TUESDAY: Where is the number 2 a 5?

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2026

On our most-watched "cable news" program: Sometimes, the stupidity seen on the Fox News Channel reaches a special level. 

Last night, the studied dumbness was truly world-class. Consider our failing nation's most-watched "cable news" program, the padded room procedural known simply as The Five. 

Also, consider Gutfeld!, its spiritual cousin—the painfully numb-nutted messaging show which comes on the air at 10 o'clock Eastern, 7 o'clock on the coast.

There are quite a few serious topics a show like The Five might explore. We'll cite one example—Mayor Mamdani's current proposals for the New York City budget.

Stating the obvious, the dumbbells assembled to rule this show wouldn't be able to conduct any such real discussion. Quickly, let's consider one of the topics these dumbbells did pretend to explore, a topic which was also beaten to death five hour later on Gutfeld!

Yesterday, The Five pretended to discuss one of the ways New York City was hoping to dig out from the snow. In a perfect capture of this program's gong-show essence, the "discussion" started like this:

MAYOR MAMDANI (videotape, outdoors in the snow): Due to the historic nature of this blizzard, we've increased pay to thirty bucks an hour. And you can walk into any Sanitation garage until 8 p.m. this evening, and starting again from 9 a.m. tomorrow morning. All you need is to bring is two forms of I.D. to ensure you get paid.

WATTERS (chuckling): Call it the Snowcialist state! Zoran the Destroyer says you don't need I.D. to vote, but you need five forms to touch a snow shovel.

PERINO: [Laughter] 

In that tape, Mamdani was urging New Yorkers to help the city shovel out from the snow—but what followed was classic The Five! The tape showed Mamdani referring to two forms of I.D. 

Without so much as batting an eye, Watters raised the number to five!

No explanation was offered. Struggling to compose herself, the increasingly awful Dana Perino, lovingly adjusting her hair, switched it right back to two:

PERINO (continuing directly): I mean, it's just so obviously funny. And what's great is that—I know that he's an intelligent guy, and he's quite charismatic—that he doesn't realize, as he's saying the words out loud, how ridiculous it sounds to need two forms of I.D. to shovel, but not to vote.

We'd somehow gone from two to five, and now we were back at two! Again, we've seen no statement from Mamdani concerning forms of I.D. needed to vote.

At this point, Watters threw to the disordered Young Master Gutfeld himself. After offering a hackneyed digression on bureaucracy, the little guy offered this:

GUTFELD: Five I.D.s! Now that is redundant—for shoveling snow! Now he brought it back to two, which is good...

The termagant went with five, then said that Mamdani "brought it back to two." The fellow didn't explain his comment—but when Gutfeld finally finished talking, Watters returned to this:

WATTERS: Emily, if you actually present five I.D.s and you get a shovel, can you just go to the bar for a couple of hours and come back and get paid?

COMPAGNO: I don't know. I would think so. I don't know if I have five I.D.s....

It was a modernized version of Who's On First, performed by a messaging troupe composed of corporate clowns

On this occasion, the children kept jumping from two to five and back to two, with no attempt to explain. Held until last, twice-weekly liberal co-host Jessica Tarlov now said the shoveling offer was actually a pre-existing approach used by Gotham mayors in blizzards of the past.

Sometimes an attempt to get snow shoveled may be just an attempt to do that! 

The New York Post had invented the grisly conflation of 2 and 5 in its original pseudo-report on this topic. In this follow-up report, the Post did a bit of semi-explaining, even as the paper adopted a new snarky approach:

Mamdani admin. fails to attract any shovelers for hours at NYC site

S’no thank you. 

The Mamdani administration failed for hours to attract any emergency shovelers at one Queens garage Sunday—while planning to try to dig out New Yorkers with a fourth of the force the city used for its last mega-storm. 

[...]

While city officials said they expect to have attracted a total of 1,400 public shovelers to start round-the-clock shifts beginning Sunday night, that quantity is still a fraction of the 6,454 people who were recruited for the 2015-16 winter season, which saw up to 3,500 shovelers working simultaneously at peak times that period.

[...]

The mayor has recently caught some backlash over the city’s rigorous sign-up requirements for the program.

