Firehose #187: Put Him on Mt. Rushmore

Also: Maybe save some dates for upcoming live shows?

At the end of an extremely friendly interview on Fox News Saturday, Afroman, who earlier this week successfully fended off a defamation lawsuit filed by the Adams County, Ohio sheriff’s deputies who had ransacked his house four years ago based on a bogus informant and then got sad when the rapper made a bunch of retaliatory songs and videos calling them incompetent pedo dipshits, was given “one last question” by the fill-in for Jesse Watters: “It’s the 250^th anniversary birthday of the United States of America. What is your message to the United States of America on our 250^th birthday?”

“This is home,” Afroman said with a satisfied smile. “And I love everybody. That’s my message, yeah. And God bless freedom of speech and all that good stuff. What’s goin’ on!”

They say we’re divided, they say times are fraught, they say love is in too short supply. Maybe. But I just watched 100 percent of Americans who are not dipshit Adams County cops stand up and give Afroman a richly deserved “Well done, sir!” The European mind can’t begin to comprehend this. Never count us out. The proof’s on the Internet.

* Speaking of freedom of speech and all that good stuff, you may have noticed that Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr, when not cooing that Donald Trump is “the alpha in every single room and every single place all across the world,” has been reacting to Iran War coverage his boss doesn’t like by warning that broadcasters “will lose their licenses” if they fail to “operate in the public interest.” We talked about that (and other stuff, including our late colleague Brian Doherty) on this week’s Reason Roundtable; here’s a Carr-tastic edited clip of me:

* You guys like free speech, right? Cool. So do our pals over at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), who are putting on a patriotic Soapbox 2026 conference in Philadelphia Nov. 4-6 with a bunch of great speakers, including past Fifth Column guests Nick Gillespie (Special Dispatch #72, #379, Members Only #251), Greg Lukianoff (#216, M.O. #183, #427, M.O. #276), Jacob Mchangama (#102 & #344), John McWhorter (#84, #121, #188 & #366), and Matt Taibbi (#226, #348). Just between us girls, even though the website does not yet reflect it, there is, let’s say, a super-duper excellent chance that your humble podcast will be crowning off the affair that Friday night.

* More save-the-datery: April 12 seems like a fine afternoon/evening to communally celebrate our (*gulp*) 10-year anniversary in New York City, don’t it? Never Fly Coachers should expect an announcement real damn soon, other paying subscribers soon after that, with freebooters in the caboose. We may have some limited-edition swag on site as well….

* Speaking of podcasts having notable anniversaries, beloved previous guest Russ Roberts (M.O. #275, unlocked) just released a 20^th anniversary episode of EconTalk. Legend!

* Another Reason Roundtable clip from a live show we performed a week ago at Reason Weekend on the Palos Verdes peninsula. Here, for those who celebrate, we bash lousy California public policy:

* Two-time previous guest Rand Paul (#509, M.O. #301) had an interesting exchange about political violence this week at the committee confirmation hearing for Department Homeland Security nominee for Markwayne Mullin. Note that after this exchange, Mullin was approved out of the committee 8-7, with the deciding vote cast by Democrat John Fetterman.

* On episode #549 with the great Noam Dworman, we spent some time cud-chewing on the ever-shifting, ever-personal (ever-trivial?) considerations of which public figures are worthy of one’s professional time, and how that time might best be spent. As if on cue, Yascha Mounk (#124, #195) just went ahead and podcasted it out, in the form of a conversation with … Ibram X. Kendi.

* Speaking of Peak Woke, our pal Nancy Rommelmann (#79, S.D. #27, S.D. #30, #198, #203, S.D. #34, S.D. #50, S.D. #64, S.D. #111) did some re-reporting for RealClearInvestigations about a museum administrator who got #MeToo-nuked by the New York Times in January 2020. You may or may not be shocked to learn that the Gray Lady did not exactly behave the way a fair-minded truth-seeking institution might be expected to behave, not just in 2020, but in reaction to Nancy’s story. She starts at 10:30 in this video:

* M.O. #309 begins with a discussion of this beautiful if confounding piece of art, now hanging proudly in our studio, that Producer Jason acquired from a thrift store in Florida. Moynihan offered listeners a free subscription (“for a short period of time”) for “the best art-critic idea for what this painting is, and what it means.” And though Stephen Rodriguez *did* generate some hilarious and somehow comprehensible (to me) flibberdygibbet from A.I. (sample: “a deliberate bifurcation of pictorial space that refuses the easy unity of traditional couple-portraiture in favor of a more haunting, almost metaphysical dialogue between presence and absence….”), I think the winner here comes from Bill D., via email:

Soul singer O. V. Wright commissioned this painting to show that
while he was touring Korea, he never stopped think of his baby. He
felt her her watching over him, giving him strength.

The resemblance *is* uncanny….

* Speak of the devil, time for Producer Jason’s Video Vault!

This is how it starts. Your overlords insist you have editorial independence, but then one day they walk into the office talking about how it’s an especially good week to pick Chuck Norris vs. Communism for Producer Jason’s Video Vault. No order given, no threats made, but the message was clear. Now I know how everyone over at CBS must feel. “Jason, is this the hill you’re going to die on?” one colleague asked me. “I haven’t even seen the film,” I replied, “so I can’t very well recommend it.” But I have a family to feed, so instead will offer what I hope the triumvirate will find to be a suitable Norris-centric alternative: Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films.

Growing up in the 1980s when the video store was the place where I and my miscreant friends went looking for age-inappropriate entertainment, no studio churned out more of the films that appealed to our adolescent tastes than Cannon Films. Breakin’ 1 & 2, American Ninja, Bloodsport, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 practically leaped off the shelves at us. But Cannon’s real bread and butter was Chuck Norris. Studio missteps like Masters of the Universe, Superman 4: The Quest For Peace, and the Sylvester Stallone arm-wrestling saga Over the Top could be papered over by Chuck’s popular, testosterone-fueled oeuvre: Delta Force 1 & 2, Invasion USA, Missing In Action 1-3, and Hellbound, which would turn out to be the last Cannon film.

Electric Boogaloo tells the story of Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, the mad Israeli geniuses behind this visionary studio. The Golan/Globus approach to development often skipped over scripts; instead they would just show international distributors a photo of Chuck Norris with guns a-blazing and say things like “Killing! Shooting! Maiming! Fabulous story!” The rest was cinematic history. Electric Boogaloo is a super entertaining and truly inspirational doc about a pair of cousins who embraced schlock, managed to eke out a few highbrow works by people like John Cassavetes and Godfrey Reggio, and truly lived the American dream. Original U.S. trailer here; you can watch the whole thing for free on YouTube.

* Comment of the Week comes from Pedro Frigola:

I was lucky to escape Cuba with my brother and parents in ’85. Many of my friends and family came much later; some are still there. Thank you for covering the plight of the Cuban people. I, too, agree with you guys that it would be preferable to usher Cuba into democracy rather than “take it,” but let me tell you something [said in Michael’s Tony Montana accent]: I’m not going to cry if Trump grabs Díaz-Canel by his pussy and yanks him out.

Sendoff: It will not surprise you to learn that the late, great Chuck Norris was celebrated serially in song: Tons of rap, a perhaps surprising number of Euro-techno hits, your odd metal, whatever genre this is. But, I don’t love any of them. And, turns out that the dude singing the Walker Texas Ranger theme song was … Chuck Norris! So pour one out for friend of Elvis and Donny Osmond alike, Mr. Chuck N: