Unctuous Grievance, Not a Good Look
Let he who has not gone on television and suggested killing all unhoused people be the first to cast a stone. Wait… why do you all have stones? Before things get out of hand, take a look below, where I’ve written about right-wingers’ contempt for the rule of law, the folly of car culture, a brief examination of Taylor Swift lyrics, and more. LFG.
GO DIRECTLY TO:
- Seeing Charlie Kirk with Clear Eyes
- Bari Weiss Is Not a Serious Person
- The U.S Government Keeps Bragging About Killing People for No Reason
- MAGA Has Contempt for the First Amendment
- By the Way, a Fox News Host Said We Should Solve Homelessness by Killing Unhoused People
- Car Culture Is the Worst, Pt. 1
- Car Culture Is the Worst, Pt. 2
- Reflecting on Roberto Clemente Day
- The Clippers Are Showing Why Salary Caps Are Bad
- A Thought About Taylor Swift’s Lyrics
- I Recommend a Novel: “When We Were Real”
Seeing Charlie Kirk with Clear Eyes
In the first few days after conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk was murdered, I was certain the whole thing would blow over in roughly the same pattern as the attempted assassination of candidate Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania in summer 2024. I was wrong because I failed to appreciate that a large chunk of mainstream journalists and pundits considered Kirk a peer in spite of the hateful positions he staked out and destructive rhetoric he inflicted for his life’s work. And I was wrong because I underestimated conservatives’ eagerness to use Kirk’s death to garner sympathy for fascist ideas and further chip away at the rule of law, an eagerness that has an unsettling resemblance to mass psychosis.
At this point, many other people have written incisively about how Republicans and others have obfuscated who Charlie Kirk was and what he stood for, and how conservatives are using his death to attack their disfavored groups of people. Below are just a few of the pieces from recent days that I appreciated for how they straightforwardly explain Republicans’ fervor and Democrats’ and various journalists’ spinelessness.
- Ta-Nehisi Coates, Vanity Fair (archive) • What are we to make of a man who called for the execution of the American president, and then was executed himself? What are we to make of an NFL that, on one hand, encourages us to “End Racism,” and, on the other, urges us to commemorate an unreconstructed white supremacist? And what of the writers, the thinkers, and the pundits who cannot separate the great crime of Kirk’s death from the malignancy of his public life? Can they truly be so ignorant to the words of a man they have so rushed to memorialize? I don’t know. But the most telling detail in [Ezra] Klein’s column was that, for all his praise, there was not a single word in the piece from Kirk himself.
- Elizabeth Spiers, The Nation • Charles James Kirk, 31, died on Wednesday from a gunshot to the neck at a Utah Valley University campus event just as he was trying to deflect a question about mass shootings by suggesting they were largely a function of gang violence. He died with a net worth of $12 million, which he made by espousing horrific and bigoted views in the name of advancing Christian nationalism. The foundation of his empire was the group he cofounded and led, Turning Point USA, which is a key youth-recruitment arm of the MAGA movement. Kirk was able to launch Turning Point at the age of 18 because he received money from Tea Party member Bill Montgomery, right-wing donor Foster Friess, and his own father, also a prolific right-wing donor. He was an unrepentant racist, transphobe, homophobe, and misogynist who often wrapped his bigotry in Bible verses because there was no other way to pretend that it was morally correct. He had children, as do many vile people.
- Ana Marie Cox, The New Republic • Looking at the behavior of Republicans in the Trump era—indeed, looking at Trump himself—we know the answer: Using the awesome power of U.S. government to compound people’s grief is exactly how Republicans measure success. Indeed, they use no other metric.
- Joseph Gedeon, The Guardian (original story linked within, but I don’t feel like linking to anything on Substack) • The US justice department has scrubbed a study from its website concluding that far-right extremists have killed far more Americans than any other domestic terrorist group, just days after a gunman fatally shot the prominent conservative activist Charlie Kirk… The National Institute of Justice study, which was based on research spanning three decades, represented one of the most comprehensive government assessments of domestic terrorism patterns. It found that “militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States” and that “the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism”.
- Marisa Kabas, The Handbasket • What’s been revealed in the past week is that the current ruling party sees free will and free speech as indoctrination, but believes compulsory moments of silence for a man most Americans hadn’t heard of until his death to be fair game. As much as Kirk and his supporters try to stress that free-flowing debate is what made his approach to politics great, they’re honoring him by completely shutting it down. But pointing out Republican hypocrisy is a fool’s errand. Shameless people cannot be shamed, and those with an unquenchable thirst for power don’t care how they get their fix.
Bari Weiss Is Not a Serious Person
Bari Weiss may soon be one of the most powerful people in American news media if Paramount leadership follows through on their reported plans to give her a senior position at CBS News. This, even though her entire public life is an exercise in hypocrisy and success-through-flattery.
An especially delightful thing about Weiss’s apparent elevation that I feel like not enough people realize is that she is simultaneously an extremely dull thinker and an unapologetic nepotism practitioner. Take this recent post of hers (screenshotted to BlueSky) in which she wrote: “Not a single word was uttered at the Emmys about the assassination, days before, of Charlie Kirk, arguably the most high-profile killing of a political figure since the ’60s in this country. You know, the one where the Emmys take place, and where its nominees presumably live. What happened to Kirk, in the minds of the actors at the Emmys, was perhaps something that happened online, to someone uncool and on the wrong side of history.”
The unctuous grievance reads as funny because of its utterly ahistoric take on what counts as a “high-profile killing of a political figure” (Leo Ryan, George Moscone and Harvey Milk), because it is blasting the nominees and producers of the Emmys(?) for not showing sufficient respect for non-TV figure Charlie Kirk, and because it so confidently ascribes malignant motive for the lack of acknowledgement. But what really pushes it over the edge for me is something that’s not readily apparent from the screenshot: she’s quoting a piece her sister published at Bari’s blog site. So, not only is Bari Weiss amplifying this piece of drivel, it’s a bit of intellectual detritus bylined to her sister, who first came into the public eye as a high school senior when she was given the opportunity to publish a widely mocked opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, where Bari Weiss had recently worked. The less said about Suzy Lee Weiss’s subsequent appearance on the Today Show the better, and if you have an opinion about anything else she’s published, you might be the first.
This is how Bari Weiss does things. Good luck, CBS News.
The U.S Government Keeps Bragging About Killing People for No Reason
President Trump posted a video of a boat getting obliterated and claimed the U.S. military destroyed the boat and killed all aboard because they were drug smugglers off the coast of Venezuela. Since then, the U.S. government has said they’ve destroyed at least two more vessels, and, according to their own accounts, killed at least 17 people in Caribbean waters.
The government has defended these summary killings by asserting without evidence that they had identified those people as drug smugglers and therefore they deserved to die. Plainly, this is barbaric and illegal, especially given that even if the boats were smuggling drugs they could have been intercepted. But the people in charge of the U.S. government are reveling in the illegality and their ability to flex power. Vice President JD Vance even joked about it to a friendly audience, saying with a smirk, “I wouldn’t go fishing right now in that area of the world.” One might wonder what the fascists’ reaction would be if someone joked that it would be a bad idea to give speeches in Utah right about now.
More: “What do you do with an unrepentant killer who won’t stop killing?”
MAGA Has Contempt for the First Amendment
Actually, you don’t need to wonder the reaction, because the Trump administration and MAGA partisans have made their position clear. Late night show host Jimmy Kimmel and the ABC television network may be the most prominent entities to come under government pressure to curtail their speech, but at least 100 other people across the country, many of them public employees, have been fired or suspended for comments they made in relation to Kirk’s killing.
Government pressure to curtail speech is plainly illegal — even if it’s disgusting speech, which Kimmel’s comments were not. But, of course, the First Amendment is no impediment for a lawless administration which has publicly threatened citizens with repercussions for mocking Kirk’s death and is simultaneously attacking the concept of a free and independent news media at every opportunity. Private entities have much more leeway to influence employees’ speech, but the reason many of these entities are firing people who had the temerity to quote Kirk’s own words disapprovingly, or less, is because they are bending the knee to authoritarianism in the hope of being left alone by a vengeful government or the braying MAGA mob. Either way, it’s pathetic all around, especially when it’s news organizations giving up their integrity.
By the Way, a Fox News Host Said We Should Solve Homelessness by Killing Unhoused People
What the header says. On the execrable Fox and Friends show, one host was talking about a murder in Charlotte, North Carolina from August that was caught on camera, fearmongering about how the unhoused are dangerous, and ranting about how with all the money that’s been spent on addressing societal ills he shouldn’t be made to feel bad about icky irresponsible poors who might be having mental health issues. He concluded by saying that those people ought to be forced to accept “the resources we’re gonna give you” or be jailed. To which co-host Brian Kilmeade responded, “Or involuntary lethal injection. Or something. Just kill ‘em.”
Kilmeade has since apologized, and as best I can tell, he’s still on the Fox News payroll. No word yet on if anyone’s going to address how the Fox and Friends co-hosts all just kind of went “yes-and” when Kilmeade casually suggested some mass killing.
Car Culture Is the Worst, Pt. 1
There’s a particular school site in Tennessee where the drop off and pickup traffic is so bad that some caretakers have taken to arriving at the school by 1 p.m. in order to get a favorable spot in line ahead of 3 p.m. dismissal. The punchline, if you can call it that in such a miserable situation, is that about 70% of the students arrive and leave by car even though this is a relatively well-resourced district and the school leadership is more or less asking people to please have their kids use the buses.
Car Culture Is the Worst, Pt. 2
In San Francisco, Supervisor Joel Engardio was recalled. What did he do to spark the ire of his constituents? He supported closing a roadway and converting it into a park, which was approved in a citywide vote by a 55%-45% margin. What were the empirical effects of closing that roadway and diverting traffic to another major artery that runs in parallel? According to traffic studies, it added 4 minutes on average to driving trips.
Though I think Engardio was a bad supervisor, on net, it was for reasons largely unrelated to this issue, about which he was on the side of the angels. Moreover, it's infuriating that the recall people are acting like they're fighting monied interests when they are the monied interests. They're the incumbents preventing anyone from doing anything about housing costs and they're promoting a car-brained vision that's the antithesis of quality urban life. It’s also tied up in notions of wanting to live in a neighborhood of single-family homes, but also with all the benefits of dense urban life, but also with an understanding that everything be maximally convenient to me me me, and that because I own a home I get final say over everything in my neighborhood.
The upcoming zoning fight is going to suck.
Related: The Chinese restaurant at the end of a long argument about housing
Reflecting on Roberto Clemente Day
If there’s any athlete I would describe as my “hero,” the closest is probably Roberto Clemente. Thus, long after I read it, I keep thinking about this excellent post on North Side Baseball about Clemente’s values and why Major League Baseball has struggled to canonize him in a way the lords of the game feel comfortable about.
The Clippers Are Showing Why Salary Caps Are Bad
If you haven’t kept up with the L.A. Clippers-Kawhi Leonard salary cap circumvention story broken by Pablo Torre, he’s done at least four episodes of his podcast about it: One, two (if you’re interested, I live-posted a few thoughts while listening to this episode), three, and four. It’s a lot, but Bruce Arthur has provided a good rundown of Torre’s reporting and the stakes for the Clippers, team governor Steve Ballmer, Leonard, and the NBA.
This is all “existential” for the NBA in the sense that the bargained-for salary cap saves team owners from themselves and suppresses player payrolls so that even the teams that cry poor can spend in the same neighborhood as teams with massive revenue streams outside of national media deals. However, there’s no inherent higher good in suppressing player salaries this way. If the L.A. Clippers wanted to spend $900 million per year on player salaries, that would be fine by me, a nominal Charlotte Hornets fan, because even if the Clippers were able to acquire and pay an All-Star team, other teams would still be competitive since there are only 7-10 rotation spots per team, and plenty of guys would rather be a well-paid starter than a well-paid reserve.
There are enough players to go around. Far more money should go to players than does. There’s obvious market pressure to pay players more. Let teams pay them!
Related: How to start a new pro basketball league to rival the NBA
A Thought About Taylor Swift’s Lyrics
The Official Child of 29 Sunset Missives is extremely excited for the new Taylor Swift album, set to drop Oct. 3. We were already listening to Swift’s songs often, but it’s ramped up since the new album announcement, and I’ve found myself contemplating Swift’s rhetorical strategies much more than I previously did.
There’s a specific thing she does that I clock every time I hear it that is best demonstrated in the song “All Too Well”: in short, her narrators speak decisively on behalf of other characters. (For simplicity, I’m going to refer to the narrators as “she”, even though Swift shifts between claiming identity as the speaker or maintaining distance from the narrator-as-character when convenient.)
It’s not just that she’s speculating on what other people think or feel; she’s stating others’ thoughts and feelings as fact. In “All Too Well”, the ex-lover “taught me ‘bout your past, thinking your future was with me.” He also keeps her old scarf “‘cause it reminds you of innocence, and it smells like me; you can’t get rid of it ‘cause you remember it all too well.”
Combined with the music, the tone is both triumphant and sad. Triumphant that she’s in his head even after he messed up, and sad that they had something wonderful, but he was too selfish to work at the relationship. The thing is, she’s not omniscient, so how does she know that he thought his future was with her? How does she know that her scarf reminds him of innocence? The most charitable reading is that she’s telling him off by explaining how he must feel to her audience, but it’s still presented as a definitive statement of truth.
Jake Gyllenhaal and people close to him might feel this is all extremely unfair, and if I were in that situation, at best I’d be annoyed. But even though I can’t unhear that rhetorical twist, and even though I definitely see how she’s stacking the deck, “All Too Well” and most other Swift songs still work because she’s legitimately great at pop songcraft, and also her entire pop star persona is so big that she’s in a zone previously occupied by The Beatles where she can make declarative statements that would sound corny or too try-hard coming from anyone else (“All you need is love, love is all you need” being the the peak heat-check lyric in this mode).
I Recommend a Novel: “When We Were Real”
Daryl Gregory’s novel, “When We Were Real,” is not about the simulation hypothesis, to be clear. Instead, it uses the simulation hypothesis as a premise. Seven years prior to the events of the story, humanity is informed that, without doubt, the known universe is a simulation. From there, the novel is a page-turning search for meaning, with a variety of characters — including a nun, a novitiate, and a rabbi, all of whom stuck out to me, in particular — contemplating God and how or if they might change after coming into this new knowledge. I plowed through it in just a few days, and now I’m looking forward to reading more of Gregory’s work.
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Thanks for reading, you crazy kids. Let’s do this again, sometime.
(Photo: "Great Highway Sloat Boulevard view" by Willis Lam. Used under CC BY-SA 2.0 license.)