George Will - What Happened ?

For most of his adult life Will played second fiddle to William F. Buckley. He was always the second conservative, after Buckley, invited to the Georgetown parties or on the pages of National Review. I think the second class status warped him into the bitter, angry and deluded man he is today. Buckley has been gone for over 10 years and Will has not been hailed as the heir apparent. That anger is directed at DJT because DJT is accomplishing the conservative agenda without his assistance. 

All one needs to know about George Will is the way he treated his first wife and handicapped son.  The man is not worthy of an audience.

By coincidence, I read that this morning. My favorite part was:



None of us live in Washington nor feed our lives on celebrity. I can no more understand the life of Neil Armstrong (a literally stratospheric career) than I can understand the lives of the professional talking-heads in Washington D.C. We can try to measure them via our own lives, or even some objective standard, but the two shall never be within spitting distance of each other.

I have no problem with someone who despises Trump. I despise Trump. But not because he doesn’t hold his little pinky extended when he drinks his tea. I think most objections by the chattering class (or those who identify with them) are about style, not substance.

In many ways, Trump has proved himself to be a useful son-of-a-bitch, not unlike General Patton. (Insert a vast discussion of the the good and bad things he’s done within the context of what Hillary or the typical RINO would have done.)

George Will is a very good writer. I respect him for that. As for a thinker, he’s veered more and more toward a pseudo-intellectual, if not a grifter of the mass media, his only purpose to be noticed (which is the fishbowl they all swim in).

He does have an article on The Puzzling Problem of Vaping.

This is not much more than weak “descriptive conservatism.” Tobacco is bad. A lot of kids are using it now via vaping. Ho hum. But descriptive conservatism is by no means unique to Will, just as “ranting conservatism” is not unique to what used to pass for citizen-journalism at StubbornThings.

Regarding vaping, I won’t get into the tobacco issue, per se. Yes, of course, it's ironic that the generations pummeled with anti-smoking messages are now taking it up with perhaps even more enthusiasm than the youngsters who saw James Dean puffing away.

The thing about cigarettes (harmful as they may be), they are sort of cool. The fire, the smoke. This is why movie stars looked cool when smoking, especially guys like Robert Mitchum or Bogie.





But vapers look like they just escaped Romper Room. Those silly puffs of vapor look like part of a kiddy carnival ride that goes with them.

So that I don't engage in little more than descriptive conservatism, or ranting conservatism, I will formulate a call to action: Next time you see a vaper, tell them how ridiculous they look. That's the kind of peer pressure that could work.

No vaping at the nursing home? That has to be a violation of someone's civil rights.

There once was an elderly vaper
Making nicotine mists was his caper
But not all joined in the craze
Of the addictive wet haze
So they traded him in for a tapir

A short story is called for.

In the late 1980s, while living in Hong Kong, my company banker invited me to some large formal dinner/event in a major hotel, I believe it was the now leveled Hilton. We had to wear tuxedos and black ties. As I recall, I had to have a tuxedo made as I hadn't been to anything so formal for years.

In any case, after the dessert plates were cleared and coffee had been served, the banker and I lighted up a couple of good Macanudos. (Yes smoking was not yet a capital offense in 1980s Hong Kong) We sat their puffing and talking when the banker's date turned to the banker and said, "Adrian, you look like a kid smoking a cigar." She then turned in my direction and said, "But Fu Zu looks like a capitalist." We all had a good laugh. I felt she meant it as a compliment and I took it as such.

He clearly likes his cigar. As for looking like a capitalist??? I will have to think about it for a while.

An Action-heroist smoking a cigar:



A Hucksterist (although I couldn't tell you which movie this is from):



A Comedianist:



A Lawmanist:



And finally, an Addamsist: