I’ll never forget when Chris was an editor at Esquire and I was a writer doing the first investigative piece on the super secret society that Chris (and his father and his father’s father) were members of. You know: Skull and Bones. We’d both been at Yale, but it was a dicey situation and he handled it with customary diplomacy and tact while I brooded in customary paranoid suspicion. Was he some kind of mole? (no)
First of all why can’t all Republicans be like Chris or P.J. O’ Rourke or mark Steyn (all of whom I’m a fan of however much I might disagree on some issues)? You know, tolerant, most of all funny. Take a look at Chris’ Class Day address at this year’s Yale graduation from his Daily Beastblog.
It’s hilarious and knowing, but not know-it-all z(the ideologue commenter’s disease–along with cyber-disnhibition of course)) There’s only one point I’d take issue with in Chris’s speech: the origin of the all purpose word “Whatever”.
Chris perhaps deliberately misattributes it to the millennial generation, as a brilliant verbal, philosohical invention, but take my word for it, it’s a boomer/slacker phrase. I remember when I was still a reporter for The Village Voice back in the 70’s, hearing my high school friend Rich Molyneux do a whole riff on why “whatever” was…whatever it was.
Chris, it’s ours, not theirs. It may be our greatest most lasting contribution. Don’ take it away from us.
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