An hour with Semafor founder Ben Smith discussing the sorry state of the media, followed by a Smith-free hour with the lads discussing, among other things, two very different people who nevertheless shared a very deep love of young people.
i was walking through a walmart this morning shopping for a new microwave when moynihan started to say he liked women his own age, then fessed up, & i laughed so hard a woman walking towards me grabbed her little kid to keep her away from me since i looked insane, i guess.
So yes, Ben Smith’s interview was kind of inside baseball. But I didn’t hate it. What would have been very interesting is to have a “Battle of the Bens” and have Ben Smith and Ben Dreyfuss on the same podcast, next time. It would be both informative and irreverent. And their voices are even somewhat similar, to my ear anyway. They could be a journalism Jekyl and Hyde.
It is possible he was a pedophile, but there is no proof. When I studied Carroll in grad school, I came to find out that most of the rumors about Carroll were Oxford gossip. Most of the "academic evidence" of his impropriety could be traced to a single scholar who wrote sometime after his death (want to say the 30s...don't remember). It could be "fake news." Yet, the child photography is most damning: super creeper vibes. Victorian people paid him to take pictures of their kids, but let's also remember Victorians liked to take pictures of their dead children/family members, so photography itself was just weird then. Dodgson/Carroll's family also actively tried to supress evidence of his relationships w adult women (bc morality), which contributed to many that think of him as asexual or a pedo. I think he was an oblivious, feminine, academic autistic man who wrote 2 amazing children's books. Even if we could prove he was not a pedo, he was still a big weirdo in a very Victorian way.
Yea the removal of pages of his journal is sus but not in itself damaging. The ambiguity and lack of evidence is why I still let myself enjoy Alice in wonderland. But yea I enjoy it with an * asterisk.
I think Carroll was an emotional pedophile, but there's no evidence that he actually molested anyone. These days, people are so prurient that their minds go to the worst place that they can, so its hard for folks to picture that. Not to say his emotional relationships with little girls were exactly healthy, but have some context.
There are also scholars who point out that we are looking at those pictures through our far more sexualized modern culture. Victorian England had the representation of children as the embodiment of innocence untouched by the harshness of adulthood and they would no more think there was something sexual about a naked child picture as the fact that your dog is walking around naked.
I read the Vanity Fair article today, before I listened to this episode, not having know much of anything about Cormac McCarthy and I came away thinking he was a brilliant, complicated, and flawed human being. I did get the feeling that he was trying to do the right thing and searching for his own redemption which it seems like Britt was able to provide him. It’s unseemly and gross for a man in his forties to have sex with a 17 year old girl, but there is a fuckton of nuance in the situation and the two of them were actually in love. It makes me want to read his books even more than I wanted to before! I thought the bits about the Santa Fe institute and how wealth and influence changed him were actually the juicier bits in the story.
I still happily watch or listen to them and many others. Rejecting art on the basis of bad behavior would require throwing out most of my books and music.
agree with Welch that there is potential in DOGE (Despite the dumbass Greene) but shocked to hear him say he hopes Trump implements DoGE’s ideas by executive order. Libertarians don’t believe in an imperial presidency!
Using executive orders to rescind congressionally untethered regulatory promulgation is a good deal different than using it to accrue/wield more power. For example, each incoming president by law has the ability to undo regulations taken in the final months of the previous presidency. Reason over the years has been in favor of that as a tool, even though on some rare occasions we liked the previous reg.
Apologies in advance if I’m way off here as I have a 1-month-old. Tired and all that. While the WSJ oped is paywalled, I skimmed it with a free read when it came out and thought there were a few more ‘imperial’ overtones to it. It explicitly endorsed the use of executive action over changing legislation, and if I recall correctly it also toyed with the idea of the president simply not spending appropriated dollars in order to force agencies to downsize. This doesn’t strike one as totally consonant with the post-chevron emphasis on an executive more tightly linked to congressional express intent. Appropriations are a key piece of congressional intent in many ways. Not looking at the piece, I may be getting that part wrong.
I also believe the need to be consistent with existing law will constrain the vision more than some think. It’s not simply a ‘it’s too complex, ergo no change can ever happen’ argument. It’s that Musk and Ramaswamy may have a vision that government agencies are out here doing far more arbitrary things than they in fact are. Sure, they’ll be able to find and dunk on a bunch of silly DEI-adjacent things or money spent on wasteful contracts, but the core activities of most civilian federal agencies are probably not as arbitrary as some think.
I may write a longer email to catch my loose thoughts here in more developed form, dunno. Hopefully these thoughts are relevant. Worried in part that Musk and Ramaswamy will overreach and not be credible messengers and it polarizes folks away from future efforts potentially (I mean already, DOGE is such smirking-dipshit kind of branding, cmon)
Agreed on the Reflector episode, which I thought was unusually dull. But, I thought TFC version was good. Liked some of the discussion on the economics of trade newsletters, intersection of business/economics/politics, etc.
As some who has been right of center most of his life and who has also grown up both playing and studying music, I learnt very quickly to separate art from artist--otherwise whom could I have possibly idolized or performed on stage with? I honestly think any other way is a fool's errand.
Where to begin with artists who have bad politics/ checkered past?
Pretty sure Caravaggio was a violent mess and believed to have murdered someone (it’s so far back that we can forgive those beautiful paintings of…beheadings)
Picasso, known pig.
Dali, cozied up with fascists.
Pasolini, a self proclaimed Marxist…still wondering if he was a good filmmaker tbh
Wagner, anti semite
Miles Davis, general asshole and woman beater
Gaugin, pederast
Polanski, scumbag and rapist
Coco Chanel, that whole Nazi thing
All kinds of rock band from the 70s, being rockers in the 70s
Edgar Degas was an absolute raving, frothing at the mouth antisemite.
Paul Gauguin ditched the mother of his child to “marry” a teenage (if that?) Tahitian girl.
Probably the worst one for me is Gian Lorenzo Bernini, who hired someone to slash his lover’s face…
I will say, as a person working in the art world, which has itself proven to be a cesspool of Jew-hatred and self-hatred in the wake of 10/7… it’s easier to stomach when the artist is dead lol.
i was walking through a walmart this morning shopping for a new microwave when moynihan started to say he liked women his own age, then fessed up, & i laughed so hard a woman walking towards me grabbed her little kid to keep her away from me since i looked insane, i guess.
Moynihan being a higher ed elitist here? Is this opposite day?
Nice to hear him push back on the Elon slurping.
So yes, Ben Smith’s interview was kind of inside baseball. But I didn’t hate it. What would have been very interesting is to have a “Battle of the Bens” and have Ben Smith and Ben Dreyfuss on the same podcast, next time. It would be both informative and irreverent. And their voices are even somewhat similar, to my ear anyway. They could be a journalism Jekyl and Hyde.
Re: artists whose work we admire but are creeped out by the artist:
I love Alice in Wonderland but am mortified at rumors about Lewis Carroll and the child who inspired the story.
It is possible he was a pedophile, but there is no proof. When I studied Carroll in grad school, I came to find out that most of the rumors about Carroll were Oxford gossip. Most of the "academic evidence" of his impropriety could be traced to a single scholar who wrote sometime after his death (want to say the 30s...don't remember). It could be "fake news." Yet, the child photography is most damning: super creeper vibes. Victorian people paid him to take pictures of their kids, but let's also remember Victorians liked to take pictures of their dead children/family members, so photography itself was just weird then. Dodgson/Carroll's family also actively tried to supress evidence of his relationships w adult women (bc morality), which contributed to many that think of him as asexual or a pedo. I think he was an oblivious, feminine, academic autistic man who wrote 2 amazing children's books. Even if we could prove he was not a pedo, he was still a big weirdo in a very Victorian way.
Yea the removal of pages of his journal is sus but not in itself damaging. The ambiguity and lack of evidence is why I still let myself enjoy Alice in wonderland. But yea I enjoy it with an * asterisk.
I think Carroll was an emotional pedophile, but there's no evidence that he actually molested anyone. These days, people are so prurient that their minds go to the worst place that they can, so its hard for folks to picture that. Not to say his emotional relationships with little girls were exactly healthy, but have some context.
There are also scholars who point out that we are looking at those pictures through our far more sexualized modern culture. Victorian England had the representation of children as the embodiment of innocence untouched by the harshness of adulthood and they would no more think there was something sexual about a naked child picture as the fact that your dog is walking around naked.
Richard Strauss - incredible composer, shitty politics
I read the Vanity Fair article today, before I listened to this episode, not having know much of anything about Cormac McCarthy and I came away thinking he was a brilliant, complicated, and flawed human being. I did get the feeling that he was trying to do the right thing and searching for his own redemption which it seems like Britt was able to provide him. It’s unseemly and gross for a man in his forties to have sex with a 17 year old girl, but there is a fuckton of nuance in the situation and the two of them were actually in love. It makes me want to read his books even more than I wanted to before! I thought the bits about the Santa Fe institute and how wealth and influence changed him were actually the juicier bits in the story.
Re: Creepy and/or otherwise loathsome artists
Among my favorites:
Crimes and Misdemeanors (Woody Allen)
Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski)
Dark Side of the Moon (Roger Waters)
I still happily watch or listen to them and many others. Rejecting art on the basis of bad behavior would require throwing out most of my books and music.
I'm starting with the mann in the mirror. I'm asking him to change his ways. But I digress, b/c...
