Laryngitis

Finally! My first week without travel in a long time–a chance to catch up on work around the office, enjoy relaxed conversations with colleagues about the state of the world, and get summer reading recommendations from Phil Terzian, new cocktail recipes from Vic Matus, and analysis of the baseball season so far from Lee Smith and Terry Eastland. So, needless to say, I came down with a summer head cold which became an unpleasant cough and then a case of laryngitis by mid-week.

 

So I spent Thursday and Friday at home, writing my editorial Thursday morning at our kitchen table (where I do my best thinking, such as it is), and badgering my colleagues with all kinds of queries and suggestions by phone and email. It really is true, with modern communications, you don’t have to be there physically to be in constant touch. I did get the sense that Richard Starr, Mike Warren and others may have thought I was in too constant touch when they started somehow inadvertently missing my calls or not noticing my emails, with Richard finally gently reminding me at 7:00 p.m. Thursday that we did have a magazine to produce and that the time for clever headline ideas and illustrations had passed.

 

In any case, the days at home had their desired effect and I seem to be getting better. And it was a fun week (the part of it that I participated in) anyway. The party on our rooftop celebrating our 1,000th issue seemed to be a big success, and since no one can hear you in those kinds of mob scenes anyway, not having much of a voice didn’t matter–I just nodded a lot and mouthed agreement to whatever friends, associates and various D.C. poobahs were saying. Sen. Ben Sasse, with wife and kids back home in Nebraska, seemed to welcome a chance to mix and mingle with non-Senators (I hope I don’t get him in trouble for saying this), and spent a couple of hours there talking with everyone from Bret Baier to various interns. The weather was beautiful, the mood was good, and we put Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton out of our collective minds for an evening.

 

And I’ve only heard from one longtime friend, also a friend of the magazine, who somehow wasn’t on the invitation list and (rightly) thought he should have been. I of course blamed errant subordinates for an inexcusable lapse, and assured him heads would roll…

 

Of course, in retrospect all the chatting probably wasn’t good for my voice, which was pretty much gone by Wednesday morning. I made it through the annual Bradley Prizes event Wednesday night, with a particularly strong crop of honorees this year–Charles Murray, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Andrew Roberts and Gary Sinise–did some more nodding and mouthing at the reception, and spent the rest of the week at home.

 

And you won’t be surprised that in my (sort-of) absence, Richard & Co. produced a strong issue, with an important think piece by Chris DeMuth on the administrative state, a thoughtful (and worrisome) report from Tom Joscelyn on Omar Mateen and the FBI, an excellent review by James Gardner of what Susan confirms is a terrific exhibition of Hellenistic art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which goes through mid-July and which I hope I can get to early in the month, and much more! And Mike Warren, in his first week of directing the website, filling the needless-to-say unfillable shoes of Daniel Halper (who accepted an offer to become D.C. bureau chief of the New York Post), had lots of good web content up, including a much-noted piece by Virginia Hume on “Donald Trump and the Art of Seduction,” well-worth reading.

 

And as my laryngitis ebbs, I’ve discovered one thing: It’s a good excuse for declining invitations that otherwise I’m too inclined to accept. So I may just let the impression that I can barely talk linger for a couple more weeks….Total honesty is not always the absolutely best policy.

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