It appears I’m headed into another vortex of work for a few days, and maybe weeks, although it won’t be unrelenting. I’ve accepted an outside job doing proofreading on some marketing materials, the proceeds of which I’m throwing into our Iceland account. Did I mention we’re going to Iceland in June? WE ARE GOING TO ICELAND. I’ve always wanted to see the midnight sun and sit in steaming cauldrons of natural hot springs. The last time I did that was in Yellowstone, in a place deep in the backcountry, where a hot spring joined with a cold stream to make a perfect, and I do mean perfect, hot tub. You adjusted the temperature by moving around in the stream. ‘Twas wonderful. But this trip, like the last one, will require money, so I’m in selling/earning/saving mode.
A big pile of work has been promised for my blogging time tonight, so this may be a little dashed-off. Fortunately, I have some good links. Here’s Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone on Il Douche, but more important, the conditions that have allowed his remarkable run to take place:
What these tweedy Buckleyites at places like the (National) Review don’t get is that most people don’t give a damn about “conservative principles.” Yes, millions of people responded to that rhetoric for years. But that wasn’t because of the principle itself, but because it was always coupled with the more effective politics of resentment: Big-government liberals are to blame for your problems.
Elections, like criminal trials, are ultimately always about assigning blame. For a generation, conservative intellectuals have successfully pointed the finger at big-government-loving, whale-hugging liberals as the culprits behind American decline.
But the fact that lots of voters hated the Clintons, Sean Penn, the Dixie Chicks and whomever else, did not, ever, mean that they believed in the principle of Detroit carmakers being able to costlessly move American jobs overseas by the thousands.
It’s a really good piece. Long, but entertaining and absolutely worth your time.
As is this one, again by Jeb Lund, again in Rolling Stone. It’s about the other Jeb, the exclamation-point one. It’s not a slashing piece; Lund is a Floridian, and gives Jeb! credit for his competent handling of that state’s hurricanes, plural. (You’ll recall it only took one to send his brother into a tailspin.) But then he gets to the Terri Schiavo case, and, well, it’s hard for a thinking person to forgive the governor that.
Oddly enough, I’ve seen Jeb come in for abuse on that issue from the other side, some of whom honestly believed that he should have sent the Florida National Guard into her hospice, to protect her from her husband. Whom they would have loved to see arrested. There’s a noxious priest who was openly saying that Michael Schiavo abused his wife into a coma and, fearful she might wake up after 16 years and be able to point a trembling finger at him from a witness stand, just wanted to, y’know, finish the job. And in fact, Bush did ask the prosecutor to look over the original police and medical reports, for just that sort of evidence.
So let’s wrap up with something a little lighter — Hank, on the “Full House” reboot, “Fuller House.” It has a nice late-in-the-piece pivot point:
I could stop here and go home, having dutifully shot the fish in “Fuller House’s” barrel. But we haven’t done the part where you accuse me of telling the kids to get off my lawn. I feel we must.
“Full House” wasn’t my thing, so “Fuller House” certainly won’t be. But you younger folks, you enjoy.
Well, the snowstorm was a big nothing burger for my part of Michigan — all-day slush-rain, as the temperature hovered at 32.8, and yes, I checked. We still might get something overnight, but right now? I’m thinking I’m going to have to swim in the morning.
Good day, all.