It's the freakin' weekend, baby, I'm about to have me some fun (a little toot toot, beep beep)...
So I just put a little tannis root in my whiskey...
Thinking about heading up to the Yukon with my dog, Buck...
Need to clear my head, start a new, and to remember that the sun also rises...
Because in the end all we need is a little Meta World Peace...
Re: Joe Biden and Trump meeting
Joe and Jill are such a petty self-important people that they definitely voted for Trump and could not be happier with the outcome.
I would lay money they wrote themselves in
agree with Welch that there is potential in DOGE (Despite the dumbass Greene) but shocked to hear him say he hopes Trump implements DoGE’s ideas by executive order. Libertarians don’t believe in an imperial presidency!
Using executive orders to rescind congressionally untethered regulatory promulgation is a good deal different than using it to accrue/wield more power. For example, each incoming president by law has the ability to undo regulations taken in the final months of the previous presidency. Reason over the years has been in favor of that as a tool, even though on some rare occasions we liked the previous reg.
Apologies in advance if I’m way off here as I have a 1-month-old. Tired and all that. While the WSJ oped is paywalled, I skimmed it with a free read when it came out and thought there were a few more ‘imperial’ overtones to it. It explicitly endorsed the use of executive action over changing legislation, and if I recall correctly it also toyed with the idea of the president simply not spending appropriated dollars in order to force agencies to downsize. This doesn’t strike one as totally consonant with the post-chevron emphasis on an executive more tightly linked to congressional express intent. Appropriations are a key piece of congressional intent in many ways. Not looking at the piece, I may be getting that part wrong.
I also believe the need to be consistent with existing law will constrain the vision more than some think. It’s not simply a ‘it’s too complex, ergo no change can ever happen’ argument. It’s that Musk and Ramaswamy may have a vision that government agencies are out here doing far more arbitrary things than they in fact are. Sure, they’ll be able to find and dunk on a bunch of silly DEI-adjacent things or money spent on wasteful contracts, but the core activities of most civilian federal agencies are probably not as arbitrary as some think.
I may write a longer email to catch my loose thoughts here in more developed form, dunno. Hopefully these thoughts are relevant. Worried in part that Musk and Ramaswamy will overreach and not be credible messengers and it polarizes folks away from future efforts potentially (I mean already, DOGE is such smirking-dipshit kind of branding, cmon)
First hour was a snoozer of a show the reflector episode with the same fella was just as dull.
Tried reading Ben Smith’s book “Traffic”. Incredibly interesting premise, but…… Snoozer.
Agreed on the Reflector episode, which I thought was unusually dull. But, I thought TFC version was good. Liked some of the discussion on the economics of trade newsletters, intersection of business/economics/politics, etc.
As some who has been right of center most of his life and who has also grown up both playing and studying music, I learnt very quickly to separate art from artist--otherwise whom could I have possibly idolized or performed on stage with? I honestly think any other way is a fool's errand.
Where to begin with artists who have bad politics/ checkered past?
Pretty sure Caravaggio was a violent mess and believed to have murdered someone (it’s so far back that we can forgive those beautiful paintings of…beheadings)
Picasso, known pig.
Dali, cozied up with fascists.
Pasolini, a self proclaimed Marxist…still wondering if he was a good filmmaker tbh
Wagner, anti semite
Miles Davis, general asshole and woman beater
Gaugin, pederast
Polanski, scumbag and rapist
Coco Chanel, that whole Nazi thing
All kinds of rock band from the 70s, being rockers in the 70s
Luis Bunuel, believed in communism too much
Wow, we had some cross-thinking here! Did you read Chaos by Tom O'Neill? Somehow made Polanski look worse.
I did! How’d ya know? Such a fascinating book and would love to see it turn into an overlong doc series to relive it visually hahaha
Are you saying that Pablo Picasso was, in fact, called an asshole? 😂
I wear my TheFP cap while I’m working out in the gym inside the complex here in the Beltway Swamp. It gets a few sideways glances.
Oh I think Reflector did something about this recently. But I am sure the Fifth Column version will be raunchier (and drunker)
You mean the correct version.
"Don't make politics your religion; your gods will always be overthrown" - Jeff Blehar
And then extrapolate.
Best unsolicited advice I ever got.
Oh man, where to start?
Edgar Degas was an absolute raving, frothing at the mouth antisemite.
Paul Gauguin ditched the mother of his child to “marry” a teenage (if that?) Tahitian girl.
Probably the worst one for me is Gian Lorenzo Bernini, who hired someone to slash his lover’s face…
I will say, as a person working in the art world, which has itself proven to be a cesspool of Jew-hatred and self-hatred in the wake of 10/7… it’s easier to stomach when the artist is dead lol.