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In today’s edition:
WpGet the full experience.Choose your planArrowRight- Americans forgot how to make pie crust. We must remember.
- What’s an anachronym and why do I keep using them?
- Incontrovertible proof for where Kate Middleton went
- Seeking the permission to vote for Trump
A slice of American heritage
Happy Pi Day! I hope you are celebrating, if not by reciting the irrational number to its 76th decimal place (2), then with a slice of strawberry-rhubarb.
The day is particularly special for me because each year it gives me the chance to recirculate what I consider one of the best things Post Opinions has ever published, and the pièce de résistance of Megan McArdle’s portfolio: her essay on America forgetting how to make pie.
Originally published a few years ago during peak summer — and, thus, peak produce! — the piece is a loving remembrance of how Megan spent childhood watching her mother and grandmother make pie crusts. It also rolls opprobrium all over the crust that prevails today, that “flaccid flap of flavorless pastry” that is “too flabby, too tough or too overcooked to be worth eating.”
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“This isn’t just an essay about pie,” Megan writes. “It is a polemic. I want to convince you that American pie is special, because it is. … We are at risk of losing not just a dessert, but a little piece of who we are as a country.”
Come for the recipe (mock purple raspberry); stay for the clarion call to an American piemaking renaissance.
Chaser: If ya nasty, here’s a Post video of yours truly competing seven years ago in this newspaper’s first (and last) no-hands pie-eating contest.
Dial in for this one
Here’s a new word: “anachronym.” Ironically, language sage Benjamin Dreyer explains, it’s for old words. Specifically, an anachronym is a word used “in an anachronistic way, by referring to something in a way that is appropriate only for a former or later time.”
Think “subtweet,” absent Twitter, or “podcast,” absent iPods. Think “cc” — for “carbon copy” — on emails. Think New York’s subway “token” booths, even though you haven’t used a token since nova was a dollar an ounce and tofu schmear was but a twinkle in deli guys’ eyes.
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Dreyer writes that these dated words are all around if you just roll down your car window and look around. He quotes Faulkner: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
Now, once you’ve got “anachronym” down, head over to the rest of the essay and let Dreyer introduce you to “skeuomorph.”
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Chaser: Anne Lamott, feeling a bit dated herself these days, writes in another great, deep breath of an essay how a misty morning walk reveals all that is true about aging.
Kate Watch, Day 17
Some of you have emailed in to say that you are tired of the attention The Post has given to the whereabouts of Catherine, Princess of Wales. To which I say, TOO BAD!
Still, the American media’s obsession with the story of the century is nothing compared with that of the British tabloids, whose coverage has grown increasingly panicked, as Edith Pritchett cartoons above. See the rest of her basically accurate front pages here.
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Besides, the whole story will be at an end soon anyway, because humor columnist Alexandra Petri has scoured British literature to find exactly where Kate is: stuck halfway through the little door into Rabbit’s House after eating too much honey. Probably.
More politics
Marc Thiessen really really really wants to vote for Donald Trump. He writes that Joe Biden is the worst president of his lifetime (border, inflation, spy balloon) while Trump was one of the best conservatives ever (mostly thanks to the things his Reagan Republican allies seemingly got him to do).
Marc isn’t even deterred by Jan. 6, writing that Trump wouldn’t become a dictator … because our checks and balances would foil any attempt. Okay!
But right now, Marc just isn’t there. He writes that Trump’s neo-isolationist campaign promises (new staff, baby!) would render a second term not “a continuation of the best elements of his first, but a radical departure focused on revenge and retreat from the world.”
Chaser: Ramesh Ponnuru writes that the vote to ban TikTok shows that the Republican Party is not a cult of Trump (who, as of recently, opposes a ban).
Smartest, fastest
- Biden’s budget calls the bluff of supposed GOP budget hawks, Jen Rubin writes.
- Ghana’s draconian new anti-gay bill is a painful echo of colonialism’s push to impose Western morality there, Karen Attiah writes.
- Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts lays out a plan for reshaping the Communications Decency Act to protect kids online.
It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … The Bye-Ku.
Cracked on the counter
This country’s lean cohesion —
Quick! Cut butter in
***
Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. See you tomorrow!
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You’re reading the Today’s Opinions newsletter. Sign up to get it in your inbox.
In today’s edition:
Happy Pi Day! I hope you are celebrating, if not by reciting the irrational number to its 76th decimal place (2), then with a slice of strawberry-rhubarb.
The day is particularly special for me because each year it gives me the chance to recirculate what I consider one of the best things Post Opinions has ever published, and the pièce de résistance of Megan McArdle’s portfolio: her essay on America forgetting how to make pie.
Originally published a few years ago during peak summer — and, thus, peak produce! — the piece is a loving remembrance of how Megan spent childhood watching her mother and grandmother make pie crusts. It also rolls opprobrium all over the crust that prevails today, that “flaccid flap of flavorless pastry” that is “too flabby, too tough or too overcooked to be worth eating.”
“This isn’t just an essay about pie,” Megan writes. “It is a polemic. I want to convince you that American pie is special, because it is. … We are at risk of losing not just a dessert, but a little piece of who we are as a country.”
Come for the recipe (mock purple raspberry); stay for the clarion call to an American piemaking renaissance.
Chaser: If ya nasty, here’s a Post video of yours truly competing seven years ago in this newspaper’s first (and last) no-hands pie-eating contest.
Here’s a new word: “anachronym.” Ironically, language sage Benjamin Dreyer explains, it’s for old words. Specifically, an anachronym is a word used “in an anachronistic way, by referring to something in a way that is appropriate only for a former or later time.”
Think “subtweet,” absent Twitter, or “podcast,” absent iPods. Think “cc” — for “carbon copy” — on emails. Think New York’s subway “token” booths, even though you haven’t used a token since nova was a dollar an ounce and tofu schmear was but a twinkle in deli guys’ eyes.
Dreyer writes that these dated words are all around if you just roll down your car window and look around. He quotes Faulkner: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
Now, once you’ve got “anachronym” down, head over to the rest of the essay and let Dreyer introduce you to “skeuomorph.”
Chaser: Anne Lamott, feeling a bit dated herself these days, writes in another great, deep breath of an essay how a misty morning walk reveals all that is true about aging.
Some of you have emailed in to say that you are tired of the attention The Post has given to the whereabouts of Catherine, Princess of Wales. To which I say, TOO BAD!
Still, the American media’s obsession with the story of the century is nothing compared with that of the British tabloids, whose coverage has grown increasingly panicked, as Edith Pritchett cartoons above. See the rest of her basically accurate front pages here.
Besides, the whole story will be at an end soon anyway, because humor columnist Alexandra Petri has scoured British literature to find exactly where Kate is: stuck halfway through the little door into Rabbit’s House after eating too much honey. Probably.
Marc Thiessen really really really wants to vote for Donald Trump. He writes that Joe Biden is the worst president of his lifetime (border, inflation, spy balloon) while Trump was one of the best conservatives ever (mostly thanks to the things his Reagan Republican allies seemingly got him to do).
Marc isn’t even deterred by Jan. 6, writing that Trump wouldn’t become a dictator … because our checks and balances would foil any attempt. Okay!
But right now, Marc just isn’t there. He writes that Trump’s neo-isolationist campaign promises (new staff, baby!) would render a second term not “a continuation of the best elements of his first, but a radical departure focused on revenge and retreat from the world.”
Chaser: Ramesh Ponnuru writes that the vote to ban TikTok shows that the Republican Party is not a cult of Trump (who, as of recently, opposes a ban).
It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … The Bye-Ku.
Cracked on the counter
This country’s lean cohesion —
Quick! Cut butter in
***
Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. See you tomorrow!
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