Top-down stupidity.

Note: I wrote a draft of this post on Sunday, planning to put it up Monday, but got to wondering if I was too harsh. So I held off and looked at it again Monday. 

No, events of the last week convince me I was probably not harsh enough, if anything. 

So, here we go:

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The irreplaceable Instapundit often notes that we have the dumbest elites in the history of our nation. I actually am starting to think he's understating the problem. 

I take my impressions from the section of the culture in which I toil the most -- books. As a youth I would have found it difficult to believe that people could be both smart and stupid at the same time, but modern books have me convinced this is not only possible, but exactly what is going on now. 

duh.

Don't get me wrong -- a lot of the books I'm thinking of are well written, with great command of the language, deft use of literary themes, and great craft in metaphor, character, and sometimes even plot. But there is a willful stupidity that contaminates many of them, and I hope to make the case for some of the reasons why.

1) Gullibility. 

I probably do not need to say that these writers believe every single solitary word printed in the New York Times, which is why apostates like Senator Cotton must not be allowed to appear in that holy writ. I'm not kidding -- Biblical scholars are much more aware of and understanding of contradictions and conflicts in the Holy Book than Times fans are of their word of god. Times true believers are willing to argue that the Times is always right, even when the paper itself reports that it was wrong (as in Walter Duranty's famous coverage of the Holodomor, let alone more recent scandals -- the Hunter Biden laptop, or so-called Russian collusion, or Fauci and Cuomo as heroes of the pandemic, just to name a few). Not that the paper ever admits error; it just runs the new information as if it was never their fault for screwing up. 

Being wrong when you're Times means never having to give back your Pulitzer.  

2) Obsession with factoids. 

Another side of this gullibility is a love of factoids. Not that there's anything wrong with enjoying and amassing information, but the "facts" must be entirely Times approved. Mostly, though, the facts must contain some supposed insight that makes the intellectual look smarter, more worldly, and that will be the golden ticket to success. This is how we get lying books like Three Cups of Tea, which supposedly held the magic to dealing successfully with the intractable Taliban and became a huge seller. Our stupid Department of State could not buy enough copies, the morons. 

Remove all the garbage books like that from our publishing houses and there'd be a lot fewer trees giving their lives for book paper. 

3) Dead hearts.

Modern celebrated writers hate everyone, especially their own Western countries. The hate for them is pristine. There's never an understanding or excuse for why this or that Western nation did something in the past. Pure evil is the only explanation. Every statement must be phrased in a way that makes the people involved look as selfish, craven, and cruel as possible, even if the historical evidence actually shows beneficence. Such kneejerk hatred, for persons and populations, is the sign of a dead heart.

On that note, every character in their novels is dead inside as well; some may put on a good face, but they really love no one. It reflects the feelings of the loveless readers. If you found yourself transported into one of these novels, you'd think you'd gone into some kind of hell. Because dead hearts lead to... 

4) Empty souls. 

They believe nothing but the worst. They cannot write a genuine book about a character of faith, because they don't know what that's like. They think it's a kind of mental failing. And I don't mean religion so much as real ideals, the kind people will willingly die for. 

I've found no heroes of genuine selfless nobility in any novel celebrated by the intelligentsia written this century. I haven't read them all, of course. Prove me wrong!  

5) Racism, sexism, and all the other -isms.

Advancing the wrong people for the right reasons, the right people for the wrong reasons, and of course, the wrong people for the wrong reasons. The "right people for the wrong reasons" suffer for being stuck with the same affirmative action label. 

Is this payback for discrimination of the past? Fair point. Do two wrongs make a right? Try reading some of this stuff and tell me what you think. 

6) Lack of focus. 

No one can just do the job anymore; they have to do the messaging about the thing. In fact, that's what they truly want to do. They want to talk it all to death. Life as an endless undergrad bull session.

This is way beyond just books. If your company has to release an operations manual, for example, and hires some former English majors to do the job, watch for the opening sections to be about diversity, equity, and inclusion, before suddenly turning into serious data and instructions. The English majors really just want to do the DEI stuff. It'd be like buying a coffeemaker and finding the first three pages dedicated to the company's policies of inclusion. WHO CARES? I JUST WANT COFFEE. 

But the folly is not limited to virtue signaling. Companies that ought to be run by people who know how to do the things (cough, Boeing) are instead run by stock market weasels who sacrifice quality and even lives to increase stock value. Anyone could see that it's a short-sighted policy -- anyone but our crop of intellectual morons. Companies are unfocused; workers are self-indulgent; fortunes are being squandered because no one is really working on the actual job. 

7) Inadequate punishments for stupidity.

Only dissent gets punished in this universe, not stupid actions centered in foolish criteria. There seems to be no comeuppance for the dumdums ruining our society. They just fail upward.

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The only corrective that works in these cases is one that comes from those the perpetrators fear. It doesn't matter how much value the company loses, how disastrous the policy is, how lousy the books are; unless people who can make a difference get angry and start throwing bums out, nothing will change. Certainly I can be of no help. Nobody is afraid of me. 

Anatomy of a rock album.

 

Popaganda.

Just got back from observing the popular culture for another day! 

I occasionally work on books for younger readers. Sometimes they are pretty good. Sometimes they even achieve that rare quality of being a good read for an adult. As C.S. Lewis wrote, “I am almost inclined to set it up as a canon that a children’s story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children’s story.”

At least, that used to be the case. Nowadays every one of them has to have some kind of propaganda. 

Nothing new there. Propaganda is the art of the emotional appeal, and it does not always make for bad art. The Nazis and the Soviets were terrific at film and poster art. Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove makes no attempt at reasoned appeal against nuclear weapons; it just wants to make us laugh and sick with fear at the same time so we can't think unemotionally about the subject. Cartoonish portrayals of political figures intend to make us ill when we see the real humans. And don't even get me started on pop music. A lot of craft can be put into the appeal that goes below the threshold of reason. Often it is meant to spur the good of the recipient, but mostly it is meant to support the cause of the artist.

I'm not seeing much craft these days, alas. It's definitely gotten worse in the last five years. The kids turned out from left-wing universities, their brains stamped like Oreo cookies with indoctrination, don't all come with creamy talent filling. They just toss off the usual canards with very little art, either hoping to make us two-minute-hate one target or accept something as normal that would have seemed preposterous yesterday. Adjust your Newthink dictionaries accordingly. These kids move up (no matter how many of their projects fail) and hire people just like them. The next thing you know, you're playing Candy Crush on your phone because there's nothing but crap on the bookshelves and in theaters and on TV.

Propaganda doesn't show the world as it is; it's either a picture of the world as the author thinks you should want it to be, or a kaleidoscope in which the only patterns that form are those of hate. 

So yeah, everything is insane out there, and of course your only hope is to read my books! 

Are they lousy? That's up to you. I don't think so. But at least they play with the rules of humanity as we know humans to be. They are not written with an eye on the scoreboard, making sure they check the boxes and win clapter. Even my fantasy books start with three-dimensional human characters you could recognize.  

Give one a read! If you don't like it because you think it's written poorly, I will give you a personal apology. If you don't like it because it doesn't conform to your social ideals, well, we'll have to agree to disagree. But please know that, oxymoronic as it seems, I write honest fiction. 

The disco menace.

It's hard for kids today to appreciate the disco menace. It came on suddenly, and when it had done its damage, it went away. But even though I was a kid, I can never forget.

The word disco was alien when I first heard it, and it seemed like a nonsense word. But it came from the French discotheque, which itself came from "disque disk, record + -o- + -thèque (as in bibliothèque library)" according to Merriam-Webster. In other words, disco is short for record library. A discotheque was a place where people would dance to music played on vinyl records rather than music played by a live band. Any little town could have a dance club even if they had no musicians. The word disco dates to 1957, but disco didn't conquer the world for a while after that.

Disco music was defined by a particular beat, as classic rock is, and as the waltz is. Whereas rock used the backbeat (the emphasis on every even beat -- one TWO three FOUR etc.) and the waltz's emphasis is on the second and third beats (one TWO THREE one TWO THREE), the disco bass drum is hit on all four beats of the measure. Thus the four-on-the-floor, thumpa thumpa thumpa thumpa. It's harder to play than you'd think, but it had the advantage of letting songs run one after another with the exact same rhythm and speed, so dancers never had to stop unless it was time to re-up the cocaine. 

The thing is, during the height of the vogue, any music could be put through the discoizing machine and come out disco. Any. Music. 

They dusted off a 1926 hit ("Baby Face"), put it through the discoizer, and it got to number two on the disco charts. They took the theme from the TV show I Love Lucy and discoized that, and "Disco Lucy" got to number 9 on the Easy Listening chart. The music from  May 1977's unexpected smash film Star Wars managed to get a whole disco album out of it before the end of the year (Meco's Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk), which is not to be confused with the mashed-up film music set to a disco beat by a studio band called the Force, released as a single before the end of the year. (The B side was the timeless classic "Funky Hat.") Even Ludwig van Beethoven became discofied in 1975, his breathtaking Fifth Symphony shrunken and beat to "A Fifth of Beethoven" by Walter Murphy and the Big Apple Band. Disney discofied itself, doing a takeoff of the Village People's "Macho Man" ("Macho Duck"), certainly the most famous track on the immortal 1979 album Micky Mouse Disco. If you stood still long enough, you might get discoized, too -- finding yourself with a whitefro and a leisure suit, gold Italian horn chain, shirt open to the waist. 

It seems to have seized the nation and the world like a kind of mania, but ebbed within a short period. "The Hustle" was a disco landmark, released in 1975, but by 1980, when Studio 54 closed, the whole thing seemed to be old (if still funky) hat. The Who had declared disco dead in 1978. The infamous Disco Demolition Night in Chicago took place the next year. But it took a while for the rest of the culture to catch up. 

Say what you will about disco, at least it finally got out of the center ring. If only all our manias would have the good sense to ebb as quickly. I can name quite a few that I wish would go away already, or at least go on vacation.

Return of the UFOs.

I'm starting to get a sense that it's time for the UFOs to come back. They have a cultural moment every twenty to twenty-five years, and I think they're due. 

Why do I think so? Oh, they radioed me through my tinfoil hat. You should get one. It blocks the CIA but lets in the aliens alerts. Kind of a police radio for ETs. 

No, it's actually a couple of real things. For one, in the last twelve months I've had assignments for various books centering on space creatures, either nonfiction (such as, about Roswell or Area 51) or fiction (aliens-among-us stuff). Book publishers have their faults -- their many, many, many faults -- but they often are right up front with this stuff. Our cultural vampire phase and zombie phase came out of book series; the apocalypse phase too, and whenever we're in a mood for swashbuckling or historical drama you can bet it started on the bookshelves and went into movies and TV after. And I am seeing a ton of BEMs and LGMs and ETs and UFOs (or UAPs, as the navy calls them now) coming down the cultural chute. 

Don't count me among
the Little Green Men.

Usually there is a real-world prompt that gets things moving. I think the main one now is the Webb Space Telescope, which is getting people who like space stuff excited enough for it to spill over to the rest of us. Less so the talk of Mars missions and new missions to the moon. They are boosted by nationalism again with China and Europe and the US and others wanting a taste of space glory -- and nationalism is the only thing that got humans into space and on the moon, by the way -- but those goals keep being pushed off and seem less concrete. Webb goes live in July and we expect some amazing things.

Culturally, this means more X-Files type shows, maybe some ALFs or Mork and Mindys or My Favorite Martians, although undoubtedly the darker, grittier, versions. Our fictional aliens have been with us for decades, but I predict a strong resurgence of alien-themed cultural artifacts. I think a lot of it died down because the ubiquity of personal cameras in phones meant far fewer UFO sightings for a while, because tales of things that happened would have inevitably meant lots of pictures from various people. However, they're coming back. 

Here's where I would say "Keep watching the skies." Honestly, though, I am not convinced that there's ever going to be a useful workaround to the universal speed limit of light speed, so I think it's very unlikely we'll ever be visited by aliens. So instead I'll say "Keep watching the TV." That's where you'll see most of our visitors from outer space.  

And don't bother with the tinfoil hat. That was a joke. Tinfoil underwear, however, is very useful for stopping the FBI's omega rays that sap one's essence. 

Newstalgia.

The 1954 film White Christmas isn't going to be running on a full-day marathon this year on AMC, but it's definitely on the schedule. I've wondered how this VistaVision classic had become so popular with viewers nowadays, when it had barely been seen on TV for decades. It's not a bad movie and it has some great songs, but why now?

The more I think of it, the less I think it has to do with the film's virtues, and more to do with the reasons for the current adulation of PBS painter Bob Ross (died 26 years ago) and PBS child friend Mr. Rogers (died 18 years ago). And that is: Because our culture today sucks eggs. 

It's no surprise that people my age and older find that the culture sucks. Ever since all the arts got targeted at people under thirty, everyone over thirty is obliged to find that these kids today blah blah blah. But I think that the kids themselves feel that they have terrible culture, and prefer to seek out things from a better one. Things like kindness without irony. Romance without the expectation of instant gratification--or the beartrap of sexist accusation. Calm without a horrific storm. Entertainment, in other words, without a sucker punch.

I've heard people my age say the reason kids are so unhappy is because their music sucks. Well, a lot of the music from my generation sucked too, but most of the singers weren't swearing like Bowery bums or threatening everybody or, worst of all, using AutoTune.

Why do we have such a horrible culture? A few reasons. One is the long-held belief dating at least to Freud that the more awful something is, the more true it must be, since everything we do is meant to conceal the awful truth. Or something like that. Also, there are rewards for shocking the jaded, but that ratchet effect has been going on for a long time. There's not much room left on the jack. And finally, we live with a culture that has the idea that everything--that's the total in totalitarianism--has to support THE MISSION. So every book, movie, TV show, etc. has to have some propaganda in it. At the very least, even for people who are 100% behind THE MISSION, that means all entertainment is injected with a dose of homework. Who wants that after an exhausting day? 

My feeling is that this stuff is going to continue until some bright publisher or producer realizes that there's a strong market for new stuff that satisfies the way these cultural items of the past do. I think the infamous Hallmark movies are doing that now, which is why the fans of those aren't all the people that the intelligentsia expect--trailer-park yahooettes. It's much more widespread than that. 

We need some kind of culture that is fit for common consumption, that is not soaked in propaganda. The products of our current culture are in effect designed to put decent people at one another's throats all the time. How long are we going to support garbage like that?

Eat it.

Quite a few years ago my wife and I were honored to be invited to a colleague's wedding in Chinatown. We were very touched to be included, along with some other people I knew, and were looking forward to it. It was a beautiful ceremony, a gorgeous blend of Chinese tradition, Christian church, and no fewer than three outstanding dresses for the bride at different parts of the evening.

