Today was ruinously expensive. We rented a car, drove up to wine country a few dozen kilometers north of here, dropped in on one vineyard, bought a case of wine (which will be shipped), stopped for a priciest-so-far lunch, and for the coup de grace parked in the Arles municipal parking garage at NYC prices. I don’t want to think about what this is totaling, but then, this was the little village where we ate…

And this was the view from the table…

And this was dessert…

And so I’m thinking: Eh, worth it. We haven’t ripped the knob off on our spending this month, but shit’s expensive and sometimes lunch costs what it costs, and dessert looks like that, so.

The countryside was worth the cost of the car rental. Vineyards, needless to say, but also olive groves, medieval churches, twisted cedars and poplars (hey, Mr. Van Gogh!), farm fields that grow something other than corn / beans / wheat. The lady at the vineyard spoke British English and inquired about Michigan wines. When we left, she rinsed out the basin where we’d been pouring our tasting samples for the next customer, who looked at it quizzically. “That’s the spit bucket,” I explained, and she said that was a more descriptive term than something-something-in-French, which sounded very classy but was essentially the same thing. I have always believed you can tell everything about the French relationship with food by noting that potatoes are pommes de terre, i.e. apples of the earth.

The vineyard was way up in the hills, a real goat-path kind of road. The poor soil is good for the wine, she explained, because the vines put all their energy into the fruit, perhaps sensing they’re not long for this world. She used a lot of terminology I didn’t really understand – Alan has a better palate – but I’m not intimidated by any of that shit anymore. Does it taste good? Did you like it? Then drink.

Tomorrow we head for the Camargue. It’s supposed to be sunny. I’m hoping for some wild horses, flamingoes and cattle. I’ll settle for two out of three, and not too-too many mosquitoes.

BTW, pictures are going on posts now because we have much better internet here. Let’s hope it lasts.

I forgot to mention this, and seeing as how there’s a NYT story about it today, I guess I should.

My old editor Carolyn chimed in a few posts back and recommended a particular bike tour, and the next-to-last night we were in Paris, we decided to give it a try, signing up for the night ride. Nights are arriving earlier, and it sounded cool, seeing the city of lights when they were turned on. We’d start at the company’s offices near the Eiffel Tower, cruise here and there, get ice cream on the Ile St. Louis, pull off for a one-hour boat tour and then ride back to the offices by 10:15 p.m. or so. A three (and a half) hour tour, a three-hour toooour.

And it was fine, although man — it was a hair-raiser for part of it.

As we were assembling for the heading-out briefing, the guide asked if anyone had experience with group rides. I raised my hand, expecting to be one of eight or so. But I was the only hand raised. So all of a sudden, I was made the sweep, i.e., the person who rides at the back of the pack and makes sure no one gets left behind. OK, no biggie, I can handle that. However, I quickly realized, our party included a couple of older women, who’d been talked into this by the daughter of one, who was middle-aged herself. The least-experienced of the two admitted she hadn’t been on a bike in years. She didn’t understand gears. She didn’t understand hand brakes. “How do I stop this thing,” she trilled as we headed to our first turn. Hoo-boy this will be fun, I thought.

But they don’t say “it’s like riding a bike” for nothing, and Gail was a gamer. She did fine, once she figured out the brakes. I advised her to stick closer to the curb side of the bike lane (she wobbled left) and to keep her foot on the raised pedal at stops, the better to push off easily. We were following hand signals from the guide, indicating single-file, double-file or “domination,” i.e. a tight pack to assert our right to be wherever we were. (Inexperienced cyclists sometimes don’t understand that you’re safer when you claim the lane, so to speak. That’s what domination is all about.)

Anyhoo, we hadn’t gone far when we joined a bike lane along the Seine, well past what I’d consider rush hour, absolutely packed but still moving. And because of the different aims of all the two-wheelers there, it was like driving in, oh, Miami, maybe, where Dave Barry once observed the great South Florida melting pot of drivers each follows the laws of the country they immigrated from. There were cycling commuters. There were cycling tourists. There were Uber Eats riders hellbent for the next fare, and all the similar services. There was a messenger on a Euro-style cargo bike, so tatted and muscled he looked like a member of another species. There were pedicabs. And there were those fucking electric scooters, just to put the turd olive on the shit sandwich. It was utter madness, with buses and cars gridlocked on the quai road and the bike lane moving like anarchy. I saw the fall before it happened, as Gail put her leg out to push away from a bollard and went down in slow motion.

But she was fine! She scrambled up, at least as quickly as a Minnesota senior lady who hasn’t ridden in years can, and remounted. Our peloton of 15 or so stopped far ahead for us to catch up. By this point all I could think was lord give me strength, but She did, and we finally made it to the Ile for our ice cream. The guide confessed he had excised the Louvre courtyard stop, due to the bike-lane insanity. Apparently the 2015 terror trial is going on now, and the commute is even more fraught than usual. But inexperienced riders in the mix was like putting a 15-year-old with a learner’s permit on the Dan Ryan Expressway not precisely at rush hour, but close enough to it that traffic gets the way it gets – bumper-to-bumper at 70 miles per hour and you just best keep your shit together.

The NYT story is about how (allegedly) the French spirit of liberté precludes Parisian riders from following rules:

Probably the biggest challenge, though, is that Paris doesn’t yet have an ingrained cycling culture.

In Paris, parts of the 1,000-kilometer citywide cycling network (about 620 miles) can steer bikers into hazardous interactions with cars, pedestrians and other cyclists. At the Bastille, a once-enormous traffic circle that was partly appropriated from cars, a tangle of bike lanes weave through traffic. Cyclists who respect signals can take up to four minutes to cross.

“Paris has the right ideas and they’re absolutely the main city to watch on the planet, because no one is near them for their general urban transformation visions,” said Mikael Colville-Andersen, a Copenhagen-based urban designer who advises cities on integrating cycling into urban transport.

Hmm, I dunno. Funny how drivers aren’t really mentioned in this piece. And I don’t speak French, so I’m wary of making too many assumptions, but while we were riding I heard a single cyclist shouting in what sounded like very angry French at a pedicab conveying a tourist couple in the bike lane. The pedicab was electric-assisted, and nearly as wide as a Smart car, which made its presence on a stretch of pavement reserved for cyclists problematic.

It all turned out well in the end. We got our ice cream, we had our boat ride, we opened a few bottles along the way, the guide told us about Academie Francaise, where scholars gather to decide all matters pertaining to the language. Make a note of it: “Covid” is a masculine noun. And our boat passed one of those river cruise vessels, and we caught a glimpse of one man sitting up in bed, in his PJs.

Our final stop was the Eiffel Tower, lit up and glorious. “Just a three-minute ride to the end,” the guide called as we pushed off from there. At the final turn, Gail’s friend, as old as she was, wobbled and tipped over, too. But like Gail, she popped up and said it was all her fault.

For my service as sweeper, I was awarded a T-shirt. I think I earned it. And I hope your Thursday was as much fun.

My view, heading out:

Was it worth it? Oh yeah:

France’s bullet train is the TGV. That stands for train a grand vitesse, i.e. very fast train. J.C. Burns, speaker of OK French, taught me that a hundred years ago; he thought it was amusing. This was around the time of my own first and until now only trip here, after which my host, a friend from middle school, sent me a local weekly newspaper’s page of listings for porn theaters, helpfully translated. At the time, American porn titles were all wisecrack-y plays on mainstream American movies: “Pumping Irene,” “Indiana Joan and the Black Hole of Mamou,” stuff like that. (I wonder if anyone ever did “Forrest Pump,” one I just made up.)

Anyway, the titles were similar to “very fast train.” “Two Horny Professors and a Willing Schoolgirl,” etc. My favorite employed a French verb which means “to break into something with force,” and translated to “I’m Breaking Into You and Without Vaseline.” Sans Vaseline!

Anyway, these are the things you think about on the TGV. We boarded yesterday around 7:30 a.m., pulled out at 7:43 on the nose and were in the sunny southern city of Arles at 12:16. And that included several stops on the TGV line, a 45 minute layover in Avignon, and a far slower train between there and Arles. I remind you, this is a country the size of Texas. The distance between the two cities is 462 miles. It would take you twice that long to drive it, at least, and you couldn’t read a book, take two pee breaks without stopping, eat a slice of pizza in Avignon or contemplate the lovely scenery out the window.

I mean, that sucker flies. Of course the U.S. refused to build even one.

And now we’re in Arles. The weather isn’t good, but the place is rather amazing-looking, at least where we are, in the heart of the old city. The view out the front door is of the Roman coliseum, where today they hold no-kill bullfights, which I am sorry to learn will not be held while we’re here. They’re no-kill because the goal is to hook a ribbon tied between the animal’s horns, sometimes a bouquet of flowers. These French, they are amusing. I was hopeful there might be something going on yesterday, because we could hear occasional animal bellowing out the window. It turned out to be a sound installation by some artist whose name and goals I can’t translate. We bought a ticket and sat in the stands to listen for a while. I texted a photo to a friend back home, a fellow “Gladiator” fan, and we traded lines from the movie. Simple amusements.

The plan for our stay here is more rambling, and I expect we’ll rent a car and check out the Camargue, the brackish Rhône river delta nearby. It’s supposed to rain today, so today will probably be a rambling day, with stops for the usual midday wine.

Enjoy your Sunday, whenever it dawns for you. I’ve already eaten a chocolate croissant — aux aumandes —- and feel ready to start mine.

As part of my preparation for this trip, I did a little research on clothing. Of course I wanted to be comfortable, but also? I didn’t want to look too much like an American.

Now I realize a few things right away: Any French person would peg me as a Yank at 20 paces, the same way I learned to spot French people when they all swarmed Detroit in the last decade, click-click-clicking their cameras at the ruin porn. But I thought that maybe, if I didn’t cross certain lines, I could at least not stick out like some dipshit. No baseball caps, no fanny packs, you know the drill. So I hit the web, googling “how do French people dress” and packed accordingly.

I had sneakers, not big chunky gym sneakers, but cute, close-cut Italian sneakers, much more fashionable than something you’d wear to work out in. I brought only one set of leggings, which I wear exclusively indoors. Because everything I read indicated that French women would never wear Nikes, and leggings on the street? Non!

I don’t need to tell you how much of this advice was utter bullshit, do I? Everybody — and I mean all ages, both genders, tiny tots to grandparents, are wearing American-style athletic shoes on the street. My Italian sneaks not only aren’t working, but with so much walking, my feet swell as the day progresses, and they’re virtually crippling. I haven’t worn them since day three, when I limped into a Nike store and paid too much for a pair of running shoes, which I wore out of the store. My feet had expanded a half size in mid-afternoon, so there’s the literal rub. The waitress at the restaurant we lunched at today was wearing a leather miniskirt, white cotton sweater, patterned tights and black Adidas.

And leggings are everywhere. Hey, these girls have cute little fannies, and why not wear something that shows them off?

Not that they don’t have that je ne sais quoi. There’s something about the way they can throw together a pair of jeans and a plain white T-shirt and just look fabulous, in a way that no non-fashion model American can pull off. (The men look great, too. I see way more suits here than in Detroit, although hardly any neckties.) It has to do with the accessories, but also the scarves.

Man, the scarves. It’s funny, because the scarves are how I learned to spot the French in Detroit. It could be 80-plus degrees, killer humidity, but you’d see these folks hanging around town taking pictures, in Euro-style eyeglass frames and always, always a scarf. Maybe draped a little loosely, but still — on the neck when someone with my body composition and internal thermostat would have instantly drenched it with sweat. How. Do they DO IT.

The weather has been fine so far, 70s dipping into the 50s at night, but the first day the high was just below 70, people were out in lightweight puffer jackets and scarves. The humidity is pretty high, and when I walk, even casually stroll, in weather like that, I need a jacket and scarf like I need a pair of stilettos. I don’t even wear my good scarves until it gets pretty chilly, because the last thing you want to do with silk is sweat all over it. But here there seems to be no such rule. Today was fine and sunny, in the mid-60s, and we were strolling on the Viaduc du Something-or-Other, i.e. the Paris Highline, I in a very light sweater I didn’t really need, and Alan in long sleeves. A teenage boy quickstepped past us, dressed how I would expect — jeans, a T-shirt with some band name on it, and a red knit scarf wrapped tightly around his neck.

It must be a national garment or something, like the way Eastern European grandmas swaddle babies in enough wool to cook them like pigs in a blanket, and in July no less.

I packed four scarves, tried wearing one on a couple of days, but always took it off after an hour outdoors. I wore one the night we went to the string quartet, and had to keep pulling it away from my neck for fear of ruining it. I think my bloodline is way too German for this place.

Next, I think I’d like to write a little about the pass sanitaire. Which we should have in the U.S., but don’t, because freedom. Au revoir!

Well, this has been a week, for sure. Actually, a week plus a few days, but whatever.

What a beautiful city. What a beautiful world. Lately we’ve been stopping to look in the windows at realty offices, scanning the posted listings for apartments, etc. And dreaming.

For about $1,500 Euro a month, we — OK, I — could have a tiny garret somewhere in Paris, your basic wee-living-space-with-a-sleeping-loft deal, in a halfway decent neighborhood. For 1.3 million Euro, hell, we could own it. I say I could have this space, not we, because this would require the sort of tight living space that’s hard for more than one person to inhabit. Ah, Alan, I would miss you, but you could visit your wife here whenever you wanted, and outside this box stall-size space? Would be Paris. But if we wanted to stay together all the time? Well, that would require a lottery jackpot. So we’ll keep dreaming.

The first week, we bagged peaks, as the mountaineers say. Louvre, Pompidou Center, Pere Lachaise cemetery, Eiffel Tower, all the stuff you have to see. The second week, we’ve decided, will be more casual, and today we moseyed to the Ile St. Louis for a stroll, lunch and more strolling. Lunch was a splurge, and we’re footsore at day’s end, so we’ll stay in, drink another bottle of wine, read and listen to the ooh-wah sirens rising up from the pavement outside. It works for me. I’m sleeping better than I have in a while. The espresso after lunch helps keep the afternoons active, as does the wine.

Overall, it’s been lovely, watching the people on the street, finding amusements where we can. We saw a string quartet in a gothic church, the wrapped Arc de Triomphe, the Global Citizen set at the Eiffel Tower. Global Citizen was some sort of round-the-world concert thing, this and that artist performing on stages here, in Los Angeles, other places. It was free to attend, but no way was I waiting in line to see Ed Sheeran and Elton John, and I’ve been served pieces of the performances on Twitter since everyone played over the weekend. That was the night we saw the quartet, and as we ate a late dinner afterward, watched the satellite trucks roll down the quay road.

Lunch today (the splurge) was fine. We read the reviews first and found a few one-stars, people complaining that the waiter refused to fetch a croque monsieur for their 4-year-old, “because we only serve French food,” or sneered at a wine order and said, “I’ll bring the wine that goes with what you ordered.” Our kind of place! For what it’s worth, they brought the wine we asked for. And the cassoulet was approved, probably because it was chilly and rainy outside. It was very good. I had the roast beef and the ubiquitous frites. Which were better than McDonald’s, my personal high standard.

I just realized that if you want to see some photos, I’m posting a few to Instagram, at nderringer. Easier than doing it here.

Tomorrow it’s supposed to rain, so I’m thinking another museum. More food, more wine. Update at some point in the future. Au revoir.

We made it. The flight was long and uncomfortable, as you’d expect, but one thing I’ll say for Air France: The in-flight movie selection isn’t too shabby at all. I watched “Dog Day Afternoon,” and had forgotten how good it was.

And then you land, and clear customs, and find your transportation, and this, and that, and suddenly you’re in Paris, mofos, and oh my it’s better than you expected and different than you remembered, and in so many ways. The diesel exhaust smell I recall from 40 years ago is gone, and so many vehicles now are EV/hybrids. The locals are still slim and well-dressed, but everyone has a mask somewhere on their person, and surprisingly, the default is the plain old blue surgical-style, not the creative cloth version preferred in the U.S. (Alan read those are banned in offices as ineffective.) Covid testing stations are everywhere, including under pop-up tents on street corners. More people speak at least some English, and we’ve been getting by with pointing, gestures, a few words here and there and my mournful Je suis desole, je ne pas parlais francais.

Why is this famously language-proud country suddenly so much more accommodating of my atrocious monkey-grunts? I suspect the usual reasons: Smaller world. The internet. And can’t forget that great motivator of language study in the young — video games.

So in these early days, we’ve been knocking off the usual stops. The Louvre on Sunday, Norte Dame yesterday. Today, the wrapped Arc de Triomphe. I would upload some pictures, but the internet here is spotty and untrustworthy.

I wish you all well from the 11th arrondisement (I think), and now to puzzle out the Metro routes. Au revoir, all.

Man, there is something about taking a piece of writing that is too long by half and trimming hundreds of words of fat from it. Sharpening focus, excising tangents, simplifying overlong sentences — you end your task thinking, man, this is better. You wish you could show readers what you started with. But the job of an editor is to be invisible, and so all I can do is leave behind this silver bullet, and…

…forgive me. My mind is awhirl with details and errands and crap, even though we’re well-organized for the upcoming trip. The to-do list is made and is being ticked off. Alan ordered some new books to read on the planes/trains. We upgraded our KN95 mask supply to fashionable black, because hey — Paris. But I’m still on the job, and we’re moving forward with a planned bathroom(s) rehab for later this fall, and the supplies are all being delivered – what supply-chain issues? – which is the long way of saying I just helped Alan carry six doors to the basement and then consulted with the writer I just trimmed.

A little scattered this morning. So how about a wee mixed grill?

** Who decided the hashtag for 9/11 anniversaries was #NeverForget, and why do I overwhelmingly see it on right-wingers’ social media? I mean, to paraphrase Joaquin Phoenix in “Walk the Line,” did they think we maybe forgot? I don’t want to give these people any more, seeing as how they’ve already glommed onto the American flag, the word “patriot” and the once-essential, now-hives-inducing OK and thumbs-up gestures. They don’t get 9/11, too, no matter how many memes they hit the Share button on. As long as there are meme lords, there will always be a way for them to express their feelings, and it will probably feature a candle burning in a dark room.

** Unsatisfied with just one band to play in, Kate has hooked up with a second, although this is more casual. GiGi, another all-female lineup “dedicated to the power of anthems,” as their social media says. They played a quick five-song set (all they have right now) and they have a single/video, which you can watch here. It’s very…anthemic. The story of the song (and the genesis of the band) is in the notes on the video. If you watch carefully, you might see an old bag lady they dragged in from the street to add a little age diversity. We shot it last spring sometime. Here’s Saturday’s soiree, which was in Becky Tyner’s back yard in Detroit. It was fun — lotsa people. The deck made an imperfect stage for photography, but I did what I could.

** Finally, what is -core, to you? What sort of -core are you? The WashPost asks:

The spring of 2020 seems quaint in retrospect: We learned to knit, baked sourdough bread, solved puzzles and sewed handmade masks. Some people moved out of cities to get away from people, and spend more time in nature. This, we decided, was called “cottagecore” — performative cozy nesting, dried flowers, vintage aprons, a sense of optimism.

…And now? It’s still ramping up, but the new pandemic “core” is “goblincore.” Because that’s apparently where the summer surge has taken us. Goblincore is about pure fantasy and escaping humanity to live in the woods: Think homes filled with dark wood and plants, mossy colors, whimsical mushroom prints, earthen homes, tarot cards, extreme isolation, plenty of brown corduroy and tweed.

“All three of these movements are about trying to create an ideal,” says Ruth Page, who teaches English and linguistics at the University of Birmingham in England, “which is a way of comforting and alleviating the distress of the reality that is around us.”

I’m not sure which I am. Agingcore, maybe. OK, then, time to get this up before I lose every reader I have.

It’s Labor Day, the traditional, not technical, end of summer. I feel like I should write something, but I already wrote a column today (not about Labor Day) and am feeling a little played out. So I went through my photos, and decided it wasn’t a bad season, not at all. Here’s a selection of these warm summer days, Memorial to Labor. I hope your season was as picturesque.

It started with a horse show, something I haven’t been to in ages. I was only a spectator, but it was interesting to see how they’re doing things these days. (Spoiler: All that’s really changed are the helmets. And everything is way more expensive, not that it was ever cheap.) This is a guy I used to take boxing classes with, riding in the schooling jumpers class:

Flashback to my June driveway dinner party. Lots of work, but lots of reward:

Outdoor Friday-night spritzes with Dustin at a new spot in Detroit. Typical post-industrial setting, typical curated wall art:

In early July, I went with my colleague Violet to what was billed as “the first political speech” by James Craig, who retired as chief of the Detroit P.D. to run for governor (although he hasn’t announced yet). Here he is demonstrating his support for the second amendment:

The story of the summer was the rain. Torrents of it, storm after storm, causing much misery and the usual idiot chin-scratching about what, huh, what could be causing these sorts of unprecedented rain events. This happened at least half a dozen times in two months or so:

This was the encore of Shadow Show’s first post-pandemic show. They ran offstage, quickly changed into (p)leather and came back to cover “Sharivari,” considered the first Detroit techno record, with a guest guitarist. A really fun time, and a great one for a bassist to show off:

Of course there was some sailing:

Wildfires out west, red sunrises here:

A late graduation party, poolside:

On to August, and a primary election. I worked it again. Criminally low turnout, but we left no ballot behind:

A rooftop Friday cocktail hour, and we lit the shabbos candles for Danny Fenster, now imprisoned in Myanmar for more than 100 days. If you know anyone on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a letter of support would be appreciated:

A pop-up show by Griz, an EDM artist who was launching his new cannabis brand. People who don’t live in states with legal weed are often amazed by how, shall we say, robust the market is here. Still, this was too many people too close together, and hardly anyone was masked. (It was brutally hot.) I got a Covid test five days later, just to be safe. (Negative.)

And finally we get to Labor Day weekend. The girls had a show at the Hamtramck festival, and I wandered off down Joseph Campau Street to get away from the crowd. Hamtramck was for years primarily a Polish community, and still is, in large part, although it’s now more diverse than the United Nations. This pocket park was built to honor Pope John Paul II:

May the Pope, wherever he is now, watch over our autumn, as we head into it.

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.

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.