Firehose #80: Blinded by the White

Also: The Balko/Coleman wars, and Moynihan interviews Yang

Trying to squeeze this one out before heading to multiple birthday parties in rainy Southern California, so let’s hit the big red button on the George Michael Fif’ Machine!

* “Andrew Yang says President Joe Biden will not make it through the majority of second term: ‘I would be stunned,’” went the New York Post headline. Where did the former presidential/mayoral candidate-turned Forward Party founder turned-Dean Phillips hype man (and veteran of Episode #134) say these words? In an interview this past week with a Mr. Michael Moynihan, for The Free Press:

* Moynihan also brightened the Valentine’s Day doors of the Meghan McCain Has Entered the Chat podcast, talking presciently about “Russia's current threats,” as well as “politics, media, and how people suck on social media.”

* Me & Nancy Rommelmann (#79, Special Dispatch #27, S.D. #30, #198, #203, S.D. #34, S.D. #50, S.D. #64, S.D. #111) did one of our sporadic joint appearances on Compound Media’s Mornin’!!! with hosts Joanne Goodhart & Bill Schulz (#79, S.D. 72) to talk about Nancy’s reporting trip to Israel (from which a new Reason piece just dropped), plus polyamory, and Bill’s various poor life choices.

* Speaking of N.R., she opened her pages this week to our Comedy Cellar-owning friend Noam Dworman, so that he could spit some righteous fire about a major subtheme of #442: The attempted Twitter-trial of Yascha Mounk (#124, #195). Long story short, “We don’t have to live this way.”

* The star of #442, Coleman Hughes (#121, #144, #181, #188, #201, #379, #412), continues his media blitz, including an interview at Big Think, a discussion with Sam Harris, some gentile-ing with Ask a Jew, and an appreciation by Andrew Sullivan (#139 & #200). Then there are the Balko Wars.

To catch up: As mentioned on Working for the Weekend #78, the criminal justice columnist Radley Balko (#68) in late January uncorked nearly 8,000 words of vituperative and detailed critique of Coleman’s mid-January Free Press piece that, based largely on The Fall of Minneapolis documentary (which we discussed in #435) concluded that convicted George Floyd murderer Derek Chauvin was “not a murderer, but a scapegoat.” After digesting Balko’s pushback, Glenn Loury (#121, #188, #366), in his regular podcast with John McWhorter (#84, #121, #188 & #366), concluded that “We were too quick to praise The Fall of Minneapolis”:

Moments after that video wrapped, Balko came out with the second of a promised three-part critique, this one around 9,000 words. At this point Coleman piped in with a tweet:

For those awaiting my response to @radleybalko's critique of my Free Press Chauvin/Floyd column, note that I'm waiting for him to release his promised "part 3" before I respond in detail.

But here are two corrections to his posts, which I hope he will implement immediately:

1. Nowhere do I claim that George Floyd died of an overdose, which you've attributed to me in both parts 1 and 2 of your post. And less importantly:

2. I'm not 28 years old, I'm 27.

(He soon added a third.) Balko then came back with “Some new developments, a correction, and a response to Coleman Hughes,” here at a more digestible 2,600 words, ending with: “I should have the final installment of my series ready next week.”

* The Coddling of the American Mind, that 2018 runaway bestseller by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff (#216, Members Only #183, #427), will on Feb. 22 be treated to a full documentary version, directed by our friend Ted Balaker. The doc, which will premier right here on Substack, “follows the stories of five twenty-somethings who entered college with high hopes but instead faced a serious mental health crisis sparked by the anxiety- and depression-inducing climate that Jonathan and I outlined in our book,” sez Greg.

* That Desert Oracle Radio episode I did with Ken Layne about the early days of sorta-political blogging has now been unpaywalled.

* All y’all mentioned the SNL classic, but no one provided the link: “President Reagan, Mastermind.”

* Two can’t-miss upcoming events: Feb. 24, 7:30 p.m., Ask a Jew meetup in L.A., at Mazal somewhere near the Glendale Narrows. And in NYC Feb. 26, a spicy SoHo Forum debate between Jeremy Hammond and Eli Lake (#52, #65, #141, #174, S.D. #51, #326, #368, #407, M.O. #184) on the proposition, “The root cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the Palestinians’ rejection of Israel’s right to exist.”

* Before I do Comment of the Week, a note on Comments (and Chat, for that matter): Please don’t turn it into Twitter. Have arguments without becoming a name-calling dick to people in this community, whose commonality, after all, is NOT agreement about public policy (especially foreign policy). This is a presidential year, so people’s political nerves will be rubbed down to the nubbins. Please don’t hop up and down on them, unless, as always, it’s funny. I enjoy participating in the comments (including/especially when people disagree with me), and I want to keep enjoying said participation, but I really don’t want to be the annoying Reply Guy saying, “Please don’t be a dick to other members of this community.” So please be cool and/or funny, and we’ll all have a better time.

* Comment of the Week from Franklin Harris:

I can't wait to get my Apple goggles, go back in time, and rewrite history so Cleopatra actually is black.

Walkoff music is atonement for my gross error in #443, when—not unlike Bulwark/Dispatch!—I confused Helena Vondráčková with the great Marta Kubišová.