While some have called on Mamdani’s administration to change the requirements so as to allow more people to pick up a shovel, city officials claimed there was little they can do about it.

“We know there has been some press about the requirements, and we want to be clear: As with any employer, the City of New York has a legal obligation under federal law to verify work authorization and maintain proper documentation before issuing payment,” DSNY press secretary Vincent Gragnani told The Post.

“We are not legally permitted to hand out checks without completing that process,” he said.

“Ensuring compliance with employment law isn’t red tape for its own sake—it’s what allows the program to operate responsibly and sustainably, helping keep our city running through the toughest winter days.”

Even Rupert Murdoch's Post was now making it sound like the I.D. requirements hadn't come from the laughable mayor himself. As usual, the Post's reporting wasn't precise enough to create any clear understanding about the source of the I.D. requirements.

As noted, it was the Post itself which performed the original act of conflation. It had referred to two forms of I.D. in the body of this report, transformed to five in the headline. A panel of deadbeats—four of The Five—decided to have some low-IQ fun with the whole situation. 

This has been standard fare on this braindead channel since the first snow fell. Going from 2 to 5 to 2 to 5, four hounds from Hell burned yesterday's hour away in this and other ways.

Stupidity's easy, explanation is hard. We may someday be able to tell you about the additional intellectual rot on display all over this channel last night.

Meanwhile, what about Mamdani's budget? That would be an actual topic.

These dopes are too flyweight to go there. Tarlov continues to suffer.

STATE OF THE (DIS)UNION: Even before Jones interrupted...

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2026

...Khanna oddly misspoke: Not long ago, the so-called Big Weekend Show was a virtual afterthought in the Fox News Channel's cavalcade of corporate messaging programs.

As the leading authority on the program recalls, the show had debuted, in a one-hour format, and under a slightly different name, in February 2021. Things dragged along for four years.

Big Weekend was expanded to a two-hour format in January 2025, then to three hours last September. This was part of the channel's decision to eliminate hours of "news reporting" in favor of an increase in group propaganda shows. 

The channel engineered this adjustment after President Trump was elected for the second time in 2024. Last September, the channel also announced that The Big Weekend Show would have regular co-hosts for the first time, with Tomi Lahren and Johnny Joey Jones cast in those roles. 

Last Saturday, it was this potent three-hour show which attempted to tell Red America how to view the Supreme Court's 6-3 decision—its to throw a large portion of the president's prevailing tariffs onto the junkheap of history. The program went on the air at 5 p.m. Three minutes later, Secretary Bessent, on videotape, had made the new situation almost impossibly clear. 

As viewers could see on the videotape, here's what the fellow had said: 

BESSENT: Six justices simply ruled that "Aye-Eepah" [phonetic] authorities cannot be used to raise even one dollar of revenue. This administration will invoke alternative legal authorities to replace the "Aye-Eepah" tariffs. 

Treasury’s estimates show that the use of Section 122 authority, combined with potentially enhanced Section 232 and Section 301 tariffs, will result in virtually unchanged tariff revenue in 2026.

Few things could be more clear! As we noted yesterday, co-host Jones was soon explaining the president's inevitable greatness as it had been manifested in this episode:

JONES (2/21/26): I can't help but laugh at Josh Shapiro...

You know, [the Democrats] play this game that's— They're not very good at it, I don't think. 

President Trump is smarter than they are. He's playing checkers, they're playing— Or, he's playing chess, they're playing checkers. 

Trump had outsmarted the Dems again! The Democrats had been playing checkers. He had been playing chess!

Along the way, co-host Lahren had littered the twelve-minute pseudo-discussion with descriptions of the Democrats' horrible motives in opposing the miraculous tariffs—the bad faith Democrats had revealed in the course of their refusal to root for the United States against the rest of the world. 

In this way, the corporate messaging was broadcast through Red America as the channel worked to maximize corporate profits even as it undermines the possibility of maintaining the American project.

So it goes as this channel's messenger children bend themselves to the scripted corporate will. But as we noted yesterday, something very unusual happened on Sunday's Big Weekend Show.

On this campus, our youthful analysts were surprised but heartened by what this development. During Sunday's 6 o'clock hour, co-host Jones teased, then later introduced an extremely unusual segment:

JONES (2/22/26): Joining us now is Congressman Ro Khanna, a member of the House Armed Services and House Oversight Committees. 

Congressman, thank you for joining us. We don't get a lot of Democrats on here, wo when we do, we want to treat you with respect. 

Say what? Rep. Khanna (D-CA) has been prominent on MS NOW in recent months, largely due to his tireless work with respect to the attempt to engineer the legally mandated release of the Epstein files. 

In a rare bit of bipartisan conduct, Khanna has joined with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) in his work on that project. Now, Khanna was actually appearing on The Big Weekend Show!

It was a very unusual cable event. It didn't go remarkably well, but if we the people are ever going to find a way "back out of all this now too much for us," it will have to come from events like this—from events in which the two Americas, Red and Blue, attempt to speak to each other.

Inevitably, the current state of our nation's (dis)union makes such undertakings hard. Consider what happened when this prominent Blue American congressman showed up on this Red American messaging program.

We start with a mutual bungle. Khanna had apparently been invited onto the show to discuss the so-called SAVE (or SAVE America) Act. This strange first exchange occurred:

JONES: Do you believe that only American citizens should vote in American elections?

KHANNA: Yes, of course. But I don't think there's some widespread problem of those who are undocumented or who don't have papers voting. By the way, there are criminal laws for that. Enforce the criminal laws. If someone is voting who is not an American citizen, then they should be prosecuted.

The problem I have with the SAVE Act is that it unfairly puts a burden on women. Women are going to, if they've changed their last name, have to go amend their birth certificate or go get a passport, and it unfairly puts a burden on students. How is it that hunting and fishing licenses count, but student IDs don't count for kids?

JONES: That's a great point!

Really? "That's a great point?"

Khanna's statement about married women who changed their names could have been the start of a real discussion about one problem with this Republican "Voter ID" proposal. But his second point—his statement about hunting and fishing licenses—seems to have nothing to do with this sweeping new proposal.

That complaint seemed to be hanging around from earlier Voter ID debates—debates within which it constituted a perfectly valid Democratic complaint. That said, hunting and fishing licenses play no role in this new GOP proposal, but Khanna instantly brought them up.

Co-host Jones seemed to have no idea! "That's a great point," he strangely said.

Moments later, Khanna turned to hunting and fishing again. Briefly, a bit of context:

The SAVE Act has passed in the House, but it's widely believed to have no chance in the Senate. Perhaps for that reason, it's rarely discussed on Blue America's cable news shows.

Meanwhile, on the Fox News Channel, the SAVE Act is constantly cited. But in the absence of Blue American guests, the valid objections to its provisions are simply never mentioned. 

Instead, the act is treated as an unobjectionable proposal for a national "Voter ID" requirement—and "Voter ID," generically presented, polls extremely well. Messenger stooges on Fox will thereby cite Democratic opposition as proof that the Democrats are plotting to let "illegals" vote:

In the absence of any coherent statement in opposition to the proposal, this attack on Those Fiendish Democrats Today will seem to make perfect sense.

So it goes when two large nations, Red and Blue, observe years of strict self-separation. In this particular case, a genuine oddity occurred:

Given a chance to voice his objections to the proposal, Khanna emitted a genuine blooper. But perhaps because he only knew the standard Fox scripts about this proposal, Jones seemed to think that he had just heard his Blue American guest articulate a "great point!"

From there, things went straight downhill. Jones continued to question Khanna—and now, the instant interruptions and overtalking began. To see this overtalking in action, you can (and should!) click here. 

Co-host Jones had pledged to show respect, but that dream was quickly deferred. Quite suddenly, Jones seemed to be showing that he could play tough with his Blue American guest.

It's very, very, very rare to see a guest like Rep. Khanna on a Red American messaging program like The Big Weekend Show. On Sunday, a startling first attempt was made, and the state of the nation's vast (dis)union quickly swam into view.

Jones knows his tribal messaging points. Khanna didn't seem completely up to speed with respect to the topic at hand.

(Did he know that was going to be the topic? We have no idea.)

Tonight, a major source of the nation's disunion comes full-blown center stage. At Fox, we hope they try this sort of thing with Rep. Khanna (and others) again. 

The bulk of Sunday's nine-minute segment was in fact perfectly civil. At one point, a good solid laugh was shared by Khanna and the Red American panel.

Can a large modern nation expect to survive in a state of perpetual self-segregation, half Blue and half Red? We hope that Fox tries this format again. There's no other way out of the mess into which we the tribals have fallen.

Tomorrow: "Fixed ideas" v. union?

MONDAY: The state of the union involves the angry shredding of union!

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2026

The latest Truth Social posts: As we speak, the state of the union seems to lack the basic spirit of union. A tiny portion of that lack of unity may even seem to trace back to the commander in chief.

The president was busy on Truth Social again last night and early this morning. Larger orgs tend to ignore this conduct. To its credit, Homey don't play it that way.

The Homey to whom we refer is the news org Mediaite.  At that site, Tom Durante offers this report about a new set of Truth Social posts:

Trump Tears Into Supreme Court in Truth Social Tirade, Predicts It Will Rule Against Him on Birthright Citizenship

President Donald Trump, undoubtedly still miffed at the Supreme Court for killing his emergency tariffs, attacked the branch of government in a Monday morning Truth Social storm, saying the same justices who ruled against tariffs may do the same on birthright citizenship.

Posting to his social network early Monday, Trump began by saying he will only spell out Supreme Court in lower-case letters “based on a complete lack of respect!”

And so on from there—and for the record, it's true! The president remains so miffed that he refused to capitalize the name of the judicial body in question.

The president still seems to be angry. The full post reads like this:

Truth Details

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

The supreme court (will be using lower case letters for a while based on a complete lack of respect!) of the United States accidentally and unwittingly gave me, as President of the United States, far more powers and strength than I had prior to their ridiculous, dumb, and very internationally divisive ruling. For one thing, I can use Licenses to do absolutely “terrible” things to foreign countries, especially those countries that have been RIPPING US OFF for many decades, but incomprehensibly, according to the ruling, can’t charge them a License fee - BUT ALL LICENSES CHARGE FEES, why can’t the United States do so? You do a license to get a fee! The opinion doesn’t explain that, but I know the answer! The court has also approved all other Tariffs, of which there are many, and they can all be used in a much more powerful and obnoxious way, with legal certainty, than the Tariffs as initially used. Our incompetent supreme court did a great job for the wrong people, and for that they should be ashamed of themselves (but not the Great Three!). The next thing you know they will rule in favor of China and others, who are making an absolute fortune on Birthright Citizenship, by saying the 14th Amendment was NOT written to take care of the “babies of slaves,” which it was as proven by the EXACT TIMING of its construction, filing, and ratification, which perfectly coincided with the END OF THE CIVIL WAR. How much better can you do than that? But this supreme court will find a way to come to the wrong conclusion, one that again will make China, and various other Nations, happy and rich. Let our supreme court keep making decisions that are so bad and deleterious to the future of our Nation - I have a job to do. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! President DONALD J. TRUMP

We've advised you to consider seeing this within a medical context. We now expect to return to that line of rumination at the start of next week.

For this week, inevitably, it's all about the state of the union! The Justices who choose to attend tomorrow night's address will be right there in the front row. They'll be sitting there in their robes, as if they're ready to rule!

Then too, this: Durante followed with a second report based on that Truth Social "storm." Capital letters were still MIA. The report begins like this:

Trump Claims He Doesn’t Need Congressional Approval to Impose Tariffs

President Donald Trump pushed back on the Supreme Court’s tariff decision, saying on Monday that he doesn’t need Congress’s OK to impose tariffs.

“As President, I do not have to go back to Congress to get approval of Tariffs,” Trump posted to Truth Social on Monday. “It has already been gotten, in many forms, a long time ago! They were also just reaffirmed by the ridiculous and poorly crafted supreme court decision!”

And so on from there. As you can see, he was still withholding those capital letters. Our advice remains what it was.

The president doesn't need an OK from the Congress? It sounds like cases may be coming where we'll all get to find out again.

The state of the union is often like this at the present troubled time. To peruse that additional Truth Social post, you can just click here.

STATE OF THE (DIS)UNION: Ro Khanna visits The Big Weekend Show!

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2026

Grant sits down with Lee: The far-flung state of the disunion had held through the rest of the weekend. 

How widespread is the current (dis)union? For one example, consider the dueling approaches adopted by different arms of This Murdoch Empire Today. 

The state of disunion remains so strong that major arms of that powerful empire can't even agree with each other! Late last Friday afternoon, even as The Five were happily clowning, the Wall Street Journal editorial board was already in print saying this:

Trump Demeans Himself as He Attacks the Supreme Court

President Trump owes the Supreme Court an apology—to the individual Justices he smeared on Friday and the institution itself. Mr. Trump doubtless won’t offer one, but his rant in response to his tariff defeat at the Court was arguably the worst moment of his Presidency.

Granted Mr. Trump is angry that the Court voted 6-3 to overturn his signature “emergency” tariff policy. Other Presidents have criticized the Court when they didn’t like a ruling. But Mr. Trump lit into the Justices who voted against him as traitors bought by foreign interests.

[...]

He called the liberals a “disgrace to our nation.” But he heaped particular vitriol on the three conservatives. They “think they’re being ‘politically correct,’ which has happened before, far too often, with certain members of this Court,” Mr. Trump said. “When, in fact, they’re just being fools and lapdogs for the RINOs and the radical left Democrats—and . . . they’re very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution. It’s my opinion that the Court has been swayed by foreign interests.”

This is ugly even by Mr. Trump’s standards...

And so on from there.

So spoke the Journal wing of the Murdoch empire. But over on the Fox News Channel, a vastly different story was being told. 

By Saturday evening, the greatness of the president's brilliance was being clumsily affirmed by the four messenger children on the Fox News Channel's so-called Big Weekend Show.

At 5 p.m., the children opened the show with a trademark non-discussion discussion of the Court's ruling, and on where things go from there. 

By 5:04, new co-host Tomi Lahren was reporting that Democrats oppose the tariffs because they refuse to "root for the United States of America against the rest of the world." 

(Referring to Republicans who oppose the tariffs, she said this: "I can actually see your point.")

So said co-host Lahren. At 5:09, new co-host Johnny Joey Jones managed to bring it all home. We're cutting this down a bit for purposes of clarity, but here's what Lahren's co-host said, seeming to be speaking of the Dems:

JONES (2/21/26): I can't help but laugh at Josh Shapiro...

You know, they play this game that's— They're not very good at it, I don't think. 

President Trump is smarter than they are. He's playing checkers, they're playing— Or, he's playing chess, they're playing checkers. 

President Trump has been playing chess; the Democrats are playing checkers! After an initial stumble, that's what the co-host said.

(Co-host Lahren hotly continued, moving again to assessments of motive. "Why don't you want America to win for once?" she hotly asked, addressing the Democrats. "They just can't do it," she now heatedly said.)

In short, the state of the (dis)union was strong, even within these high-profile arms of The Murdoch Empire. But then, dear God! Here came (the tiniest hint of) the sun! We suddenly flashed on sacred Keats in one of his most famous poems!

All of a sudden, here came a hint of the sun! Last evening, on that same Big Weekend Show, an extremely rare event took place. 

It happened during the 6 o'clock hour. Breaking every rule in the modern "two Americas" book, co-host Jones shocked the world, suddenly saying this:

JONES (2/22/26): Joining us now is Congressman Ro Khanna, a member of the House Armed Services and House Oversight Committees. 

Congressman, thank you for joining us. We don't get a lot of Democrats on here, wo when we do, we want to treat you with respect. 

Say what? Ro Khanna, a very high-profile figure on Blue America's cable news channel, was appearing as a guest on The Big Weekend Show! A nine-minute segment followed, principally focused on two topics—the so-called SAVE Act. but also the current partial government shutdown.

Alas! We'd say that Khanna's performance was amazingly poor; Jones' attempt to show respect may have been marginally worse. So it goes when warring parties make a halting first step at interacting in the public square again.

Khanna was disappointingly bad; Jones may have been worse. Still, we pray that such meetings will take place again and again and again. The participants made that very suggestion as the segment ended. 

Tomorrow, we'll walk you through what was said during the segment in question. The fellow citizens even shared a bit of a laugh at one encouraging point!

(To watch the full segment, click this.)

Tomorrow night, the president is going to speak—and the ongoing state of disunion is likely to be strong. The Justices are scheduled to be sitting with the soul of the late Bob Uecker, right there in the front row!

Tomorrow: Generals Grant and Lee engage in a halting first step

Keats speaks: Briefly, we flashed on sacred Keats. Long ago and far away, here's what the gentleman said

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

[...]

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

No, it wasn't really that good. But it seemed like a halting first step!

SATURDAY: David Brooks talks the talk!

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2026

The gentleman gets it right: It reminded us of one of our favorite passages from literature—although, in fairness, there are surely many excellent passages we have never read.

(It reminded us of Willa Cather's treasured words in My Antonia. "I always knew I should live long enough to see my country girls come into their own," Cather's narrator says. For reasons we'll try to explain, we'll post the fuller passage below.)

For now, we're referring to what David Brooks said and did on last night's PBS NewsHour. The background here is simple:

The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 vote, had struck down a substantial portion of President Trump's treasured tariffs. In response, the president had call them (almost) every name in the book. 

There he went again! The president said he was "ashamed of certain members of the Court, absolutely ashamed for not having the courage to do what's right for our country." 

He said they were "a disgrace to our nation, those justices." He said they were "just being fools and lapdogs for the RINOs and the radical left Democrats."

"They're very unpatriotic," the president said, "and disloyal to our Constitution.  It's my opinion that the Court has been swayed by foreign interests," he said, with les Chinois specifically mentioned at one point. 

Before he was done, he even said that the six disloyal jurists were "an embarrassment to their families." Little was left unsaid. 

Last evening, on the NewsHour, Geoff Bennett mentioned this reaction. When he did, David Brooks said this:

BENNETT (2/20/26): "Disloyal to our Constitution." Is there a point at which the president's rhetoric—maybe we're already there—becomes corrosive to the institution itself?

BROOKS: Well, Donald Trump has never had an honest disagreement with somebody. And where you say, "Oh, I disagree with you," and without him going ad hominem.

And that is just his nature. It is the nature of somebody with a narcissistic personality disorder to think, "I am the center, and everything that's an assault on me cannot be anything but a shameful attack on all that is right and good."

Brooks went on from there—but he had used some technical medical language. We're hoping that's a badly needed first step down a long and winding road.

Is the sitting president caught in the grip of a narcissistic personality disorder?" And if so, what exactly does some such assessment actually mean?

Brooks was using technical diagnostic language—language from the prevailing DSM-5. Assuming he meant what he said, he was saying that the president is afflicted with what is still often described as a "mental illness"—but what does some medical diagnosis actually mean? 

Obviously, David Brooks is not a doctorate-holding clinical therapist. The president's niece, Mary L. Trump, actually is.

In her best-selling 2020 book, Too Much and Never Enough, she had offered a diagnosis which Brooks was now advancing—but she'd also moved beyond that one assessment. "A case could be made that he also meets the criteria for antisocial personality disorder, which in its most severe form is generally considered sociopathy," she had also said.

Dating back to the 1960s, the mainstream press has agreed that medical assessments of that type must never be a part of this nation's political discourse. In our view, that was always an excellent rule—until the time came when it suddenly wasn't.

In our view, Brooks did the right thing last night. He did the right thing when he walked away from that long-standing prohibition. Having said that, we'll also say this:

If we as a people ever move on to a productive discussion of such medical topics, we must learn to offer such diagnoses in sorrow rather than anger. Such provisional assessments must be offered as statements of concern, not as apparent insults.

Cather's narrator "always knew" that the disregarded immigrant girls he admired so deeply would go on to preside over the finest farms in the state of Nebraska. We ourselves had perhaps always suspected that David Brooks might be the person who would start to walk across a border line which was keeping the American nation, such as it is, from a mature discussion of the sitting president's impulses and behaviors.

We admire Brooks for apparently choosing to take that first step last night. That said—borrowing (in translation) from Chekhov's widely admired story, The Lady With the Lapdog, we'll also suggest this:

 "The end is still a long way away and the most complicated and difficult part [of this undertaking] is only just beginning."

What does it actually mean when some such medical diagnosis is advanced? What is actually being said about the person in question? Brooks broke through a barrier last night. He dropped the familiar colloquial turns of phrase and employed the specific medical language. 

Had we always suspected that he might be the one to go first? Last night, the analysts stared slack-jawed at their TV screens as they saw him actually do it. 

We were thunderstruck, as they were. Also, we thought of that treasured passage from Cather, whose narrator knew all along.

We'll return to this general topic next week. Last night, for all to see as he took a first step, David Brooks got it right.

Starting Monday: What do medical diagnoses of that type actually mean? How should they be advanced?

Cather (and her narrator) speak: For whatever reason, we thought of one of our favorite passages when we saw Brooks cross that line. 

At present, we Americans are confronted with a highly unusual political situation. We should perhaps find our frameworks of understanding off somewhere in the realm of high literature, thereby escaping our debilitating fixation on whatever it is that President Trump said ten seconds ago.

With respect to Cather's book, has anyone else ever advocated with such ardor? 

The situation Cather described had little to do with our current difficult state of affairs. But Cather's protagonist, Jim Burden, had always known that the immigrant girls he so deeply admired were going to prevail in the end. 

Had we ourselves perhaps suspected that David Brooks would one day walk across a prevailing line?

We love the ardor Cather's narrator expresses in support of the "immigrant girls." This is not our struggling nation's specific situation today, but it's a wonderful form of escape from the latest fusillade of insults from that one usual source:

My Antonia: Book Two, Chapter IX

There was a curious social situation in Black Hawk. All the young men felt the attraction of the fine, well-set-up country girls who had come to town to earn a living, and, in nearly every case, to help the father struggle out of debt, or to make it possible for the younger children of the family to go to school.

Those girls had grown up in the first bitter-hard times, and had got little schooling themselves. But the younger brothers and sisters, for whom they made such sacrifices and who have had ‘advantages,’ never seem to me, when I meet them now, half as interesting or as well educated. The older girls, who helped to break up the wild sod, learned so much from life, from poverty, from their mothers and grandmothers; they had all, like Ántonia, been early awakened and made observant by coming at a tender age from an old country to a new.

I can remember a score of these country girls who were in service in Black Hawk during the few years I lived there, and I can remember something unusual and engaging about each of them. Physically they were almost a race apart, and out-of-door work had given them a vigor which, when they got over their first shyness on coming to town, developed into a positive carriage and freedom of movement, and made them conspicuous among Black Hawk women.

[...]

The Bohemian and Scandinavian girls could not get positions as teachers, because they had had no opportunity to learn the language. Determined to help in the struggle to clear the homestead from debt, they had no alternative but to go into service....but every one of them did what she had set out to do, and sent home those hard-earned dollars. The girls I knew were always helping to pay for ploughs and reapers, brood-sows, or steers to fatten.

One result of this family solidarity was that the foreign farmers in our county were the first to become prosperous. After the fathers were out of debt, the daughters married the sons of neighbors—usually of like nationality—and the girls who once worked in Black Hawk kitchens are to-day managing big farms and fine families of their own; their children are better off than the children of the town women they used to serve.

I thought the attitude of the town people toward these girls very stupid. If I told my schoolmates that Lena Lingard’s grandfather was a clergyman, and much respected in Norway, they looked at me blankly. What did it matter? All foreigners were ignorant people who couldn’t speak English. There was not a man in Black Hawk who had the intelligence or cultivation, much less the personal distinction, of Ántonia’s father. Yet people saw no difference between her and the three Marys; they were all Bohemians, all ‘hired girls.’

I always knew I should live long enough to see my country girls come into their own, and I have. To-day the best that a harassed Black Hawk merchant can hope for is to sell provisions and farm machinery and automobiles to the rich farms where that first crop of stalwart Bohemian and Scandinavian girls are now the mistresses...

Cather's narrator goes on from there to a much more striking (and tragic) assessment of the social lives of the young people in this Nebraska town. We love the ardor of his advocacy on behalf of these hard-working "country girls"—Spoiler alert!—whose physical —beauty and physical vibrancy "shone out too boldly against a conventional background."

We love the ardor Jim Burden displays. He says he "always knew."

The situation we're facing is different. We hope Brooks took a first step.