Workin’ for the Weekend #40: After the FIRE

Also: Megyn Kelly, CNN, Michael Malice, Ezra Klein, Bill Maher, Prince, and so forth.

April was always gonna be an insane month for the Greater Fifdom, but man has spring done sprung. No time to dwell, let’s just stick and move, as my old baseball coaches used to say (about applying a tag on a close play, to be clear).

* Feels like a thousand years ago already, but we did our monthly turn on The Megyn Kelly Show Tuesday, talking about the Fox/Dominion defamation lawsuit (this was taped on the afternoon just before they settled), Chicago violence, Elon Musk’s Tucker Carlson interview, Chris Cuomo’s self-help walks through the woods, and why Matt Welch is always wrong. Full show:

* Did another co-host go on CNN Tonight to do panel-yakking about the day’s events? Here’s me on Friday (care of Busty Wimsatt) talking about Texas politicians tryna order all public schools to display the Ten Commandments:

* Just saw that Kmele went on “YOUR WELCOME” w/ Michael Malice (#21) back on April 5, to talk about “the Trump indictment, the danger of DeSantis’ war on ‘wokeness,’ and what he sees as glimmers of hope for political transformation.”

* Let’s see if the new Substack Notes can magically re-appear when I post in Moynihan’s link of “an amazing, terrifying stupidity time capsule.” It can!

* There’s a new podcast by Daniel Oppenheimer called Eminent Americans, about “the writers and public intellectuals who either are key players in the American intellectual scene or who typify an important aspect of it.” The debut episode, released Friday, is about Ezra Klein, and features me, because of my 2012 Columbia Journalism Review profile “The Boy in the Bubble.” (Would also recommend to Fif’ listeners my Reason piece a decade ago, “The Death of Contrarianism: The New Republic returns to its Progressive roots as a cheerleader for state power.” From Oppenheimer’s episode write-up:

The big idea with Vox was that it would revolutionize how journalism provides background and context, and it was a bust on that front. His recent book on political polarization sold well and was buzzy for a little while, but I don’t see much evidence that it’s thesis has any staying power. I don’t even remember the thesis. As a thinker, he always strikes me as living in a relatively narrow band somewhere toward the center of wherever the progressive consensus is. So why does he seem so central to it all, and so representative of … something?

* The Fifth Column fourth wheel in the pic above is none other than free-speech hero Jacob Mchangama (#102, #344), whose Future of Free Speech project on Monday launched its American offshoot at Vanderbilt University, as announced in The New York Times by David French (#191, #325, #365). Frenchy, formerly of FIRE, cited this as one of four recent examples of free-speech green shoots on college campuses:

[T]here are some signs that the center is fighting back on some of the most elite campuses in the country, that some of the “best” still do, in fact, possess the necessary convictions. I litigated free speech issues on college campuses for almost 20 years, and I’ve never seen such widespread, institutional academic support for free expression.

* One of French’s examples came from Cornell University, which was also cited Friday by Bill Maher in his inaugural Cojones Awards:

* Apropos of a Members Only interview soon to drop, the reliably value-adding L Brown points out that:

For those of you who are not Audible subscribers and cost is an issue to subscribe to the Jon Ronson series "The Debutante", there is a free 30-day trial available on Audible:

https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Debutante-Audiobook/B0BV13NMBK

* Official Comment of the Week comes from Matthew Brannigan:

Okay, time for me to put my ex-Jehovah's Witness hat on. Van Morrison's mother was a Jehovah's Witness for a while when Van was a child. He wrote a song called "Kingdom Hall", which is on the 1978 "Wavelength" album, and Kingdom Hall is what the Jehovah's Witnesses call their churches. It's a rather happy and jolly song, which doesn't bear any relation to what I remember a Kingdom Hall being!

I wasn't aware of Prince's Seventh Day Adventist history, however the Jehovah's Witnesses came out of the Bible Students movement, which in turn had its beginnings in 19th century Adventism / Millerism, so they have a common root, and share some theology.

Anyway, when my parents met Prince it was after I had left the Jehovah's Witnesses, and there are rumors that his premature death was as a result of his reticence to get surgery due to the blood doctrine.

Related outro music that I’ve always taken equally as metaphor, authorial cry for help, and reminder about the #FAIL of living in certain climes: