Pun Salad

A lot of self-flattery is found when looking at Amazon's array of political-statement paraphernalia. I don't usually fall for it, but… hey, I liked the frog.

At the WSJ this morn, Andy Kessler's column is a celebratory and cautionary combination: Woke Goes Up in Smoke. (WSJ gifted link)

Andy warns later: "But like all slasher movies, the killer isn’t dead yet. He’s hiding in the dark." Could be. As Thomas Jefferson did not say (but is nonetheless true): "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."

So stay awake.

Also of note:

• Failed Prophet I. Matt Ridley apparently now posts at the Rational Optimist Society substack. A recent contibution bids farewell to Paul Ehrlich's anti-human legacy.

  The butterfly biologist turned rock-star eco-pessimist, Paul Ehrlich has died at the age of 93. That in itself is remarkable because in 1970 he forecast that within the coming decade “100-200 million people per year will be starving to death” and “by 1985 enough millions will have died to reduce the earth’s population to some acceptable level, like 1.5 billion people”. Furthermore, by 1980 the life expectancy of the average American would have fallen 42 years as a result of cancer caused by pesticides.

  Yet he not only lived more than 50 years longer than 42; he lived to be one of more than 8 billion people in a world where global life expectancy has increased at the average rate of seven hours per day since he forecast it would collapse. Meanwhile, famine has all but gone extinct, with death rates from mass starvation down to a tiny fraction of what they were in the 1960s. Here are the astounding numbers: in the 1960s, 29.7 million people out of a population of 3 billion died in famines that killed more than 100,000 people each. In the 2010s, 1.1 million out of a population of more than 8 billion died in such episodes: a decline of 99% in the death rate.

  In short, Ehrlich was wrong. Not, as the New York Times said in its obituary this week, “premature”, but radically, completely, spectacularly wrong. He was wrong as soon as he put pen to paper and went on being wrong for decades afterwards. He shot to fame with a best-selling book in 1968, The Population Bomb, whose prologue dismissed all hope for humankind: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.”

  I recently read Dan Wang's book Breakneck, which (among many other things) detailed the death and misery caused not by famine, but by China's One Child Policy, carried out by people who made the mistake of believing Ehrlich and his ilk.

• Failed Prophet II. Bjørn Lomborg takes to the pages of the latest issue of National Review to "celebrate" the 20th anniversery of An Inconvenient Truth, aka Al Gore’s False Prophecy. (NR gifted link)

  Two decades have passed since Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth hit theaters, in May 2006, catapulting climate change into the global spotlight. The film, with its dramatic visuals and dire warnings, transformed the issue from a niche ecological concern into a front-page crisis. World leaders in rich countries began labeling it an “existential threat,” and it dominated international agendas. Gore’s message especially resonated with the elites who travel by private jet to attend global conferences, and it inspired a generation of influencers, activists, and policymakers.

  As we approach the film’s 20th anniversary, it’s a time to reflect on not just its impact but its accuracy. The film’s predictions of escalating catastrophes have largely failed to materialize, its policy prescriptions have fallen short, and the $16 trillion currently spent in pursuit of its vision has delivered scant benefits. An Inconvenient Truth encapsulates the past two decades of climate debate: heavy on emotion and costs, light on evidence and benefits.

  As Marvin Gaye taught us many years ago: "Believe half of what you see Son, and none of what you hear, and also nothing from Al Gore."

• "Never mind." Robert Graboyes looks at the long history of finding fascists under the bed: Give 'em Hell, Hairy.

  I can’t say how many times in recent weeks I’ve heard some American politician (often, but not always, Donald Trump) described as a “fascist.” Let me offer some alternative terms suitable for bipartisan bile: authoritarian, autocrat, bully, blowhard, hoodlum, hooligan, narcissist, thug, gangster, goon, strongman. Use any of these words, and the conversation can continue, punctuated but not upended by the invective. Use “fascist,” and the original conversation vanishes beneath a smog of sophistry over what fascism is and who deserves the label.

  Anyone who calls some contemporary American political figure a fascist instantly becomes Roseanne Roseannadanna—Gilda Radner’s SNL “consumer journalist”—and so does everyone else in the conversation. Roseannadanna would read a query on some specific topic from a viewer (usually “a Mister Richard Fedder from Fort Lee, New Jersey”), gloss over the query for 10 or 15 seconds, and then meander ad nauseam over some pointless, irrelevant anecdote involving a posh celebrity (e.g., Joyce Brothers, Yves Saint-Laurent, Princess Lee Radziwill) and a grotesque bodily function (e.g., sweat balls, navel lint, boogers, toilet paper stuck on shoes, greasy hair, runny noses, bad breath, armpit stains, foot odor, pantyhose runs, dandruff, food stuck in teeth, earwax, ingrown hairs, rashes, zits, stomach noises, gas, underarm hair, panty lines, sweaty socks, smudged lipstick, cheap wigs, ill-fitting bras, and hemorrhoids.) When the exasperated Jane Curtin would inquire as to the relevance of the peroration, Roseannadanna would answer:

  “Well, Jane, it’s always something. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.”

  Mind you, every single one of Roseannadanna’s musings was more interesting, informative, and thoughtful than any discussion of whether “fascist” is or is not an appropriate label for Trump or any other 21st century American politician. I blame a 20th century politician—Harry S Truman—for the Left’s descent into Roseannadannaism. (Occasionally, right-wingers calling left-wingers “Fascist,” but such usages are less frequent and less mainstream.)

  Robert provides a fine history of the careless, stupid smear.

• But speaking of smears… Jeff Maurer wrotes of one that never went out of style: Why the Drunken, Brawling Irish Got Me Thinking About Hannah Gadsby.

  For whatever reason, this year I really noticed the flamboyantly non-PC nature of St. Patrick’s Day. Drinking is the cornerstone of the whole thing, so much so that even hipster cocktail bars will slap a paper leprechaun on the wall and dye their twee bottles of liqueur made from daffodils bright green. The obviously-not-Irish are encouraged to participate, and fake accents abound. My son’s preschool class covered green paper plates with stickers of shamrocks, rainbows, and buckle-clad green stovepipe hats, and I wondered what the equivalent project would look like for, say, Chinese New Year or Cinco de Mayo.

  Every comedian knows that you can joke about the Irish. Conan O’Brien, who might be literally the most Irish man who ever lived, jokes about being Irish all the time. 30 Rock is full of Irish jokes about Jack and Dennis and Jack’s high school girlfriend from Boston. TV writers live in fear of the network or a sensitivity reader dragging you into a deadly earnest conversation about a joke you wrote at 2AM while drunk, but I have never heard of an Irish joke triggering that conversation. And then there’s the Notre Dame Fighting Irish logo, which is a literal brawling leprechaun but is beloved and defended by fans of that school.

  What should we make of all this? I think the implication is obvious: The Irish are cool winners. Irish stereotypes mattered back when there were political parties dedicated to Irish oppression, but these days, Irish Americans are highly successful according to pretty much any metric you choose. Ireland itself is a robust economy and an intermittently successful soccer team. The Irish in America won — everything they aspired to back when Daniel Day Lewis was trying to drive them out of New York happened. So why should they care if a cultural celebration sometimes bleeds into clumsy stereotypes? How does that hurt them? The answer is: It doesn’t. They’re secure and successful and some lightly-offensive imagery can be — and is — laughed off.

  And then Hannah Gadsby shows up. Read on, if you dare.

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