Dear Reader (including those of you starting a new career),
Let’s start this Dr. Seuss style.
“I Don’t Like Seed Oils!”
I do not like these seed oils, no!
I do not like them, friend or foe.
Would you cook fries in soybean oil?
Would you fry them, watch them boil?
No soybean oil! Not in my fries!
No seed oil tricks, no seed oil lies!
Soy’s for soy boys, weak and bland—
I’ll eat no oils from their hand!
Would you like them from canola?
Maybe just a little cola?
No canola, no thank you please!
Seed oils make me ill at ease.
Cottonseed? Sunflower too?
Seed oils I will give to you.
You should eat fries cooked in fat!
Yummy tallow, fancy that!
Tallow fries? Yes, that’s my style!
Golden, crispy—makes me smile.
Seed oils pale next to beef fat—
Give me tallow fries, that’s that!
I do not like these seed oils, no!
Take your oils, soy boys, go!
Give me butter, tallow, ghee—
Seed oils just aren’t right for me!
But hey, stupid is so hot right now.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick explained this morning that the only reason Greenland is owned by Denmark is, well, I’ll let him say it:
Just remember, the reason Greenland is part of Denmark, did you ever think about that? Why is Greenland part of Denmark? Because Erik the Red, Erik the Red, was this Viking, right? He was kicked out of Denmark for murdering people. He went to Iceland. He was kicked out of Iceland for murdering people. He goes to Greenland. And what does he do? He murders people and takes over Greenland.
As one wag put it, “We’ve reached the land acknowledgements phase of MAGA.”
I mean, this idea is like Howard Zinn and Jimmy Hoffa had a baby.
One of the great blunders is getting into a land war in Southeast Asia, but another is taking Howard Lutnick too seriously. But come on. The mind reels at where this train of thought will take us. No one remind Mexico how we got Texas. I don’t mean to stir that pot in particular. Because nearly every country has a similar story.
But let’s get back to french fries made in tallow. I like them. I think they taste better than fries cooked in vegetable oil. But I am entirely open to the idea that my opinion is deeply informed by nostalgia for how much I loved McDonald’s fries when I was a kid. I also thought ice cream tasted better when I was a kid. I don’t think that’s because ice cream has gotten worse, I think it’s because ice cream tastes awesome when you’re a little kid.
It’s sorta like the line “the Golden Age of science fiction is 16.” Don’t get me wrong, I love Dune. But I love Dune in part because I read it at the age when Dune is mind-blowing. I think The Catcher in the Rye is a bad book, but if you read it at the right age, you’re like, “Holy crap, this guy is a wizard. He knows how I feel!”
Anyway, people are talking beef-fat fries right now because Steak ’n Shake, a struggling fast food chain, has gone MAHA. “We RFK’d our fries,” Steak ’n Shake Chief Operating Officer Daniel Edwards said in a February Fox News interview.
In one of Sean Hannity’s patented soft-hitting interviews, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—scourge of seed oils—said, “We are very thankful to them for RFKing their French fries. They’ve turned my name into a verb.” Weird, I thought the practice of dumping animal carcasses in unusual locations was called RFKing. Though I’ve also heard people use the term for driving your spouse to suicide, as in “he RFK’d her to inherit the beach house.” In fairness, there’s a morbid tradition of turning Kennedys into verbs. RFK Jr.’s uncle inspired the phrase to “Ted Kennedy” someone, which roughly means an unlicensed high-speed burial at sea. To “Joe Kennedy” something is to play footsie with Nazis. A lot of right-wing influencers have been on a spree of Joe Kennedying lately.
I understand that there’s an argument that seed oils are bad for you. I’m totally open to it. I’m pretty sure that beef fat can be bad for you, too. Everything in moderation and all that.
But contrary to some very strange rumors out there, the focus of this “news”letter is not nutrition and healthy diet tips. I mean, sometimes people do ask when they see me on TV, “I wonder what he’s eating?” But I think they’re looking for tips on what not to eat.
I just want to make a different point. It’s funny, I spend most of my time commenting on politics in one way or another. But I don’t actually like politics very much. Or to be more precise, I don’t like politics outside of the proper realm of the political. I generally don’t like it when politics intrudes on food, movies, fashion, sports, TV, music, cars, etc.
Take cars: The other day Charlie Cooke had a good piece on the politicization of Tesla. He begins:
At Semafor, David Weigel asks Senator Adam Schiff, “How do you feel right now about owning a Tesla? What do you plan to do with it?” Schiff responds, “I sure as hell wouldn’t buy one now. If I’d have known what a selfish and destructive human being he would be, I never would have bought one to begin with. I’d be happy to unload it.”
I find this attitude bizarre. Does Schiff like the car? If so, has that car changed for the worse in the last year? The purpose of a Tesla — or of any car — is to be a car. It’s not a charity donation, or an affinity tattoo, or a T-shirt with a political slogan on it. It’s a car. Scouring the market for products made by companies whose founders or executives you like is a silly, unwinnable game that, ultimately, deprives you of the core benefits of capitalism. I understand that Adam Schiff is a political person — he’s a U.S. senator, after all — but is he really so political that he intends to sell his car because he dislikes the owner of the company that produced it?
Now, I agree 100 percent with Charlie in principle. In practice, I think there are exceptions to the rule. Like I’m not sure if I were alive in the 1920s, that I wouldn’t have looked to unload my Model T after Henry Ford published The International Jew. Now there was a guy who was Joe Kennedying before it was cool.
More to the point, as Charlie notes, I think the problem Tesla faces is that a lot of the early adopters of Teslas bought them in the first place to make a political statement. Back when Elon Musk was a beloved figure of the gentry left, he sold a bunch of people his cars so they could virtue-signal about climate change at high speeds. Long before he went MAGA, many of these early adopters started hating on Tesla because Musk had the effrontery to make affordable versions of his car. They couldn’t forgive him for depreciating the status symbol of their luxury beliefs.
But that was a champagne problem compared to the fact that Tesla is now considered the Official Vehicle of MAGA. I think the people vandalizing Tesla dealerships shouldn’t be called “domestic terrorists” but I have no problem whatsoever with them all being prosecuted.
What bothers me about all of this is the politicization of everything.
As longtime readers know, one of my core explanations for why partisanship has been running riot for the last couple decades is that Congress and the parties aren’t doing their jobs. Congress is where politics is supposed to happen. Politics is what political parties are supposed to do. When they fall down on the job, politics spills out of its proper containment vessels and into the media, Hollywood, etc. People internalize partisanship because the professionals won’t handle it responsibly.
But there’s another factor. It is axiomatically true that the bigger and more intrusive government gets, more stuff is considered “political.” This was a major theme of Liberal Fascism. For instance:
Most successful businessmen would prefer not to bother with politics. For years both Wal-Mart and Microsoft boasted that they had no interest in Washington. Microsoft’s chief, Bill Gates, bragged that he was “from the other Washington,” and he basically had one lonely lobbyist hanging around the nation’s capital. Gates changed his mind when the government nearly destroyed his company. The Senate Judiciary Committee invited him to Washington, D.C., to atone for his success, and the senators, in the words of the New York Times, “took a kind of giddy delight in making the wealthiest man in America squirm in his seat.” In response, Gates hired an army of consultants, lobbyists, and lawyers to fight off the government. In the 2000 presidential election, Wal-Mart ranked 771st in direct contributions to federal politicians. In the intervening years, unions and regulators began to drool over the enormous target the mega-retailer had become. In 2004 Wal-Mart ranked as the single largest corporate political action committee. In 2006 it launched an unprecedented “voter education” drive.
Now, I am not an anarcho-capitalist. I have no problem with reasonable food safety regulations. But when the federal government bans, say, the importation of unpasteurized cheese, eating stinky fermented gunk becomes an act of political defiance. It also creates black markets.
Of course, there is no ban on using beef tallow instead of vegetable oil. If there was, Steak ’n Shake would be RFKing itself into court.
But the whole spectacle is just lame.
Michael Oakeshott, one of the most underrated political philosophers of the 20th century, observed, “It is not at all inconsistent to be conservative in respect of government and radical in respect of almost every other activity.” I agree with that wholeheartedly. But we now live in an age where being “conservative”—by which I really mean right-wing—isn’t a philosophy of government, it’s a lifestyle choice.
The right is a latecomer to this sorry state of affairs. The left got drunk on the idea of “the personal is political” a half century ago, and has been injecting politics into language, food, fashion, and everything else ever since. This, after all, is the logic of “social justice”—to make every nook and cranny of life vibrate with political significance. This is how politics becomes a secular religion. You have to eat the right foods, mutter the right incantations, post the correct “In This House We Believe” signs, fly the right flags, and check off all the other boxes of the ideological jihad.
I welcome much of the backlash against wokeness. What I can’t stand is how so much anti-wokeness has become a kind of right-wing wokeness. The other week on The Dispatch Podcast roundtable we talked about a Reddit post that went viral. Someone convinced their cousin that putting beans in chili is “woke.” So, his chili-loving cousin immediately stopped putting beans in his chili. Like Adam Schiff wanting to sell a car he likes because of politics, refusing to put beans in your chili—when you like beans in your chili—to fight wokeness is just another kind of wokeness.
Go ahead and order the fries at Steak ’n Shake, or don’t. I don’t give a rat’s ass. But if you’re doing it because it’s the politically correct thing to do, don’t mock people who disagree with you for being politically correct, too.
Various & Sundry
Canine Update: I’m filing very late today and have to run to an event. So, I’ll keep it brief. First: Here comes Mr. Bill’s Dog! Second, Pippa has started growling at Gracie when she tries to get on the couch when Pippa has the prime real estate next to The Fair Jessica. Gracie takes it in stride. But we don’t like it and kick her off the couch to teach her this behavior is unacceptable. Also, the other morning Zoë and Pippa spotted a fox on the lawn by our back stairs. Zoë nearly pulled me to my death going after it. Pippa, who was off leash, took point. But when she realized that her wingdingo was being restrained, she resorted to Spaniel Tactics: running in wide circles and barking, “There’s a fox!” over and over again. The pack is good.
The Dispawtch
Why I’m a Dispatch Member: There’s an Edmund Burke quote about “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil…” If (moderately) sane, good people like me don’t support (mostly) sane, good people—and publications—who are right-of-center, but not wacky or caustic about it, then this good man here hasn’t done enough.`
Personal Details: I make bourbon (i-bourbon.com if curious), and I brought a bottle to Jonah at a “Dispatch Live!” in Washington. Although purportedly more of a scotch man, Jonah says he loved “I Bourbon!” Proud moment for me.
Pet’s Name: Duke (a name which is equal parts “aristocracy” and “motorcycle gang”)
Pet’s Breed: A Terrier-Chihuahua puree
Pet’s Age: Probably 13?
Gotcha Story: Duke is my fourth senior rescue from the amazing people at Homeward Trails in Northern Virginia. He was basically kept in a box and fed way too much food, so he was almost 20 pounds when I rescued him. He looked like a bleach bottle. If he lost his balance or sat down, he really couldn’t get back to all-fours very easily. He also couldn’t walk very much or very far. He’s still obese—I call him “a tank”—but he’s down to 14 pounds. That seems to be a nice weight valley at which he’s settled.
Pet’s Likes: Well, food … but I am pretty strict about his intake. I’d say “closeness.” As a fairly mistreated guy in a previous life, like all senior rescue dogs, he is deeply grateful and deeply besotted with me.
Pet’s Dislikes: Anyone he doesn’t know in any area he believes to be his bailiwick. Indeed, when I came to rescue him from his foster home, Duke bit me. I guess I deserved it for intruding! These days, in my high-rise condominium, Duke believes he owns the hallway, so he’ll yell at neighbors who dare to join us in the hall as we wait for the elevator down for a walk.
Pet’s Proudest Moment: Given Duke’s morbid obesity when I rescued him, I would have to say I am most proud of his ability to “function” pretty normally now. Walks started with my carrying him down to the sidewalk and our walking 10 feet. Then, 20 feet the next day, etc. I’d have to lift his butt up if he lost his balance and had to sit down on the sidewalk. Now, we can go for miles. His legs are stubby, and his stomach is still enormous, so the pace is not super-impressive, but he trots along like any dog now. He can also now do stairs—a labor of intense patience with treats JUST out of reach of his snout. He cannot jump UP onto anything (and the occasional jump DOWN doesn’t always land elegantly). But, he’s a pretty normal guy now, which makes me proud—and happy for him!
Bad Pet: Duke isn’t easy on new houseguests, or people who are coming over to sample my bourbon. I know his heart’s in the right place, but my voice has been raised out of equal parts embarrassment and annoyance. What’s amusing, though, is that once Duke has yelled at the newcomer for about 30 seconds (assuming the newcomer doesn’t engage), Duke decides he has said what needs to be said, snorts, and stomps away with his head and tail held high.
Do you have a quadruped you’d like to nominate for Dispawtcher of the Week and catapult to stardom? Let us know about your pet by clicking here. Reminder: You must be a Dispatch member to participate.