We were also promised an amazing feast of many courses. I was a little wary, knowing that this was not going to be the takeout that Americans normally think of as Chinese food. But we had recently started to frequent a wonderful Indian restaurant and were all in on that cuisine, so we figured this might be a similar situation.

As you might guess, it was not.

To my uncultured Ugly American palette, what we faced was just dish after dish of weird things from the sea, stuff you would throw back, stuff that might make you give up fishing forever if it landed in your net. Everything seemed runny, gummy, wobbly, gushy, weird. We and the other white folks at the table were fighting over the rice as the meal progressed. Also, we of some Irish extraction drank all the beer before the reception was half over. (Meanwhile, the groom, who did not like to drink, was borne by tradition to toast every table of the large extended family with Chivas Regal.)

I bring this up as an example of why I think it's perfectly natural to resist unfamiliar food, and the more unfamiliar the stronger the resistance. My wife has lately taken to watching the show Monsters Inside Me, and if you are trying to lose weight this new year, I advise putting it on during dinner. 

Monsters Inside Me details the real-life horrors of people who at some point contracted a terrifying disease, most often caused by parasites. Doctors are unhelpful, because early symptoms and signs are confused with more common complaints -- but eventually the effects turn hellacious, and usually life-threatening. If that's not enough, the show provides gruesome magnified animations of the "monsters" at play in the body, munching, bursting, oozing, and multiplying. My wife turned it on once and the narrator was saying something like "When the fungus finishes eating the natural bacteria on the eyeball, it can adapt to eat the tissue of the eye itself." I called out from the kitchen, "That is the most typical piece of dialogue you can imagine from the show." Every episode I've seen includes little talks from Dr. Daniel Riskin, explaining why these creatures are so deadly and how many people they kill. He's lots of fun at parties. 

No offense to our wedding hosts, and I can promise you no one got sick there, unless it was from too much Chivas Regal. The only reason I bring it up is that there are consequences to eating unknown foods in strange places, especially things that have not had the hell cooked out of them, and we seem to have a natural urge to avoid foreign things if we can. Evolutionary biologists might say it comes from millennia of watching Og or Thunk so hungry that him eat weird thing raw and then him turn green and devoured from inside out. Our natural reaction to new food, thus, ranges from caution to spurning to horror. 

Heck, what's more anodyne than American peanut butter to those without food allergies? And yet I'm told many people from foreign lands think it's weird and won't touch it. 

It's not a bad idea to be cautious when sojourning outside the country. As the CDC says, "International travelers can be at risk for a variety of infectious and non-infectious diseases. Travelers may acquire parasitic illnesses: through ingestion of contaminated food or water, by vector-borne transmission, or through person-to-person contact. Contaminated food and drink are common sources for the introduction of infection into the body." I think Monsters Inside Me has turned my wife off sushi permanently.

It's not bad enough that eating raw crabs or something can infect you with a parasite that will kill you. It's that the parasite may also make you want to kill yourself. You may have heard that the common cat-related Toxoplasma gondii parasite is linked with depression, but so too is Ascaris lumbricoides, which may be ingested if good hygiene is not observed.

Which got me to think of chef and author Anthony Bourdain, largely remembered for traveling around the world and eating weird foods on shows like No Reservations. Well, now I have reservations -- I wonder if his mental state had been wrecked by some ingested parasite. If the autopsy did not look for it, we'll never know; Bourdain was cremated. 

I'll add a note too to Andrew Zimmern, host of various Bizarre Foods shows: Bring a microscope with you when you dine out. Or Dr. Daniel Riskin.

Old snobs and new.

On the whole, I think I prefer the old-fashioned snobs, the kind one hardly sees anywhere anymore. I think they were a better class than our newfangled snobs. 

Stay back, hoi polloi.

They certainly share things in common, mainly the unbridled joy of being able to look down upon the mass of humanity. And that can be maddening to us in the rank-and-file. And yet the old snobs had it all over the current crop in multiple ways. For example:

1) They were cultured. They supported opera and other classical music, artists whose ardent devotion to their work showed in every stroke of paint, great books of historical importance, and they did it with their own money, not by making the government pay for it. They supported the Western culture that supports everything else. They did not think you could cut the legs under the table of civilization and it would float in air. They preserved Bach and Brahms; they didn't write articles celebrating the social importance of Cardi B.

2) They never tried to pretend to be "commoners." One might point out stories of little jaunts as "normal people" by Victoria and Albert, or rich women posing as shepherdesses, but that's just what those things were -- poses. They didn't try to be "street" when the "street" they came from was a "cul de sac." A snob in those days dressed in ragged clothing was not trying to be an oik any more than a guy dressed up as Green Lantern at ComicCon thinks he can fly. But slovenly hipsters with trust fund money on bikes in Brooklyn think they have cred.

3) They had noblesse oblige. Charity may have been and still be a haphazard thing, but it was considered a social obligation. When a war broke out, rich people were involved, and for real. When a rich person bought his way out, like Teddy Roosevelt's father in the Civil War, it was shameful, whether known publicly or not. They were expected to have skin in the game. Second and third sons were sent off to fight, not "raise awareness" for things. God, I am sick of rich people trying to raise my awareness.

4) They believed in tradition and heritage and God. See #1 above. Were they hypocrites? Sure, many of them, but like François de La Rochefoucauld they believed that hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue, so the social benefits were enforced even if the sinner was lost. Now we have believers in the Year Zero, who think that the world and its people can be remade if everything is co-opted into the great project, everything up to and including faith in God, which tells us that the so-called Liberation Theology is not dead -- worse, it now has precious little theology. As C.S. Lewis famously concluded, "Of all the tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.  It may be better to live under robber barons than under the omnipotent moral busybodies.  The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

5) They tried to help in ways that sometimes helped. See #3 above. Also see the work of William Gladstone, a British PM best remembered here for being skewered constantly by rival Disraeli, but a reformer who for whatever his other faults went out to help get poor women off the streets in genuine acts of charity. He also got rid of peacetime flogging in the navy, so that was nice. Modern snobs are more concerned with making themselves feel good about themselves, and if everything goes to hell, at least they tried. 

6) They were not everywhere you looked. The old snobs kept to themselves. One of the worst things about modern snobs is that you can't get away from them. There are more of them and they are all entitled to wonderful careers. Most have parents to support them in unpaid positions that pad the résumé, and the connections to get the good jobs before the talented climbers can even apply. They may have lots of money from the folks or they may not, but they're always turning up in workplaces, especially in media and government, where they want to make change. The only change these modern snobs should be making is four quarters for a dollar, and why? Because in the old days...

7) They thought they were better for better reasons. Personally, I don't mind being accused of ignorance; everyone is ignorant about some things. And I know I have little appreciation for the most high-minded offerings of culture. But I will not stand to be called evil because I don't subscribe to the modern shibboleths of Critical Social Justice, or that I know recycling is a money-wasting joke, or that I despise abortion and I love my church. Yet our modern snobs must not just look down on me, but call me all kinds of synonyms for evil. 

I'm not saying that it would be better to be poor in, say, Victorian London than in modern Detroit. The fact is that all kinds of advancements have made life better for people of every class in the last 150 years. I am saying that we now have what Glenn Reynolds calls the worst ruling class in the history of this great nation, all of which can be traced back to bad ideas from European Communists. 

Why are the bulk of our Communists people who grew up with money, rather than the unwashed poor? Answer that and it explains everything.

Devaluing books.

I have noticed that on PBS's Antiques Roadshow, two things that people often think will be valuable but aren't are old toys and old books. Even when a toy (in the original box!) is valued well, a revisit to an old episode with updated pricing usually shows a drop. For a book to be valuable it needs to be a first edition, of some historical interest, in perfect condition, with dust jacket (if applicable), and so on and so forth, and maybe it's a couple of hundred dollars.  

My concern isn't for the monetary value of books at the moment, though, but of their value in our culture.

Old Joke: How do you break a nerd's finger? Slam his book on his nose.

Before computers took over the world, books had a place of honor in the culture, a value that is lost now. I don't think those of us old enough to remember the pre-Internet days appreciate that. Before computer storage was common, books were the cheapest means of storing any kind of data. And before photography and phonography, putting things down on paper or the like was the only means of storing data. Printing was the only means of reproducing it for distribution.

For centuries books represented the depository of all human knowledge and wisdom. They commanded a respect that I think young people can only imagine. True, people who lived their lives in books, for research, writing, library science, and whatnot, could be teased as bookish or bookworms, but the respect engendered by books and what they meant usually rendered the teasing light.

All of a sudden, slowly when computer data storage began, then suddenly as the Internet blossomed into businesses and homes, books lost their place as the repository of all human knowledge. It happened so fast that we still haven't recovered from the cultural whiplash. 

In a historical trice, a whole category of books was wiped out. Print encyclopedias, trivia books, the full-length Guinness Book of World Records, sports data books, map books, all sorts of general knowledge books vanished or became shadows of their former selves. The Internet was faster, free, and with the smartphone, could fit in your pocket. Sites were never out of date because they could be updated to the current minute. Even if the information was wrong, it was good enough for most readers. And it's not like the old books were always 100% on the money, either. 

Books still have place in our culture anymore; it's just that their prestige has mostly gone. When everything is data, books are just more files to download. 

I think the main loss at this point is historical. Book lovers for the most part had a good sense of history and the continuity of human nature, because the minds of those in the past were still alive in their books. Today, dusty old books have as much respect from those who grew up the Internet as do dusty old Web sites. The Internet has led them to live in the eternal now. The idea of browsing in a used-book store for old forgotten treasures makes as much sense to them as buying old food. Most of those shops are long gone now, anyway.

No wonder these idiots rampage in the streets. Why would they have respect for our culture, our history? Nothing matters or even exists but this current second.

As always, I thank the fine folks at Gutenberg, such as our friend Mongo, for helping to keep the fires of civilization lit. How long we can hope to do that, who knows? The Internet is a wonderful genie, but once it's free from the bottle, you can't control what it does.

Fred's Book Club: Hell on Earth.

Hello, book fans, and welcome to today's amazing entry in our Wednesday Humpback Writers feature, the feature named for Hump Day, not for the writers, some of whom may have humps of one sort or another, but I've never asked. You have to draw the line somewhere.

Today we have a classic of journalism by a writer who was not afraid to get down in the mud (sometimes literally) to dig for information, who has probably had more guns pointed his way than the average mid-level drug dealer, and yet has retained his sense of humor through it all.

Holidays in Hell, originally published in 1988, is a collection of pieces by P.J. O'Rourke, the one-time National Lampoon writer whose career has been headlines by two constants:

1) Go to places in the world that completely suck, or don't suck, and find out why they are the way they are; and

2) Make fun of them.

This book, which is a pretty good snapshot of the state of the world in the eighties, features essays of his visits to horrible places like Lebanon, El Salvador, South Africa, the Gaza Strip, and Epcot. He would go to these places so we wouldn't have to, and God bless him for it.

O'Rourke is a keen observer with a great eye for detail and a sharp wit, some of which would ensure no large modern New York publisher would go near him these days. Here's P.J. on ...

LEBANON 

Miss Phillips was gone for two hours. She emerged from the donnybrook perfectly composed and holding three bus tickets. I asked her what all the shooting was about. "Oh," she said, "that's just Lebanese for 'please queue up.'" An ancient horrible Mexican-looking bus pulled into the crowd smacking people and punting them aside. Amal was carrying a co-ed's full complement of baggage in two immense suitcases. I handed my kit bag to Miss Phillips, grabbed these and made for the bus. Or tried to. Three steps put me at the bottom of a clawing, screeching pile-up, a pyramid of human frenzy. I heard Miss Phillips's voice behind me. "Don't be shy," she said, "it's not rude to give a wee shove to the Lebanese." I took a breath, tightened my grip on the suitcases and began lashing with Samsonite bludgeons at the crowd of women, old men, and children. If you ask me, it was pretty rude, but it was either that or winter in South Lebanon. 

POLAND 

"Let's start with nightclubs," I said as soon as the cop had given up on us. Zofia raised an eyebrow.     "There's one called Kamienolomy, 'The Quarry,'" said Tom. The decor was budget Mafia. Because of the name, I guess, the walls were covered with Permastone house siding. There were little strips of disco lights around the dance floor, but they just flashed off and on; they didn't move around the room or change colors or anything.        A bored combo -- one singer, one guitar player and a guy on the electric organ doing the rhythm, bass and drum -- played a Ramada Inn lounge arrangement of "I Got You, Babe," lyrics in memorized English:            Ugh gut you to told me height            Bucket jute tuchus god night

THIRD-WORLD DRIVING 

Traffic Signs and Signals: Most developing nations use international traffic symbols. Americans may find themselves perplexed by road signs that look like Boy Scout merit badges and by such things as an iguana silhouette with a red diagonal bar across it. Don't worry, the natives don't know what they mean, either. 

EPCOT 

At Epcot Center, the Disney corporation has focused its attention on two things greatly in need of Disneyfication: the tedious future and the annoying whole wide world. 

The book is also educational. I would never have heard this theory of colonialism otherwise:

The historian C. H. Haring points out that there are two kinds of colonies. Farm colonies are refuges where Pilgrims, Quakers and other fruitcakes can go chop down trees and stay out of everybody's hair. But exploitation colonies are places for wastrel younger sons and sleazed-out noblemen to get rich on gold and slave-labor plantations. Farm colonists are interested in forming their own permanent institutions. Exploitation colonists are interested in getting home and spending their money. For this reason New England, Canada, Costa Rica and parts of Argentina are reasonably nice places, while Mississippi, Jamaica, Mexico and most other sections of the hemisphere are shit holes.    

Holidays in Hell was not the first book of O'Rourke's I read. Parliament of Whores, his 1991 deep dive into American politics, was an eye-opener for a lot of people and an introduction to economics too -- and funny as hell. It stated the reasons why America has been so successful -- rule of law, respect for institutions and vice-versa, freedom of enterprise, etc. -- and how fragile these things can be, as we are seeing now.

But O'Rourke lost Libertarian street cred in 2016 with his semi-endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president -- the woman of whom he once said "Every man looks at her and sees his first wife," part of the couple he called "blathering highbinders." I'm not sure if he considers himself a Never Trumper, but he's at the very least a Trump Despiser. With the backs of the conservatives against the wall as never before, this kind of attitude is hard to swallow to his longtime fans.

Be that as it is, although he's getting up there now (72 now and probably not going to any real hellholes these days), O'Rourke is one of the sharpest writers of his generation, merciless on the foibles and failings of his generation, and a real talent. If you hate his politics (or you support Mississippi), you'll still love The Bachelor Home Companion: A Practical Guide to Keeping House Like a Pig, which I also recommend without reservation.

Mask on, mask off.

On Saturday I had to pick up a medicine for large economy size dog Tralfaz. The vet's office is closed to hoomans (as the dogs supposedly say) but you can drop off dogs for exams and things. If you're picking up meds or special foods, you can use the courtesy walk-up window. You call to say you're there, give them a credit card number, and they slide the receipt and package to you along the table.

Of course I put the ol' mask on to pick up my package. I don't think it matters much at this point, even in southern New York, but I am willing to do it as a courtesy. Of course, Governor Corleone insists on it. The day before I was on the highway and these signs appeared every fifteen miles or so:

Hey, if I had his face I'd cover it all the time. And look, I could even get official MLB face coverings with the logos of my favorite team! Which is kind of weird, since there's no baseball because of this damn Chinese death virus.

However, Saturday was a lovely day, and when I passed by the park I noticed it was crowded with people walking the trails. And guess what? The majority were not complying with the state edict. Maybe a quarter or an eighth had masks over their noses and mouths. Some had them askew somewhere on their heads, but most wore nothing over their faces. As Instapundit noted, most people started staying home before the government told them to, and now most of them are breaking out before the government tells them to. It's not an angry protest; quarantine fatigue is a real thing. Americans are good and caring people on the whole, but our institutions are throwing away our trust in them at a fast pace these days. With each day the "stay-at-home" orders get harder to obey, financially, psychologically, socially.

It certainly doesn't help me when I see propaganda based on old Soviet artwork, either. Have you encountered this thing? Drippy girl with torch in peasant hat? I have never seen a poster more calculated to elicit the romance of Soviet butchery. Who the hell thought this was a good idea?

I want to grab her little torch and stomp it out, rip off her phony wings, Frisbee her peasant hat, and send her home crying with her juice box. Of all the annoying commercials with sad piano music, the messages that people who don't give a damn about me are here for me, the moronic celebrity videos filmed in the part of the house where the help lives (so as to not be too showy) to say we're all in this together, of all these things, none of them makes me want to go running through the streets unmasked, ungloved, coughing and sneezing and spitting everywhere, more than this stupid, creepy poster. Nice job, Ad Council, you pinko wankers.

When, where, and how will this all end I do not know. I'm usually happy to do as requested; I continue to put out my bottles and paper on recycling day even though I am 90% sure it all goes to the landfill. But I'm not doing this shelter-in-place crap into July.

Whitelegs McGee.

Sorry to have to keep this short, but there's a couple of reasons. Mainly, yesterday was a combo of big deadline and technical difficulties, but in the end everything worked out okay. Still, it kept me from thinking of more important things, like my blog.

Also, I was obliged to be outside -- by my wife and the dogs. Less than a week after it snowed, we had 82 degrees Fahrenheit. It was so nice, I actually put on shorts.

Me. Shorts. That may not seem momentous, but only me wearing mandals would be as shocking.

I have never liked shorts. Not sure why. Mosquitoes love me, and sun burns me, and my knees were always getting skinned as a kid, so long pants offered more protection. Also, I always need pockets, and shorts used to only have either no pockets, lame pockets, or goofy old-man pockets, at least before cargo shorts became big.

Anyway, I am known to wear long pants all summer long. Consequently, my legs are so ridiculously white only the American Academy of Dermatology would say they looked healthy. As in this picture:

You think I exaggerate? Well according to StyleCraze, "During the Elizabethan age a pale complexion was considered as a sign of good health and prestige. Poor people could not achieve such complexion due to the burden of going out and working hard for their living, resulting in a tan. Wealthy women to gain such a complexion used several different things; the commonest way was to use Ceruse, a foundation made from mixing the poisonous white lead and vinegar. Many people preferred to apply tin ash, sulphur, alum, etc."

Those Elizabethan ladies would have said my legs were too white. "My goodness, get some sun, old chap."

Japanese women famously use methods to try to whiten their skin, and they'd say my fish-belly legs are too white.

The rest of me gets enough sun to pink up a little, but not my legs. I told my wife that the police made me come back inside because the glare from my legs was blinding drivers. 

In fact, I wrote this haiku in honor of the Japanese skin-whitening ladies:

My legs are so white 
The kids down the street thought it
Was snowing again

The shorts are in the washing machine as I write this, making the roads safe once more. 

Loving dogs.

It may be safe to say that Americans who have dogs are divided into people who love their dogs too much and people who treat their dogs like garbage. There seems to be precious little middle ground, at least at the cultural level. I don't even want to talk about places where they treat them like dinner.

My wife and I are, of course, squarely in the "love too much" camp. I had to sleep on the sofa the other night when Tralfaz was having one of his freak-outs because it was so windy. I would have laughed at people like me before we got this dog. Ha, ha. Then he made me fall in love with him, damn it.

My wife's no better. She doesn't go around calling herself a pet mom or a furbaby mother, but I think she thinks that way sometimes.

Other people never take their dogs to vets, leave them chained up, or in hot cars, let them run around near busy streets, ignore them, starve them, use them for convenience, make them fight. There's nothing wrong with having working dogs; that's what most of them love best, is to have a job. But they ought to be treated well. Police dogs are treated like partners; Army dogs are non-commissioned officers who outrank their handlers. Junkyard dogs famously rank with the junk they protect.

Then there are people like this:

In The Hounds of Heaven, Stephen Bodio describes his quest to Kazakhstan to procure "the ancient saluki-like tazis of Central Asia." These are no ordinary dogs, as he reminds constantly in the book, but essentially the Mongol warriors of dogs -- sleek, mighty, tireless, proud, ferocious, fearless, intimidating, blah blah blah. I don't want to poke Bodio too hard on this, as he will send his vicious beasts after me, but it's clear that he regards all normal pet dogs, which is virtually every non-tazi dog on earth, as a pansy little hairball. If a dog can't run 500 miles and then take down a caribou solo, it's just a useless toy.

Well, I don't know. Maybe if I lived in Nowheresville, Non-County, New Mexico, as he does, I'd find a use for wild canines. Here in civilization we like our dogs to be useful, but affectionate; spirited, but trainable.

I've always said that people are weirdest about money and sex, but if there's a next tier down I might add pets. Well, pets and food (what with vegans, pescatarians, fruitarians...). Pets, food, and politics. And religion. Ah, the hell with it -- people are weird. If our dogs are weird, it's because they've been hanging around with us too much.

Dogs have a strange history with us, of course. They don't do well in Middle Eastern cultures, currently or historically or biblically. And then there's the man-bites-dog cultures of whom it is racist to speak. Still, I think Frederick the Great was right in calling dogs Man's Best Friend. We eat a lot of the same things and enjoy a lot of the same activities together, from hunting to playing ball to loafing on the couch. How many other animals would even want to apply for the job?

Fred's Book Club: I Think I Can!

Welcome to another Wednesday, and thus another episode of the Humpback Writers, so named for the day of the week and not any humps whatever. Let's kick things off with a song:

Now, Fred's an intellectual, brings a book to every meal
He likes the deep philosophers, like Norman Vincent Peale
He thinks the army's just the thing
Because he finds it broadening
It makes a fellow proud to be a soldier!

Of course Tom Lehrer was not referring to me as the Fred in his song "It Makes a Fellow Proud to Be a Soldier," but he does make a reference to one of the most popular writers of his time, Norman Vincent Peale, who wrote this little tome:

"This book is written to suggest techniques and to give examples which demonstrate that you do not need to be defeated by anything, that you can have peace of mind, improved health, and a never-ceasing flow of energy" writes Dr. Peale in the introduction. "In short, your life can be full of joy and satisfaction. Of this I have no doubt at all for I have watched countless persons learn and apply a system of simple procedures that has brought about the foregoing benefits in their lives."

Sounds like a massive promise, doesn't it? And indeed The Power of Positive Thinking had and continues to have a massive impact on modern culture in a number of ways I know. It was published in 1952, when America was in a new war having just gotten through the big one, and the world had been exposed to the staggering effects of evil ambition; yet this little seeming Pollyana of a book struck a chord with millions that reverberates to this day. It spoke to the aspirational soul of America, but its appeal reached beyond our national borders. The idea that one could change one's circumstances by changing one's mental condition was not new (Émile Coué had led the pack on that) but Peale tied it to our characteristic evangelism and made it much more than Emersonian self-reliance.

The book is mostly made up of anecdotes of biblical-based optimism and fervent, steady prayer leading to amazing results. This was not the way most of our European ancestors saw prayer -- beseeching a distant and dangerous God. This was a scripture-based plan to attune one's self to a loving and helping God; what could be more positive than that? Take the obstacle man:

He then reached into his pocket and took out his wallet. Under the isinglass window was a card on which were written some words. He shoved the wallet across the table and said, "There, son, read that. That is my formula, and don't give me the song and dance that it won't work either. I know better from experience."
     The obstacle man picked up the wallet and with a strange look on his face read the words to himself.
      "Read them out loud," urged the owner of the wallet.
     This is what he read in a slow, dubious voice, "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." (Philippians 4:13)
     The owner of the wallet put it back in his pocket and said, "I have lived a long time and have faced a lot of difficulties in my time, but there is power in those words -- actual power -- and with them you can remove any obstacle."

The rest of it is basic, practical, easy-to-understand instructions, as in this list at the end of the chapter "Try Prayer Power":

1. Set aside a few minutes every day. Do not say anything. Simply practice thinking about God. This will make your mind spiritually receptive.
2. Then pray orally, using simple, natural words. Tell God anything that is on your mind. Do not think you must use stereotyped pious phrases. Talk to God in your own language. He understands it.
3. Pray as you go about the business of the day, on the subway or bus or at your desk. Utilize minute prayers by closing your eyes to shut out the world and concentrating briefly on God's presence. The more you do this every day the nearer you will feel God's presence.

And so on, ten tips in all, gently leading the reader to a better prayer life.

You may wonder how a dazzling sophisticate like myself came to read a book with such homespun cheerfulness. Well, it was a particularly dark spot in my young manhood. I'd been dumped by four girlfriends in a row; I had a crap nowheresville job taken from hunger after a long layoff; my dad was very sick; everything looked bleak. I'd certainly heard of the book; everyone had for fifty years after its introduction. The chapter titles really appealed to me -- "I Don't Believe in Defeat" (I did); "How to Break the Worry Habit" (I had it); "The Power to Solve Personal Problems" (I had those in spades). When I found out I was working near the church where Peale had been senior minister for 52 years (the lovely Marble Collegiate Church on Fifth Avenue at 29th), it seemed like fate. Even the story of how Peale got that position seemed to back up his thesis -- one day in 1932 he had to fill in for another preacher unexpectedly, and he held the job until 1984. He lived to a ripe old age of 95. (Incidentally, Donald Trump attended Marble Collegiate growing up, and married Ivana there, for what that's worth.)

Peale's great message was turning prayer into a hard tool people could use to transform their lives. Although explicitly Christian, this had some similarity to  Pragmatism, the "whatever works" religious school of William James and Charles Peirce. Alcoholics Anonymous had adopted it as a means of using a spiritual basis for recovery in the 1930s. Whether Peale knew anything about this or not, there was a practicality for people in distress that he shared with average readers to improve their lot.

I had some stumbling blocks when I read the book, and I still do, and they're not all the same. Take for example his story of the salesman;

"I'm a traveling salesman," he explained, "and I drive around all day calling on my customers, I have discovered that while a man drives he thinks all kinds of thoughts. If his pattern of thought is negative, he will think many negative thoughts during the day and that, of course, is bad for him; but that is the way I used to be. I used to drive around between calls thinking fear and defeat thoughts, and incidentally that is one reason my sales were down. But since I have been using these cards [scriptural cards with Matthew 17:20 and Romans 8:31] as I drive and committing the words to memory, I have learned to think differently. The old insecurities that used to haunt me are just about all gone, and instead of thinking fear thoughts of defeat and ineffectiveness, I think thoughts of faith and courage. It is really wonderful the way this method has changed me. It has helped my business, too, for how can one expect to make a sale if he drives up to a customer's place of business thinking he is not going to make a sale?" 

It's hard to argue with that. But what if this man was a salesman for a company that made cheap crap that broke after the first use? Or useless snake oil? Or Chinese medical supplies? Ought he to expect divine help for selling this garbage, no matter how virtuous he may be?

Also, I have to think that Peale's legacy includes the so-called Prosperity Gospel movement, which seems to me like a complete reversal of the actual Gospels' love and humility, even a shameful and childish worship of wealth disguised as altruism. What happens when followers fail to achieve prosperity, as some must? Goodness knows there are plenty of people around who are deluded about their own talents. Will they blame God, become atheists, fall into despair? Does belief that God will help you become healthy and rich if you pray enough set believers up for a catastrophic failure of faith? I suspect so.

As I've noted elsewhere, "when bad things happen to good people" is not just a ponderous question in life; for Catholics, it's kind of our mission statement. But Peale never meant that Divine Worship was a money machine that would drop sacks of cash into the laps of believers. He simply meant that people who expect to fail will, and these people can be helped by a higher power that can change their attitudes. He made a brilliant career of it and probably helped a lot of people.

Maybe I'm still just too pessimistic. I will say that the book was only of limited help when I read it first, mainly because I had no faith in anything. It was like trying to build a table without tools. My life did get better, as it often does, and at least reading this gave me some hope for that dark period.

You know, I wanted to run this book today because I thought it would help us get cheered up in a time of trouble. Actually, I think I feel a little better now.

For a breath of fresh air.

IN THE LATE AFTERNOON OF April 22, 1915, members of a special unit of the German Army opened the valves on more than 6000 steel cylinders arrayed in trenches along their defensive perimeter at Ypres, Belgium. Within 10 minutes, 160 tons of chlorine gas drifted over the opposing French trenches, engulfing all those downwind. Filled with pressurized liquid chlorine, the cylinders had been clandestinely installed by the Germans more than 3 weeks earlier. The order to release the gas was entrusted to German military meteorologists, who had carefully studied the area’s prevailing wind patterns. Disregarding intelligence reports about the strange cylinders prior to the attack, the French troops were totally unprepared for this new and horrifying weapon.

So writes Dr. Gerald J. Fitzgerald in "Chemical Warfare and Medical Response During World War I" (American Journal of Public Health, April 2008). This was the first known use of a chemical weapon, and it blasted through the French lines with terrible effect. But, as typical for World War I, the Germans were not prepared to follow this advantage, so everyone wound up back in the same positions within days. Not that such weapons were not effective. "By the time of the armistice on November 11, 1918, the use of chemical weapons such as chlorine, phosgene, and mustard gas had resulted in more than 1.3 million casualties and approximately 90,000 deaths," writes Fitzgerald.

All this going around and wearing masks to fight the Chinese Death Virus has made me think a bit about mask-wearing in the twentieth century. They say gas masks used in the Great War killed the beard for men for fifty years. Blake Stilwell in We Are the Mighty writes, "Just twenty years prior, beards were a common sight in the Spanish-American War. Troops and their officers thought nothing of a well-grown face of whiskers.... When the Germans started using poison gas on World War I battlefields, the Army started issuing gas masks — and these new safety razors. Suddenly, shaving was a requirement as well as a lifesaving tactic. In order for these early gas masks to fit properly, the men needed to be clean-shaven."

