Midweek Notebook

A podcast announcement, and more feel-good (and absurd) news headlines.

• First, an announcement. The 3WHH podcast will return to livestreaming here on Substack tomorrow night at 8 pm PACIFIC time/11 pm Eastern. We’re sorry this time slot is so late for those of you in the central and eastern time zones, but each of us is on the move this week and it is the first opportunity we have to get together. Think of it as a good excuse to stay up late and have whisky with us! For those of you who miss it, it will be posted on YouTube on Saturday.

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• Now this has to be the worst thing we’ve done to our European allies since John Kerry took James Taylor with him to Paris a decade ago:

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• But there’s a stupider news story out there, from USA Today:

Millions of women whose married names aren’t on their birth certificates or passports could also face extra hurdles to register to vote and cast their ballots.

I am surprised the left’s “voting rights” advocates would be against this, as married women tend to vote much more Republican than single women. Ergo. . .

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• It’s official!

Cue sad trombones again—womp-womp:

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• Don’t these people ever get tired of this?

The campaign to drink whole milk seems to have exploded out of nowhere. Many suspect it is fueled by the powerful dairy industry, and that may be true, but here may be darker forces at work behind the sudden appearance of all the memes and videos showing so many prominent health officials and influencers proudly guzzling huge glasses. . .

As a student of and writer on the history of science and public health under fascist regimes, I am suspicious. Milk drinking is political. Drinking whole white milk has played a big role in racist and far-right thinking. . .

I’m trying for some kind of joke about inverse lactose intolerance, but I got nuthin.’

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• How do you know Gavin Newsom is already doomed in his 2028 presidential run? First, anyone remember how Vanity Fair anointed Beto O’Rourke back in 2019, complete with Annie Leibovitz photography:

Well, Newsom is featured right now in . . . Vogue, complete with photography by. . . Annie Leibovitz!

Let’s get this out of the way: He is embarrassingly handsome, his hair seasoned with silver, at ease with his own eminence as he delivers his final State of the State address. . . His tone is temperate, but the words echo through the State Capitol’s Assembly chamber, the august backdrop for his speech. . .

That’s all I could get before I hit the paywall, and lookit, I only buy the Vogue September issue because that’s the only one that counts for real fashionistas like me.

Let’s get this out of the way: this is embarrassing media coverage. But the liberal bubble is so thick these days that they haven’t a clue how little this appeals to the 99.5 percent of Americans who don’t read Vogue. But I am sure it is good for fundraising in The Hamptons and on Martha’s.

The New York Times is happy to try to help Vogue and Newsom, though:

So, did he have to settle for asking to borrow French’s Yellow instead of Grey Poupon when he was motoring downhill from Nob Hill? Even the Times can’t play this “I’m just a poor boy” act, reporting:

Mr. Newsom comes from a long line of figures who built and shaped San Francisco, and his family is so entwined with the power structure that Nancy Pelosi’s nieces and nephews were young Gavin’s cousins. John Burton, a former congressman who would become one of the state’s most powerful politicians, sat in the bleachers to watch Mr. Newsom play basketball in high school. A close friend of his father’s was the oil magnate Gordon Getty, who took Mr. Newsom and his sister on a safari in Africa and on a visit to the king and queen of Spain.

Those ties helped Mr. Newsom start a business that grew from a corner wine shop to a collection of wineries, restaurants and bars and an alpine resort. And they nurtured a political career that began when he was appointed as a parking commissioner in San Francisco at age 29.

Here’s my favorite picture from the story:

You just know these bros are about to be shunted off to Delta House, except without any of the brio of Otter or “Bluto” Blutarsky. Can there be anything worse than being a brio-less bro in San Francisco?

But forget it. He’s on a roll.