Firehose #163: Thank God it’s Fifday

Also: Do some weird secret thing w/ Kmele in L.A. on Saturday?

As we await tomorrow morning’s banger of a Members Only release (Ed Note: ain’t it grand to have a reliable production schedule?), I thought we’d get an early jump on the weekend to give you SoCal-adjacent Fiffolk the chance to, uh, join emcee Kmele for “A Night of Awe & Wonder” that will leave you “transformed”? Sounds suss, but: “You’ll hear from a leading psychologist revealing the surprising science of awe, a renowned adventurer describing how Earth’s most extreme places spark transcendence, a pioneering marine biologist unveiling groundbreaking work decoding animal communication, and a legendary screenwriter reflecting on how awe has shaped his career—along with many more.” It’s in Atwater Village, so the more professional among you already know where to postgame….

Here’s hoping it’s even more fun than this slice o’ 2020:

* I don’t know how it all got started, but there’s a new weekly user-driven feature in the Fifth Column Chat premiering right the hell today, called “Thank God it’s Fifday,” in which every Friday afternoon you insane people wait for Deejay MWG of KTFC to drop the anchor thread of (preferably semi-obscure?) songs of particular idiosyncratic value & interest, in the form of YouTube links. (See also: “Fifdom’s Fave Four-Album Runs,” and also “Wait, Is This a Pop Culture Podcast?”)

* We are officially Pivoting to Video next week, gang. It only took 9.5 years! And oh man do we have a helluva first guest…. What you should do RIGHT THE HELL NOW is subscribe to our YouTube channel. You won’t be sorry.

* Let’s get to some Fiftastic content. Moynihan on his Report this week had on Dem operative & 2Way stalwart Dan Turrentine to react in near-real time to the indictment of James Comey:

* Ol’ Hollywood also jawboned about the Jimmy Kimmel perplex with our pal Mike Pesca (veteran of Episodes #343, #418 and #467):

* Pesca this week also took a long look under the hood of Empire City, an acclaimed podcast series by NYU journalism prof Chenjerai Kumanyika that takes a heavily critical look at the NYPD. “In practice,” Pesca concluded, “it’s riddled with factual errors, all in service of an exciting—but deeply misleading—piece of propaganda.” Stay tuned for more on The Gist.

* Last week I posted a couple of clips of Kmele scrambling brains on CNN. Thanks to the ministrations of Busty Wimsatt, here’s all of Mr. Foster that day:

* Tired of the free-speech foofaraws? TOO BAD. FIREman Greg Lukianoff (#216, M.O. #183, #427, M.O. #276) wrote for The New York Times on “Everyone’s a Free-Speech Hypocrite.” Ginger hair model Peter Meijer (Special Dispatch #51, #307, #339, #367, #424, M.O. #184) spat fire on CNN about the Biden administration’s widespread efforts at deplatforming. Robby Soave (#332, #517) bothsidesed with “60 Years Ago, Ayn Rand Denounced FCC Censorship. Brendan Carr Should Listen” and “Democrats to Trump: Stop Jawboning, That’s Our Job!” Ethan Strauss (#185, #333, #383, M.O. #151, #408) informed us “what the Jimmy Kimmel war is really about.” Matt Taibbi (#226, #348) averred that, “No, Things Aren’t Worse Now on Speech. It’s Not Even Close.” And plucked out of Monday’s Reason Roundtable was this edit rant by moi:

Ryan Long reset:

* Heckuva week for Days of Rage. On Wednesday, nearly 50 years to the day of her failed assassination attempt on Gerald Ford, former Symbionese Liberation Army space cadet Sara Jane Moore died in Tennessee. On Thursday, convicted cop killer and Tupac-momgodmother Assata Shakur died in Cuba, where she escaped to in 1979. And on Friday came the release of Paul Thomas Anderson’s new DiCaprio-starring portrait of lefty terrorists, One Battle After Another. It shall be, in other words, a MAH-velous few days for measuring (in)equal political adjectivizing in what remains of the mainstream media. How’s the movie? “Lets leftist radicals off the hook,” deems my Reason colleague Peter Suderman. Sez Sonny Bunch (#92): “[It’s] a movie with pretense to daring subversion that nevertheless hews neatly to nearly every political instinct of…Anderson’s intended audience, ensuring there’s never an uncomfortable moment.” Oh, and never forget Episode #335: “Assata Shakur Elementary School--Class of 2021.”

* Fun fact: Days of Rage was a recent selection of the Fifth Column Unofficial Book Club. (Author Bryan Burrough talked about it last year with the Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em gals.) Potentially funner fact: Book Club’s got another sesh coming up this Sunday, on Thomas Sowell’s Basic Economics.

* Remember at the end of #525, when non-blues-exploding guest John Spencer detailed the unwanted (if still-unpublished) attention he and many people around him received from The New York Times beginning immediately after Spencer had been name-checked in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s July 2024 speech to Congress? Well, look who Bibi name-checked again, in his United Nations speech this morning.

* Three consecutive bullet points without video?? Fie! Pursuant to some recent Moynihan reference I blanked out on, and flagged by entertainment-ephemera expert (E.E.E.) Craig Mahoney, here is a Hats Off Entertainment mini-doc about the feature film that sank Chris Elliott’s career:

* Eventsapalooza: Besides Kmele’s creepy “Night of Awe & Wonder” in L.A. tomorrow night, there is the Moynihan-emceed free speech conference in Nashville Oct. 3-4, the Tangle song & dance (w/ KF) in Orange County Oct. 24, and of course our Anaheim arena show with super-not-controversial-these-days Megyn Kelly Nov. 21. As discussed on our forthcoming Members Only, we are beginning the process of putting together some post-Anaheim Fifth Column event(s) in SoCal on at least Nov. 22. Reason is doing another debate Oct. 2 in D.C. on whether “mass immigration is good for America,” with the si señor side taken by Katherine Mangu-Ward (#75, #395) and Alex Nowrasteh (#303); the aw-HAIL-nahs repped by Rich Lowry and Steven Camarota.

* Comment of the Week comes from boogie mann:

Every time I hear Kmele wax poetic about race, I’m right there with him until I recall that, in fact, Clarence was the fifth Beatle.

Walkoff is my contribution to today’s TGIF, a goose-bumper that I discovered (and included on one of my favorite playlists) after asking people on Twitter for songs that for whatever reason reminded them of this one.