Bill Maher is having the best year of monologues of his career.
“Democracy dies in dumbness.”
— Bobby Burack (@burackbobby_) June 18, 2022
Language advisory as to the above video. Cancel culture empowers the worst among us, and is incredibly destructive. Institutions like The Washington Post were all in favor of it, until, inevitably, it came against them. Empower heresy hunters and they will inevitably turn upon you.
In some abstract, irrelevant way, she’s an intelligent person.
Three generations ago, you had a body of handsome magazine literature for general audiences (recall the old Saturday Review) for which the talents of someone with an Ivy League or Seven Sisters education might be a satisfactory fit. Nowadays, you have local media, who still engage in something resembling reporting and who do not require tony tertiary schooling; and you have national media, who do not require it either and who are staffed with ‘garbage people paid to lie for the Democratic Party’ in the words of Glenn Reynolds. Going into journalism was a waste of her grey cells.
She’s never married, she has no children, and, at age 40, no prospect of any. One of the people whose career this woman wrecked gave an account of their dealings with each other as a post mortem which made them both look like vulgar clowns. He was 30, she was 35, neither one was married or had children, and they’re carrying on like the lesser sort of college student. Our media hire people who are most adept at arrested development.
At this point in her life, she has nothing. As for whether she’ll reflect on her situation in a salutary manner, don’t hold your breath.
In other matters, Mark Shields has died. Mark Shields has been the odd Democrat in recent decades who saw the Democratic Party as a contestant in a competitive and deliberative political order, as opposed to being the natural party of government harassed by unworthy people. The people whose attitudes made constitutional government sustainable are dying off and being replaced with younger cohorts who seem increasingly disoriented and loosely wired.
Enjoyed watching him on the Capital Gang for years. Appreciated his sense of humor.
Never saw an episode of Capital Gang, only saw him on McNeill / Lehrer. I tended to prefer him to him to his interlocutor as they paired him off with David Gergen and then David Brooks, one of whom is vapid and the other of whom is a shill.