You Do You
Internet scolds, sex-mad cicadas, 100-hour brownies
Good morning from Knoxville! Where last night at 9:45 I attempted to drink a Sazarac in a speakeasy and got about 50% through before I had to bail. Comes from a 12-hour drive from NYC, I imagine, during which I saw some bugs at a rest stop along I-81 and thought, what are those? (And if you want to read something REALLY horrifying about cicadas…)
The comment I mention above is to my piece of this week in The Dispatch, “Can Portland Recover From a Year of Lockdowns and Nihilism?” I tend to think the 5-day Portland visitor had an idea of what the city must be and how the media has, for partisan reasons, perverted that story. Which, I mean, can be true!
I sometimes feel like I am taking crazy pills, trying to understand the logic that says the problem here is the media reporting what they see. Yes, some outlets are bald in their agenda. Some are more subtle (kind of more dangerous, right?). We all have varying opinions and histories that make us lean this way or that. However, do not, because you lean a different way, tell me I am a liar when what I am doing and will always do is report what I find.
The tendency for people in media to see the hateful in anything they disagree with is driving me bananas. Elizabeth Bruenig writes a sweet essay about the happiness and some hurdles she found having a child at 25 and is accused of all manner of misogyny and worse. Why? Because the people doing the accusing have other ideas, ideas that must not have much tensile strength if anyone else’s ideas (and happiness, and child) is so threatening that the response is to… you know what? I am neither linking nor repeating, but you can listen to some of it on this episode of Blocked and Reported, the title of which, “Calling Female Journalists Dumb Knocked-Up Bitches With Ugly Husbands, For Feminism,” gives you some idea.
Phil Klay, whose fiction I love, had this to say on Twitter: “Watching hyperbolic takes on here (like “Liz Bruenig is an actual theocrat!”), I often cannot tell where bad faith ends and actual stupidity and ignorance begins...”
Me, neither. Another thoughtful voice on Twitter is Scott Greenfield, who writes the Simple Justice blog and who wrote the following, about the mask-scolds and un-mask scolds and the tendency to be super-pissy in general:
"Scolding has become a competitive sport over the past few years, where random people believe with all their heart that they are entitled, if not duty bound, to tell strangers how they are to live their lives."
I think scolding has become the new crack, people digging through the carpet of social media et al looking for anything they can huff and feel righteous about. Here’s a tip: the high is illusory and the hangover’s a bitch.
Why does anyone care if Bruenig, or I, had a baby at 25? I may think it’s silly or unnecessary to keep wearing a mask when the data tells us it’s safe not to, but good god, I’m not going to call you names if you want to keep wearing one. You do you.
Is that enough spleen for a Thursday morning? I think so! Let’s move on to the butter. I mentioned in the last newsletter that I might make the 100-hour brownies, and I did! Because I appreciate people filming themselves while cooking, I gave it a whack.
Not too shabby, until I opened the microwave the next day and found six ounces of melted chocolate that was supposed to have been mixed into the batter (if, um, unmelted), which at that point was spending its requisite three days in the fridge. No matter. When it was time to bake off the brownies, I halfway re-melted the chocolate and swirled/smashed it into the batter before it went into the oven. Yael Bar tur sat outside the kitchen door manhandling Paloma Media merchandise as I baked.
As for why was Yael on the floor cutting stickers, it was about all she could handle after the tweet storm she’d put up the night before was read by about 10 million people, with reason. I urge you to read it. It’s crucial, clear, beautifully worded.
She and I got in the studio a few days later and had, “A Light-Hearted Conversation About Israel.”
As for that merch: I was selling the hats and stickers for gas $ but seeing as I am already on the road I guess I’ll have to place them in your hot little hands.
I’ve read some beautiful things this week, including Matt Welch on “Gay Pride Parade Discriminates Against Gay Cops,” which our friend Anthony, who is an NYPD officer, and gay, tweeted about:
I’ve just started Maria Konnikova’s The Biggest Bluff, which crackles from page one, and I’m about to pre-order Jonathan Rauch’s The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth (and if you haven’t read Rauch, start here, and I mean, like right now). As soon as my monthly Audible credit hits, I am going to download, Confident Women: Swindlers, Grifters, and Shapeshifters of the Feminine Persuasion, by Tori Telfer. Until then, here’s what’s on audio in the car:
Ambition and Desire, the Dangerous Life of Josephine Bonaparte, Kate Williams
Arguably, essays by Christopher Hitchens and read, deliciously, by the author
The Outlaw Ocean, by Ian Urbina
Mythos, The Greek Myths Reimagined, by Stephen Fry
You may notice a lack of fiction on that list. I have a hard time listening to fiction on audio, by paragraph two I am off someplace else. Exception makes the rule: The Godfather, which I listened to back on cassette back in the day, was amazing!
A far as What Tafv Sent, she didn’t send this one but she might have!
Until I get to Nashville later today, love and a bite of the warm croissant I will eat at Wild Love Bakehouse before I pull out of town xx