On the occasion of your New Year's celebration. My fellow Americans, and I
extend our very best wishes well the prosperity and well being of the government and
the people of Vietnam. This is Ronald Reagan, President of the United States.
I'm speaking to you, the peoples of the Soviet Union, on the
occasion of the New Year. I know that in the Soviet Union, as
it is all around the world, this is a season of hope and expectation.
Slow him, good them, slove him, ShaSS him. Years from
now they'll be talking about it. They'll be talking about this great, great
thing that we did. Welcome everybody, Happy New Year. It's the Ricciy
Podcast, number six hundred and seventy two. I'm James Linlax here in Minneapolis,
where it's bright and it's cold, and we're looking forward to a new
year. I don't know why, because there's just no point to New Year's
is there. We all know that nothing changes, nothing changes except the rent
is due. Really, I mean, the whole idea of New Year,
New me is ridiculous. You come up with some resolutions and things you're going
to do, and we all know that they founder on the rocks of February,
if not earlier. I actually find it easier to make little, tiny
changes and resolutions that I know that I will be able to fulfill. I
vow to have a small chocolate mint covered pretzel every day after lunch. I
think I can do that. I vow, actually, this is my New
Year's resolution every day, thanks to the miracles of ample music, to listen
to one new artist that I've never heard before from start to finish and not
give up after fifteen twenty seconds because it's auto tuned and thumping or the rest
of it. But really, actually to try to learn something new musically every
day. It's not hard. It's the things that make you get up and
go someplace and do something like workout or quote something that you love that you
don't want to do. That's the stuff that never works. So I don't
know why we put ourselves to this. Well, we do because it's January,
right, and January is the start of everything new. January, as
we all know, is named after right Janus Roman, god of doors.
First learned about him when I was a kid. I first of all,
I was freaked out by him because he had a he had two faces,
he had one, you know, normal forward facing face, and then one
in the back. I thought, how does that work exactly? How do
you manage all that sensory input? Why would you want if you have a
cold, does the back nose run at the same time as the front allergies?
You've got four eyes that are going to be driving you nuts. And
how roman is it really to have a god of doors? I mean,
these these guys you understand after a while the appeal of monotheism, because when
you have God's cluttering up absolutely everything. The God of you know, the
God of desks, the God of chairs, the gods of pens, the
gods of dog everything. Everybody's got a dog. You figure, you know,
something comes along and says, no, there's just one. It's going
to simplify thing. It's you. I'm going to bundle it all into one.
But then, of course human nature being what it is, that gets
complicated as well, with saints and what they're in charge of them. I
put three people in a room with one thing, and at the end of
the day, two of them are get to a gang up against the other
as to what the one thing means. Anyway, I was wrong as a
kid and just thinking that Janie had to do with doors. No, he
had a lot more to do with that. He was the god of beginnings
and as such was regarded by many in those days and Lord the complexity of
Roman deities and their stories, he was the first. He was the number
one guy. He started everything out. So when you started the day,
he prayed to Janice. When you started a new business enterprise, you played
prayed to Janney. When you pray to a god, you prayed to Janis,
just because the beginning of everything. And if you go back and look
on your Wikipedia, you will find that he was also related to the god
of portals, because they had a different god for portals as for doors.
Okay, I don't know why they needed that. I don't know if they
had to do some reconciliation sessions there where they divide it up. Okay,
you're gonna have harbors, he's gonna have doors, You're gonna have warehouse openings,
he's gonna have like business doors and the rest of it. But you
know, when you study the whole story of Janis, it turns out that
he ravaged some nymph and in the process made her a goddess and she's now
regarded in their view as the goddess of hinges, the goddess of hinges.
It's not the most it's not the biggest job you can have, I suppose
in the pantheon. And if you're a guy who fixes doors for a living,
I imagine that you probably would be burning some salt and some you know,
some spelt to her every day before you went to work. But really
so, yes, Janie got a doors, but of so much more and
less. We think, however, that it's kind of silly. They have
a got of doors. They had a god of hinges and a god of
knobs too, and that just sounds like something that you should just say as
an epithet when you're disappointed in something, Oh, God, lot of knobs.
Well, there was a person who had to sit by the door,
of course, like me right now, who is there between the thing from
which you come and the thing into which you go being the next year,
And that person was named after the god of doors and beginnings, Janice,
And from that we get Janitor. So in a way, when we say
a janitor and we see the people around the building doing what they do to
clean things, it's actually part of an old and noble tradition, and for
all we know, the janitors for two thousand years have been part of a
secret society actually that knows all, sees all, and actually keeps everything working.
I know, without them, nothing gets picked up and thrown away.
So thank your janitor today, That's all I'm saying. It being the beginning
of the year or the end of the new, dependent at the end of
the old, depending on when you're listening to it, I'll bet you wondering.
I hope there's a roundup of this year, because I really would like
to revisit all the awful things that happened and confirm my priors and revel in
all the things that went awry and weep and moan and rent garments and the
rest of it. I'm really not in the mood for that. You can
find it elsewhere, but I find year end summations to be hideous, to
be honest. Oh, we have lots of actualities as to what I as
to what happened, and we might get to those. But there are two
things that I want to do. One of them is I posted on Ricochet.
You know ricochet dot com. If you're listening and you're not a member,
you should be. I mean, really, I'm trying to shame you
into it for all these years now. No shame is not the word.
No cajole. Welcome you. Extend a hand to pull you through the portal
of Janice to the place where you've been looking for the Internet for a long
time, the home of sane civil mostly center right conversation. So I posted
on Ricochet and the member feed, which can't go to unless you remember some
questions to see if anybody has any questions of me about anything. I'm going
to try that. I also thought, rather than looking back at the year
here, it might be instructive to go back to nineteen twenty four, nineteen
thirty four and briefly look at what January first looked like at the front page
of the paper. What were they concerned about? Well, for example,
let's take a look a nineteen twenty four. I just happen to have it
right here in front of me, thanks to newspapers, dot com, big
headline. And I do this to remind you that whatever we think is the
most important thing going on in the last year. They were thinking that then,
were they right? Were they wrong? Was it actually affect human history
in the years to come. Well. January first, nineteen twenty four,
the Minneapolis Journal. Big headline top above the fold hole page Obertagon halts war
on rebels. Delay is ordered, a waiting arrival of arms from US.
Now Obergon is probably forgotten. I had no idea how to look them up.
It has to do with the Mexican rebel so we were supplying arms to
them. We were involved in our border state. We were having troubles with
Mexico one hundred years ago. It was a stunning surprise. Below that another
headline, bits of wreckage from dix Muede identified. Now, what I love
about these old papers is that when first the story of Dix Muede was broached,
they had to explain what it was. But after a few days of
newspapers, of course everybody knows what dix Mute is. And in this case,
Dick s Muede was a Zeppelin and as such, as you might imagine,
came to a not entirely felicitous conclusion. Zeppelin airship built for the Imperial
German Navy, unfinished at the end of First World War. Reading this off
the top of my head, obviously no Wikipedia. It exploded in mid air
on the twenty first of December twenty nineteen twenty three, off the coast of
Sicily, killing all fifty two people of forty two crew and ten passengers.
As Wikipedia, this is one of the first great airship disasters, preceded by
the crash of the British R thirty eight and the US airship Roma, and
followed by the destruction of the Shenando in twenty five, the British R one
oh one in nineteen thirty forty eight dead, and the Akron in nineteen thirty
three seventy three dead, and the Hindenburg in thirty seven twenty thirty six dead.
So does the dix Mewed matter to us one hundred years later today,
Probably so, in that it was part of a pattern of these things going
up kaboom that led to the lack to the diminished interest, shall we say,
in flying around in a great ball of a gas. So that's that.
That was nineteen twenty four. They were also, of course worried about
the weather there. The mercury had dropped to sixteen below in Minneapolis, which
is not surprising entirely, and it was a sedate reveling because you couldn't drink
so much anymore. Oh and let's see, Yes, a furnace had exploded
and twenty five families were shivering somewhere in Minneapolis in front page news, So
that's twenty four. Part of it is I think the newspapers, well,
it has to do with the newspaper you read. That was the sedate journal
for the respectable people. The Star probably reported about a whole bunch of people
who doing nasty things. Well in nineteen thirty four, I'm looking at it
right now, nineteen thirty four January first, that would be ninety years ago.
What's the big headline at the top, thirty five hurt in eighty six
crashes. Thirty five people here in thirty five crashes or in eighty six crashes.
Now that was the toll for the year. It wasn't like eighty six
people that wreck their car that night. But below that was a big deal
about the conference rum bill. What the conference rum bill is? Oh,
it's just rum about letting people drink more. Because it's thirty four, that's
pretty much it. The whole front page is car crashes, it's cold and
you can drink pretty soon. Something here, Oh, Chicago murders were up
ten percent over the course of the year, and Octave Thanet, novelist was
ill. Here's one of yours, your moments of realizing that all fad famous
fleeting Octave Thanet. Do you have any idea who that was? Pen name
of a woman who was very popular and wrote an awful lot of novels and
was well known, and obviously so by the fact he's on the front page.
But she had the diabetes and she would kick off about a week after
that. Octave Thanet never heard of her before, used to be a household
name. Take note, writers, that's what happens to us all nineteen forty
four. As you can well imagine, well, uh yeah, headline Nancy
Escape bridge destroyed by Italian coast leap frog raid, Yanks take more hills,
eighth gaining All this meant something very specific to people in nineteen thirty four.
They would know where the eighth was and what the They would know what the
eighth was and where they were and what they were doing. Russ drive,
perils Nazi river Army. That's a headline, Russ drive, perils, Nazi
river Army. A couple of the Oh russ spoil. Nazi New Year party
was below that, so you get the feeling that the russ Our allies,
of course good old Uncle Joe, are on the move and the Nazis are
on the back foot. Other than that, it's pretty Oh yes, little
tiny story down here at the bottom of the paper. Twenty nine bombers lost
in raid, twenty nine US bombers lost in a raid. Front page,
but below the fold. You're used to that nowadays, Well you can well
imagine. Come nineteen fifty four. Well, hey, it's a swinging happy
time, is right. Everybody's enjoying hula hoops and rock and roll and everything's
great and McDonald's and shakes and tail fins and and happy time. Minneapolis Star
January first, nineteen fifty four lead headlines parents of seven shot after New Year
party in city right below that in big type as well. Two killed by
hit run cars. Hello that blast outdoor fell's gunman. So that was that
parents shot, two killed, and somebody shot a gun out the door and
killed somebody who was moving around. Good times. But a small story about
a GI who changes his mind and quits the Red Pow an American war prisoner,
A guy who defected. Claude Bachelor of Kerna, Texas, decided he
was to go over to the other side to the Norks, and turns out
he didn't like it very much, and thereafter he came back with his hat
in his hand and was jailed. Later got out and went to work as
an accountant. Died about twenty years later. So fifty four is pretty violent.
Fifty four is looking violent. Let's look at nineteen sixty four. What
would your presumption of nineteen sixty four January first be? Well, as it
turns out, it's all local news. Astrian requests court to transfer trial to
Duluth. Big trial. Nobody cares what it's about now, But there's a
little story down at the bottom. Two US officers are wounded by viat cong
and that, of course is going to absolutely consume everything. Perhaps the story
of most lasting significance is one little tucked away in the front page. Biologists
joint hunt for life on Mars. Their tools, of course, were not
as sophisticated as the ones that we have today, but they were trying,
they were looking. It's entirely possible at night that twenty twenty four will be
a pivotal year in the search for life on Mars, or the attempt to
put life on Mars, that life be us if elon Musk's rockets all work
and his desire to get us there gathers esteem. Nineteen seventy four, which
of course is a horrible year, area shivers in record colds. The major
headline Mayor quits gas prices up US to permit heating oil gas to rise.
One sent a nation for additional nations to raise crude oil prices. British began
three day week to save energy. The temperatures were twenty below in Minneapolis and
the and the price of everything was going up. So, yeah, nineteen
seventy four, we're pretty much sure that we weren't going to have any gas
in the future. It was all going to run out about four or five
years. Of course, the idea that the prices would go up and that
would spur more exploration than the rest of it. No, we were all
very much concerned about alternative forms of energy, and we weren't coming up with
any synth fuels. That was big, I remember that. But we were
all going to get used to not being able to drive very much in those
days were over. We were, of course wrong. And I can't really
think of any era other than the early seventies in which so many erroneous beliefs
were adopted by so many. It seemed to be that was a starting point
for people thinking incorrectly or in correct decisions, because when you look at you
know, you look at nineteen forty four, well, what were they doing.
They were fighting the Nazis, that's generally what you want to do.
You look at nineteen thirty four, and they were getting rid of the ridiculous
criminal enabling prohibition and saying it is a civilized thing to enjoy a glass of
whiskey. And well, my view, that's pretty much the way to go
to. And in nineteen twenty four in the paper I didn't note this,
there was a note from Calvin Coolidge at the top, telling everybody in America
that we are a good, strong, prosperous nation. We should believe,
we believe in ourselves, and we believe in the future. And that's and
that's a good way to go. But in seventy four everything seems to be
just falling apart here. So look at at nineteen eighty four. Now you
would think, of course, eighty four America's back Morning in America and the
rest of it. But you have no idea if you weren't there at the
time. Excuse me, Helmut, there was my cough button. It used
to be in a radio station. He used to have a cough button.
You have no idea how much the newspapers in nineteen eighty four were general preaching
doom and misery, that everything, everything was bad because of that Ronnie raygun
guy right well, nineteen eighty four, Minneapolis Star Tribune, January First,
it was a Sunday military takes over in Nigeria. No bloodshed reported in fifth
coups since nineteen sixty. And you remember that military coups in Africa seemed to
be the sort of thing that would populate your paper about once every four or
five months or so. Nobody paid any attention to them, and nobody cared
mondale calls for removing marines from Lebanon without forty five days. This is what
Walter Mondale would say, force without purpose is weakness, not toughness. The
vulnerability of our marine's undermines not preserves our credibility. Well, we don't know
where that went. Let's see Navy flyer tells Jackson. Oh, the Syrians
are treating him well, says navy flyer who was talking to Jesse Jackson.
The flyer had been nabbed by the Syrians, and Jesse Jackson, who in
those days was a frequent intermediary element, had gone to speak to him.
And then my favorite headline of all, which you probably can repeat in any
newspaper for any place, at any time, for whatever reason, I quote,
growing reports may indicate growing problem. Let me run that one by again.
Growing reports may indicate growing problem. Now it has to do with sexual
abuse of children. But that's kind of an evergreen, as we used to
say, Come nineteen ninety four, we're sort of getting into the common era,
aren't we. Nineteen ninety four seems to be part of the world in
which we inhabit right now. South African leaders plead for calm because there was
a shooting spree in joe Burg, and then there's something about a local gambling
racetrack and that's about it for international lose. Everything else is local because the
paper had realized we don't need a reprint the New York Times. We can
tell you what's going on here. So ninety four, if I remember correctly,
it's pretty good. We didn't think so at the time. No,
we were under the boot of Clinton. We were worried about Jack Puts knocking
on our doors on behalf of the irs, which is not an unreasonable thing
to believe. But we were going through this whole strange we're beginning perhaps the
whole strange nineties paranoia, a bit that you saw in the X Files and
Art Bell and all the rest of it. Y two K and this feeling
that something was coming, and it was. It just wasn't anything that we
were expecting at all. The old Black Swan, or rather two of them
appearing in the skies of New York, which means we go to two thousand
and four, which is the last year I'm going to do here, and
the headline is Americans Party under Orange Alert, which is something that may not
mean anything to anybody in the future, but at the time it did.
This was three years on and the main headline on New Year's Eve was still
something of the sort of we could be bonded, and we're looking around and
we're nervous about it. But no, nothing happened. Year after year would
go by and nothing would happen. And we would become accustomed to nothing happened,
nothing happening. I don't know about you, though, I don't see
any of these gatherings to this day without thinking something might happen. Why wouldn't
it. While we may have cleared the decks of some of the bad actors
back in the day, they seem to reassemble and cohere and redouble their efforts
to do something about us. Statan Magnus right, also a big prediction here
in the headlines of that paper, Warren politics will co star in the news
of two thousand and four to come. You think, I think it's possible,
and I think the same thing will go here. We will be discussing
the two wars ongoing in twenty twenty four. We will be discussing politics,
which will seem like an absolute, complete and total mess, which it will
be and often does, because it's only from the distance of time when passion's
cool and the winners and the victor's right the histories that we tend to think
that everything else moved smoothly. It doesn't. Although the machinations underfoot this year
seem particularly egregious, wouldn't you say, But that's for a two twenty four
podcast with misters May rob Long and Peter Robinson. I had asked on the
Bricochet page whether or not anybody had any questions for me, and I think
if they, let's check here and see what they said, and see if
there's anybody who did the wrong page. See if anybody who does. You
know, this is the point usually where I go to a spot but we're
giving you a little break. We're going spotlets this week. I could probably
from memory give you a bowl and branch for free. I could probably from
memory tell you about all the wonderful sponsors we've had in the past that have
made it Ricochet possible. But the thing is, it's really people like you
who make Ricochet possible, who commit to every month pooning up a small amount
of money to say, yes, I want this thing to go, and
I want to be able to contribute. I want to be able to comment.
That's the great thing. There's some science that I love, and I
go down into the discus in man, I tell you you just have an
image of an awful lot of really unhappy people who just love to do nothing
more then sidle into the room and issue a conspicuous piece of flatulence and then
wander out as though some great witticism has been undeployed. And it's the thing
I like about Ricochet is that I am constantly abraided by other people's mulish disinclination
to agree with me or what I have my head. So civil conversations with
people that you've had civil conversations with for a long time and who think differently
about things is a big plus as opposed to just marinating in the bath of
everybody agreeing with everybody else. Oh, there are fourteen comments on this,
let's see. Well. Don Tilman, who smells his name backwards, says,
this is an opportunity for a record of the greatest number of segues in
a podcast. I don't think I've had one. Why because I haven't had
to go to an ad and b because I haven't had the steel bar in
the spokes of Rob Long and his ability to derail any segment that I wanted
to do. Jenna Stocker, who by the way, is also writing for
American Center of American Experiment around here and is an absolutely fantastic writer, just
great. I wanted to start writing nineteen forties mystery novels too, said if
you had a chat with the young James Lillax about your life since childhood and
which you're up to now, what would he be most surprised to hear that
it all worked out, that it all actually happened. I mean, that's
the thing. I became what I wanted to become. I went where I
wanted to go, and I did what I wanted to do. I was
a kid in Many in Fargo reading the Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper. I had
to go to the library to get it. It was the missive from the
big city. It was the it. It told me what was going on
in the big town, to which I'd only been a couple of times once
as a small boy. When we paid an extraordinary visit, absolutely magical,
really, I stated at Howard Johnson, I'd never seen one of these things
before. Orange roof with a little turquoise top, I'm thirty, how many
flavors of ice cream? It was just that futuristic lobby building, that that
that that you drove that dad went into to get the keys. I mean,
I'd never seen anything. Then we went to Southdale and an enclosed mall,
the likes of which, of course did not exist in Fargo. There
were birds indoors in cages too, story cages in the winter, singing.
Ah. It was great. I loved it. I wanted to go there,
and every visit I paid to Minneapolis next, I only only reinforced that.
And what I wanted to do was to write, and I wanted to
be in newspapers. I wanted to write for the Minneapolis start So I wanted
to be a columnist for the Minneapolis Startribune when I was growing up. And
I am. And that's I don't know what more to say about that except
whew, what a relief. It all worked out. Am I disappointed that
I wasn't challenged or didn't have bigger ideas. What if I decided that I
wanted to be a columnist for the New Yorker. Well, I don't want
to be one of those. I'm happy here where I have an audience that
surrounds me and has surrounded me since the early eighties when I started writing in
the college papers. So that might be it. I might be surprised to
learn that it worked out completely. Thank you. Jenna john Stanley writes,
The Vikings used to play in the Minnesota cold, but now the Vikings play
indoors. Is the movie Doors linked to a lack of Super Bowl appearances?
No, No, I don't think so. I think it's something else.
I think it's a curse. It's the curse that hangs over us. There's
something deep in the marrow of the Vikings fan that is unable to be happy,
that knows that at the end of it, at the end of it,
we'll ever get there. Never. It never happened. It's supposed to
happen. This year, it was supposed to happen. Kurt was great,
JJ is supposed to have after a last year where her Ja was supposed to
but we lost fourth straight and then you know, went through four quarterbacks.
So now second John continues. Is the willingness of the fans to suffer outdoor
in the cold a link to post season victories? It could be, you
know, you look back at the old shots of the Vikings playing in the
snow, and the snow gathering on the eyebrows and the caps of the people
in the stand still cheering, and you think there are heartier people than we
are for God's sakes. A. Yes, perhaps so. B they're drunk
though pretty much short that everybody had a nip of some snowshoe grog or peppermint
schnaps, some fine Phillips products in a flask that kept them warm. But
yeah, that's the way football is meant to be played, bruisingly endured in
the outdoor elements. But on the other hand, I've been inside the new
stadium and it's absolutely gorgeous. And I've been there when it's cold outside and
I'm happy to be warm inside. So yes, I'm a member of that
debased, debauched, defeat, indolent, sybaritic crowd that can no longer endure
the way things used to be. Wisconsin con Wi Coon said, you work
for the Star Tribune, are you? And there are some other noteworthy and
otherwhile not worthy, There are still at least local papers still in existence.
But the model doesn't seem viable. Nothing new there. But are you seeing
any viable replacements emerging? Uh? No, yes and no. What we're
trying to do here at the newspaper, of course, is to transition to
all digital. That's the future. Hate to say it, sorry Tree industry,
Sorry delivery guys, I mean and sorry everybody who loves the newspaper,
including me. But the move is to all digital. The problem, of
course, is what's that word, I'm looking for money? The problem is
getting people to exchange goods in exchange their money in exchange for our goods and
services. Because I was on Reddit the other day and somebody had posted a
story from the link from the Star Tribune, a very important story from the
Star Tribune, a story that only we had if I believe correctly, that
we had gone out and sent somebody. We paid somebody to go there and
look and do and research and come back and write it. And then we
had put that information on pieces of paper, handed them to a distribution system
that put them all over town and also put them up online for something that
we paid for. And the person said, you know all, I'm not
going to pay to read that. I'm not going to pay for news.
Okay, all right, I get that now. Somebody doesn't want to pay
for something because they have a reason. A they don't like the bias,
or they don't like what's being nobody's obligated to pay for anything, but if
you would like local reporting, you generally have to pay somebody to go out
and do it. The old days of relying on the blog of sphere.
It's not going to happen. The BLOGI sphere is an adjunct. It's a
necessary corrective. It's good. People do a lot. I mean people do.
There are people who are who have their niche and they do it.
I'm not sure they do it as much as they used to before, but
generally, no, you have to pay, and so it is you got
to hand over some money. Now who do you hand over the money to?
In our case, we are a brand. We've been around, We've
been doing this for one hundred and fifty years, and we have a track
record, and we have the standards of objectivity. I know, I know
what people say, but I know I know what goes on here, and
I know what we believe, and I know what the ideas and the ideals
are. So the model that emerges is going to be two or three competing
online sources, which will eventually require either AU to pay or B somebody behind
the scenes to pay for it, and you don't know who they are.
So I like our model. I do. And there's more to it.
And I mean, if you just have a I'll just shut up about it.
Just that's it. Y Kon goes on to say, I get most
of my local news from our local talk radio station. Their coverage is better
than the local broadcast news and less biased than the local paper. Okay,
I don't know where that is, but where do they get their news?
Where does the talk radio place get their news? I mean in the old
days. I remember when I worked for KSD KSDB a AM fifteen hundred.
Our news department was run by John McDougall, who was an old TV guy,
and Bruce Gordon also, And it's kind of a you know, a
rip and read is what we You know the wire, you ripped the wire
off, you read the wire. You didn't have any guy you did.
We did ksdbting and a lot of guys going on the field for the AM
version, right and not MINDI talk radio stations have guys who go out and
report, so if they do great. He goes on to say, there's
a need. But outside those dying papers and the patch whatever that's considered,
do you see anything on the horizon. It seems like that there's another reason
people are more focused on DC versus their local cities and states, as there
just isn't the coverage of states. That's that's the problem. That's why you
need local organizations devoted to covering your state, so pay for it, is
all I'm saying. Stad. I had said that my promise to you is
no tiresome, depressing recaps of the year, and Stad said, but quote
tiresome and depressing unquote is you at your best? JK goes on to note,
do you miss doing National Review cruises? And are there plans to start
them up again? I know the NR Institute still has them. Do I
miss doing the National Review cruises? I don't know. Yes, yes,
I do very much so because I love going on cruises. Can't get my
wife to go anymore because she thinks she doesn't want to fall overboard, although
we might do some river cruise because I guess you can swim the shore.
I loved them because I loved meeting everybody and talking late at night at the
night Old Session or at the sessions at the Crow's Nest Bar. I love
being in the Caribbean. I loved being part of the NR enterprise. I
really did. It was great fun and I may do it again. The
Institute is having them at Alaska, and problem is is that they need to
get enough people. If they have enough people, they can bring on the
second tier talents like myself. And as I said to them last when I
was there, went out to the National Review Christmas party in New York,
I said, you know, I do offer a full spectrum service package here.
I'll talk a lot at dinner, I'll talk a lot. In the
evening, I'll talk. I actually will engage people at breakfast or on the
ship anywhere, not just at the meetings. Fans, are you know full
customer service? I'm your customer service guy, and we'll see what happens.
Full sized Tabby, well, thanks for asking stad send him a letter,
tell him you want me. Full Sized Tabby says, I would enjoy hearing
some of your most memorable or interesting surprising experiences covering the State Fair over so
many years. Huh, that's interesting, State Fair. I hadn't thought of
that in a while. Mostly it's these Quotitian moments that don't really add up
to anything except for a deep and abiding love of the entire enterprise. I
mean, I was never there when anything big and was I I don't think
so. I wasn't there when the bull escaped and ran through the crowd and
killed itself by dashing its head into a fire stanchion, you know, fire
plug bang. No, I heard about it happened later. I have done
dozens of shows where I stand on this little stage in the broiling sun with
a neon huge yardstick, trying to get the audience to pay attention to me.
Those all blend into one. I mean, I'll have a guest who
will talk about eating crickets, and well, you know, I'll eat some
cricket peanut butter, and another guests will come by with the flight of local
beers and I'll drink those in the sun and then fall on my head.
All I remember about the fair is just its existence and then its non existence.
The fact that I usually show up the day before, when everything is
just getting set up and all the grass is green and they're starting working the
friars, and the smells of everything is just absolutely just wonderful. It's waiting
to happen. It's fresh and it's new, and you know, the sprinklers
are making the are on the flowers. They're glistening in the morning light.
It's just but it's not the fair because there's not a lot of people there.
There's not a lot of people walking around with stupid t shirts and uh
and uh and expressions of expectation of small children and old people and being it's
not the fair without the people. And so when I show up and plunge
into it, it's just what it was last year and the year before and
the year before. And even though it's changed somehow, that place is gone.
That place is a new sign, that's new, it's still just the
fair. And it goes back maybe to what I was saying before about that
trip to Minneapolis, because now that I think about it, at first trip
to Minneapolis, when I said the birds were in the cage and the winter
inside, that wasn't true. Couldn't have been, because it was fair time.
We went to the fair. We went to see the Twins out at
met Stadium, but we went to the fair as well. And as a
very small child, I stood there and looked up at this gopher in a
turquoise in white sort of you know, music man suit, with a straw
boator and his cane, and I associated him with a state fair, which
I was just in love with too, because I'd never seen anything of its
magnitude. I'd never seen anything with so much noise and joy and the fargo
Fair. The North Dakota State Fair happened about two blocks from my house,
and it was smaller as you can well imagine. And at night I used
to sit there on my steps and far go and hear the fair, the
distant sound of it, and the screams and maybe the chuffing of machinery and
the rest of it, and I would swear the days after the fair was
over in the summer, I could still hear it. So I always loved
the fair, And to walk into the one in Minnesota was just was just
the world. It was just the world as it should be, with its
wonderful fried foods and corn dogs, and it's malts, and it's spin art.
We would make spin art, which were involved taking these little things and
putting them on a spinning piece of spinning canvas, and the fumes were so
carcinogenic that it's a miracle anybody for my generation made a past fifty. So
I love the state fair and full sized tabby notes. One of the delights
for me of state fairs that they draw such a variety of people. And
that's absolutely true. Here's everybody. You don't seeing the course of a day,
course of a week, course of a month. This is Minnesota.
These who are, this is what we are. Whatever you think about your
group, No, Steve C. How do you manage your time? You
come across as very productive and yet appear to wander off into tangents a good
deal of to me? What digressions? Well, since I have absolutely no
set things to do over the course of a day, I have long ago
set my own routines. My day goes on rails, and it always has.
When I was back in college, writing people used to note, you
know, you're the only guy who says he's a writer. Well, actually,
lights that's my secret. That's what I do. I would make time.
I would sit down every day. I'm going to do this. Now,
I'm not going to do that. Then I'm going to do that over
there. This is my pinball time, this is my writing time, this
is my walking time. And I stick to it, and sometimes it makes
me incredibly unflexible, and I get twitchy if I moved off the schedule.
But Monday through Friday the life is unrailed. The weekend the chalks are off
madness and madness. But that's how I do it. I just and I
have set in and I can do different things at different time, so I
don't get bored, because I get bored very easily. Don g who would
like to remind us that c AGW as a scam. By that, I
hope he means that the anthropogenic global warming right goes back to wy Coon about
the Star Tribune me working there, and notes young adults get their news from
TikTok. I didn't see that coming newspaper existed before the advertising model. Will
they exist after the collapse of advertising, just a different kind of advertising.
We still have advertise. I mean, we still have ads. We still
have lots of ads, and we still have people go out there and sell
them, and we still have people who use us as a medium to get
to the people who want to buy this, that or the other. That's
great. We'll never be without ads, and that's one of the things that
we got going for you. It just pains me to look at the ads
of the old papers and it's not as you could just because there were so
many. I mean, Downtown had Dayton's Department Store, Donaldson's Serious Pennies,
it had powers, It had all of these stores, each of which would
take two three pages out in a Sunday newspaper. The quantity of retail advertising
in the old newspapers is astonishing. The newspaper on Sunday would be three hundred
and seventy pages thick. We're still the third largest Sunday newspaper in the country,
but we don't know that. But it wasn't just the big ads.
It was the little tiny ones. I mean the profusion of stuff either for
scab medication or scrofula or qatar, moving on to little tiny thing for golden
girls, milk and salt and all the rest. It was just the eye
could could could linger on the page of an ordinary newspaper on a Tuesday afternoon
and find a three dozen things to think about. And that was just one
page. So we will exist after the collapse of advertising. But by the
way, if you look back at the oldest newspapers, they have ads.
I've looked at newspapers in the eighteenth century in England, they have ads.
If you look at newspapers from the nineteenth century in America, the front page
is almost all ads. And so yeah, I just didn't have a lot
to sell. But lord, all ads, shoes, books, cheap metal
things. GLD three, purveyor of splendid malpropisms. That was great. Reagan
member, I should note, I says in response to my thing about being
tiresome and depressing, he says or she there are at least five of us
ricochets in the Alaska trip this coming summer. Can you weasel your way into
being there? I'm working on it. I'm working on it. The only
problem is is I am also sort of kind of sort of obliged to a
to do a show in England. I think I'm booked at a theater.
Another story, Stephen, See best book and movie you have read and seen
this year? I can't think of any sold. They can't because the movies
they come in to go and I don't think of them in terms of years.
And it may have been that the best movie that I saw this year
was something that was from three or four or five years ago. I mean,
I see a lot of as impressed with Parasite, for example. Takes
me a while to get to some things, and that's that's the problem with
that. And likewise, I think the probably the best book that I read
that I mean, how do you define best? Is it gonna be Thomas
Soule's latest? It should be could be it's great. Or is it a
novel that I reread because I'd forgotten how it went and I was at the
beach and I wanted a detective story. Or is it simply because it was
a Roman detective story that I read at the beach earlier in Kancun that kept
me interested, not for its vivacious pros, not for its spellbinding mystery,
but simply because I knew the characters and liked them and wanted to spend some
time with them in this sort of reimagined way of what we'd like to think
Rome was. It's great. You know, Roman mysteries, there's a whole
big genre, and they each have their own different approach to it. I'm
kind of tired of the guys I got to go back to the well every
single time to do the whole Caesar thing. Yeah, we know, and
more interested in the ones that come along later. This series that I was
reading, which is not particularly it's great literature, but it's a Marcus Aurelius
view. It's a very very upstanding view of Rome. Kind of cool.
Mid mitht White Male, when talking about the Vikings and the Snow and the
rest of it, says that that working playing outside thing has worked well for
the Packers lambeau Field thirty consecutive years of Hall of Fame quarterbacks and just three
Super Bowl appearances. Shut up, shut up, go away. Uh.
And then they go back and they're arguing about this, about that again,
and then Peter Jean, Hi, Gene, how were you. Jeane,
by the way, who has been with us for a long time, has
been on several Ricochet cruises, and as you all know, is the well
there's there was there was, you know, on a cruise, you'd see
Jane, and you'd see Dave, and I missed Dave. And I used
to work with Dave here at the paper, not at this building, back
at the old building, back at the old building, under the old management,
which is so stupid that they took him out of his extraordinary talents and
put him to put him to doing some rote thing, not drawing as much
as he could have. Just ridiculous. All you need to know really about
management sometimes is that they would take him, you know, newspaper management,
is that they would take him in a talent like Dave Metheni and say why
don't you, why don't you edit the entertainment calendar fools. Anyway, Gene
asks any chance of Lilac's Post of the Week returning. I guess so let
the powers that be decide that. I think we still love the sounder for
it, don't we? Yeah? I think we do? Or did I
make that one up? Did I? It would doesn't matter if you could
pick what time period in the US to live in, other than now,
what era would that be? I asked, because you are such a collector,
connoists, your commentator of Americana in architecture. I have always thought all
my life that I would have liked to have been born in nineteen hundred and
live eighty nine years. I think it'd be fantastic. You'd be a teenager
during World War One, and you'd so you'd be an idiot, twelve fourteen
year old kid who was excited about war news and following it and the rest
of it, and it all seemed terribly modern and terribly terrifying. You'd be
in your twenties during the twenties, which would be I mean, come on,
just the jazz, the Charleston, the Hooch, the flasks, the
Fitzgerald. Who wouldn't You'd be in your thirties and probably settled a bit during
the depression, which wouldn't be that great. But you know, it's not
like everybody went on the breadline. I mean, there was still a functioning
economy. It was just crippled, and it was a fascinating time, time
of rapid growing sophistication in a variety of mediums. If you look at the
movies of the thirties compared to the twenties, you look at the ads of
the thirties, the magazines of the rest compared to the twenties. We grew
up fast in the thirties. To be in your forties and the forties would
be well, you know again, following the news in your fifties and your
fifties. That's the thing. We think of the fifties as being, you
know again, happy days, carefree. No, no, no, it
was a difficult time. It was neurotic, it was anxious. I mean,
yeah, it had a lot going for it. There was much more
cultural capital and cultural solidity. But at the same time, I mean,
for God's sakes, imagine being somebody who had been through the depression in World
War two looking at juvenile delinquents, looking at all these hoods and these thugs
and saying, what is the matter with you? You know what we went
and you're and you're acting like you know you were born in some awful,
horrible world. Come on, sleepe up, yeah, eat nick Losers.
And then to endure the sixties and the seventies and then finally in your eighties
and you're waning years of your dotage. Live until the Berlin Wall came down
and we won. There had to be somebody who was eighty nine years old
who was watching the Berlin Wall come down and realized we won, and then
they died. There has to be There has to be somebody who either turned
off the television and went to bed and never woke up, or somebody who
was in a nursing home and it was not going to go gentle into that
dark night and held his trembling hand with the remote up at the television in
the wall and saying, I'm not going to turn it off. I want
to see how this comes up. They're tearing down the Berlin Wall. We
won. Good, I can go It happened to somebody. It's a nice
note to go out, and it's a good note to go out on.
Here too. Thank everybody for listening to this, and remember that you never
see what's coming when it comes. All the things we're worried about today are
things that we probably won't be worried about next year. There will be something
else, and to gird yourself for it, and remember that some days bad
things happened. To state the obvious and the banal. But then the arc
of history, which is a term that I hate because it doesn't exist,
moves in such a way that you were watching the wall come down, and
in our lifetimes we will see the equivalent of that in some other sense.
We can't see it coming now, just any more than we could see it
coming in nineteen eighty four or eighty two or seventy nine. But good things
will happen because we're America, because we are optimistic, because we are still
free, and because we are the last best hope of Western civilization. And
on that cheerful note which I entirely mean, I thank you for listening.
I'm James Lennox. We'll be back next week with Robin Long, probably with
rob and Long and Peter and Robinson to join the Ricochet Podcast, And as
ever, I'll see you in the comments, not at Ricochet five point zero
because it's common, But some point this year we'll see you in the comments
at Ricochet five point oho, but for now, happy New Year. Ricochet
joined the conversation