It’s not often I get concerned, or consternated, by local news stories here in Baltimore. What’s left of the media isn’t much—I can find out the weather forecast and the Orioles comings and goings online, and the latest government corruption, in a politically-corrupt city, washes over me. Recently, however, there was a minor hubbub about Maryland’s House of Delegates passing a bill repealing the “prohibition of selling condoms in public school vending machines.” According to The Baltimore Sun’s Hannah Gaskill: “House Bill 380 would allow contraceptives to be sold in nursery school, preschool, elementary and high school vending machines.” The bill was tabled in a Democratic-controlled State Senate committee, with little fanfare. Gov. Wes Moore (who’s become faintly chummy with President Trump) had no comment.
Various conservative outlets—FOX, The Daily Mail, The New York Post—ran salacious headlines featuring the “good parts” but the story mostly evaporated, and like a correction buried on page 22, I haven’t seen any follow-up. Objectively, I doubt tots Walker or Olivia would’ve plunked two quarters for a condom in their nursery school bathrooms, though maybe the teachers got their hopes up, but the whole notion was fairly comical. When I was in high school there was a vending machine in the cafeteria that sold apples and pears, but no rubbers (maybe because The Pill ruled in those days), and if needed you went red-faced into a pharmacy, bought a pack of Trojans and put a lucky one in your wallet.
A Maryland Republican Delegate, Lauren Aiken protested, saying the now-dead bill is “the kind of stuff that makes swing states go red,” and “shocks the conscience.” Maryland’s not a swing state, and won’t go red, unless the government goes crazy-woke—as if it’s 2021—and starts promoting unisex high school locker rooms and completely-out-of-control taxes. Gov. Moore may be pliable, indecisive, and easy to roll, but he supposedly has presidential aspirations and is bound to hug the political center.
Anyway, the internet and media “pivot” faster than a Mason Miller heater, and Maryland’s temporary embarrassment—so little regard is shown for my state that if Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott was indicted for a side hustle of loan-sharking it’d consume just two hours of the news cycle—is history. More pressing in the media-talks-about-the-media culture (not new, just more pronounced in the past 15 years) was the announcement by Jeff Bezos, that his Washington Post opinion section would now feature likely unilluminating essays about “personal liberties and free markets.” The Post isn’t relevant in “the national conversation,” although for what it’s worth, Bezos owns the paper and can do what he wants. There was another staff revolt—“Look what’s happening in our newsroom, got to revolution, got to revolution!”—and some Post veterans, who could withstand the financial hit, sanctimoniously left the paper. So what.
The bigger mystery to me, again, is why Bezos doesn’t unload the money-losing enterprise: it’s an attractive acquisition for a left- or right-wing billionaire, who could sell the Post’s real estate, cut the staff by half, turn a profit and institute Champagne Fridays.
More interesting is that Anne Tyler’s new novel Three Days in June is a muted return to form—after her dismal French Braids in 2022 [https://www.splicetoday.com/writing/bad-report-card]—even if it’s far removed from her prize-winning days (if you take such prizes seriously, which I don’t) of decades ago. Tyler’s now 83, and reading her current work isn’t so far off from, say, seeing a Santana nostalgia tour, except you don’t have to push through a line of “second childhood” boomers singing “Evil Ways” as they use cellphone flashlights to locate their seats.
This Tyler paragraph was a glimmer of her best work: “Everything Sophie said, as a rule, was about three degrees too vivacious. It seemed that she lived on some other level than ours, someplace louder and more brightly lit.” The lyric of Hattie Carroll “emptying ashtrays on a whole other level” came to mind—word association I guess—and I hummed Bob Dylan’s 1964 song about William Zantzinger slaying Carroll in “a Baltimore hotel society gathering,” because I’m a boomer too, even though I’ve less-than-zero desire to see the 83-year-old singer perform again.
The made-for-no-reason film A Complete Unknown is credited with giving Dylan Betty White/Tony Bennett status among the young, a notion so preposterous—as if the songwriter/performer wasn’t universally recognized before Timothee Chalamet began ticking off his favorite Dylan “deep cuts” to adoring interviewers—that if I weren’t already so disgusted at the intellectual state of this country, I’d a put a rag over my face and disconsolately whistle Hank Williams’ “Lost Highway.”
Last week at Splice Today Mark Judge (who has justifiable enmity towards MSM) took apart Jake Tapper and predicted the CNN anchor’s book Original Sin, co-authored with Alex Thompson, would flop—although propped up by small bulk sales for publicity—when it’s published in May. I think that’s correct for a couple of reasons: who wants to read again about the cover-up of Joe Biden’s cognitive decline during his entire presidency (in which Tapper was complicit), and if there’s a demand for such “tell-all” political books it’s escaped me. I do wonder how Tapper, considering his CNN duties, was able to co-write a book in, as he said on Twitter, two months, allegedly interviewing over 200 sources. That’s a very fast turnaround, and I smell interns at work. Volunteer interns at that—if they have the “right” connections—or minimum-wage bright-eyed guys and gals.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023