Happy Monday!
First off, credit where it’s due. One of my passionate readers was intrigued by the question implicitly raised in last week’s letter, about whether a Chipwich (or a chipwich) is better called an “ice cream sandwich” (which of course brings to mind a different edible), or whether one has no choice but to keep referring to the thing described as a “chipwich,” even thought that is a brand name (cf. Kleenex; and don’t get me started on the capitalization of “Realtor,” which merits a long post of its own). Said reader, a college sophomore, wrote the following:
I hope this email finds you well. I write concerning your quest to find the name of the Chipwich.
Research led me to define “ice cream sandwich” as ice cream between two cookies, biscuits, wafers, or other similar dessert bread; my definition is flavor- and cookie-agnostic, as is that of the food regulatory agencies.
Next, I offer Judge Gerard L. Goettel`s opinion in Martin Ice Cream Co. v. Chipwich, Inc. for your consideration.
Decided in January of 1983, ice cream distributor Martin filed suit against Chipwich for preventing them from continuing to serve as the exclusive distributor of the Chipwich (or, as Judge Goettel writes, the “chocolate-chip-cookie-ice-cream-sandwich”).
“Plaintiff Martin Ice Cream Co. (“Martin”), a distributor of ice cream products, brings suit against defendant Chipwich, Inc. (“Chipwich”), the primary manufacturer of the chocolate-chip-cookie-ice-cream-sandwich known as the Chipwich
(Martin Ice Cream Co. v. Chipwich, Inc., 554 F. Supp. 933, 935 (S.D.N.Y. 1983))
This considered, a Chipwich is an ice cream sandwich.
I can see where my young correspondent is coming from, but I respectfully dissent. I think the judge got it wrong. A chipwich is a chipwich. This is an ice cream sandwich:
OK, time to move on to less important matters . . .
What’s up, RFK?
Some sons of Massachusetts are utterly captive to the Kennedy mystique; I am a sone of Massachusetts who was always indifferent to it. I remember certain Democratic politicians from my youth: one John Kerry defeating a certain Ray Shamie to succeed Paul Tsongas in the Senate (years later I was to become casual acquaintances in college with Sen. Tsongas’s daughter, who came to Beverly Hills 90210–watching parties in my dorm suite); Richie Neal moving from the Springfield mayoralty to Congress, in a seat he holds to this day; one Michael Dukakis becoming governor (for the second time) and, when I was in junior high, declaring for president (I shook his hand at an early rally at the Springfield Civic Center). But I have no particular memory of Sen. Ted Kennedy; he was simply a fact on the ground, the once and always senator. And I didn’t care when Joe Kennedy became a congressman from the far east of the state (near someplace called “Boston”).
All of which is to say that ignoring Robert F. Kennedy Jr. came naturally to me.
Except for one thing: early on in my journalism career, I realized that one of the best predictors of crazy was a certain kind of vaccine skepticism, the kind that involved wing-nut theories about vaccines causing autism. I once had a boss who seemed normal, but then one day he mentioned how friends of his were pretty sure their’s son autism was caused by vaccines, and they were going to have their son undergo chelation therapy to get the vaccine toxins out of his body; and my boss was saying all this not with compassion, or in solidarity with friends facing a very tough challenge, but as a cheerleader, somebody who believed that the vaccine-industrial complex would soon be exposed.
This boss was, in case you are interested, of the political bent that led him to Dennis Kucinich, Ralph Nader, and Bernie Sanders—all very different men, but the overlap here will help explain where my boss was coming from. And he was a pretty good specimen of the dominant strain of vaccine skeptic 20 years ago, who came from the left end of the political spectrum. I was vaguely aware that RFK Jr. was hanging out with them on that end of the spectrum, drinking the same cool waters from the same tainted well.
One of the pernicious side effects of COVID has been to elevate Junior (as I will call him) and his particular brand of anti-vaxx stupid. A lot of people have concerns about the new vaccines made to fight COVID. People are scared. Now, these are vaccines I got, and my children got, and my wife got—all good calls, as best I can tell. But they are new, and they don’t have a long track record, and it’s a truism to say there’s a lot we don’t know. (My general view is that, given how relatively benign COVID is for young children, the US ought to have pursued a vaccination regimen closer the UK’s.) But of course Junior doesn’t stop there, because he has a long track record of stupid.
And so should we be surprised that Junior—whose campaign is, by the way, being managed by Dennis Kucinich—ended up in antisemitism-land, final destination of all self-respecting conspiracy theorists? Over to my friend Yair Rosenberg, at The Atlantic:
Last week, at a dinner event in Manhattan, the Democratic primary candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. shared his unvarnished thoughts about the nature of the coronavirus. “There’s an argument that it is ethnically targeted,” he explained, in remarks captured on video. “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.” To be sure, Kennedy added, “we don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted or not.” In other words, Kennedy apparently believes it is an open question whether the pandemic was engineered by a shadowy cabal to spare Chinese and Jewish people.
You can read the rest of Yair’s piece here.
A lot of really thoughtful people, including some journalists I admire, have given oxygen or airtime to Junior in recent weeks, often noting his history as an environmental activist (albeit an ineffective one), pro-labor partisan, and other good things. Also, he’s a Kennedy, and a lot of people are suckers for the name “Kennedy.” I’d like to think that this will stop. But look, this is a guy who for a while has been saying that Wifi causes “leaky brain” and that the CIA killed his uncle and his father. And that hasn’t stopped them for indulging Candidate Junior. I fear he’ll continue to get attention, and not just in the Rogan-sphere.
Follow-up note. The piece not to read about Junior is the one by David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker. That’s because Remnick, while rightly calling Junior out for his anti-vaxx stupid, also belittles Junior’s free-speech concerns (which have some validity) and is generally snide. There’s a lot wrong with Junior, but blaming him for the company he keeps—“I’m finding it curious,” Remnick says to him, “and maybe even disturbing, that some of your early admirers include Trumpists like Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, and Roger Stone”—is unfair. Anyone who says anything in the public eye attracts strange bedfellows, and it’s just McCarthyism to do this guilt-by-association stuff. It’s not Remnick at his best.
Manly men!
There’s been a good bit of attention paid lately—smart attention—to the question of manhood, the struggles of men and boys in the US, etc. I have linked to Richard Reeves’s work here before, and you might enjoy Ezra Klein’s podcast interview with him, via The New York Times. And now comes this really thoughtful, long essay in The Washington Post, titles “Men Are Lost. Here’s a Map Out of the Wilderness.” It’s by Christine Emba, whose work I did not know, but now feel I should.
The essay says a lot, and has very meaty reporting, and shouldn’t be oversimplified. But it’s fair to say that one of her central questions is what a non-toxic masculinity would, or should, look like. Many of us can agree on what masculinity, or male culture, should not be, but what should it be, if anything? Emba correctly points out that any attempt to say what men should be is instantly controversial, because people will infer that you are talking about what women shouldn’t be. (“Men should be brave.” “Can’t women be brave?”)
Please go read the essay. I’ll offer this one thought for those of you who get to the end: Shouldn’t she say more about fatherhood? Being a parent is not necessary for fully realized male-ness, or female-ness, or manhood, or womanhood, or masculinity, or femininity, or non-binary adulthood. One can clearly be a thriving adult, with a powerful, secure identity, without procreating. But given the statistics Emba cites about how many children now grow up without fathers, and given what we know about the beneficial effect of male role models in the lives of boys—again, she cites the evidence—it would seem natural to imagine that one place to begin constructing a healthy model of manhood, one that includes softness, nurturing, delaying gratification, etc., would be in the role of being a dad.
Photo of the week
Spotted today in Williamsburg, Mass., near Northampton, an unusual business idea:
As ever, thoughts are welcome at mark.oppenheimer@substack.com.
Now go get some ice cream.