Welcome to Monday, Februay 16, 2026, as this month wings by, bringing each of us closer to extinction. It’s Presidents Day, a federal holiday but not one here at the hard-working University of Chicago. Here is Mount Rushmore, Sculpture of Presidents, before and after construction:
Before:
And after. I’m surprised Trump hasn’t mounted an initiative to add his head to the monument:
It’s also Cream Bun Day (in Iceland), International Syrah Day, Tim Tam Day, and National Almond Day.
Today’s Google Doodle (click on it to read) highlights ski jumping. 
I think they’ve used this before.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the February 16 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The Washington Post highlights six Congressional orimaries this coming up that could tell us where the country—and the Presidency—is going politically in the future. The races are in Ohio, Texas, North Carolina, Kentucky, Maine, and Illinois (the last one, to fill Dick Durbin’s Senate seat, is reliably Democratic, but there’s a range of candidates from moderate to progressive). Here are two of them (article is archived here). In many places, like Texas, political redistricting could throw things off balance. Here’s a bellwether election in Ohio on May 5:
Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) has fended off everything Republicans have thrown at her over the years.
Kaptur, 79, has represented northwest Ohio for more than four decades and is the longest-serving woman in congressional history. Thanks to her deep connection with her working-class community and the weaknesses of a string of imperfect Republican candidates, Kaptur has managed to hold on as the Rust Belt has moved further and further right in the Trump era.
This time, Ohio Republicans, at Trump’s urging, redistricted the state and changed Kaptur’s from a district that marginally leaned toward Republicans to one that overwhelmingly favors them. “Let the Columbus politicians make their self-serving maps and play musical chairs,” Kaptur said in response. “I will fight on for the people.”
More than a half-dozen Republican candidates are running for the chance to challenge her in November — a crowded, noisy primary that, like past contests, could hobble them in their effort to finally remove Kaptur.
Derek Merrin, the former Ohio state representative Kaptur defeated in 2024, is on the ballot again, along with Ohio state Rep. Josh Williams and Air Force veteran Alea Nadeem. But Republicans are growing more excited about Madison Sheahan, the former second-in-command at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who jumped into the race in January.
Are Republicans determined to field a candidate closely aligned with Trump’s record, like Sheahan, even as polling shows broad disapproval of ICE and immigration enforcement? Or will they turn to more traditional, less MAGA-aligned candidates? Their choice in races like this one may be what matters most in November.
And in Kentucky on May 19
There are probably few people that Trump would be happier to see go down to defeat than a fellow Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of deep-red Kentucky. On issue after issue, Massie has loudly stood up to the president, most notably by pushing the legislation that forced the release of millions of government files on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.\
Trump has called the six-term lawmaker a lightweight, a grandstander and a loser. And he recruited and endorsed Ed Gallrein, a farmer and former Navy SEAL, to challenge him.
. . . What could save Massie, he believes, is the effort he has put into establishing his own identity in his home state. “I’ve taken a lot of care to explain my votes when it’s not intuitive that they are actually the conservative positions,” Massie said.
Gallrein has accused Massie of having “a problem for every solution.”
Other Republicans will no doubt be watching the Kentucky primary closely. It could be this year’s biggest test of whether the GOP remains in the iron grip of an increasingly unpopular president, or whether more of them can feel safer charting their own course forward.
I already have my mail-in ballot for Illinois, but will take some time to figure out who to vote for. The problem is that the ads for the Democratic candidates for Durbin’s seat are all identical: Trump, Trump, Trump, ICE, ICE, ICE. Finding views on other issues is going to take a bit of time.
*An ex-Israeli hostage, who survived being held by Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, now reveals that she was not only sexually assaulted on nearly a daily basis, but also tried to commit suicide.(She was kidnapped along with her boyfriend from a kibbutz, and were separated and held in different places.)
Former hostage Arbel Yehoud revealed in an interview broadcast Friday that she attempted to end her life several times while held captive by Palestinian terrorists in Gaza, but ultimately decided not to after her captors showed her video of a protest in Israel where she saw her face on a poster, and she understood that people were fighting for her.
In a separate interview, Yehoud indicated that she had faced sexual assault on an almost daily basis among widespread abuses she suffered while being held alone.
“One of the times, not long before my release, I saw drone footage from Hostages Square [in Tel Aviv]. I saw people holding signs of people I don’t know, and then suddenly I saw signs of people I knew. I saw a sign for Ariel [Cunio] and a sign for me, signs of people from the kibbutz,” Yehoud told Channel 12 news in an interview alongside Cunio.
“From the moment I saw that, I didn’t try to put an end to my own life there.”
Amid the two-year war, tens of thousands of people staged weekly Saturday night protests in Tel Aviv and around the country, demanding that the government reach a deal to bring the hostages home.
“That was the last time I tried,” she continued, noting she attempted to kill herself at least three times while in captivity. “When I saw the drone footage and understood that people who I don’t know are fighting for me as if I were their sister or daughter, I have a duty to return to Ariel and my family, but also to those fighting for me.”
Cunio recalled the terror of their abduction and being torn apart once they entered Gaza.
“I told her, ‘The most important thing is that we stay together. As long as they don’t separate us, we’ll be okay.’ Half an hour later, that is what happened,” Cunio said. “It happened so fast, there wasn’t even time to say ‘I love you, be strong.’”
“I didn’t manage to tell him bye, I didn’t get to see his eyes,” Yehoud added.
While many of the 251 hostages were held together in small groups by Hamas, both Yehoud and Cunio were held by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which kept them separate and alone.
In addition, Yehoud says she endured interrogations, forced conversion attempts and starvation.
There is a lot she says she is still unable to talk about.
“Because it was a very long time, and the things I went through, I went through from beginning to end, so they are in a sealed box,” she told Channel 12.
Nobody ever mentions that kidnapping of civilians and holding them for ransom is a human rights violation, much less rape or assault of woman hostages, nor have the Red Cross or UN paid much attention to the hostages in general. Finally, I’m pretty sure that other women hostages endured sexual assault, but are too traumatized to talk about it. (Remember that women assaulted during the Oct. 7 massacre were killed thereafter.)
*The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) used to be accused of being right-wing because it defended Lefties accused of Wrongspeak, and accused universities of suppressing free expression because of a left-wing ideology. Now, according to an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, those accusations are wrong, for FIRE is busy cleaning up after Trump’s depredations. The article is free, and is called “From ‘cancel culture’ watchdog to Trump antagonist,” with the subtitle, “FIRE, the Philly-based free speech organization, is now defending universities it long criticized” (h/t Ginger K.)
. . . . the full power of the federal government is trained on universities and individual students who disagree with it. The stakes have grown exponentially, as became clear early on when federal agents detained Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University Ph.D. student on a visa, after she cowrote an op-ed in a student newspaper. She then spent 45 days in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention in Louisiana. (FIRE submitted an amicus brief in Ozturk’s ongoing federal case, in which a federal judge ruled last month that the administration had no grounds to deport her.)
More recently, federal agents arrested and charged journalist and former CNN anchor Don Lemon with federal civil rights crimes for his coverage of an anti-ICE protest inside a Minnesota church. Of his arrest, the organization wrote, “FIRE will be watching closely.”
The question FIRE faces today is whether it can effectively meet the moment, and overcome skepticism from the left and from other free-speech advocates, some of whom argue the group helped lay the groundwork for an authoritarian crackdown.
Those critics say the present free-speech crisis is partly the predictable result of FIRE stoking a conservative panic over campus politics, effectively handing the federal government a well-crafted rationale for suppressing progressive voices.
FIRE’s leaders say they were not wrong before about cancel culture. Things were bad, they argue. But this is far worse.
“The threats we’re seeing right now, to me, often feel damn near existential,” [legal director Will] Creeley, 45, said in a recent interview. “The incredibly important distinction is that what we’re seeing now from the right is backed by the power of the federal government.”
. . .It can sometimes feel as if FIRE has been involved in nearly every major free-speech flash point of the last year — part of an intentional strategy to build the organization’s profile and raise awareness about speech violations, said Alisha Glennon, 41, the group’s chief operating officer.
Among dozens of ongoing cases, FIRE is suing Secretary of State Marco Rubio in federal court over the administration’s targeting of international students who reported on or participated in pro-Palestinian campus activism.
FIRE has also been outspoken in its defense of Harvard University. After the Trump administration sent Harvard a list of demands this spring — including banning some international students based on their views, appointing an outside overseer approved by the federal government to ensure “viewpoint diversity,” and submitting yearly reports to the government — the university refused to comply. Trump then sought to cut off billions of dollars of federal funding in response.
Harvard sued, and FIRE submitted an amicus brief supporting the university, noting that because of its own “longstanding role as a leading critic” of Harvard as a center of cancel culture, it was not less but more alarmed by the government’s “wielding the threat of crippling financial consequences like a mobster gripping a baseball bat.”
FIRE is also preparing to potentially sue Texas A&M University after the university instructed a philosophy professor in January to remove some teachings of Plato from an introductory philosophy course, citing new rules barring public universities in the state from offering classes that “advocate race or gender ideology.” FIRE wrote to the university, calling the move “unconstitutional political interference.”
Removing Plato from an intro philosophy class is the type of absurd, taken-to-the-extreme free-speech dispute that has long been FIRE’s
It goes on, but FIRE deserves your support if you value the First Amendment.
*The shooter who killed 8 people in British Columbia on February 10 was a trans-identified male, but was initially reported as a woman. The fact that shooter Jesse Van Rootselaar was a male suffering from gender dysphoria is relevant to his story, but, as recounted in Quillette, the press ignores both that and his biological sex in favor of hewing to a gender-activist narrative.
On 10 February, Jesse Van Rootselaar (also known as Jesse Strang) killed eight people in the remote British Columbia mining town of Tumbler Ridge. The first two victims were the killer’s mother and half-brother, whom Van Rootselaar shot at home. Van Rootselaar then went to a local secondary school and murdered six more people—five of whom were twelve- or thirteen-year-old students—before committing suicide. Twenty-seven others were injured. It was the deadliest Canadian school shooting in almost four decades, and the highest-casualty mass-shooting event in the nation’s history.
Nothing I write here can properly convey the anguish that surviving family members must now endure. The population of Tumbler Ridge is only about 2,400. Most residents likely know one or more people connected to the tragedy in some way, and so they will share in the trauma as well. Like Columbine and Sandy Hook, the words “Tumbler Ridge” will now become indelibly associated with senseless violence and unfathomable sorrow.
When news of the tragedy was first reported to Canadians on the afternoon of 10 February, it appeared to include a striking anomaly: The killer, we were told, was a “woman.” There are scattered examples of female killers in the annals of Canadian crime. But this would be the first time in the recorded history of Canada and its colonial antecedents—going back more than 400 years, to the early seventeenth century—that a woman had gone on this kind of murderous rampage.
It soon became clear, however, that Van Rootselaar wasn’t a woman. He was an eighteen-year-old man—a gun-obsessed, middle-school dropout whose many mental-health afflictions happened to include gender dysphoria. The mass murderer called himself a woman. But that doesn’t mean he was, or that the rest of us have to live in the imaginary universe he (literally) built for himself.
According to Royal Canadian Mounted Police deputy commissioner Dwayne McDonald, Jesse was “a biological male” who “approximately six years ago began to transition to female and identified as female, both socially and publicly.” In keeping with Canadian policies implemented by Justin Trudeau’s government in 2017, McDonald and other police officials then proceeded to refer to the killer with female pronouns, as if he actually were a woman.
This kind of institutionally mandated misuse of language is dishonest at the best of times. But it is especially offensive when it serves to misrepresent reality on behalf of a murderer (posthumously or otherwise). While Jesse Van Rootselaar’s criminal motive is unknown, he left a trove of digital clues about his identity—all of which paint a picture of a deeply disturbed young man with a stereotypically male fixation on firearms and violence.
Why proper identification and reporting matters:
Needless to say, no one personally affected by the Tumbler Ridge massacre is in a state to care about culture-war arguments over the killer’s identity. But policies that allow male and female criminals to be miscategorised on the basis of self-declared gender identity can actively hinder law-enforcement efforts to identify and monitor future killers before they strike.
Men are more violent than women, which is why they account for more than ninety percent of the world’s prison population, and commit about ninety percent of all homicides. For acts of mass murder, US data puts the corresponding figure at 98 percent. This greater tendency toward violence is rooted largely in male evolutionary psychology, and doesn’t get erased when a man changes his pronouns or puts on a skirt. Simply put, being male (and young) represents one of the most important risk factors that exist when it comes to violent crime. And so a constabulary seeking to prevent the next school shooting, whether in Canada or anywhere else, would naturally focus most of its limited resources on men, whatever their claimed “gender identity.” And yet, Canadian policy since 2019 has been to categorise homicide suspects not according to sex, but rather according to the “gender a person publicly expresses in their daily life,” including “at work” and “while shopping.”
. . .Moreover, the ideological excesses of the gender-affirmation movement actively inhibit dysphoric youth (such as Van Rootselaar himself, though we know little of his case history) from receiving proper scientifically grounded care for such psychiatric comorbidities. This is because it is now ideologically fashionable to imagine that all such conditions will resolve themselves in some mystical way, as if by exorcism, once a patient’s soul-like “gender identity” is aligned with his or her outward identity—a form of magical thinking debunked by Dr Cass.
This is one of the reasons why Britain’s scandal-plagued Tavistock gender clinic was shuttered in 2024: If a troubled child presented at a psychiatrist’s office in England with a list of complaints that included gender dysphoria, he or she would summarily be dispatched to Tavistock, where the single-lane therapeutic focus was on transgender affirmation and rapid transition. Meanwhile, most or all of the child’s underlying psychological problems were ignored, on the conceit that they were mere artefacts of a trapped gender soul crying out for release.
All of this serves to explain why Van Rootselaar’s identity as a man suffering from gender dysphoria is highly relevant to his criminal back story. And journalists are fully justified in noting it plainly in their reporting—much in the way that they might note other significant mental-health afflictions.
As I said, Luana suspected that the shooter was a trans-identified males from the moment the shooter was identified as female. I reserved judgement, but it turned out she was right. As the article says, keeping track of one’s sex and gender are important for keeping accurate records and for sociological/psychological analysis, but, most important, for giving objective therapy that doesn’t necessarily cater to an adolescent’s wishes.
*Courtesy of NASA (via Matthew), we now have a video (confected from many pictures) of a full rotation of the Moon (remember, it does rotate on its axis, but with exactly the same period as Earth’s rotation, so we see only one side of it). But now we can see a full rotation, displayed at OpenCulture:
An excerpt and explanation:
This is a sight to behold. Above, the moon spins in full rotation, all in high-resolution footage taken by The National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Here’s how NASA explains what you’re seeing:
No one, presently, sees the Moon rotate like this. That’s because the Earth’s moon is tidally locked to the Earth, showing us only one side. Given modern digital technology, however, combined with many detailed images returned by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), a high resolution virtual Moon rotation movie has now been composed. The above time-lapse video starts with the standard Earth view of the Moon. Quickly, though, Mare Orientale, a large crater with a dark center that is difficult to see from the Earth, rotates into view just below the equator. From an entire lunar month condensed into 24 seconds, the video clearly shows that the Earth side of the Moon contains an abundance of dark lunar maria, while the lunar far side is dominated by bright lunar highlands.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili was lost again:
Andrzej: I was looking for you everywhere.
Hili: Even a cat needs some peace and quiet sometimes.
Ja: Szukałem cię wszędzie.
Hili: Nawet kot potrzebuje czasem świętego spokoju.
*******************
From Richard, an eternal truth:
From The Language Nerds:
From Give Me a Sign:
From Masih, a 15-year old shot by the Iranian regime’s police:
Can you read the writings of a 15-year-old and not cry, not act?
“Today, the last day of summer, I feel so excited for the first day of school.
I want to study electronics and electrical engineering.
I hope a bright future awaits me and my family.
In the silent night, the house… pic.twitter.com/0obGMMTqbO— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) February 13, 2026
From Simon; the AP celebrates Larry’s 15th anniversary at Downing Street:
Larry the cat, the Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office, is celebrating 15 years as the British government’s official rodent-catcher. The unofficial first feline has served under six prime ministers. pic.twitter.com/f2GIZTO06L
— The Associated Press (@AP) February 15, 2026
And Larry himself celebrates his 15th anniversary at 10 Downing Street:
My old pal @mortenmorland has captured my 15th anniversary in Downing Street perfectly pic.twitter.com/TsYCQJ3bhx
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) February 15, 2026
From Luana, who says, “The Democrats are committing suicide.”
BREAKING: Palestinian activist Aber Kawas is running for NY State Senate.
She’s said 9/11 was America’s fault due to “capitalism, racism, white supremacy, and Islamophobia,” is endorsed by NYC DSA and Zohran Mamdani, and has worn a Hamas headband.
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) February 14, 2026
One from my feed. I wonder if the artist plans it out beforehand, or figures it out as he goes along:
🤩Quand vous pensez avoir tous vus…
Kuronushi est un artiste japonais, qui crée des œuvres d’art impressionnantes dans l’ombre, avec des moyens étonnamment simples.
Avec du carton et de la colle, il forme des constructions apparemment insignifiantes, mais qui révèlent tout… pic.twitter.com/TlmfNzQWn0
— Philippe T (@brain_stimulus) February 14, 2026
One I retweeted from the Auschwitz Memorial:
This French Jewish boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was six years old, and would be 90 today had he lived. https://t.co/aB8JNMLgHv
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) February 16, 2026
Two from Dr. Cobb. The first, the cover of “Tapestry” turned 55 years old on Feb. 10. And the cat prominently featured on the cover has surely crossed the Rainbow Bridge. From Wikipedia:
A&M staff photographer Jim McCrary took the cover photograph in the living room of King’s home at 8815 Appian Way, Laurel Canyon, California. It shows her sitting barefoot on a cushion on a bench beside a window, holding a tapestry that she had hand-stitched, with her cat Telemachus, named after the mythological son of Odysseus, near her foot.
55 years ago today one of the greatest and biggest pop albums was released: “Tapestry” by the legendary Carole King. The album won several Grammys and was one of the biggest selling and longest charting in history. She has inspired decades of singer songwriters.@carolekingofficial.bsky.social
— Dan Wentzel (@danwentzel.bsky.social) 2026-02-11T05:43:12.095Z
Yes, we’re severing ties with the Marine Biology Lab in Woods Hole, MA. But our ties aren’t that recent. And yes, we so have money woes, as do many schools.
As money woes hit the University of Chicago, the oldest private marine laboratory in the United States is striking out on its own. https://scim.ag/4trAN3l
— Science Magazine (@science.org) 2026-02-10T17:52:03.340412619Z
The idea that aligning oneself to the right gender will cure all other psychological problems is part and parcel of the Marxist idea that all of society’s ills (such as crime) are part of Bourgeois Culture as the superstructure of Capitalism and that they will disappear when Socialism is achieved. I think the author of this piece is right to imply that treating transgenderism as normal may be, at least, leading to other mental health issues not get treatment.
Just amazing to me that someone can look at a rock, visualize it sculpted into the images of the four presidents, and then actually carry that vision into reality.
The contrast of the near and far sides of the moon is most impressive in a color topographic representation. I keep a moon globe of such a representation in our den with the most interesting far-side highlands turned toward the observer. A take-away is that the moon is lop-sided. Color topographic representation comparison of near and far sides from Clementine Mission at url
https://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/missions/clementine/images/img1_lg.gif
There’s even better and much higher resolution topography now from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter:
https://science.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/lro-litho8-lunar-topography.pdf
And, compare that with lunar gravity from the GRAIL mission:
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4014
Thanks. I had looked for an LRO image but could not find it this morning. Much cleaner.
The gravity anomalies remind me of the discovery of mass concentrations (mascons) by the unmanned moon orbiting missions of the 1960’s, mapping the details in preparation for Apollo manned landing(s).
Before I went there on a road trip in 1995, I had never seen Mt. Rushmore and I thought it was just some schlocky piece of Americana. But OMG. It’s amazingly huge! It surpassed my expectations behind words.
“As I said, Luana suspected that the shooter was a trans-identified males from the moment the shooter was identified as female”.
When the shelter in place alert was issued, it described the shooter as “a female in a dress”, which was something of a giveaway. Would they have said “a male in trousers” in more usual circumstances?
I hope that Strang’s atrocious crimes aren’t recorded as having been committed by a woman. The misleading alert allowed his sex to be obscured in reporting around the world, including in Ireland which is as bonkers on sex and gender as Canada is: https://archive.ph/g5OBO
The US is only a step or two behind, Jez. Contrary to the wishful thinking that wokeness is abating, it is simply going underground. The Democratic Party’s tactic for federal offices and governorships will be to disingenuously run as moderates and then govern as “progressives.” (Biden’s leftward turn wasn’t an anomaly—the entire party apparatus has turned sharply left in the last two decades.) To questions about gender from those in their own camp and elsewhere, they will belittle the speaker: I believe in being fair to everyone, but we have more serious matters to worry about—ICE, Ukraine, the economy, the values of “our democracy”—rather than get hung up on whether some person thinks there are more than two genders.
But if given the electoral power to do so, they will impose the same state-mandated falsehoods and constriction of speech seen in Canada and elsewhere. Where the First Amendment is a barrier, they will rely on private employers, under fear of civil action, to either silence or bring into conformity those who want to keep their jobs. And they will continue full throttle on indoctrinating the children of others since they are increasingly having none of their own.
If they succeed, it will be because their core voters will continue to vote blue no matter what—hoping against hope to persuade those on their own team to change course. But when a politician has your vote no matter what she does, then she will do what she wants to do rather than worry about “representing” you. Once their voters have swallowed the indignity of spouting known falsehoods and justifying it as “truth” or moral superiority—as many of them already have—it will take very little to have them jump through other hoops. Sound familiar?
Oh, and before anyone else says it, yes, Trump is a disgrace. And? The craziness, cravenness, and cowardice predate him—and each will outlast him. The libations are ready to pour.
Stuart Parker nailed the response to Tumbler Ridge, especially the efforts by CBC and other media to portray the shooter as a sympathetic character (or just another victim of a transphobic culture).
With respect to our host’s reasonable suggestion that “sex and gender are important for…giving objective therapy that doesn’t necessarily cater to an adolescent’s wishes”, Parker reminded us that this is illegal in Canada. Honest to god.
“2. The reason trans-identified youth do not have their Cluster-B personality disorders treated is not because the Canadian mental health system is underfunded, which it is. They don’t get that treatment because parliament unanimously passed a law mandating a five-year prison sentence for any clinician who tries to.”
https://x.com/stuartlosaltos/status/2022406433703367092
I did not know that the view from the Northern Hemisphere was now the “standard” for views of the moon. Wonder what our Ozzie friends think of that.
The Planetary Society gives the “opposing view”:
https://www.planetary.org/space-images/moon-features-you-can-see-from-earths-northern-hemisphere-square
https://www.planetary.org/space-images/moon-features-you-can-see-from-earths-southern-hemisphere-square
Carole King was a heart throb of mine in the early 1970’s. My favorite record of hers at the time was Rhymes & Reasons, which I liked much better than her more famous Tapestry. I saw her in concert with James Taylor a few years ago and it was a dream come true.
Join the club!
I still recall their skit on SNL ages ago, somewhat mocking “You’ve Got a Friend.” Can’t seem to find a video of it at the moment.
Rep. Thomas Massie, in addition to pushing for release of Epstein information, has also voted/voice opinions contrary to the interests of Israel.
That’s why “three GOP-aligned billionaire donors: Hedge fund managers Paul Singer and John Paulson, as well as a PAC with ties to Miriam Adelson, the widow of late Trump megadonor Sheldon Adelson” have contributed to MAGA KY.
https://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article311595964.html
Massie is up against formidable opposition. It’ll be interesting to see the outcome.
Carol King wrote a number of wonderful songs. Melody, lyrics, the works.
But she, along with Gerry Goffin, also wrote some songs that were, , “interesting”. the song “He hit me (and it felt like a kiss)” written in 1962, and sung by the Crystals in 1963 (IIRC). If it came out today, her name would be right up there along with Epstein. Luckily, those of her fans who know abut this are more forgiving, and understand that those were different times. I seem to recall an interview some years ago where she was asked about the song, and admitted that i wasn’t her finest moment.