Pun Salad

Reason's latest entry in their continuing series: Great moments in unintended consequences.

Remember: birds are flammable, pickpockets are sneaky, balloons eventually pop, taxation is theft.

Also of note:

• Future unintended consequences: unnecessary flu deaths. That's what leaps to mind from reading the WSJ headline: FDA Refuses to Consider Approving Use of Moderna’s New Flu Vaccine.

  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration refused to review Moderna’s application to sell a new seasonal flu vaccine.

  The FDA sent Moderna a “refusal-to-file” letter earlier this month, saying the company’s study testing the vaccine wasn’t sufficient, and the agency wouldn’t take up the company’s request for approval to sell the shot, Moderna said Tuesday.

  In the letter, the FDA said Moderna failed during testing to compare its experimental flu vaccine with the best available vaccine on the market.

  Moderna said the FDA didn’t identify any concerns about the safety or effectiveness of the company’s experimental vaccine. The company said it was asking the agency for a meeting to discuss the matter.

  Moderna was surprised by the rejection. “It does feel like the rules of the game are being changed after it’s been played,” Moderna President Stephen Hoge said in an interview.

  With RFKJr calling the "shots" (heh), pharmaceutical companies had best prepare for unpredictable Calvinball rule changes from the FDA.

• So I'm not debating it. But… Isn't Jeff Blehar's headline a tad self-contradictory: Bad Bunny Super Bowl Halftime Show Is Not an ‘Issue’ Worth Debating.

  Worse:

  I switched off the game early because it was so boring, so I didn’t watch the halftime show when it was on. Instead, I “Twitter-watched” it — watched the reactions of others online. And what I saw spill forth was a Rorschach inkblot spreading out in real time: Was it political? Was it mild and inoffensive? Was it an entertaining hoot or a bizarre failure? All I know is that everybody was fighting bitterly about the cultural import of a guy who self-identifies as a vicious hare — which I assume is about as seriously as we should take him — and the angles were almost entirely predictable based on partisan priors. (Notable exception: Commentary’s John Podhoretz, who delightfully zagged where others zigged.)

  When I finally checked the thing out myself, I had three takeaways: (1) My conversational Spanish is way rustier than I thought. (2) Golly, Puerto Rican women sure are lovely. (3) Whoever choreographed this should work on the next major stage production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Seriously, hundreds of humans dressed as tall reeds and sugarcane stalks? Watching them exit the field afterward was its own kind of surreal joy. Birnam Wood came to Dunsinane on Sunday night, so if you’re the sort to put stock in witch’s curses, best start contemplating the end of your reign.

  Jeffrey gets more content out of the halftime show by not watching it real time. I will have to remember this for next year.

• And that tune is "Misty Mountain Hop" by Led Zep. Jim Geraghty notes the Gray Lady having second thoughts about America getting its herb on: The New York Times Changes Its Tune on Marijuana, at Last.

  It’s always a good day when the New York Times editorial board catches up to our Charlie Cooke.

  Back in November, Charlie wrote a typically insightful and well-thought-out magazine piece lamenting that “marijuana legalization is a good idea with bad consequences”:

  The United States has some of the greatest and most interesting cities in the world — New York, Chicago, San Francisco — and, over the last five or so years, almost all of them have become unpleasant to walk around in thanks to the ubiquitous smell of weed. Truly, it is everywhere — including, most distressingly, wafting through open-air restaurants and sidewalk cafés. There is a reason that the colloquial name for marijuana is “skunk,” and there is a reason that one tries to avoid skunks: They are not, in any circumstance, nice to be around. . . .

  Nobody seems to believe that the omnipresent smell of weed is the inevitable consequence of their viewpoint. And they’re right: It’s not. Toleration of the public consumption of marijuana — whether explicit or implicit — is a choice that exists wholly independently of the underlying legal status of the drug. Indeed, when one stops to think about it for a moment, it’s rather peculiar that we have ended up in this position in the first instance. The go-to comparison for cannabis is alcohol. And, in almost every major city in the United States, it is illegal to drink alcohol on the street. How can it possibly be the case that we are more permissive toward a drug that has just been legalized than toward the one that has been a mainstay of our culture (including during Prohibition!) since the beginning of the republic?

  We could have just put piles of burning tires interspersed throughout the downtowns of major U.S. cities and achieved the same olfactory effect.

  Charlie also pointed out the absurdity that a culture that has effectively banned tobacco smoking in every public space is now completely fine with smoking marijuana in those same public spaces. A major argument that drove the ban on tobacco smoking in public places was the danger of secondhand smoke. Apparently, both the broader public and most lawmakers have decided that when it comes to marijuana smoking, we’re just not going to worry about that sort of thing.

  I lost my sense of smell a few years ago, so someone would have to tell me if that's an issue in the LFOD state.

• His competition is fierce, unfortunately. George Will notes an unofficial Olympic event: JD Vance vies for the gold medal in coarseness and flippancy. (WaPo gifted link)

  Spurning the rich subtleties of the English language, JD Vance has a penchant for words that he perhaps thinks display manly vigor, and express a populist’s rejection of refinement. In a recent social media post, he called someone whose posts annoyed him a “dipshit.” He recently told an interviewer that anyone who criticizes his wife can “eat shit.”

  Now, Vance might reasonably believe that many Americans enjoy potty-mouthed high officials. The “Access Hollywood” tape became public 32 days before the 2016 election in which the star of the tape, who mused about grabbing women’s genitals, was elected president. At a minimum, it would be reasonable for Vance to suppose that, after five years of a president who talks about “shithole countries,” Americans are inured to such pungent language.

  I will admit that I've grown inordinately fond of using "bullshit" when talking about Trump or Vance. In my defense, George, I'm not sure there's a better word available.

• I will try to keep this in mind. Kat Rosenfield advises us: Stop Asking Olympians How They Feel About America.

  The most salacious Winter Olympics drama of the week was, for me, an emotional roller coaster. A high-speed journey from dismay to horror to nauseated recognition, culminating in a sense of having fallen out of space and time as déjà vu collided with clairvoyance. The thing that was happening had happened before; it would happen again, and again.

  I am referring, of course, to the incident wherein American Olympic skier Hunter Hess said he had “mixed emotions” about certain U.S. domestic policies, and President Donald Trump called Hess a “real loser” who “shouldn’t have tried out for the team, and it’s too bad he’s on it.”

  Hess’s comments appear to have been made in response to a question from the press about how it felt to be representing the United States at this present moment of political turmoil (as opposed to, you know, any prior moment of the near-continuous turmoil of the past 15-odd years). That Trump responded by calling Hess a “loser” is best categorized, like so many Trumpian shenanigans, under “disappointment” rather than “surprise.” I’m not saying the 79-year-old president of the United States shouldn’t indulge in petty middle school–style beefing with an athlete one-third his age; I’m saying, if he’s going to do it, can’t he steal Hess’s girlfriend, put rotten eggs in his locker, and challenge him to a dance-off like a normal person?

  Fine, Kat. I just hope Gertie Burper does OK in (or at least, survives) the luge.

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