Firehose #160: Born in the U.S.A.

Also: Kennedy & Kennedy

What makes you really American? We talked about that bizarrely topical subject on Members Only #274, prompted in part by a questionable NatCon speech this week by United States Senator (who knew??) Eric Schmitt (R – Missouri). While my official answers to such brain-twizzlers tend toward the tautological (à la, them cuties above pictured from a few years back all qualify due to birthing geography, regardless of patriotic fervor), I do on occasion indulge in non-binding, funtime exercises of gradation, as in: What is your most American quality? (The game obviously can be applied to Frogs, Canucks, Eye-Talians, and other national subvariants.) Mine’s probably just baseball, though in the broader family tree, deep-rooted in North America as it is, arguably the most “American” branches are precisely those that our NatCon friends might consider least “Heritage.” Such, such, are the paradoxes! Anyhoo, confess yer most own-nationalityness in the Comments, por favor.

* OK, let’s go to other podcasters accusing The Fifth Column of elitism because Cracker Barrel (a subject we laughed about on Episode #521). Do your level worst, Andrew Klavan!

* So was the Internet just a mistake? Moynihan on his Report this week had on acclaimed tech thinker Douglas Rushkoff to talk about such things, as well as Rushkoff’s recent book Program Or Be Programmed: Eleven Commands for the AI Future:

* I mentioned on #522 having talked about the very busy recent doings of RFK-jay; here’s me hosting this week’s Reason Roundtable, which begins with a long segment on same:

* Long before we discussed the subject rather spikily on #522, the Chat (participable by paying subscribers) was very interested in bestselling journalist Malcolm Gladwell confessing that he was “ashamed” about having been “cowed” into saying things he didn’t quite believe about trans participation in athletics. After our convo, beloved listener Ryan Huber excoriated us for being “totally uncharitable.”

If so, others in our universe are suffering from a similar deficit of generosity. Matt Taibbi (#226, #348) reacted with a piece headlined “Malcolm Gladwell Conquers Mt. Suck,” arguing: “Public opinion may have turned to the point where even a jellyfish like Gladwell feels safe saying a word or two, but you won’t see any of these folks standing up for those who’ve lost jobs or been publicly reviled….If the only thing the profession demands is guts and you don’t have any, that’s a bad look.”

J.K. Rowling made a similar argument:

Non-famous people, mostly women, girls and gay people, have genuinely had their careers and indeed lives destroyed for saying what Gladwell was too pusillanimous to say, and Gladwell didn’t lift a finger in their defence. […]

He hasn’t changed. He’s merely sensed a shift in what it’s acceptable to say and feels safe to align himself with the new consensus, excuses for his previous behaviour to the fore. He isn’t an ally, he’s a weathervane.

Changing sides years late, and only after you’ve realised the non-elite opposition is winning, isn’t a mark of integrity but of arse-covering. Those whose overriding focus is remaining in good odour with the in crowd can never be trusted. Gender identity ideology has been the modern arts world’s McCarthyism, and all Gladwell’s done is reveal himself as a man who’d have named names, but felt a bit uncomfortable about it afterwards.

And Douglas Murray (#390) gets right to the distinction that seems most salient to me:

Could you be persuaded to say something you knew not to be true?

Most of us would probably say “Absolutely not. Never.” But the evidence is that even a small amount of social pressure can make grown adults say things they know to be untrue.

* Meanwhile, several of our listeners, put off that Moynihan and I prefaced our criticism of Graham Linehan’s arrest and the UK’s illiberal free speech regime by saying that Linehan can be personally unpleasant, are accusing us of having been only a step or two less cowardly than Gladwell over the years when it comes to controversies over trans issues. “It seemed the Fifth ranked playing cool above a single, sober minute of factual calling bullshit,” was a representative comment. While I expressed genuine sympathy on the episode with those who beat us up over this and/or saw this debate as THE most Orwellian public-discourse issue, and additionally I’ve long held the view that the first people courageous enough to get through an airtight door tend to need particularly sharp shoulders, I’ve got too many open spreadsheets on my laptop to let pass the mistaken impression that this subject never came up on this podcast, that there were “so many people the Fifth guys could have on who would be thorough, rational and calm,” but did not.

We invited Jesse Singal on the podcast in August 2018 precisely because he was at that moment in the center of an unhinged firestorm over his trans-related science reporting; re-listening to the first half-hour today reminded me that Kmele had recently gone on WGBH to argue about gender-neutral bathrooms:

We talked about The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling with creators Andy Mills and Matt Boll, about the excesses of trans activism with Andrew Sullivan; we addressed “a complicated [listener] email about trans issues from a lesbian witch.” Hell, we even allowed Katie Herzog on the podcast. The fifth.rocks database doesn’t seem to be working at the moment, so I can’t more precisely trawl the archives, but I am confident that a more accurate complaint would be that we didn’t talk about related issues very much, rather than at all. And you never heard no Malcolm Gladwell working the lyric “TERF-world officer” into a jingle about Jesse Singal eating babies!

(H/T Andrew Shimmin.)

Will have more on these subjects from you fine people in a forthcoming Mailbucket. In the meantime, last add Linehan: Our FIRE pal Greg Lukianoff (#216, Members Only #183, #427) co-wrote a receipts-heavy piece this week with the right & just headline, “Yes, the UK Really Is That Bad for Free Speech,” and delivered the bad news directly to the BBC (as captured by the indefatigable Busty Wimsatt):

* In an M.O. #274 discussion about the 20^th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, I mentioned a Reason piece I wrote back then, titled “They Shoot Helicopters, Don’t They? How journalists spread rumors during Katrina.” Here’s the top:

On September 1, 72 hours after Hurricane Katrina ripped through New Orleans, the Associated Press news wire flashed a nightmare of a story: "Katrina Evacuation Halted Amid Gunfire…Shots Are Fired at Military Helicopter."

The article flew across the globe via at least 150 news outlets, from India to Turkey to Spain. Within 24 hours commentators on every major American television news network had helped turn the helicopter sniper image into the disaster's enduring symbol of dysfunctional urbanites too depraved to be saved.

Golfer Tiger Woods spoke for many of us on September 2 when he remarked, during a tournament in Boston, that "it's just unbelievable…how people are behaving, with the shootings and now the gang rapes and the gang violence and shooting at helicopters who are trying to help out and rescue people."

Like many early horror stories about ultra-violent New Orleans natives, whether in their home city or in far-flung temporary shelters, the A.P. article turned out to be false. Evacuation from the city of New Orleans was never "halted," according to officials from the Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and the Louisiana National Guard. The only helicopter airlifts stopped were those by a single private company, Acadian Ambulance, from a single location: the Superdome. And Acadian officials, who had one of the only functional communications systems in all of New Orleans during those first days, were taking every opportunity to lobby for a massive military response.

More important, there has been no official confirmation that a single military helicopter over New Orleans--let alone a National Guard Chinook in the pre-dawn hours of September 1--was fired upon. "I was at the Superdome for eight days, and I don't remember hearing anything about a helicopter getting shot at," says Maj. Ed Bush, public affairs officer for the Louisiana Air National Guard. With hundreds of Guard troops always on duty inside and outside the Superdome before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina, if there had been gunfire, "we would have heard it," Bush maintains. "The instant reaction over the radio would have been overwhelming."

* Palate cleanse: Intnl Woman Of Mystery, apropos of I don’t even care, sends along this song/video of Moynihan-Indian-accent-hero Peter Sellers attempting to fend off innuendo from an AYFKM Sophia Loren:

* Speaking of funnymen, our dear friend and former colleague Kennedy (#37) is back doing videos for Reason, and oh how this woman makes me laugh:

* Listener Garrett Young has written a great letter to Congress on behalf of Tax Fairness for Americans Abroad, describing some of the Kafkaesque frustrations examined here on M.O. #271 & Firehose #157 of being a law-abiding Amurrican tryna navigate the FATCA-fuckered financial system outside the U.S. and A. Excerpt:

Being denied for a home mortgage, being rejected by all but one bank in a given country, almost having my ability to buy property revoked — all of these are the result of carrying my American passport with me. My story is not only about the extreme complications of filing my taxes in the United States, which in most years result in no material tax owed but still cost me thousands in compliance, but also about the exclusion from opportunities to better my family’s situation by investing, by being able to shop competitively for banks, or by simply owning the property in which we live.

* Do I need an excuse to link George Will? Who cares! Many bangers therein; here’s the nubbin:

The Constitution’s architecture presupposes legislative and executive powers not merely separated but somewhat rivalrous. “Ambition,” wrote James Madison, “must be made to counteract ambition.” The architecture collapses when, as today, the controlling ambition of most members of the congressional majorities is reelection requiring sycophancy toward today’s president. Individual and institutional pride have vanished, supplanted by unapologetic and undignified fear.

* Events: Stay tuned for a special announcement Sept. 8! Meanwhile, Sept. 10 at Reason HQ in D.C. is a discussion/party about “Why Europe Can’t Get Rich,” featuring among other panelists Ben Dreyfuss (#83, #97, #148, #214, M.O. #129, M.O. #140, #392, M.O. #180). Also on Sept. 10 in NYC, our friend Mike Pesca (#343, #418, #467) is taking the “no” in an Open to Debate event on whether masculinity is a prison. Oct. 3-4 is the Moynihan-emceed Global Free Speech Summit in Nashville, organized by Jacob Mchangama (#102 & #344), and featuring such luminaries as David French (#191, #325, #365), Yascha Mounk (#124, #195), Jonathan Rauch (#323), Rikki Schlott (#427), and Thomas Chatterton Williams (#121, #158, #188, #197, #373, M.O. #252, M.O. #273). And on Oct. 6, John Thorn (Special Dispatch #86), THE historian of Major League Baseball, is giving a talk in Albany I desperately want to attend but probably cannot, on “MLB & NYC: A Love Story.”

* Comment of the Week comes from CharlieDubs:

I love how Moynihan conveniently “can’t remember” the names of other journalists he’s beefed with but he has the name of the fat girl from The Facts of Life locked and loaded.

Walkoff, released just this week, is a blatant attempt to pull me back into a racket I walked away from three decades ago.