FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.



Genre bendahs.

• For those of who who haven't yet subscribed to Roy Edroso Breaks It Down (five servings of premium content every week! Cheap!), here's another freebie, in which The Atlantic Festival comes up with the perfect interviewer for (and this I'm not making up) their session with former Homeland Security child jailer Kirstjen Nielsen. Enjoy!

• Seeing all these kids marching to fight climate change today puts me in mind of the idea, spread by the New York Times and other trend-chasing organizations and popular till recently, that notwithstanding their candidate got the most votes in 2016 it was liberals who lived in a "bubble" and as some sort of penance must travel outside it to the great Cletus Safari trail, and expose themselves to the views of Trump voters. The idea seemed idiotic to me then -- and even before then, when Charles Murray was peddling it with his Belmost/Fishtown "Bubble Test" -- and nearly three years on, it's so obviously ridiculous that even the Times seems to have backed off it. In polls Trump is down to his rump, the kids are all into reversing climate change, even Republicans want an assault weapons ban, and striking GM workers are showing dramatically that unions are not rightwing swearwords and featherbedding conspiracies but ways for working people to make a decent living, and Americans are increasingly into it. The notion that you had to listen to some geezer in a diner tell you why they thought a game show host was going to protect them transsexuals should be added into future editions of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.