Booming out of town tomorrow for an epic business/pleasure combo ramble. Not to return until early next week, by which time these items in my idea file will have dissipated like so many courtroom farts. Let’s not let them go to waste. —DM
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Remember during Vietnam—or maybe it was after that era—when we heard about all the terrible dinner-table arguments between parents and children (dads and boys then, mostly), about protesting the draft? I assume those kinds of arguments are happening now over FaceTime with parents asking how studying for finals is going, at the encampment. It’s actually those conversations—not chants, not TikTok rants—that I’d like to listen in on.
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Did you know that middle-school kids in some schools these days, call their middle-aged female teachers “bro”? (And some kids even call their moms “bro,” too?) Yes, it’s a thing; and I can’t see how it’s a good thing. Can you?
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Everybody knows I’m a leading advocate of the silent profession. So I’m embarrassed to hear the product of lame speechwriter research, like the fake marble delivered by House Speaker Mike Johnson at Columbia University a couple weeks ago.
“We are standing here right now in the steps of the Low Library,” Johnson began. “In this very building right behind us, Columbia University once awarded Winston Churchill in an honorary degree, and it was Churchill who said, ‘It is manifestly right that Jews should have a national home where they may be reunited.'”
If that riff was a basketball, it would be blocked into the stands, the defender yelling, “Get the weak shit out!”
Amiright?
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At the end of a speech transcript, I found a disclaimer: “This is a human-generated transcription. Small errors may be found.” What the hell is that supposed to mean?
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When did we normalize raising sports ticket prices spontaneously, like Uber high-demand rates? You do know what this does, don’t you? It tells every person in America who isn’t awash in extra cash that they’ll never afford to attend an important game again. Only the meaningless contests for them.
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And when did we normalize “normalize”? We lived our whole lives without it and now it appears in every opinion column you ever read. I’m sick of this fucking word, aren’t you?
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