Whither the Renaissance Man?

CF friend KT—she of Saturday Pet Thread renown, among other notable things—hips us to an intriguing VDH column. Sefton linked it earlier this week, but I let it get by me somehow.

We Are in Need of Renaissance People
The songwriter, actor, country/western singer, musician, U.S. Army veteran, helicopter pilot, accomplished rugby player and boxer, Rhodes scholar, Pomona College and University of Oxford degreed, and summa cum laude literature graduate, Kris Kristofferson, recently died at 88.

Americans may have known him best for writing smash hits like “Me and Bobby McGee” and “For the Good Times,” his wide-ranging, star-acting roles in A Star is Born and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, his numerous solo albums, especially with then-spouse and singer Rita Coolidge, and the country group super-quartet he formed with Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Willie Nelson.

In other words, Kristofferson was a rare Renaissance man who could do it all in an age of increasingly narrow specialization and expertise.

At certain times throughout history at particular locales, we have seen such singular people from all walks of life.

Classical Athens produced polymaths like Aristotle—tutor to Alexander the Great, logician, student of music, art, and literature, educator, think-tank founder, biologist, philosopher, and scientist. Later Greeks like Archimedes and Ptolemy, as men of action, mastered six or seven disciplines and applied their abstract knowledge in ways that made life easier for those around them.

But we associate the idea of a “Renaissance man” mostly with Florence, Italy, between the 15th and 16th centuries. In that brief 100 years, the Florentine Republic hosted multi-talented geniuses like Leonardo da Vinci—master painter, sculptor, architect, scientist, engineer, and inventor—best known for the Mona Lisa and Last Supper.

The American Revolution was a similar embryo of Renaissance men. Thomas Jefferson was perhaps the most famous example of unchecked abstract and pragmatic genius displayed in almost every facet of late 18th– and early 19th-century life—main author of the Declaration of Independence, third U.S. President, founder of the University of Virginia, inventor, agronomist, architect, and diplomat.

But Benjamin Franklin may best approximate the model of the Florentine Renaissance holistic brilliance—journalist, publisher, printer, author, politician, diplomat, inventor, scientist, and philosopher.

And here’s where it gets really interesting.

The best American example of the current age is the controversial Elon Musk, a truly Renaissance figure who has revolutionized at least half a dozen entire fields.

Huh. Much as I’ve come to like and admire him, I hadn’t thought about Elon as a modern-day Renaissance Man before, but now that VDH brought it up it seems obvious. Onwards.

No one prior had broken the Big Three auto monopoly of GM, Ford, and Chrysler.

Musk did just that. He exploded all three companies’ dominance with his successful creation of the first viable electric vehicle, Tesla, whose comfort, drivability, reliability, safety, and power rivaled or exceeded the models of all his competitors.

His spin-off battery storage and solar panel companies allowed thousands of families to go off the grid and stay self-sufficient in power usage.

Musk’s revolutionary Starlink internet system—a mere five years old—provides global online service to over 100 countries. Through its some 7,000 satellites, Starlink brings internet service to remote residents far more effectively and cheaply than do their own governments. When natural disasters overwhelm utilities or war disrupts the normality of peace, all look to Musk to restore online reconnections to the outside world.

Musk, almost singlehandedly, transformed the U.S. space program from a NASA 60-year-old government monopoly to an arena of fervent private-public competition. His Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) created a rocket and spacecraft program that has kept the U.S. preeminent in space exploration and reliable satellite launches. When NASA and old aerospace companies falter, the government looks to Musk to bail them out.

Musk, at great personal cost, radically transformed the old Twitter—poorly managed, censorious of ideas and expressions not deemed progressive, and mired in scandal for partnering with the FBI to silence news deemed possibly injurious to Democratic candidates and left-wing campaigns.

His new X replacement is an unfettered platform for free expression. And the more the left abhors their loss of the monopolistic old Twitter’s ideological clearing house, and vows to flee X and start their own new left-wing, censorious Twitters, the more they stay on X.

There’s more yet, and it’s…well, like I said, it’s intriguing.

SIDE NOTE: I haven’t looked in on Hanson for a goodish while—nor American Greatness itself, for whom he used to write a regular column, and perhaps still does—but for many years practically every piece he published was linked and excerpted approvingly here at CF; in particular, his post-9/11 output looking into the Moslem supremacist threat and how the West might most successfully deal with it was reliably excellent—very insightful, well-written, and steeped in the historical perspective. I see now he has his own website, The Blade Of Perseus, which I didn’t know about before. Duly bookmarked and blogrolled.

Update! Just checked and yep, looks like Hanson is still posting over at AmGreat. A little taste of another good piece, this one with an overly optimistic title.

Try a Little Honesty About Israel
Rather than admitting their own role in igniting the Middle East, Biden and Harris now blame the victims of their own incendiary foreign policy.

Honesty? From these congenital liars?!? *snort* Yeah, as if. That’ll be the day.

It was the terrorists of Hamas who surprise attacked and murdered 1,200 Israeli civilians during peace and a Jewish holiday.

Their slaughtering torturing, raping, and hostage-taking revealed a level of precivilization barbarism rarely seen in the modern era.

Israel was simultaneously targeted by rockets from Hamas and Hezbollah that would eventually number over 20,000.

It did not respond to the bloodbath with a full-scale invasion of Gaza until October 27, some three weeks after the slaughtering.

During that interim, for most of the Muslim world and both U.S. Muslim communities and on American campuses, there was rejoicing at the news of slaughtered Jews.

After it all, Biden-Harris lifted sanctions on a hostile Iran, giving it $100 billion in oil windfalls. It begged Iran to reenter the disastrous Iran deal. It abandoned the Abraham Accords. It lifted the terrorist designation from the terrorist Houthis. It restored fungible aid to the Hamas tunnel builders. It gave new aid to Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon.

Israel’s enemies got the Biden message: attack the Jewish state and perhaps Americans for the first time in a half-century may not really mind that much.

And so they did in unison.

 And will go right on doing so, unless and until we finally pay heed to LeMay’s sagacious advice.

Curtislemay1 2x.

Read all of that Hanson piece at AG, folks, and expect to see more of the man ‘round these h’yar parts henceforth. I have been remiss, now I intend to make it up to y’all. What the hey, it’s the least I can do.

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AWWW!

Doesn’t suck? Dude, it ROCKS!

Stuff that doesn’t suck: Pat and Party Cat
The fellow flanking us was filthy, and upon his shoulder sat a small orange kitten, making the chopper pilot look like (the) world’s friendliest pirate.

Spurgeon and I were walking down a dirt path inside Nelson Ledges Quarry Park at the Lowbrow Getdown. We may have been inebriated. We were walking to see Blue Oyster Cult play a little rock ‘n’ roll. We commented to the cat-bearing fellow about how odd it was to see a kitten at a motorcycle event, and then we got the story of a lifetime.

Pat hails from New Jersey, not too far from RevZilla, but we met him in Ohio, hundreds of miles from home. Pat told us a story that would have been unbelievable if he didn’t have the furry proof standing on his shoulder. That adorable bucket of fuzz, by the way, now is known as Party Cat.

“I was coming back from Born Free in California, and we had made it to Nevada,” Pat told us. “I was at this truck stop getting gas, and this little guy just needed help. He was pretty badly burned, so I picked him up and tucked him inside my vest. We’re feeding him regularly now, so he’s doing better, even though he’s sort of living on the road until we get home.

“He’s been eating tuna fish out of those dry-foil packs you can buy, and his burns are pretty much all healed up except for the little spot on his lip. He’s so chill. He just hangs out in my vest when we get on the road. I’ve never met a cat so calm.”

Yes, there’s a pic, yes, it’s great, and no, I wouldn’t dream of not running it.

A real one-percenter

I repeat: AWWW! A cross-country Ironbutt trek all the way from Nevada to Jersey tucked inside a biker’s cutoff, with nary a complaint? That cute li’l booger is a natural-born scooter tramp for sure and certain. Good on ya, Pat, and God bless you and your feline passenger. Another rough, tough biker with a heart of gold, with a lot of gentle, loving kindness at its core. That may come as something of a surprise to people who don’t really know bikers, but not to me—almost all the many I’ve known have been like that.

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Lost America

GREAT piece on the opening-credits sequences of those classic old 70s sitcoms.

Opening credit sequences are a lost art these days. “Lost” because the ritual of collective TV watching is a thing of the past with no real place here in the streaming era. And yes, once upon a time, Network TV watching was a ritual. Like a formal State dinner with seventeen different kinds of spoons and a new glass for each course, Network TV viewing came with a set of rules and an irresistable order. All over America families gathered around the TV set at the appointed time, tuned our sets to the proper channel and waited for the opening notes of the songs we all knew by heart, excited to spend half another hour with characters we’d come to think of as friends.

There was something gratifying too about the idea that all across the country millions of our fellow Americans were doing the same exact thing at the same exact moment. If you are of a certain age, you probably have a memory of getting up during a commercial break on a warm night, maybe to let the dog out, and hearing the sound of the same commercial you were just watching coming from your neighbor’s open window. There was something special about that sense of shared culture, all of us participating at the same time, no matter where or who we were…city mouse and country mouse…doctors, lawyers, electricians and plumbers. There was an irresistable allure to being a part of something magical that would only happen once and then never again.

Streaming TV viewing, by contrast, is a solitary act with no real sense of time or place and where nobody knows your name. By the time a popular 70’s show entered syndication, a committed fan would have watched the series opener one hundred times or more. But memorable credit sequences are more rare now, a function of their incompatibility with the churn-and-burn binge-viewing nature of the streaming model. Easier to just click the “skip” button, or “next episode”, and get on with it.

Instant gratification saves time, certainly, but in the process something is lost that perhaps should not have been. There is value in waiting. Part of what makes Christmas so special is the month long run-up that precedes it. There is also something captivating and mysterious about the idea of being treated to a show. To the knowledge that we can’t speed things up at a whim. That we can’t just skip to the good stuff. It is satisfying in a way that the wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am rhythm of streaming will never be able to deliver. And it’s hard not to wonder if the old ways of network TV might not have been good for us in some critical way we can no longer recall.

Sit down, relax…be still. Someone else is in charge for the next 26 minutes and you can’t skip ahead. You are not in control. If the episode ends in a cliffhanger, you’re going to have to wait a week to find out what happens. And that’s OK.

Everything moves faster now. And while it may be an article of faith at Wharton Business School that the customer is always right, there is no immutable law that says the customer will always be happier, or even better off, once they get it.

“Sometimes you wanna go…where everybody knows your name…and they’re always glad you came…”

The above closing line, of course, comes from perhaps my personal favorite of all the shows featured in the post’s embedded videos:

Cheers, Taxi, KRP, Kotter, M*A*S*H—they’re all here, folks, and it’s one hell of a great ride. No true child of the American 70s will want to miss this one, and definitely shouldn’t.

(Via Stephen Green)

Update! The comments-section discussion betwixt myself and Barry compels me to append a typical, wonderfully silly cab-depot exchange featuring Andy Kauffman as Latka Gravas and the incomparable Christopher Lloyd as the Reverend Jim Ignatowski in Taxi.

Heh. LOVE that show. What kinda disturbs me is that, what with all the things that have slipped from my increasingly unreliable memory over recent years, I can still recall both Kaufman’s and Llloyd’s characters full names without batting an eye.

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History lesson

Our boozum chum, frequent commenter, and esteemed CF Lifer hhluce provides us with a real gem of an educational post centering on a Fredrick Douglass speech which includes some enduring words of wisdom which, IIRC, currently live on in our Notable Quotes section at right. hh’s post was good enough that, rather than excerpt and link it here, I decided to just repost in its entirety at my Substack hang as a bonus Eyrie edition. Do check it out, you won’t regret it.

On-air freakout

Hurricane+divorce=just too much for this poor TeeWee weatherdude to take.

“Satan’s butthole,” no less. That’s gotta be the funniest forecast I ever did see. Can’t remember where I ran across this one, but I sincerely thank whoever it was for the steer to it.

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Endless this war

Remember, it’s not “election interference” when THEY do it—in YOUR faces, using YOUR tax dollars, with THEIR bought and paid for D卐M☭CRAT-ATM dwarf.

Ukraine’s Zelensky Used U.S. Military Assets To Campaign For Harris in Pennsylvania
Zelensky’s visit with Harris surrogates in Pennsylvania comes one day after The New Yorker published an interview in which he criticized Trump and Vance.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appeared to use U.S. military assets to campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris on a visit to battleground state Pennsylvania on Monday.

On another trip to ask the U.S. government for money and munitions, Zelensky toured a Pennsylvania ammunition plant with Gov. Josh Shapiro, a prominent Kamala Harris surrogate, and other Democrats, including Sen. Bob Casey. Zelensky arrived in Scranton, Pennsylvania (President Joe Biden’s oft-referenced birthplace), aboard a U.S. Air Force C-17, images of which he used to advertise his visit. In a message recorded from the inside the aircraft, Zelensky noted, “This fall will determine what’s next in this war.”

“Zelensky is in Pennsylvania today, signing bombs with Gov. Shapiro. Zelensky is also attacking J.D. Vance in the biggest, most important battleground state in the country during an election year,” Sean Parnell, former Pennsylvania Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, said at a Trump rally Monday. “Folks, if that ain’t foreign election interference, I don’t know what is.”

“Trump makes political statements in his election campaign,” Zelensky said. “My feeling is that Trump doesn’t really know how to stop the war even if he might think he knows how,” Zelensky added [emphasis original]. “With this war, oftentimes, the deeper you look at it the less you understand. I’ve seen many leaders who were convinced they knew how to end it tomorrow, and as they waded deeper into it, they realized it’s not that simple.”

Oh, I dunno, Smurfette, I betcha he does know at least one simple, sure-fire way to end it. To wit: shutting off the US money, munitions, and materiel spigot oughta do the trick quite nicely, I believe.

Update! The Bee knows, same as I do, you do, Trump does, and everybody else.

Democrats Invite Foreign Leader To Meddle In U.S. Elections
SCRANTON, PA — Democrats celebrated as foreign leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited an ammunition factory in the hotly contested swing state of Pennsylvania to meddle in U.S. elections.

The Ukrainian President was quick to publicly throw his support behind Kamala Harris while placing his signature on artillery rounds.

“If Donald Trump wins in November, he will end the war, and also my generous allowance of billions from the United States,” said Zelenskyy. “Ukraine represents democracy and stuff. And Russia stands for not democracy or whatever. So a vote for Trump means you hate democracy. I am proud to endorse Kamala Harris, and I will prove my support by laundering millions of dollars I received from the U.S. government through various third parties until they end up in Democrat super PACs. It’s the least I can do for democracy.”

Democrats were enthusiastic about the endorsement. “We’re very glad this foreign leader has chosen to meddle in our democracy,” said Governor Josh Shapiro while placing his signature on various deadly weapons. “We invite other countries to meddle with our democracy on behalf of Democrats in order to save democracy.”

At publishing time, Zelenskyy had been spotted in Philadelphia filling out mail-in ballots.

Is that last bit real, or is it satire? Who the hell can even tell anymore.

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One for JJ Sefton

A not exactly personal note—y’know, seeing as how it’s actually, erm, public—regarding today’s Morning Report post, wherein our ol’ blog-bud JJ says:

While the Democrats expose exactly who and what they are, Donald Trump had a rather interesting meeting with someone I would have thought would want absolutely nothing to do with him, given all of the above as well as the looming national election.

The Democrat mayor of a community with many Arab-Americans in Wayne County, Michigan, who helped lead the uncommitted movement in the Democrat primary, told Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Saturday that his meeting with former President Donald Trump last week “was very productive” and well received by the community, which traditionally votes Democrat. Hamtramck Mayor Amer Ghalib (D) spoke with Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle in a nearly 20-minute segment on the program on the heels of his meeting with Trump in Flint, Michigan. . . Ghalib said his meeting with Trump materialized in part because many in Hamtramck and these neighboring communities are supportive of him and “the shifting dynamics” he is leading. . . “The meeting was very good,” Ghalib, who hails from Yemen, added. “I talked to President Trump about, you know, some statistics here in Wayne County and how it used to be a stronghold for the Democrats, and we always used to vote Democrat. This is not the case anymore here.” Ghalib recounted later in the interview that Trump said “he is going to end the chaos in the Middle East,” adding Trump “doesn’t want wars.”

Hamastramck or Haramtramck? Is this just another Taqqiya Sunrise, or is there something else going on? If this character is trying to appease the blue collar base, which is increasingly disenchanted with the Biden/Harris junta over its insane disaster over pushing EVs that is laying waste to their jobs among many other issues destroying the economy, on top of the Teamster rank and file seemingly leaning heavily towards Trump. Heck of a job trying to right the sinking Democrat ship. Mayor Ghalib.

Now as fate would have it, I myself had a cordial email exchange with Mayor Ghalib in June of last year wherein I congratulated him and the Hamtramck City Council on the passage of a town ordinance forbidding the flying of any other than official city, state, or US national flags from government buildings in Hamtramck…yes, DURING PRIDE MONTH!!! In my original missive I wrote:

I honor and congratulate you, Mayor Ghalib, for your work with the Hamtramck city council to restore a modicum of sanity and decorum to your city with the recent determination that flags celebrating Pride Month have no place on city property. I am not a Muslim myself, and live quite a distance from your city, although I have visited Hamtramck and the Detroit area several times in years past, when I was on the road playing with a rockabilly/blues/surf band. That was back when I was lot younger than I am now; I’ve gotten much too old for that sort of thing now, alas.

That said, I am very glad to see you and your fellow elected officials standing up for what’s right on this issue, and applaud you all for your courage and plain good sense. The new ordinance isn’t in any way unreasonable or unjust; in fact, all the statements I’ve seen so far from not only Hamtramck officials but ordinary Muslim-American citizens in your area have been nothing but commonsensical, broad-minded, and eminently fair. Stick to your guns, you’re fighting the good fight here, and whether you know it or not there are millions of us out here who realize that, and are firmly on your side in this battle.

All in all, you good people seem to me to be way more American than all too many native-born folks I could name.

Heartfelt kudos to you all, and please keep up the good work. I was born in North Carolina myself, and currently live just over the state line in SC. I’m happy to have you and your colleagues here with us in the USA, and that you understand so well what our country is supposed to be all about. I support what you’re doing one hundred percent, and wish you good fortune, success, and happiness. Thanks again.

Naturally, the LGBTQEIEIO+++ Mafia was throwing kicking, screaming hissy fits over this unconscionable “betrayal” at the time. Ghalib was good enough to write back straightaway thanking me warmly for my support; I posted here on said cordial exchange, as you would expect. While I daresay there’s plenty of other topics we probably don’t see eye to eye on, far as I’m concerned Mayor Ghalib is a-okay, one of the good guys.

MOAR Destructo-X

As if being a cop in San Franshitsco wasn’t already humiliation enough.


Hilarious.

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Oh HELL yeah!

KILL. THEM. ALL.


Ya gotta love the guy. Well, unless you’re a scum-sucking Paleosimian terrorist who just had his nuts blowed off, that is. Or a shrieking ((((JooJooJooJOOOOOO!!!)))) hating shitlib.

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DEBUNKED!

Or, y’know, NOT. Whichever.

EXCLUSIVE: Police Audio, Report Confirm Haitian Goose-Hunting In Ohio: ‘They All Had Geese In Their Hands’
A caller reported to police a group of Haitian migrants carrying four geese in Springfield, Ohio in exclusive audio obtained by The Federalist.

A recording of a police phone call obtained by The Federalist reveals a local resident reporting a group of Haitian migrants carrying four geese in Springfield, Ohio two weeks ago.

“I’m sitting here, I’m riding on the trail, I’m going to my orientation for my job today, and I see a group of Haitian people, there was about four of ’em, they all had geese in their hand,” the caller tells the public services dispatcher in the audio recording of the call.

According to a police report reviewed by The Federalist, the call was placed on Aug. 26, before the Columbus suburb located roughly 50 miles from the state capital became nationally known this week for epitomizing the nation’s migrant crisis. The caller told the dispatcher he saw four migrants in total, two men and two women, each carrying a single goose.

“I was trying to get my phone out and I was trying to make it to this orientation on time,” the caller continued. “I’m time crunching here, and I saw that, I’m like, ‘Yeah this has got to be reported,” he tells the non-emergency police dispatcher.

“How many geese did they have?” the dispatcher asks the caller in the recording.

“Uh, they each had one,” he replies.

The caller says he spotted the Haitians carrying the geese at an intersection between Water and Warder Street, a location that does exist in Springfield and is confirmed in the police report later filed about the incident.

Debunked,” is it? Just another “liberal” lie, nothing more, in accordance with my longstanding guiding principle: Assume they’re lying, always, for if they couldn’t lie, they’d have nothing whatsoever to say. Which, come to think of it, sounds like another shoo-in candidate for addition to our Mike’s Iron Laws section, I do believe.

Update! As promised/threatened: done, and done.

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Contractualities

One of our pal Ms Sarcastica’s best ever. Which, yes, that really IS saying something.

Your Body’s Updated Terms of Service:
We are writing to inform you that Your Body (“you,” “yourself,” “your aging body”) has updated its terms of service, which apply to the use of all your Parts and Areas. These terms will apply only to Your Once-Useful Body and may differ from Other People’s Bodies, Which Are Still Normal.

We encourage you to review the updated Terms before you attempt any dangerous activity, such as playing with your dog or walking uphill. Our other legal policies are available in our Depressing Policy Center.

Addendum to Terms of Service

I. Food and Beverage
a. Alcohol may be consumed a maximum of three (3) nights per week, with two nights consisting of no more than one (1) beverage and one night consisting of no more than two (2) beverages. If you have one (1) beverage on a night you are supposed to have one (1) beverage, but the drink doesn’t “do anything” and you “don’t feel any different,” you are still not allowed to have a second beverage because the first one “clearly didn’t count.” If you do have two (2) beverages on a night you are supposed to only have one (1), you will have a hangover the next day. Yes, an actual hangover. Also, if you have one (1) beverage on a night you are supposed to have zero (0), you won’t get any sleep and will wake up hating the world.

b. Caffeine is one of three good things that exist. The others are love and the Fleetwood Mac album Rumours. However, like the relationship between Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, your body’s relationship to caffeine is a productive yet fraught dance. If you consume any caffeine after 1 p.m., you won’t get any sleep and will wake up hating the world. Other People’s Bodies can consume caffeine until 3 or 4 p.m. or even have an espresso after dinner. You aren’t them and never will be. Also, if you have more than two (2) cups in a day, you will become convinced that there must be some kind of “demon” inside your chest and you will never be normal again.

c. Despite your many lobbying efforts, Pretzels are still not considered their own food group and should not be treated as such. A healthy diet consists of diverse foods from those food groups recognized by the scientific community. Capeesh?

II. Exercise
a. Your Body and Mind require 4–6 days of exercise per week, unless you want to go to sleep hating the world. Unfortunately, every kind of exercise that you enjoy causes Your Body’s back, knees, or ankles to enter “The Zone of Desolation.”

b. If your physical pain ever starts to feel depressing, it could help to look on the bright side: if you were a hunter-gatherer, you’d probably be dead by now.

Plenty more where that came from, every word of it true and accurate, every word of it eminently worth checking out.

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Howard Stern: what happened?

Well, for one thing, by his own choice he went from being a true iconoclast to being a straight-up lunatic.

If money’s your metric, then Howard Stern is the most successful radio personality in American media history. If you consider radio a creative art, then he’s the world’s wealthiest artist. He’s been compensated more money than anyone else in his medium — and by a VERY wide margin.

He makes $130 million annually from Sirius and has a net worth of $900 million. He owns a pair of apartment buildings in New York, 32 villas and properties in Minnesota, Texas, and Virginia, 16 mansions in Florida and California, and over 5,000 acres of real estate. His enormous mega-mansion in Palm Beach, Fla., is estimated to be worth $300 million. (A nearby property in Palm Beach — Mar-a-Lago — was appraised by New York Attorney General Leita James to be worth just $75 million.) 

Stern has made more than Rush Limbaugh. More than Hannity, Beck, Imus, and Schlessinger combined. No radio talent has ever matched his checkbook.

For a time, he was so omnipresent in popular culture, that an article like this would never see the light of day. First of all, the premise alone would be preposterous — how the hell is Howard Stern irrelevant?! He’s everywhere! And second, journalists were terrified of Stern. If he turned his spotlight on you, it was brutal: His insanely loyal fans would terrorize you in public. Go ask Kathie Lee Gifford how fun it was to be caught in Stern’s crosshairs.

And really, that was the secret to his success: More than anything else, it was the connection Stern forged with his audience that made him so special. If he had an autograph signing or an appearance somewhere, thousands of his fans would huddle together in the pouring rain — waiting for hours — just to get a glimpse of their radio deity. His book “Private Parts” became the biggest literary smash-hit Simon & Schuster had ever published. His audience hung on to his every word. The emotional bond between him and his audience was unbreakable.

Or so we thought.

Then something strange happened: Howard Stern became the world’s first celebrity to go behind a paywall.

It was a clever move by Sirius: For satellite radio to succeed, they needed to figure out a way to convince audiences to pay for something that they’re accustomed to getting for free. So, if you’re Sirius, what’s the fastest, most efficient way to build a paying audience?

Answer: Find the biggest name in the talk-radio universe with the most loyal audience — fans so faithful, they’ll follow him anywhere — and sign him to an exclusive contract.

And that’s exactly what Sirius did. Stern left terrestrial radio and jumped to satellite in 2006.

Originally, this was pitched to his fans as an amazing new development for creative content: Before, Stern was limited by the FCC. Now, he’s finally free to do the show he’s always wanted to do — it’ll be wilder, crazier, and waaaay more explicit! Oh, can you imagine the antics Stern might pull without any risk of censorship?!

In his first few years at Sirius, Stern was hitting on every cylinder. Those shows were some of the finest of his career: Artie Lange, Eric the Actor (“Ack, ack”), Beetlejuice, Riley Martin, and their merry gang of goofy Wack Packers were skewering sacred cows and delighting millions of ultra-dedicated fans. Back then, when you walked around an office building, you’d usually find multiple people tuning to Stern over the Internet while wearing headphones (or hiding in the parking lot, listening to their Sirius radio), giggling and laughing.  

And now?

Nobody under 40 listens to Stern. Nobody under 30 knows could even identify him in a lineup. But whereas older Americans — Gen X-ers and up — still remember Stern as a pioneering shock jock, younger Americans don’t remember him at all. 

It’s like he never existed.

Might as well not have, in effect. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer asshole if you ask me, but YMMV.  Oh, and: “terrestrial radio”? As I understand the thing, it’s more atmospheric than terrestrial, but maybe I’m just picking nits on that one.

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SF officials cut off noses

Successfully spite own faces.

San Francisco officials weigh in on departure of Elon Musk’s X headquarters: ‘Good riddance’
X owner Elon Musk’s plan to move the social media platform’s headquarters out of San Francisco has some city officials eager to bid farewell to the billionaire’s business.

“I share the perspective that most San Franciscans have, which is good riddance,” city attorney David Chiu told The New York Times.

The outlet noted that San Francisco Mayor London Breed said she had met with Musk “several months ago” but that she didn’t extend offers aimed at keeping X in the city, saying, “I’m not going to beg anybody.”

The report comes after Musk announced last month that he will move the company’s headquarters to Texas in response to a new law enacted by the state of California that prohibits schools from notifying parents if their children want to change their gender identity.

Musk said at the time that X’s headquarters would move to Austin, Texas, while he also announced that SpaceX would relocate its headquarters from Hawthorne, California, to Starbase, Texas.

He cited the gender identity law as being “the final straw” and attributed the move to “this law and the many others that preceded it, attacking both families and companies.”

Shortly after Musk announced in July that X would move out of San Francisco, he mentioned issues with the “crazy gross receipts city tax” making it “impossible for financial companies to operate in San Francisco.”

“That’s why Stripe, Block (CashApp), VISA and many others were forced out of San Francisco, as ‘gross receipts’ came to be defined as all transactions processed by a company, even if NOT revenue. That meant companies processing payments either had to leave SF or die,” Musk said last month. “Even if the severe crime problem in SF were to be solved tomorrow, X could not remain in SF and launch payments, as it would immediately fail.”

Will the last sane person to flee what was once one of the most lovely, eminently livable cities in all the world please turn off the lights? Thank you.

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CF Glossary

ProPol: Professional Politician

Vichy GOPe: Putative "Republicans" who talk a great game but never can seem to find a hill they consider worth dying on; Quislings, Petains, Benedicts, backstabbers, fake phony frauds

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