Workin’ for the Weekend #76: Fif’ Fight! Amash vs. Meijer!

Also: Rommelmann in Jerusalem (OK, Tel Aviv)

Strap in, sons and daughters of the rEVOLution, here comes a long’un!

* Let’s say—hypothetically—you had the private cell phone numbers of exactly two federal politicians in these here United States. What would be the chances that they would … just go ahead and compete against each other for the same elected office? Such, such were the thoughts when word came Thursday that two-time Fifth Column guest and top half of the dreamiest trial-ballooned presidential ticket in history Justin Amash (Episode #184 & #389) was forming one of those committee thingies to explore whether he should run in the GOP primary for the open U.S. Senate seat in Michigan … which is currently also being sought by six-time Fif’ guest and Amash’s one-term successor in Congress, Peter Meijer (Special Dispatch #51, #307, #339, #367,  #424, Members Only #184).

Meijer, you may recall, entered the GOP primary against Amash on July 3, 2019, less than seven weeks after Amash had called for impeachment proceedings against then-President Donald Trump; on July 4, 2019, Amash then declared independence from the Republican Party. The congressman, after briefly flirting with a run at the 2020 presidential nomination for the Libertarian Party (which he had joined in April 2020), announced that July he would not seek re-election. Meijer won this GOP primary in August, then the general election in November, and was in Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021 (which he described to us in harrowing detail), after which he voted to impeach Trump, which led to him being primaried, and the Democrats taking the purple Grand Rapids seat, and so on, and so forth.

Also competing for the GOP Senate nod are the Trumpier candidates Mike Rogers (former congressman), James Craig (former Detroit police chief), and Sandy Pensler (businessman). Given our luck (by “our,” I mean “the country’s”), the two good guys will cancel each other out, and then start a podcast, or a buddy movie, or a joint listening tour of Baluchistan. Will Amash really jump in? Are they just competing for The Fifth Column’s affections? Do we all need to decamp to Michigan until we can figure out what the hell’s going on? These are the questions.

* You’ll note that the fetching lass decorating the top of this post/email is neither a Michigander nor a dude. Instead, it’s America’s reportorial galpal Nancy Rommelmann (#79, S.D. #27, S.D. #30, #198, #203, S.D. #34, S.D. #50, S.D. #64, S.D. #111), who as advertised is out busting hump in the Holy Land, interviewing the families of hostages Omer Shem Tov, Oded Lifshitz, and Romi Gonen, in addition to Yael Bar tur’s mom, for starters. (Speaking of Yael, she’s got a new City Journal piece out about what the last three and a half months has been like for her.) “If you find the work valuable,” Nancy writes in every post on her site, “please support it by becoming a paid subscriber and/or via Venmo, CashApp or Paypal.” There is some photographic evidence of her cavorting in Tel Aviv with the likes of Douglas Murray (#390); other previous Fif’ guests will also likely pop up in the chat.  

* Speaking of Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em, I went on Thursday with a solo Sarah Hepola (#354) to talk about current events, past life experiences (hint: rhymes with grog), Bill Maher, this here podcast, how institutional media screwed the pooch, the artistic genius of “One in a Million,” why boys don’t kiss and tell, and which of us would win in a three-way fight. There are also many, many terrible pictures of me.

* Even more Matt, you say? (Or don’t.) OK, two election-related Reason pieces from me this week—“No Labels Has 13 Presidential Candidates, 14 State Ballots, and 7 Weeks To Decide Whether To Run: The centrist group says it will decide on challenging Biden and/or Trump after Super Tuesday,” and “4 Reasons Why Dean Phillips Could Shock Write-in Joe Biden in New Hampshire Tuesday: Though alas, the long shot primary challenger probably will not.” My colleagues Liz Wolfe and Zach Weissmueller also invited me week onto their great newish show Just Asking Questions, where they tried to make me uncomfortable with queries about libertarian populism, Murray Rothbard, Vivek Ramaswamy (#411), January 6^th, political violence, etc.:

* Tagging in the fellas, Señor Moynihan did the guest-host thing on the Honestly Pod Wednesday, talking with Joe Nocera about his newish co-written book, The Big Fail: What the Pandemic Revealed About Who America Protects and Who It Leaves Behind. From the write-up:

We now know that so much of what we were told in those years was wrong. (Last week, Anthony Fauci admitted in closed-door congressional testimony that the six-feet apart rule was “likely not based on scientific data.”) And if the guidance wasn’t flat-out wrong, it was certainly debatable. But debate was not only discouraged—it was shut down. Respected dissident scientists were dismissed as fringe scientists. They were deplatformed on social media.

For most of us, all of this seems like a lifetime ago. But the problem is that here we are, four years later; millions of Americans suffered, more than a million died, and it’s not clear we have any better understanding of what exactly went wrong. How was it that our leaders—and our economy—were so brutally underprepared for a global pandemic?

