FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

If you’re feeling down this’ll pick you up.
This is my favorite Sammy Davis Jr. number, a great tune from Finian’s Rainbow that he just swings the hell out of.
Love the byplay with Jerry (RIP) and with the audience, too.
• My Bartlett's entry about Jonah Goldberg has been around long enough that we sometimes take it for granted, but today he proves the truism true: he really has come up with the stupidest thing ever written. It's an entry in the Confederate monument debate, which has already inspired a lot of brain-bleeds on the right, but no one else need bother now that Goldberg has weighed in (in part because he broke the scale). Here's a typical farting point:

Indeed, the fight over Confederate statues is just a discrete and more understandable eruption of the larger trend. This stuff has been happening for decades. One of the first outbreaks involved the word “crusader.” The term hurt the feelings of people who didn’t know what they didn’t know. Left-wing historians (and the Islamists who love them) convinced themselves that the Crusades were a trial run of Western imperialism and colonialism. They were, in fact, largely defensive wars intended to beat back the aggression of Muslim colonizers. Even the organization Campus Crusade for Christ changed its name to “Cru” lest people get the wrong impression.

Goldberg doesn't see why lefties and their head-chopping Mooslim friends consider the Crusades a racist symbol. I wonder if he sees why actual racists (including Anders Breivik) consider them a racist symbol, too. Maybe the liberals and Mooslims bamboozled them? Oh, and:

What fascinates me about this civilizational auto-immune disorder is how superficial it is. Mark-Viverito is from Puerto Rico. More than 95 percent of the people there speak Spanish. The dominant religion of Puerto Rico is Catholicism (85 percent). As far as I can tell, Mark-Viverito, who is of mixed European ancestry (her mother, Elizabeth Viverito, was of Italian descent and a prominent Puerto Rican feminist; her father, Anthony Mark, was a prominent doctor), does not speak Taino, the native language of the Arawak tribes who inhabited Puerto Rico when Columbus arrived. Rather, she speaks the languages of her alleged oppressors — Spanish and, of course, English. She even attended Columbia University. I could find no mention on the Internet that she has burned her diploma in protest.

You have to hand it to Goldberg -- the whole "you use an iPhone, your anti-capitalist argument is invalid" shtick seemed totally dead, yet he's given it new life by declaring it hypocritical to denounce colonialism if you speak Spanish (or English!). Goldberg braps the field again -- what a great way to shart the morning!

• "John C. Danforth was a Republican U.S. senator from Missouri from 1976 to 1995," intones the Washington Post, instead of saying "here's another old Republican who has nothing left to lose by disowning Trump":

Many have said that President Trump isn’t a Republican. They are correct, but for a reason more fundamental than those usually given. Some focus on Trump’s differences from mainstream GOP policies, but the party is broad enough to embrace different views, and Trump agrees with most Republicans on many issues. Others point to the insults he regularly directs at party members and leaders, but Trump is not the first to promote self above party. The fundamental reason Trump isn’t a Republican is far bigger than words or policies. He stands in opposition to the founding principle of our party — that of a united country.

We are the party of Abraham Lincoln...

LOL Abraham Lincoln! Buddy, most Republicans today would postpone the freaking 2020 election if Trump said it was necessary. They also think his nice-Nazis response to Charlottesville was a-ok. Most of them think colleges have a "negative effect on the way things are going in this country." Oh, and Republicans nominated and elected Trump. Notwithstanding his horrible policies are virtually the same ones the other preening dickheads they've been sending to statehouses and Congress for years have been pushing for, I understand why the Senator would prefer the lumbering, murderous Frankenstein he and his comrades brought into being to have a more thoughtful, "Presidential" countenance. But the actual voters have decided: It's not good enough being self-centered bigots on the downlow anymore -- they want to revel in it. I wonder if anyone not sitting on an editorial board is fooled?