Althouse

“A lot of people that have opinions about this seem to think that there’s something wrong with this friendship. You know, it’s possible that people are just really friends. It blows my mind that people assume that because Clarence Thomas has friends, that those friends have an angle.”... 

“You know, I can’t talk to Clarence without him asking all about the kids. ‘What are they doing?’ We have a dog named Otis that Clarence particularly likes. We talk about dogs a lot.” Crow remembered Thomas supporting his son’s wrestling team at St. Mark’s School of Texas. “Friends do stuff like that.”... 

“Every single relationship — a baby’s relationship to his mom — has some kind of reciprocity,“ he said....

Crow is asked why he bought Thomas’ mother’s house:

ProPublica reported that Crow bought a single-story home and two vacant lots down the road for $133,363 from three co-owners — Thomas, his mother and the family of Thomas’ late brother. 

“I assumed his mother owned the home,” Crow said. “His life story is an amazing American life story: born into deep poverty. Father gone. Mother — the lady whom we’re talking about — really not able to do a lot to help raise her two sons. Ultimately raised by his grandparents, who were illiterate. Growing up in Jim Crow Georgia. So I approached him with the idea that I might purchase that home for the purpose that in due course it could be the boyhood home of a great American.”  The thought that it was more than that “kind of drives me crazy.” 

As for the improvements? “She works as a greeter in the local hospital — a 94-year-old lady,” Crow said. “When we made this purchase, she was just an 84-year-old lady, or something like that. I built a carport, so that she can park her car. It’s not an enclosed garage. That’s what I did. Now, you said improvements to the house. I don’t remember any other rooms. However, if there was a commode that was terrible, I might have fixed it. I don’t know.”...

 Crow expresses a desire to be understood in terms of his love for America:

“I think America is one of the greatest things that’s happened in world history. Here we are governing ourselves, or trying to govern ourselves,” Crow said. “There are other times in world history in which that’s happened, but nothing like this. I love the American experiment in self-governance.... 

“I decided that I like American historical manuscripts and books that relate to American history.... It’s a big collection. But it’s many thousands of documents, and books.... We have a small number of things here that are about bad guys.... You can’t have a library and talk about that without including the bad.... We’ve got Jesse James and Al Capone and Lee Harvey Oswald and John Wilkes Booth... So yeah, World War II was a fairly big event in American history. We have a bunch of stuff about World War II, including some of our enemies."... 

“It really, really bothers me that — what I’m going to call yellow journalism — has decided to say that I like some of that stuff. That’s exactly the opposite of what the truth is.... My mom was on a ship that was sunk by Germans during World War II. If you try to kill my mom, I don’t like you. I mean, that’s reasonably obvious. And so the idea that I could have sympathy for Nazism is insane.”...

[O]ne can make out statues [Harlan] Crow has collected from countries ravaged by political violence: Nicolae Ceaușescu, the general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party; Lenin and Stalin; Enver Hoxha of Albania; the Hungarian Communist Béla Kun. These authentic specimens were harvested from the wreckage of collapsed tyranny, and they are kept in the condition in which they were found....Nearer to his office, away from the silent outer darkness, are statues of Margaret Thatcher and other political and cultural figures whom he honors rather than reviles. And inside, near the entrance to the Crow library, is the largest bust of Winston Churchill I have ever seen.... 

Down the hallway, I saw paintings by Dwight Eisenhower and George W. Bush. Bush is a friend of Crow’s, and one of his paintings depicts Crow in conversation with an elderly African man. It is labeled father to father. In the main hall, one of the most prominent paintings is a portrait of Clarence Thomas in his robes. Thomas is also visible in a few vacation photographs framed in Crow’s office. 

The Hitler paintings were, I am told, in the library somewhere—but they occupied no exalted space, and the Crow collection consists mostly of items from American history, chiefly relics of those who advanced the cause of freedom. It includes signatures from all the signers of the Declaration of Independence, as well as the desk of Abraham Lincoln.... Somewhere in the Crow library, there’s a signed Mein Kampf...

It simply isn’t possible to be a Nazi, crypto or otherwise, and simultaneously be an Abe Lincoln and Liz Cheney fanboy—let alone to conceal from your dearest confidants, among them Black and Jewish people, your preference for the master race....

Compared with the old establishment that survived on inherited wealth and social position, they are insecure, and many worry that their offspring will be downwardly mobile, which leads them to spend virtually all of their outsize disposable incomes on preparing the children to become star performers in the next round of competition.... 

What self-respecting mammals don’t want their kids to have it at least as good as they did? At the median household income, that’s even a semi-plausible demand, because here all government needs to provide is median-grade public goods.... If you would be satisfied knowing that your child had a secure but unremarkable life managing a Walmart in some exurb, the government could probably guarantee that.... 

But — as McArdle sees it — if you worked hard enough to get to $400,000 a year, you expected something bigger for yourself and then you'll probably want the same — and more — for your children, and — overspending for them — you're stuck with an ordinary life for yourself. The Camry. The eggs.

Is that really the explanation for the Collins/Stephens agreement? I don't know. But if it is, there are some good solutions for young people looking on and thinking I don't want that to happen to me:

1. Don't have children.

2. Don't get the idea that you're special and you need to win in economic terms. If you sort of win — within the range that you're likely to win — you'll still have an ordinary life, and it will be much more work and much more disappointing. So come to terms with your mediocrity early. If you do this, it's easier to....

3. Live somewhere cheap (and close to nature).

4. Do some sort of work that you can enjoy and feel good about. 

5. Go ahead and have children. If you're doing ##2-4, you can skip the non-having of children. Make life about love, not boosting these random new humans to the next higher rung above some other couple's random new humans.

 Forbes reports.

"... and Moehringer occupied it for two years while he worked on the book. All the writer requested was a long table where he could lay out the scenes he’d piece together 'like a necklace,' Agassi recalled. They’d meet in the morning, fueled by breakfast burritos from Whole Foods. 'I’d spend a couple of hours with him over breakfast and a tape recorder,' Agassi said. 'Open' is widely considered a paragon of sports autobiographies — a raw and honest excavation of a well-known life. Agassi said he sought out Moehringer to write the book — 'romancing' him to do it, he said... Like any reliably employed ghostwriter, Moehringer is also known for his discretion. Prince Harry’s book is his third ghostwriting project. Maybe.... Agassi.... said he wanted to put Moehringer’s name on the cover.... But Moehringer declined such public credit, Agassi said. He preferred to disappear."

Writes Elizabeth A. Harris in "When the Writing Demands Talent and Discretion, Call the Ghostwriter/Ghostwriters write books in someone else’s voice — without leaving fingerprints. Doing it well requires great technical skill and a flexible ego" (NYT).

Moehringer is also the ghostwriter for Prince Harry's new book — "Spare" — and, again, his name is not on the cover.

I'm giving this post my "furniture" tag because what attracted me to the story was the line "All the writer requested was a long table where he could lay out the scenes he’d piece together 'like a necklace.'" 

I'm very interested in the furniture used by writers. Note my expression of admiration — here — for the book "The Writer's Desk." 

But also the appearance of the word "necklace" caught my eye — and not just because it's a snazzy simile. It was only yesterday that I was quoting from Prince Harry's book, "He grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace...."

By the way, how rich do you need to be to have someone working for you to assemble fresh breakfast burritos? Do people with over $100 million really just do take out from Whole Foods — day after day?