Mark: Nice of Hyacinth Girl to give a mention to humble Stinkweed Boy here.

I mean, how can anyone claim that dissenting ideas are frowned upon if one reads any of the dust-ups caused by gleeful contrarian John Derbyshire? He, I assume, enjoys job security and a lively inbox, and yet I’ve never heard him bitch and moan about it in column after column after column.

Just a couple of points though:

• I am not gleeful. I am somber, a steady practitioner of dustsceawung.• Having just posted a column in which I asserted that: “America doesn’t do jobs for life. The employments we enter into are provisional and speculative …,” it should be plain that I am no fan of job security. Haven’t got it, never had it, never wanted it, and would probably screw it up somehow if I wandered into it. Life’s an adventure. “A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.”• Lively inbox, oh yeah — though I’d imagine Jonah GOLDBERG’s is somewhat livelier. In fact we are yoked together in the minds of some readers. Recent sample, from a reader in the Golden State:
“Ya know what? **** you. You and all the rest of you bat**** insane NRO liars are disgusting. You constantly lie, pervert, tweak and obfuscate any reality in anything. You are like weather forcasters telling us it’s snowing outside in the middle of July in southern California. We know it’s not ****ing snowing, but you insist to us it is. Well, fina***ingly, you dip****s at the NRO are having [disgusting physiological reference] slapped in your face. And the nation helped him. Tens of millions of voters voted for “the black guy”. The one you label a “social marxist”, and who your ***hole of a friend Jonah Goldberg lies about on a daily basis. “But we’re done with you ****ers. Only now, after Bush has raped our shared consitution, ignited the middle east in flames, trashed our treasury, institutionalized torture, and had hundreds of thousands of innocent people murdered, then loses to “the black guy” do you finally find any fault whatsoever with him. Well **** [capitalized]. YOU. And PLEASE. Don’t you dare ever come to California. “Actually. Print this email and tape it to all the offices at the NRO. Tell all your colleagues to never step foot in this state again. Go to Utah. Go to Utah where the rest of the most delusional piece of the population lives. ***holes, all of you.”
And you should see the ones I get from conservatives!• Bitch and moan? Thanks for the reminder, Hyacinth Gal. I haven’t done a b & m column for a while. Although, come to think of it, this here Corner post is about as much b & m-ing as I am inclined to.

My email box this morning is actually fun-filled. Readers are emailing in their car reminiscences. And no, not all first-car reminiscers are XY-chromosomal. I’ve heard from Theresa, still dreaming fondly of her 1969 Chevy Impala, and Rita, who lost her heart to a souped-up 1957 Ford Fairlane. People have been telling me for years that girls can be fun. Maybe there’s something to it.

Reading about these people and their cars has brought home to me what a great friend of liberty the automobile has been. That first experience of taking to the open highway, in your own car! — was there ever anything like it? No, that’s not a reason to prop up failing managements and featherbedding unions with taxpayers’ money, but the romance of it probably contributes to pro-Big Three sentiment.