Firehose #115: Autumnal Calamities

Also: Noam Dworman interrogates Martyr Made

In fairness, one can get so dazzled looking at the bright, bright colors of mid-October Hudson Valley that one can … forget to bring home one’s laptop-backpack, requiring one to have to drive (after a three-plus-hour Sturgill Simpson concert) five hours longer than one had planned, cutting severely into one’s time for the normal weekend writing routine; further pinched by the ritual celebrations of a visiting desert creature…. So yeah, a bit late with this email/post, dog ate my homework, but not ALL of my homework.

* Last week Mr. Moynihan did his Free Press livestreamy things; first up on the topics of “Sex trafficking at the border, ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome,’ the CBS Kamala tapes and more,” with with Batya Ungar-Sargon (veteran of Episode #451), Mary Katharine Ham (#345 & #430), and Oliver Wiseman:

Then came some cud-chewing about Yahya Sinwar’s demise, Kamala Harris’s bad Fox News interview (which we discussed on #475) and the growth of “de-banking,” with Mike Pesca (#343, #418, #467), Batya, Francesca Block, Rupa Subramanya, and former Israeli Defense Forces spokesman Jonathan Conricus:

* Speaking of Israel & such, our pal Noam Dworman did a two-part Live From the Table interview with Tucker Carlson’s favorite historian, Darryl “Martyr Made” Cooper. The first part is headlined “Christianity, the Jews, the Book of Matthew...”

… and the second part is “Political Philosophy, Fascism, Tucker & More”

* Apropos of last week’s election convo between Kmele and Ben Domenech, multiple listeners recommended this discussion over at Reason w/ Ben’s wife Meghan McCain, “about the changing GOP, bias in corporate media, the 2024 election, and what it's like to be a non-MAGA, nonpopulist member of today's Republican Party.” As interlocuted by Billy Binion:

* Moar video: Here’s some backstage footage of Moynihan & Kmele (and other recognizable faces) during our Democratic National Convention adventures, as narrated/party-crashed by Trace Crutchfield and Thomas Morton:

Say, isn’t that Crutchfield fella familiar? Why yes he is—Trace was the first-ever video host in the Bad Boys era of VICE, as he explains in the introduction to his new (Substack!) no-frills This Is Now travel show:

The question often arises: how did I become the first VICE video host? An integral part of the story is my dad, who insisted that I have adult clothes and arranged for me to get them handmade in Hong Kong. One rarely realizes, except in hindsight, that your parents are actually doing you a solid when you think they are just being old-fashioned. Flash forward a decade, and I decided to wear one of the pieces, a navy double-breasted blazer that I never really liked but was in pristine condition, to the VICE office on North 10th in Williamsburg as a lark. I jokingly referred to my reasoning as a “Conservative Friday” event. At lunchtime, I went out with the other “salesdudes” to Bedford Avenue. […]

A New York Magazine photographer was out snapping photos of hipsters and noticed me dressed up like Bob Barker on a day-drinking binge, accompanied by a cohort of vastly cooler, younger, and more fashionable VICE lads, and quite unexpectedly asked to take photos of my outfit. When published, NYM proclaimed a new fashion trend in Williamsburg!

The timing of that whisper of publicity was enough for Shane [Smith] and Eddy [Moretti] to decide that I should go to the City of God favela in Rio and host the episode of the first ever VICE video, dressed in the aforementioned blazer and cheap aviator sunglasses. I was like, okay.

* Lookie there, Reason published its quadrennial survey (first started by a guy named me!) of how its staffers intend to vote for president. From the intro by boss lady and Fifth Column-namer Katherine Mangu-Ward (#75, #395):

This year we have 12 Chase Oliver voters (many of whom have horribly mean things to say about the L.P.), six nonvoters, three Kamala Harris voters (many of whom have horribly mean things to say about Harris), one Nikki Haley write-in, one Kennedy write-in (the Fox News host, not RFK Jr.), and two undecideds (one 50/50 Trump/Oliver and one 50/50 Trump/nobody). In general, the tone of the forum is bleak and discouraged, in keeping with the mood of the American public. 

We talked about the cowardice of 99 percent of the rest of the journalism world about such things at the midway point of last week’s Reason Roundtable:

* Did you need a Kyle Dunnigan interlude? Well, here you go:

* A+ headline/subhed/paywall-cutoff combo from lunatic Ben Dreyfuss (#83, #97, #148, #214, Members Only #129, M.O. #140, #392, M.O. #180): “Donald Trump Says Arnold Palmer Had a Giant Penis—But Did He? An investigation into the late golfer's club.”

* Events reminder (literally cut-and-pasted from last week; blame the backpack!): There’s a SoHo Forum debate Oct. 21 in NYC between David Leonhardt and John Early on whether “The stagnation of living standards, and soaring economic inequality, have become the defining economic trends of American life.” On Oct. 24, Nick Gillespie (S.D. #72 & #379) will conduct a Reason Speakeasy interview in NYC with Musa al-Gharbi about his new book We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite. And the Nov. 4 election-eve live taping of The Reason Roundtable in NYC is now being waitlisted.

* Comment of the Week comes from FloppyFrog:

They touched on something that traces back to the core of what I hate about civil discourse in 2024.

When Trump says something like “let’s revoke CNN’s license” and the right cheers as the left panics, I absolutely believe if the script were reversed so would the response.

If tomorrow Biden decided to scuttle Fox News, the left would be high fiving each other for days. The right would call it an act of war against the normal American people.

Yet…where on earth would you hope to hear a loud, practical voice that says “limiting free speech is wrong, and a rights violation, in both cases. You don’t get to pick and choose who has rights based on tribal affiliation”?

And that really bothers me in a way no other specific irksome thing could. The double standard. The tribalism. The refusal to grant the opposition the same rights that all people ought to have, as a starting point, and then trying to make your case from there.

It’s absolutely infuriating.

Walkoff music was worth the extra drive-time: