• Headline of the day:
The few books that have been written about the Bidens have not exactly been flying off the shelves. . .
New York magazine writer Gabriel Debenedetti’s “The Long Alliance: The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama” has sold fewer than 1,500 copies, according to NPD BookScan. The Associated Press’ Julie Pace and Darlene Superville’s “Jill: A Biography of the First Lady” has sold fewer than 2,500 and Chris Whipple’s “The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House” and POLITICO’s Ben Schreckinger’s “The Bidens: Inside the First Family’s Fifty-Year Rise to Power” have each racked up fewer than 5,000 books sold.
That’s in contrast to the almost million copies that Michael Wolff’s Trump-focused “Fire and Fury” sold, according to NPD BookScan, and the more than 400,000 copies that Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s “Peril” sold, among many other Trump-focused books on which publishers made a killing.
How can this be? I am reliably informed that Joe Biden received the most votes for president ever!
• Elizabeth Stauffer does a wonderful beat down on Kamala Harris immediately below, with the comparison to the hapless Miss South Carolina from 15 years ago a nice cherry on top. I’ll add merely that (P)resident Biden decided not to attend the current ASEAN conference underway in Jakarta, even though our ASEAN alliance may be more important (because China) than the NATO alliance right now. The presumption must be that Biden is not up to the travel, and thus he has sent Kamala Harris in his place. Where she offers up this:
Another word salad from Kamala Harris:
"I feel very strongly about the importance as a general matter of engaging in U.S. policy as it relates to foreign affairs in a way that we pay attention, of course, to the immediate concerns and threats if they exist, but that we also pay… pic.twitter.com/imsov89Ksg
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) September 6, 2023
• Ross Douthat thinks James Bond is going woke—at least in the newest Bond novels:
After so many decades fighting evil masterminds bent on Britannia’s destruction, the 21st-century version of James Bond has found a very 21st-century antagonist. In the newest Bond novel, “On His Majesty’s Secret Service,” 007 is charged with protecting King Charles III from a dastardly plot hatched by a supervillain whose nom de guerre is Athelstan of Wessex — in other words, a Little Englander, a Brexiteer, a right-wing populist, apparently the true and natural heir to Goldfinger and Blofeld.
The novel’s Bond, who carries on a “situationship” with “a busy lawyer specializing in immigration law” (not to worry, he’s not taking advantage, “he wasn’t the only man she was seeing”), must travel to Viktor Orban’s Hungary to infiltrate the vast right-wing conspiracy and avert a terrorist attack at Charles’s coronation; along the way the secret agent muses on the superiority of the metric system and the deplorable dog whistles of populism.
Pretty easy to predict that if they make a film version along these lines, it will bomb so hard at the box office that the Bond franchise might die not another day, but that day.
• No surprise here:
Harvard is named worst school for free speech — scoring zero out of possible 100
Harvard University is officially 2023’s worst school for free speech.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) released its annual college free speech rankings on Wednesday, which dubbed the state of free speech at the Ivy League school “abysmal.”
“I’m not totally surprised,” Sean Stevens, director of polling and analytics at FIRE, told The Post. “We’ve done these rankings for years now, and Harvard is consistently near the bottom.”
Despite being the most acclaimed academic institution in the country, Harvard received a 0.00-point free speech ranking on a 100-point scale — a full 11 points behind the next worst school. FIRE says the dismal score was “generous,” considering Harvard’s actual score was a -10.69, according to their calculations.
• Happy to see my contribution to the food chain acknowledged at last:
Just 12% of Americans — mostly men — are eating half of our beef supply
A new study reveals that 50% of the beef consumed in any given day goes to just 12% of the US population. . . And if you’re wondering who’s eating all that beef, the answer is, disproportionately, men. People between the ages of 50 and 65 were also more likely to eat a heftier portion of beef.
The researchers were “surprised” such a small percentage of people consume such an outsized proportion of beef, study author Dr. Diego Rose, nutrition program director at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, said in a news release.
Good. Now do bacon.
P.S. Naturally the authors of this study want to complain and lecture us about it:
“This may be because meat, especially red meat, is associated with masculinity, strength and power in Western culture,” they added.
Yes, and the problem is?
“Men are more likely to subscribe to the idea that human lives are more valuable than those of animals, and are more likely to associate meat with healthiness. Whatever the reasons, men are significantly less likely than women to consider reducing their meat consumption.”
Almost a third of the beef eaten came from cuts such as steak or brisket. But six of the top 10 sources were mixes like burgers, hot dogs, burritos, tacos, meatloaf or meat sauce.
Checks out.
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