Archive for 2018

SARAH HOYT: The Past is Another Country — A Crappy One.

As PJ O’Rourke once wrote, “In general, life is better than it ever has been, and if you think that, in the past, there was some golden age of pleasure and plenty to which you would, if you were able, transport yourself, let me say one single word: ‘dentistry’”

PAUL MIRENGOFF: Another baseless shot at Matt Whitaker. “Shugerman provides no evidence that Whitaker is other than a fine lawyer and a capable administrator. He simply assumes the Post’s editors and readers will nod in agreement with his string of insults because they hate Trump. Shugerman may not know Whitaker, but he knows his audience.”

Sorry, but after Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, Democrats don’t get to complain about cronies or fixers in the AG’s office.

JANN WENNER BECAME A REPUBLICAN SO SLOWLY, I HARDLY EVEN NOTICED:

● Shot: Why Republicans Still Reject the Science of Global Warming.

—Headline, Rolling Stone, November 3rd, 2016.

● Chaser:

Wenner’s Gulfstream II jet seated ten people and featured a dining table, four overstuffed couches, and a foldout bed. It cost $ 6 million. Wenner loved it so much he put the factory-issued model in his office on Fifth Avenue and dreamed of ways to take his Rolling Stone salon of celebrities and suitors to the air. “Then it became ‘What can we do to fly this thing? Where can we go? How can I take it in the air?’  ” recalled Wenner. “I would just circle over LaGuardia to have lunch.”

* * * * * * * *

[Wenner’s attorney Ben] Needell put the plane under a business subsidiary called Straight Arrow Transportation to write it off as a business expense, but Wenner said it was “90 percent personal.”

—Joe Hagan, Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine, published last year. (Click here for my review.)

As Glenn likes to say, I’d be more inclined to take global warming seriously, when the people who tell me it’s a crisis start to act like it’s a crisis themselves.

Oh, and speaking of science…

● Hangover: Meet the Woman Bringing Social Justice to Astrology — Chani Nicholas is transforming horoscopes from quips about finding true love and stumbling into financial good fortune to pointed calls to action.

—Headline, Rolling Stone, June 1st, 2018.

(Via Vincent Caruso.)

CLARICE FELDMAN: Then They Came For The White Women. “With the women should vote for a woman (Hillary) and white men are all rapists (Kavanaugh) tactics having failed, the left is now turning against white women as the enemy.”

OPEN THREAD: Comport yourselves with dignity.

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN! Michael Walsh on “The Late Great (Again) Planet Earth:”

God knows whom or what the poor sods living in the ruins of the Roman Empire in the 6th century blamed for the weather — probably God, possible cow farts — but today’s True Believers no longer believe in God; rather, they believe in Man, as both the root of all evil and the last best hope of Earth, if only Man would have the decency to kill himself. Or at least kill the conservatives, so that poor little Lizia Woolf may thrive without fear of imminent extinction or another Orson Welles documentary.

Sorry, I lived through the original round of eco-freakouts in the 1970s. No need for a rerun.

PAULINE KAEL JUST CALLED, AND SAID YOU’RE TRAPPED WAAAAY TOO DEEP IN YOUR OWN BUBBLE. Newsweek reporter: Almost everyone I’ve ever heard of who owns an AR-15 is a mass murderer.

By the way, if [Nina] Burleigh’s name rings a bell, it’s because the tweet above isn’t close to being the most dubious thing she’s ever said about a political matter. Exit quotation via Twitter pal JammieWF: “Almost every single Newsweek writer [I know] has wanted to perform fellatio on Bill Clinton.”

Heh, indeed.™

(Classical allusion in headline.)