Also in The Atlantic, Tom Nichols put his finger on one of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s most repellent traits: “It is the overbearing corniness that comes from trying to mimic deep sincerity, and it tends to end up sounding like a cross between a late-night-television preacher and an arrogant luxury-car salesman: Jesus brought you here, my brother, so what’s it gonna take for you to fly home in one of these super-lethal F-35 babies today?” (Peter Schmolka, Ottawa, Ontario)
In The Stamford Advocate, Colin McEnroe mulled the currency of ignorance in politics today: “There may never be another moment like this: when all the things you don’t know are actually points in your favor. (I’m looking at you, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) It’s like ‘Reverse Jeopardy!,’ where correct answers subtract from your winnings.” (Bruce Mac Nair, Stamford, Conn.)
In The Financial Post, William Watson wondered how Canada, “a country so proud of its woke devotion to peacekeeping, harmony, cooperation and nonaggression,” embraced “brutal and violent” hockey as its national sport. The National Hockey League rulebook, he added, “has eight mentions of ‘blood,’ including the stipulation that ‘high-sticking’ merits a four-minute penalty, not two, if injury results, ‘in the manner of drawing blood or otherwise.’ A glossary specifies that ‘blood does not have to be visible to consider it an injury’ and that ‘severe bruising, abrasions, a welt, cutting of the skin or damage to teeth’ also qualify. How many other sports have rule books written partly by pathologists?” (Louise Klein, Landenberg, Pa.)
In The Times, Nitsuh Abebe marveled at the marketing behind “PepsiCo’s denuded ‘Simply NKD’ Cheetos and Doritos, ‘now reimagined without any colors or artificial flavors’ — as if freshly picked from the Dorito bush and crisped in an elderly doritero’s brick oven.” (Laurence Whitlow, Catron County, N.M.)
Also in The Times, Michael S. Rosenwald recalled the upset in 2011 when it was revealed that the Mark Twain scholar Alan Gribben would excise the hundreds of appearances of a racial slur from forthcoming editions of Twain’s most famous novels: “The literary establishment shrieked like the whistle on a steamboat chugging down the Mississippi River.” (Phil Pullella, Rome)