"May I borrow your safety razor, old chap?"

One of the things my high school class had been taught by a history teacher was that troops had been told to use damp cloths over their faces to protect themselves from mustard gas, but that tactic actually made mustard gas more effective. This was greeted with a typical Har har stoopid past people fighting wars so stoopid from the class, which seemed to be the attitude of the teacher. However, I am unable to find any evidence now to back up that assertion. I did find that in the early days of chemical warfare, according to The Canadian Encyclopedia, a damp cloth did offer protection against chlorine gas: "Some of the Canadian soldiers who had been trained in chemistry had recognized chlorine gas from two days earlier and had instructed men to wet cloths with water or urine to offer minimal protection."

I guess instead of N95 masks they had P95 masks (yukk yukk). It would seem to make sense to use a dampened cloth, as water droplets would close more gaps in the fabric, but I have found little on this either way. If any of you out there in Blogland know anything about it, I'd love to hear it.

This leads me to today's thoughts:

1) I'm glad we are currently battling a virus and not huge rolling clouds of chlorine gas.

2) It's unlikely that the Chinese Death Virus will cause a change in men's facial hair.

3) World War I was hell.

4) People I see around who don't know how to wear masks and always leave the nose exposed would not have lasted long in the trenches.

5) No matter how bad things may be from COVID-19, we are not losing 1,300 men every single day, as was the average daily death toll for the entire length of that war.

Maybe it's not a cheerful Friday thought to know that things could be worse -- but hey, they could be.

Tequila hombre Fred.

So today is Cinco de Mayo, the celebration of the anniversary of Mexico's victory over France in 1862. I think that's not a bad cause for celebration. After all, France helped us in the Revolution but has been a pain in our boutoques ever since. 

As John J. Miller and Mark Molesky pointed out in their book, Our Oldest Enemy: A History of America's Disastrous Relationship with France, the French were among our enemies even in World War II. "By rejecting the advice of Woodrow Wilson and insisting on crippling and humiliating reparations, France fatally undermined the fledgling German democracy and planted many of the seeds of the Second World War -- a conflict for which the French required another American rescue. Before that liberation could occur, however, American troops landing in North Africa in 1942 encountered stiff resistance from the soldiers of Vichy France. The GIs literally had to fight their way through the French to get to the Nazis."

So yay, Mexico.

My bandoliers are on back order.

When St. Patrick's Day falls, Americans think of Ireland, Irish food, and alcohol, and not in that order. When Cinco de Mayo comes around, we think about Mexico, Mexican food, and alcohol, and definitely not in that order. It's the American way. We haven't started getting drunk over Latvian Independence Day yet (November 18), but give it time.

Well, we can't get blasted on Corona this year, I guess, since the Chinese corona death virus has caused the parent company to suspend Corona brewing for now. There's always Dos Equis, Tecate, and others, and does it really matter? Tacos go down with everything.

Of course, you can cut to the chase and drink tequila. And since we're all quarantined, you can guzzle it from the bottle in your own home. Olé! If anyone gets mad because of your poor behavior, point out loudly that A) You're home, sho yer not drinkin an drivin, and B) Your only crime ish cultural appropriation, sho go to the college and get a divershity cop, Karen, and 3) Shuddup already.

Like many of us, I first encountered tequila with the lime and salt paraphernalia because someone I was drinking with decided it was time we got manly and took the express train to Hammerville. And it worked! Several shots and more beer later, I had not only arrived, I had shot past the station into Woozytown and was deposited at last in Bedspin City. "Teh Kill Ya" had a reputation for being the one drink to have when you wanted to nuke the evening, but it really was unfair. We just never did shots of gin or vodka or whiskey at the bar, any one of which would have been as deadly.

Years later I was on a press trip, a freebie granted by work in exchange for writing a 1,000-word travel article. The magazine would get invites for these all the time, and the chief would reward someone who did good work with a chance for a free-ish vacation for one. I was the lucky choice. A bunch of reporters, some of us drinking like idiots, were catered to for several days by the local travel industry. I remember one night we were treated to a dinner cruise on a local river, and on a whim I ordered a tequila on the rocks. The interns working for the travel hosts were muy impressed that someone would sip tequila; they'd only ever seen people horking it down to get their drink on fast. I'd never seen anyone drink tequila on the rocks either, actually. And it made a nice drink. But it's the only time I ever drank it that way.

So that's my story of tequila, into which you can fold any mezcal references you want because they are included as they all tasted the same to me. I never ate the worm. I've been told the worm's hallucinogenic property was kind of a myth anyway, but your experience may have been different.

Fred's Book Club: Courage in Reporting.

Welcome, friends, to another edition of our Wednesday book group, the Humpback Writers, not named for humps but for Wednesdays. It's a dumb joke but we're sticking with it.

This week's book is by one of the few really sharp and honest reporters of whom I know, someone who does not toot the courage horn by sitting in a studio defended by the resources of a network, but demonstrates it by going out in the world to find things called facts and write stories based on them. I mean City Journal's own Heather Mac Donald, and her book, The Burden of Bad Ideas: How Modern Intellectuals Misshape Our Society.

I feel you can make a distinction between two types of reporters who look at societal problems: the first, your average J-school grad, says Look at this problem! Do something! The other, much more rare, says Why is this a problem, one that has proved so hard to solve? Mac Donald is squarely in the second camp, and this book is a great collection of her pieces on these problems.

"The reality I have observed again and again in welfare offices and urban classrooms across New York and elsewhere is so dissimilar from that presented in the mainstream media that I sometimes wonder whether their reporters and I occupy the same universe," she writes in the introduction. "Maybe this is a matter of my background. I came to writing about urban problems and social policy as an innocent, without a preconceived theory about the neighborhoods that have dominated domestic policy debate for almost half a century now."

This book was published in 2000, but hardly anything has changed in the last twenty years, and where things had changed for the better, as in New York, they are rapidly changing back for the worse.

What Mac Donald learned in her work is shown in this book, with chapters like "The Billions of Dollars That Made Things Worse," "Why Johnny's Teachers Can't Teach," "Public Health Quackery," and "Revisionist Lust: The Smithsonian Today."

One of the most powerful chapters to me was "Homeless Advocates in Outer Space," which described a 1990s program by the Business Improvement District of Times Square to do exactly what advocates for the homeless seem to think has never been tried -- provide a no-strings-attached outreach to feed and clean and house the homeless, then offer every kind of help to get them on their feet provided they refrain from drug and alcohol use for a period of time. "One year and $700,000 later, only two people had accepted housing," Mac Donald reports. And this is only one of the programs described, a hint of the millions spent that helped hardly anyone. She concludes, "A sane homeless policy would acknowledge two basic realities. First, many people on the streets need treatment, not housing. For the sickest, legislators need to change rules against involuntary confinement, and states need to recommission mental hospitals emptied by deinstitutionalization. Second, for the rest of the homeless the best medicine is the expectation of responsible behavior -- the expectation of work and civil and lawful conduct in public spaces."

When The Burden of Bad Ideas was published, the New York Times Book Review said "this book has the freshness of a stiff, changing breeze." With the rush among governors and mayors to empty prisons and allow tremendous homeless encampments, and ding-dongs like Mike Bloomberg disowning all the policies that made his political leadership successful, I think it's safe to say that Mac Donald's essays, backed by interviews, observation, and deep research, have been completely ignored by those empowered to make better public policy. In fact, just last year she had a look at San Francisco's intractable homeless situation and found a situation even uglier than described in Burden. I doubt her work finds a welcome in the New York Times Book Review today.

I would advise anyone interested in the problems of urban decay to read The Burden of Bad Ideas. Urban problems have been given the breath of new life since the book was published. The causes have not changed, but now the idiocy that led to bad public policy has seeped into an urban population incapable of seeing how its participation in bad ideas leads to its own misery. This book ought to be required reading for every political science major in the country.

Instead, of course, Mac Donald gets silenced on campuses by the usual idiots who can't bear to hear anything resembling the truth.

Suffering for art.

When I was a young man, with that fresh-out-of-college smell still on me, I was on a self-improvement kick. Having neglected everything in pursuit of my degree, and in pursuit of having fun as I pursued my degree, I tried to make my mind more well-rounded and my body less so. I took up running. I started reading great books without a professor forcing me to. I studied philosophy and economics and history. And one year, when the office tossed us out at noon on Good Friday, I went to a Good Friday service at a church where the choir was performing the Johann Sebastian Bach St. Matthew Passion.

I wanted to cultivate some knowledge of religion, but also knowledge of classical music, which like most American kids my age had been largely restricted to aborted piano lessons, school choral groups, and of course Looney Tunes. But because of this minimal exposure, and the fact that I thought I liked things I'd heard from Vivaldi and the rest of that crowd, I wanted to immerse myself in Bach's musical masterpiece.

I learned a few things that day.

1) Good Friday services with the complete Bach Passion run for three hours.

2) Three hours can feel like 300 hours.

3) It is apparently important to suffer right along with Jesus.

4) Despite having studies the origins of words, I don't know a single word of Latin when sung.

5) I am an unreconstructed ignoramus slug of a barbaric bozo upon whom the world's greatest music is completely wasted.

No thanks, Mr. Bach.

Every time I look back on that day, I think of Sinclair Lewis's novel Arrowsmith. The hero, Martin Arrowsmith, a young man with a powerful bent for science, is taken by fellow student Angus Duer to a classical music concert.

At supper Duer said abruptly, "Come into town with me and hear a concert."
      For all his fancied superiority to the class, Martin was illimitably ignorant of literature, of painting, of music. That the bloodless and acquisitive Angus Duer should waste time listening to fiddlers was astounding to him.  He discovered that Duer had enthusiasm for two composers, called Bach and Beethoven, presumably Germans, and that he himself did not yet comprehend all the ways of the world. On the interurban, Duer's gravity loosened, and he cried, "Boy, if I hadn't been born to carve up innards, I'd have been a great musician! Tonight I'm going to lead you right into Heaven!"
      Martin found himself in a confusion of little chairs and vast gilded arches, of polite but disapproving ladies with programs in their laps, unromantic musicians making unpleasant noises below and, at last, incomprehensible beauty, which made for him pictures of hills and deep forests, then suddenly became achingly long-winded. He exulted, "I'm going to have 'em all--the fame of Max Gottlieb--I mean his ability--and the lovely music and lovely women--  Golly!  I'm going to do big things. And see the world. . . .  Will this piece never quit?"

Unlike Martin, I was not particularly good at science, and I think I missed any of the incomprehensible beauty bits. It made me wonder what I had been doing my whole life to that point.

And I have avoided Bach ever since.

That's pretty much all I remember about it except for one thing, which is also 100% true. It had been a very wet, miserable April day, and the rain was lashing the church pretty well throughout the interminable service. Then, at three o'clock, just as everything was finished, through a narrow window behind the altar, I could see a sharp, piercing beam of the sun breaking through.

Town and country.

Had a strange dog-related experience with someone in the neighborhood the other day.

There's a new lady in the area; she has a couple of young children and a tiny little dog. (No, she doesn't live in the Witness Security Program/FBI Safe House; I don't know where she lives but it's not there.)

I tried to keep away from her, I ought to let you know that. She was coming down the block with little dog but no little kids, and I was in the front yard with Senior Varsity Dog Tralfaz. Tralfaz is an enormous hairy beast, although the friendliest pup you know, and he sometimes scares children and other dogs with his enthusiastic greeting. That being: A few really loud barks, then he barrels at them like a locomotive. Who would be alarmed by that?

Typical action scene 

Anyone would be alarmed by that, I know, so I dragged and cajoled him against his will into the backyard until the lady went by. Well, he immediately pulled me to the farther end of the house to watch when she came out the other side, but he was quiet about it. Once she had gone, I took him back to the front to resume what we were aiming to do out there in the first place -- walking up the street, in the same direction from which she had come.

What I didn't realize was that as soon as she got to the end of the block, she and her dog turned around and started back up in our wake.

So now we had the world's slowest chase: me trying to keep my crazy bear from realizing the little dog was behind us, Tralfaz dawdling to sniff every molecule that the little dog had left behind, her and her dog strolling along, and me also trying to glance back to see if they were gaining on us (they were).

When the inevitable happened and we met, our greeting was quite friendly. Tralfaz immediately went nose-to-nose with the little dog, and at first all was fine; then the little dog did an aggressive growl and the lady had to pull him back. Which was no problem, as she is quite tall and presumably strong and her dog weighs maybe ten or fifteen pounds, maybe a tenth of Tralfaz's fighting weight.

We chatted a bit, complimenting each other's canine chums; she asking about dog groomers. I found out that she and the family just moved up to the Hudson Valley from the city and are just finding their way around. And then she said something that surprised me: that she'd cleaned up after her dog and didn't know what to do with it so she left it on the fire hydrant.

That sentence didn't compute for me, so I just let it fly by as we went on to the next topic. Soon we parted, and I took Mr. Friendly back down the hill.

Sure enough, hanging from the fire hydrant closest to my house was a plastic pet waste bag.

I realized suddenly that she really is from the city originally, and probably a neighborhood where there are municipal trash cans on every corner. Clean up after your pup there, drop it in with the Styrofoam coffee cups and chip bags and soda bottles in the corner can, and be on your way. This is something she didn't know about suburban life, that while we may have sidewalks in our neighborhoods, we don't have public trash cans.

We have to take care of our own trash. I use an outdoor bin in the backyard. Another family I know leaves the waste bags hidden behind the bushes until trash day. Another family keeps the garbage can outside all the time for that purpose.

Not to belabor a distasteful topic, but I had to think about how to deal with it. Of course if I speak with her again I'll suggest she follow my lead on this. Meanwhile, there was a dog waste bag hanging on a fire hydrant in front of the house of my despised neighbor, the dog hater, the one who I have mentioned will probably be led out of his house by the feds one day.

I told my wife about this situation. She thought that it was hilarious, but I knew we'd get blamed for this. And really, I don't want any confrontations with the unpleasant occupant next door. I don't want any contact with him at all.

So, while walking Nipper later, under cover of darkness, I took the bag off the fire hydrant and put it in my holding pen. The lady will probably think the garbage men picked it up, that it's part of whatt they do -- so if I'm not astute, the fire hydrant could turn into a veritable Christmas tree of dog poop.

The moral of the story is, I guess, comes from the old Town Mouse and Country Mouse tale by Aesop, or maybe the Town Mouse, Country Mouse, and Suburb Mouse by Roz Chast. Or something. The point is, moving from one kind of place to another is a culture shock. First thing to do is find out how to get rid of your garbage. It's not the same everywhere.