I am running out of steam to talk about you-know-who, but goddamnit, the Detroit News stuck this fucking paywalled piece of crap into my face this morning, and OK then, I’m taking the bait.

A rare double byline, for starters, the longtime editor and his current underling go on a Cletus safari to the latest Trump rally, last weekend in Oakland County. What is yet to be learned about Trump disciples? I haven’t a clue, but the headline tells us: Trump’s messianic message resonates with the forgotten and I nearly spit out my coffee. Forgotten? Forgotten? I feel like these people and their mystifying beliefs have been shoved in my face on a near-daily basis for years. But OK, let’s read on:

Three buddies are sitting in an Irish bar in Waterford Township, drinking beer and talking politics.

It’s Saturday night, and one of the trio is waiting to go to Donald Trump’s fly-in rally at nearby Oakland International Airport. The other is killing time while his wife attends the event. And the third is not sure where he stands on Trump and would like to hear what the former president has to say. But he doesn’t have a ticket.

“You wouldn’t happen to have an extra one, would you?” he asks us.

That’s our first indication of what the night ahead holds. Most politicians have to bus people in for their appearances to make the venues look full. For Trump, the crowd is scrounging for tickets.

Ooh, a scene-setter. And shoutout to the dude who still — still! — isn’t sure where he stands on Trump and would like to hear what he has to say, but alas, there’s apparently no way to find out short of standing in an unheated airplane hanger for a few hours. But here’s the part that sent the top of my skull into the rafters:

“He’s endured untoward suffering on our behalf,” said Ed Chandler, a pastor and bus driver from Grand Blanc who arrived early and found a place to stand right up front. “The least I could do was to show up in person to support him. It’s important for all of us to take a stand for what we believe is right.”

The messianic undercurrent ran through the evening, and Trump played to it. After a lengthy diatribe on the litany of legal attacks on him by what he called crooked judges and corrupt prosecutors, Trump told his devotees, “I’m being indicted for you. Never forget.”

Intentionally or not, it brought to mind Christ’s communion promise, “This is my blood, shed for you.” Trump’s new covenant sounds much like the old one, built on promises to build a wall, put criminals in jail, derail the green agenda and bring China, Russia and Iran to their knees with just the sound of his voice.

I’d say Pastor Ed needs to go back to divinity school and learn a few things about Jesus. But I’ve read this before — he says it every time he opens his mouth — and what’s more, I’ve heard it repeated by idiots. A woman in my Facebook network quoted her husband saying just that, after the Stormy Daniels hush-money indictment came down, and I replied that as long as her husband wasn’t paying adult-film actresses for their silence, they’d probably be OK, and yes, this is coming from a public Christian and what the hell has happened to American Christianity, that they’ll swallow this bullshit so eagerly? You tell me. More:

While Saturday night’s crowd was still mostly White, we noticed it was a lot younger than in the past. A generation that came to age during the upheaval of the COVID pandemic is also looking to Trump to save it.

“My generation is most concerned about housing,” said Christian Armstrong, a 21-year-old Wayne County Community College District student from Detroit. “We want to be able to buy a house to get a start in the capitalist system, and we can’t.”

Armstrong also is sympathetic to Trump’s claims of persecution. “They’re trying to keep him off the ballot, and that’s not right,” he said.

When I was 21, I was in no position to buy a house, either, but at least I have some sympathy for this plaint, because it’s legit. I have no idea what Trump is going to do about it, but if he wins, there may be an explosion of inventory that will drive prices down, as millions of Americans flee to Canada or Mexico or Costa Rica or Europe. But this, this, was the coup de fuckin’ gras:

Rola Makki, a young woman from Livonia who showed up in a red “Arab Americans for Trump” shirt, explained her attraction to the enduring figure.

“He’s never dismissed the suffering of the Palestinian people,” she said. “He’s always highlighted that yes, it’s both sides. To me, that’s someone who has humanity and compassion for people no matter what their background is.”

Her perception of Trump’s empathy can’t be dismissed. Trump speaks directly to the frustration and fears of a large portion of the electorate. President Joe Biden hopes to convince voters they’re not really as bad off as they think they are and has ignored their worries about inflation and immigration. Trump gives voice to their angst. He hears people who believe no one else is listening.

This must be what happens when legit news operations die, that an Arab American can believe this when Trump has said right out loud that he would reject Gazan refugees, impose a religious and ideological purity test for immigration, and said of the war in Gaza that “you have to let it play out,” not to MENTION his relationship with the Israeli prime minister — I mean, I’m just speechless. (Of the Abandon Biden movement gathering steam in Dearborn we will not speak. Yet.) Oh, and a little Googling revealed that this “young woman from Livonia” holds a vice-chair position in a state GOP outreach committee, so this column wins a bonus Salena Zito Jes’ Folks award, too.

I don’t know why I let this stuff bug me, but I do.

And now it’s Thursday, the weekend is right around the corner, and I intend to enjoy mine. I hope you enjoy yours, too.

I was a few minutes late for my part-time job the other day (lifeguarding for swimming lessons), and explained my tardiness thusly: “I’m dog-sitting for a medically fragile schnauzer.” And that’s why this is the first blog of the week. My life’s been disrupted a little bit.

This is my dear friends’ dog, and I don’t mind watching her, but hoo-boy. She’s diabetic, and blind as a consequence, so caring for her is not just a matter of taking her to the boarding kennel and waving goodbye, or even taking her to my house. I have to go to her. She needs insulin injected twice a day, plus two more meds. And letting her outside is a matter of snapping your fingers so she’ll follow the sound, then watching so she doesn’t walk into the swimming pool, which she has done, although not on my watch. She did walk smack into a wall yesterday, however. Poor dear.

Her brother dog is a spoiled-rotten but charming Morkie (Maltese/Yorkie cross) who does not hesitate to ask for attention whenever he feels a lack of same. So I’ve got my hands full. Upside: They have a luxurious bathroom — the shower squirts out of multiple heads, it’s so fabulous — and one of those new Dyson hair dryers, so there are compensations. And I’m always willing to do a favor for friends.

Happy Fat Tuesday, by the way. No, I will not be looking for paczki today. They’re jelly donuts, and I fail to see why I have to drive to Hamtramck, or even Kroger, for jelly donuts.

In my solitude, I’ve been reading. Looking back over the last few years of this blog, I’m starting to wonder at the damage you-know-who is going to my psyche, because it seems like every FUCKING day there’s something to be outraged about, and that can’t be good for one’s cortisol levels. But being an engaged citizen is part of one’s duty in a democratic republic, and so on we plow. Today’s outrage is this piece in Talking Points Memo, about what document discovery is revealing about the 2020 election aftermath:

Donald Trump’s months-long effort to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election culminated on a single, now-infamous day: Jan. 6.

But there was an alternate scenario gamed out by Trump’s lawyers — one that would have expanded the hours of indecision caused by the Trump campaign’s efforts and stretched out the process for weeks, all the way until Jan. 20, 2021, the Constitution’s ironclad deadline for the transfer of power. If their scheme succeeded, these lawyers hoped, Joe Biden would never take office.

…The plan would have seen the Trump campaign pushing Republican lawmakers to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s win not just on Jan. 6, but for days afterwards. GOP legislators would have feigned confusion over competing slates of electors, paralyzing Congress as the Trump campaign brought increasing pressure on the Supreme Court to step in and resolve the election in their favor.

Is it wrong to want to see these people not just in court, but in federal prison? Maybe gen-pop at Leavenworth? I don’t think so.

Hate to cut this short, but the morning is slipping away and I have some work to do, i.e., thinking about lunch. If Lent is upon us, can spring be far behind? I don’t think so.

You guys, I am shocked this story hasn’t gotten more attention from the prestige media. It’s based on a government report, not “sources.” The revelations – that the White House has its own pharmacy, and under Trump, it handed out prescription meds like Smarties on Halloween – are startling. And yet, it seems to have bloomed and withered in one news cycle, and what stories were written concentrated on the cost, mainly of the use of name-brand drugs when generic equivalents were available.

That the White House has its own medical unit and pharmacy isn’t surprising at all – we’re talking about the commander-in-chief and support staff. But in the Trump administration, it sounds like it operated more like your skeezy cousin who knows someone who works night shift in a hospital pharmacy, and in some cases the guy at the end of the bar with a backpack who keeps going in and out, but not to smoke and the bartender keeps his stool open.

The pharmacy freely dispensed over-the-counter meds, no big deal, every office I’ve worked in has an unsecured cache of Tylenol and so forth. But they also liberally prescribed sleep aids like Ambien (defensible, but a somewhat bigger deal). And narcotic pain medications, including oxycodone, fentanyl, morphine and so on. (Bigger deal.) Also, Provigil, and now I’m paying attention. Provigil is described as an “anti-tiredness” drug, but generally speaking you need a diagnosis of narcolepsy to score it, although I’m sure the dealer at an Ivy League dorm can hook you up during finals week. Also. Also! Ketamine, a highly abused sedative. And Versed, a serious benzo, given to people about to go into surgery, for crying out loud.

I mean, I can understand why someone working in the Trump White House might want to be high all day, every day, but this is ridiculous. Provigil for jet lag at a G20 summit? I get it. But ketamine? Who the hell you planning to date-rape, Stephen Miller?

