Firehose #134: Bitch, Please

Also: The best email we’ve ever received?

Well, that was a month of Friday afternoons, was it not? To keep us grounded, here’s our not-in-house (outhouse?) animator Arch Stanton, auteur of the above Venn Diagram, with yet another insane recap, this time of Members Only #249:

* Pertinent to yesterday’s “Fiasco in the Oval Office,” as aptly characterized by Eli Lake (veteran of Episode #52, #65, #141, #174, Special Dispatch #51, #326, #368, #407, M.O. #184, and M.O. #244), and as further excoriated by Kmele on Twitter, I wrote a pre-Trump/Vance/Zelensky-blowout Reason piece Friday (as teased in #492), under the headline “NATO Could Effectively Die This June.” Excerpt:

So are the European Union's three pillars ready to assume some real-world responsibility? Don't count your chickens yet.

Macron, reinforcing the long tradition of French exceptionalism within NATO, has for years been pushing for a Gallic-led European successor bloc to the transatlantic alliance's critical function as a security guarantor. Until very recently, Germany and England have balked, due to a mixture of Franco-wariness and a desire to nurture the special relationships with Washington. Meanwhile, the French president has mastered the art of simultaneously talking tough while always managing to not spend overly significant money and manpower on European defense, all while both flattering Trump and trying to play him.

In his visit to Washington this week, Macron, out of one side of his mouth, continuously stressed European-provided "security guarantees" for Ukraine, while, out of the other, he spoke of American "solidarity" with those guarantees in such a way that would ensure French troops wouldn't have to actually enforce much of anything.

* Omnigraf o’ reactions to yesterday from past Fif’ guests: Tim Mak (#170), “Why Zelenskyy Stood Up to Trump-Vance”; Rep. Thomas Massie (#51), “Is this the end of Zelensky’s presidency? He hitched his wagon to Biden and the deep state. They lost and now he doesn’t seem to be playing his cards well”; Noah Rothman (#119 & #167), “This Is Not a TV Show”; Rep. Dan Crenshaw (#476), “If you are the leader of a country in a dire situation with no path to peace without American support, do not come into the Oval Office and argue with the President of the United States in public”; Jonah Goldberg (#182), “Dishonor and Incompetence to the Oval Office”; Vivek Ramaswamy (#411), “Modern-day peace through strength”; Jamie Kirchick (#55, #347 & #394), “an utter disgrace”; Glenn Greenwald (#183, #197, #211), “Just spend a few years reading about basic history and being silent until coming back to opine on things about which you know nothing”; David French (#191, #325, #365), “utterly shameful. This is Vladimir Putin's best outcome. The U.S. is placing pressure on a free nation fighting for its life while giving aid and comfort to an authoritarian thug”; Batya Ungar-Sargon (#451), “It's actually Trump standing up for the used and abused American taxpayer. Trump can't stand that our generosity is being used against us to prolong a war most Americans don't believe in”; Jessica Tarlov (#110), “Guess Trump and Vance really don’t know who’s an ally and who’s an enemy. Should have that kind of energy for Putin”; Michael Tracey (#105), “Zelensky’s White House Meltdown”; Conor Friedersdorf (#165, #186), “A lot of people know deep down that the Trump Admin is behaving shamefully with regard to Ukraine, but don't want to admit, even to themselves, that America is being dishonorable, so they fixate on matters of no consequence, like Zelensky's manners, to distract their consciences”; Matt Taibbi (#226, #348), “Zelensky plays Triumph the Insult Comic Dog in an unforgettably obnoxious White House visit, all but assuring an end to U.S. aid.”

I predict that these subjects will be discussed around these parts again very soon.

* Speaking of Taibbi, he was the guest on this week’s Just Asking Questions, at which he talked about “the collapse of the censorship regime,” and disclosed voting for Donald Trump:

* Moar Reason interviews w/ past Fif’ guests: Nick Gillespie (S.D. #72, #379) interrogates John McWhorter (#84, #121, #188 & #366) as to whether “wokeness is finally dead”:

* Speaking of The Jacket, here’s his mentioned-on-#492 appearance on Jon Stewart’s The Weekly Show:

* Also touched on in #492, some publishing news: Axios political correspondent Alex Thompson, with whom we talked in M.O. #215 and #468 about the amusements of being way ahead of the journalistic pack in documenting Joe Biden’s cognitive decline, is now co-authoring a book on the subject with someone named Jake Tapper, under the title Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.

* There was additionally some discussion in #492 about the White House bitch-slapping The Associated Press over not letting Donald Trump dictate its style guide concerning international bodies of water. Relevant Reason linkage: “May Officials Exclude Journalists from Press Events Based on Disapproval of Journalists' Speech?” (Eugene Volokh); “D.C.'s U.S. Attorney Is a Menace to the First Amendment” (Joe Lancaster); “‘It Is a Fact That the Body of Water ... Is Called the Gulf of America’?” (Volokh); “Trump's White House Says 'Gulf of Mexico' Is Misinformation” (Robby Soave). Also, see Greg Lukianoff (#216, M.O. #183, #427): “[it] isn’t just petty, it raises genuine First Amendment issues.”

* New awesome pod alert! Pie-gal Nancy Rommelmann (#79, S.D. #27, S.D. #30, #198, #203, S.D. #34, S.D. #50, S.D. #64, S.D. #111) has a new, Eli Lake-theme-songed interview series out called Chefs Talk. This week featured a killer convo with Anthony Falco, who is not a Sopranos character, but rather an … international pizza consultant? Sure, why not. Teaser copy: “Falco describes how the ‘soul-crushing’ tasks of working in a drugstore at age 14 led to restaurant work by 15 (‘I thought the cooks were the coolest dudes. They just came in and just kicked ass and then drank beer’); how a family tragedy when he was 19 put him back in touch with a father who’d been on the run for 15 years for smuggling hash, and how together they went to Sicily and discovered… pizza.”

* Email of the Week/Month/Year. Kmele’s reaction was: “This might be the single best email we've ever received.” Will omit the name to protect the guilty, but will say that A) it was sent at 4:17 AM, and B) the subject line was “Ruffo and drunk free press.” Behold, the only thing greater than yourself:

Hey y'all

I'm drunk at 3amm I'm going to make this quick

Big fan u rule keep being great keep being you people love the fifth because who you are is raw and real and you fucking rule hell yeah

So my point give me a minute Barri Weiss was cool enough to have an open bar at her after party she's cool as fuck. Please remove my last name from the email if I make it on the pod

Anyways

I'm wasted about to get to bed. Barri threwa banger event and after party and she's so nice

Ross and the other speakers are kind fun people love em

But here's the thing I wrote the email for

Chris ruffo is talking shit about t chaterson Williams and ruffo sounds like a little.bitch

Someone got to say it

He needs to touch grass and go ourside and feel sunshine on his face and stop being a fucking loser stop talking shit about thomas he's cool as fuck he rules ruffo is a little bitch

Look I'm mad drunk I was socially okay tipsy at Barris smart people party then I hit a sick ass dive bar on dirty 6 for the greatest soul music I've ever heard in my life I dance and melted into a spiritual realm with the people the band went INTO THE STREET TO SHRED AND EVERYONE EAS DOWN

Like this guy took the party into the street and everyone was feeling so good

it was amazing

And the band bought me free drinks for just having fun and dancing

Barri is official as cool as these people because she also had booze LFG Barri u rule BARRI U ARE A LEGEND

But anyways the bass and guitar and drums AMD RHR PEOPLE I WAS JUST CONNECTING WITH MY SOUL were convincing me God is real WAY MORE THEN ROSS and Ayaan Hirsi Ali and both of them are intellectual heavy weights and they gave the people a AMAZING TIME THEY ARE FANTASTIC

But this guy and the people ont the dance floor and the cool guy who drew a picture of me when I was sitting alone in deep thought about God and life and meaning and dre wme a beautiful picture for free

That is more convincing of God tbh

I am sooo Sorry for too long email I will end it here

Okay here it goes

Chris ruffo is talking shit and he needs to be told he's a little bitch

Thomas is rifht

Straight up the saying about the left years ago is they won the culture war and then they drove around to shoot the survivors

Look I was blackmailed and harassed for having an interview racial relationship and voting libertarian

But I have to say this

My soul feels so incredible from the music that a multi racial group of people just shredded in a bar

And I was melting away and dancing with amazing people of every variety and I feel so amazing this is the American project to create TRANSCENDENT EXPERIENCES OF THE SOUL

TNIS IS OUR CULTURE AND IM SO PROUD

my both sides of my family traveled an ocean to fighting WWII for this culture to flourish and I will do anything to keep it beautiful and alive

My uber driver agreed with me and he's cool as fuck and he's a fan of the fifth

Look it has to be said the people who are feeling this shit for the right reasons from a place of caring a love are NOT DOWN with Chris

Chriss needs to chill the fuck out

Tell Chris I will take him out on dirty six to hear music that will make him realize why this country is beautiful and great for reasons that are essoteric and spiritual above our comprehension

And it's time for a cease fire in the culture war

Because if what I just heard was rhe product of multi racial multicultural America we need to end this shit and star pursuing an exceptionalism that TRANSENDS any one of us and is so great we are lucky to be a part of it

It was southern rock with blue and soul

Italians (part of my heritage) and black people and Jews and all kinds of working class Americans made this a part of our culture and I'm so lucky to be alive in this nation and a child of this heritage and I will never let what I felt be taken for granted because this is the heritage purpose and soul of this nation and I will never let it be forgotten and seen as anything other then beautiful

I'm going to bed love you fith col

No, it is WE who love YOU.

Walkoff music comes only after a failure to locate a good one-off duet with that tragic Red Sox third baseman….