Last Gasp: The Sunday Night Reader for 9/12/21
Budzinski, Davis, and Williams
Budzinski (running) for Congress
For all my focus on Rodney Davis and the IL-13 congressional district, I can’t say I’ve ever been thrilled with his challengers. David Gill was a genuinely good guy with the very best of intentions, but he was a windmill tilting impossible dreamer with all the positives and negatives that implies. The less said about Ann Callis the better — fitting, given that she barely said anything at all. Betsy Dirksen Londrigan scored well in her first outing but, in both runs, was hamstrung by the fact that she never said anything that wasn’t straight from the briefing book. She meant it, but did she feel any of it?
Nikki Budzinski — Dick Durbin’s third go at trying to name a person to the seat — seems different, perhaps? An organizer rather than a fundraiser. Time with Pritzker, who is doing a great job, in my opinion. And if you can be chief of staff at OMB, you can do about anything.
Given the way redistricting appears to be going, the primary may well decide the 13th this time, so I’d love to see more candidates and real competition for the seat. David Palmer is already in it, and let’s see five or six total like we did in 2016. But regardless of who queues up, Budzinski gives me some hope that I might be able to get excited about the Dem nominee this time around. Nick Vlahos profiled Budzinski in the Peoria Journal Star this week.
Do me a solid. Tell your friends about the newsletter.
Davis and the Vaccine Mandate that Wasn’t
Rep. Rodney Davis laid this little bit of misinformation on social media this week: “President Biden has gone too far. His executive order forcing private sector employers to require their employees to be vaccinated is blatantly unconstitutional. We must fight back against it.”
I don’t support a federal vaccine mandate either. Which is great, because despite what Davis said, President Biden didn’t issue one. Instead, the order requires businesses with more than 100 employees to require either vaccination *or* weekly testing. There’s a vast difference between those two things.
Does Davis consider them equally invasive? Of course not. Does he really believe a 10-second swab to avoid transmission during a pandemic unconstitutional? If he did, he’d mention it here, so he could come off as even more of a fire-breather. Is he intentionally misrepresenting the situation to make political hay? Now, you’ve got it.
In the face of Biden’s action, Davis’ options were: 1) Have a nuanced opinion about the executive order, 2) jump on the "masks and tests are tyrannical thought control" crazy train, or 3) lie to make an extreme position seem more reasonable. Facing a possible primary against Mary Miller — who buys her crazy trains wholesale — but always angling to keep a shred of his respectability, Davis went with #3, of course.
Skunk Works
This story by Lee Hudson in Politico should be right up my alley. It’s an ersatz behind-the-scenes tour of Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, which has been home of the defense contractor’s classified projects since World War II. But, on the anniversary of 9/11, it just bums me out.
I’m not a pacifist. I believe we need a military and heroes. I believe that if you have to fight, you better be equipped to win. I believe that the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was necessary. I also believe that if a war is in its 20th year, it’s long-past unwinnable.
Puff pieces like this one about Lockheed’s Skunk Works — versions by different reporters were all over the place for the last couple of weeks, based on the same tour, hitting all the same notes — tell us the lie that we should always be scared. Don’t buy it. We can win wars, but wars will never calm a fear that can’t be calmed. Read more.
An Appreciation: Michael K. Williams, 1966-2021
I usually write these myself, but Doreen St. Felix did a better job than I ever could in the New Yorker:
“Williams was drawn to works of heightened realism, but no one would describe his performances, even the rougher ones, as merely realistic…Williams was a performer openly daunted by the task at hand, a shock absorber. The membrane was so thin: he saw you seeing him, and it was as if he allowed you to touch him. He did not have the smell of self-seriousness on him, but he took his vocation seriously. We loved him for his special embrace of difference; there was something of Brando in his visions of queer masculine life.” Read more.
