The latest from Iowahawk:
by T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII
Intellectual Conservative At-Large
Summer once again tiptoes in on crepe soles to the eastern extremities of Long Island; affording, as is its wont, fresh opportunities to enjoy the providence of nature and the financial acumen of one’s forebears. Despite the looming spectre of global climate change the lawn is verdant and lush, and my gardener Hideo informs me the hibiscuses are in especially fine fettle. Much to the relief of his mother (if not the household staff) young T. Coddington VIII has returned from Quonsocket Prep and Rehabilitation Center. I am pleased to announce he has made significant strides in overcoming the acute arson disability that so plagued his sophomore academic marks, and thus his matriculation as a member of Harvard ‘15 is all but assured. And, if you will forgive a note of personal triumph, I also find myself in the midst of a career renaissance as the leading conservative thinker on the scourge and embarrassment of conservative extremism.
This solstitial season should then, by all rights, occasion in a conservative centrist like myself a deep sense of satisfaction — if not outright contemptuous pity for the jejune editorial boobs of The National Topsider who some 18 months ago unceremoniously dismissed my services following my prescient endorsement of Barack Obama. Thanks to the good conservative breeding instilled in me by my late father, swashbuckling Topsider founder T. Coddington Van Voorhees VI, I am happily above such base emotions. Living well, as they say, is the best revenge; particularly when underwritten by royalty checks from the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, and the other top-tier periodicals unintimidated by trenchant critiques of the soi-dissant ‘Tea Party’ idiots. Rather than basking in the deserved status of a conservative man in full, however, I instead find this the summer of my discontent. Each day seems to introduce some new crisis on the world scene with hints of more to come, and one is left to wonder if even our elegant young President’s oratorical and tonsorial gifts are equal to the challenges ahead.
I was visited by one such harbinger last weekend, in the form of a 80-meter Ferretti motoryacht, as I was hosting my weekly confabulation of like-minded conservative thinkers at the old family Montauk estate. Dame Peggy Noonan was there as always, along with the vivacious Kathleen Parker and those two mighty Davids of conservative intellect, Frum and Brooks. We were engaged in a vigorous boys-against-girls badminton match on the south lawn when I espied the aforementioned vessel laying anchor a few hundred yards off the jetty. A quick peep through the old family Dollond spyglass (according to Van Voorhees lore, a gift to Coddington III by some lovesick Nantucket whaling heiress who later committed suicide with a harpoon after great-great-grandpapa spurned her advances) confirmed it was Die Walküre, the handsome 16-cabin personal watercraft of my old friend and EU agricultural pricing minister Kloonkie Von Wallensheim. As delighted as I was to see this grand seagoing edifice, I was equally aghast to see her gleaming white hull now disfigured with some sort of black gooey film.
The rest here.