Workin’ for the Weekend #39: Moynihan, on CNN -- ‘Can I not overly intellectualize this, and just say that it’s kind of gross?’

Also: Third Sunday tomorrow at 1 p.m. ET

“’The Lama’? Is that a thing?” Thus asketh Moynihan, in my favorite moment of his hour-long stint on a CNN Tonight panel this past Monday, as hosted by Alisyn Camerota. The Moyni-question was in response to Rolling Stone columnist Jay Michaelson’s eyebrow-raising deference to the Dalai Lama in the wake of the religious leader bizarrely ordering a young boy to suck his tongue. Michaelson, as  Mediaite pointed out, explained that “The Dalai Lama is a very playful human being,” that the encounter was “about as sexual as a bowl of plain rice,” and that it was done in an “aura of love and kindness.” Retorted Moynihan: “Can I not overly intellectualize this, and just say that it’s kind of gross?”

Watch at this apparently no-longer-embeddable Twitter link! You can listen to the whole CNN Tonight episode as a podcast, read the transcript, and/or watch the Busty Wimsatt-captured clips.  

* Speaking of Moynihan, alert listener Duchesse des Esseintes performs some awesomeness-archeology here with a 2007 interview Hollywood gave to America’s Future.

* As paying subscribers know, we usually record a special Second Sunday Members Only episode with a few score of our favorite listeners lurking & heckling & sometimes contributing to the episode via Zoom or whatever. However, since last week was Easter Sunday, we rainchecked for a week (though that did not stop us from recording that day & blessing all tiers with a free episode!). All of which to say is, we’ll be doing a Third Sunday tomorrow at 1 p.m. ET, with details per usual coming at the last possible minute. If you want to participate in this sacred ritual—which often includes people ripping muted solos on their electric guitars, or confessing their Nazi-loot crimes, or just being Ben Dreyfuss—you need to pony up.  

* Let’s just follow this up with a chronological Events Paragraph, shall we? April 16: Second Sunday, 1 p.m. ET. April 18: FIRE gala, emceed by Kmele. April 20: Well I’ll be at the Angels/Yankees game, anyway. April 24: SoHo Forum immigration debate between Francis Menton & Alex Nowrasteh. April 25: Reason Roundtable podcast live at The Village Underground. May 1: Reason Speakeasy, w/ Nick Gillespie interviewing Ben Smith. There’s probably more.

* You may have noticed some kerf(l)uffles this week involving Twitter, Substack, Elon Musk, Matt Taibbi, and this new thing called Substack Notes? Well, in an episode of the Smoke ‘Em if You Got ‘Em podcast taped last Saturday and released Tuesday, I pinch-hit for co-host Sarah Hepola (#354) and yakked about the great social-media wars w/ Nancy Rommelmann (#79, #198, #203). And OK, maybe we talk a little baseball at the end….

* So what’s the deal w/ Substack Notes? I mean, go to the FAQ and see for yourself, but from what I can gather as someone who’s been playing around with it here and there over the past few weeks, any of you reading this can join the conversation; just click on the buttons and do the deal (these are technical terms). The main thing to note as a reader is that little “Home/Subscribed” toggle at the top, which either limits your view to the Notes written by people you subscribe to, or lets you drink the entire firehose. It is so far a less political/argumentative space than Twitter, but I can see some familiar faces readying their turds for the punchbowl, and/or Mau-Mauing the hosts to act as bouncers against the Bad People. My advice, as always: Be nice, share stuff of genuine wider interest, don’t over-promote (even our stuff!), and have fun watching Ben Dreyfuss.    

* I wrote a ranty piece this week for Reason under the self-explanatory headline, “Democrats Choose to Advertise Failures of Single-Party Democratic Rule by Holding the 2024 DNC in Chicago.” Then, after the Tea Party bombthrowing congressman-turned repentant if vein-popping #NeverTrumper Joe Walsh recommended the piece on Twitter, I subjected myself to several hundred of the most depressing examples of human beings’ inability to use reason when discussing politics. Yowza!

* Comment of the Week comes from Ameya:

Speaking of tank collectors, I recently came across an amazing story that connects several topics of interest to our hosts: tanks, southern California, the Czech Republic, and Boston's metrowest suburbs. There was this fellow named Jacques Littlefield who loved tanks. He had a ranch in California and over his lifetime grew his collection. He started to branch out into other military equipment such as aircraft, and then when the cold war ended he found that a veritable bonanza of surplus equipment was becoming available, including a SCUD MISSILE LAUNCHER that he purchased from the Czech Republic [1].

US Customs was deeply concerned when this showed up at a California port. An investigation revealed that it had not been fully disabled. Somehow he was able to jump through whatever technical and bureaucratic hurdles were needed to keep the missile. When he died, his entire collection was donated to the American Heritage Museum in Stow, MA [2]. I have been there and it is incredible. The Scud TEL is there in all its glory, as well as numerous tanks from WWII-era T-34s and Panzers up to a modern Abrams tank. There's even a mock battle between a T-34 and a Panzer. I was a little annoyed, though, that they re-painted the Czech Scud in Iraqi colors and vaguely linked it to the Gulf War, rather than explaining the true provenance.

In any event, people seem to forget the obvious truth: today's weird billionaire collection is tomorrow's museum.

[1] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-sep-29-mn-27610-story.html

[2] https://www.americanheritagemuseum.org/

Outro music applies not only to intro theme of this post, but also the pitfalls of investing too much in the rehabilitation of once-genius singer-songwriters attempting a middle-aged comeback: