A fine fine story from the Washington Post:

The emailed response from the Guggenheim’s chief curator to the White House was polite but firm: The museum could not accommodate a request to borrow a painting by Vincent van Gogh for President and Melania Trump’s private living quarters.

Instead, wrote the curator, Nancy Spector, another piece was available, one that was nothing like “Landscape With Snow,” the 1888 van Gogh rendering of a man in a black hat walking along a path in Arles, France, with his dog.

The curator’s alternative: an 18-karat, fully functioning, solid gold toilet — an interactive work titled “America” that critics have described as pointed satire aimed at the excess of wealth in this country.

Speaking of poverty and inequality in the US and how that (along with other faults) makes us not a shining city on a hill – the US has a deep poverty problem.

According to the World Bank, 769 million people lived on less than $1.90 a day in 2013; they are the world’s very poorest. Of these, 3.2 million live in the United States, and 3.3 million in other high-income countries (most in Italy, Japan and Spain).

But if you factor in needs, it’s even worse than that.

An Indian villager spends little or nothing on housing, heat or child care, and a poor agricultural laborer in the tropics can get by with little clothing or transportation. Even in

Trump in Davos is trying to convince us all that he and Theresa May are best friends, best best best best dear close intimate best friends. May is simply saying the UK and the US remain allies.

His elegance and cogency were as usual striking.

“We’re on the same wavelength, I think, in every respect,” Mr. Trump said. “And the prime minister and myself have had a really great relationship, although some people don’t necessary believe that, but I can tell you it’s true.” He expressed respect for Mrs. May, and said he thought “the feeling is mutual from the standpoint of liking each other a lot,” adding that the two were “very much joined at the hip” on military

Missouri dude runs for nomination to Senate on Eww Feminism ticket.

Republican Courtland Sykes posted a statement to Facebook in response to questions about his stance on women’s rights. In the post, he said his wife had “ordered” him to respect women’s rights, but she knows that “I want to come home to a home-cooked dinner at six every night – one that she fixes and one that I expect one day to have daughters learn to fix after they become traditional homemakers and family wives”.

The candidate expanded on what he expected of his daughters, saying he didn’t want them to grow up into “career obsessed banshees who forego home life and children and the happiness of family

Russia threat should unite us, not divide us: “It’s not about Republicans or Democrats. They’re coming after America, which I hope we all love equally… And they will be back, because we remain…that shining city on the hill, and they don’t like it. “ Me (Senate Intel 6/8/17)

— James Comey (@Comey) January 25, 2018

Comey:

Russia threat should unite us, not divide us: “It’s not about Republicans or Democrats. They’re coming after America, which I hope we all love equally… And they will be back, because we remain…that shining city on the hill, and they don’t like it.” Me (Senate Intel 6/8/17)

Well, we don’t, really. One, we never were, because slavery and genocide just for a start, and … Read the rest

Brendan O’Neill. Spiked. The Presidents Club. Calm down.

Moral outrage…outrage entrepreneurs…raging loudly against the wicked…Britain’s chattering class…the utterly non-shocking news…sassy young women who early in life use their nous and looks to earn a buck…not the most decorous of annual affairs…pink-hued Guardian wannabe…posh fury with Brexit…to jump on the trending bandwagon…grovelling apologies…heads on platters…arrogant instinct…every little thing that displeases them.

…freedom of association…mixing with whomever they choose…a less than PC fashion…whiter than white…the new moral guardians…infantilised the women…the possibly sad or old-fashioned men…hapless, slave-like creatures needing to be saved by the middle-class, clever women…the skills necessary to deal with dickheads…today’s media women…national scandal…men touched their knees…the political and media classes…safe-spaced and prudish…

Every fucking cliché in the book innit. … Read the rest

A beautiful, blistering series of tweets by MarinaS:

How many trans men were at that fucking "dinner", eh? And were the participants asked to RSVP their gender identity, just in case the organisers offended them by assuming they were men? Would it have been "oh sorry, nevermind, you're uninvited"?

— MarinaS (@marstrina) January 24, 2018

Come back to me on self identification when gender is not enough of a socially constructed but VERY CONCRETE reality that it determines whether you get invited to elite mixers where the /other/ gender is coralled like animals in a petting zoo.

— MarinaS (@marstrina) January 24, 2018

Or was it exactly what it looks like: an occasion for men to wallow in the power

Republicans in North Carolina are trying to make NC a one-party state, and the courts are telling them No Can Do, so now they’re trying to make the courts one-party.

Courts have overturned 14 laws passed by the legislature since 2011, including redistricting maps for the House of Representatives and the state legislature that one federal court called “among the largest racial gerrymanders ever encountered by a federal court.” Sweeping voting restrictions passed by the legislature in 2013 suffered a similar fate, with a federal appeals court saying they targeted “African Americans with almost surgical precision.” The legislature’s Republican supermajority hasn’t fared any better in state courts, which have blocked GOP efforts to strip teachers of tenure and

The FT reports that the Presidents Club is disbanding.

The Presidents Club has decided to close after a Financial Times report detailing sexual harassment and groping of women at a fundraising dinner it organised.

The group said late on Wednesday that “the trustees have decided that the Presidents Club will not host any further fundraising events”. Remaining funds held by the trust will be distributed to children’s charities and “it will then be closed.”

The BBC:

A man who helped organise a men-only charity dinner, where hostesses were allegedly groped, has quit the Department for Education board.

David Meller quit his non-executive role after claims about the event by an undercover FT reporter.

Charities are refusing donations

Suzanne Moore on that boys’ night out for charity gropefest:

But this event has been going for 33 years. It was introduced by a Channel 5 baseball presenter called Jonny Gould, with the words: “Welcome to the most un-PC event of the year.”

Political correctness gone mad, you see, means that you cannot grope 19-year-olds who have been told to wear matching underwear under tight skirts while bunging some dosh to Great Ormond Street.

Indeed. Treating women like actual human beings as opposed to walking holes is suffocating politikul korrektnessss.

The detail is nauseating: the hostesses who have been tracked to the toilet and told to see the organiser if it’s all getting too much. The parading on stage

One section of an interview on Fresh Air on Monday:

LEVISKY: The creed to which Daniel refers and the initial establishment of strong democratic norms in this country was founded in a homogeneous society, a racially and culturally homogeneous society. It was founded in an era of racial exclusion. And the challenge is that we have now become a much more ethnically, culturally diverse society, taken major steps towards racial equality, and the challenge is making those norms stick in this new context.

DAVIES: And you do note in the book that the resolution of the conflicts around the Civil War and a restoration of kind of normal democratic institutions was accompanied by denial of voting rights and basic

I didn’t know him but I have many friends who did and I can see that Josh Kutchinsky is a great loss.

The IHEU:

Josh Kutchinsky, one of the greatest friends to international humanism, died last night. He had been suffering from an interstitial lung disease diagnosed in 2016.

Josh was a committed organiser and phenomenal personality within the humanist movement, both at home in the UK, and internationally.

During many years of activism, he served as a trustee of Humanists UK, and then Humanists UK’s international representative to the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), as well as joining IHEU’s Uganda Humanist Schools Advisory Group. He was a founding trustee of the Uganda Humanist Schools Trust. In 2013

From the Financial Times:

At 10pm last Thursday night, Jonny Gould took to the stage in the ballroom at London’s Dorchester Hotel. “Welcome to the most un-PC event of the year,” he roared. The sports broadcaster was there to host a charity auction — the centrepiece of a secretive annual event, the Presidents Club Charity Dinner.

The purpose is to – wink wink – raise money for Good Causes…but – nudge nudge – not really.

It’s for men only; the “entertainment” included 130 women who were told to wear “skimpy black outfits with matching underwear and high heels.” At a party afterwards, to the astonishment of everyone, many of the women were groped and propositioned.

The event has been … Read the rest

Women journalists covering Pence’s trip to Israel are being subjected to gender segregation.

[O]n Tuesday, female journalists were particularly perturbed to discover that they had been relegated to covering Pence’s spiritual stop at the Western Wall, one of Judaism’s holiest sites, from the other side of a fence.

The Western Wall — the outer wall of the raised esplanade that is called the Temple Mount by Jews and al-Haram al-Sharif by Muslims — is currently under the authority of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Western Wall Heritage Foundation. According to custom, the plaza is divided by gender, with men praying on one side of a barrier and women on the other.

“According to custom,” of course. It’s always “according to custom.” That’s … Read the rest