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This week’s whisky

In another wide ranging episode (our last for the year), “Lucretia” and I review the best and worst Christmas movies, the best and worst Christmas music, the rank order of the best Will Ferrell movies, whether blended whisky is ever acceptable, why Finnish rock music sounds like a whale being tortured, and whether we can deduct the cost of our whisky under the tax changes of the COVID relief and omnibus spending bill Congress just passed.

Then we finally get around the the biggest stories of 2020—which turn out to be the stories that were not told, or told so incorrectly that “fake news” hardly begins to describe the malfeasance and incompetence of the media today. What went on behind the scenes in early March to suddenly propel Joe Biden to the Democratic nomination when he was given up for dead? Once upon a time we’d have had Theodore White to explain it to us after the fact, but the substantive decline of the news media includes the decline in political journalism about presidential campaigns. We also discuss how the media’s credulous and superficial coverage of the whole COVID pandemic represents perhaps the most egregious media failure since its biased and inaccurate coverage of the Vietnam War.

Finally, are there reasons to think the left has gone too far with its wokery, and will provoke a significant backlash? Lucretia and I divide on this question, but that’s what happens when you divide about what kind of single malt to drink. Happy new year everybody! We’ll drink to that.