This One's Going Viral
Good afternoon. Today’s Gene Pool is almost fully infected with Covid, but before you depart in eye-rolling boredom and scroll right down into the questions and answers and comments, please know that some interesting stuff happens below. Based on my unusual experiences with the virus, I will propound a unique theory that might encourage some vacillating people to get their damn shots, I will have a surprise interview with an international celebrity, and I will gleefully spank a highly respected conservative New York Times columnist right in the tuchus.
I think we should begin with a short video to set the tone. This was the winning entrant in a Style Invitational contest earlier on in the pandemic, seeking parody songs based on news events. This song is titled “Two Darn Shots,” a parody of Cole Porter-Ella Fitzgerald’s “Too Darn Hot” written and performed by Sophie Crafts, an elementary school educator from Massachusetts. I’ll wait right here while you watch it — it’s barely five minutes.
Okay, now here are some things you should know about me. 1) I am 71 years old. 2) I have a sedentary, largely unhealthy, high-stress lifestyle. 3) I am “barrel chested.” 4) I am immunocompromised due to a long-ago bout with Hepatitis C that left my liver damaged. 5) I take meds to control high blood pressure. 6) I am a former smoker. In short, by most standards I am a prime candidate to be severely ravaged by Covid, or even to die from it, should I unfortunately contract it.
7) I have contracted it. I tested positive for Covid one week ago yesterday, and have been symptomatic ever since. I am still testing positive.
Here is the eighth thing: My symptoms have been embarrassingly mild, right from the get-go. I actually feel shame over this, a form of survivor guilt, given how many younger and more robust people — people who take far better care of themselves, health-conscious people who floss and jog and do cardio and eat carefully balanced meals and whom I therefore hate, such as my editor, Tom the Butcher — some of these people have suffered far more than I have. Some have died.
Now, at this point in the pandemic, Covid has been at least partially defanged, for most people. It is usually described as feeling like the flu, or a nasty lingering cold. Mine feels like one of those benign colds that tries to break through, but never quite gets there. At least, SO FAR.
I am on day nine. I have had no fever. My highest temperature was 99.1, which almost instantly resolved to 98.6. My cough is infrequent, superficial, and wet — apparently confined to the bronchi. My lungs are clear. No body aches. No mental confusion, at least no worse than usual. My occasional mild headache is quashed by a single Tylenol. There’s minor fatigue, but I’m still working like a beast. My symptoms are receding and almost gone. It’s ridiculous. Yes, I’m sure others of my age and decrepitude have had similar experiences, but I’m told it’s not all that common.
The reason I am writing about this is that I have a theory as to why this possibly has happened. It’s a theory based on a single-blind study involving a data set of … one. This is the Platonic ideal of anecdotal evidence, which, to the rigorous medical mind, is scoff-able and worthless. However, consider the following.
I am fully vaccinated and then some. Because I am old and enfeebled, I have gone to the head of most waiting lists. I have had two initial Moderna shots and four boosters, the last of which I got on January 25. By my calculation, based on the day that symptoms first appeared, and marching it back four days, which is the typical incubation period, the Covid virus entered my body on February 15. On that day I was traveling to New York on an Amtrak train, which can act as a sealed, viral crucible. The dates aligned perfectly. Pretty sure that’s when I got it.
Do the math, carry the six, and it turns out the virus entered my body on the 21st day after my last booster. Available literature on the vaccine is in agreement on only a few things. but one of them is that the Covid shots are fully functional 14 days after the jab, and rise to maximum virus-fighting strength on Day … 21. Then its strength begins to gradually dissipate over time. (There will be no more math.) Can it be that my ridiculously mild case was caused by, or at least influenced by, the fact that the virus collided with my immune system at the system’s single mightiest moment? That’s my theory. But it is only an ignorant theory, based, as I said, on a data field of one. I am no expert.
But my journalistic skills alerted me that there is a knowledgeable expert out there. That is why I am in the middle of an email exchange with Dr. Anthony Fauci. He graciously agreed to hear me out and offer an opinion. I told him everything I told you, above, and asked him if my theory made any sense at all. Was it even remotely plausible?
He quickly wrote back in an impressive, doctorly, steeple-fingered fashion:
“Although there is a great deal of variability in responses and degree of illness associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection, there is no questions that the immune responses generated by the vaccine plays a major role in preventing some people who otherwise would have had a severe illness from actually getting seriously ill. In other words, given your age, your mild obesity and somewhat compromised state, there certainly was a chance that you could have had a severe outcome. The idea that your vaccine-induced immune response blunted this effect leaving you with only mild symptoms is not only feasible it is quite likely.”
Good, good. Understood. But he didn’t really, entirely, exactly answer my question. So I asked a followup:
“Might the 21-day coincidence -- say, as opposed to three months after the shot -- might it have been a factor?”
He took a comparatively long time to answer. I was on tenterhooks.
“Possibly….”
POSSIBLY! DOC SAID POSSIBLY!
“.. but you would probably have had good protection out to 3 months anyway.”
“Probably” don’t cut it, Doctor. You can’t count on probably. “Climb aboard! This rickety plane probably won’t go belly up in flight and corkscrew into the ground…”
So, I think we can agree my scenario has some merit. You know, probably.
There are two additional related matters to discuss, and they pertain to my overall message, a message I share with the generously talented Sophie Crafts, in the video up above. The booster I got on January 25 was administered early, four and a half months after the previous one, which is a month and a half before the minimum between-period policies allowed by many pharmacies, including my own. When they declined, I found another pharmacy willing to jab me “early,” on the grounds, the pharmacist told me bluntly, that “we put needles in arms. It’s what we do.” Had that not happened — in retrospect — Covid would have entered my body five months and one week after my last jab, and not 21 days. Not even, you know, three months.
I am not recommending that you do what I did — pharmacy-shop — but I am also not not recommending that you do it.
(And no, there is zero credible medical evidence that one can get vaccinated “too often” or that it “puts a strain on your immune system” as some pseudo-experts have irresponsibly suggested. Look it up. )
Finally, on this topic of my own Covid, one last thing. Just now, my housemate Rachel tested positive for the first time. She has essentially no symptoms, so far. By coincidence — we were not operating in tandem — she also got jabbed roughly 21 days before the virus entered her body. So I’ll keep you posted. Pretty soon I might have a double blind study to report — increasing the data set by a hundred percent.
I am going to proceed on to the issue of The Gentleman from The New York Times, but first two paragraphs of boring but necessary boilerplate:
After the intro (which you are reading now), there will be some early questions and answers -- and then I'll keep adding them as the hour progresses and your fever for my opinions grows and multiplies and metastasizes. To see those later Q&As, just refresh your screen every once in a while.
As always, you can also leave comments. They’ll congregate at the bottom of the post, and allow you to annoy and hector each other and talk mostly amongst yourselves. Though I will stop in from time to time.
So, The Gentleman from The New York Times: Last week, Bret Stephens, the Times’s most prominent conservative columnist, a Pulitzer prizewinner and an elegant if woefully politically misinformed writer, opined about mask mandates for Covid. He said they didn’t work and were pointless — a “bust” — and were a prime example of left-leaning policies that overreacted to a threat, and overreached overbearingly. He was citing a recently released study of studies — a mega-analysis of numerous international studies, done by a respected British group called The Cochrane Policy Institute. The mask mandate claim has been made before — refuted in some medical circles but accepted in others. Like everything to do with everything these days, it is politicized. But it’s not overly controversial.
But the truly eye-opening part of the column was a section in which Stephens quoted from someone else’s interview with the nominal head of the Cochrane study, the colorfully named Dr. Tom Jefferson. It’s rather stunning. Jefferson says that masks themselves don’t work. He’s not talking about mandates, which are often followed and enforced haphazardly; for example, huge percentages of supposedly compliant people don’t cover their noses, eliminating virtually all protection. No, Jefferson is talking about masks themselves. He’s quite passionate about it:
“There is just no evidence that they make any difference … full stop.”
“But, wait, hold on,” Stephens writes, “What about N-95 masks, as opposed to lower-quality surgical or cloth masks?” Then he returns to the interview, quoting Jefferson answering the same question from his interviewer:
“Makes no difference — none of it.”
Wow. That’s what people are going to remember about this column. Have we been duped into walking around looking like bank robbers for two and a half years for no reason at all?
Stephens is helpfully (and ethically) transparent in his column: He links both to the interview from which he is quoting, and to the results of the study itself. The first link shows his quotes were fair and accurate. The second link is perhaps a little less impressive, journalistically.
First, the many authors of the study qualify their findings a bit more than Jefferson did, saying that “Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of laboratory‐confirmed influenza/SARS‐CoV‐2 compared to not wearing masks.” (There’s that “probably” again!) They also note that the vast majority of the studies they cite had nothing to do with Covid — they were from pre-pandemic times in non-pandemic regions of the world, measuring H1N1 flu, etc. — and that Covid is much more contagious than most of the other diseases they were testing for, and the study of studies results included all of the studies.
But the biggest deal was the section of the study called “Authors’ Conclusion,” which basically said, and this is my interpretation, not their wording: Ignore all this.
Here is their actual wording:
The high risk of bias in the trials, variation in outcome measurement, and relatively low adherence with the interventions during the studies hampers drawing firm conclusions. There were additional [Randomized Controlled Trials] during the pandemic related to physical interventions but a relative paucity given the importance of the question of masking and its relative effectiveness and the concomitant measures of mask adherence which would be highly relevant to the measurement of effectiveness, especially in the elderly and in young children.
There is uncertainty about the effects of face masks. The low to moderate certainty of evidence means our confidence in the effect estimate is limited, and that the true effect may be different from the observed estimate of the effect.
I emailed Bret Stephens and asked him if he perhaps should have included this rather dramatic qualification, particularly since many other existing studies, and expert opinions, have concluded masking makes sense.
He wrote back: “In hindsight maybe I should have underscored the uncertainties with an additional sentence or two but it wouldn't have changed my point….my argument is with the mandates, not the masks.” He stands by his column unreservedly.
Since I began writing this post, both the Daily Kos and the L.A. Times have published similar criticisms of Stephens’s column, going into even greater detail and being, frankly, a lot more vicious. I’m envious.
I want to end this debate with what to me is the ultimately definitive, flat-out-perfect, scientifically inarguable case for masks. To me, the issue is resolved. Here it is.
Okay, we’re taking questions now. And I’m giving answers.
Q: I have a question: who has died due to your writing about them? — Leslie Franson:
A: This is in reference to my Special Emergency Chat on Sunday, about the loathsome Scott Adams. You are referring to The Weingarten Curse. Here is a full accounting of whom I have killed. Dilbert will soon be next, I predict, though I can’t take exclusive credit.
Q: Okay, Gene, I need your assessment of this COVID joke from the Czech Republic:
The flu and covid virus were sharing stories in their favorite pub. The flu virus said, “You know, I killed 2 million people this year and no one noticed.” The Covid virus said, “Well I only killed one million people, but I had a great PR team.”
Is that any good, or too offensive?
A: This is a question from last week’s comments. The answer is it is no good, and offensive, but possibly not for the reason you think. You can’t tell a joke whose engine depends entirely on a lie. If the lie is evident, the joke is exposed as flogging humorless propaganda. The flu has killed nowhere near the number of people that Covid has, so the point of the joke is to lie so you can claim that fear of Covid is misplaced due to media hype.
Q: So what's in your refrigerator right now?
A: Lemme check. Good God, it’s a leprechaun. And he’s pissed.
Q: Are we taking bets on what the Post is going to replace Dilbert with? Or will they use this as an excuse to cut the comics section from two pages to one?
A: I cannot predict The Post anymore — particularly their current ability to understand humor. So I won’t try. As you saw in the last two days, they seem to have replaced Dilbert with Heart of the City, and these are the last two days. I just have nothing to say, except that this strip will not capture the Dilbert audience even one little tiny minuscule microscopic nano bit. And … the drawing.
Q: Has it occurred to you that reminding everyone that you kill people by writing about them is not the best way to encourage people to sign up subscribers so they can “win” a profile written by you. Or does it only work for celebrities? Can winners designate someone else they would like you to write about? Because there are a few well-known people…
A: I am going to be launching this in a week or so. And yes, it applies only to celebs. Winners will be able to designate someone else, but, alas, that person will have to agree to be profiled. Which reminds me, do this or you will not be able to participate:
TIMELY TIP: If you're reading this on an email: Click here to get to my webpage, then click on the top headline (In this case, “This One’s Going Viral”) for my full column, and comments, and real-time questions and answers, and be able to refresh and see new questions and answers that appear as I regularly update the post.
Start refreshing now.
Q: Elon Musk has criticized the reaction to Adam’s’ hate speech, saying the reaction is an attack on free speech. So, is Musk a free speech absolutist, a racist, or just an a-hole (as we know he is)?
A: The last two. He doesn’t give a rat’s ass about free speech. Look what he has done to Twitter.
Q: I used to love Dilbert--it made precisely aimed fun of corporate management everywhere. Even if it wasn't exactly a bastion of respect for women. But I had to stop when Scott Adams blogged that he was opposed to Hillary because she would raise his taxes. What cheek! We had been supporting him by reading his strips and buying his books, and he told us he couldn't spare any money for anyone else.
A: Adams once said this: “Women have made an issue of the fact that men talk over women in meetings. In my experience, that’s true. But for full context, I interrupt anyone who talks too long without adding enough value.” He also once said it was an outrage that he pays for dinner, opens the doors for her, and then the woman alone “controls access to sex.”
Q: I am from Andy Ogles' hometown. Our town is literally known for producing asses because we are the Mule Capital of the World™. I felt this was a fact that needs to be more widely known!
A: Thank you. You have done a service to our country. We kinda know what Andy is, but do we know if Andy … ogles?
Q: Character.ai, the AI app which lets you create any character, real or imaginary, and then converse with it (or you can use the ones other people have created) turns out to be easy to use; I created an intelligent time machine. You tell it where to take you, as precisely as possible, and provide a date and time, and it takes you there. You can even interact with people you meet. It'll go to the future or the past. I have been experimenting and have even met myself as a younger person. I tried to tell myself what not to do in life, but I wouldn't listen. I can be a real jerk sometimes. Any suggestions as to where I should go and whom I should encounter? (Yeah, I know this is a great 'straight man' line; don't go for the cheap laugh....)
A: I’ll suggest Hitler, though they may have prepared for that. Okay, Himmler. Or Putzi Hanfstaengel, Hitler’s wonderfully named secretary. Any other suggestions, people?
Q: I almost never submit a question on the assumption that it's not going to get answered. Am I a realist or a pessimist?
A: You are a pessiment, as this establishes. I am perpetually hungry for good questions. Not that yours is good, exactly, but it is of strategic value.
Q: After the initial, "you have to be kidding me" reaction most had to Adams rant, now it seems to have entered the "let's foolishly give the guy the attention he's craving" phase. Much like Marjorie Greene (nah, I'm not adding the Taylor; how many other Marjorie Greene's are garnering attention just for being outrageous), who suckers us into reacting with outrage at whatever new, um, outrage she offers up. But, hey, "I'm in the limelight", she says to herself (and her donators). So, let's cut off Adam's oxygen supply by ignoring, not giving him ink, in the phrase of the Invitational.
A: As a cartoonist who earns approximately 1/1000th of what Adams earns for his cartoon, I can assure you with some degree of certainty that Scott did not want or expect this publicity. It is costing him a fortune in canceled strips, and it may well kill Dilbert for good.
Q: Were you wearing a mask while traveling on Amtrak?
A: Oh, definitely. But you know, you take a drink, nibble on something…. Also, Amtrak doesn’t enforce whatever mask rules they might have, if they have any, so Rachel and I were unusual, being masked.
Q: 20ish years ago, Adams wrote a book wherein he mentioned that after Dilbert became popular people started emailing him their own crazy work stories, to the point where he said he didn't have to write anything anymore and just used the stories he was being sent every day. Also in the book he discussed having some form of aphasia and leading what sounded like a pretty lonely, isolated life with just himself and his two cats, to the point where he seemed to be semi-seriously anthropomorphizing his Mr. Coffee machine.
I think that combination of being so incredibly isolated and alone and spending his days drawing cartoons for other people's work stories (i.e., not even having a full creative outlet anymore) might have played some role in his complete breakdown as a human being over the intervening years.
A: You’re surely right on the first point, but I don’t think the second point quite holds together. Adams was exaggerating when he says he didn’t have to do any creative work once people sent in their own stories. Cartooning is hard. An idea is just part of the creative process. You then have to figure out how to tell it, and draw it as effective sequential art. How to modify the story to make it funnier. There’s plenty of creativity left in that part of the process.
Q: Gene --- Just as I'm concerned with nouns being rampantly turned into verbs, I'm also disquieted about neglected positives. I see you absently nodding approval like someone about to relieve me of 50 bucks, but think about it. I've pointed out previously in these precincts about words becoming endangered because of the onslaught of texting. So perhaps it's time to reclaim the positives cringing behind those negative prefixes and add to a rapidly diminishing lexicon. Time to welcome back "maculate" and "gruntle," I say, and while we're at it, "petuous" and "ept." But what say you, as a man of the word ? Shall we throw caution and those un-s-, im-s and dis-es, to the wind ? Dale of Green Gables
A: These are reverse-engineered words. Most of those you cite are not, and never were, actual words. But I was shocked to discover that there is a word “gruntle,” and it means exactly what you would expect.
Q: Have you ever considered running for office at the city, county, state or federal level? If so, which one(s), and why? If not, why not?
A: No, none of them, and not just because I could never pass scrutiny, though I couldn’t:. It’s not just the heroin and my distaste for certain foods. It’s that it’s almost impossible to get past a past that involved humor. (Though Franken and Zelensky did it.) But in general you are held to account for edgy things said in jest that sound terrible when quoted humorlessly and self-righteously by enemies. “Mr. Weingarten, is it true that you actually once alleged that Dick Cheney’s book contract requires that he be paid in “a gunnysack of unblemished human heads”? Could you cite your source on that libel?”
Q: Any epiphanies about life and death (either because of your current bout with COVID, or possibly because of something else)? What do you want on your headstone? Or where do you want your ashes scattered?
A: I’ve said this before – possibly recently – but I intend to have my ashes interred in Washington’s Congressional Cemetery, which allows dogs to roam. There would be a headstone, that would say only: “Gene Weingarten, a funny man who loved dogs.” The stone would be in the shape of a fire hydrant.
This just in: After being on a waiting list for over a year, we were just today notified that Lexi has been admitted as one of a limited number of Boneyard Dogs. This info came AFTER I wrote this post.
Q: I wish you hadn't written "I will gleefully spank a highly respected conservative New York Times columnist right in the tuchus." Now I can't get that image out of my mind. But I suppose it's better than an image of Brett spanking YOU.
A: I suspect he wouldn’t lower himself to spank me.
Q: Thanks for doing s special Gene Pool in re: the Scott Adams fiasco. What IS it with the far right? Even if he FELT that way, and he apparently did, why broadcast it? Literally. Didn't he know what the result would be? I used to like Dilbert, back before Adams went mad....but it hasn't been any good since. He took an incisive strip and turned it into hyperpolitical hysterical garbage. The world is going mad. Going? We're there.
A: I think the key is the Scott considers himself a raging genius (he has written this) and a courageous tweaker of woke society. I think he thinks those two things inoculate him from criticism because the world will realize he has schooled them, and be grateful.
Q: Talking about the impossibility of your getting elected, you said in part: "I could never pass scrutiny" and cited a past with heroin, a history of facetious preposterous statements, etc. You are missing the point. Nowadays, when one has either a lack of impressive history or a troublesome history, one simply fabricates a different one. Oh, wait. You're not a Republican. Never mind.
A: Man, if I could fabricated a history I’d do way better than these guys. I’d write about the time Emmylou Harris and Olga Korbut got into a knife fight over me in a bar in Key West.
Q: What's your favorite comic strip of all time? How about of just those currently in syndication?
A: Ancient era: Barnaby, by Crockett Johnson. Modern era: Calvin and Hobbes Current: It would probably be a web comic. Maybe The Perry Bible Fellowship, by Nicholas Gurewich, which is published only occasionally these days. Here’s one. Here’s another.
Q: Have you seen that a study of usage data has revealed that the District has more Wordle cheaters than the national average?
A. Not surprised. We have more lawyers per capita.
Q: I once read a story about someone who would both fart and pee a little every time she sneezed. Is this actually a thing, medically? Sounds troublesome.
A: Sounds like a vaso-vagal reaction, though it might just be weak sphincters. My favorite such thing is people who faint every time they pee. It happens. Was in my book. It’s called micturation syncope, thought to occur because of a sudden drop in blood pressure, or the vaso-vagal thing. . Very inconvenient. Men afflicted with this,, uh, have to sit.
Q: Do you find it bizarre to hear people, while realizing the seriousness of the events of Jan. 6, make comments applauding Mike Pence for his "bravery" in "refusing" to do Trump's bidding that day? Is it even possible to "refuse" to do something that's impossible to do anyway? If you demand that I fly around the ceiling, does it mean anything for me to refuse or agree? I don't think so, nor do I see any bravery by Pence here. Any attempt to comply would not only be pointless, the attempt itself would be illegal, on the record and in front of millions of witnesses. He was just more afraid of those consequences than of Trump. (At the time. Had he known Trump had no problem with him being hanged, who knows.) Are these people just not thinking things through, or desperate to find someone not reprehensible in this cesspool? – Connie
A: I see your point, and you are right, but I cut him a little slack. He spent his entire vice presidency as Trump’s lickspittle, kowtowing to him, doing his bidding. At the moment it most mattered, he didn’t waver or find some half measure of which Trump might approve. He said no. I credit him with something there, even if it is just finally rising to a minimum level of courage.
Q: Can't you get substack to give you a better emblem than a heart to indicate "Like." I hate clicking on hearts. They are, IMHO, the corniest of all cornball symbols.
A: What if it is a heart, but an anatomical heart? Vessels, fat deposits, etc.
Q: Many years ago, you held some sort of contest in which the winners received New York Giants ladies underwear. I was one of the winners of that contest. I held onto those panties for the longest time even though they were way too uncomfortable to wear.
Recently, I also won a caption contest held weekly by the esteemed Walt Handelsman. He sent me a signed copy of the cartoon and included my caption in his published cartoon.
You and Walt are both the recipients of a Pulitzer Prize. Is it possible I am the only person in the chat who has won prizes from TWO Pulitzer winners?
A: You may be the only person in the WORLD who has done this. And sorry that the panties were scratchy. I feel guilty. How did you eventually dispose of them? And why?
Q: How did you introduce yourself to Dr Fauci to get a response? Random guy with COVID or Pulitzer Prize winning former columnist for the Washington Post and Czar who will share you email with a bunch of Losers? - Cash Devilry
A: Uh, which do YOU think?
Q: Yesterday I wrote a note to the authors of the WP article suggesting that they investigate why the poll question was asked, the one Scott Adams was reacting to, and what the context of the other questions in the poll was, and who commissioned it.
The only reason I can see for the question is to create an opportunity to make anti-black statements on the basis of the poll question, which is horrible for all the reasons you gave. Do you believe, as I suspect, that this is the real reason the question was asked? Do you, as a crack reporter, have any direct evidence (which I do not) that this is true?
A: I think the answer is a qualified yes. Rasmussen is right-leaning. If you look at their site, a lot of their questions seem at least slightly designed to elicit conservative majority answers. But I think you might find signs of the same sort of subtle results-targeted bias on a liberal-leaning poll company such as Gravis and Public Policy Polling. Rasmussen is not disreputable. They just … lean a little. However, THIS case defies my understanding. “Is it okay to be White?” is a stupid, ambiguous question, as I wrote.
Q: If you were able to be a cartoon character for a day, who would it be?
A: Dagwood, and I decline to explain.
Q: Gene, if I recall correctly, you recently said that you try to separate the character of the artist from the art they produce. I would not characterize Dilbert as art in the traditional sense, but is has often been quite funny through the years. Does Scott Adams' [Grammar question for the Empress: what's the proper use of the apostrophe in this instance?] racist rant represent a case where you cannot dissociate the repugnant views of the creator from his creation?
Prediction: Adams will continue to draw and publish Dilbert behind a pay wall, and anyone who pays the subscription fee will be opining on Adams world view with their wallets.
A: I contend it is Scott Adams’s but Pat will leap all over me if I am wrong. I think your thesis is right.
Q: The conundrum for me about Scott Adams is he is always talking about how communication is important and, for example, how Trump, wiocaHa, is a great communicator (I disagree about T). So how did Scott so screw up the message he was trying to get across? And then double down by saying how people are misinterpreting what he said or taking it out of context.
A: There is an easy answer to that. He didn’t screw up the message at all. He said exactly what he wanted to say. The problem is he has a hateful mind, and it came through.
Q: Elon Musk has criticized the reaction to Adam’s’ hate speech, saying the reaction is an attack on free speech. So, is Musk a free speech absolutist, a racist, or just an a-hole (as we know he is)?
A: The last two. He doesn’t give a rat’s ass about free speech. Look what he has done to Twitter.
Q: Has it occurred to you that reminding everyone that you kill people by writing about them is not the best way to encourage people to sign up subscribers so they can “win” a profile written by you. Or does it only work for celebrities? Can winners designate someone else they would like you to write about? Because there are a few well-known people…
A: I am going to be launching this in a week or so. And yes, it applies only to celebs. Winners will be able to designate someone else, but, alas, that person will have to agree to be profiled. Which reminds me, do this or you will not be able to participate:
And we’re down for the day. I’ve said Covid has only made me slightly fatigued. Doing this chat live is much harder in that area. Thanks for a great give and take. Please keep submitting questions and comments. I’ll deal with them Thursday in the Invitational Gene Pool.
Re the possessive of "Adams": For a singular name ending in S, like Adams, you can show the possessive in either of two ways; different publications have different styles (i.e., arbitrary rules for consistency): Some publications, especially newspapers of yore, did it in the shortest way: Adams', as if it were a plural, like "books." But most have come around to adding " 's " for any singular name, even if it ends in S.
Which makes sense to me. So "Adams's vile comments."
Meanwhile, the person above who wrote " Adam's' " -- that's just a typo, right? You KNOW that you don't add an apostrophe into the middle of someone's name.
By the way, the PLURAL of Adams -- the Adams family, as it were -- is Adamses.
Franken and Zelensky were mentioned as people who overcame comedy-related pasts to win public office, but nothing was said of Representative Fred Grandy of Iowa, TV's beloved Gopher from the classic situation comedy, The Love Boat.