What news of Bottom, and his anxious lower border?

  Who can dream of making light of

  Fox News' pixie dust, after trans-

  forming our endearing Bottom into

  an Ass for all to see, reduced to

  striking menacing postures to the

  delight of their viewership, even

  to the disquiet of their nemesis,

  the undistracted gaze of history;

  how shall his Queen Titania still

  find reason to tickle his ears?

Queensland Ballet
2016

Origins of Wednesday lxxxviii: Consent or custom?

The intriguing defense of Virginia's

Lt Gov (the office doesn't really use 

the orthographic space it occupies),

to a couple of pressing complaints of

sexual assault, is that the encounters

were "consensual." To have any experi-

ence with life is to possess enough ex-

perience with assault to blow that re-

tort out of the water with one simple

question: how the heck would you know?

I give you the circumstance, of submit-

ting to the custom of the towel snap

on the fanny in the locker room, the

mussing of one's hair before class,

even (hypothetically) the tummy grab

from behind, as yielding to horseplay

as good-naturedly as the setting seems

to demand. But setting and submitting

aren't consenting, and the Lt Gov is

not any likelier to forge that equation

in his pending testimony, than a jury

is to lack experience of assault. Dis-

tinguishing volition from consequence

is akin to counting a ballot without

gerrymandering its frame. He'll learn.

Stella Tennant x Cathleen Naundor

2013

John Koch

1909 - 1978

After the Sitting

Sunday nibbled sleeve iv: Governor Northam's therapy campaign

Briefly to recapitulate, for readers

blessed to have been comatose last

week, the Governor of Virginia, hav-

ing been publicly convulsed in con-

trition for posing in a group port-

rait favoring Ku Klux Klan violence

and minstrel show standards of equal

protection, recanted on the following

news cycle, and denied that he had

any idea where the picture came from.

With that, he announced he would ig-

nore the interests of Virginians, his

Party, and his own ostensible prin-

ciples, and cling to his Office with

the tenacity of the tick he may be.

The subsequent exposure, within hours,

of his successor as a serial sexual

assailant, and of his successor as an-

other racially confused vessel of e-

quality (if not in marital rights),

has somewhat reinforced the Governor's

barricading of himself in Office, much

to the 24/7 employment of poll-takers,

to quantify the damage before it hits.

The interval has emboldened Mr Northam

to attain a new level of ridiculousness,

and sink to an unimagined low of divis-

iveness, by vowing as unctuously as any

caricature of Uriah Heap to commit him-

self to what he wouldn't know if it hit

him in the solar plexus, racial equity,

for the rest of his livelong daze as Gov-

ernor. Seldom has the chaos of a politi-

cian's contrition so spontaneously ren-

ovated the urgent priorities of policy

in his domain, to suit a program of ef-

facing a sordid, sodden sense of guilt,

which his resignation could do for free.

And yet, who can forget the example of

Brutus' funeral oration for Caesar, re-

vealing a glittering upside to grief?

But even Brutus didn't blame the State.

According to Ralph Northam, it is more

urgent for Virginians to be conscript-

ed in his crusade for himself, than it

is for them to redress with their legis-

lators' sobriety and balance, the many

pressing opportunities and problems of

public policy in the Commonwealth. What

a dauntless idiot. As if repulsive in-

anity in his underlying conduct had not

made Virginians feel deceived enough, 

he offers the cure of heedless vanity.