Get-Me-Through-the-Weekend Links: Kmele’s Intelligence, the Desert’s Oracle, Ileana’s Anti-Masking

Hey gang, Welch here, coming to you a tad earlier than usual on a Friday from the (haunted) Hollywood Roosevelt hotel, where I’m about to check out and see if this rent-a-tin-can can hump it all the way out to Gram Parsonsville for a summit w/ my dear old pal Ken Layne, proprietor of the Desert Oracle almost-quarterly print thingie and spooky podcast/radio program (and live fall/winter tour!), all of which I recommend sampling and (if intrigued) paying for. I won’t attempt to describe it (here’s The New Yorker last month doing their level best), but Layne always does weird and wonderful and inexplicable shit, even when I’m involved, as has happened on record and in various launched & unlaunched publications.

* But enough about Prague! You can now watch our own Kmele Foster doing rhetorical battle in an Intelligence Squared debateon whether “Cancel Culture Is Toxic.” Joining KF on Team Yup was some Russkie nerd named Garry Kasparov (watch/read/listen to Miami-show guest Nick Gillespie interview the chess icon over at Reason); on Team Wrong was philosophy prof Erich Hatala Matthes and Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah. (I include their Twitter handles both to tell you who they are and also because I know that if/when you engage with them on that hellsite it will be more respectfully than me jackassing on this here Patreon!) Here’s a quickie Kmele squib to wet your whistle.

* Speaking of our favorite Jamaican, Joy Pullmann, executive editor of The Federalist, built an entire column responding to arguments Kmele made on #335. Headline: “Kmele Foster Is Right: Banning Critical Race Theory Isn’t Going To Stop It.”

* Beloved Fifdomite, elementary school teacher, and uncommon Romanian Ileana Almog had a great Twitter thread this week about the damage that masking does to schoolkids. Go encourage her to write more!

OK! Gonna go claw through the hallway apparitions and Hollywood street-zombies, try to get some Echo Park tacos for the road. Hope to see a couple of you in the LBC on Sunday if schedule-madness permits. Have a terrific weekend!