Workin’ for the Weekend #47: Moynihan on Strauss, Eli Lake on the Subway Choking, and The New Yorker on a Whole Bunch of Us

Also: Today’s scheduled Second Sunday has been moved to June 18

One of the perks of being a paying subscriber to The Fifth Column is that you get to patch into and sometimes participate vocally in our usually-though-not-always-posted Members Only episodes on the Second Sunday of each month. Except for those months, like April, and now June, where we punt it to the Third Sunday, for reasons! Today’s reason is that the other two yobs are on the West Coast “in meetings,” which would you leave just you, and me, and my mastery of technology. So June 18 it is! And yes, that’s Father’s Day….

* Moynihan went on CNN Monday night to talk about Sen. Tim Scott (R – S.C.) going on The View, plus book bans and his own Uber rating. Transcript here.

* Moynihan also went on House of Strauss with our pal Ethan, (#185, #333, #383, Members Only #151, #408). “A conversation with the funniest and best read Media Man,” proclaimed the subhed. Then: “Michael Moynihan of Fifth Column fame is, in my opinion, one of the best podcast talents out there. Additionally, The Fifth Column is, beyond being hilarious, one of the great sanity-validating resources in this crazy era.” I also endorse Strauss’s timely piece this week, “Nobody Knows How to Market Nikola Jokić.”

* Recommended by many listeners is this weekend’s Honestly episode titled “The Killing of Jordan Neely,” featuring host Eli Lake (#52, #65, #141, #174, Special Dispatch #51, #326, #368, #407) with guests Jonathan Rosen, Kat Rosenfield and Rafael Mangual. From the description: “There are no easy answers. A few things, however, are clear. Neely was known both to the police and to New York’s public health system. He was considered a danger to himself and others. And yet none of the safeguards and early warnings worked. In today’s discussion, which you can listen to below, we attempt to find out why.”

* The New Yorker this week published an curious piece about the internal struggles at a startup anti-woke advocacy group called the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism (FAIR), at which Kmele was an advisory board member. The headline gives a sense of things: “Is It Possible to Be Both Moderate and Anti-Woke? A small nonprofit launched by the journalist Bari Weiss devolves into tribalism.” We have not yet talked about the article or the subject on the podcast, so I’ll just excerpt a paragraph of interest, and then provide some links after:

There seemed to be a genuine philosophical conflict within the fair community. In September of 2021, two members of the advisory board, Rufo and the libertarian podcaster Kmele Foster, started squabbling on Twitter about Rufo’s methods for opposing critical race theory in K-12 schools, which Foster described as inviting “all kinds of reactionary hysteria.” Rufo resigned from the advisory board soon afterward. “The question with FAIR that I had was: what are the substantive wins the organization has accomplished? And it was very hard for anyone to explain this,” Rufo wrote to me in an e-mail. Fair’s high-profile advisers were “transgressive enough to generate attention, but not transgressive enough to achieve results. It’s almost worse than doing nothing, as it creates the illusion of action and absorbs political energy that would be better spent elsewhere.” Later, in a conversation about fair on Megyn Kelly’s podcast, Rufo criticized the organization’s attempt to create alternative diversity trainings. “It’s such a fundamentally failing strategy,” he said. Speaking of progressives, he added, “It legitimizes their institutional structure. It legitimizes their bureaucratic authority. And it legitimizes the background concepts that they use in order to achieve power and push their ideology.”

Rufo came on the podcast on July 2, 2021 (#322); Kmele co-authored a New York Times op-ed criticizing the speech-traducing Rufoist approach to anti-Critical Race Theory legislation on July 5, 2021, we talked further about the hubbub the next day on SD 75. Kmele’s co-authors at the NYT were David French (#191, #325, #365), Jason Stanley (#210),  and Thomas Chatterton Williams (#121, #158, #188, #197, #373). Other past guests named in The New Yorker article include by Bari Weiss (#89, #115, #159, #180 & #187), of Andrew Sullivan (#139, #200), Glenn Loury (#121 & #188, #366), and Paul Rossi (#304).

* That same New Yorker writer, Emma Green, published another piece May 17 that intersects with some people in our world. Headline: “The Party Is Cancelled: Inside a monthly New York City hangout, where fired university professors and controversial TikTokers get together to have discussions they feel they can’t have anywhere else.” Excerpt below, links after:

“In a place like New York, you feel surrounded by people who are so far removed from where you are,” Nick Gillespie, an editor-at-large at the libertarian magazine Reason and a regular at the gatherings, told me. “Every conversation is about how capitalism is evil or how America is the most racist, sexist, homophobic country in the world.” As a result, he said, “There’s a lot of political homelessness.” On average, the group probably leans to the right, at least when compared with the rest of the city. But a few socialists go, along with a contingent of libertarians, such as Gillespie, who come ready for debate. “And you bring drugs,” he added.

Besides Gillespie (SD 72, #379), and the requisite Bari Weiss, the article includes reference to past Fifth Column guest Greg Lukianoff (#216),

* Apropos of nothing except for Busty Wimsatt’s indefatigable search prowess (as well as the evergreen popularity of rock music & American pop culture vs. evil commies), here’s a February 2015 appearance of mine on Stossel:

* Comment of the Week comes from Duchesse des Esseintes:

When will the Kmele/Kennedy 2024 campaign be launched?

Once they’re in power, they’ll of course install their old friends as “Super Special Ambassador to All Countries with Hot Female PMs” and “Remarkable Advisor on Helping Senior Citizens Navigate the Digital World”.

A military coup by a misanthropic but dog-loving lesbian, her giant nerdy assistant, and a pack of wild furries will put a swift and brutal end to this utopia.

Outro music is what happens when you let me drive around the city of Hawthorne….