In Impromptus today, I lead with the GOP and its internal politics. In short, is Trump buckable? Can you cross him and survive? I also discuss China, Ukraine, and some other issues — including literary talent hired early by WFB: Joan Didion, Garry Wills, Renata Adler, and John Leonard. See what you think.

In recent columns and posts, I’ve had some notes on pronunciation. A reader writes,

Jay,
I grew up in very provincial Boston (in the 1940s) and, of course, had trouble figuring out which words contained the letter “r” and which did not. My mother’s name was “Ida” (uncommon for an Irish-Catholic), but neighbors called her “Ider,” like Kennedy’s “Cuber.” We also said “Iderho.”
On the flip side, my friends and I would occasionally call each other swear words — and “bastard” was a common one. But we said “basted.” I discovered the word had an “r” only when I saw it written in a book when I was probably 13. I thought the publisher had made a mistake.

I’ve told a certain political tale before, but maybe I can tell it again. In 1992, former senator Paul Tsongas competed against Governor Bill Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination. Tsongas was from Massachusetts, and sounded like it. He wanted to accuse Clinton of pandering to voters. So his line was: “He’s a pander bear.”

But there was a problem: From his mouth, “pander bear” came out “panda bear.” But it got worse.

When voters in, say, Florida did not chuckle over his coinage, he tried to explain. And when he explained, what the voters heard was this: “He’s a panda bear. Not a pander bear, but a panda bear. Get it?” They didn’t.

By the way, it was a different political age when one pol could accuse another of pandering. If anything, a pol today is accused of not pandering. (That’s one of the themes in my column today — and many days — now that I think about it.)

In response to my Impromptus earlier this week, a reader writes,

Jay,
Your words about the late Terry Teachout sent me to your review of his biography of Louis Armstrong, which I had not read before . . .
It reminded me of the one and only time I saw Armstrong in concert. It was the spring of 1968, I was 14 years old, and he had come to play in my hometown of Kingsport, Tennessee. The venue was the gymnasium of the recently built high school, a piece of modernism that was quite the talk of the region.
I had an aisle seat among the folding chairs arranged on the floor of the gym. To reach the stage, Pops would walk down the aisle where I sat.
As he entered the gym, we all stood to applaud, and as he came within just a few feet of me, it struck me that he was perhaps the most beautiful human being I had ever beheld. I instinctively reached out to him, and he took my hand in his. He gave me that radiant Pops smile, released my hand, and kept moving to the stage.
It was soon to be, in some ways, a terrible year, with the murders of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy. But that moment with Pops stayed with me . . .

Finally, I have a picture for you — not taken by me, but by our Molly Powell, in New Hampshire. Meet the youngest feline in Molly’s household: Theophilus Von Claus.