There was a tragedy hereabouts last week: A 5-year-old child was killed, and his mother injured, when the hyperbaric oxygen chamber he was in exploded. Hyperbaric oxygen chambers push nearly 100 percent oxygen, which is highly flammable. Obviously, something went very wrong.

I didn’t think much of it at first. My friend Mark the Shark went through a course of HBO therapy a few years ago, after hand surgery post-op went awry and the bandage was removed, revealing a gangrenous pinky finger. He and his doctors managed to save the finger, which gradually returned to its normal pink hue over the course of 35 treatments. This was in a hospital setting, and wound care of this sort is one of the conditions for which HBO is indicated.

But I started reading further, and the world of, shall we say, suspect HBO treatments was revealed. This boy was not in a hospital but a treatment center, founded and run by a doctor whose degree is a PhD in education, not medicine. The list of conditions HBO is said to treat would set off alarm bells in any reasonable person. It runs from A (ADHD, autism) to T (traumatic brain injury), perhaps because no one’s thought to tie it to Zika virus. This child was being treated for sleep apnea, which is rare in kids but is treatable with, shall we say, different strategies than HBO, at least according to Yale Medicine. And the Mayo Clinic. And Cedars-Sinai. You get the idea.

Anyway. The area’s fiercest PI law firm has taken the case, and time will tell. But it’s always interesting to see how health care can make people desperate for Cures That Modern Medicine Is Keeping From Us, Because Big Pharma. The Atlantic reports that if Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is confirmed as HHS secretary, expect to see what flimsy restraints are put on dietary supplements obliterated entirely:

If the little regulation that the FDA is responsible for now—surveilling supplements after they’re on the market—lapses, more adulterated and mislabeled supplements could line store shelves. And Americans might well pour even more of our money into the industry, egged on by the wellness influencer charged with protecting our health and loudly warning that most of our food and drug supply is harmful. Kennedy might even try to get in on the supplement rush himself. Yesterday, The Washington Post reported that, according to documents filed to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Kennedy applied to trademark MAHA last year, which would allow him to sell, among other things, MAHA-branded supplements and vitamins. (He transferred ownership of the application to an LLC in December. Kennedy’s team did not respond to the Post.)

A truly unleashed supplement industry would have plenty of tools at its disposal with which to seduce customers. Austin studies dietary supplements that make claims related to weight loss, muscle building, “cleansing,” and detoxing, many of which are marketed to not just adults, but teenagers too. “Those types of products, in particular, play on people’s insecurities,” she told me. They also purport to ease common forms of bodily or mental distress that can’t be quickly addressed by traditional medical care. Reducing stress is hard, but ordering the latest cortisol-reducing gummy on TikTok Shop is easy. Your doctor can’t force vegetables into your diet, but a monthly subscription of powdered greens can.

We talked about this a few weeks back. I’ll repeat now what I said then: There is very little FDA oversight of supplements now, and grifters and sleazebags take full advantage of it. Not-Dr. Kash Patel has pimped “vaccine reversal” supplements, for god’s sake.

Oh, well. In other mad-king news, perhaps in an effort to prove that yes there is SO a giant valve that one can turn to send water to Southern California, the president ordered two dams there to release water. It won’t do any good, but it could harm farmers when the growing season starts, because that’s what the water is being impounded for.

Finally, Neil Steinberg speaks for me.

Gird your loins. The week ahead awaits.

Edited to add: Friends, I wrote this yesterday before news of the plane crash broke. Obviously, we’ll all be watching those developments today. Feel free to thread hijack all you want.

I’ve probably talked about this before here, but if there are any newbies in the readership, here it is again: I’ve always felt a certain not-too-serious sisterhood with Caroline Kennedy. We’re so close in age — she is two days younger than me — that it’s the sort of thing your mom tells you when you’re both little, and her dad is president. What’s more, her younger brother’s birthday is on the same date as mine, three years later. So it’s:

Me: November 25, 1957
Caroline: November 27, 1957
John Kennedy Jr.: November 25, 1960

Mostly this was taken as a joke in my family: “I see Caroline Kennedy is interning for the New York Daily News this summer,” my mom might say, by way of noting that I was spending my break working the cash register in a Mexican restaurant. Caroline went to law school. Caroline has published many books. Caroline has served as ambassador to two countries (Japan, Australia). Needless to say, Caroline lives a cooler life than I do, but that’s to be expected.

This week Caroline made news for a devastating letter she sent to senators considering her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as the president’s nominee to run the Department of Health & Human Services. You can see her read it here. The letter itself was very brave; she described her cousin as a “predator” and a malign influence on others. She scolded him for appropriating her father’s image and family’s reputation for his ridiculous presidential run, before “groveling to Trump for a job.” We’ll see if it has an effect.

But, shallow doppelgänger than I am, I couldn’t help but notice her face. I don’t want to snip copyright photos, so let’s look at the public-domain Wikipedia shot:

That is a 67-year-old, well-lived-in face. (Albeit one with Irish DNA and likely our generation’s casual relationship with sunblock.) And I think we’ve forgotten what that looks like.

We’re so inured to today’s fillered, Botoxed, surgically altered, Instagram-filtered face, we think that’s what older women should do, whether they want to or not. JLo is 55, and has not only no lines, but a 25-year-old’s body. The old ad line for hair color — “Does she or doesn’t she?” has moved from hair to our entire body. And speaking of 55-year-olds (in April), let’s take a look at another older woman:

It’s the new First Sex Worker’s official portrait. In the name of Photoshop, have you ever seen more filters deployed in your life? Not to mention the heavily plasticized body, with the breast implants, the slanty eyes, and god knows what else. Also 55 (although this photo is a few years old:

This photo was singled out for derision when she published it on her Instagram. It says a lot about her, if you ask me.

You can go online and find photos of both these women before they entered the Mar-a-Lago fembot factory. Others, too. Kristi Noem, age 53:

I can hear some of you men, or at least your horny ids, saying so what if Kristi and Kim got a glow-up? That high-necked pink blouse was doing her no favors, and her new hair is sexy. My reply would be: Why did she change her look so drastically? To catch the eye of a known sexual assailant, that’s why.

Speaking of Mar-a-lago:

(Shudder.)

Anyway. I’m watching the RFK Jr. hearing now. I can’t figure out whether Bobby has perma-dyed his skin the color of a walnut, whether he supplements with Bronx Colors makeup like his would-be boss, or if he simply spends so much time outside, maybe flexing his guns on the beach shirtless in a pair of jeans, or what.

Are we doomed? I feel like we probably are.

Good things are happening in the world right now. Decent people are having babies, the ultimate act of optimism about the future. The days are getting longer (in our hemisphere, anyway), and spring will arrive one of these days. Who knows, maybe right at this very instant karma is coming for Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, Elon Musk and the rest of the democracy wrecking crew. You never know. Cancer could be metastasizing, a blood vessel wearing thin, a lethal dose of fentanyl making it way to someone’s coke or ketamine stash. We’re all going to die someday, and maybe one of those assholes will die first, hopefully in front of cameras.

But it’s hard to be optimistic. This I grant you. One of Michigan’s Democratic senators announced his retirement Tuesday. This isn’t good.

Today I opened the newspaper and learned it’s sponsoring a serious event in a few days:

Sponsored by The Detroit News, the program, “Lessons from History, Hope for Tomorrow: A Courageous Conversation,” is scheduled to be moderated by Gary Miles, editor and publisher of The News. Panelists are center CEO Rabbi Eli Mayerfeld; Nolan Finley, editorial page editor of The News; and his partner in the Great Lakes Civility Project, Stephen Henderson of Bridge Detroit.

The center referenced is the Zekelman Holocaust Center in Farmington Hills. The center, and the above-mentioned individuals, want to “divert America from that dangerous path,” because “incivility can quickly lead to hatred, and hatred to dehumanization.” Jews know this well. And yet, as I texted friends after reading this…well, it was something uncivil. Take my word for it.

Civility. Are you fucking kidding me.

The two partners in the Great Lakes Civility Project are, or used to be, the editors of their respective newspaper’s editorial pages. Finley still has his job, but Henderson left his a while back, and now works for my old employer. Both are lavishly paid and both still do this increasingly anachronistic work afforded only a lucky few anymore — having opinions, and sitting on panels to discuss these opinions in front of audiences. They’re friends, of course, because they have more in common than the fact one is a conservative and the other a liberal. As someone whose name I forget coined a phrase in a piece I also forget, they are fellow People of the Green Room. Game recognize game.

Not to beat up on those two. If someone offers you an honorarium, you take it. God knows where we’ll be in another year or two. Or six months. But I guffawed when I clicked through to the ticket site and learned it’s restricted to members of the Holocaust Center and Detroit News subscribers. I can imagine what the crowd will look like.

Here’s the question I’d ask, if I somehow were immobilized with a tranquilizer dart and forced to sit in the audience at this event: Why is it always us who extend the hand of brotherhood across the chasm of division? Have you ever seen a right-wing outfit – a church, a policy shop, anything – fretting about our uncivil world? And don’t tell me Nolan Finley constitutes “the other side.” Like I said, besides his fat ‘n’ happy career perch, he’s enough of a never-Trumper to be despised by many MAGA types. Which means this earnest event will have zero effect other than to fill the gray heads filing out afterward with endorphins.

It’s times like this I remember another quote whose source I forget, about an infamous Jewish gangster: “If more Jews were like Meyer Lansky, there wouldn’t have been a Holocaust.” Maybe we need a new hashtag: #BeLikeMeyer. No, that would be wrong. That would be uncivil. Meanwhile, here’s the winning team, as featured in the current issue of New York magazine:

This set’s most visible political stance is a reaction to what it sees as the left’s puritanical obsessions with policing language and talking about identity. A joke about Puerto Ricans or eugenics or sleeping with Nick Fuentes could throw a pack of smokers outside Butterworth’s into a gigglefest. Recounting her time at one of the balls, a woman tells me she jumped the velvet rope into a VIP section “like a little Mexican.” Then she lets out a cackle. This is the posture that has attracted newcomers to the cause. “Six months into Biden being president, I was like, I can’t fucking do this anymore,” says a 19-year-old New Yorker who once quite literally had blue hair and attends Marymount Manhattan, which he describes as “75 percent women and 23 percent trannies.” He had supported Biden, but “I hate watching the things I say. I took a much farther horseshoe around this time.” Later, a former Bernie supporter (who looked like the most Bernie-supporting person one could imagine with long, curly hair and a plaid shirt) told me the same: He wanted the freedom to say “faggot” and “retarded.”

They want to say faggot and retarded. And once they get comfortable, you know the other slur with double-Gs in the middle will come back from its long stretch in the wilderness. And maybe then the “19-year-old New Yorker” will feel brave enough to use his real name. (This I doubt.)

Of course, all those people can use those words now. I certainly hear them plenty. They just don’t want to get their ass kicked for saying them. Which makes them cowards, as well as uncivil.

Here’s one more thing, a glimpse from a subculture, or a sub-sub-subculture, I have no real knowledge of. The setup: There’s a local club in town, deep in the black east side of Detroit, that mostly hosts rock acts. It always seems to be teetering on the edge of some sort of collapse and its glory days are well behind it, but it stays open, somehow. Apparently over the past weekend, they were hosting a seven-band metal show, put on by an independent promoter, which means the venue was just there to be the roof and bar. The promoter handled everything else. The first band went on, and surprise! They’re Nazis! The house manager did the right thing, and shut down the show during the second band’s set. Here’s a newspaper story about it, based on social-media postings.

The Reddit thread is more instructive. A snippet:

I know who the dudes are who put this show on. They are in fact Nazis. Half the crowd was probably Latino and this is common in the NSBM(nationalist socialist black metal) scene and yes I know that makes no sense but it’s a thing.

The promoter is himself Latino! MAKE THIS MAKE SENSE. Because I can’t.

Idaho’s state legislature wants to ask SCOTUS to overturn Obergefell, i.e. the same-sex marriage decision. They’re doing this in the form of a petition, which is unusual and unlikely to succeed, but I’m thinking this is the velociraptors testing the electric fence. They’ll be brushed back, and then try again. Or another state will get the idea. And I expect we’ll see the corrupt SCOTUS roll back this protection. Places like Michigan, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York will retain the right, but red-state shitholes like Alabama, Louisiana, even Indiana? I doubt it. And so a lesbian couple that travels from their home in Grand Rapids to, say, the bluegrass festival in Brown County, Indiana should take care not to get into a traffic accident, because they wouldn’t be each other’s next of kin if something bad happened.

This situation is why we have federalism, of course. It’s preposterous to think you can be married in one state and single in another, but that’s the way MAGAts want it, and I guess that’s how they’ll get it.

Also, the president casually suggested ethnically cleansing Gaza over the weekend. I hope the Arab Americans in Dearborn and Hamtramck who simply couldn’t vote for the party of Genocide Joe will enjoy this outcome. We’re also tariff-beefing with…checks notes…Colombia?

In other news at this hour, all the Great Lakes freighters are heading to their winter layup ports, about a week late. One had to be broken out of the ice in Lake Erie near Buffalo. It’s not exactly Shackleton’s Endurance, but good lord, we knew this weather was coming at least a week ahead of its arrival.

And that’s all I have energy for today.

There are two Catholic high schools in Fort Wayne. Bishop Dwenger, in the north end of town, is considered the academic powerhouse of the pair. Bishop Luers, on the south end? A football academy. In my time as a Hoosier, I remember the football academy being in the news when it was discovered that some of the players had something they called “The GTA Club,” with GTA standing for “grab that ass,” and we’re not talking about on the football field. In that more innocent time — it was before the Boston priest scandal — it was seen as a one-off, problematic but boys will be boys, etc.

My friend Nathan reports in an extended Xitter post that this is, it would seem, part of a pattern. In 2012, the athletic director was dismissed after he was found to be surreptitiously taking “inappropriate” photos and videos of students. In 2023, a teacher was arrested for having sex with students, and when it turned out he was having a competition with another teacher to see who could bang the most students, that guy was arrested, too. (One is in prison, the other is not.)

But it gets worse.

This week, a lawsuit was filed over, again, a scandal with sexual overtones. Overtones — what am I saying? It’s a sex scandal, but a particularly cruel one. The ledes of both stories don’t really explain fully what happened, so I’ll try:

Male students would go to porn sites and find clips where the female performer had similar hair, skin tone and body type as one of their classmates, then add her name to the clip and trade with or sell it to their friends and others, advertising it as being that student. This constitutes child pornography under state law.

The suit claims the school knew and — stop me if you’ve heard this one before — did nothing. The diocese did nothing. The principal, and dean of students/athletic director not only did nothing, they stonewalled the parents of the girls. Relevant quote:

According to the lawsuit, (the dean of students/AD) admitted to the parents that the school had been “dealing with” the pornographic videos for “some time.” He also admitted the videos had not been reported to the authorities, the suit said.

“During this confrontation at the school on September 25, (the principal) repeatedly proclaimed: ‘We don’t want to falsely accuse the boys!’” the lawsuit reads.

When I first read the story, I assumed the clips were so-called deepfakes, where AI is used to actually put a person’s face on another’s body. They don’t appear to be, but I’m sure that’s next, and I’m sure the next principal will stonewall those young women, too.

My trainer coaches at a local public high school, and says the parents of students at the Catholic football academy in these parts are fond of screaming obscenities at the officials.

I smell bullshit in this story, too:

The Trump administration has instructed federal health agencies to pause all external communications, such as health advisories, weekly scientific reports, updates to websites and social media posts, according to nearly a dozen current and former officials and other people familiar with the matter.

The instructions were delivered Tuesday to staff at agencies inside the Department of Health and Human Services, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, one day after the new administration took office, according to the people with knowledge, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Some of them acknowledged that they expected some review during a presidential transition but said they were confused by the pause’s scope and indeterminate length.

…Two others suggested the move is aimed at helping the newly installed Trump health officials understand the vast flow of information coming out of the agencies. The pause, according to one official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal agency conversations, “seemed more about letting them catch their breath and know what is going on with regard to” communications.

Catch their breath, my ass. The MMWR — Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, to you civilians, and one of the “paused” communications — is how doctors and researchers keep up with what’s killing and sickening Americans. Journalists rely on it, too. But I’m sure this is OK; it’s not like bird flu is going around or anything.

This, along with the deep freeze we’ve been stuck in all week, is not elevating my mood. At least Kate’s house hunt is a diversion. She got her pre-approval, and starts going through houses on Friday. So it begins.

Well, I kept some of my vow. I didn’t watch any of the inauguration ceremonies, but some of it got in around the edges. Melania’s hat. Ivanka’s hat. Both of their chins, Ivanka’s unquestionably new. The next Mrs. Bezos-elect’s neckline. Saved by God, golden age, Elon’s Nazi salute, blah blah blah. All those executive orders. I guess this is how we govern now? Send a bunch of idiot clowns to Congress, then get shit done via EO. The wingnuts will holler OBAMA DID THIS while ignoring that the reason Obama did so much via EO was because Mitch McConnell, et al, vowed to do absolutely nothing to work with him, i.e. their jobs, and were as good as their word. Now there’s a whole generation of young people who think this is governing. It is not. It’s stupid king-signaling, but this is the country we are now. Regrettably.

Vivek Ramaswamy is out at the new commission which is basically just an office and has no power other than to prompt more EOs. The human mosquito now intends to run for governor of my native state. I haven’t kept up on how the Democrats are doing in Ohio, but I have no doubt that Buckeyes will buy what he’s selling, whatever that is. I wonder if he sends his kids to the excellent public schools in the suburb where he lives now, the same one I grew up in. My guess is…no. But they’re still very young, so we’ll see.

A headline along the way spoke of Trump’s “showmanship.” I guess that’s what you’d call it, but I prefer to think of it as the greasiest pro-wrestling promoter baying to a crowd of toothless morons, desecrating the traditions and buildings of our allegedly cherished republic. In other words, I’m even less inclined to be nice to Trump voters, if I ever was.

Yes, I am glum today. How about you?

We went to Costco on Saturday, a very bad idea, although Costco was handling the crowd pretty well — all checkout lanes open, and as always, the ruckus was in the fresh-foods section, where people were lined up for Lunch at Costco, i.e. all the samples they were giving out.

To be sure, one of those people was me, although only in the less-busy stations. I ate a bite of plant-based pasta, some sort of savory pastry, chicken Alfredo and cherry cheesecake. Mea culpa.

That said, it was kinda festive, because everyone, and I mean everyone except the Derringers, was outfitted in festive Detroit Lions merch, and spirits were high. Go Lions! We’re Super Bowl-bound!

Alas, that didn’t work out. This is why I, generally speaking, don’t follow sports. Isn’t life full of enough disappointment? Isn’t the idea of facing the next four years misery enough? Do we have to layer our crushing moods like a party dip? I say leave that to others. In return, I promise I won’t bandwagon when your team is having a great year.

This was the Costco in Macomb County, i.e. Trump country, so it’s possible all the smiles and go-teams were also about Monday’s events, and I’m not talking about the King holiday. Perhaps it just wore Lions merch instead of MAGA hats. Entirely possible, but at this point I don’t care. I put down the NYT in despair today, unable to read anything more troubling than a short piece on Jamie Leigh Curtis. But it won’t last. I’m only practicing self-care, and only for a while.

This very interesting data tool shows that I’m among friends in my precinct — Harris by 28 — and the metro area in general is still blue enough for comfort. For now. Anyway, I ain’t giving up.

That said, if you’re feeling fragile at the moment, you probably don’t want to read this, but here’s a taste. It’s about Trump’s phone call with the Danish prime minister last week:

In private discussions, the adjective that was most frequently used to describe the Trump phone call was rough. The verb most frequently used was threaten. The reaction most frequently expressed was confusion. Trump made it clear to Frederiksen that he is serious about Greenland: He sees it, apparently, as a real-estate deal. But Greenland is not a beachfront property. The world’s largest island is an autonomous territory of Denmark, inhabited by people who are Danish citizens, vote in Danish elections, and have representatives in the Danish Parliament. Denmark also has politics, and a Danish prime minister cannot sell Greenland any more than an American president can sell Florida.

At the same time, Denmark is also a country whose global companies—among them Lego, the shipping giant Maersk, and Novo Nordisk, the maker of Ozempic—do billions of dollars worth of trade with the United States, and have major American investments too. They thought these were positive aspects of the Danish-American relationship. Denmark and the United States are also founding members of NATO, and Danish leaders would be forgiven for believing that this matters in Washington too. Instead, these links turn out to be a vulnerability. On Thursday afternoon Frederiksen emerged and, flanked by her foreign minister and her defense minister, made a statement. “It has been suggested from the American side,” she said, “that unfortunately a situation may arise where we work less together than we do today in the economic area.”

If you voted for this, then, well, you voted for this.

I will be practicing self-care all day Monday, i.e. not watching the new administration goose-stepping into the White House. If anything happens, I’ll hear about it later and there will be multiple camera angles. My house needs cleaning. That’s what I’ll be doing. How about you?

I’m leaving Twitter on Monday. Monday, the day all of Elon Musk’s evil plans click fully into place at noon? That seems to be a good idea. I’ve already deleted it from all my mobile devices. I can still access it through a web browser, but there’ll be another level of inconvenience that will discourage me from doing so (as though the content, which is truly like a sewer nowadays, doesn’t already).

But the other day I stumbled upon a tweet by a Detroit media personality who is currently grubbing the bottom of the barrel of his career, trying to rebrand as a conservative. And this individual made a point of excoriating our newbie senator, Elissa Slotkin, for her questioning of Pete Hegseth this week, on the subject of whether, as Secretary of Defense, he’d obey an order from Donald Trump to send in federal troops to quell domestic unrest, or anything else he feels like tamping down with jackboots.

She’s so dumb she doesn’t even know about 1967!, etc. Hard to imagine that a military veteran and CIA analyst, as Slotkin was in an earlier chapter in her life, wouldn’t know that indeed, the 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions, about 5,000 troops, were sent into Detroit during the civil unrest. I mean, I know that, and I’m not even a native.

But he leaves out the most important detail: That federal troops came to Detroit at the explicit and official request of the mayor and governor, after local police and National Guard troops were unable to quell the violence after (I believe) three nights of it. I talked to a friend who knows more about this than just about anyone, and he said it was quite a dramatic moment; President Johnson requested network television airtime at midnight to announce the action. Flanked by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and Attorney General Ramsey Clark, LBJ laid out the request and his decision to grant it. It’s on YouTube, and you can watch it. Said the president:

I am sure that the American people will realize that I take this action with the greatest regret and only because of the clear, the unmistakable, and the undisputed evidence that Governor Romney of Michigan and the local officials in Detroit have been unable to bring the situation under control. Law enforcement is a local matter. It is the responsibility of local officials and the governors of the respective states. The federal government should not intervene except in the most extraordinary circumstances.

Only someone trying to mislead you would ignore that Trump has said he wants to send troops into American cities on his own whim, not at the request of local officials. He has spoken of “the enemy within.” From the AP last fall:

As Trump’s campaign heads into its final stretch against Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, he is promising forceful action against immigrants who do not have permanent legal status. Speaking in Colorado on Friday, the Republican described the city of Aurora as a “war zone” controlled by Venezuelan gangs, even though authorities say that was a single block of the Denver suburb, and the area is safe again.

“I will rescue Aurora and every town that has been invaded and conquered,” Trump said at the rally. “We will put these vicious and bloodthirsty criminals in jail or kick them out of our country.”

This is, of course, what Slotkin was trying to get Hegseth to talk about. What will he, and Trump, do when Fox News gins up another “crisis?” My friend said he thinks we’ll find out sooner rather than later. I’m afraid I agree. And he won’t do it with the greatest regret, as LBJ did. Get ready, Springfield.

Meanwhile, every MAGA idiot is rolling at the incoming president’s feet like puppies. This is in Indiana:

One of Indiana’s most influential elected officials wants to take the practice of trying to lure residents from neighboring states a step further by annexing entire counties.

Republican House Speaker Todd Huston’s bill to create an Indiana-Illinois Boundary Adjustment Commission to “embrace neighboring counties that want to join low-tax, low-cost Indiana” is one of the supermajority’s priority bills for the legislative session, meaning it has a good chance of passing.

“Annexing.” Such a benign word. You want to live in “low-tax, low-cost” Indiana? Fine. It’s still a free country. MOVE THERE. Of course, if you lose a hand in an industrial accident, you’ll collect about $4.17, because the insurance industry owns the legislature. If you need help in an emergency, make your way down to your township trustee’s office, get on your knees and beg. Chances are you’ll be sent away with a lecture about self-reliance. Maybe you’ll get a little cash, but prepare to come back in another month and do it again. That’s how Hoosiers do.

OK, then. The end of the week is coming into view, and mine’s been not-great. Let’s hope for a good weekend.

I read “Misery.” Saw the movie, too. I recall Stephen King talking in an interview about his inspiration for the novel, i.e. meeting his fans, and how quickly they can turn from “I love every word you’ve ever written, including the grocery lists” to “I will kill you, you motherfucker.” Usually this happens because you’ve turned down a fan’s perfectly reasonable request, perhaps that you come to their home, lay hands on their dying grandparent, and then stand as godparent to their child.

I have listened to “Stan,” the Eminem song that gave the world “stan,” lower-case, as a word for a certain kind of superfan. I’m aware of the Swifties, the Beyhive, and probably a dozen other self-named fan groups. There was an Amazon series a year or two back about a woman who was devoted to a fictional pop star similar to Beyonce, and I watched it, or enough of it. And Kate’s partner works at a local business founded by a local celebrity, and he talks about the superfans who come in, and solemnly hand the staff pictures they’ve drawn and other stuff, begging that they pass it along to that celebrity.

So I know that today’s fandom is nothing like yesterday’s, at least in my opinion. (Yes, I know about the suicides after Rudolph Valentino’s death, ditto Elvis, but the internet changed everything, and you’ll never convince me otherwise.)

This week I read the New York magazine piece on Neil Gaiman, the fantasy novelist. It starts out being a fairly familiar piece about Gaiman being, as we say now, “problematic,” but if you stick with it, it gets darker and darker, and while I have a long-standing policy of judging art, not artists, I finished it tempted to burn every Gaiman book in my possession. (One, as it turns out, with another on the Kindle app.) He stands revealed as not just a sexual abuser, but a sexual assailant, a particularly nasty variety of same, as well as a parent who should probably never see his child again. His ex-wife, Amanda Palmer, doesn’t come off much better.

There will no doubt be plenty of commentary on Gaiman, and the claims made by the women in the story, but I want to talk about fandom, as described in two short passages from a very long article:

Women would turn up to his signings dressed in the elaborate Victorian-goth attire of his characters and beg him to sign their breasts or slip him key cards to their hotel rooms. One writer recounts running into Gaiman at a World Fantasy Convention in 2011. His assistant wasn’t around, and he was late to a reading. “I can’t get to it if I walk by myself,” he told her. As they made their way through the convention side by side, “the whole floor full of people tilted and slid toward him,” she says. “They wanted to be entwined with him in ways I was not prepared to defend him against.” A woman fell to her knees and wept.

People who flock to fantasy conventions and signings make up an “inherently vulnerable community,” one of Gaiman’s former friends, a fantasy writer, tells me. They “wrap themselves around a beloved text so it becomes their self-identity,” she says. They want to share their souls with the creators of these works. “And if you have morality around it, you say ‘no.’”

It’s not a spoiler to reveal that Gaiman did not have morality around it, at least with some of them. But mercy! That quote about self-identity — that hits the nail on the head. I have my own fan enthusiasms, to be sure, but they begin and end with wearing a band’s T-shirt to their next show. I’ve met enough people I admire to know that “never meet your heroes” advice is sound. And yet, today’s fandoms seem to always take it too far.

It’s the larping and the cosplay — speaking of two words I had to look up, and not that long ago — and the WhateverCons and the fanfic (another one) and the cultivation of websites and Reddit groups, so you can find other people who share your enthusiasm and will talk-talk-talk about it with you forever. Until it seems perfectly reasonable to fall to your knees, weeping, when the object of your obsession passes close by. And those people become sitting ducks for the sort of abuse Gaiman dished out. (It should be noted that the worst of the abuse detailed in the article was inflicted upon babysitters, but there were ugly incidents with fans, too.)

Fans are important, of course, but if you ever wonder why your favorite actors, musicians, writers, et al have to live behind walls and fences, and rarely go out in public, and have to hold themselves aloof from the rest of humanity, well, this is one reason.

Various people have postulated over the years that the loss of religion on a wide scale led to…all sorts of stuff. Our obsession with our bodies, with food and diets, our naive belief that we are somehow perfectible. It suggests that worship — of God, of heroes — is something we need. Jesus is a pretty good role model, all around. Beats a novelist.

How’s your week going?

Before Jimmy Carter’s grave grows too much grass, I want to talk about his funeral a little more. It was, of course, interesting to see the seating of the first few rows, where the former presidents and other dignitaries were placed. There was a certain chatter, especially on the right-wing socials, about a shot of Obama smiling as Trump talked to him, which, depending on your degree of insanity, either means UNIPARTY or SEE THEY GET ALONG, SO PUT US BACK ON YOUR CHRISTMAS-CARD LIST. To me, it looked like polite cordiality, but that might be my own prejudice.

Melania looked utterly miserable. Karen Pence stared straight ahead and refused to look at Trump. Michelle Obama was said to have “a scheduling conflict” that could mean anything, but I’m choosing to think it meant no, I will not sit next to that racist piece of shit and you can’t make me. And I was struck by this photo:

The Quayles, Dan and Marilyn, of course. Now, we just watched “The Substance” this weekend, and I will never shame a woman for not going all-in on the insanity of cosmetic surgery, or even procedures. Part of me is glad she doesn’t give a shit about being anything other than properly presentable; I mean, she’s 75 now, and that’s a good thing, as anyone who’s checked out party pix from Mar-a-lago can attest. No one looks their best at a funeral, and it would be gross if anyone put in too much effort. It’s not about you. My only note, as we say in Hollywood, is that it’s time to rethink the hairstyle you’ve had since…at least 1984:

I haven’t thought about this woman in nearly that long. She will forever be fixed in my mind with the late ’80s, in Indiana, when she smiled sometimes but often had that who-farted look on her face. When I’m feeling empathetic, I think it must be terrible to be a smart woman who sailed through law school, and had the sort of steel-trap mind that drove her to choose induced labor for her first child, so that she could take the bar exam on schedule. (She was said to have sat on an inflatable donut.) She always seemed to be about 30 IQ points smarter than her husband, but she was imprisoned by her own politics, which called for her to be happy as a mommy and not ask for anything more. When I’m not feeling empathetic, I recall she was always kind of a bitch; I remember reading that she was distressed to learn the expensive D.C. private school she was enrolling her kids in also had the children of journalists in the student body, like our kids were common white trash who should have been happy in public schools.

It sounds like I’m saying I wish she was softer, but I’m not. I give her credit for her comment, when someone tried to imply her husband had screwed some woman he met at a golf tournament, something like: “Anyone who knows Dan Quayle knows he’d rather play golf than have sex.”

The world needs bitches, too, and this was before the modern political era, when an army of stylists would have descended upon her, dressed her in different clothes, cut and styled her hair and done their best to Stepford-ize her into something she wasn’t. People project whatever they want on you, anyway. Melania is a bitch, too, but there are millions of MAGA chuds who think she’s warm and elegant. Bottom line, Washington is a hard place to be anyone’s spouse, particularly at this level.

So yeah, we saw “The Substance.” An interesting movie overall, but very gory and, as so often is the case these days, about 15 minutes too long. Recommended for an inexpensive rental, but I’ll never watch it again. Demi Moore is naked for much of it, and Margaret Qualley ditto. Although one plays the used-up Older Woman and the other the super-hot Younger Woman, both look pretty ghastly rolling around in a white-tiled bathroom, but that is the point, I think. We rented “Conclave” on Saturday night, and it was way better than I expected.

The week ahead! Let’s enjoy it! We finally have some snow on the ground, so yay.