Finally, after a week of heat and storms and blackouts, we got our ottering in. It was worth the wait, a perfect Pure Michigan day. The water was cool but refreshing, the sky a fathomless blue and there was a fairly craptastic band playing at the microbrewery across the street from the park. They were wheezing through “Live With Me” as we arrived; what makes a cover band think they can handle the Rolling Stones, anyway?

But in the river we couldn’t hear anything but the wavelets hitting the seawall and one another’s voices, catching up and taking the news of the day apart like a rotisserie chicken. It was a good time.

Then we had a couple beers at the microbrewery, just as the band was getting into “Dance to the Music,” and if there’s any band other than the Stones that a cover band shouldn’t attempt, it’s Sly & the Family Stone.

But enough about that.

Afghanistan has fallen to the Taliban. A trillion dollars and in a week or so it’ll be like we weren’t there at all, except for all the weapons and vehicles and god knows what else is left behind. What a goddamn failure.

And what a way to start the week. I’m enjoying your comments in the last thread about all of this, if “enjoying” is the right word for it. It’s a grim moment. The dumbest people on my timelines are all Biden-Biden-Biden, but even their hearts don’t appear to be all the way in it. The truly dumb ones have a mendacity and cynicism that’s nearly breathtaking.

Meanwhile, in Covid news, conservative Cardinal Raymond Burke, who “expressed skepticism” about social distancing, vaccines and masks, now has the bug himself and is on a ventilator. The lord moves in mysterious ways.

Time to start Monday.

The Derringer family trip to France is now on day-to-day status. I’m not afraid of navigating the country in a mask, but I don’t want to spend thousands of dollars to see a lot of Closed signs, either. So: Day-to-day. We applied for our Covid passes today — yes, vaccine passports! — and are keeping our fingers crossed.

Fucking Delta. Ah, well. What can you do besides get vaccinated, follow the rules and watch the world collapse because FREEDUMB? And lack of access, true; let’s be fair. Still. God knows what this burning, flooding world will be like by next year. Might as well go to France now. We’ll play the odds, and the odds aren’t bad, at least against getting sick. Seeing the Louvre? That’s still up in the air.

We had another storm yesterday, and another fierce one overnight, and another mini-storm this morning, and there’s a 40 percent chance of more tomorrow. Then we get a break, maybe.

When it comes to climate change, I think we have fucked around, and now we’re finding out.

And yet what other end were we expecting?

The temperature maps are terrifying, the prognosis for the future not much better. So let’s go to France. Maybe Spain next year. I hope I have a trip to Asia in me before my knees give out.

But as the city of Detroit’s motto says (in Latin): We hope for better things.

Between Monday’s power outage and Tuesday’s heat and Wednesday’s heat and Wednesday night’s storms and Thursday morning’s storms and GOD WHAT IS NEXT I’m kinda looking forward to the weekend, how bout you? And I have little to say other than I’m tired.

How about you?

Why do the weekends go so fast? It seems like 10 minutes ago I’d dragged Alan to a Delray dive for some tacos and Modelos, and 30 seconds ago I was ordering a pizza instead of cooking on a Sunday night. In between, lots of heat and humidity, a storm, errands, blah to the blah. But weekends are never blah, at least not when you’re out under the sun and in a pool and otherwise enjoying summer.

So into August we gallop. Five weeks until France. I’m staring to feel like Rhoda Morganstern when she’s offered a snack: “No thanks. I have to lose 10 pounds by 8:30.”

Saturdays are generally my favorite part of the weekend: Farm market, solitary breakfast at the coney island, food prep, vague hopeful anticipation at what’s ahead over the next 48 hours. And even though it turns out to be some book time and some looking-at-the-thunderstorm time and a little bathroom-cleaning, it’s still a weekend, and it’s great.

But now it’s Monday. Going ottering with Bill later this afternoon, as it’s going to be a scorcher. It’ll be nice to catch up and maybe watch a freighter go by. The Canadian border opened today, so if for some reason we end up there, it’ll be somewhat less illegal than it was last week. The Canadian-side customs workers staged a slowdown Friday, and the lines to cross the Ambassador Bridge were insane. We drove around picturesque Delray for a while before we left, but nearly got ensnared in it. Definitely pee-in-a-bottle time for a lot of truckers.

The pleasant days leave me less time to think about hell-yes autocrats hanging out in Hungary, listening to Tucker Carlson say, and I wish I were kidding:

Tucker: “I love America, I think my country is the best in the world. But don’t tell me America is more free than Hungary.”

— Rod Dreher (@roddreher) August 7, 2021

Rod Dreher is, of course, one of the leading “intellectuals” pushing this idea, that Hungary does autocracy right because it keeps out Muslims and represses gays. I’ve been reading this guy for years, and early on it became clear what his animating force is: Fear. He’s afraid of everything, so it figures he’d be right at home in a place where Big Daddy is always looking out for you.

Later that day, Brother Rod tweeted an article by John Derbyshire (who he calls “Derb”) in VDARE, the explicitly racist and white-supremacist publication. When he was immediately called on it, he spent hours calling all his critics crazy because he didn’t know anything about VDARE, he just thought the piece was good. Hours and hours later, he finally deleted it. How is it possible that I, a shlub in Detroit, know what VDARE is, and not a leading intellectual of conservative America? It is to puzzle.

The incident did give me a reason to poke around the explicitly racist conservative mediasphere for a while. Steve Sailer wrote a piece on racial differences vis-a-vis athletic achievement, linking it to the Olympics and with the headline, “Arguing With the Inarguable.” This is well-trod ground – I guess that’s why it’s “inarguable” – and it’s the sort of thing that might be interesting in the hands of a non-racist, but there you are.

Some people on Twitter are asking why this story isn’t making a bigger splash, and I don’t have an answer other than TSF, i.e. Trump Scandal Fatigue:

WASHINGTON — Jeffrey A. Rosen, who was acting attorney general during the Trump administration, has told the Justice Department watchdog and congressional investigators that one of his deputies tried to help former President Donald J. Trump subvert the results of the 2020 election, according to a person familiar with the interviews.

Mr. Rosen had a two-hour meeting on Friday with the Justice Department’s office of the inspector general and provided closed-door testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Saturday.

The investigations were opened after a New York Times article that detailed efforts by Jeffrey Clark, the acting head of the Justice Department’s civil division, to push top leaders to falsely and publicly assert that continuing election fraud investigations cast doubt on the Electoral College results. That prompted Mr. Trump to consider ousting Mr. Rosen and installing Mr. Clark at the top of the department to carry out that plan.

Whatever happens, I hope the full weight of the Justice Department’s internal affairs division (whatever it’s called) falls on Jeffrey Clark’s head like a ton of shit.

And with that, I suggest we get Monday under way. But first, breakfast.

The longer you watch the Olympics, the more the suckitude intrudes. Why is golf an Olympic sport? Why are zillionaire American pros permitted to play Olympic tennis? Why can’t any of these color commentators just shut the hell up once in a while?

And of course, why do idiots keep weighing in on Simone Biles’ “mental health?” I put it in quotes because the way some of them talk, you’d think she’s hallucinating demons perched on the uneven bars, when it seems pretty clear what is happening: She’s had enough, and she’s done, and she’s not going to risk breaking her neck for the entertainment of a bunch of fat-asses in Barcaloungers, and that’s that.

With all we’ve learned about women’s gymnastics in recent years, isn’t it time for us to shut up and listen to them? I think so. I also think it’s grimly hilarious that the people who are saying but-but-but-Kerri-Strug and but-but-but-the-Magnificent-Seven can now hear directly from Strug and, oh, Dominique Moceanu, and they and others who have been in Biles’ shoes are all saying, girl, you did the right thing. Also, Rachael Denhollander:

Hey America- ya'll praising the "results " of the old system- did you know that our elite athletes were systematically starved so severely that at competitions many of them would walk the halls of the hotels eating scraps of food from food service trays put out as garbage?

— Rachael Denhollander (@R_Denhollander) July 28, 2021

And many, many more.

Even Mitch Albom got up off his cash-stuffed bed and phoned in some piece of shit I won’t link to because it’s paywalled and also, it sucks. But here’s one passage:

“At the end of the day, we’re human, too,” she told the media. ”We have to protect our mind and our body, rather than go out there and do what the world wants us to do.”

It’s hard to argue with that sentence. It’s just weird to hear it at the Olympics — in a sport that is defined by Olympic performances. It’d be one thing if Tom Brady stepped away from Game 15 of the regular season, saying he was burned out or needed a break. It’d be another thing if he did it after the first snap of the Super Bowl.

As many have pointed out: When Tom Brady has a bad day at work, he throws interceptions. When Simone Biles does, she can end up in a wheelchair.

Of course, only idiots still read Albom. Meanwhile, in the Washington Post, Sally Jenkins wrote one outstanding column about her and USA Gymnastics, may that outfit rot in hell, today. She had another really good one on the utter idiocy of the debates over what female athletes should wear in their performances two days ago.

But both of those are paywalled, and this one isn’t, by my old colleague Dave Jones, about the malign influence of one ambitious NBC executive on the Olympics and, by extension, every American who watched or competed:

The outgoing network showcased the athletes of the world and told us their stories. It could be Ethiopian marathoner Abebe Bikila or Kenyan 1,500- and 5,000-meter specialist Kip Keino or Russian gymnast Olga Korbut or Russian weightlifter Vasily Alekseyev or Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci – as well as the great American champions such as swimmer Mark Spitz, skaters Peggy Fleming and Dorothy Hamill, decathlete Bruce Jenner and gymnast Mary Lou Retton and diver Greg Louganis. Whatever and whoever the great stories were, ABC found them, regardless of nationality. Which is, after all the ideal of the Olympics.

Under Ebersol’s command at NBC, all that changed. Obsession with Americans and only Americans, to the point of almost jingoism, was the theme. Nobody else was worth personalizing. Foreigners were essentially made adversaries. The nightly medal count became paramount.

Ebersol was the man who gave us schlockmeister John Tesh as a preeminent event host, complete with his… what would you call them – illustrated lyrical narratives? – before the ’92 Barcelona Games women’s gymnastics sessions. If a Celine Dion ballad of the era could have been whipped for 90 seconds in a Cuisinart with a tablespoon of orchid nectar, it would have emerged as a John Tesh NBC Olympics essay.

And it’s a fun read, too.

Finally, Danny Raskin died this week. He was 102. You probably don’t know who that is. A columnist for the Jewish News here in Detroit for no fewer than 80 years, he wrote a restaurant/around town column called “Best of Everything.” This was the best obit, and the kicker is hilarious:

Scott Raskin said his father was wearing his customary suit and tie when they went to lunch at the Stage Deli in West Bloomfield shortly before the onset of COVID-19.

Mr. Raskin, then 101, spoke briefly to another diner there, a bent and aged-looking woman Scott Raskin guessed to be around 80.

Then “he turned to me,” he said, “and told me, ‘I dated her mother. She was a looker.'”

And with that? Another storm is coming, high winds, so better get this posted in case the power goes out.

I think Julie asked if anyone was watching the Olympics. I am, a little bit. I always enjoy the swimming, the gymnastics, a few other things. The commercials, some of them. (So far, my favorites are the one for the pickup truck with the guy and his cat, and the Dick’s Sporting Goods Miss America thing.) Today’s big news was, of course, Simone Biles’ exit. As I merely watch these events for entertainment, I don’t feel emotionally invested, but apparently a wide swath of the conservative Blabbersphere is:

I always thought the Olympics was supposed to be about competing, and winning, for your country. As an American, the Olympic Games always felt like a unique opportunity to utterly defeat other countries and prove, again and again, that the USA is the greatest country on earth, and other countries suck.

Apparently, things have changed. For some U.S. athletes, the Olympics has become all about them.

…Biles doesn’t suffer from a specific mental illness, at least not that we know of or that’s ever manifested itself before. What she experienced wasn’t that, it was something more common among professional athletes: she got psyched out. She wasn’t mentally tough when she needed to be.

But instead of being ashamed of that, or apologizing to her teammates and her countrymen, Biles seemed to revel in taking care of her “mental health,” whatever that means.

Whatever that means. Ai yi yi. These are the armchair gymnasts who simply cannot imagine what a top-tier gymnast having a bad day could mean — a broken leg, a broken neck, whatever. Jesus wept over these morons.

So Simone got the yips. BFD. Sometimes I hate the Olympics.

At least swimmers with the yips don’t have to risk anything worse than drowning. And there are lifeguards.

Fortunately, we can comfort ourselves with bloggage:

I love this story:

Everyone can agree that Camp Quinebarge did not go as planned.

…The decision to close the 85-year-old camp in Moultonborough, N.H., in the middle of the summer left campers bereft, counselors stewing, and some parents furious. Soon, stories began to circulate of problems that went much deeper than late deliveries: counselors hired just days before camp and lacking basic training; a counselor punched in the face by a child and a camper later hit in the head by the same child; dirty dishes provided at multiple meals; at least four campers vomiting and getting quarantined, while some parents said they weren’t informed; and staff quitting and being fired in high numbers.

…Tales from the aggrieved make Quinebarge sound like the summer camp equivalent of Fyre Festival, the ill-fated music fest that promised luxury accommodations in the Bahamas but instead delivered FEMA tents and second-rate cheese sandwiches. The Globe spoke with more than a dozen parents, current and former staff, and campers.

It’s the usual story: Covid hiring supply chains blah blah blah. I’m just imagining a kid punching a counselor in the face, and laughing. (I shouldn’t.)

Then there’s the January 6 hearings, which I did not watch. I hear they were hard to handle. Don’t need that now.

Krugman on J.D. Vance, that doughy fraud:

Vance noted that some prominent Democrats don’t have children, and he lashed out at the “childless left.” He also praised the policies of Viktor Orban, the leader of Hungary, whose government is subsidizing couples who have children, and asked, “Why can’t we do that here?”

As The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel, who was there, pointed out, it was odd that Vance didn’t mention Joe Biden’s newly instituted child tax credit, which will make an enormous difference to many poorer families with children.

It was also interesting that he praised Hungary rather than other European nations with strong pronatalist policies. France, in particular, offers large financial incentives to families with children and has one of the highest fertility rates in the advanced world. So why did Vance single out for praise a repressive, autocratic government with a strong white nationalist bent?

I’ll give you three guesses.

Meanwhile, ha ha ha ha ha:

Republicans' attempted counter-protest of the 1/6 commission was itself counter-protested out of existence pic.twitter.com/lVQXCwh09v

— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) July 27, 2021

Happy Wednesday, all.

Looks like national humiliation hasn’t curbed Tim Goeglein’s thirst to be A Writer. The Journal-Gazette carried another of his contributions over the weekend; hat tip to Alex for passing it along. Ahem:

What gives Fort Wayne its distinct sense of place and definition? What makes it a unique locale?

What about any city could never be part of a franchise of any other time or era?

Monuments and memorials of surpassing beauty certainly cohere that sense of place. So do beautiful buildings of distinction and proportion. A city’s cultural institutions play a large role in the composition of a city’s personality, tempo and style.

There are other works of art not normally put into a category of high achievement but which seem to live with us as things elegant but easily taken for granted or overlooked like a strand of pearls or a fine-cut stone or a filigreed lamppost on a shady, quiet city street.

Oh, god. Do we have to do this again? Monuments and memorials are close enough to being synonyms that you can drop one. Certainly, like most adverbs, is disposable. The second graf seems to be what he’s getting at — to put it more simply, let’s make a fuss over the little things. So where are we going, Tim?

In Fort Wayne, there are two neighborhoods, one south and one north, that deserve our celebration and further attention – as if they are great paintings or meaningful poems. They are probably irreplaceable and certainly matchlessly noble, grand and even lush.

I knew exactly which ones he was going to single out — Old Mill Road and Forest Park Boulevard — immediately, and why? Because they are constantly celebrated and paid attention to, “like great paintings or meaningful poems,” etc. etc. They are two neighborhoods with no shortage of blah-blah written about them, so of course those are the ones Tim singles out:

In summer, these inviting and lovely neighborhoods offer leafy coolness against the background of their shaded homes. Their canopies of trees, well-clipped lawns and beautiful old stonework seem to offer us a welcome respite and refreshment on otherwise molten days.

In fall, their autumnal and kaleidoscopic colors are inviting and form a tapestry of reds, yellows, oranges and golden hues.

If you order an ice cream sundae at Tim’s soda fountain, it will come with syrup, sprinkles, nuts, a cherry and I dunno, maybe a bow and a hat. It would be inviting and lovely, leafy and shaded, with canopies of trees and “well-clipped lawns,” whatever that means.

It goes on at some length. I am done making fun of it. Although I will say this: Rarely has a prose style so suited the human being from which it comes. The first time I saw a video of Tim speaking, and this was well after the incident here, I was shocked. As our dear lost Coozledad said, “That guy makes Fred Rogers look like Dick Butkus.”

Well, I am sure he’s happy. He certainly landed on his feet.

So, Wednesday nearly upon us. Our trip to France grows closer. Starting to check the weather reports, look at local listings. Downloaded the Paris Metro app. Thinking about maybe taking a cooking class. It’s gonna be great.

Of course, I hope it actually happens, too. Delta could shut everything down, but fingers are crossed. Certainly I don’t want to only travel within the borders of this batshit country for another year:

I guess we’ll see. In today’s news: Another billionaire in almost-space, riding in a penis-shaped rocket. Covid stirs anew. Rand Paul got his ass kicked by Dr. Fauci (again). In other words, just another day in late-stage, climate-meltdown capitalism. How’s your week going?

I wish getting too much sun wasn’t so bad for you — I’d do it every available weekend. Getting too much sun is one of those uniquely summer pleasures, especially when you don’t get burned, just mildly/somewhat irradiated. Kinda glow-y. Tired.

It finally stopped raining midday on Saturday, but before that there was another deluge, and another flood. Our basement stayed dry, and for the life of me I don’t know why. Maybe we sacrificed a chicken or something, but we were fortunate again, while people in Grosse Pointe Park had poop water in their basements, some for the second time in three weeks, some for the third. I can’t imagine how terrible that was. Boy did it come down Friday — another inch-plus downpour. We’d planned a staff get-together on the roof of our editor’s apartment building, but it was washed out, so we relocated to his place. We did go up at the end of the night, when it was down to a drizzle and we could enjoy the view:

That’s the DIA at bottom left, the library at bottom right. Between them, Woodward Avenue. On the far horizon at left, the RenCen. Far horizon right, Motor City Casino, Wayne State’s Old Main and the Ambassador Bridge twinkling off in the distance. Rural landscapes are pretty, but I love a sparkling city, even one (especially one) as messy as Detroit. In between, we lit the shabbos candles and told stories about the newspaper business when it was fun. It sure isn’t fun now. On the other hand, I have one foot out and will have the other one out sooner rather than later. I’m not happy to be aging, but the timing, in this case, isn’t terrible.

Alan’s sister came up Saturday, and we had another smallish dinner party, including Kate and some other friends. Today: Sailing, capped off with some pool time under a hazy sun. I could have skipped my Vitamin D this morning. Hence the irradiated feeling.

So another good weekend in the books, a reminder that time is precious and one should spend it well.

Meanwhile, more hair-whitening news on the ol’ teletype machine. Dateline Pittsburgh: A woman who’d been abducted two months ago managed to leave a detailed note in a public bathroom, giving the address of her captive prison and promising it was no joke. But when police arrived…

Scott police officers went to the apartment address listed in the note on the day the first note was discovered, a criminal complaint said, but no one answered. The officers said that they could hear furniture moving inside the apartment toward the front door, but because they did not have a warrant, they could not force their way inside.

They later called a cell phone connected to the man who was holding her. He refused to let them speak to her privately, insisting the call be on speaker. She told police she was fine, no problem, on vacation, even. Then the next day, a second note was found:

The second note said that the writer had heard police at the door of the apartment July 8 and added that the abuse had not stopped.

This time they came back with a warrant, arrested the guy and found the woman. She told them:

During interviews with police, the woman described months of abuse; Mr. Brewer had allegedly punched and stabbed her and cut off clumps of her hair, the complaint said.

Mr. Brewer had also attempted to strangle her on multiple occasions, she said, and he had raped her. According to the complaint, police saw red marks, cuts and bruises on the woman and said that her hair was cut unevenly.

So of course he had to stand before a judge at his arraignment:

On Monday, Mr. Brewer was released after posting 10 percent of the $5,000 bail set by North Side Magisterial District Judge Robert Ravenstahl Jr.

We can all do the math on what 10 percent of $5,000 is. Five hundred bucks to be free on pending charges of sexual assault, strangulation, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, terroristic threats, unlawful restraint and simple assault. I wonder what it would have been if he’d killed her. Probably at least $600.

I look forward to hearing more about this one.

And I look forward to a good week. With no more rain.

Oh, I have been a lazy blogger of late, and for the millionth time, I apologize. Part of it is summer, part of it is that I’ve been reading these excerpts from the new crop of Trump books, and it’s summoning my PTSD. The Michael Wolff book, pfft – it looks like crap. But the one by the two WashPost reporters, Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, that one looks pretty amazing, in a wreck-on-the-freeway kind of way. A couple of times this week I had to stop reading and just drink a glass of water. Don’t know if I can take a whole book’s worth.

Today’s excerpt was particularly unnerving. Especially since it’s obvious Ivanka was a source, but fuck her – these people will never wash the blood off their hands. Which they shouldn’t, ever.

It’s upsetting. But I guess it’s something we have to get out of our system.

And current events notwithstanding, it’s been a great summer so far. So much visiting, so much seeing people. I mentioned the Shadow Show return to the stage last weekend, seen here:

And I have some good reading material, thanks to America’s librarian:

I got “Leave the World Behind” out of the library. It’s OK, but the verdict is still out.

So now the weekend has rolled around again. Company’s coming, two kinds. It’s going to rain, but it’ll be a good time. You try to have some, too.

Generally speaking, I have no problem with the weird things people spend their money on. I reserve the right to have opinions about it, but your money is your business, etc. etc. Then I saw a photo on Twitter of Richard Branson riding a bike to his zillion-dollar space flight, escorted by a matched pair of Range Rover SUVs, and thought: Jeez, what a douchebag. The copy on that Space.com story didn’t help:

In the video, Branson cheerfully parks the bike, hands it off to a staff member and exchanges excited hugs with the rest of the Unity 22 passengers.

I remember reading that Jann Wenner and his wife always took a professional photographer with them on vacation, to document the memories. Today I hope those photos are stored in a damp basement somewhere that will soon flood, because there are rich people and then there are rich assholes, and there’s a marker for one, right there.

Yesterday was an overcast, dreary day, but I’d have thought it no matter what my mood was. And my mood wasn’t bad — it was a good weekend. Kate’s band got back on stage at a local bar, it wasn’t too hot, and nothing flooded. It felt like the BeforeTimes, which I guess we’re kinda back to, at least those of us who live in blue/purple states and have been fully vaccinated. That said, I’m glad the show Saturday night was outdoors. Damn kids and their we’ll-live-forever attitudes.

I had plans to go on at some length today, but now it’s Monday, a federal judge is holding a hearing on possible sanctions for Sidney Powell, Lin Wood and other Trump lawyers who filed those ridiculous suits last fall. And this tweet just came up:

This is quite the hearing.

Lin Wood says he found out afterward that his name was included on the suit to overturn Michigan's election.

“I actually did not know at the time that my name was going to be included," Wood said.

— Craig Mauger (@CraigDMauger) July 12, 2021

So I may have to peel off for this. Ha ha ha ha ha, repeat one million times.

What’s the worst social-media platform? Easy: Facebook. Stupid content, stupid people, terrible management. But they have most of the money and the Microsoft strategy: When a competitor threatens, buy ’em. Or, in the case of Substack, imitate ’em. The first editions — I guess that’s the word — of Facebook Bulletin, its newsletter platform, dropped last month, with three star writers.

Malcolm Gladwell (snicker), Erin Andrews and…drumroll…Mitch Albom.

In a way, I can’t complain; one of the last times I took a whack at Mitch I suggested he write more about Haiti and his work there, and that’s apparently the focus of his bulletins. I regret to inform you he is not living up to my hopeful expectations. So far, in three bulletins, we’ve learned that the children are sweet and loving and that the orphanage he runs there is an oasis. I was hoping for something a little …grittier, maybe? The poverty of Haiti is no secret, but I want to know how a high-profile American writer’s orphanage operates in a country like that — how the government treats them, what the government is like, even. All of which is to say, I don’t think he’s going to share his thoughts on the assassination of the president.

As for Gladwell, well. In this piece, a series of sloppy wet kisses for autonomous cars — which, sorry, have a long way to go to match his enthusiasm — he does not mention anywhere that he’s a paid shill for General Motors. That’s a long way from ethical journalism, but he sure knows how to tap multiple revenue streams.

I haven’t even looked at Erin Andrews’.

Speaking of writers who have displeased me, I did perk up my ears when I saw that Gary Abernathy, the southwest Ohioan perplexingly employed as a contributor to the Washington Post, decided to take on his fellow Buckeye, J.D. Vance. Boy, is that guy’s utter humiliation something to see, or what. Abernathy is kinder, but maybe not:

As he gets rolling, Vance seems to be struggling with who to be. As Politico reported Monday, Vance said he regrets now-deleted tweets from 2016 “calling Trump ‘reprehensible’ because of the former president’s views toward ‘Immigrants, Muslims, etc.’” Vance recently trekked to Mar-a-Lago for an audience with Trump, as have others in the race. But the about-face smacks of pandering and no matter what he does now, his old tweets will undoubtedly be featured in attack ads ad nauseam.

…According to one source, Vance currently places third in internal polling behind Mandel and Timken, and many think Timken is best positioned to receive Trump’s endorsement, which would likely be the ballgame in the GOP primary. But other hopefuls abound, including business executives Mike Gibbons and Bernie Moreno, with more considering the race. Congressman Tim Ryan is the only Democrat to have declared so far. Vance may be the best-known of them all nationally, but that just isn’t enough against longtime Ohio political players.

Yeah, he’s in third place “according to one source,” by about a mile. Josh Mandel has 35 percent and Vance, about 6 percent. Hillbilly meltdown.

Want to read some fine lines? Try this, from Texas Monthly:

In the year 1190, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, amid an arduous overland trek to Jerusalem, arrived with his army at the Saleph River, in what is today southern Turkey. He drowned in waist-high water, according to some accounts, weighed down by his armor. Crusades are a dangerous business.

Sidney Powell, crusading lawyer of Dallas, is drowning much closer to home. It’s late May, Memorial Day weekend, and she’s speaking to a crowd of nearly a thousand self-described truth seekers. “Truth is the armor of God,” she tells the rapt audience at Eddie Deen’s Ranch, a kitschy wedding and event venue in an awkward corner of the city’s gargantuan convention-center complex. “Deception is destroying this country,” she says. Heathens and unbelievers are “terrified, absolutely terrified of the truth.”

Finally, want to have a little fun during spelling-bee week? Do a personal spelling bee, via the NYT. I got 13 out of 15. Best of luck.

Now, let’s enjoy the weekend. RIP to L.A. Mary’s Smokey.