Firehose #154: Blood on the Tracks

Also: (Un)wholesome baseball content!

The things we will do to bring you freshly chopped podcasty goodness! Speaking of which, if you’re anywhere near the Tri-State area, please do come around Tuesday night (that’s tomorrow!) at The Village Underground to watch a special live taping of Uncomfortable Conversations w/ the inimitable Josh Szeps (veteran of past episodes #25, #80, #103, #117, #196, #328, #423, #445, Members Only #231), plus stormin’ Noam Dworman, two-thirds of The Fifth Column, and trombonist extraordinare Coleman Hughes (#121, #144, #181, #188, #201, #379, #412 & #442). Szepsy flier:

* Kmele brought his clubfinger on CNN Live Friday night, to talk about various things in the politics. Here’s a clip:

* We mentioned that apparently polarizing Eddington movie on M.O. #268. Well, here’s Moynihan’s interview with director Ari Aster!

* Also on the Report last week was Richard E. Farley, author of the new, energetically subtitled Drop Dead: How a Coterie of Corrupt Politicians, Bankers, Lawyers, Spinmeisters, and Mobsters Bankrupted New York, Got Bailed Out, Blamed the President and Went Back to Business as Usual (And It Might Be Happening Again):

* On Thursday, The Reason Roundtable dropped a new “Table for Two” mini-thing, in which I mostly decline to take the bait in making fun of the anti-war libertarians who don’t like me, while also explaining a bit my thots on Ukraine and suchlike:

* We talked last week about Tulsi Gabbard’s “treasonous conspiracy” revelations w/ grizzled Fif’ vet Eli Lake (#52, #65, #141, #174, Special Dispatch #51, #326, #368, #407, M.O. #184, M.O. #244); his Free Press skepticism is here. Squarely in the there’s-there-there camp is Matt Taibbi (#226, #348). His pieces, in chronological order: 1) “Note on New Trump-Russia Disclosures”; 2) “Barack Obama Now Squarely in Russiagate Crosshairs”; 3) “Explaining Russiagate: Why the December 9^th, 2016 Meeting Matters”: 4) “Classified Report on Hillary Clinton, Loretta Lynch, and James Comey Finally Released”; 5) “In Brutal Document Release, the Russia Hoax Is Finally Exposed”: 6) “Fact-Checking Glenn Kessler.”

* We have spoken a few times over the course of this podcast about Tucker Carlson, about conspiratorial thinking, about where evidence-untethered speculation preponderantly tends to land. Tying those threads together in a long piece for National Review last week was our pal Jamie Kirchick (#55, #347, #394). Three long paragraphs:

Featuring underage girls, a private jet, powerful men, a secret island, and Jews, the Epstein scandal has been like catnip to antisemites. Epstein, Carlson has alleged, operated “a blackmail operation run by the CIA and the Israeli intel services, and probably others, . . . the usual darkest forces in the world colluding to make rich and powerful people obey their agenda.” (Carlson’s outrage concerning sexual predators is highly selective: in 2023, he conducted a fawning interview with Andrew Tate, the misogynist internet influencer and creator of the “Pimping Hoes Degree” — “PhD” — program who was then under house arrest in Romania awaiting trial on charges of rape and human trafficking. Tate’s arrest, Carlson said, was “obviously a setup” and a “definition of a human-rights violation.”) Given the righteous certainty with which Carlson has so frequently expressed his confidence regarding the Epstein case, he was bound to be demoralized by anything short of official government confirmation that Epstein had entrapped the world’s most influential men in the service of Israel. Alas, no evidence has been adduced to substantiate the claim that Epstein blackmailed anyone, let alone on behalf of an intelligence agency. The day after the Justice Department announced that Epstein did not have a “client list” and confirmed his death by suicide, Carlson invited [Saagar] Enjeti on his show for a wide-ranging conversation about “Zionist interests” (Enjeti); “Likudnik interests” (Carlson, referring to those in Netanyahu’s party); “Israel hijacking our government” (Enjeti); and Jonathan Pollard (Carlson, referring to the American who confessed to spying for Israel in 1986). It was not until the end of this fevered, two-and-a-half-hour gripe session that Enjeti felt compelled to profess, “I’m not an antisemite.” […]

Two weeks after the U.S. bombed Iran, Carlson conducted an interview that surpassed in sycophancy his 2024 conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Speaking with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Carlson took at face value his claims that it was the Islamic regime’s desire “to live in peace and tranquility with everybody,” and that “death to America” really means “death to crimes, death to killing and carnage, death to supporting killing others, death to insecurity and instability.” Pezeshkian asked Carlson whether he had “ever heard of Iranians killing Americans,” answering his own question: “No.” (The families of the 241 Marines killed in the 1982 Beirut barracks bombing and the over 600 American soldiers killed by Iranian bombs in Iraq would beg to differ.) Carlson, so credulous when it comes to avowed enemies of his country, let these awful lies slide. If only he’d been a tenth as tough on the Iranian president as he was on the junior senator from Texas. […]

Perhaps, in isolation, none of these incidents and outbursts — calling a Jewish politician “ratlike” and “shifty,” giving a respectable hearing to a Holocaust denier, imputing dual loyalty to American Jews, denouncing the Nuremberg Trials, accusing Jews of traducing the Old Testament, suggesting that Jews harbor an ancient blood lust, falsely claiming that Israel murdered American servicemen in cold blood, alleging that Israel established an international child sex ring to blackmail “rich and powerful” men, railing against usurious Jewish billionaires, conducting a softball interview with the leader of a theocratic dictatorship committed to the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state — perhaps none of these, on its own, constitutes prima facie evidence of antisemitism. In his defense, Carlson’s hostility to “warmongers” (a term of derision favored throughout history by fascists, communists, and Tulsi Gabbard) isn’t limited to Jews. “Have you noticed that, like, a huge percentage of war-crazed Republican senators are secretly gay?” Carlson asked, apropos of nothing, on a recent podcast.

* Let’s cleanse the palate with some wholesome baseball content, in the form of our annual pilgrimage to the Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony in beautiful Cooperstown, New York:

That’s the fourth year running, and third with the full 72-hour commitment/AirBnB situation, and I can’t recommend it higher. What with the World Baseball Classic in Miami, Houston, and Puerto Rico; and All-Star game scheduled in semiquincentennialtastic Philadelphia, 2026 is shaping up as the year you just may need to re-commit to the National Pastime.

Did I write about the 2025 Hall of Fame class for Reason? You damn skippy: “Baseball, and the Vanishing Art of Forgiveness: Can this weekend's Hall of Fame induction of Dick Allen and Dave Parker teach us a lesson about politics?” Here’s how it ends:

There are cases aplenty that none of these men should be rewarded with what amounts to baseball immortality. But count me firmly on the other side. There's a reason why reconciliation is a sacrament. Too much human error, particularly of the political variety, leads in this age of disenchantment to irrevocable condemnation, to alienation even from family; ultimately to self-isolation.

No baseball player died for our sins (thankfully, Jesus De La Cruz still walks among us). But this weekend in Cooperstown, I will happily raise a toast not just to the two fallen badasses, but to a closer famous for failing in the postseason, a starting pitcher who tipped the scales at 300 pounds, and a Japanese fitness lunatic who by all accounts delivers the best broken-English profanity this side of Stripes. Baseball allows us to love humanity in all its fullness. May we some day remember that in the less sunny corners of life.

For those inclined, and even those not, we all highly recommend the hilarious and gloriously accented acceptance speech Sunday from Ichiro Suzuki. But my favorite part might have been the poem written for the occasion by the late Dave Parker, as read by his namesake son:

* Well, the car’s fixed (and made it to Cooperstown!), anyway: Fanimator in Chief Arch Stanton is back with a short about our, ah, broken bits:

* Before I forget, there are a variety of robust, decidedly unofficial Fifdom WhatsApp groups tethered to various geographical locations and psychographic states of mind. Listener John M. wants any a y’all near Atlanta to get busy with the Atlanta WhatsApp; you can even email him at Johnmcwaters-at-icloud-dot-com.

* Comment of the Week, deserving of its own DING-DING-DING, comes from Iris:

SNATCH. Kmele’s term of choice is snatch?! Also a Guy Ritchie joint circa 2000! Took me 15 minutes of brainpower to get to this- I should have asked Perplexity.

Walkoff I frankly cannot believe I haven’t used before, but here’s a recent live answer to the question of, “Say, what’s half of R.E.M. doing nowadays?”