Things Lighthearted

Dear friends, you know that we have a wide variety of interests here: when you tune in, you expect to be regaled with reflections upon everything from wainscoting to handwoven tweeds, frothy pints of Kentish ale to untranslatable passages from Juvenal. We love it all, and we love you for loving it with us.

If in recent days we have become unattractively petulant, perhaps even abusive -- to you, of all people -- we apologize, and after a few brief moments of housecleaning we promise you nothing less than useful advice of a cheerful nature. In order to get the predictable business out of the way as quickly and efficiently as possible, we're going to abandon our usual lambent prose and just get right to the fucking points.

Item:
Upon learning that Z. Moussaoui will get no Texas justice, and will instead spend the rest of his life in prison, Dubya announces that "Evil will not have the final say."

If he's right, we only hope that the final say will go to Stephen Colbert, who actually and thankfully wasn't funny at all: I'm still waiting for somebody to tell me just what the fuck is so risible about secret prisons, torture, global climate change, and a foreign policy based entirely on greed, photo-ops and depleted uranium.

Evil was unavailable for comment.

Item:
A 19-year old Harvard student plagiarizes her novel, the plot of which concerns a young woman's triumphant admission to Harvard, after learning that what she really needed to do was loosen up, get frisky, and have some fun.

First of all, we believe we're the first to note that this was also roughly the plot of Risky Business, wherein a wealthy kid from a good school gets into Princeton only after learning that Ivy League admissions respond better to blow jobs than they do to SAT scores. (Apparently admissions officers also respond to rich kids who hire expensive admissions consultants after not attending public school but rather "Public" school in a cool Scottish way, which is how Kaavya Viswanathan got in, but that's for another post).

Yes, she plagiarized passages such as these (no, we're not going to cite where we got this comparison, because we're metaplagiarizing):

From Megan McCafferty's Sloppy Firsts: "Sabrina was the brainy Angel. Yet another example of how every girl had to be one or the other: Pretty or smart."

From Miss Viswanathan's book: "Moneypenny was the brainy female character. Yet another example of how every girl had to be one or the other: smart or pretty."

Seriously, does this sort of thing trouble you? Are you worried about what kind of message this situation sends to America's youth? Do you think it suggests a certain moral or intellectual decline?

Because if you do, you're a fucking idiot.

You're a fucking idiot like the Harvard undergraduates who flooded the Crimson with letters pointing out that Viswanathan also lifted passages from The Princess Diaries. What's offends us is not that a 19-year old would plagiarize -- god forbid we were ever held responsible for what we did in our 19th year -- but that America's putative academic elite have memorized a novel that our ten-year old niece recently described as "too simple to be interesting" (true story, we kid you fucking not, etc.).

Want your kids to enjoy an inspiring bit of realism that carries a useful lesson? Tell them that by virtue of the fact that they're your kids born into your family in your class, they've already missed out on all the statistically significant ways of getting into a first-tier private university. If that depresses them, just point out that society will probably collapse before they would have had a chance to matriculate.

Okay, friends, having wiped that out of the literal cracks in our figurative floor, we have our first installment of a series (nota bene, we've abandoned our idea for a Baedeker to American Paleoconservatism: we realized a few days ago that the project was starting to feel dangerously like work). This week?

Liquor One Can't Afford Not To Buy

Say it with us, friends: The Grand Macnish.

A Scotch whisky that has been distilled continuously since 1863, but that is (much more significantly) to be found in your local CVS pharmacy, and never for more than $7.99 per 750 ml bottle. It's warm, well integrated, a classic Highland malt that requires neither branch water nor ice nor stockbroker for full enjoyment. Toffee and leather on the nose, hints of heather and lilac on the finish.

Ever wonder how Dewar's might taste if they didn't spend all their money on full-page ads in Maxim? Ever suspect that collie-piss Glenfiddich was expensive Scottish revenge on Americans who turned tartans into comfortor covers? Ever have only $8 in your pocket but a rather more refined palate than you thought satisfiable for under a sawbuck? Here you go.

Tell 'em the Swill sent you (purely figurative, we're not guerrilla marketers or anything).