Did The Depp-Heard Trial "End #MeToo"?

The Guardian, for instance, raises that question:

When Hollywood star Johnny Depp’s defamation trial against Amber Heard ended in his favor on Wednesday, some observers worried that the verdict might have a chilling effect on the #MeToo movement.

The whole trial enexpectedly turned into a media event with manifold implcations -- Depp was revealed as a master of improv tongue in cheek on the witness stand, for instance. What a loss it's been not to have his talent available for the past half decade. As a personality, he simply outshone Heard, her attorneys, and her witnesses in a way that the worldwide audience found delicious. #MeToo was just an incidental casualty.

The main problem is that it was a Hollywood media event, certainly the equivalent of a blockbuster film, except that the Hollywood machine that might have created such an event in the past -- the Star Wars franchise, for instance -- was AWOL, clueless, not involved. It emerged spontaneous, unscheduled, without spin, without photo ops, without programmed PR in People magazine.

Isn't that the unintentional subtext of this tweet?

Far Left = Amber is a Liar.
Far Right = Amber is a Liar.
Vast Majority of Public = Amber is a Liar.

CNN/MSNBC/ABC/CBS/NBC = Believe Amber because she is a woman. Believe the lies.

This is the real story coming out of the Depp trial.

— Nate The Lawyer (@NatetheLawyer) June 4, 2022

I think the public didn't even know how badly it wanted a Captain Jack Sparrow back, but the character Depp played in the trial is also a cousin to Han Solo, and Amber Heard somehow turned out to be an anti-Prinicess Leia.

If you think about it, Princess Leia in the Star Wars franchise manifested classical virtues, prudence, temperance, justice, fortitude, and indeed even faith in the Force. Our image of Ukraine's President Zelensky in the popular imagination owes something to her implied leadership of the Rebel Alliance -- and let's not forget that Zelensky started out as an actor and comic.

What we saw in the Depp-Heard trial was Hollywood out of control, without producers, writers, flacks, and handlers who normally manipulate the public imagination. Amber Heard's character spontaneously emerged as a woman utterly without virtue, and the public loved it. Official Hollywood would never have allowed this. Woman must always be victim.

The public is generally aware that women tell lies, they cheat, they cover for each other, they're histrionic, vengeful, and vain. It's normally polite not to point this out. On the other hand, a pirate of the lovable sort can get away with this simply because he's a pirate.

When we all stop laughing sometime in coming days, we'll just go back to living out the normal pathology of everyday life, having been helped along by some unintentionally great entertainment.

Just How Big A Public Policy Blunder Has COVID Been?

The sociopolitical histories of COVID have yet to be written, and I'm realizing the whole episode is by no means over as we speak. I just got a notice to come in for another booster, while Alameda County in the San Francisco area has reinstated a general indoor mask mandate, which suggests LA County won't be far behind. This won't go away until people make it go away.

Nevertheless, bien pensant opinion is gingerly starting to approach the question of how big a public policy disaster COVID has been. I was out driving Thursday and happend to tune in to the Clay and Buck Show, which is the successor to the late Rush Limbaugh. They had as a guest David Zweig, who writes for The Atlantic. It says something that the powers that be there seemed to think it was OK for him to talk to El Rushbo, or at least the guys in El Rushbo's old tme slot. Here's part of the transcript:

BUCK: David, I want to ask you… So, you write for The Atlantic, and not to make any assumptions but, you know, you have a lot of Democrats and liberals who read your work. So, they may not listen to me. You know, they may not listen to Clay because of what we say on a daily basis and all the rest of it. Could you, like, get together with all the libs, all the Democrats that you know and just be like, “Guys you really have to stop with this mask thing on the planes”? . . .

ZWEIG:. . . human beings are not the same as a lab test. And, unfortunately, what has happened is — not just for masks but for a whole variety of different interventions that the government has imposed on us — that they base them oftentimes on just, you know, on a study of mannequins in the lab or, you know, something you do in a petri dish, you know, relating to, you know, certain effects of the vaccine when you’re looking at antibodies rather than looking at whether people are going to the hospital or not. . .

CLAY: Where will, historically, as you work through on your school analysis — I’m arguing, and I think Buck agrees, this is the [worst] public policy failure since at least Vietnam. All the experts saying, “Hey, we have to shut down schools. We have to ensure that these kids are learning remotely. It’s not safe to do it.” Are you in agreement there — and the reason why I’m asking this question is, everyone basically acknowledges Vietnam was a colossal failure now. The best and brightest got it wrong. Is this going to be a modern-day Vietnam in your mind as people continue to see the impact of shutting down schools and how disastrous it’s been for so many kids?

ZWEIG: Yeah. I’m glad to hear your thoughts on that. I agree a hundred percent, and that’s what prompted me to get involved in this two years ago. . . . So very much so in my mind — and what I am prepared to argue in a very detailed manner — is not only that this was an enormous, catastrophic failure of the United States government and our public health apparatus, but I want to explain why it happened. . . . You know, it’s less about trying to beat people over the head to prove that this was a catastrophe. I think that’s fairly obvious, and there have been some other reports who have done some really great work showing the harms. To me what’s more interesting is, you know, how did this happen? Why did it happen? So, but, to your point about Vietnam, you know, the thing that I’m not certain about is how this is going to be viewed.

The transcropt has a link to an Atlantic article by Zweig from last December, but its tone is much milder, and its scope is somewhat narrower, than even Zweig's implications on the Clay and Buck Show. Zweig is focused on masks in schools, a relatively arcane corner of the whole COVID panic, but he's calling even this "an enormous, catastrophic failure of the United States government and our public health apparatus" and agreeing with the hosts that it's comparable to Viet Nam. And that, recognize, is only in the context of masks in schools. What about shutting down the world economy? Where does that rank?

For instance, just Friday we had a White House economist connecting COVID with the current inflation:

On Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” White House Council of Economic Advisers member Heather Boushey stated that “the reason that we see inflation today is because we’re recovering from this historic global pandemic.”

Boushey said, “Well, let me be very clear, you know, the reason that we see inflation today is because we’re recovering from this historic global pandemic. So, the president has outlined a number of steps that he is taking to make sure that we contain inflation. . ."

Ms Boushey gives no specifics on how COVID caused the inflation, but she implies that it was an act of nature or something like that, and the president is taking steps to remedy the situation. I would imagine that an intelligent high school graduate could suggest that the stimulus payments from the US and other governments that were meant to be token compensation for those thrown out of work during the panic were one major factor driving the inflation.

But what about the millions of government and other white-collar workers like teachers who were sent home for months (and in cases like Tesla, at least two years) but were still paid for not showing up? Wasn't that inflationary? I suspect if you pressed Elon Musk, who isn't an economist but seems to know a lot about money, he'd probably acknowledge a connection between "work from home" and his super bad feeling about the economy, since his tweets about those matters last week certainly came in close succession.

And that leaves aside Alex Berenson's continiuing research into COVID vaccines, which in his view are increasingly proving not just ineffective but harmful. For instance, from his recent Substack,

I wonder how many physicians are now no longer encouraging - or even actively discouraging - patients from getting booster shots. Taking a public anti-vaccine stance is risky for physicians. Even filing a VAERS (vaccine adverse events report) submission comes with headaches.

If you are a patient who has seen your doctor’s attitude change, or a nurse who has noticed that your hospital is no longer pressing shots, or most of all a physician who has decided that the Covid vaccines may not be appropriate for your patients, please email me at alexberensonauthor at gmail.com (or protonmail.com if you are concerned about confidentiality).

I've long thought that the basic public policy problem with the Viet Nam war was that it was an abuse of the government's conscription power, something Nixon cured first with a draft lottery in 1969 and then with the elimination of the draft in 1973. We might say that it took five years, from Lyndon Johnson's decision not to run for reelection in 1968 to the all-volunteer military in 1973, to correct the Viet Nam blunder. How long will it take to correct COVID?

We haven't even figured out what the problem is at this point. By 1969, less than two years in, Nixon had gotten elected on the basis of his policy position and was on the way to a solution. I think fixing COVID will take a lot longer and have a much bigger impact on the population at large.

Musk's Red Pill Journey

Within a matter of days, Elon Musk announced that Tesla employees would have to return to in-person work at the office, followed almost immediately by an announcement that 10% of them would be laid off nevertheless.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk wants to slash 10% of jobs at the company due to his “super bad feeling” about the economy, according to a Friday report from Reuters.

The United States economy shrank at a 1.5% annualized rate in the first quarter of 2022, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which associates recessions with two consecutive quarters of negative growth.

In a Thursday email to executives seen by Reuters, Musk instructed Tesla to “pause all hiring worldwide” and said that the company needs to cut 10% of jobs. Tesla currently has more than 99,000 employees, The New York Times reported.

Before the most recent news on economic activity, the U.S. had been recovering from COVID-19 and the lockdown-induced recession — growing at a strong 5.7% in 2021 after contracting 3.4% in 2020. The economy, however, has also been troubled by numerous phenomena — including persistent inflation, high gas prices, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The message comes two days after Musk said in another email that “remote work is no longer” acceptable at Tesla.

It's hard for me not to see an underlying relationship. If times get hard, it's always time to trim the fat. The big piece of fat that's staring everyone in the face is that the staff -- or wait, the entitled, credentialed staff -- has been working from home. The assembly line workers, well, no. It's the social media analysts, the diversity and inclusion specialists, the corporate communications coordinators, who've been working from home, or at least pretending to.

So we might anticipate that the 99,000 Teslans will be coming in to the office again, whereupon there will be an immediate effort to determine which of them is "essential". Oh, wait, didn't we go through that effort just a little over two years ago? Doesn't HR already have a list of "essential" workers that they can maybe just dust off and update? Wasn't the whole "essential" exercise intended to identify who needed to come in for work no matter what, and the rest could stay home?

I would think the people you could lay off would match pretty closely with the ones who've been "working from home" for the past two years. But I think we can surmise that's not how this is gonna work. In the 1980s and 1990s, my wife and I went through phase after phase of downsizings, at a time when "working from home" was pretty unusual.

One of the first rules of thumb was that, short of union contracts that laid out clearly how it must be done, the least essential employees were never the ones who got laid off. Over and over in the course of downsizings, I heard the observation that they couldn't lay off old Joe, he'd never be able to find another job. So they'd lay off Frank, who they knew would land on his feet. Except, of course, Frank was probably the guy you actually needed to keep.

Even the downsizing consultants that companies would hire to prepare their staffs for the cuts never quite figured this out. I went through this at one point in the 1990s when I was old enough to know how it worked. I went to the company-sponsored seminars on how to write a resume and so forth, with the whole process geared to steer those who were cut straight back to the consultants who'd counsel them some more when they got the bad news.

I had fun that day. They called me in to the little room and said, "John, we're here to tell you there won't be a place for you at the dynamic new _____." I grinned with delight, unhooked my pager from my belt, and handed it to my new ex-boss in a grand gesture. It's a shame they don't have pagers any more, and nobody can do that now.

But it wasn't over. The next step was to escort me across the street to the outplacement lady, who already knew me from the resume seminar. "I don't understand" she said. "I'm just flabbergasted. Of all the people I worked with, you're the one I was sure I wouldn't be seeing here." It wasn't my job to explain to her how this stuff actually worked. In fact, if you think about it, the company hired her as a consultant precisely because, at least in theory, she was supposed to be the one who knew how these things worked.

Or anyhow, maybe she was. On the other hand, someone who actually did know how these things worked wouldn't want her job, because they wouldn't have her illusions.

I think this is going to be another phase of Elon Musk's red pill journey. Let's hope he's a quick study in figuring out whom to lay off at Tesla. If he is, maybe he'll have something to teach the rest of us.

Bp Barron Promoted

In my e-mail yesterday was an announcement from the Word on Fire Institute that linked to this statement from Bp Barron:

Friends, I am overjoyed and humbled to learn that Pope Francis has appointed me the ninth bishop of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester (Minnesota).

The bishop of a diocese is, first and foremost, a spiritual father to the priests and people who have been entrusted to his care. My prayer this morning is that the Lord will give me the grace always to be a good father. The bishop is also, as Pope Francis often teaches, a shepherd with the smell of the sheep—out in front of the flock in one sense, leading the way, but also with the flock, giving encouragement, and in back of the flock in order to gather in those who have fallen behind. I pray also for the grace to be just that kind of shepherd to the Catholics of southern Minnesota.

It has been an extraordinary privilege these past seven years to serve as auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, where the priests and people received me, from the beginning, with warmth and enthusiasm, and where I had the good fortune to observe close up the ministry of Archbishop Jose Gomez, one of the great churchmen on the scene today. Watching him govern the largest Archdiocese in the country was a master-class in ecclesial leadership.

Visitors here know I've been an unabashed Bp Barron fan, especially since my wife and I sat not far from him at a concert, and I watched him pretty carefully. What struck me then was that he wasn't surrounded with an entourage, and as an instantly recognizable figure, many people approached him to greet him. He appeared to be genuinely friendly and gracious with everyone. Not long afterward, our parish distributed copies of his Letter to a Suffering Church about the clergy abuse crisis. I appreciate both his erudition and his clarity.

My wife suggests his new duties could cause conflicts with the work of his Word on Fire Institute. My impression is that he is a figurehead and an outside man there, although he does contribute essays and scholarly theological commentary to some of the institute's editions of scripture and liturgy. However, he does not manage the institute from day to day. Thus personnel issues can and do arise:

Word on Fire Catholic Ministries, founded by Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Robert E. Barron, issued a brief statement May 2 saying it had fired an employee possibly over an incident involving some unwelcome advances.

“The accusations against this employee surrounded events in the employee’s personal life, not the Word on Fire workplace, and did not involve any other Word on Fire employees,” said the statement on the organization’s website.

The statement was issued after accusations of unwelcome sexual advances involving the employee surfaced in a substack — an email newsletter platform — and were widely discussed on Twitter.

. . .The newsletter detailing the accusation called to task the ministry because of Bishop Barron’s efforts, via the book “Letter to a Suffering Church,” to combat abuse in the church.

“Ultimately, Word on Fire and Bishop Barron have been leading voices for accountability in the Church. The organization has zero tolerance for abuse or harassment of any kind,” the organization’s statement said.

My own view is that where Bp Barron is directly involved with Word on Fire publications, they are extremely well produced, inspiring, informative, and indeed highly attractive. However, Word on Fire is a brand that covers many other writers who simply aren't at that level, and indeed, as an organization run by humans, it carries many human characteristics, including the squabbles over the personnel issues above. The National Catholic Reporter, not a Bp Barron fan, had this story:

Frustrated by poor communication and a workplace culture they say has been warped by secrecy and hypermasculinity, at least a half-dozen Word on Fire employees in recent months have resigned from the Catholic outlet founded by Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Robert Barron.

Those who remain at the Illinois-based multimedia nonprofit are working in an environment that a few recently departed workers described to NCR as beset by low morale, damaged trust and a "boys' club" culture that made some female employees uncomfortable and others unwilling to raise concerns to leadership.

"To put it bluntly, I do not feel that if I had been one of the victims, I would have been protected in any way," said a former staff member, who left Word on Fire after working there for about a year.

But if the unwelcome advances occurred outside the workplace, I'm not sure precisely what the institute could or should have done to protect its staff members -- it sounds like the one quoted above was constructing a purely hypothetical situation "if" she had been a victim, though neither she nor any of her colleagues was affected. In any case, even unsympathetic accounts are making it clear that the institute was "founded by" Bp Barron but is not managed by him.

What I'm finding most interesting is that Bp Barron is being criticized by the Catholic left here, when earlier he's been a target of the far right, like Michael Voris, who calls him A clear and present danger to souls.

Los Angeles auxiliary bishop Robert Barron continues to advance a type of Catholicism that undermines the glories of the teachings while at the same time promoting a "half-gospel." He is, in fact, the poster-child cleric for this watered-down, self-serving gospel-lite.

If the far left and the far right both hate the guy, he must be doing something right. In any case, at 62, it looks like he'll be active for some years to come, and if he's advancing iin the contemporary US Church, the Church is functioning as it should.

The Undead Mask Mandate

Via Reuters:

The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday asked a federal appeals court to overturn a U.S. District Court judge's April order that declared the government mandate requiring masks on airplanes, buses and in transit hubs unlawful.

Hours after the federal judge in Florida declared the mandate unlawful, the Biden administration said it would no longer enforce it.

The Justice Department told the appeals court that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) order issued in January 2021 was "within" the agency's legal authority.

The CDC did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday on whether it would reinstate the requirement if the ruling was overturned.

Days before U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball's April 18 order, the CDC had extended mask requirements through May 3. The CDC said earlier this month it still recommends travelers continue to wear masks in airplanes, trains and buses.

Although some localities still require masks in medical facilities, as far as I'm aware, the last public mask mandate of any kind is for airport, rail, and transit stations and conveyances in Los Angeles County. At LAX Airport, it's largely disregarded:

Heartening: at LAX they're blasting the audio message "YOU ARE REQUIRED TO WEAR A MASK THAT COVERS YOUR MOUTH AND NOSE IN THE TERMINAL" but three quarters of travelers are maskless and totally ignoring it 🇺🇸

— Noah Pollak (@NoahPollak) May 30, 2022

This flouting of the rule at LAX goes back to the earliest days following the Florida judge's ruling. As of April 23, a traveler reported:

I arrived on United Airlines in Terminal 8 to messages over the loudspeaker reminding people to mask up. There were also signs noting that masks were again required.

But I’d put compliance at less than 50%…which is really a striking indictment of the public officials in Los Angeles County.

And it wasn’t just passengers: I was very tempted to take a picture of three unmasked United flight attendants standing in front of the sign above. But it was just too obvious…and I would not want to get them in trouble at this point in time. I also noted several gate agents who were not wearing masks. Nor were the TSA officers I passed. Or the LAX Police officers I saw in the baggage claim area. In short, the people who arguably should be “setting the example” were instead flouting the rule.

It’s an amazing lesson that the people will only respect rules when they believe those rules are rooted in legitimacy. At this point, people are so over masking up that they will no longer respect clear and umbagious rules. And clearly there seems no appetite to enforce such rules at LAX.

I've already noted that the Metrolink rail transit system has publicly said it's "asking" riders to wear masks in reponse to the county order, but it is not enforcing it.

Meanwhile, Monkeypox was briefly a thing about two weeks ago until it was generally recognized that it wasn't. As Alex Berenson noted on his Substack,

You can almost feel the public health authorities squirming right now.

On the one hand, they’ve almost got another epidemic on the go - the perfect way to distract the shiny-haired robots in the media from the complete failure of the mRNA vaccines.

On the other, the monkeypox epidemic - stop me if you’ve heard this before - very much appears to be centered around the sexual practices of gay men.

They told me I should set up an appointment for another COVID booster. Sigh. I guess I should, if only to keep being able to go around without a mask.

