MICKEY KAUS passed through town, headed toward L.A. in the sleek Kausmobile. We had sushi and talked about blogs; the Insta-Daughter enlightened him on The Sims.

I haven’t done a cross-country drive in a while, and I envy him. More journalists should emulate Kaus and do these drives. Or maybe Kaus is emulating Daniel Waterhouse, from The System of the World:

‘Twere pointless, as well as self-important, to rush to London, so long as he was on the island, and able to reach the city on short notice. Better to take his time and to see that island, so that he would better understand how things were . . . Through the windows of Mr. Threader’s carriage he was viewing a country almost as strange to him as Japan. It was not only England’s unwonted peace and prosperity that made it strange to him. Too, it was that he was viewing places that Puritans and Professors did not get invited to. Since Daniel had never seen those places, he tended to forget they existed, and so discount the importance of the people who lived in them.”

Even in the 18th Century they had the equivalent of Flyover Country — and the people who were smart enough not to skip it.