Two Criminals Die in High-Speed Crash

Posted on | April 9, 2021 | Comments Off on Two Criminals Die in High-Speed Crash

How do you want a police chase to end? Fatal crash is the correct answer. After months of watching police pursuit videos on YouTube, I’ve developed a thorough hatred of these criminals, so when one of them slams into a tree, that’s what I call a happy ending:

Investigators have released a video of the chase of two suspects over the weekend. Two suspects fled from authorities and led them on a chase in Coweta County [Georgia] on Friday evening, officials said. Deputies said the suspects ended up being involved in a deadly accident in Fulton County.
Driver Jamaal Willis-Powell, 30, of Covington, and passenger Jasmine Simone Hayes, 28, of Palmetto, were killed in a crash after losing control and slamming into a tree near Fayetteville Road and Taylor Circle. Hayes was ejected from the vehicle while the driver had to be cut free of the mangled wreckage.
Just minutes before, the pair were running from Coweta County deputies. Investigators said Willis-Powell had outstanding warrants for felony burglary out of Gwinnett County and Hayes was wanted by Palmetto police on obstruction, theft by receiving, and a weapons charge. . . .
Although it only lasted about two miles, speeds reached about 70 mph in a 45-mph zone heading towards the Fulton County line. After about a minute and 41 seconds, it was all over. Deputies said the couple crashed into a tree just across the county line.
This is not the first time the couple has sped away from law enforcement. The Palmetto Police Department said the pair were suspects in a burglary of a gas station. Police said officers spotted the suspects, but lost them as they fled the scene.

Watch the video, which was edited by the local TV station to omit images of the deadly crash scene:

As soon as the drive passed the cop — but before the cop turned on his blue lights — the suspect began trying to elude the officer, pulling into the left-turn-only lane at a red light and then making a right turn in front of the other cars waiting at the light.

Notice this crucial sentence:

The tag that was on the car, according to police, was actually for a white Nissan Sentra; the VIN was not registered to the people inside of the car.

Translation: It was stolen and had a stolen tag from another car.

I’m 99% sure both of the deceased perps voted for Joe Biden.

Category: Crime, Georgia

CNN: ‘Crisis? What Crisis?’

Posted on | April 9, 2021 | Comments Off on CNN: ‘Crisis? What Crisis?’

For the past three days, I’ve had the TV in my home office tuned to CNN. This is something I do occasionally, just to see what the world looks like to people who get their news from the liberal media. One thing I noticed is that, during about two dozen hours of programming over three days, not once did anyone on CNN refer to the current crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. It reminds me of what Jim Treacher said:

“Modern journalism is all about deciding which facts the public shouldn’t know because they might reflect badly on Democrats.”

If the only source of news you had was CNN, you would have no idea of the unprecedented havoc at our nation’s southern border:

Border Patrol agents apprehended nearly 170,000 migrants in March who illegally crossed the border into the United States. This represents an increase of nearly 72 percent in one month.
During the month of March, Border Patrol agents took 168,195 migrants after they illegally entered the U.S. from Mexico according to the Southwest Land Border Encounters report released on Thursday by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
“CBP has experienced an increase in encounters and arrests. This is not new. Encounters have continued to increase since April 2020, and our past experiences have helped us be better prepared for the challenges we face this year,” said CBP Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Commissioner Troy Miller in a written statement. . . .
CBP reports apprehending 30,389 migrants in March 2020. The March 2021 apprehension of 168,195 represents an increase of more than 450 percent over last year. Compared to the 2019 migrant border crisis, the apprehensions sat at 92,833. . . .
Last month, agents apprehended 18,663 Unaccompanied Alien Children (up from 9,271 in February), 52,904 Family Unit Aliens (up from 19,286), and 96,628 Single Adults (up from 68,992).

NEW: CBP has published March numbers showing 172,331 taken into custody, the most in nearly two decades.

The blue line on the graph below is 2021. CBP had to redo it chart to stretch the Y axis. Our story https://t.co/EgrwOA0aIn pic.twitter.com/CHdhK3nbgT

— Nick Miroff (@NickMiroff) April 8, 2021

Here’s how out of control it’s gotten:

The Biden administration is considering sending cash payments to Central Americans in a bid to prevent them from making the trek north as the US grapples with the worst immigration crisis seen in 20 years, Reuters reported Friday.
The potential cash transfer program would be targeted at residents of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, which account for the overwhelming majority of migrants illegally crossing the border, Roberta Jacobson, the White House’s southern border coordinator, told the outlet.

We’re going to give U.S. taxpayer money to foreigners to pay them not to come here illegally? Yeah, but CNN viewers know nothing.

Category: CNN, Immigration

In The Mailbox: 04.09.21 (Morning Edition)

Posted on | April 9, 2021 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 04.09.21 (Morning Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

How I feel about all the stupid unconstitutional nonsense the Potted Plant of the United States is signing.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Rapists Turned Loose Because It Would Be Unfair…
EBL: George Floyd – “I Ate Too Many Drugs”
Twitchy: Biden’s ATF Pick Did A Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) Last Year And It Was A Disaster
Louder With Crowder: Bad Orange Woman Defends Harris Not Visiting The Border Yet – “She Got A Snack”
Vox Popoli: Minneapolis Is Going To Burn Again, also, How Then Shall They Know?

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Taft’s Anti-Plutocracy Conservatism
American Greatness: AZ Legislature Opposes Federalized Elections, Passes Election Integrity Bills, also, Boston Hospital To Offer “Preferential Care Based On Race”
American Thinker: When President Harris Breaks The Glass Ceiling (And Everything Else)
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Apex Predator News
Babalu Blog: Venezuela Now The Poorest Country In The Western Hemisphere – Dead Last, Behind Haiti
BattleSwarm: Extreme UV Lithography Is Insane
Behind The Black: Today’s Blacklisted American, also, Europe & Red China Discussing Future Space Cooperation
Cafe Hayek: Bari Weiss On The Great Awokening
CDR Salamander: Diversity Thursday
Da Tech Guy: Quick “Shooting Da Movie In Da Neighborhood” Thoughts Under The Fedora, also, Coronavirus Lockdowns & Mask Mandates Just Another Battle In The Collectivist War Against Individualism
Don Surber: Abandoning Children At The Border Is Child Abuse
First Street Journal: More #Woke Writing From The Philadelphia Inquirer, also, Why Can People Never Tell The Truth About Homicide?
The Geller Report: Netanyahu – “We Won’t Be Bound By Iran Deal That Threatens Us With Annihilation”, also, Quality Of Life Plummets, Taxes Rocket Higher, And NYC Faces Doom
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, Don’t Know Much About History
Hollywood In Toto: Clueless Reporters Ignore GOP Elephant In Oscar’s Room
The Lid: How Eisenhower Ensured Holocaust Horrors Would Never Be Forgotten
Legal Insurrection: U. Oregon Pays Nikole Hannah-Jones $25,000 To Lecture On Systemic Racism, also, New York Creates Funs To Pay Unemployed Illegals Up To $15,600 From COVID Relief
Nebraska Energy Observer: Those Horrible Brits!
Outkick: How The New Era NBA Is Ruining What The Old NBA Built, also, MLB Bent The Knee To Stacey Abrams, LeBron James-Led Voting Group
Power Line: The Chauvin Trial So Far, also, Race-Based Admission Preferences In The Ivies Aren’t About Diversity
Shark Tank: Murphy Champions Biden’s Gun Control EOs
Shot In The Dark: It’s Good To Be King
The Political Hat: Woke Segregation – College Orientations, Coffee Klatches, & Mandatory Racial Bias Training
This Ain’t Hell: Oh, Here We Go, also, Terrorists At The Border?
Transterrestrial Musings: Joe Biden’s “Infrastructure”, also, Biden’s Jim Crow Lies
Victory Girls: Target-Rich Douchery Environment
Volokh Conspiracy: Some Thoughts On Google Vs. Oracle By Harvard’s Prof. Rebecca Tushnet
Weasel Zippers: Iran Claims Victory Over America As Biden Prepares To Lift Sanctions, also, OR Department Of Education Declares Math Is Racist Because It Requires A “Right Answer”
The Federalist: IA Governor Says She’ll Take Executive Actions Against Vaccine Passports, also, Republicans Who Can’t Oppose Child Mutilation Should Leave Office
Mark Steyn: Victims Of The Biden-Cartel Alliance, also, Fake News, Late Corrections, & Domestic Terrorists

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Category: Linkagery

Free Speech on Campus: ‘It Is Vital That UVA Lose This Case, and Lose Badly’

Posted on | April 8, 2021 | Comments Off on Free Speech on Campus: ‘It Is Vital That UVA Lose This Case, and Lose Badly’

A federal judge has rejected the University of Virginia’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Kieran Ravi Bhattacharya, a former UVA medical student who was suspended after he asked a few questions during a campus panel presentation on “microaggressions.” Robby Soave’s account of the case is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how “social justice” has turned elite institutions into Kafkaesque nightmares. Bhattacharya’s skeptical inquiry was interpreted by faculty as “inappropriate,” “aggressive,” and “threatening”:

Immediately following the panel, [UVA professor Nora Kern] filed a “professionalism concern card” — a kind of record of a student’s violations of university policy.
“This student asked a series of questions that were quite antagonistic toward the panel,” wrote Kern. “He pressed on and stated one faculty member was being contradictory. His level of frustration/anger seemed to escalate until another faculty member defused the situation by calling on another student for questions. I am shocked that a med student would show so little respect toward faculty members. It worries me how he will do on wards.”

“Shut up,” she explained. Skepticism and disagreement are impermissible on the 21st-century university campus. Bhattacharya’s questions made him a Thought Criminal, and soon UVA faculty ordered him to undergo psychiatric evaluation. How dare he be “antagonistic”!

Call it what it is: Stalinism.

Category: Education, Virginia

Late Night With In The Mailbox: 04.07.21

Posted on | April 8, 2021 | Comments Off on Late Night With In The Mailbox: 04.07.21

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

We all know how this scene ends.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box, Episode #1315
357 Magnum: Cops Abandoning Portland – Can You Blame Them?
EBL: Biden Is A Real Master…
Twitchy: PolitiFact Needs WaPo Fact Checker’s Help Deciding Whether 60 Minutes‘ Hit Piece On DeSantis Was “Deceptively Edited”
Louder With Crowder: Caitlyn Jenner May Run For CA Governor – As A Republican
Vox Popoli: Michelle Calls Out The Neoclowns, also, Talent Hates Convergence
Gab News: The Vaccine Has Become A Religious Ceremony That Christians Have The Right To Reject

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: A Couple Of Quotes
American Conservative: Joe Biden’s Nonexistent Mandate
American Greatness: D.C. Coroner Rules Ashli Babbitt’s Death A Homicide, also, North Las Vegas Mayor Switches To Republican Party
American Power: Now THIS Is Some Big Pandemic News
American Thinker: Things We Can Live Without
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
Babalu Blog: Bankrupt Cuba Desperately Seeking Business Partners, Especially From Cuban Diaspora
BattleSwarm: Red China’s Semiconductor Industry – Shell Games All The Way Down
Behind The Black: Today’s Blacklisted Americans, also, SpaceX Successfully Launches Another 60 Starlink Satellites
Cafe Hayek: Scott Atlas Speaks On Science, Politics, & COVID
CDR Salamander: Nagorno-Karabakh War’s Maritime Lessons Learned?
Da Tech Guy: Biden’s Train Wreck, also, Carjacking & Murder Vs. Cutting Off One’s Breasts And/Or Abortion
Don Surber: NYT Downgrades A Hate Crime
First Street Journal: No, This Isn’t About Government Controlling People At All! also, No Media Bias There, Huh?
The Geller Report: Red China Flanks Taiwan With Military Exercises In Air & Sea, also, Heartbreaking Video Shows Sobbing Boy Abandoned By Smugglers At Mexican Border
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, Raaaaacist Corporations?
Hollywood In Toto: Samantha Bee Trashed Trump For Kids In Cages, Ignores Far Worse Under Biden
The Lid: Biden’s DHS Deletes Reports Of Terrorists Sneaking Across The Southern Border
Legal Insurrection: Chauvin Trial Day 8 – “I Ate Too Many Drugs” Could Be Game Changer, also, New UNH Course Will Teach About “Racism In Science”
Michelle Malkin: Silicon Valley’s Smuggling Apps
Nebraska Energy Observer: The Old Mill, Part 2
Outkick: Jemele Hill Smashes Karen Rovell, Wins First Inaugural Woke Challenge, also, Former Commissioner Fay Vincent Disagrees With Manfred’s Decision To Move All-Star Game
Power Line: Biden Begins His War On The Suburbs, also, Germany’s Energy Disaster
Shark Tank: The Fight To Save Florida’s Medical Marijuana Program
Shot In The Dark: Grab Your Popcorn, also, Ecology Theater
The Political Hat: Denying The Existence Of Biological Sex Is Now Mainstream
This Ain’t Hell: Navy Shooter Identified, also, United Airlines Promises To Be Racist And Sexist In Hiring Pilots
Transterrestrial Musings: The Rise Of Naziism & The American Left, also, The Current Politicocultural Disaster
Victory Girls: Asa Hutchinson Gets Rekt By Tucker Carlson
Volokh Conspiracy: Justice Breyer Warns Against Court-Packing
Weasel Zippers: Police Raid Alberta Church That Defied Lockdown Orders, also, Gillibrand Mocked For Stupid Infrastructure Tweet
The Federalist: Baseball’s Commissioner Cares More About Politics Than About The Fans, also, It’s High Time We Made Corporate America Feel Real Pain, And Here’s How We Can Start
Mark Steyn: The Moral Preening Of Corporate Woke, also, Tal Bachman – We Have Met The Enemy

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In The Mailbox: 04.07.21 (Afternoon Edition)

Posted on | April 7, 2021 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 04.07.21 (Afternoon Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Don’t Mess With Rural Oklahoma
EBL: Rum – It Is Good For You
Twitchy: Kennedy Blisters Kamala Harris For Going Completely AWOL On The Border Crisis
Louder With Crowder: Another Immigration Fail – Biden Administration Hints At Restarting Border Wall Construction
Vox Popoli: An Ignition, Undoubted, also, Twitter Fails The Witch Test
Stoic Observations: John Brown & Harriet Tubman Sitting In A Tree
Gab News: What’s Next For Gab?

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Greatness: Biden Administration Refuses To Correct Lies About Georgia Election Integrity Law
American Power: Stephen Soukup – The Dictatorship Of Woke Capital
American Thinker: Maybe Coke Should Be Cancelled For Its Nazi Past, also, Strike Out Major League Baseball
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Russian Nukes News
Babalu Blog: Capturing The Brave Defiance Of The Cuban Opposition
BattleSwarm: Texas Vs. California Update, also, A Good Explanation Of The Semiconductor Shortage
Behind The Black: Today’s Blacklisted Americans, also, A Martian Crater Lake Fed By Glacial Runoff
Cafe Hayek: A Comment On One Of Tyler Cowen’s Claims At EconTalk
CDR Salamander: Egads On NGAD
Da Tech Guy: India Pulls A Trump On Saudi Arabia, also, Report From Louisiana – Dystopian Shreveport
Don Surber: Remember All Those Shovel-Ready Jobs That Weren’t?
First Street Journal: A Stunning Lack of Self-Awareness At The Harvard Crimson
The Geller Report: Biden Puts Infamous Liar Susan Rice In Charge Of Vote-By-Mail Expansion Effort, also, Murder & Violence Skyrocket In (Democrat) Cities That Slashed Police Funding
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, Get Woke, Get Whiter
Hollywood In Toto: Underground Railroad Director Attacks Trump, American Exceptionalism, also, Comedian K-von Quadruples Fan Base With Biden Barbs
The Lid: Biden’s DHS Secretary Says Border Wall Construction Could Resume
Legal Insurrection: Fight Against California’s Neo-Marxist Critical Ethnic Studies Curriculum Shifts To Individual Districts, also, Professor Allegedly Investigated By College For Months After Opposing “White Fragility” Training
Nebraska Energy Observer: Laughter
Outkick: U.S. Considering Joint Boycott Of Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, also, Aaron Rodgers Gets Trolled About Packers On Jeopardy!
Power Line: Georgia Smear Blowing Up In Biden’s Face, also, A Comic Book For Our Cartoon President
Shark Tank: Democratic Legislators Demand COVID Funds Be Used To “Fully Restore The Arts”
Shot In The Dark: A Few Issues
The Political Hat: Woke Medicine In Vermont – Wrong Race? No Vaccine For You!
This Ain’t Hell: Navy Officer Under Scrutiny For Letter Disparaging Enlisted Sailors As “Deviants” & “Perverts”, also, Fort Detrick Shooting
Transterrestrial Musings: What Happened To SN11, also, Gwynne Shotwell
Victory Girls: Anthony Blinken Says No Travel Until The World Is Vaccinated
Volokh Conspiracy: I’m Really Going To Miss Justice Breyer
Weasel Zippers: Woman Flips Out And Attacks Another Woman In Elevator Over Social Distancing, also, Here’s The George Floyd Video The Media Didn’t Show You
The Federalist: If Democrats Will Cry “Racist” No Matter What, Republicans Should Pass Stronger Laws, also, Embracing Cultural Marxism Will Only Hasten MLB’s Demise
Mark Steyn: Minnie The Moocher, also, The Morality Of Woke

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Journalism and Mental Health

Posted on | April 6, 2021 | Comments Off on Journalism and Mental Health

Dear Ms. Aviles:

What you need here, ma’am, is an expert analysis, and you’ve found the right guy for the job because — ask around — I’ve always been crazy.

One spring afternoon in 1986, I put on my three-piece suit and walked into the offices of the Cobb News-Chronicle. I walked out with a $4.50-an-hour job as a staff writer and an assignment to cover that evening’s Austell City Council meeting. I had no idea what I was doing, but it was better than driving a forklift, which was what I’d been doing for the past year-and-a-half, saving up money to buy P.A. gear for my rock band.

Thirty-five years later, I’m still at it and, some would say, I still have no idea what I’m doing, but I am by God doing it, aren’t I?

My point here is that journalists have mental health problems because no genuinely sane person would ever get into this miserable racket. Some people pine for the Golden Age of Journalism, but this “profession” (if you can call it that) has always attracted more than its fair share of kooks and cranks who, if they actually became successful at journalism, were politely called “eccentric,” which is just a word for crazy people who make good money. But these were rare exceptions, and the bulk of the people in America’s newsrooms were always a mix of neurotics and drunks, supervised by sadistic sociopaths known as “editors.”

You want to talk about “trauma-facing” work? Yeah, I spent a few years as a sports editor in a small town in North Georgia, where the fans of the various high schools constantly accused me of being biased in favor of their rivals. Calhoun fans thought I was in the tank for Gordon Central and vice-versa, but all I cared about was hitting my deadlines and having enough copy to fill up the section. Talk about trauma . . .

Bowling-league standings.

For years, my job included typing in the local bowling-league scores, which is about as low on the journalistic totem pole as it gets, but I had a wife and kids and bills to pay, so I did it. The problem with most young journalists today is they never had to do that kind of grungy low-level local journalism. Instead they graduated from Northwestern or Columbia and landed a job with one of those clickbait farms — HuffPo, Buzzfeed, Vox — cranking out listicles and other worthless crap. On my tombstone, the epitaph should read: “Here lie the mortal remains of Robert Stacy McCain, who never once in his journalism career wrote a listicle.”

Bowling scores, yes. Listicles, never.

Nowadays, every 23-year-old J-school grad thinks he’s qualified to be a pundit, telling us How to Save Our Democracy. They don’t want to do any actual work, so they haven’t paid their dues covering the police beat or city-council meetings or whatever, but you can find them on Twitter 24/7 snarking away about national politics and how utterly oppressed they are, because they’ve got $60,000 in student-loan debt. And then when they get axed in the latest round of layoffs, we’re expected to take seriously the wailing about the Death of American Journalism because some 26-year-old lost his/her (they/them?) job writing clickbait for HuffPo.

How was it that I managed to make my way up the food chain from the lowest level — bowling scores! — to covering presidential campaigns? Working crazy hours, mainly. I once worked 30 hours straight to hit a major deadline, then went home and slept for 18 hours. More than once over the years, I actually fell asleep at my desk from sheer exhaustion, but the thing was, I knew it was my own fault. I am disastrously inefficient — easily distracted, an undiagnosed case of ADHD if ever there was one — so it takes me more hours to produce the necessary amount of output, and this overcompensation for my inefficiency became a habit. Above all, I was persistent, doggedly determined to keep banging away until I amounted to something. “You sons of bitches think you’ve got me beat? Ha! I refuse to admit defeat.” And so here I am. Not rich or famous, but still working long after most of those sons of bitches packed it in and went off to write P.R. or sell insurance or whatever.

One of my college buddies, who landed a newspaper job in Alabama at the time I was driving a forklift in an Atlanta warehouse, decided to go to law school instead. “Forget about journalism, McCain — it’s a lousy job and there’s no money in it.” I refused to heed his warning, and sometimes think what might have happened if I’d stuck with that forklift gig. But I’m crazy, see? You want to talk about mental health in journalism, sweetheart, I’m an acknowledged expert. Out on the campaign trail, I did 110 mph in a rented Nissan racing across upstate New York covering the craziest congressional campaign in American history. That was after I’d gone to Kentucky to cover an alleged murder that turned out to be a suicide. And did I mention I’ve been hate-listed by the SPLC? Sued for defamation by a notorious bomber? I’ve smoked cigars with members of Congress and drank beers with presidential candidates.

Only a maniac could have done all the things I’ve done over the past 35 years, and yet for some reason I’m not under psychiatric care. My only medications are two packs of Marlboros a day, copious amounts of coffee and maybe a beer or two every now and then.

Since you’re so interested in mental health, maybe I can come see you up there at Columbia Journalism School. Just rattle the tip jar for a road trip, book a ticket on the Amtrak to New York, take an Uber uptown to Morningside Heights, and we can have some beers, talk things over.

Would you like that, Ms. Aviles? One-on-one interview with the craziest living American journalist? Clarice and Hannibal Lecter?

No, probably not. In fact, I imagine you’d call 911 and get a restraining order against me if you really thought I might do it.

NOTORIOUS RIGHT-WING EXTREMIST
THREATENS COLUMBIA PHD STUDENT
NEW YORK — Police here launched a manhunt this week for notorious right-wing blogger Robert Stacy McCain after he was accused of “stalking” a Ph.D. student at the Columbia University School of Journalism.
The threat came after Columbia’s Gwen Aviles issued a Twitter request for journalists to talk to her about their mental health problems. McCain, who has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “neo-Confederate white supremacist,” apparently took this as an invitation to visit Aviles in person. He quickly raised money on PayPal to fund a trip to New York, and was last seen driving a rented Dodge Hellcat.
“His current whereabouts are unknown,” said an NYPD source, recounting how McCain had eluded state troopers in New Jersey last weekend after a pursuit that hit speeds of 130 mph. . . .

They’d never think to look for me in a low-rent tribal casino, playing $2 roulette and drinking beer until the panic died down. Find some loser who went bust at the blackjack table, offer him a couple hundred bucks to drive me up to New York to, uh . . . visit my girlfriend Gwen.

Nah, they’d never catch me. But there’s no point pursuing this wild fantasy digression further, because it’ll never happen. I’m not that crazy.

Or maybe I am.

That’s the thing about crazy people. You never really know how crazy they are until they do something so insane that all the neighbors are telling the TV reporters, “He was a quiet guy, kept to himself, but he didn’t seem like the kind of maniac who would do something like this.”

And when the radical priest
Come to get me released,
We was all on the cover of Newsweek.

Just a bit of a Gonzo trip there. But they don’t teach Gonzo journalism at Columbia University, do they Ms. Aviles? No, of course not. People in Respected Institutions of Higher Education have never sanctioned the Symbiotic Trapezoid Quote, because they’d never pay a practitioner of Gonzo to teach kids how to do it: “Now, class, if you’ll check the syllabus, you’ll see that you’re gonna need a substantial supply of mescaline . . .”

But obviously this kind of first-hand experience with serious craziness is not what you were looking for when you sent out that tweet talking “trauma” and “mental health” in the field of journalism. What you had in mind, Gwen, was people talking about anxiety and depression and stress, which is quite a different thing than the bizarre manic freakouts that are my special area of expertise. I’m also familiar with several forms of weird sexual fetishes that are common (although seldom mentioned in public) among journalists. You might be surprised — or maybe not — at how many staffers at the New York Times are into really sick kinky stuff. Certainly you would be unwise to trust any NYT staffers alone with your pets or your children, if you know what I mean. But I digress . . .

In summary, Ms. Aviles, after 35 years in this miserable racket, I think journalists are not really crazier now than they were back in the day when there was an ashtray on every desk in the newsroom, and a pint bottle of whiskey in the bottom drawer of most of those desks. In fact, I think the problem is that most journalists now are just too uptight — they don’t drink, they don’t smoke, they don’t have any fun at all, as far as I can tell. Most of them spent four years chasing some paranoid fantasy about the Kremlin and Donald Trump and expected us to take that shit seriously — clearly, they’ve lost touch with reality. If the entire newsroom of CNN were to be hospitalized in the psych ward at Bellevue, they’d be less dangerous to the public. I mean, have you seen Brian Stelter?

He’s demented, deranged, depraved, a few fries shot of a Happy Meal, nutty as squirrel farts, and cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. If your research project into the mental health of journalists results in Stelter finally getting a straitjacket in a padded cell, America will thank you.

Meanwhile, you should consider taking me up on my offer of a one-on-one interview. Ask around. I’m an expert on crazy.