Roy Edroso, over on his excellent Substack, has been writing very funny short scenes featuring you-know-who ever since he noticed the constant sniffing during the first debate. He (Roy) has concocted a running gag about “the Formula,” the inhalable mix of crushed tablets that none of us would be surprised Trump consumes all day every day. It’s always fun when a Formula scene arrives in my morning inbox. And now we know: It probably wasn’t much of an exaggeration at all.

Now it’s snowing, way more than I expected when I checked the forecast this morning. A good day to stay inside and watch the fat fluffy flakes, maybe read a book or three. Think I will.

I neglected to mention one detail of my Miami trip: Passing along the causeway to Miami Beach, we had an excellent view of Royal Caribbean’s brand-new Icon of the Seas cruise ship, in the Port of Miami, just days away from her maiden voyage.

You don’t know what the Icon is? Well, check it OUT, friends. It’s only what appears to be the world’s largest cruise ship, “the largest waterpark at sea,” with a fact sheet that must be read to be believed:

20 TOTAL DECKS
18 GUEST DECKS

2,350 CREW
(INTERNATIONAL)

2,805 STATEROOMS

5,610 GUESTS
(DOUBLE OCCUPANCY)

7 POOLS AND
9 WHIRLPOOLS

6 RECORD-BREAKING
WATERSLIDES

1,198 FEET, 365 METRES LONG

BUILT AT
MEYER TURKU, TURKU, FINLAND

It’s all caps because I copy/pasted it off the fact sheet, sorry. Also: There are eight separate “neighborhoods” onboard, which I suspect is designed to make this enormous floating city seem smaller, somehow, although if small is what you’re after, why not book a smaller ship? Dumb question, I know. Cruising on this vessel is all about what you’ll tell the folks back home upon your arrival.

It’s as long as the longest Great Lakes freighters, and as tall as…can’t say. It looks weird and top-heavy, but that’s probably my uneducated eye. I can only say that, judging from the view from the causeway, I’d rather be towed behind in a dinghy than go aboard. I recall too many stories about norovirus, Covid, and what was the one that went dead in the water somewhere off the coast of Alabama a few years ago? CNN covered it like the Hiroshima bomb, and maybe that’s to be expected, as surely some of the passengers stranded aboard longed for the sweet fiery release of a nuclear explosion. I remember looking at the long-lens video shots of the ship shimmering in waves of heat coming off the Gulf of Mexico, and thinking: Fuck it, I’d go overboard and swim for it.

But people who cruise purely love cruising, and if that’s what they want, bless ’em. I wonder what the Finnish shipbuilders thought of this thing as they assembled it.

As I write this, the voters of New Hampshire are making their wishes known. This guy is surely one of them, and his story has been a minor social-media topic the last few days, and why not:

BEDFORD, N.H. — “This,” Ted Johnson told me, “is what I hope.” We were here the other day at a bar not far from his house, and we were talking about Donald Trump and the possibility he could be the president again by this time next year. “He breaks the system,” he said, “he exposes the deep state, and it’s going to be a miserable four years for everybody.”

“For everybody?” I said.

“Everybody.”

“For you?”

“I think his policies are going to be good,” he said, “but it’s going to be hard to watch this happen to our country. He’s going to pull it apart.”

As the story goes on, it’s plain this guy is lying. It’s not going to be hard for him to watch, whatever scenario this Northwoods idiot has in his head. He’s going to love it, plainly love it, because it’s going to punish everyone he dislikes, and that is a very long list.

It starts with his brother, from whom he is estranged, because what is family compared to Donald Trump, avenging angel?

Johnson started talking about “Russia-gate” and “Biden’s scandals” and Hunter Biden. What, I wondered, did Hunter Biden have to do with Nikki Haley? “She’s not going to hold anybody accountable for what they’ve done,” Johnson told me. “People need to be held accountable. That’s why you’ve got to break the system to fix the system,” he said. “Because it’s a zero-sum game right now. And to be honest with you, the Democrats are genius. They did anything they could do to win and gain power, even if they lie, cheat, steal. … What they’re doing is they’re destroying the country. Who could bring it back?” He answered his own question: “Trump’s the only one.”

Don’t want to over-paste here, but there is plenty-plenty more, and lest you think this guy is a trod-upon Deplorable, think again. He’s well-off, retired military with a great work-from-home job, a big house worth about three-quarters of a million, and more anger than you’d expect from a man living so well.

I used to think the people who said that MAGA was all about Trump giving people permission to hate others were a little bit dramatic. They weren’t. They flatly despise people they don’t understand, and it makes them feel good to do so.

And so they do.

OK. It has rained, drearily and near-freezingly, all the livelong day. School was cancelled last night, so no morning swim for me. So I’m feeling puffy and thinking I should maybe scrub a bathroom or something.

You guys, I meant to check in at least a couple times this past week. I took some work along, figured I’d squeeze a few notes in. But the warmth and torpor of South Beach took hold and I mostly spent my free time napping, chilling and wandering around looking at the ocean or the girls walking the street in bikinis or whatever.

We found a great dive bar, the kind of place where, when “War Pigs” comes on the jukebox, everybody sings along:

We found a lizard on the sidewalk:

We found the beach, complete with an offshore billboard, because American capitalism never sleeps:

And on Friday I made my way up to Palm Beach, to see the sucking vortex of tacky, Mar-a-Lago:

I met up with an old colleague there, also a journalist. We watched planes come in low over MaL on their approach to the airport in West Palm. She said one sign that Himself was in residence during his presidency was when they didn’t do that, on the orders of the Secret Service. She had lots of little factoids like that; Carolyn should be a tour guide. Don’t think you can sneak your drone in from the water side, either:

Being on the ground, though, I could see why a rich lawyer of my acquaintance sneered at Mar-a-Lago, which he called badly located, too close to the road that allows any old prole to look at your place. Of course, some people like the proles looking at their place. No one was ready for one to become president.

Later, we decamped to the Breakers, where they were playing, no kidding, croquet:

And then I got back on the Brightline higher-speed train and made it back to Miami in an hour and change.

A good trip. Now to climb back on the Dry January wagon for the next 10 days.

One thing I did in the early/late hours in my hotel room: Watched cable news, just to remind me that cutting cable was the best decision we’ve made in a while. The constant, never-ending blah-blah about the Iowa caucuses was too much for me. Especially when none of it captured details like his, from Politico:

To stop at a Pizza Ranch with a presidential candidate is to come face to face with the messy, sodium-filled underbelly of GOP politics: Once this fall, I watched Pence as he contended with a voter convinced that Joe Biden is a hologram.

Or this, from the WashPost:

Brian Laures, 52, said he had been star-struck meeting the former president at an event in Mason City earlier in the month. Laures was enlisted as a caucus captain by the Trump campaign to recruit pledges to show up to vote for Trump on Election Day. He had contacted more than 50 people, he said, and passed out dozens of yard signs.

“The aura that man carries around is tremendous. He has absolute confidence,” he said. “I loved what he did with our country. You know, closing up our border, getting Black people working, lowest unemployment, everybody was working.”

God, these fucking morons. And we focus the attention of a great nation on them, for weeks at a time.

At least it swatted Vivek Ramaswamy back to Columbus. Seems the voters of Iowa had different reasons for disliking him than mine, however:

Sigh.

Well, we picked a good week to be gone. It’ll be rain and melting for the week ahead at this latitude. I can handle that. Hope you can, too.

Finally: Go Lions.

MAGA types love to talk. That, and watch movies. They must have “Braveheart” and “The Patriot” running in loops in their houses, and over time, the dialogue seeps into their subconscious, and then out their mouths. My assessment is charitable in that I believe they’re mostly just shit-talkers, but even shit-talkers are responsible for what they say, which brings me to this:

Note the paywall, so no link. But here’s the gist:

There was a recount in a local election in December that “got heated.” Recounts are public events, so:

The event drew attendees who were investigating whether there was some sort of wrongdoing in the election, and it became tense.

And then:

At one point in the day, a person, who hasn’t yet been identified by law enforcement, was overheard saying (the county elections director) was going to be “hanged for treason,” (that same director) told The Detroit News in an interview Tuesday.

The recount turned out the way almost all of them do, in that it didn’t change the result and only shifted the totals by one vote:

But on Dec. 16, a day after (the recount), the Michigan Republican Party issued a press release, saying a “citizen-led investigation,” including a “canvassing mission” of homes in Royal Oak, found some voters who said they had cast ballots in the election but their votes were allegedly not reflected in city records.

“This is a time for Michigan Republicans to stand together, regardless of differing perspectives and fight to eliminate election corruption and ensure that no Michigan voters are disenfranchised due to derelict behavior of election officials,” Michigan Republican Party Chairwoman Kristina Karamo said in the mid-December press release. “We will not stand by and see our voices diminished or our presence deleted by dictatorial democrats.”

(The elections director) said some individuals at the recount wanted county officials to investigate the claims, but their allegations fell outside the scope of a recount, which is focused on tallying ballots.

This is so typical of these ignoramuses: Show up at a hearing where the activity is constrained by law to one thing, demand another thing, then yell “dictatorial democrats” when it fails, and then someone says “hanged for treason” to just put the cherry on top.

You watch: If this person is charged, they’ll howl about the Deep State uniparty, blah blah blah. “Hanged for treason” sounds real Mel Gibson-y, like something the patriots of old would do.

(I’m reminded of the first Indiana Jones movie, when he faces a foe swinging a scimitar around all fancy-like. Jones rolls his eyes, pulls out a revolver and shoots the guy. I mean, why is hanging always the preferred punishment of these idiots? The potential for spectators would be my guess, but you can make a show out of a firing squad and not have to build a scaffold.)

Anyway, these idiots are getting on my nerves. Fortunately, they’re destroying themselves. You’ve probably heard about the turmoil within the state GOP, and how the state committee tried to remove the above-mentioned Karamo at a meeting last weekend. But she is telling them she’s not going, and now there are lawsuits being teed up on both sides. It’s a People’s Front of Judea v. the Judean People’s Front all the way down the line, and Michigan Democrats are reacting exactly the way you’d want them to, which is to say: By not making a sound, a statement, or so much as a peep. When your enemies are destroying themselves, don’t interfere, etc.

So. Winter has arrived. We’re supposed to get snow today, and then next week, a deep cold snap. I, however, will not be here. A few weeks back, a friend called to pitch a girlfriends’ week away and I said OK, sure, I’m in. So where will I be while the temperatures settle into the single digits here? MIAMI. I am overcoming my distaste for all things Florida to sit poolside and sip tasty drinks. (Dry January is taking a time out, too, but I’m not going to rip the knob off or anything.) Maybe I can finally beat this respiratory crud.

But I’ll have my laptop, so no break planned here.

I was foolish enough to think I’d wake up Tuesday ready to resume my swimming routine, but at 2 a.m., once again, it was cough-cough-cough-cough for a couple hours. At 5 I gave up and thought maybe something bland and soft on my stomach might help me drop off, and began the day with Raisin Bran.

It didn’t really improve from there, but I went out in the driving rain to buy some OTC cold remedies. I’m going to nuke my body with Nyquil tonight and get seven hours come hell or high water.

And I actually feel fairly OK. Except for the lack of sleep.

But never mind. Confined to soft chairs as I was today, I read this thing in Politico, exploring why the MAGA right is so obsessed with sex trafficking.

Well before MAGA, I’d noticed how these lurid sex-trafficking (but never labor trafficking) stories flowered among the Karens and Kens of America, who may or may not be MAGA but were MAGA-adjacent, shall we say. The stories about girls being abducted from malls, and their mothers from mall parking lots. The “Taken” films. This idea that women, anywhere, and sometimes children, can be snatched off the street or some other public place, never to be seen again. When anyone who’s even noddingly familiar with the issue knows the trafficker is almost always someone known to the victim, and isn’t likely to end up on a sheikh’s (or Jeffrey Epstein’s) jet, bound for a Qatari nest of prostitution. But you all know this.

The Politico piece is a Q&A with Mike Rothschild, who wrote “The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything” and (this is my fave title) “Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories.”

As is usually the case, the Clintons live rent-free in these dolts’ heads:

What is it about the Clintons that captivates far-right conspiracy theorists like this?

Part of it is that it’s already been three decades of this: The Clinton conspiracy industry started in the early 90s. It started with stuff like Whitewater, Travelgate, stuff that is ancient history now. But there was a really well-funded, very organized and popular effort to bring the Clintons down. And then of course, it resulted in the impeachment, it resulted in the dump truck full of conspiracies about Hillary Clinton when she ran for president. And even though they’re not really in the public eye much anymore, it’s so prolific that conspiracy theorists have stuck with them because they know what works. They’re just like a classic rock band playing the hits.

Which reminded me of a photo I took in a Detroit used bookstore a while back:

My brother had asked for a loathsome Clinton book for Christmas, and I was determined to look for a used copy before I paid the writer for one. Check out that chunk of reprinted Wall Street Journal reporting on Whitewater — remember that? And that was only one shelf. There were at least 20 different books on the Clintons, nearly all of them cut from the same cloth. As Rothschild says, the hits.

But it’s the salaciousness of the pedophilia accusations that always squicked me out, and I think Rothschild is right again here:

There’s always been a certain amount of salaciousness in these conspiracy theories, and there are theories going back about the awful sexual depravity of the Catholics or later on of the Jews. So you’re always going to find a certain amount of attention paid to any kind of conspiracy theory involving sexual proclivity of trafficking. And if it involves children, people immediately just lose their mind — even if these children don’t exist. There are no children who have been trafficked because of Pizzagate because Pizzgate isn’t real.

But if you just put out the suggestion there, it grabs ahold in a way that is difficult to dislodge. I think a lot of it has to do with antisemitism. I think a lot of it has to do with fear of the occult and Satanic panic. So you get all of these things that are mixed together: the anti-Jewish sentiment, the fear of Satanism. And, of course, now it extends to social media. So you have these powerful figures, in media, in politics, in culture, academia. It’s very easy to kind of put these people together as part of this vast conspiracy. And if there’s a conspiracy of them, well, they’re probably doing horrible things to children, too, because that’s what evil people do.

I hadn’t considered the ancient roots of antisemitism being the universal solvent here, but he’s right. One of the oldest hatreds, still a classic.

But this is the most important part, and why it’s pointless to try to change their minds:

Disinformation and conspiracy theories spread so quickly and so readily on social media, while the rest of us are doing our research and writing our articles and doing our interviews, trying to figure out what this actually means. The people who believe this stuff have already decided what it means. And they don’t want to be told differently.

Twitter and people like Alex Jones and people like Steve Bannon, they have an alternative media ecosystem. These are not fringe people anymore. This is not the guy standing outside the football stadium waving a sign about the end is coming. This is a massive industry. You’ve got billions of dollars being pumped into misinformation, into these products, into these podcasts, into these books. It’s a job for a lot of these people, and they’re very good at it. They spread this stuff very quickly. They know it doesn’t matter whether it’s real or not, their audience doesn’t care.

So, good news: You can give up trying. And enjoy the midpoint of this miserably gloomy week.

I hope you all had a pleasant Insurrection Anniversary Weekend. The observances around here were minimal, mostly a lot of coughing, mostly on Alan’s part. Me, I think I may be over it, but as always, more will be revealed. Probably Monday. (On edit: It is now Monday. Still sick, but not terribly so.) We watched “Maestro” and were underwhelmed. Made salmon. Did the laundry.

Now I’m killing Sunday night scrolling through Golden Globes photos. Some astonishingly ugly turnouts, even considering it’s the starter event for awards season and often a little off-the-wall. Tom and Lorenzo liked this, but OMG no, Bella Ramsey, I don’t care if you’re nonbinary, this is not a goddamn bowling league banquet:

They also loved this, but I’m a hard no on peplums pretty much everywhere:

That’s Da’Vine Joy Randolph, from “The Holdovers.”

We’re in full agreement on Meryl Streep, however:

(We both loved it.)

Moving on to my new Monday hate-read: Paul W. Smith, who’s a local talk-radio host published by The Detroit News, where he files no more than six or seven paragraphs of prose so slight it barely qualifies as elevator small talk between the 10th and 25th floor. What’s more, they put it behind a paywall, because lord knows only the readers who pay for the paper should have the privilege of reading this:

Aside from many religious related exclamations of “miracles” over the years, one of the most famous such exclamations/questions of our lifetime had to be on Feb. 22, 1980, when extraordinary sportscaster Al Michaels blurted out, “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!” at the end of the United States’ 4-3 upset of the USSR in the 1980 Olympic hockey semifinals in Lake Placid, New York. The U.S. then went on to win the gold medal.

I have a new miracle. In fact, I am proclaiming it the first one of 2024.

The miracle at Japan’s Haneda Airport. Japan Airlines flight 516.

That long windup in the first graf makes me chuckle, it’s so full of cheese — “exclamations/questions,” the precise date, “extraordinary” Al Michaels, the full quote, the score, the date again, the city, the medal. Because lord knows this obscure moment from sporting history needs to be fully illuminated in the opening sentence. I’m surprised he didn’t mention the movie, too.

Then, the technique I’m calling the Albom Drop: But I have a new one. [new paragraph] The new thing.

More cut-and-paste from the wire services follows, detailing the crash in Japan, etc. etc. And he still manages to get the miraculous escape, in which all the passengers survived, wrong:

The well-trained crew of 12, along with a veteran pilot with 12,000 hours of flight experience, led to a relative absence of panic while passengers remained seated awaiting instructions.

See, I differ on this. I’m sure the crew did their jobs. But what saved the 379 people aboard wasn’t the crew. It was the fact they’re Japanese, raised in a culture where following instructions for the greater good of the collective is a bedrock value. If Japanese passengers in a clutch situation are told to get up, leave everything behind and swiftly exit via the inflated slides, they’re going to do it without an argument.

Anyone who’s flown on an American airline knows exactly how this would have ended at one of our airports. Fifty people might have made it off, and the rest would have been barbecued in jet fuel as passengers clawed at the overhead compartments, trying to rescue their laptops, wallets or favorite shoes, angrily pushing back at anyone who tried to hurry them toward the exits, screeching I HAVE A WORK PRESENTATION ON THAT COMPUTER AND MY BONUS DEPENDS ON IT.

Eight paragraphs, due to the Albom Drop. If it took him 10 minutes to write, he took a bathroom break in the middle.

More photos? Yes. Here’s one for my Columbus readers. I was telling Alan some Dispatch stories the other day, and recalled the Bonhams, a married couple who presided over the Sunday books page. We only saw them one day a week. Fridays were payday in the newsroom, and in those days before direct deposit, it meant everyone came in on Fridays — all the regional correspondents, the farm reporter (who wore bib overalls, and was hilarious), and the contributors like the Bonhams, who assembled and proofed their Sunday page. They were…well, “old-fashioned” would be the polite adjective. They took over from another weirdo, whose singular accomplishment of note was keeping books he considered “dirty” off the paper’s best-seller lists. I don’t remember how he did it — it was before my time — but Marge, our bridal reporter, said he was furious when “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask)” sat atop the lists for months at a time. I don’t know if he asterisk’d or simply ignored it, but if you had a book that did unexpectedly well in Columbus during the 1970s, that might be the reason.

Anyway, the Bonhams were cut from the same cloth. One of my colleagues described their ideal volume as “Twenty Years of Steam Trolleys,” and that’s pretty close. But they also hankered to be authors themselves, and when the Dispatch agreed to print a collection of their columns in book form, they came up with the perfect title:

I didn’t buy it, or even nick it out of the library, no. I told Alan this story, which he found hilarious. A few days later, UPS delivered it to our doorstep. The used bookseller was clearly so thrilled to get this dog out of her collection, she threw in another small-press volume, something called “Biblioholism: The Literary Addiction.”

I’ve been paging through the Bonhams’ prose for a few days. My fave so far is “Some Books That Press My Anger Buttons,” which I’ll summarize for you: Books that tell the reader how to succeed with no thought of others; books that run down America; books with “vulgar scenes and bad language”; and “books that exploit celebrities.” This column contains my favorite line so far: An author I know, who is a good writer and is working on a book, is being pushed by his publisher to put a homosexual scene in the manuscript. “Never!” says the author. “Even if it means my book will never be published.”

Seeing as how I’ve gone on at length beating up on three writers, let me finish with some praise: This biblioholic received Zadie Smith’s “The Fraud” for Christmas, and is enjoying it very much. Happy Monday, all, and send healing vibes this way.

All of a sudden, the young people I know are having babies. Not Kate’s crew, but the slightly older ones, the ones in their 30s. I went to a baby shower in the spring, a more casual one this fall, and now there’s one on the calendar for this month. I want to give all the parents what they ask for on their registries, but also my gift of knowledge, and uppermost in mind is this:

You won’t need most of this stuff.

Not that I am stingy, but it’s hard not to be awed by the sheer quantity of stuff new mothers are told they have to buy, a truth when I was pregnant, and one that persists today. And so much of it – so, so much – will be used little, or not at all. You need burp cloths, yes, but any old cloth will do; I found a six-pack of cheap cloth diapers did just fine. You need clothing for the little shaver, but shoes are entirely optional until they start walking. And while it pains me to say this, say it I must: Give up the dream of being an eco-warrior and using cloth diapers for anything other than spit-up cleanups: There’s a reason this is Pampers’ world and we’re all just living in it. If it scratches too hard at your conscience, find a brand that isn’t an environmental disaster and stick with it.

One modern trend I approve of: The one where guests are asked to bring a book and sign it to the baby. I can never disapprove of books. But after they’ve gone through all those infant board books, again I whisper: The public library is an excellent resource. Not all parents have the outstanding Allen County Public Library just down the road, but “move to Fort Wayne” isn’t an option for most of them.

Anyway, I know a lucky baby who’s getting a Poppleton book. Advanced for reading on their own, but fine for reading to them, once they can sit up and appreciate Poppleton’s world. It was between that and the McDuff books. And everything by Rosemary Wells. And so, so many others. No one embraces reading to a child as enthusiastically as an older mother.

OK, just added “Good Dog Carl” to my Amazon cart. You can’t get a good start in life without a copy of “Good Dog Carl.”

There’s much going on in the world, but today my interest is drawn to something I wrote a couple of years ago. I only recently learned that a Michigan U.S. representative traveled to Uganda — fucking UGANDA — to do this:

U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Tipton) traveled to the African nation in October for that country’s National Prayer Breakfast, during which he encouraged Uganda to “stand firm” in its Anti-Homosexuality Act, which was signed into law in May by President Yoweri Museveni, and includes the death penalty for those who are determined to be “serial offenders.”

Walberg began his remarks by applauding Ugandan Member Parliament Cecilia Ogwal, who he said came second only to God, after earlier in the prayer breakfast she compared support for LGBTQ+ individuals as an attack on God.

It so happens I know a gay Ugandan. He’ll be an American eventually, but the last I checked on him, he still had permanent asylum status, and was waiting out the year before he could apply for a green card. That’s when I wrote about him, after having known him casually/socially for a few years.

As I pointed out in my column, Alistair enjoyed many advantages people coming in on the southern border don’t have, mainly education, language skills and a certain amount of money. But even so, I was struck by just how hard it is to drive to an airport with the clothes on your back and whatever you could fit in a suitcase, but a one-way ticket and say goodbye to everything you’ve known. Make no mistake, he grew up with the sort of advantages an upper-middle-class child enjoys in modern Africa, but he still had to flee his home and country. Meanwhile, this Moody Bible Institute grad strokes the people who drove him out. Disgusting.

OK, I’m going to try to navigate a shower with my seasonal crud (not Covid, yay) and then take Wendy for a mani-pedi.

The new year — Eve and Day — is one where a certain amount of reflection is almost required. Doing laundry yesterday, I started thinking about the turn of the millennium. In…I think September 1999, a major water main in Fort Wayne ruptured, cutting off service to a big chunk of the city. And how did the affected customers respond? By fleeing to grocery stores to buy up all the bottled water, and yes, I think there were shoving matches here and there over the last case on the shelves.

It didn’t bode well for the feared Y2K bug, coming at the end of the year.

Remember that? Millions of words of fear-mongering, warning that nuclear reactors could melt down, business records disappear (including your life savings), and yes, infrastructure that keeps life going – like municipal water systems – would similarly fail. Advertising for survival goods like dehydrated food, water purification filters and 24-hour candles soared. It was a big topic.

We had a recently turned 3-year-old, wonderful neighbors, and cable television. When the new year began arriving in the Pacific, the celebrations, yes I said celebrations, started. And it was beautiful. CNN covered the rolling party, and as the day wore on, we watched fireworks, bell-ringing and parties breaking out, hour after hour, as the disaster failed to arrive. Tokyo, Sydney, Beijing, across Asia to Moscow, Eastern Europe, Western Europe (Paris’ fireworks were particularly wonderful), Africa. That was the night I learned that Canada’s Maritime provinces have this weird half-hour time hiccup, but that just meant another batch of live party video at the bottom of the hour. Finally it was our turn. A neighbor detonated 2,000 firecrackers in the street, which I feared would awaken Kate but didn’t. We went to bed and got up early to learn what we already knew – that those who had crouched in their basements fearing the worst had been wrong. Life would go on. The computers didn’t fail. The center held.

We had not quite two years of believing that life would get better and peace would reign until al-Qaida changed everything, but it was fun while it lasted. I think of that New Year’s Eve from time to time as kind of a platonic ideal. We made a nice dinner, we drank champagne, we kissed at midnight, we went to bed, we woke up happy and safe.

I hope yours was like that.

As for the Nall-Derringer Co-Prosperity Sphere, this year we went out. For the first time in years. Kate’s band was playing with two others we like at a local club. The theme of the evening was Playboy After Dark, an excuse to get dressed up, and we did. Alan leaned all the way in with a smoking jacket, captain’s cap and gold chain. I just wore a nice dress. Kate, as a performer, went a little further:

The other bands that night were pretty hard core, and they sounded great and loud, but not so loud we couldn’t have a conversation at our table in the back. Here’s Will, Kate’s high-school friend, who plays in the Stools, hoisting his instrument high while the crowd goes wild:

No good shots of Shadow Show, sorry — it was elbow-to-elbow crowded, and we could only see them from way off to the side. If we don’t get Covid it’ll be a miracle. But I’m not sorry we went. It was the polar opposite of 2000, but NYE 2024 was worth all the trouble. And I got a Stools T-shirt.

P.S. I just remembered a detail from 2000-ish: A Fort Wayne man died and the contents of his house were auctioned. He’d been a Y2K paranoiac, and his basement was stacked to the ceiling with canned goods, freeze-dried food and other supplies. If you needed 200 rolls of paper towels, cheap, that was your stop. A colleague wrote a story about it.

So! What else is going on in the world? Nikki Haley steps in it again:

On the heels of a very bad week for Nikki Haley, the Republican presidential candidate said she would pardon Donald Trump if he’s convicted of federal crimes. “I would pardon Trump if he is found guilty,” she said at a campaign event in Plymouth, New Hampshire, on Thursday.

“A leader needs to think about what’s in the best interest of the country,” Haley went on. “What’s in the best interest of the country is not to have an 80-year-old man sitting in jail that continues to divide our country. What’s in the best interest of our country is to pardon him so that we can move on as a country and no longer talk about him.”

Yeah, Nikki, ask Gerald Ford how that worked out for him. Of course, I think it would be excellent for the country to have an 80-year-old man sitting in jail, proving we actually have a rule of law and it applies to everyone, but I’m a crazy dreamer.

Otherwise, I’m going to spend the day doing a whole lot of nothing — maybe taking down the Christmas tree — and eating leftovers. Happy New Year to all of our little community, and fingers crossed we’re still standing a year from now.