Loosely on the Cuff

Did he have a noose in the background? -- Whoopi Goldberg

Having once complained about not having a favorite Marilyn Monroe picture, viewers might be surprised that I liked her youthful supporting role against Stanwyck Clash By Night.

In the movie, Stanwyck is all but a prototype Hillary Clinton, or Kamala Harris. In many ways this RKO stock reel is a sartorial grimace, suggesting monogamy is, after all, the best form of partnership despite the foibles of the human heart, and Stanwyck plays against her type, and deconstructs its regal queen aspects at the same time. She returns home to her seaport town, not so much humiliated as defeated, after her affair with a powerful politician grinds to a halt in New York, marries a lug who's a steady earner, and then, lacking other options, fucks his buddy who manages the movie theatre. Rinse, repeat, and see Marilyn as an innocent ingenue who doesn't stray far from Keith Andes as Stanwyck's more inflexible brother. Do I think Stanwyck's Doyle is overactively promiscuous? Certainly. She was a reigning matinee idol until she forgot her lines with Richard Chamberlain in The Thorn Birds. Do I think the embattled Senator Harris is overly promiscuous, (or in harder morphemes, a slut)? Possibly, hence her prosecution of Backgate is at least problematic. She didn't sleep with Brown for money, but there was, nonetheless, a transactional collusion taking place, and I should have backstopped my ponies and aligned my facts before defending James Woods or Fournier on their "heels up Harris" segue. Let it be noted, for the record, that "noose" also connotes violence, just as it denotes memories of lynching. Just as slut is still a word, however, a noose is a complex knot, a simple technology. Did anyone protest to ABC that Whoopi's use of it threatened violence? Her use of it in defense of Biden certainly had a more direct correlation than my bold tweet.