer, heart disease and stroke.

The drop emerged from a major federal health survey that experts say is the gold standard for evidence on what Americans weigh.

That is, indeed, a stunning drop. If the data is good, it’s…well, it’s unlikely due to just one thing. Complicated problems rarely have simple solutions, so my guess is, it’s a combination of things, from doubling food-stamp dollars at farmers’ markets (which they do in Detroit) to curtailing garbage snacks in school vending machines to simple awareness, awareness, awareness.

There was a restaurant critic at the other newspaper in Fort Wayne, who was, for most of the time she was on the job, morbidly obese. Then she lost a pile of weight, gained some back, and I don’t know where she is at the moment, but I caught a radio interview with her during her skinny phase. She was telling the audience how much she had to learn when she was dieting, oh my goodness. She revealed that she’d routinely eat a package of Pepperidge Farm Lemon Nut cookies at her desk every morning, and she thought they were good for her — after all, the had “lemon” and “nut” in their name, and aren’t those things healthy? (Apparently the “cookie” part was blurred out on her package.) You laugh, but I bet more overweight people than you’d imagine have this sort of magical thinking. Maybe now they are simply paying closer attention.

That’s why, even though I think it’s not much of a step, I don’t really object to things like calorie counts on fast-food menus or restrictions on enormous sodas in New York City. I don’t eat much fast food, but when I do, I pay attention to calorie counts. I think, “I’m starving and I’m getting a burger, but I’m leaving off the cheese and — oh, this is hard — skipping the fries. The burger will fill me up, and there will be french fries to eat on another day. Just not today.”

And if I really, really, really want the fries, hell, I get them. I just take a moment to ask whether I really, really, really want them, or am just ordering them out of habit.

But this is kids we’re talking about here, which suggests maybe parents are making smarter decisions in regard to their children, too. Which is very, very good.

And yes, I give the first lady some of this credit; after all, it’s her signature issue. Not that I expect many to give her a shred of credit for it, though. Because she wants to take away Mrs. Palin’s Big Gulp, of course. And look how skinny Sarah is!

OK, enough of this. As predicted, today was a better day than yesterday, but it was busy, and now I must toddle off to bed. I leave you with? Bunnies!

Happy Wednesday, all.

You think you’ve seen it all when it comes to anti-gay b.s., but I have to agree with the obvious click bait of the headline here: Kansas’ Anti-Gay Segregation Bill Is an Abomination. (But why oh why, Slate, are you using up-style headlines? It’s So Old-Fashioned, And Not In a Good Way.)

Seriously:

When passed, the new law will allow any individual, group, or private business to refuse to serve gay couples if “it would be contrary to their sincerely held religious beliefs.” Private employers can continue to fire gay employees on account of their sexuality. Stores may deny gay couples goods and services because they are gay. Hotels can eject gay couples or deny them entry in the first place. Businesses that provide public accommodations—movie theaters, restaurants—can turn away gay couples at the door. And if a gay couple sues for discrimination, they won’t just lose; they’ll be forced to pay their opponent’s attorney’s fees. As I’ve noted before, anti-gay businesses might as well put out signs alerting gay people that their business isn’t welcome.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. In addition to barring all anti-discrimination lawsuits against private employers, the new law permits government employees to deny service to gays in the name of “religious liberty.” This is nothing new, but the sweep of Kansas’ statute is breathtaking. Any government employee is given explicit permission to discriminate against gay couples—not just county clerks and DMV employees, but literally anyone who works for the state of Kansas. If a gay couple calls the police, an officer may refuse to help them if interacting with a gay couple violates his religious principles. State hospitals can turn away gay couples at the door and deny them treatment with impunity. Gay couples can be banned from public parks, public pools, anything that operates under the aegis of the Kansas state government.

Does anyone in the Kansas legislature have any shame about being featured on “Ken Burns’ Gay Revolution,” premiering in 2020? I guess not. Who are these people, who can simultaneously feel like the most oppressed, put-upon souls in human history — besides Jesus, of course — and pass legislation like this?

Of course, most of these things won’t happen; homophobia isn’t as widespread as the Kansas legislature perhaps thinks. But it will happen. If I were gay in Kansas, I’d leave. Let the Fuller Brush Co. hire some heterosexuals to do their advertising.

And what, exactly, is being protected here? This, the single most excruciating thing I’ve watched in a good long while. Thanks, Velvet Goldmine, for bringing it to my attention.

And with that, the last day before vacation dawns, a pretty busy one. I leave you with a recording of a weird sound that swept across St. Paul early Thursday morning — it’s oddly musical. Explanation at the link.

And finally, it turns out Michelle Obama wore a formal dress to a formal event. THE NERVE.

Happy valentine’s day! As for me, Laissez les bons temps rouler. At least it’ll be warmer.

I know this stupid blog has readers across the country, so I must ask our Milwaukee correspondents what they make of the Stradivarius theft — and subsequent recovery — in their fair city.

I first heard about it via this New York Times story, which did not disappoint:

It should have been one of those nights musicians live for. Frank Almond, the concertmaster of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra for nearly two decades, had just closed a chamber concert in his own “Frankly Music” series with Messiaen’s hushed, eerily intense “Quartet for the End of Time.” Mr. Almond drew the graceful, ringing high notes of the finale from his prized 1715 Stradivarius violin, producing a tone so intensely focused that the audience in the Wisconsin Lutheran College’s 388-seat auditorium sat in awed silence for 20 seconds before applauding.

But the glow of the moment evaporated quickly, once Mr. Almond, 49, stepped into the college art center’s parking lot at 10:20 p.m. Monday, his violin carefully swaddled against the subzero temperatures and minus-25-degree wind chill. And as he neared his car, a figure stepped up to him and shot him with a stun gun.

It happened in a matter of seconds: Mr. Almond dropped the violin, the attacker scooped it up and jumped into a late 1980s or early ’90s maroon or burgundy minivan, where an accomplice was waiting to speed away.

Based on that early information, I figured the violin was already halfway around the world, bound for a Russian, Chinese or perhaps a Japanese mobster’s bunker, there to lie in suspended animation, decay setting in for lack of proper care and play, until it was found years later, maybe when the mobster’s junkie nephew tried to pawn it.

I mean, clearly, this was the work of professionals, no?

No. Or, at least, not very skilled ones. The instrument was recovered in Milwaukee, in the attic of a home, and two guys, one of them named Universal Allah, are in custody. Neither one looks anything like like Alan Rickman or Jeremy Irons, which is the only acceptable face for this crime, IMO — European, faded good looks and a deep appreciation for classical music as played by stringed instruments. Hell, I’d believe Hannibal Lecter stole the thing before these guys.

What, do you suppose, is the story here? More will be revealed, I expect.

Alan informed me that most Stradivari and similar violins are technically owned by zillionaires, who form buyers’ syndicates and lend them to worthy musicians to play. Makes sense. They really need to be played to stay in shape, just as pearls need to be worn to stay pretty. I expect Frank Almond will continue to play this one, but he’ll be walked to his car by orchestra hall security now.

So, then. In the bloggage today, a friend sent this along, one of those great data maps on the most pleasant places to live. I notice that when I moved from Fort Wayne to Detroit, I gained eight “pleasant” days a year along with a radically higher homicide rate, so hey! Win! The most pleasant places are all in coastal or near-coastal California, the least-pleasant in Montana, Nevada, Wyoming and some place called East of Cedarville, Calif. Discuss. (The fact North Dakota isn’t contributing to the least-pleasant list is a mystery to me, too.)

I only read two sections of the Detroit Free Press when it arrives on Sunday, so I missed the Great Cleavage Debate, which followed this story, which is probably good, because if I’d read this sentence cold, my head might have exploded:

Cleavage is a powerful, powerful thing.

The story became a journalism story, mainly because of a poll attached about who has the best cleavage, blah blah blah. That’s not what interests me today. Rather, I don’t think I’m working with the same definition as everybody else. What, exactly, is cleavage? I thought cleavage occurred when you had enough breast heft that, when displayed in a low-cut neckline, you actually had a cleft. By that measure, two of the three women in the accompanying photo don’t actually have cleavage at all. Am I wrong? Don’t misunderstand, they all look great, but in that picture, only Sofia Vergara is rocking cleavage. Amy Adams has a lovely top half, but she’s slight-breasted enough, in the ’70s style, to be free of it. And Lupita Nyong’o has one of those enviable rock-hard fashion bodies that makes every dress look fantastic, in large part because she doesn’t have much boobage at all.

You guys take 20 or 30 minutes, examine the picture, maybe do some outside research, and get back to me on that. I have a weekend to start. Hope yours is great.

Somehow I got sucked down a Woody Allen rabbit hole today. I really wish that hadn’t happened, because it makes my brain spin like a Tilt-a-Whirl.

When I was a columnist, I sometimes got thoroughly sick of having to have an opinion about everything, and the Woody Allen situation today is one of those things that I’m simply refusing to engage with, like a late movie you’re just waiting to fall asleep in front of. No matter how many times I turn it over in my head, I come up with the same conclusions:

1) Someone is lying, and it is impossible to know who that is.
2) In our country, when we’re not sure about someone’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, we don’t convict.
3) Of all the children in the world who are abused every day, whatever did or didn’t happen to Dylan Farrow constitutes getting off easy, as these things go. (A friend of mine is a therapist; her small talk turns your hair white.)
4) Speaking truth is important. So is healing.

Someone brought up something the other day, in connection with a completely different matter: Why do we spend so much time looking at what doesn’t work, instead of what does? If the numbers of abused children are as high as we’re told, surely not every single one of them is so traumatized that the sight of their abuser makes them vomit. What works? Is it therapy, revenge, inner strength? Surely there’s something good to be plucked from this rancid shitshow other than I believe this one and that one is lying.

By the way, I always separate art from the artist. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be anything good to watch, listen to or experience. Artists are frequently shits. This is not a secret.

That said, here’s a fascinating XOJane roundup of all the well-known artists who have gone for young girls. It’s sort of sick, actually.

Bloggage? OK, sure. Of all the things I’ve read about Philip Seymour Hoffman since Sunday, this is the second-worst:

One continuing mystery of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death is this: Why was he in such abject need of a shoddy, solitary and dangerous chemical high when he knew the pure joy that comes with just being with your kids?

And if you’re wondering what’s the worst, it’s this thing, by the same writer:

As a crime scene investigator emerged to fetch a brown paper evidence bag, photographers fired off their flashes as they had when taking shots of Hoffman at openings and awards ceremonies. The light glinted strobe-like off the brick façade and the air momentarily filled with the paparazzi sound of camera shutters.

Ugh.

OK, so. We got another six inches of snow today, so quickly that I let Wendy out and let her back in five minutes later and she had a measurable snowfall on her back. So what did I do? Waited until it tapered off, fired up the snow blower and moved it off the damn driveway.

This shit is getting old. At least, it’s making me feel that way.