* More from the Free Press universe: Coleman Hughes (#121, #144, #181, #188, #201, #379, #412) went there on Tuesday, with a piece (pursuant to our discussion on #435) titled “What Really Happened to George Floyd,” in which he suggests that “Derek Chauvin is not a murderer, but a scapegoat.” Coleman on Monday also celebrated Martin Luther King day by publishing an MLK chapter from his forthcoming book The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America. Concluding graf:

If it strikes you as odd that today’s “anti-racists” sound nothing like Dr. King yet claim his mantle, it should. They do not carry his mantle. They enjoy the moral authority of being seen as the carriers of his legacy while simultaneously betraying the very ideals that he stood for.

* OK, because life is too short to get rich slow, here’s an inspirational callback to M.O. #196:

* Heavily recommended by many in the Fifiverse is the latest episode of The Re-Education with Eli Lake (#52, #65, #141, #174, S.D. #51, #326, #368, #407, M.O. #184), titled “A Brief History of the AsAJews.” Synopsis: “Eli traces the history of Jews who use their words to side with the enemies of the Jewish people. His guest is the chief Rabbi of the Re-Education and the host of the Good Faith Effort podcast, Ari Lamm.”

* Shall we tilt toward the other side? Let’s. Andrew Sullivan (#139 & #200) last week wrote an anguished piece under the headline, “It's Not Genocide. But It Is Infanticide: At some point, a civilized country has to ask how many children it is prepared to kill.”

* Keeping on the broad topic, Nick Gillespie (S.D. #72 & #379) was the latest half-Irish/half-Italian motormouth to go on the Ask a Jew podcast, where Yael and ChayaLeah Sufrin grilled their “favorite libertarian” on “Hollywood’s portrayal of Israel,” Fiddler on the Roof, college kids nowadays, Leslie Fielder, and so much more.

* Nick is also seen in this Reason vid published this week of his recent interview with Jamie Kirchick (#55, #347, #394), about “how identity politics has overwhelmed the left's traditional defense of free speech, why so many younger journalists seem lukewarm at best to the First Amendment, and how to muster the courage to speak up for first principles in uncomfortable and hostile situations.” There reportedly is some light ribbing of a present-in-the-room Moynihan….

* Did someone say free speech on campus? Ring the FIRE alarm! Greg Lukianoff (#216, M.O. #183, #427) went on The Hill’s Rising program Wednesday with co-hosts Robby Soave (#332) and Briahna Joy Gray for a segment about how Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) departments and policies are smothering collegiate discourse. (Oooh, here’s a headline: “The Hill’s online show, ‘Rising,’ falls prey to host’s anti-Israel conspiracy theories.”) Anyway, Greg:

* Since we just had a double-shot of Tina Nguyen (#95, #136, #202), some links: The book is called The MAGA Diaries: My Surreal Adventures Inside the Right-Wing (And How I Got Out). Here’s her adapted chapter about Tucker Carlson, a recent interview with Columbia Journalism Review, and an appearance on Morning Joe.

* Events! On Jan. 22 there’ll be a Reason Speakeasy with the aforementioned Gillespie interviewing David Stockman about his new book Trump’s War on Capitalism. Jan. 29 nets us a SoHo Forum debate with Tony Mills and Terence Kealey arguing over whether, “Government must play a role in fostering scientific and technological progress by funding basic research.” And in D.C. Feb. 2-4 there’s International Students for Liberty’s annual LibertyCon blowout, co-sponsored by Reason, and featuring a whole host of Reason awesomeness, such as emceeing work from Robby Soave, journalism panelage from Katherine Mangu-Ward (#75, #395), and ol’ Shatterhand Gillespie talking to … Justin Amash!

* Glad you guys liked the inaugural Mailbucket! It shall now appear on the semi-irregular. Don’t mean to jump the gun on that, but this very practical-minded longish email, from Alexander, just felt too useful not to pass along right away. (The usual light editing applies.):

Hi gents,

I wanted to share my hiring tips, given that several subscribers have mentioned how they end up fearing their Gen Z zealot staffers. I just heard Jamie Kirchick express the same sentiment on the Reason Interview. I’ve developed a few easy-to-implement rules and it’s been a huge help. I work for a very bougie company (our clients are billionaires, several people who were in Epstein’s black book [for real], a bunch of major sports team owner, people like that) and some other managers are straight up terrified of their direct reports, who tend to be … entitled (and are often clients’ kids). So I try to go another direction. 

1. I have my H.R. rep remove the college attended from any resume I receive, so I can't be biased.

2. I love hiring women who are returning to the workforce after having taken time off raising kids. Other companies undervalue them, and they have put up with enough shit raising kids that they don’t fuck around.

3. If you’re remote, hire from the middle of the country. My only Gen Z direct report is from Appalachia. She’s fucking amazing.

4. Immigrants. But legal ones. My best hire is all of the above: a Trinidadian-born mom who’d taken time off to raise her kids. Her job is to deal with difficult, rich, entitled clients who have issues to be resolved. She’s absolute magic at it.

Hope this is helpful! 

* Comment of the Week comes from Kathleen:

I love when Moynihan is a princess about wine.

Walkoff music, as reffed on Smoke ‘em & repped on People Who Died (2023), is a bit of a garage-rock banger, NGL: