This afternoon, I took a long walk around an empty Manhattan, smoking a cigar and maintaining a safe distance.  (The cigar has that effect…) New Yorkers are already skilled at giving each other a wide berth.” A very wide berth.

I wrote a guest column for Variety today. Here’s a sample:

I’m a Republican (sort of), so maybe I’m predisposed to look on the bright side of any Republican administration, even one that’s run by a Democrat. But it seems to me that if there’s any community that knows how to deal with irrational, misinformed narcissists with way too much power, it’s us.

A college friend posted this on Facebook, in response to the news that a Yale professor cancelled a test yesterday because the students were too upset by Tuesday’s experience of democracy.

I cannot improve on it:

I was a fool to think this couldn't happen and to condescend to those who did. May the next 4 years humble me with prosperity and progress.

— Rob Long (@rcbl) November 9, 2016

This, I can say without hesitation, is an outrage.  From the WSJ:

When we wrote about a new Food and Drug Administration rule that seemed to forbid companies from donating cigars to U.S. soldiers, we hoped it might be a misunderstanding. Now we know the ban is deliberate.

On the last podcast, some good-natured fun was had with Peter Robinson’s familiarity with the Bob Dylan songbook.  In short, he had none. Which of course I knew all along, and which was the central reason I asked him, “Hey, Peter, what’s your favorite Dylan song?”

In the spirit of full disclosure, he’s not the only one here at Ricochet who is out of touch.  I represent below the Slack messages between me and @blueyeti. He sent me a screenshot of a TV show that will, apparently, feature the young and talented designer behind Ricochet’s new look.

About show business, Woody Allen said it best:

“Show business is dog-eat-dog.  It’s worse than dog-eat-dog, it’s dog-doesn’t-return-other-dog’s-phone-calls.”

We all have our opinions about the Nobel Prize committee awarding the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature to Bob Dylan. I was skeptical. I thought it seemed a little over the top.

Rain or shine, whether he shows up for the debate or doesn’t!  Let’s get a drink together and fortify ourselves for the next 21 days.

The Rules:

This, finally:

A lot of people are saying that the next debate should be cancelled.  Most of them are the usual suspects.

Whether it is or isn’t, I’m going to need a drink.

Yesterday, on Twitter, David Axelrod delivered some good advice to Hillary Clinton:

If I were @HillaryClinton, I'd lay off the Tweets on the @realDonaldTrump tape. It kind of speaks for itself.

— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) October 8, 2016

There are three kinds of bad news: 1) bad news that’s about to happen; 2) good news that’s really bad news; and 3) bad news that’s out there in distance, where you can probably ignore it. Here’s a snippet of the 2nd kind of bad news, from the Pew Trust:

Primarily because of market gains, the state pension funding gap dropped in 2014, the first decline in reported pension debt since 2000. Lower investment returns in 2015, however, indicate that pension debt will increase when valuations for that year are complete.

One Saturday morning, long ago, I was walking the dog down a Venice Beach street and an old battered car pulled up next to me. In the driver’s seat, a tattooed guy with a burning cigarette between his fingers. In the passenger’s seat, a down-and-out looking woman who rolled down the window and asked, “Hey, do you party?”

As I said, it was about 10AM on a Saturday, and I was walking the dog and carrying a just-filled plastic bag — if you get my drift — so it was pretty clear I wasn’t in their target demo, for whatever it was they were targeting. But now, according to NYMagazine, we know that the urge to party is bedrock human behavior:

What contemporary Americans refer to as “partying” is of a piece with what French sociologist Émile Durkheim called “collective effervescence.” According to Durhkeim (and so many Snapchat stories), when people start moving in a shared, directed experience, a current of excitement starts pulsing through them.

I have two stories about Garry Marshall, the legendary television writer, producer, creator and motion picture director who died today at 81.

The first, I can’t really tell. Not here, anyway — it requires a very ferocious violation of our beloved CofC. And also: it may not even be true.

But the second one is easy:

Trouble in Hillaryland:

Some research, from the Harvard Business Review: