Trumpunishment

Hello. We are going to begin with a Gene Pool Gene Poll, as we often do. This one will seem pretty tedious and facile, not uncharacteristically — geared toward a specific knee-jerk response, influenced by the insanely lefty political leanings of Gene Pool readers. We urge you to take it more seriously than that, because we will follow it with a semi-serious discussion. Here comes the main question:

Okay, having now vented your collective spleens (doing the math involving analyzing the proprietary stats of The Gene Pool against available physiological data, your spleens weigh, collectively, 970 pounds) — let’s talk about this.

I want to begin with the following question I received anonymously at our heavily staffed and lavishly financed question-asking site, which I administer singlehandedly: “Since you generally agree with David Von Drehle's opinion about the folly of prosecuting TFG, would you elaborate on Von Drehle's latest opinion piece?

As with everything David writes, and has ever written, ever since he was six years old and writing about everything he knew about, which was basically pooping, but quickly expanded to international relations, his piece is well written and erudite. He’s a scholar and a deep thinker and a knowledgeable and honorable man. He was the first person in the media — a cover story in Time magazine — to correctly predict that Donald Trump would win the Republican nomination for president in 2016, and to coherently explain why. He wrote what I consider the most brilliant on-deadline political literature ever, an account of the funeral of Richard Nixon. I actually had the last sentence engraved in stone, by a cat cemetery, as a gift for David when he initially left The Post. If you are a writer, or an aspiring writer, read this piece. I don’t care if you don’t finish this Gene Pool. Read this piece. It is better than anything I have ever written, or could ever write.

Alas, David’s new column is empirically and philosophically and epistemologically, — and probably episiotomically — wrong. He is revolted by Trump but is arguing against — I am oversimplifying — punishing Trump for being Trump.

As the Gene Pool reader notes, I was with David, solidly, when the only charge against Trump involved documents carelessly stored in bathrooms. beneath chandeliers, and I said so at the time, which was a mere seven months ago. I wrote: “I agree with David one hundred percent. He persuaded me. This is not about whether Trump deserves punishment. Of course he does. David says that, too. It is about what is the best strategy to get rid of that inflated bloated crooked vulgar vulture schmuck for all time. He is currently politically inert. Sapped of all strength. A trial could resurrect him. It is entirely possible Trump WANTS to be prosecuted.”

But my good friend has lost me here. Much has changed. Prosecuting Donald Trump for being Donald Trump is not like prosecuting Jesus for being Jesus. It is like prosecuting Snidely Whiplash for tying damsels onto railroad tracks and gleefully watching as their heads are severed. Yeah, you can’t do that, Snidely. We can’t allow it. We gonna have to tie you down and have Amtrak rattle by. If we let you get away with it, it will severely decrease the damsel population. We need damsels in America.

We need America in America.

On this issue, I side more with New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie, who wrote this and this. I also find myself almost reluctantly agreeing with this Substack piece by the estimable and reliably wildly liberal Robert Reich — former Secretary of Labor — that maybe Trump should ALREADY be in prison. Not sure if you can see this but try.

The mootness issue is gone. Trump’s gotta do time. Orange jumpsuit, three hots and a cot, fetid food, the whole deal. What he did amounts to treason. We owe the appropriate punishment not to vengeance, but to history. There cannot be another Trump. And the only deterrent people like Trump understand is … being made little and weak, and nothing does that better than incarceration.

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So, we are now going to move to the questions and answers portion of The Gene Pool. Please remember to keep refreshing this page, because we are now heading into real time.

Much of the stuff you are about to read is based on my request, this Weekend, for you to tell us secrets about your occupation, things the average Joe wouldn’t know. There are some interesting disclosures. Reading them reminded me about certain things involving my particular career.

Back when I was a young reporter in Albany, New York, journalists and their sources had a somewhat cozier relationship than they do now. You schmoozed. You obfuscated a bit. You kinda .. protected them. An important source of mine once told me that he’d probably take a $250,000 bribe; that that was his price. I didn’t report it.

I remember once describing a state legislator as being in “high spirits” during a holiday celebration on the floor of the New York State Assembly when what I should have said was that he was “obviously drooling drunk.” (Actually, an editor inserted the “high spirits,” informing me that one does not comment on apparent lack of sobriety.)

I also recall two things from covering the cops, back then. Two things I never reported:

Cops in the 1970s had a term they used: “You can beat the rap but you can’t beat the ride.” That was a reference to their state of mind: They grumpily felt that guilty perps often eventually got off, due to smart lawyering or weak evidence, but that the one thing the perps could not avoid was what might accidentally happen to them after their arrest, in the squad car. This was a source of amusement.

And the second thing I did not report was a term used by the district attorney’s office who prosecuted rape crimes. It was a team of three guys, and they took their jobs seriously. They went after criminals. But among themselves — and they shared this with reporters, including female reporters — they called themselves “the pussy posse.” Never reported, as far as I can recall.

Okay, here we go.

Q: It is shocking how illiterate people in advertising are, particularly top account execs.  They are paid to come up with corporate strategies, catchlines, pitches and such.  They are not paid as English majors.  There is nothing wrong with this, per se – we had lower-paid literate people who regularly fixed their f—-ups.  But I have seen people who earn a half million a year write  “amung” instead of “among,”  “poeple” instead of “people,” and “witch” instead of “which.” 

A: I sea no prolbem with this.

TIMELY TIP: If you’re reading this right now on an email:   Click here to get to my webpage, then click on the top headline (In this case, “Trumpunishment…“) for the full column, and comments, and real-time questions and answers. And you can refresh and see new questions and answers that appear as I regularly update the post from about noon to 1 p.m. ET today.

Q:  I worked in the porn industry, briefly.  The women performers were nice, and “normal.”   Funny.   Well aware of the irony of their situation, content with their role, and feeling mostly unexploited. I had no disrespect for them and wouldn’t have been freaked out if one was my daughter.

A: This does not really surprise me!  I once saw an outtake-blooper video from porn shoots. When the cameras were off, and the phony moaning was over,  the women seemed pretty smart and definitely into the silliness of their job. I liked them. 

Q: I used to interview people who were being considered for a security clearance. I would warn them to answer all my questions truthfully because we were also doing things like checking their names (and in some cases fingerprints) with the FBI, local police and credit bureaus. You may be surprised how many people who were arrested, skipped out on rent, etc. had "clean" records. BTW, so much for the efficacy of background checks for gun purchases.

A: Yikes, I guess.  I mean, part of me – the part that doesn’t like Big Brother – is buoyed by this, but there’s that other part – the “lawn order part” – that is disturbed.

Q: What is the quintessential Washington DC cultural event? Something that is "important" (as in the art gallery snoot that informs us that Geoffrey--not Jeff--was one of the most important artists of the period 1912-14), useful and enlightening to the populace both within the DMV and elsewhere but is all those things precisely because it occurs here? Sports teams? Nah, other cities have those? A Georgetown party of "A-listers"? No, those are just self-promoting chuckle bombs. A National (not mere city) symphony at the Kennedy Center? Maybe. Fourth of July fireworks on the National Mall? Should get some votes. I suggest the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. It highlights states, regions, countries, cultures, and especially knowledge that is danger of slipping away. It's unique to DC and yet can captivate and educate people everywhere. What's your nomination? Al Larsen Arlington VA

A: Here is a true story.  In 2001, I bought a house in Capitol Hill, Washington from a man I barely knew.  It turns out he was a founder of the Folklife Festival.   I forget his name, which embarrasses  me. .   Fifteen years later, when I was working on my book, One Day, I found myself talking to the son of the drummer for The Grateful Dead. (The Dead, and something that happened on the One Day, were a chapter in the book.)  And the guy told me that when he was a kid, his dad brought him to D.C. for concerts every once in a while, and the band stayed in the house of the guy who started the Folklife Festival.   It was my house!  I looked around!  Jerry slept there.  

Q: Googlenope: “Batter farts during at bat”. Some interesting hits regarding farting bats, but nothing baseball related.

A: Thank you for sharing this important observation.

Q: Aptonym Alert in this first person account in The Nation about a mother, her newborn, and how they got there: “I am pro-abortion because I love babies, and because I understand how challenging parenting can be in today’s world. It’s all interconnected," writes … Nikiya Natale.

A: Thank you.

Q: I created the Let Teddy Win blog, which established itself as the authoritative source of information about the Washington Nationals' presidents race from 2006-2020.

When the race had its brief moment as a national crossover story, my data on Teddy Roosevelt's losses was being cited regularly in major sports outlets like ESPN, politics outlets like The Hill and Politico, every major news network, every national newspaper, and every TV and radio station in the DC area. It's also been cited in a couple of books.

There were reasons to question my data. My tally of Teddy's losses did not match the number of home games the Nationals had played, nor did it match the number of wins by the other racing presidents. Only two outlets ever asked questions to verify the accuracy of my data: The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.

A: You are a bold and honest human. And you Won. Teddy won.

Q: In accounting, there is a need by courts to have accountants testify to establish business cases. Not CEOs or MBAs. Because testimony requires explaining basics, e.g. how money earned by someone is reflected by their paycheck/ bank account, captured by financial statements etc. Value of Nicole Simpson’s future earnings? Related by accountants. Accountants are also relied on a lot for ethical standards, like defining how a real estate magnate would ethically know how to value and report their properties etc.

A: I think I am getting your point, though it is not entirely complimentary to accountants.  I am thinking your are implying that relying on such testimony would be like relying on the testimony of a second-grade math teacher in a case involving quantum physics. 

Q:  Actuaries have a well-deserved reputation as a profession of soup-on-their-tie, bad combover, pedantic , nerdy bores who should be mandatory incels. But, counter intuitively, they typically hold their professional conferences in posh, exotic resorts. A few years ago, they were at the Four Seasons Resort on the Big Island in Hawaii. Coincidentally, the annual Ironman Ultra Triathalon was being held at the same time and many of the competitors were staying at The Four Seasons. As you walked around the lagoon pool that week, it was not hard to figure out where the actuaries stopped and the Ironmen began.

A: Thank you.  I once wrote a column about having taken an at-bat from a minor league pitcher. Wife asked me if what I saw in the locker room was similar to what I saw in the Washington Post locker room. My answer was simply: “No.”

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Q: Smoke detectors are the best defense we have in case of a house fire for most people but they only cut the fatality rate in fire by about 40%. That is significant. But the truth is that house fires go fast. Really fast. It takes about 40 seconds for a flaming fire to cause the first smoke detector to go off. If this smoke detector is on a different floor and if your detectors aren’t the kind where they all go off if one does, it can take minutes for the next one to go off and then by the time you wake up, you may already be severely hypoxic and confused and it may not be possible for you to escape. If the first one does wake you up, you have something like 40-120 seconds before your house probably reaches flashover which kills firefighters in full turnout gear. So, if you build a new house, put in sprinklers. They don’t all go off if one does (I wish Hollywood would stop that in movies), they can be recessed in the ceiling so kids don’t knock them with the indoor football they aren’t supposed to be playing, AND, they aren’t any more susceptible to leaking thar any other water pipe in your house. They can be installed in new construction for around 1% of the total building cost and in one jurisdiction where single family homes have been required to have sprinklers for more than 2 decades, not a single house fire death in a sprinkler protected home. So why isn’t it required everywhere. The builder’s lobby. They spread false propaganda about costs and property damage and win. The fact is that a fire hose is going to dump about 150 gallons a minute in your house fire. A sprinkler (and 98% of fires are controlled by one or two sprinklers activating) will dump maybe 30 gallons a minute (varies depending on your water pressure but they’re designed to deliver about 0.10 gpm/square foot and since they don’t all go off at once that usually translates to roughly 30 gpm or less).

A: This was very detailed and upsetting.  The other day, we had a carbon monoxide alarm go off in our house.   I ran to the store and bought two more.  They didn’t sound an alarm.  So I threw out the first one. Was this right? Are we all going to die, including the dog? What if the dog survives us? Who will take care of her?

Q: I am a scientist. I also teach science. A few years ago, I had a student in my class with a name of foreign origin that is impossibly funny to vulgar American ears. I shared this fact with my family, who shared it with friends. All agree that the name is impossibly funny. One named their robot vacuum cleaner after this student. It sounds like a porn name, one that is intended to be such an obvious joke that it can be funny only because it is real. This student returned to work on a graduate degree with me. This student now has a job in the same field as me. It is likely that I will continue to encounter this former student throughout the rest of my career, which is why I cannot say what is the name and I cannot specify my scientific field, because it is so small. I think I might explode with this knowledge.

A: This is in reference to my prior disclosure that I have a new doctor with one of the funniest names in the world, a name I have shared with only three friends – all of whom have been sworn to secrecy – and will never share with anyone else.  No other disclosures will happen here, though I will reveal he is an ophthalmologist.

Q: I work in a library. People think we all revere books. We do not. We throw a ton of books away, every day, because books can be wonderful but they are also ephemeral and replaceable. When they come in stained with coffee or full of bedbugs, we simply chuck ‘em in the recycling or trash without last rites or a Viking farewell. And when you bring us your moms cookbooks from the microwave era as a “donation,” we say thank you very sincerely and give you a tax receipt, and chuck them in the bin. It is okay to throw books away! But if you cannot, we will do it for you.

A: Many many years ago, Julia Child spoke before a class I had at Harvard. Wife was with me. Wife revered Julia Child. At the last minute, she decided not to bring her copy of The French Chef Cookbook, to ask Julia to sign it. She decided it would be an insult, since it was so old and stained and dog-eared and oily. Only later did she regret this. We both understood it would have been the greatest compliment.

This is Gene. I am calling this one down. PLEASE send in more stuff, questions ,etc. and I will answer them on Thursday, when we present the bizarre and wonderful results of the bad-poll Invitational contest contest.