Firehose #166: Mo’ Kings

Also: Soft-save Nov. 23, in case we do a live something in Ohtani's playground

In this house we acknowledge at least one king: The best baseball player who ever lived, a great Angel but even greater Dodger (alas!), who Friday night topped off the most astounding single-game performance in the sport’s history by instructing all of us to go drink good saké:

WAY AHEAD OF YOU, SHOHEI-SAN!

That’s from our Members Only #281 conversation with Tokyo Vice and The Devil Takes Bitcoin author Jake Adelstein. Here’s fictionalized Jake, all glammed up for HBO:

* Did you go to one of those No Kings deals? I didn’t this time around, choosing instead to watch One Battle After Another with my 17-year-old daughter (liked it!). My Reason colleague Nick Gillespie (veteran of Special Dispatch #72, #379, and M.O. #251) checked the action out in NYC, and found it to be pretty normie-core:

“True Patriots Fight Fascism,” “No Kings Since 1776,” “Make 1984 Fiction Again,” “We Have Friends Everywhere,” “ICE=GESTAPO,” and “Protect Immigrants, Protect Our Neighbors, NO KINGS,” were common signs and, compared to other marches and protests I’ve seen over the past decade or so, the crowd, its clothing, and its signage was decidedly normal and mainstream. Given the impending mayoral election and the ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza war, I expected to see much more Zohran Mamdani flair and kaffiyehs. But even they were in relatively short supply.

More surprisingly, the messaging, both through signs and in conversation, was focused on the real and imagined personal failings of Trump and key points of his domestic agenda, especially Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids.

* I had a nice pre-word or two to say about No Kings during our monthly stint this week on The Megyn Kelly Show. We also talked about the AOC/Bernie Sanders CNN town hall, whether it’s the Republican Party that has radicalized young men, Kmele’s contentious exchanges with racism-hunters on CNN, Zohran Mamdani’s unconvincing reticence about the future of Hamas, Victoria’s Secret’s reversion to hawt, and more. Full show:

* Reminder that tickets are still available for our Nov. 21 appearance on Megyn’s live tour at the Honda Center in Anaheim. We are hoping to very soon announce a more intimate date in L.A. on Nov. 23. Since we’re already talking about events, Kmele is doing a Tangle thing in Irvine Oct. 24; there’s a SoHo Forum debate on drug legalization Oct. 21 in NYC between Zach Weissmueller and Kevin Sabet, then on Oct. 29 in Gotham there’s gonna be a timely mini-Reason-documentary & follow-up discussion about socialist NYC housing policies.

* Re: that Kmele CNN appearance, here’s a fun game: Interpret the import of this cable-teevee hit via headlines in overseas newspapers! Daily Mail: “Woke CNN Guest Sparks Fury by Suggesting ALL White People in Red States Are Racist.” Irish Star: “CNN Issues Huge Blow to Trump as He’s Accused of Stealing Ideas from Bernie Sanders.” Teddibly exciting, I am sure.

Or, you could just watch (thanks to the ministrations of the ever-reliable Busty Wimsatt) this 15-minute chunk:

* Moynihan this week on his Report interviewed media critic and Megyn Kelly producer Steve Krakauer, author of Uncovered: How the Media Got Cozy with Power, Abandoned Its Principles, and Lost the People. The two talked about Trump’s Mideast peacemaking, the Pentagon’s curious new rules for journalists, John Oliver’s broadside against Bari Weiss (#89, #115, #159, #180 & #187), Tucker Carlson’s audience capture, and more:

* The return of miraculously alive Israeli hostages, and the cessation of the hot war in Gaza, was this week’s enormous international news. On our Second Sunday Zoom call for paying subscribers, we were lucky enough to be joined from Tel Aviv in the wee small hours before the homecoming by our beloved friend Yael Bar tur. She wrote about that day over at Ask a Jew:

To call it a rollercoaster would be an understatement. For me it started around 3am when I attempted to share my thoughts with our The Fifth Column (A Podcast) daddies on a Members Only Zoom (sign up to listen!). I then walked over to hostage square, where by 6am hundreds of strangers already gathered to watch what felt like our own family members being released from hell. I’ve spent many days in hostage square, soon to be renamed something more optimistic. It was always a heavy place, filled with collective tragedy, pain and anger. That morning, as if by design, the clouds above parted and a ray of light shone through. We are now basking in that glow. […]

I want to thank every single person, Jewish and not Jewish, who was moved by anything that happened to us over the last two years. I know your support isn’t necessarily because you are so empathetic, but rather because you understand that we share the same values -- those of freedom, life and humanity. We often hear from listeners that we help them feel they are not alone, but the opposite is true. You are the reason we don’t feel alone, and one of the reasons we don’t lose hope.

I probably forgot 5 million things, and you can also check out my interview with the great Scott Jennings on his radio show (future AAJ guest??) and of course my X account, not to plug it but just because that’s where most of my thoughts live nowadays.

The Ask a Jew gals are having a listener Zoom hangout deal Sunday at 1 p.m. ET. Join up!

* Been another weird news-week for past Fifth Column guests. Former National Security Adviser John Bolton (#493) was hit with 18 criminal counts related to mishandling national defense information. What-were-you-thinking poster girl Olivia Nuzzi (#190), according to Status News’s Oliver Darcy, is writing a tell-all book about her various misadventures.** And by far the least interesting entrant in this particular Rule of 3 is news that shambolic Fif’ fave Ben Dreyfuss (#83, #97, #148, #214, M.O. #129, M.O. #140, #392, M.O. #180) is joining mics with Josh Barro (#482) and the strangely never-been-on-the-Fifth Megan McArdle for a new podcast called Central Air. Will it be as good as Ben’s deep-cut examination of Die Hard’s bearer bonds? Doubtful, but we’ll see.

* Did you enjoy Mary Katharine Ham’s three-peat performance in #528? Of course you did. (Past appearances were in #345 & #430.) Re: the Hammer’s southern-trash love of Bojangles, alert listener Miles sends us this important commercial message:

* Now that we have a schmancy YouTube page to subscribe to right the hell NOW, that means there are fun lil’ clips there. Like this little homoerotic tribute to the Blue Angels, Van Hagar, and blaming Canada:

* But seriously, ol’ Head-Tilt Mamdani is really gonna be mayor ain’t he? Friend o’ pod Jamie Kirchick (#55, #347, #394) has a Wall Street Journal piece examining what overlaps the smiley socialist has with the DSA. Excerpt:

The organization was mostly dormant until 2016, when Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign sparked a wave of interest in socialism. Mr. Sanders calls himself a socialist but isn’t a DSA member. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, elected to the House in 2018, was one. Over the past decade, membership has soared from 5,000 to 80,000. At the same time, it has moved far to the left. It is as socialist as ever but unworthy of the label “democratic.”

What does today’s DSA stand for? In 2021 it issued a detailed national platform supporting “extension of voting rights to non-citizens”; “nationalization of railroads, utilities, critical manufacturing, technology companies, institutions of monetary policy, insurance, real estate and finance”; abolition of police, prisons and border enforcement; “a four-day, 32-hour work week”; “social ownership” of media and internet companies, socialized agriculture and government funding of “gender-affirming surgeries” for minors without parental consent. […]

The 2021 platform also called for “a second constitutional convention to write the founding documents of a new socialist democracy.”

Mamdani shares the DSA’s fascination with the revolutionary potential of political Islam, a seemingly oxymoronic ideological tendency the French call Islamo-gauchisme, or Islamo-leftism. The Times reports that it was Mr. Mamdani’s “interest in B.D.S.,” the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, “that brought him to D.S.A.,” and that ending Israel’s status as a Jewish state is “the biggest issue on which he has not budged.”

Walkoff may be an obvious RIP, but damn, what a song, what a vibe, what a declaration about who’s really the king ‘round these parts, all politicians bedamned.

** (Corrected from earlier wording that Nuzzi had “announced” said book.)