Season’s greetings, whether you like it or not.
My wife says that I am getting crankier about the so-called holidays, and as usual she is right. For years I used to complain about seeing Christmas lights before Advent. Now they appear a few days after Halloween, at the end of “Spooky Season.” And this season there will be even more humbug than usual thanks to the upcoming presidential inauguration. I cannot be the only person whose breast nurses the pious hope that RFK Jr. will ban “pumpkin spice”—an epitaph on the death of feelings if there ever was one—along with candy corn.
Speaking of the Emperor and his servants—now that he is finally recalled from Elba, we are in a position to take stock of his predecessor. I am probably alone among contributors to this periodical in imagining that I will always have warm feelings toward our 46th president. This is not because of anything he did in office, though as far as I am concerned Biden did not deserve any of the blame for inflation. When it comes to foreign policy, though, his record is so superlatively bad that he makes George W. Bush look like Metternich. The only thing more remarkable than his ability to draw America to the brink of hot war in three non-overlapping theaters is the gusto with which the Cindy Sheehan crowd have thrown in their lot with Richard Cheney. “No Blood For Oil” has given way to “Blood—For No Oil.”
But all of these things are minor details. What I will always recall about the Biden administration is that it coincided with a new golden age of Michigan football. In fact I have already convinced myself that the micro-dynasty ended not with Jim Harbaugh’s departure for Los Angeles back in January, when hope was still possible for a future Wolverines team quarterbacked by Davis Warren, but with Biden’s exit from the Democratic ticket. If Putin somehow manages to light the candle a few before January 20, post-apocalyptic football historians will record that from the time he took office the Buckeyes never beat us again.
For now anyway the only winter facing us is of the non-nuclear variety. We have at least a foot of snow here in McMillan, Michigan. It has been coming down since last night and shows no sign of letting up. Looking out the window at the moonlit landscape I am reminded of my childhood, before global warming or whatever is responsible for the comparatively unsnowy winters that the Upper Peninsula has experienced these last few years. It’s certainly been rough on the local industry. Last night my wife and I left the children with my father and went to the Tally Ho in town. The place was loud, as usual, but it won’t be for long. The bartender informed us that it is being sold to a yuppie couple roughly our age who are intent on turning one of America’s great dives into the kind of boutique barbecue joint that was fashionable a decade and a half ago. You know the sort of place I mean: overly descriptive menus full of cloying adjectives (“artisanal”), puns (“Chip Dip-lomacy”) and pseudo-edgy appetizer names (“Not Your Grandma’s Cornbread!”), all in support of $30 overcooked brisket sold with at least eight kinds of sauce, each more revolting than the last. The tourists won’t be impressed and the locals won’t be able to afford it.
Still, the Biden economy has its good points. Bar regulars everywhere used to dread the month of December, which once brought hordes of casuals in for their dreary office holiday parties. There is nothing worse than watching your favorite bartender dusting off an ancient bottle of Midori in anticipation of two dozen middle-school guidance counselors arriving in matching acrylic sweaters emblazoned with catchphrases from A Christmas Story and Elf. For the third year in a row, I expect that many of them will be staying home: “universal peace through sea and land.”
I realize that I am sounding grinchier than even I had hoped to be here. In recompense, might I suggest a few more presidential pardons for Sleepy Joe on his way out? (Hunter deserved his, and not just because his father is The Big Guy.) I for one would like to see Corrine Brown, the former Florida congresswoman, get her good name back, along with a posthumous pardon for the late, great Jimmy Traficant. But the most amusing possibility of all would be for him to steal Trump’s thunder by setting free all the January 6 rioters or whatever we are supposed to call them. In addition to being a magnanimous gesture, it would be a fine civics lesson.
Happy Toyotathon to all who celebrate.
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