Schadenfreude Saturday

 I love reading about the inconveniences of the leisure classes and today's Washington Post has a keeper:  the 2,090 passengers on the Norwegian Escape, which was damaged when it ran aground off Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic.  Over three days, Norwegian Cruise Lines shuttled them to Orlando on chartered planes.  Then they were on their own.  It was not the week of overeating and Branson-style entertainment they anticipated.  The lawsuits will doubtless go on for years.

Am I a scholar or a snob?  In The Baffler Jessa Crispin reveals something I didn't even know, that while running for president in 2020 Pete Buttigieg told people his favorite book was Ulysses.  That was nervy.  According to Crispin this was interpreted as "I went to Harvard" and drove away voters.  "The idea that anyone other than scholars or snobs might take pleasure in the famously 'difficult' prose of Ulysses was declared absurd."  This fed into arguments about "whether difficult books are ableist" and "the whiteness of the canon."  If by ableist you mean "require a large vocabulary and the ability to recognize allusions to Homer, Shakespeare, et al.," sure.  (Joyce's sight was failing by the time he finished it -- does that get him excused from ableism or whatever it is?)  As for the tired old argument about Dead White Males hogging all the shelf space, I had hoped it died with Harold Bloom.  But I'm no scholar so I guess...snob it is.  If Mayor Pete runs again he should mention Ta-Nehisi Coates.  Then he can be accused of cultural appropriation.

Or it's just possible voters don't give a damn if you read Ian Fleming (John F. Kennedy) or The Pet Goat (George W. Bush).  Just don't tell people your favorite poem is The Waste Land.

When Putin complained of the West wanting to "cancel" Russian culture, he seemed to be angry at people inside Russia adopting Western attitudes toward things like free speech, democracy, and not bombing maternity hospitals out of spite.  He doesn't seem interested in the great things Russia has shared with the world.  But much as I hate the dog-whistle word, "cancel" is just what's going on.  Gary Saul Morson writes in First Things of some of the craven acts I've already noted, like changing orchestral programs and boycotting Russian stores.  It gets worse:  the mayor of Amsterdam had to ask people to stop vandalizing Orthodox churches and verbally abusing Russians.  "We have a problem with Putin and the Russian state, not with the Russian population or the Russian inhabitants of Amsterdam..."  Morson goes on to say that presenters are cancelling Russian performers "unless they are prepared to speak out publicly" against the war.  Not a great idea if they have family in Russia, as Putin gets more unhinged by the day -- the head of the central bank "resigned" and an important general was arrested yesterday.   

But then comes this statement:  "Even at the height of the Cold War no one thought of banning Russian literature, art or music."  Really?  No one got an FBI file opened for evincing an interest in Dostoevsky or Shostakovich or even chess?  If you defected and you weren't Lee Harvey Oswald, good luck getting back into this country, much less getting the State Department to advance plane fare for you and your Russian wife.  Relax, I'm not going down that rabbit hole.  I'm just saying the paranoia was wicked bad, especially in the early 1950s.  They just didn't call it "canceling."

Get ready for the great bio-weapon convergence.  BA.2, son of Omicron, is spiking all over Europe and elsewhere, and while it's less severe in the US than previous versions, reports from Hong Kong are more dire.  At the same time, propaganda about non-existent Ukrainian bio-weapons from US-built labs gets tossed between the Kremlin and Fox News like an ever-expanding volleyball.  If lockdowns and mask mandates return, I confidently predict the Usual Gang will blame it on Zelensky and Fauci with Biden and Soros as enablers.  When is Trump's next Two Hours' Hate?

Meanwhile bird flu is turning up in Iowa.  It has already hit the UK, where chickens are kept indoors and free range eggs are no longer available.  The horror.

Russian TV has a new star, Madison Cawthorn.  They love his "Zelensky is a thug" monologue and play it constantly.  But not his vacation selfies at Berchtesgaden, which kind of undercut their claim to be fighting Nazism in Ukraine.  Even Kevin McCarthy eventually criticized the Mad bummer.

As states like Florida and Texas grow ever more vicious in their treatment of women and transgender youth, California proposes to offer sanctuary to the wretched refuse of their teeming shores.  It even wants to crack down on assault weapons.  Too bad housing there is so expensive.

That's the high point of American civilization in 2022.  The nadir would be Wisconsin, where the Republiclowns are still intent on overturning the results of the 2020 election.  If it works, they may take a crack at repealing the Stamp Act.

Day 24.  Who to blame now?