I don’t get into the business of “sending good thoughts and prayers” to people I don’t know—on Twitter, some pleas are real, others on-nose parodies—but it’s likely that some suckers will try and fix up New York Times op-ed columnist David French. It’s a shame that successful self-promoter Bari Weiss plucked the fluffy professional Catholic Ross Douthat from the Times’ opinion bullpen for 60 Minutes—I’d have bet on Hang-Down-Your-Head-Tom-Dooley Bret Stephens, who appears lost in the most terrifying funhouse—instead of French, who remains the most irritating Big Thinker at the print/digital website.
Last week I read a terminally convoluted article by French (headlined “This Is What’s Keeping Me Up at Night”) worrying himself into a hubristic lather that after November’s midterms Donald Trump and his supporters—sycophants—will attempt to alter the results through Byzantine Congressional rules.
He begins: “In hindsight, the contours of President Trump’s plan to steal the 2020 election were almost painfully obvious. By casting Democrats as an existential threat [French can’t go even a week without invoking that now-meaningless but still unfathomably popular cliché] to the nation (and to the evangelical church) Trump activated both the fear and the religious zeal of his most loyal supporters… Trump and his supporters made wild claim after wild claim (it was exhausting writing piece after piece rebutting his conspiracy theories) so that even more normal and sensible Republicans began to get the impression that something was wrong in 2020, even if they couldn’t quite put their finger on what it was.”
Even the “normies”!
Did anyone ask French to “exhaust himself” rebutting Trump’s claims? Can he spell h-y-p-e-r-b-o-l-e? And it’s not as if nearly every reporter and pundit, some on the unofficial Democratic National Committee payroll, some not—it’ll always be January 6th, 2021—weren’t huffing (paint thinner!) about the same “conspiracies.”
French, not once, mentions that 2020 was the “Covid Election,” making it an anomaly in American politics. That’s a willful omission, but I’d guess I-speak-outdated-truth-to-power French has carte blanche to work without any editor. I didn’t vote for either candidate six years ago, but disliked the visibly unstable Joe Biden more than Trump. Still, when Biden’s election was called, I accepted the result, as did most Americans.
In a contest that was marked by an unprecedented number of mail-in and early-voting ballots (Biden received a record 81 million votes, a fishy total as even some of his supporters privately admitted), there was no question that electoral theft took place, by Republicans and Democrats. When people were still wearing masks and anticipating the Covid vaccine (Trump, not as bad as the now-disgraced Anthony Fauci, didn’t distinguish himself in the crisis), while taking verbatim the edicts from most elected officials about “super-spreader” events like Thanksgiving Dinner, they had more immediate concerns than a presidential election. (It was similar in 2008, at least for me, since the crippling financial crisis was omnipresent, and I didn’t care who won the presidency, or for that matter, didn’t give the Red Sox’s loss to the Tampa Bay Rays in the ALCS more than two minutes’ thought.)
Trump did throw increasingly weird tantrums after he lost, and had the votes gone the other way, Biden undoubtedly would’ve done the same, although in a less bombastic public fashion. But that’s history six years later, and French can’t bring himself to discuss the current political environment aside from more “vote-stealing”—the war between moderate-liberal Democrats and the DSA, as a decent primer from The Wall Street Journal spelled out—because he’s stuck in time.
Maybe someone, in their charity, will visit Great Man French with a dozen tubes of icky solvent, and transport him fully to 2026. I don’t really care either way, since French is French, and no matter what year he’s living in, it’s in his interest (and bank account) to continue flogging the same story, with little deviation. (I could’ve written a parody of French’s latest, but that would’ve caused a sleepless and exhausting night or two and I haven’t the patience.) What I found curious in French’s long dispatch—which caused him such trauma—was at the end he said that his third grandchild was born. Splendid news for the scold and his family, and one might think he’d revel in that instead of re-hashing the 2020 election and ringing alarms about the “end of democracy” after November’s midterms.
The picture above includes my soon-to-be-married dad with my Aunt Winnie to his right at the Duncan family’s home in the Bronx. No idea where my mom was—perhaps she snapped the photo (which was developed at Wisconsin’s Peerless Photo Shop, likely sent by mail) but it was a happy time, despite a world that was far more unstable than today’s.
Take a look at the clues to figure out the year: Edmundo Ros forms his own rumba band; Doris Day, 16, joins Les Brown’s band; Glenn Miller and his orchestra charted high with “When You Wish Upon a Star”; Percy Sledge is born and Effie Crockett dies; the Chicago Bears win the NFL Championship Game; The Reds take the World Series; Joe Louis is the Heavyweight Champ; Lawson Little wins the U.S. Open; Walt Disney’s Pinocchio is released; Booker T. Washington is the first African-American pictured on a U.S. postage stamp; Bugs Bunny debuts in A Wild Hare; Erskine Caldwell’s Trouble in July and Richard Wright’s Native Son are published; and William Saroyan wins the Drama Pulitzer Prize.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023