Firehose #151: Oddfellows Local

Also: Reckoning with the racial.

This week has been kind of a lot, so let’s unwind (care of our brilliant local fanimator, Arch Stanton) with a double-barrel buckshot of illustrated Moynihanian contempt for Europeans and New York City municipal governance, as culled from Members Only #264:

* Where to begin? How about our monthly appearance this past Tuesday on The Megyn Kelly Show, talking about the Israel-Iran ceasefire, Donald Trump’s F-bombery, the Tucker Carlson-Ted Cruz clash, the return of Jeb!, and New York’s new socialist heartthrob. (Reminder: Megyn ranked #4 among individuals in our Fifdom tally of who our listeners trust.)

* Later on Tuesday, Moynihan invited onto his Report to talk about some of these same issues (+ Gaza) the great Israeli journalist Haviv Rettig Gur (47^th in Who Do You Trust?):

* On the pre-ceasefire Monday, I hit similar themes (+ Mike Lee’s land-sale bill) on The Reason Roundtable:

* Reminder that the Roundtable is taping live at The Village Underground in NYC on July 15; get your tickets here. Also, some of us from the fun Yankee game meetup the other week are thinking about getting our weekday drink on at the July 23 Mets-Angels…. Finally, you may want to clear some NYC calendar space for July 29….

* You may have heard about New York’s new Democratic Socialist mayoral heartthrob? Well, aside from Episode #264, I can recommend the following post-primary content: Olivia Reingold (#459), “Why New York Just Voted for a 33-Year-Old Socialist”; Liz Wolfe, “My City Just Voted for Socialism”; Matt Taibbi (#226, #348), “Socialism Wins its American Normandy”; Jacob Sullum, “Zohran Mamdani's Jewish Problem”; and Harry Siegel (#511), “The Humbling of Andrew Cuomo.”

* Tied for 17^th among individuals on the Who-Do-You-Trust list was sportsballer Ethan Strauss. Moynihan brought the Straussian on the Report to talk about the value of post-game interviews, Caitlin Clark, the NYC primary, TACO Trump, the word “genocide,” bombing Iran, plus an A.M.A. section:

* So what’s Kmele building over there at Tangle? Here’s a thing: “Let’s Have an Authentic Racial Reckoning.” Excerpt:

The outpouring of race-focused discourse that took place in 2020 faltered not because it was overly ambitious, but because it rested on the misguided assumption that race itself is fundamentally meaningful and explanatory. Its failure obscured true justice, deepened social divisions, and intensified polarization.

We deserve an authentic racial reckoning. It must prioritize individual dignity, human equality, and the moral seriousness we rightly demand when genuine justice is at stake. This reckoning requires honestly confronting the philosophical incoherence of race and explicitly acknowledging the harms our modern obsession with race continues to inflict on individuals and communities.

There is nothing essential — biological, cultural, experiential, or moral — that all members of any so-called racial group share. No trait, no belief, no history, no fate. A category that can’t tell us what is included or excluded is not merely imprecise, it’s incoherent. Race pretends to name something concrete, but it’s an imagined substance, persistently elusive. It seems to offer only shifting generalizations that collapse under scrutiny.

What happens when you elevate an incoherent conceptual placeholder, like race, into a defining feature of personhood, policy, or moral life?

In the first case, you settle for confusion instead of clarity. In the second, you prioritize group avatars over actual persons. And finally, you create systems, institutions, and moral frameworks that orbit a divisive fiction, but behave as if the abstraction were an inviolable fact. You get policy and activism rooted in hysteria and myth.

* And yet that didn’t keep Kmele from blaming the victim -- based on skin-color, no less! -- when this happened to my car this week:

As video evidence later determined, appearances had nothing to do with the vehicular assault -- it was a private waste disposal truck with large, unsecured metal back doors swinging out when passing by, BAM!! … and then driving away. The logo on the side was quite clear, however….

* Hey, lookie here, our pal Greg Lukianoff (#216, M.O. #183, #427; #30 on Who Do You Trust?) did a TED Talk! Alas, I cannot seem to embed it.

* Broadcast legend and LBJ-administration flunky Bill Moyers died this week at age 91. Crotchety (and terrific) media critic Jack Shafer has historically been among those who never accepted Moyers’s journalistic sanctification in light of his governmental hack-work. Many thousands of years ago, Moyers was kind enough to invite me on his program to talk about Republican presidential candidate John McCain:

Walkoff music once again comes from the obit files, in addition to the Bowl Haircut Hall of Fame: