Posted on 03/01/2021 10:45:14 AM PST by Kaslin
In an attempt to save my shattered reputation, I renounce The Federalist. It is too little, too late, and not nearly enough, for our culture has silenced me forever.
Since Jan. 6, the darkest day in American history, I’ve received repeated calls from my colleagues in the media and literary worlds, and from my beleaguered manservant Roger, to “renounce” The Federalist. I’m torn about this, although I am renouncing The Federalist right now.
After all, The Federalist, which I renounce, has supported me through these dark years of plague and fascism, even though it has forced plague and fascism upon Americans through its opinion words. I can no longer apologize for this eminently renounceable publication.
This breaks my heart, because The Federalist is my friend, even as I thoroughly renounce it and everything for which it stands. It’s taken me in like a sad little dog it found by the side of the road.
The editor of The Federalist, Ben Doppleneck, and his wife, Jenna Bush Hager, have often hosted dinner parties in my honor, even though they never invite me. I understand why, as most people are afraid of my ideas, and have been ever since I debated Dick Cavett on “The Mike Douglas Show” in 1972. I was in favor of the Equal Rights Amendment. Cavett was in favor of smoking in restaurants. We couldn’t have such a debate now.
This publication features opinions that differ from what I believe, and from what everyone I know believes. Therefore, I renounce it, though I will continue writing for it as long as Brad Doublemint allows. It’s the only place remaining that will publish me, The Greatest Living American Writer.
These are dark days of intolerance in our media, our academy, and our sporting apparel companies. Every day, I receive thousands of phone calls from desperate people who don’t have my phone number, saying they have been canceled for some reason or other. I’ve heard from impoverished drug addicts and captains of industry, Super Bowl quarterbacks and supermarket cashiers, dead presidents and living presidents. I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe; attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark off the Tannhauser Gate.
Never before in the history of humankind, or of any kind, have essential freedoms been so under attack as they are now. Platforms appear and disappear as randomly as in an M.C. Escher drawing, which is an excellent intellectual reference that I just made. Why, my beleaguered manservant Roger has lost both his Parler account and his “Sexy Senior” discount on Farmers Only in just the past week. Is anyone else covering this besides The Federalist, which I renounce? I don’t think so.
The other night, I drove to Connecticut for a dinner party — masked, socially distant, and outdoors, of course — with my dear friends, who, like all my dear friends, are thoroughly committed to freedom of speech and rational discourse. I dined and drank with Professor Barbara El Alamein, who hosts six podcasts about intellectual freedom, Dr. Marcus Freelove, a prominent imaginary black libertarian, and, of course, my dearest friend in the world, Rabbi Ben Eleazer of Chelm.
Together, we wept over our mid-priced wine because of the America that we have lost, and found, and then lost again. How sad that is.
In the past six months, I have signed The Great Barrington Declaration, The Philadelphia Experiment, The Balfour Conundrum, an online plea to #FreeBritney, and a petition to recall the mayor of Mount Winchester because he refuses to reopen the town’s artisanal gin distillery despite their new HVAC system and outdoor seating arrangement. And I have paid the price, losing nearly two-dozen Twitter followers, three YouTube subscribers, and the favors of one Ms. Joyce Carol Oates, who will no longer bestow upon me a Special Birthday Surprise. These are dark days for intellectual freedom, because it is bitter, and because it is my heart.
Therefore, in an attempt to reconstruct my shattered reputation, I renounce The Federalist. It is too little, too late, and not nearly enough, for our culture has silenced me forever. Silence is golden, and silence is violence, and never the twain shall meet.
Join me in renouncing The Federalist, before it’s too late, and too soon, for all of us. Please subscribe to my Substack and my Patreon, and join me on Clubhouse to discuss how to maximize your brand by finding your voice on Clubhouse.
Thank you, and goodbye. I renounce The Federalist.
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him
(Humor) allegedly
As opuses go, a 6/10.
Is that Alton Brown in the photo?
Now how will be afford his typewriter ribbons?
You idiot, Jenna Bush Hagar isn’t married to someone named Bob Doppleneck (as in Double Neck. That alone should be a clue that is humor. Obviously you don’t get it which doesn’t surprise me one bit.
Who’s Alton Brown?
It just isn’t funny.
You’re just not getting it obviously, because you’re a sourpuss
!
It’s a sad commentary on society that it’s difficult to identify the true things and the sarcastic things in this essay.
Jenna Bush Hager isn’t his wife. Meghan McCain is.
I had no idea what that was referring to (until I searched "Tannhauser Gate").
I’m going to believe that this is humor until unless somebody has a better clue.
Agreed on the judgment of the times. Everything has to be heavily scrutinized from the internet these days.
James Lileks?
It does kinda look like a young Athens Alton, circa when he was director of photography for the video for REM's "The One I Love".
Peruse later.
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