Snake-Pits and Tarbabies

Back when I was in the client service business, we had an expression for accounts in which things could never go right — where problems would occur on a frequent basis, systems would fail, communications get misinterpreted and attempts to fix problems would just make the original problem even worse.

We used to refer to them as “snake-pit” accounts:  where no matter what you did, you’d just step on another snake.  Others in the trade termed them “tarbaby” accounts, where no matter how you tried to shake the problems off, you’d just get stickier and stickier.

Which leads us to this:

A crew member winding down production of Rust faces losing his arm after being bitten by a venomous spider, just weeks after Alec Baldwin accidentally shot and killed the movie’s cinematographer.

While I think we all agree that it would be more fitting if Baldwin had been bitten by the spider, you have to feel a little sorry for not only this crew member, but the entire crew (including the dead one, of course) because after all, they were all just working stiffs trying to make a movie together, albeit for a loathsome reptile like Baldwin.

All in all, this production certainly qualifies as a snake-pit operation.

Quote Of The Day

From Jim Treacher:

“By the time I learn enough about a breaking news story to realize I don’t care, it turns out to be bullshit anyway.”

Nowadays, I seldom bother even to learn about a “breaking” news story.  I prefer to look in on it a week later, to save myself the irritation.


Note:   Treacher’s words have been uncensored, because on this website, you can say what you say without fear thereof.

Not The Same Old

All this might have made a difference to me, were it not for the fact that other than the occasional Victor Davis Hanson piece, I haven’t read anything in National Review   for nearly ten years.

Audio recordings obtained by Wired reveal that Google cooperates with and funds a range of establishment conservatives in D.C. that help it fend off scrutiny and oversight from politicians. The organizations named in Wired’s report are the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), and the Cato Institute.

It looks like conservative mag National Review was taking Google cash too. To suppress conservative speech on social media. Was this something that @NRO donors & contributors knew was taking place?

I had to laugh that the once-amusing and now-hysterical Jonah Goldberg sat in the heart of all this.

But Emerald’s best shot comes near the end:

In any culture war, Rich Lowry and the gang have always been the first to stand athwart history, crying: “We surrender first!” They’ve been so weak and defeatist during the Trump years that a year’s subscription to the magazine could be marketed as an estrogen supplement.

And the proof of our disillusionment with this bunch of pantywaists lies in NatRev‘s  financial statement and vanishing subscriber list.

And an aside:  as usual, I am so far behind the curve that it appears as flat as the horizon, because I’d never heard of Emerald Robinson before the above link from Insty (thankee, Squire).  Here she is:

…and here’s something she did.

Cuts Both Ways, Assholes

Apparently, we conservatives are Beyond The Pale.  Saith Jennifer Rubin:

There is no way to “understand” MAGA voters, nor is there is any possibility of reaching political agreement with them. They are beyond the bounds of rational political debate.

Hey, Jen:  substitute “socialist voters” for “MAGA voters”, and you’ll have an idea of what we think of you lot.  The only thing you need to understand about us is that we hate your putrid political philosophy and your criminal voting practices.

And then some other Lenin-lickspittle chimes in with:

There is no longer any reason to try to “understand” these people. Nor should there be any compunction about doing whatever we can to read them out of American politics…

…by any means available, you mean?

Noted.

Reading Stuff

You know what I miss?  Reading newspapers and periodicals.  And one of the things the Brits do better than we do is this:

When I was the house guest at Free Market Towers, the first great pleasure of the day was not that first cup of coffee — at least, not altogether the first — it was the opportunity of reading an actual (dead tree) newspaper, great huge sheets of newsprint crammed with articles, essays, news and all sorts of stuff which could satisfy a polymath like me, learning all sorts of unlikely things that I wouldn’t ordinarily glance at.  But there, pint mug of coffee in hand, was the Daily Telegraph  which has somehow managed not to become  a complete waste of paper like so many others, e.g.  New York Times and Chicago Tribune, to name but two.

Back when I lived in the Chicago ‘burbs and caught the 5:30am train into the Loop each morning, I’d stop at the little kiosk at the Arlington Heights Metra station, buy a donut, cup of coffee and the Tribune ;  and let me tell you, the 90-minute journey into town took no time at all, because the Trib back in those days was not the Lefty rag it is today, boasting as it did wonderful writers like the late Mike Royko.

Which leads me to my next point.  For an old fart like me, who likes holding paper (whether newspaper or a book) to read, what the hell am I supposed to do?  There’s not a single U.S. newspaper worth the paper it’s printed on — go on, name me one, I challenge you — so even if we did have a corner newsagent like the one in the pic, there would be absolutely no point in calling on one unless it was to stoke my already-high morning irritation level up to boiling point.

And I’m quite aware that some of the smaller local newspapers are pretty good, but I don’t want a suburban newspaper:  I want a nice big fat city newspaper whose “World News” section isn’t just Associated Press feeds or cribs of CNN.  I want London’s Sunday Times  (just for its peerless Business & Economics section) and the Daily Telegraph, tailored for the U.S.

I don’t want to get my news online anymore;  mostly, it’s complete bullshit and clearly aimed for people with the attention span of mayflies.  Just when I’m getting interested in a topic, it ends with some trite sign-off from the writer, as though a topic actually worth about a thousand words is only given two hundred.  (I don’t know if that’s the fault of the Editor — always trying to pander to the aforesaid mayflies — or of the journalist, for whom a 1,000-word article would be beyond his writing capability and might require [gasp]  both a grasp of the topic and some journalistic research to reach that target length.)

I feel like my reading ability is being stifled, and it’s deteriorating;  and I don’t know what to do about it.