Workin’ for the Weekend #10: Fired Meijer, Vaporized Vapes, Field of Nightmares

If The Fifth Column likes you, your political career is probably doomed.

As we learned in Episode 367, lame-duck Rep. Peter Meijer (R—Grand Rapids) got his first taste of this here podcast in #184 when conducting a little oppo research on the man he would replace, Justin Amash. (Consult Workin’ for the Weekend #7 for some background/context about that conversation.)

The supermarket scion then joined us on Special Dispatch #51 for a subscribers-only Zoom, at which he gave us a harrowing congresscritter’s-eye view of the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot, and his early take on Trump impeachment #2. Hopped back on #307 to give an update about the Jan. 6 investigation, and more importantly (to Kmele, anyway) what was up with those UFOs; then came back on #339 for more on the joint committee, the Afghanistan pullout, and the state of the GOP. Here ye this, o members of Congress! If The Fifth Column likes you, your political career is probably doomed. Podcasting, tho….  Oh, and commenter L Brown points us to a video piece about Peter’s Indonesian singer friend in Afghanistan, plus his backstory.

* Moynihan finally had his vape piece published over at Bari Weiss’s Common Sense. It’s good! Here’s a taste:

In 2019, [Juul] “voluntarily” stopped selling flavored vaping products, pushing me towards surreal interactions with dealers promising, for an unreasonable fee, access to bootleg mango Juul pods.

Strangely, banning a product enjoyed by millions didn’t make it go away….

The evidence of the harm done by Juul’s products is scant, especially when compared to highly toxic combustible cigarettes. But the anti-Juul moral panic was given an assist by media puritans, who wrote countless nearly identical stories—often in nearly identical language—who amplified every shoddy study claiming vaping might even be as bad as smoking (many of which have been ably debunked by Dr. Michael Siegel of Tufts University Medical School). It became something of a requirement for reporters to describe the device as being “cool,” “resembling a USB drive,” and warning the students were being ensnared by “kid-friendly flavors” like . . . cucumber.

* This past Wednesday I went on Compound Media’s Mornin’!!! with Bill Schulz and Joanne Nosuchinsky, to talk mostly about poop, but also at the top about the late, greatest Vin Scully. Bill pronounces us his “favorite podcast,” and I am wearing the worst shirt ever seen on television. Over at Paloma Media, you can also see me watching Schulz in Wall Street as he talks to a group on my birthday about tourists rubbing balls. Finally, thanks to a chance meeting in a bar w/ Bill’s pal Kevin Gootee during a Yankees-Angels rainout, I appear on the latest Gutting the Sacred Cow podcast, making my best oral argument for why the beloved Field of Dreams is actually one of the most insidious movies ever made. There will be, ah, some more writing on that topic.

* Oh, did you need to see Kmele singing “Moon River” 20 years ago? (Thanks Neil C!)