Said one dad, who — can you figure this out? — doesn't support the enforcement of the dress code and is thinking of suing the school because "Scarmato is a total control freak." Scarmato is Joseph Scarmato, the new principal of Tottenville High School in Staten Island, who exercised his discretion to impose a new "Dress for Success" policy that put 200 students, mostly girls, in detention. Currently, we're told, the students are in rebellion.

I think there should be a dress code and the parents should support the principal, but I confess that when I was a teenager, I was the first girl in line to break the dress code. The issue back then wasn't shorts. We girls weren't even allowed to wear pants (including the new "pantsuits" for females that had just become stylish and that nowadays a woman is considered perfectly dressed up in and could even wear to deliver the State of the Union Address). In 1965, the issue was miniskirts, and the requirement was that the skirt reach midknee. Do you have any idea how unfashionable that looked at that time?

Why I remember the vice principal, to whose office I'd been sent, musing out loud about the difficulties these skirts caused for the boys and what would happen if the girls came to school in bikinis. I found that exasperating, because the school was requiring me to wear a skirt. I wasn't attempting to wear a less-appropriate item of clothing to school. Let me wear pants if the issue is the sexual troubling of the boys. But don't make me wear a skirt and force me to wear a bad-looking skirt.

See? I'm still arguing with the vice principal from 50 years ago, so you might think I should support these booty-shorts girls. But I don't. They have plenty of stylish choices to make within the range of what is permitted and shows a decent respect for the classroom. I hear that the school isn't air-conditioned, but it can't be especially comfortable to have the bare flesh of the entire length of the back of your thighs sticking to the chairs all day.

"But Rotherham's abusers found that their ethnicity protected them because they belonged to a community few wished to challenge."

Writes Sarfraz Manzoor, who grew up in the UK within what he calls the "a Pakistani bubble."

Here's Manzoor's memoir, "Greetings From Bury Park, " which is described at Amazon like this:

Sarfraz Manzoor was two years old when, in 1974, he emigrated from Pakistan to Britain with his mother, brother, and sister. Sarfraz spent his teenage years in a constant battle, trying to reconcile being both British and Muslim, trying to fit in at school and at home. But it was when his best friend introduced him to the music of Bruce Springsteen that his life changed completely. From the age of sixteen on, after the moment he heard the harmonica and opening lines to "The River," Springsteen became his personal muse, a lens through which he was able to view the rest of his life....

"The last thing they want you to do is think."

Emotional politics. He recognizes what he knows very well.

"Meet the Press," the conspicuous Sunday morning talk show, has had a regular practice, for as long as I can remember — and I've been blogging stuff from the show for 10+ years — of posting a same-day transcript. The text is up in the early afternoon, at which point I often have watched the show and written down a couple words that I can use for a search to get me to the part that I want to blog. Yesterday, I scribbled the words "ship" and "potentially," I also made a note, in my words: "blandification of the election." All day checked the MTP transcripts page, and now it's Monday morning and still no the transcript. Why?!

Yesterday was Chuck Todd's second time as host. Last week, his first time, the show was heavily larded with an interview with Barack Obama. That means yesterday's show was the first example of a normal show. Are they ashamed of it? They've put video up, including neatly captioned segments, like "James Baker: We Need People on Ground in Mideast." ("People," is that what we're calling "boots" now?) The preference for lots of little videos, with writing only in the form of captions that very briefly paraphrase what some guest supposedly said, makes me suspicious. I want to see the specific quotes, and I want to pick them apart.

Why deprive us of the words? Maybe it's just a device to make us watch an ad before we can get to the material. Maybe it's exactly what's frustrating me: They want to pick the bits they like and present them in their terms, with their paraphrase, controlling passive viewers and thwarting active commentators. Or maybe the new presentation is an effort to make Chuck Todd's MTP feel new and different, or at least not disappointingly dull.
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... accompanying herself doing percussion on the iconic drinking vessel, the red plastic cup.

From the Wikipedia entry for Solo Cup Company:

The red plastic cups are notably used in American college and university games such as beer pong and flip cup. This usage is referenced in Toby Keith's song "Red Solo Cup." The red party cup outsells the blue variety by a wide margin.

Here's a Slate article on the subject:

Should you doubt the cup's cultural significance, I would point you toward a brand new Toby Keith song titled "Red Solo Cup." The song opens with these lyrics: "Red Solo cup is the best receptacle for barbecues, tailgates, fairs, and festivals. And you, sir, do not have a pair of testicles if you prefer drinking from a glass." The tune's admirably forthright chorus: "I love you, red Solo cup. I fill you up. Proceed to party. Proceed to party."

Should you doubt the cup's cultural significance, I would point you toward Miss America, Kira Kazantsev.

That cup percussion business wasn't Kazantsev's invention. It's an internet craze (I just found out this morning). Here's a popular iteration: