You guys! I’m so sorry I’ve been such a sluggard here. I don’t know where last week went. But let’s soldier on, anyway:

I generally dislike anniversary journalism, but Monday is March 6, which sticks in my head as the beginning of Covid in Michigan. The first cases wouldn’t be diagnosed and announced until the 10th, the day of the primary election, but on the 6th the chill was definitely in the air. Kate and the girls had a show at Third Man Records, the beginning of what they hoped would be a victory march down to SXSW in Austin, but by then, SXSW had been cancelled. “Just go anyway,” I told them. “People will be getting together and playing anyway, with or without the festival’s backing.” They were afraid no one would come out to Third Man that night, but once the Bernie Sanders rally at the nearby TCF Center concluded, they had no problem filling the place. I noticed one guy standing way off by himself in a mask. Huh, I thought.

Within days, the governor would start issuing shutdown orders, and within weeks, those orders would be the genesis of a new right-wing movement here, which led directly to…well, a lot of things. The utter delamination of the state GOP, although pockets of strength remain. The shenanigans in Ottawa County got their start then. There are others.

I wrote a story for Deadline on the one-year anniversary, presented oral history-style, which means it’s too long, but oh well. I’ve reread it around this time the last couple of years, because I don’t want to forget anything about the early days – the fear, the panic, the way people one block away would cross the street when they saw me coming, walking the dog. (I, on the other hand, would only step off to the curb line. That was my comfort zone.) The way some people wiped down their groceries. The homemade masks, the Karen tantrums in grocery stores, the toilet paper hoarding, all of it.

The New York Times magazine had a Covid oral-history story last week, and one quote in it hit me between the eyes:

In the final set of interviews, most of which were conducted last summer, some people said the pandemic was over while others insisted it absolutely was not. Or that it was “sort of queasily over.” Or that it had been over, but then “it stopped being over.” “I think we all, as a society, became better,” one nursing-home aide concluded. A nonprofit worker confessed, “I used to think that we lived in a society, and I thought that people would come together to take care of one another, and I don’t think that anymore.”

That last quote, especially, echoed some of the way people talked in my story. Here’s a state legislator who lost her sister early on:

After Isaac (Robinson, a member of the Michigan Legislature) passed, (the legislature) didn’t go back immediately. We had some votes, mainly to extend the Governor’s executive order powers, and Democrats wanted a joint resolution allowing virtual voting. (The Republicans) didn’t take the resolution up. I was of the mindset that the Republicans weren’t starting from a place of “how do we deal with this crisis,” but “how do we jam the governor.”

And the funeral director:

It hit my community so hard, and we were screaming and it’s like nobody heard us. I’d hear these people saying, “We have to open up. I can’t go to my restaurant anymore,” and I’m having trouble getting gloves because of the hoarding. Without gloves, I’m out of business.

That’s kind of where I am, three years later. To be sure, the ER doctor and epidemiologist said she came away with optimism about the power of people working together, but she was mainly talking about her medical colleagues. I’m no longer confident, or even optimistic, that faced with an existential public-health threat, people will do the right thing. Here’s something I hear a lot: “I am just so over Covid.” Aren’t we all, but it’s still with us. To be sure, my masking is less common than it was. I went to a densely packed show a while back, mask-free. I eat in restaurants again. But I mask on planes, and I still watch case numbers. If they go up, I mask up. I’m still a No-vid, but I don’t worry that I could die, if I got it. I’ve been vaccinated five times; if I get it, I expect mild symptoms and long Covid to be far less likely. But I don’t want to get it in the first place.

My faith in my fellow citizens, though? That’s in the toilet. Maybe that’s why I’m enjoying “The Last of Us,” the post-zombie apocalypse show on HBO now. It posits a future where the thing you most have to fear is not the zombies, but your fellow healthy American. Everyone is armed to the teeth; busting a cap in someone’s ass is considered totally acceptable to protect one’s food or vehicle or whatever. The government is a dominating fascist force. There’s a thriving black market in the human settlements that remain. That, I regret to say, is what I expect the next time a pandemic hits.

Not that I wish to start the week on a bummer note! After a wet, sloppy snowstorm Friday night, we’ve had two days of snow-melting weather, and spring is most definitely on its way.

I know it isn’t funny, but I can’t stop laughing at that idiot Scott Adams, who fucked around and found out in recent days, and now finds himself dependent on other dumbshit racists like him to pay the bills. And his cash reserves, of course, of which I’m sure there are plenty.

Look for Dilbert T-shirts on the Proud Boys soon.

Gene Weingarten has the best take on it (so far), which spends a bit of time discussing why Adams is so, so goddamn dumb, but thinks of himself as a genius:

You are probably aware of the latest rant by Scott Adams, the creator of the pioneering workplace-related comic strip Dilbert. Adams, who has long been flirting with right-wing positions, sees himself as a rare genius — he once actually wrote that, anonymously, as a comment to a blog, as though it was an observation by someone else, and got caught. He also sees himself as a courageous provocateur and not a septic asshole, apparently on account of his doctor of geniusness degree. As you probably know, he finally went right over the top last week and did a face plant from 50 feet onto asphalt.

Citing a Rasmussen poll reporting that only 53 percent of Black people agreed with the statement “It’s okay to be White,” (roughly half of the rest were unsure, and the rest said “no.”) Adams concluded in a streaming video that Black people are a “hate group,” and that the best solution to this fact is that “White people get the hell away from Black people.” He also said Black people were at fault for “not focusing on education,” and added “I’m also really sick of seeing video after video of Black Americans beating up non-Black citizens.”

How dumb is Scott Adams? This dumb:

Rasmussen is generally regarded to be the most right-biased major pollster in the country. On its homepage right now are the following headlines, based on its recent inquiries: Conservative Viewers Are Better Informed About Important Topics; Not ‘Woke’ Yet? Most Voters Reject Anti-White Beliefs ; Local Impact of Illegal Immigration Mostly Bad, Voters Say; Fentanyl: Most Voters Rate Biden Low on Handling Problem. The only other question in the poll of whether it is okay to be White was: “Agree or disagree: Black people can be racist, too.” One can presume that Rasmussen does not exactly have its finger on the pulse of the Black community.

So why not take a stupid poll and make a stupid rant out of it, if it makes people pay attention to you? I get the feeling the stakes in a game like this, which is to say, one’s own YouTube show, is to start out saying something ridiculous and keep saying it, and escalate and escalate until, like a balloon, it pops. I’ve done radio before; YouTube can’t be that different. People say radio is an intimate medium, but only if you have the imagination to feel people out there, breathing and paying attention. Or not paying attention; maybe you’d be the kind of host who imagines attention wandering, distraction, and so you pump up the volume, hoping that the technology will somehow evolve in the next 30 seconds and they’ll talk back.

They never talk back. And so, if you’re dumb, you just keep blabbing, like Adams.

I shouldn’t talk. One of these days I’ll step in it. But no one pays attention to people like me.

OK, then. The week begins. One more to get this story done, and then we’ll be back to status quo.

Sorry, guys. I accepted a freelance assignment with the dreaded one-two punch of being, first, a fairly dry topic and second, a tight deadline. So I’ve been distracted this week. Every time I do one of these, I think: Isn’t it time to stop doing this? Then I think: Can I use the money? I can always use the money. And so: More phone calls, emails, etc.

I’m indebted to David Simon for once observing that if it were fun, they’d call it show fun. But it’s business, and so it’s show business. Some things aren’t fun.

So. The other part of this is that I’m in the dreaded late-winter doldrums. We had an ice storm midweek that, thankfully, didn’t rob us of our power like hundreds of thousands of others in the metro area, but it’s bleak enough outdoors that I have been staring at the walls and observing my empty skull like Annie Hall watching herself and Alby having sex.

But it’s at least partly sunny today — although fucking cold — and I hope to make some progress on my story today. And it’s Friday, so no matter what happens, my sources won’t be at their desks tomorrow, and I can not think about it for two whole days. A garden center on one of the main drags here always puts up a spring countdown board around this time of year, and I can report it’s below 30 now.

Someone sent me this a little while ago, and it has roused me to my usual state of simmering outrage:

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Indiana Republican lawmakers voted Wednesday to prohibit Indiana University from using any state money to support its sexual research institution after a far-right legislator unleashed disputed allegations of child exploitation by its founder and famed mid-20th century researcher Alfred Kinsey.

The Indiana House voted 53-34 to block state funding toward the Kinsey Institute that has long faced criticism from conservatives for its ongoing research and the legacy of Kinsey’s work that they blame for contributing to liberalized sexual morals, including more acceptance of homosexuality and pornography.

Oh, of course they did. Living in the Hoosier state for 20 years, I was often amazed that the Kinsey Institute existed there at all, but I was schooled on the tremendous influence of a single Indiana University president, Herman B Wells (no period on the B, a style oddity you learn the first time you mess it up), who fought the hayseed legislature and prevailed, which was every bit of the miracle you might be thinking it is. The mover behind this is a sourpuss with the ironic name of Larissa Sweet, new to the legislature, hailing from where else but Huntington County:

Republican Rep. Lorissa Sweet claimed that some of Kinsey’s research was child exploitation as she argued for an amendment to the state budget bill against funding for the institute.

“By limiting the funding to Kinsey Institute through Indiana University’s tax dollars, we can be assured that we are not funding ongoing research committed by crimes.” Sweet said.

And I’ll break my usual three-paragraph rule to include the pushback by Bloomington’s voice:

Democratic Rep. Matt Pierce, whose Bloomington district includes the university campus, responded that Sweet’s claims were “based on old unproven allegations of conspiracies that did not exist,” calling them “warmed-over internet memes that keep coming back.”

Yep. Although frankly, it would serve Indiana right if the Kinsey Institute packed up its enormous collection of literature, research and art — more on that in a minute — and decamped for more tolerant pastures. Although I’m sure if they did, the legislature would demand payment for the materials collected through the publicly funded university.

For those who think the Institute is some dank orgy pit, be advised that they guard their gates carefully, admitting only serious scholars or students doing research for classes. A friend of mine was granted entry to find material for a paper on cohabitation before marriage, and said it was extraordinary, not just for the amazing library, where “Doctor’s Naughty Nurse” was shelved next to peer-reviewed studies of male impotence next to “Lady Chatterly’s Lover” and so on, but also the art collection, which hardly anyone talks about. They have paintings and so on from renowned artists, all pretty, shall we say, frank. I don’t know about you, but I’d love to see Thomas Hart Benton’s R-rated sketchbook, wouldn’t you? Sex is a big part of human life; it’s important to study it, and always has been, something Wells knew and Sweet…doesn’t.

Sweet is a first-termer, on the record supporting all the usual right-wing crap — health freedom, gun freedom, all the freedoms (except reproductive, of course). She’s from Wabash, has a degree from Purdue in “animal agribusiness” and works as a pet groomer. And this is who District 50 has representing them in the people’s house.

OK, I’m sufficiently irritated to get back to real work now. You all have a good weekend and let’s hope for a warmer kind of sunshine next week.

There’s a piece from last week’s Atlantic that’s been going around, about the MSU situation. It’s well-written of course, but I thought it was way, way too sentimental; I mean, if the time for thoughts and prayers is over, so too is the shocked I-never-thought-it-could-happen-here-in-this-very-special-place piece. I mean, how many times does this have to happen before we stop being shocked? And I wrote a long-ish blog about it. However, I decided #toosoon, and decided to, what’s the word, extend some grace to people who are truly suffering, and spiked it.

See? I do have a heart. And that’s why no third blog last week.

But I will save this one paragraph toward the end, more or less as I wrote it five days ago:

Every teary tribute to the Specialness and the Majesty of MSU or any other institution struck by violence or sexual assault or another tragedy puts it in a unique category, i.e., one that is so special to so many that it must be protected at all costs. Then, when someone like Larry Nassar comes along, the people charged with defending it promote the interests of the institution over those of the people who suffered in it. How many times have we seen this in the past 20 years? Many. Many-many-many.

And I also want you to see two images that received lots of play last week. Like many campuses, MSU has a boulder that students paint for various occasions. Here was the MSU boulder the day after the shootings:

And here it was a day later:

College Republicans, a raiding party up from Hillsdale or townies? You tell me.

And one final note: It turns out I had a brief encounter with one of the Grosse Pointe MSU kids who died, on New Year’s Eve, 2020. Five of us had gathered for a pod celebration at one couple’s house. Their teenage daughter was having her own celebration in the basement. There’s a bathroom down there, but it must have been occupied, because one of the boys came upstairs and very politely asked to use one on the first floor. We were having a really good time, and the host said, “Only if you can name one of the Beatles.” He waited a beat, and blurted out, “John McCarthy.” We laughed and laughed and directed him to the loo. His name was Brian, but I’ll always think of him as John McCarthy. Gone at 20 years old, our sacrifice on the altar of the Second Amendment.

But life goes on, and a new week begins. Hope yours is swell.

A mass shooter took out eight young people, three of them fatally, at Michigan State University last night. I’m not going to do the things we do when this happens.

Warning: This is going to get ranty, I fear.

I will not change my profile picture on my social media to any of the approved images — the MSU Spartan with a tear dripping from its eye seems to be the preferred one for now, although there may be others. I won’t be using hashtags like #MSUStrong or #heartbroken or anything like that. I won’t be wearing green and white, or attending candlelight vigils. Not gonna buy flowers to lay on a pile somewhere, nor stuffed animals.

I get why people do all those things; it beats doing nothing, I guess. But doing nothing is better than this performative, useless thing where we collectively make a heart with our hands for a few days, then go right back to the same old shit that leads to this type of same old shit.

Here’s another thing I won’t be doing: Telling you “Don’t talk about the bad man who did this! Talk about the wonderful young people who died!” Nope. I’m sure they were fine young people. I’m sure they were bright and driven and had plans for their lives that were only beginning. It’s a tragedy they’ll never be able to carry them out, that their absence will mean decades of pain for their parents, siblings and friends. But to talk about only that, and to ignore the many bad things that led their killer to that moment last night when he fired his gun, is to say those young people are just props in our own performative grief.

In this case, the killer, ID’d as Anthony McRae, had a misdemeanor firearms charge in his record, for which he was initially charged with a felony, then pleaded down. He received probation, did the term, and was released from supervision in 2021. From the history journalists have been able to glean in the last 24 hours, he looks like a very familiar sort in 21st-century America: A guy who loved guns. Neighbors complained he’d take target practice from the back door of the house he shared with his father. It wasn’t a big house. His dad said he tried to get his son to give them up, but he refused.

Like I said: A familiar story. A defense lawyer talks sense here:

The plea to a lesser, misdemeanor charge is not unusual, said Birmingham defense lawyer Wade Fink, who was not involved in the case.

“It is exceedingly common for someone who doesn’t have a criminal history and was carrying a concealed weapon,” Fink said. “If everybody went to prison for that, you would have an overcrowding problem and you would be giving a lot of younger people felonies, which hurts them their whole life.

“What would have stopped this is more difficulty accessing guns,” Fink added. “The felony isn’t going to stop a madman.”

I’m feeling angry because already all this shit is starting, the static and snow that obscures the lesson Mr. Fink is trying to tell us. This never would have happened if he’d been put behind bars! This never would have happened if he couldn’t just walk into those buildings! This never would have happened if we had more two-parent homes! And so on. There are unlocked schools, single parents and jail-happy judges in many other countries, but this only happens here, pretty much.

One final note: Two of the three students who were killed were from Grosse Pointe. The girl, 19, went to Kate’s high school; the boy, 20, went to the other one. Both fine young people. Brian Fraser and Arielle Anderson. There, I said their names.

But until we do something serious about this madness, they’ll only be the most recent in a lengthening list.

Perry Johnson is a Michigan weirdo. He got rich as a self-described “quality guru,” i.e. a guy who helps manufacturing plants (hence Michigan) get ISO 9000 certification, but even that is a stretch.

He ran for governor last year, and flamed out spectacularly: Along with another candidate, he hired a firm to gather the signatures he’d need to get on the ballot. The firm took his money and turned in piles of garbage signatures that didn’t pass review, or court challenges. It was pretty funny when it happened, because this is a guy who followed the Trump path of claiming that his business genius makes him qualified, even overqualified, to run the state government. But he couldn’t hire competent signature-gatherers, or even get any volunteers. Throughout his short campaign, news photos showed him flashing his veneered teeth to small rooms populated by sad-looking old white people, the kind of people who will drag themselves to campaign events in the teeth of a Michigan winter.

I wrote about his exit for Deadline. There’s not much I’d change in that column. One major expenditure, for an ad in last year’s Super Bowl, is embedded in it, and I’d encourage you to watch it, because humiliating defeat has not crushed Perry Johnson’s spirit, oh no it hasn’t. Some political consultant with an utter lack of shame has convinced ol’ Perry that he’s not gubernatorial timber, he’s presidential timber, and so: Another Super Bowl ad, this confined to Iowa media markets, and hoo-boy, here you go:

This has to be one of the most horrifying things I've seen in a while. pic.twitter.com/P9kBdMy5xp

— Ian Sandler-Bowen (@iansandlerbowen) February 12, 2023

The op-ed editor for the Detroit News points out it’s so weird, it’s probably designed just to get people talking — remember the demon-sheep spot for ol’ what’s-her-name, Carly Fiorina? So I suppose I’m playing into Perry’s greasy paws just by noticing it; the king of junk faxes would absolutely adopt that strategy. Plus, you’ll notice he’s peddling a book in the course of his ad, so maybe he’s figuring enough senile Iowans go for it, and asking their younger relatives how to read this thing called an e-book doesn’t quash enough sales (“Grandpa, what did I tell you about ordering things you see on TV?”) to make it worth it.

But I’m appalled enough by the grotesque quality of this ad that I’ll take the bait. It has it all, including two of the slimmest and most beautiful female members of Congress rendered as quadruple-chinned fat ladies. Johnson’s own wife, whom he married late in life, is plump, which shows he must not ask her opinion about much. Ah well, she’s busy with their young children. And it features the president as a gibbering idiot, because they can’t think of anything else bad to say about him.

(Just for the record, New York and Minnesota, where AOC and Ilhan Omar hail from, are donor states. Iowa, on the other hand? Takers. And they raise a lot of hogs there.)

Oh, well. He’ll learn his lesson, and some consultants will get paid, and we’ll all forget Perry Johnson soon enough. I close by echoing my colleague’s words from more than a year ago: What a weirdo.

The Chiefs won the Super Bowl. I consider this good news, something positive we’ll look back on after the alien invasion is fully realized. Carry on, and watch for more military jets overhead. Happy Monday.

Before I get to whatever pops into my head today, a quick note about comments: Ever since I got my new laptop in October, the day’s comments are not ending up in my inbox. Rather, sometimes they do, but only a few. Sometimes four or five will download, then disappear before my eyes. I’m trying to remember to check the site a few times a day to see if anyone is hung up in moderation, but don’t always. Which is the long way around to saying sorry, I just released one from the mod pen, and it might have been there a while.

Meanwhile, in today’s news, I find myself agreeing with Nicholas Kristof on so-called inclusive language:

Before the millions of views, the subsequent ridicule and finally the earnest apology, The Associated Press Stylebook practically oozed good intentions in its tweet last week:

“We recommend avoiding general and often dehumanizing ‘the’ labels such as the poor, the mentally ill, the French, the disabled, the college educated.”

“The French”?

Zut alors! The result was a wave of mocking conjecture of how to refer sensitively to, er, people of French persuasion. The French Embassy in the United States proposed changing its name to “the Embassy of Frenchness.”

The A.P. Stylebook deleted its tweet, citing “an inappropriate reference to French people.” But it doubled down in recommending that people avoid general terms with “the,” such as “the poor, the mentally ill, the wealthy, the disabled, the college-educated.”

I believe the crime of putting a definite article before a group of people is known as “othering,” one of the many, many terms I see on Twitter these days. And this practice, of allegedly making people feel more included by changing small things in the language we use, is something I have very mixed feelings about. When I wrote about fat kids a while back, I noted the change I heard in a reporter’s use of the term “obesity.” You can scroll back if you like. I’ve also noted that we no longer say “slave” but “enslaved people,” etc.

Personally, I don’t think these small changes make much of a difference in perception – if you didn’t know slaves were human beings, I can’t help you – but that’s just one old person’s opinion. A young person’s opinion, which I saw on Twitter a while back, is that it’s a terrible, terrible crime of othering to ask someone with an accent or unusual-for-the-U.S. name anything at all about their family, immigration origin, etc. I was taken aback, as I’d just done just that with Mohsen, my Uber driver home from the airport the other week. He enthusiastically told me about his journey from Lebanon to Dearborn, his family, and gave me some excellent cooking tips for making the cuisine of his native land.

All this time, I thought I was being friendly. It’s a conversation-starter, and I think most of us are sensitive enough to word and express our questions in such a way that we express curiosity and genuine interest, not go-home-Johnny-Foreigner attitudes.

(May I say that after five seasons of “The Crown,” I’m mostly indebted to it for that term – Johnny Foreigner – used in an early season by Matt Smith, playing Prince Phillip? It’s a great term.)

I approve of replacing “bums and winos” with “the homeless,” but I really don’t see how “unhoused” is better, or even more accurate. I supposed it’s driven by the fact so many of these individuals consider their tent or lean-to or even a van down by the river as a home, but holy shitballs, this strikes me as a fine hair to split. It may also reflect the belief held by many advocates for this population that is is perfectly OK for people to live in a tent pitched under an overpass permanently, if they so desire, and this is not something I agree with, so.

Kristof goes on to cover the Latinx thing, pointing out that most people of Latino/a origin don’t like or use the gender-neutral thing – no surprise, as it bends a gendered language, Spanish, to English-language ends, which strikes me as a form of, what’s the word, supremacy. And my age and personal gender will never allow me to use terms like “chest feeding” or “pregnant people” without a wince, either internal or external.

Ultimately, I come down with Kristof on his contention that:

…while this new terminology is meant to be inclusive, it bewilders and alienates millions of Americans. It creates an in-group of educated elites fluent in terms like BIPOC and A.A.P.I. and a larger out-group of baffled and offended voters, expanding the gulf between well-educated liberals and the 62 percent majority of Americans who lack a bachelor’s degree — which is why Republicans like Ron DeSantis have seized upon all things woke.

DeSantis, who boasts that he will oust the “woke mob,” strikes me as a prime beneficiary when, say, the Cleveland Clinic explains anatomy like this: “Who has a vagina? People who are assigned female at birth (AFAB) have vaginas.”

Call people what they ask to be called: That’s fine. But there’s something creepy about white, educated people correcting everyone else’s.

You may disagree! And if you get stuck in moderation, I’ll try to free you a.s.a.p.

The best estimates of the state GOP chairman race are, shall I say, optimistic for Democrats. Which is to say, the state party looks like sometime next month it’s going to elect the second-worse of the top-three terrible losing candidates in 2022 to lead the party boldly, and bankrupt, into the future. Seriously. This is a guy who was fired by one of his law firms, accused by another of getting physical with a client, but who pushed the stolen-election lie early and often, winning the endorsement of guess-who. He faced the only truly beatable candidate on the Democratic slate and lost by…checking…eight points.

In other words, 2022 taught them nothing.

This morning I read about a new initiative to monkey-wrench sex ed in Michigan, led by the Thomas More Law Center, which I will heretofore refer to as Those Guys. I don’t know what its chances are of success; Those Guys make a lot of sword-and-shield noise before they drive off a cliff, but admittedly, I don’t know a great deal about them, other than their co-founder’s role in failing to convict Jack Kevorkian. (Turned out of office in a landslide, he sought a safe haven with the right-wing non-profit and became one of Those Guys.)

I don’t know what world these people are living in. Every single suburban mom I know has her sassy gay boyfriend, and many of them gay children. The sorts of people you’d have expected, 10 years ago, to make a face and say “ew” when you mention gay people, now look thoughtful and say, “Well, we do love our niece Sandra and her wife Joellen.” Even “wife” and “husband,” as they apply to same-sex couples, no longer have air quotes around them where I live. We just had a meeting of the nonprofit I serve with, one that helps women get their lives back on track, and no one batted an eye when we decided, unanimously and without discussion, that we’d help trans and cis women alike.

So carry on, Republicans. Gretchen Whitmer wouldn’t be on the shortlist for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2024 without your help.

If you keep your ear to the ground, you probably know there’s a new set of recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics regarding childhood obesity. These are sometimes called “startling,” and they are – the doctors are now recommending medication for obese children as young as 2, and surgery, bariatric surgery, for children 13 and up. In between is a mix of meds and behavior modification classes, which no one really has much faith in.

I’ve now listened to two podcasts on the subject, and I was struck by one thing in particular. Gina Kolata, the New York Times health reporter, referred to obesity as something a child “has,” rather than something he or she is. So: “If your child has obesity, they’re 45 percent more likely to…,” etc. It struck me as one of those language things that seem to be decreed by a memo that I never get, as when we stopped saying people committed suicide and instead say “died by suicide,” or we no longer say “slave,” but “enslaved person.” It’s part of the thinking that makes us consider obesity as a disease, and not a character flaw.

Anyway, that’s just one thing, and not what this is about. A statistic flew by early in this discussion that didn’t surprise me: About 20 percent of American children are obese. You can see it with your own eyes, particularly if you live in the places where the rate is probably far higher, i.e. the American south. In my year-end cleaning/purging, I came across some photos of my grade-school classes. Here’s one, third grade:

To my eye, there’s one fat kid in that group, and she wasn’t that fat, just kinda plump. I just looked her up on Facebook and she’s about the same (which is to say, she’s about like me, still in Misses sizes but a M/L for sure). Side note: 26 kids in that class, with one teacher. And yet we learned, and the school was excellent, and still is. Look at that stonework; they don’t make ’em like that anymore.

Nowadays, even in an affluent area, you’d see at least five. And somehow, the causes for this, which are myriad and diverse, weren’t even mentioned.

Don’t say it’s sugar. We all ate sugar, pure cane sugar, on everything. Pour a bowl of cereal? Sprinkle a teaspoon of sugar before you pour the milk. A favorite snack in my house was something my mom called “garden bread,” i.e., a slice of buttered white bread with, yep, a teaspoon of sugar on top. We ate potato chips, whole milk, all of it. Salads? If you like iceberg lettuce with Good Seasons Italian on it, maybe, and who likes that? By contrast, today’s groceries are cornucopia of unbelievable goodness, to my eye. Avocados, piles of pre-washed and ready-to-eat fresh greens, once-unheard-of exotic fruits and vegetables, and we’re only in the produce aisle. The rest of the store – just an ordinary Kroger, not a Whole Foods or anything like that – offers healthy foodstuffs the richest pashas of antiquity can only dream of.

A friend once pointed out the oranges and lemons in still life paintings by old masters: “That was a treasure. Think how far that orange had to travel to make it to Belgium or the Netherlands in 16-something. No wonder they wanted to capture it in art.”

I don’t have the answer to why kids are consuming far more calories than they can burn in a day, because I suspect it’s not one answer. When we go to Europe, and this was especially true in Spain, I was struck by all the children out playing in the after-school hours. They’re in every square, kicking soccer balls around, climbing on anything climbable. I’m sure some of them have video games, but they’re not playing them while the sun is out. Some of them must have phones, but they’re not staring at them, or taking a million selfies, or keeping up with their favorite influencers. And hardly any of them were fat. Presumably they eat the jamon and queso Spain is so famous for, which isn’t diet food.

I suspect the problem is a cornucopia as rich as the one in the grocery store, and it is filled with 20-ounce soft drinks; single-serving bags of snacks that were once .75 ounces and are now 1.5, yes video games; yes suburbs with a culture that encourages kids to have “play dates” and not just play; yes urban areas where parents fear to let their children roam, justifiably or not; fast-food restaurants where portions keep growing and growing, pushed by economies of scale; and, well, the list goes on. In other words, good old American capitalism-driven trends that we dare not even mention, much less criticize or shape policy to discourage.

I mean, even the dinner plates I got for my wedding in 1993 are 15 percent bigger than the ’50s-era fine china my mother gave me when they downsized.

If we really want to help kids not be fat, we don’t start with medication, let alone bariatric surgery. But it’s a crisis now, and this is what we look like.

OK, rant over. The weekend awaits. What’s on your agenda?

(Oh, and that’s me, top row, second from right.)

It’s the end of the week, and time for? Items in search of a blog!

Like every other writer on the planet except for me, Gene Weingarten has a Substack, and dropped one of his language pet peeves: “reach out to” instead of “ask.” This peeve is journalism-focused, so he quoted some story where X reached out to Y for an explanation, etc. I am in full agreement with Gene, and would like to add one that came up in my reading yesterday:

“Change out.” X was recommending Y change out their air filter, although sometimes it’s “swap out,” which might have a tiny bit of nuance, but probably doesn’t. Don’t get me started on “change up,” which is just ridiculous. Change your air filter, swap it, I don’t care. Just stop adding “up.” OK? Settled.

Next week: We’ll circle back to “circle back.”

I don’t believe I have it in me to fight another culture war, so I’m just saying it now: I’m a non-combatant in the Gas Stove wars to come. Also, I will give up my gas stove when you pry it from my cold dead fingers. That’s how much I love it, and don’t tell me how great induction is. It may heat up quickly, but it’s the cooling down that takes a while, and that’s what I love about gas. You turn off the flame and…the heat goes away! We cooked on induction in Europe, and that “H” stays lit quite a while after you turn the burners off. Don’t talk to me about air quality, either. I have no respiratory illnesses, neither does Alan, and if gas fumes were going to kill me, they’d have done so by now.

The rest of you who want to preen about your moral superiority in cooking with induction, go right ahead. I’m sitting this one out.

(Also, I know this issue is overblown, and based on sloppy reporting. Still.)

Nolan Finley, the conservative op-ed page editor at the Detroit News, gets a fair amount of undeserved credit for mundane observations; I will never forget or forgive the chorus of what-a-keen-eye-this-gent-has when he noted the near-absence of black people in a trendy new restaurant. But generally, gennnnerrrallly, I can respect that he seems to be a conservative with eyes to see and a tongue to speak, which is another way of saying he’s smart enough to see Trump for what he is. In discussing the current state of the Michigan GOP (paywalled, sorry), he writes:

How sorry are the affairs of the state party?

It still is figuring out how to pay for its state convention in Lansing Feb. 17-18, where roughly 2,000 delegates are set to gather to select a new chairman from an 11-candidate list. That slate, in its mediocrity and lack of both political experience and appeal, is distressingly reminiscent of the field of hopefuls who initially filed for the GOP gubernatorial primary in 2022.

The party is proposing for the first time charging delegates a fee for attending the convention, as many other states do. The suggested amount right now is $50 each.

Failed attorney general candidate Matt DePerno is pitching a proposal to charge the 11 candidates running for party chair, including himself, $20,000 each to pay for the convention and other operations.

Maybe the GOP should just hold a bake sale.

And you know what? DePerno, a thug fired from one of his former firms for putting hands on a client, is likely to win the chairmanship. The two closest competitors are equally crazy and unqualified, and it’s going to be glorious to watch them try to rebuild with a 2020 election denier (no matter who of the top-polling candidates wins, it’ll be a stop-the-stealer) at the helm.

With that, the weekend awaits us all. Let’s enjoy it.