Orthodox Acting Like Episcopalians

I've noted here from time to time that the Russo-Ukraine War has led to schism within the Russian Orthodox Church, the largest Orthodox denomination. Inevitably, we're beginning to see former Russian Orthodox dioceses and new ad hoc groups declaring independence from the former mother body in pretty much the same way that the "continuing Anglican" movement left The Episcopal Church after the 1970s:

⚡️⚡️⚡️ This is huge!!! The Council of the Ukrainian branch of the Russian Orthodox Church declared independence from Moscow. Expressing disagreement with Patriarch Kirill of Moscow on the war, the Council proposed negotiations with the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

— Alexander Khrebet/Олександр Хребет (@AlexKhrebet) May 27, 2022

Having studied "continuing Anglicanism" pretty closely while writing my old blog, this is all starting to have a familiar ring. Conventions and councils are staking out their positions in Ukraine and elsewhere just as disgruntled Episcopalians did late in the last century and early in this one, for instance here, via Google Translate:

The Council of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (hereinafter - the Council), held on May 27, 2022 in Kyiv, considered issues of church life that arose as a result of the military aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine. Based on the results of the work, the Council approved the following:

1. The Council condemns war as a violation of God's commandment "Thou shalt not kill!" (Exodus 20:13) and expresses condolences to all those who suffered in the war.
2. The Council appeals to the authorities of Ukraine and the authorities of the Russian Federation to continue the negotiation process and search for a strong and sensible word that could stop the bloodshed.
3. We disagree with the position of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia on the war in Ukraine.
4. The Council adopted appropriate amendments to the Statute on the Administration of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which testify to the full independence and autonomy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
5. The Council approves the resolutions of the Councils of Bishops of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the decisions of the Holy Synods of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which met after the last Council of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (July 8, 2011). The Council approves the activities of the Department of Affairs and Synodal Institutions of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

This is not to say there isn't a huge grievance here, but the Orthodox in this case are running up against a very similar problem that eventually beset the Church of England by the early 19th century: the idea of a "national confession" simply became harder and harder to support. Religion can't be identified with nationality. In England, this occurred in peacetime when domestic reforms allowed tolerance of denominations outside the Church of England. It's clearly much more difficult when a single denomination becomes doctrinally divided on who's right in a war.

However, this step isn't completely new. According to Wikipedia,

A schism between the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC, also known as the Moscow Patriarchate) and the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople began on 15 October 2018 when the former unilaterally severed full communion with the latter.

The resolution was taken in response to a decision of the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople of 11 October 2018, confirming its intentions to grant autocephaly (independence) to the Eastern Orthodox church in Ukraine in the future. The decision also stated that the Holy Synod would immediately: reestablish a stauropegion in Kyiv, i.e. a church body subordinated directly to the ecumenical patriarch; revoke the "Letter of issue" (permission) of 1686 that had given permission to the patriarch of Moscow to ordain the metropolitan of Kyiv; and lift the excommunications which affected the clergy and faithfuls of two unrecognized Ukrainian Eastern Orthodox churches. Those two unrecognized churches, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP), were competing with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) (UOC-MP) and were considered "schismatics" (illegally segregated groups) by the Patriarchate of Moscow, as well as by the other Eastern Orthodox churches.

Just as with "continuing Anglicans", the division degenerates into alphabet soup. The Council in the link above appears to be the UOC-MP in the Wikipedia entry, which, however, has also now declared independence from Patriarch Kirill. However, whether it will now associate itself with the either the UAOC or the UOC-KP is unclear, and if the "continuing Anglican" precedent applies, unlikely.

If we take the Episcopalian paradigm as any sort of indicator on what this schism will bring about for Orthodoxy, the prospects aren't good. In "continuing Anglicanism", the divisions have produced generations of litigation over property, which has depleted enormous resources for both loyalists and dissidents, while damaging everyone's prestige and encouraging disaffection among the population at large, which was losing enthusiasm for any sort of organized religion anyhow.

I can see only further damage to Orthodox prestige in the West, where up to now Orthodoxy has been a real option only to members of the loopy right, most prominently Rod Dreher, who became Orthodox in response to the Roman Catholic clergy abuse crisis in 2006. He is a member of the Orthodox Church in America, which is primarily made up of US-born, English-speakng members, some of whom are refugees from main line Protestant denominations as well as Catholicism.

While the OCA itself has denounced the Russian invasion of Ukraine and criticized Patriarch Kirill's support of Putin, Dreher himself has been taking the US far right position on the war:

I agree that Russia was wrong to have invaded Ukraine, but I cannot for the life of me figure out what we have to gain from risking war with Russia, or expanding this war to the rest of Europe.

I think this is a crisis for Orthodoxy, which I think Dreher finds it convenient to ignore. If nothing else, it will do nothing to increase Orthodoxy's prestige in the West as a conservative alternative to either Catholicism or a declining main line Protestantism.

Nancy Pelosi Doesn't Drink

What struck me about her husband Paul's DUI arrest over the weekend was the episode in the 2020 election campaign where pro-Trump pranksters put up a slowed version of one of her appearances that made her sound drunk. The response of the fact checkers was to say the speaker doesn't drink:

We requested an interview with Pelosi for this story. Her office declined, but spokesman Drew Hammill told us in an email that the speaker doesn’t drink. (Pelosi’s office told us she doesn’t drink for a similar fact-check in 2010.)

That lines up with what others have said about Pelosi over the years. After a manipulated video of the speaker slurring her words went viral on social media in May 2019, her daughter, Christine Pelosi, tweeted a rebuttal.

“Republicans and their conservative allies have been pumping this despicable fake meme for years! Now they are caught,” she said. “#FactCheck: Madam Speaker doesn’t even drink alcohol!”

At the time, my reaction was, "The Pelosis own a winery, and she doesn't drink?" But I set that aside. In preparing this post, I did a web search for images of the speaker drinking wine, or at least what appeared to be wine, and they weren't hard to find. In the photo at left, the others are holding smallish champagne flutes for a toast, but the speaker is holding a big wine glass, and it's pretty darn full, just like the one at the top of the post. A couple of full glasses that size, and my wife and I would be on the floor.

As I say, it sure looks like wine to me, although it could certainly be non-alcoholic, but I don't see that as part of the speaker's style.

The UK Daily Mail reported,

One vineyard owner who lives nearby told DailyMail.com the couple often block the road with their convoy of blacked-out SUVs when they come to town, but that they didn't seen [sic] anything this weekend.

. . . 'I wouldn't be going to the kinds of fundraisers and parties they go to.

'I don't like them very much or find them very interesting,' the vineyard owner said.

Big parties and fundraisers at their vineyard, and maybe she drinks non-alcoholic wine. That's hard for me to believe. Another interesting question is the timeline of the arrest:

For some reason that hasn’t been fully explained yet, it took law enforcement officers more than four hours to book him after he was arrested. He wasn’t booked until 4:13 a.m. Was he resisting a breathalyzer? Causing a problem? Were they debating whether or not to charge him? It’s not clear. And if he was still blowing more than 0.08 after that time, what was he like at the time of the crash? He was released about three hours after he was booked on $5000 bail.

For those who used to watch Live PD, DUI arrests were a common subject, and they were pretty straightforward: the subject is asked to take a field sobriety test, which he either fails or he refuses to take. He is then arrested, placed in the back seat of a police unit, and taken to the station, where he's booked within a fairly short time. (DUI attorneys advise people in that situation to demand a blood test at the station rather than a breath test in the field, simply because this will take more time and allow the body to lower the BAC, but of course, there are limits to how much help this can provide.)

I assume there is both body and dash cam footage of this incident. I would also guess that the officers immediately were asked, "Do you know who I am?" and much of the four-hour interval between the arrest and booking was taken up with calls among Pelosi fixers and authorities at the county, state, and federal level, but I would also guess that whatever Mr Pelosi blew, it was so outrageously high that there was no covering it up.

As at least one commentator suggested, for the guy to be doing this at age 82 suggests he'd been drinking at this level all his life. As Glenn Reynolds put it, "In Paul’s defense, if I were married to Nancy I’d drink heavily too."

I'm inclined to say stay tuned. It shouldn't be that hard to get the body and dash cam footage.

Meanwhile, remember that the speaker does not drink alcohol.