Look Behind The Curtain: Discussion with Author Walter Kirn
Taibbi: That was the root of that bizarre story in Oklahoma, where the horse-paste eaters were supposedly so numerous that they were leaving gunshot victims outside. Everybody repeated that story. Nobody stopped to think: there s probably not that many gunshot victims in rural Oklahoma&
Walter Kirn: I have to tell you, Matt, the middle of the country is being treated much as the middle of the country was treated back during the Indian wars. These are stories of strange tribes committing atrocities out in the middle of nowhere. Everybody in the metropolitan areas is reading these newspapers and thinking: Oh, the Commanche just bore off another 30 white women into slavery! or whatever. Or, the stories they would tell about Mormon polygamy as potboilers in East coast newspapers back in the middle of the 19th century. Living in Montana, which I promise you is no longer The Revenant we aren t warming ourselves inside of bear carcasses. It s an incredibly sophisticated state with airline connections to the world, sometimes even with just one stop.
Yet we re being described as though we re on the precipice of savagery. I saw that with the Oklahoma thing. I was in South Dakota last year when I heard an NPR report that the hospital in Rapid City, which I was one mile from, was about to collapse. And I drove over. I had a thousand parking spots to choose from. Then when I rechecked the text of the NPR story, I saw that it was a speculative story, which interviewed a doctor about what might happen if things got so much worse. So, I ve had that experience over and over of being reported on as a resident of the great frontier and then checking outside my door to see whether or not it was accurate and finding it wasn t.
RTWT. Sad but true. Yesterday my son got sent home from his (Catholic, private) high school because his Covid test finally came back, and it was positive. He had not had any symptoms in 5 days, which were very mild anyway. The HS had recently changed the requirement for post-test quarantine from 5 days to 10 days. My physician pretty-Covid-paranoid spouse decided that he should go in; she had not heard yet about the rule change. It had gone out by email the day before. He was very anxious to get back to school, entirely just to see his friends. (He’s no scholar.) While he was at the nurse’s office, his positive report came in. The nurse was annoyed at that and LWJ had to drive down to pick him up. Now he has to stay out another 5 days, entirely, as far as I can see, because the test was so late getting back to the school, which is because the testing company is so backed up with people getting tests. None of this makes much sense to me. This while I am teaching remotely, which I don’t object to too much because my commute is so onerous, but it does kinda suck the life of my classes, when they manage to have some. It would be better if this were just a natural disaster, like a wildfire, but instead there are other humans to blame, such as the virologists who could not resist the temptation to play about with cool but deadly viruses (on our dime) and the bureaucrats some of whom may mean well, but are both incompetent and authoritarian. It’s a good time for everyone to practice their stoicism, I reckon.