Firehose #123: Afuera!

Also: Join us for Second Sunday at 11 AM ET.

On the second Sunday of each month, Never Fly Coachers, as well as (usually, though not always) all other paying subscribers, are invited to hop on a Zoom call with we the Fifthers for some good-natured jackassery/debriefing/whatever-the-hell. These conversations (usually, though not always) become Members Only episodes after the fact. This month’s Second Sunday is tomorrow, Dec. 8, the 44^th anniversary of John Lennon being gunned down by an assassin in New York, and it is scheduled to begin at 11 am ET. All paying customers are welcome. Stay tuned to this space (and your email in-boxes) for Zoom details.

* Before we get to our regularly scheduled Fif’-related content, two fundraising reminders: 1) Livia Moynihan is shockingly still short of her goal of raising $7,500 for Memorial Sloan Kettering Kids, as part of her annual Handstand for Kids drive. Let’s get this done! 2) Reason’s annual Webathon is ongoing; very important to CLICK THIS LINK RIGHT HERE if you’re considering a tax-deductible donation, as there are various tracking codes to credit The Fifth Column for making Reason’s life better. Not hard to see the importance of that, right? Onward.

* We made our monthly appearance on The Megyn Kelly Show Tuesday, talkin’ ‘bout reactions to the Hunter Biden pardon, Moynihan’s apologia for Masshole accents, Chuck Todd’s brutal about-face on Joe Biden, Kamala Harris’s drunken diction, Donald Trump’s approach to various foreign policy crises, and much more. Will we convince her to do a live show with us and Seth Moulton in Salem, Mass.? Stay tuned!

* Did I mention Reason’s Webathon? This week we did a bonus ask-us-anything Webathon edition of The Reason Roundtable (YouTube-subscribable here) that some of you may find amusing:

* Moynihan this week did a bunch of Free Pressing. Including an Honestly episode with the great Times of Israel analyst Haviv Rettig Gur, on “what’s going on in Syria, the root causes of tribal war and dysfunction across the Arab world, the ceasefire in Lebanon, what comes next in Gaza, the weakening of Iran, and what all of this means for Israel and the United States.”

* Then there was another Honestly episode, this time a conversation about stoicism with (*checks notes*) former American Apparel marketing guy Ryan Holiday:

* Finally, along with Batya Ungar-Sargon (Episode #451), Hollywood co-conducted a conversation with “The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles to discuss the future of social conservatism under Trump’s Republican Party,” plus “Rod Dreher about Netflix’s new Virgin Mary film, Geoffrey Cain about what’s going on in South Korea, and—you won’t want to miss this—Michael and Batya are going to debate one another about tariffs.”

* The headline and feature image at the top of this post count as a double reference. First to the similarly illustrated latest episode of Smoke ‘Em if You Got ‘Em, where I talked with Fif’ lil’ sisters Sarah Hepola (#354) and Nancy Rommelmann (#79, Special Dispatch #27, S.D. #30, #198, #203, S.D. #34, S.D. #50, S.D. #64, S.D. #111) about the collapse of legacy media, the persistence of incivility, and the linguistic stylings of Taylor Lorenz. (More on murder-celebrations from Nancy here; from Kat Rosenfield [#448] here.) The second chainsaw reference, naturally, is to the vertically challenged hair model for crazy men Javier Milei, subject not just to Economist cover-fawning, but a great new documentary from my Reason colleague Zach Weissmueller. Check it out:

* Speaking of our podcast offspring, I was remiss in previously not linking to this Ask a Jew episode, for the headline alone: “Auschwitz - the Revenge Tour: Chaya Leah heeds the actvists' advice and goes back to Poland.”

* Oh, and speaking of The Economist, our pal Jesse Singal (#111 & #171) has an important, J.K. Rowling-endorsed piece over there headlined “America’s Best-Known Practitioner of Youth Gender Medicine Is Being Sued.”

* One more video for the road: America’s favorite I-wanna-argue-with-THAT-guy podcaster, beloved comedy impersario Noam Dworman, brought on our past guest Aaron Maté (#138 & #173) “to argue about Ukraine, Israel, and all the rest”:

* Events? I’ll cut & paste from last week: Dec. 11 in NYC, Soho Forum debate between Glenn Greenwald (#183, #197, #211) and Elizabeth Price Foley over whether “Presidential immunity for official acts is a key factor in the proper functioning of the U.S. government’s executive branch.” Dec. 12 in same city, Ask a Jew Hanukkah party at “the historic Blue Moon Hotel on the Lower East Side.” Dec. 18 in Washington, D.C., the first of a brand new debate series, called “Reason Versus,” this time with me & Nick Gillespie arguing with The Bulwark’s Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller over the proposition that “You Don’t Have To Pick a Side in Politics.”

* Comment of the Week comes from VanityMetric:

I love the “one hitter” thing guys!!! Yes plz!! Also, I’ve worked in the healthcare industry (as a software engineer/product manager) and used to work within the UHG galaxy and while I never met Brian, I worked with several execs at united healthcare and they are actually smart, decent people who genuinely want people to get care. I remember one all hands where the CEO of the biz unit I was in talked about how his daughter started suffering from severe anxiety and they had a hell of a time getting her the care she needed. Even the executives the idiots on bluesky and twitter love to hate are affected by this broken monstrosity of a healthcare market. I love the idea of doxing these idiots. Fucking morons.

Walkoff music is the best musical moment in the recent documentary about the Beatles, and it’s not by the Beatles: