Impromptus

Thrilling to the bad guy, &c.

By
Jesse James, July 10, 1864 (Public domain via Wikimedia)
Murderers past and present; Trump and territorial expansion; Musk and Germany; bounties on bravehearts; the late Rickey Henderson; and more

On Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update,” Colin Jost had a joke mocking the enthusiasm for a certain killer: the murderer of Brian Thompson, the health-care executive. He has quite a following, among young women not least. Some of the murderer’s following is “political” — Health-care executives, bad! But if the murderer were middle-aged and paunchy . . .

As soon as Jost said the murderer’s name, many in the audience whooped and cheered — confirming the point of the joke that Jost had not even made yet. His response to the whooping and cheering — his response to the response — was very good, by the way. See it all here, starting at the 51-second mark.

I thought of the “Preppy Killer.” He was a young man who strangled a girl to death in Central Park in 1986. He was a huge hit with many young women in this country, who sent him fan mail in prison (fan mail with offers, so to speak).

In short, they responded to him like bobby-soxers to Sinatra.


More in Crime

So it is with many young people and this murderer of Brian Thompson. Professor Nicholas Grossman, of the University of Illinois, wrote that some of his students brought up the killer “in a manner that seemed aflutter.”

Obviously, Americans have always had a soft spot for the bad guy — always. Especially the bad guy thought of as dashing, somehow. Billy the Kid. Jesse James. Bonnie & Clyde. (For once, a woman got in on the act.) The Mafia.

Oh, the Mafia. Endlessly is it glorified in our popular culture. This was one of the things that turned me off the New York Post in the early 2000s. Too much blatant enthusiasm for the Mafia. In headlines, they would use the word “rats,” to describe FBI informants — the very lingo, the very attitude, of the Mafia itself.

Anyway, this will go on till the end of time. Whether it’s an American thing or more a human thing, I’m not sure. There are probably dissertations on the subject.

• “Trump Threatens to Take Control of Panama Canal, Greenland.” That is a headline from the Wall Street Journal. The subheading reads, “President-elect’s comments about canal draw angry rebuke from Panama’s president.” The article begins,

President-elect Donald Trump is openly discussing provocative aspirations for U.S. territorial expansion as he prepares to return to the White House, warning about taking over the Panama Canal and wresting control of Greenland from Denmark.

His comments, delivered in public remarks and social-media posts on Sunday, come after he recently trolled Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by suggesting that Canada should become the 51st state and referring to Trudeau as a governor.

Here is a back-and-forth on social media:

There are many things to say about all this. I will say two.

Lots of people are called “isolationist.” I’m not sure I’ve ever met a genuine isolationist. The people who are dubbed “isolationist” usually favor one type of government over another. (They may favor Russia’s over Denmark’s, for example.) One type of intervention, or engagement, over another.

Watch those patterns.

Also, there is the matter of belligerence toward America’s allies and tenderness toward America’s enemies. We saw lots of this in Trump’s first term; the next four years should be no different.

Constantly, Trump and other Republicans mock the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky. He leads an American ally, fighting for its life. Have you ever heard these Republicans mock Putin? And you never will.

• You’ve heard of the “alt-Right”? The AfD is a literal alt-Right. Those initials stand for “Alternative für Deutschland,” i.e., “Alternative for Germany.” They are a nasty piece of work, these guys.

“Only the AfD can save Germany,” wrote Elon Musk, one of the leaders of our Republican Party (though unelected). He has been at Trump’s side for months. He is Trump’s biggest donor, to the tune of $250 million in the last campaign.

To read an article about Musk, Germany, etc., go here. There is one point I wish to make. It is this: It’s all one. All one, basically.

The AfD, the Trump GOP, the Le Pens, Nigel Farage, Viktor Orbán, Matteo Salvini, the “Freedom Party” in Austria (grotesquely named) — it’s basically one. Steve Bannon named the organization he set up in Brussels “The Movement.” In 2017, Farage traveled to Alabama to campaign for Republican Roy Moore. He had come from Germany, where he campaigned for the AfD. Rallying in Alabama, he spoke of “the whole global movement across the West that we have built up and we have fought for.”

You know how these guys decry “globalists”? They are globalists themselves, in their distinctive way, with their “whole global movement.”

Backed by Musk’s many billions — they can do a lot of damage.

• Ivana Stradner is a research fellow for FDD (the Foundation for Defense of Democracies) and a special correspondent for the Kyiv Post. She had a response to Elon Musk and his claim that “only the AfD can save Germany”:

The U.S. vice president–elect, JD Vance, had a response to Stradner: “It’s so dangerous for people to control their borders. So so dangerous. The dangerous level is off the charts.” He then issued a kind of threat: “I wonder how much money this person’s employer gets from the American taxpayer?”

Stradner said,

Here is one of Stradner’s follow-ups:

The authoritarians have many, many friends, including friends in high places. (They themselves are in high places, of course, many of them.) Advocates of freedom and democracy have their work cut out for them. But it’s not the first time.

• Dissidents may flee to other countries — but that does not mean they are safe, obviously. Russia bumps off its critics in exile. So does Turkey. So does Iran. And so forth. As regular readers know, I have written on this subject many times. Masih Alinejad, the Iranian-American journalist and human-rights activist, goes from one safe house to another as Tehran plans to kill her.

An article published on December 24 begins as follows:

Hong Kong national security police have issued a fresh round of arrest warrants for six people living overseas, including self-exiled activists, a former pollster and an ex-actor. A reward of HK$1 million has been offered for information leading to their arrests.

A related article is here. I keep saying: To the extent possible, democracies should protect refugees living in their midst.

• Rickey Henderson, the great baseball player, has died at 65. For his obit in the New York Times, go here. It is an excellent obit, written by Michael S. Rosenwald. I like this: “Often called ‘the man of steal’ by sportswriters, Henderson holds the career record for stolen bases with 1,406 — a mark unlikely to be swiped from him anytime soon, or perhaps ever.” (“Swiped.” Nice.)

How about this? “Rickey Nelson Henley was born in Chicago in the back seat of his family’s Oldsmobile on Christmas morning in 1958.” Faulkner could have begun a short story or something that way.

Last October, I podcasted with George F. Will, and we spent some of our time on baseball. The best player he has ever seen, he said, is Mike Trout. “If I were starting a team, I’d pick Henry Aaron.” And: “The player who gave me the most pleasure, probably, was Rickey Henderson.”

George added, “The highlight of my life is being hugged by him at spring training a couple of years ago.”

After Henderson’s passing, Will wrote a column about him, here. And would you like to hear a wonderful anecdote? Told by Harold Reynolds?

• “ESPN College Football Announcer Kirk Herbstreit Issues Public Apology.” That article is here. Herbstreit’s offense? His crime? He expressed an opinion about the College Football Playoff. He said that people, including the relevant committee, should look not only to win–loss records; they should look to quality of schedule. Sure, Indiana won a lot of games — but should they have been selected for the playoff?

I have no opinion on this question — on Indiana. I don’t know enough. But I know that a man should not have to apologize for expressing a perfectly sound opinion, just because other people don’t like it.

Good grief (as Charlie Brown would say).

• “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays”? How about both? How about discretion? So says Jeff Jacoby, in a column full of good sense. I have written about this issue myself, many times. (In 2003, I had an essay called “December’s C-Word.”) I say, with Jeff: Try not to get your panties in a twist, one way or the other. Don’t be a snowflake about “Merry Christmas.” Or “Happy Holidays.” I’ll try to do the same. (May be hard, sometimes?)

• Every year, the father-son golf tournament — featuring Tiger and Charlie Woods, et al. — is played. And every year, I have the same complaint. One Woods (Tiger or Charlie) is a “Woods.” Two of them are “Woodses.” You don’t keep up with the Jones; you keep up with the Joneses. Sticking to golf, Bobby Jones and his family were “the Joneses.” Yet every year, announcers and commentators at the tournament refer to Tiger and Charlie as “the Woods.”

Cripe — another lost cause . . .

• “Perry Dahl, Who Downed Nine Planes During World War II, Dies at 101.” That obit, by Richard Goldstein in the New York Times, is subheaded, “His courage in battle brought him the Congressional Gold Medal, the Silver Star, the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Legion of Merit.”

On Perry Dahl and other young men like him, so much depended. So much.

• Close with a few pictures? There was a bit of snow in New York, making it appear that Richard Tucker, the great tenor (and great cantor), was wearing a white icy yarmulke:

And how about these colors, as the sun set on the (golf) range?

Have a good weekend, my friends.

If you would like to receive Impromptus by e-mail — links to new columns — write to jnordlinger@nationalreview.com.

Exit mobile version