Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask it here.
Roughly seven years ago, my old friend and former WEEKLY STANDARD colleague, Tucker Carlson, channeled his inner Judas and started the Daily Caller, a rival to this august magazine/website that helped give him journalistic birth. This was in the late aughts, when there were only ten or twenty lone conservative voices in the wilderness, as opposed to today, when there seems to be more conservative websites than there are conservatives. (A conservative estimate.)
If we’re interpreting more charitably, perhaps Tucker wasn’t trying to stand up a direct competitor. We did, after all, fill different seams, each of us having our own stylistic quirks. The Caller has a lot more bikini slideshows. We have a lot more neocon warmongers. If we ever merged, we’d likely split the difference, running slideshows of John Bolton in a tasteful one-piece.
But even while feeling the competitive bite, I did what all good friends do in the cutthroat world of full-contact ideological journalism: I wished Tucker well, while secretly rooting for his failure. That is, until he asked me to write a column for him. Not some political blowhard column. No, even back then, everyone was pretty much all stocked up on those. He asked me to write an advice/ask-me-anything column. For years in private correspondence, Tucker had been the recipient of my free-range opinionating, philosophical meanderings, and suspect life and career instruction. All of which had nearly ruined him. Why shouldn’t his burden be shared, seemed to be the thinking.
Since I’m susceptible to both flattery and freelance cash, I immediately took his 30 pieces of silver, sold out the home team, and spent over four years answering reader questions on every subject from what kind of jeans middle-aged straight men should be wearing to why we should remain catch-and-release fly fisherpersons in preparation for Armageddon.
What started as a weekly column gradually became a monthly, then something closer to a quarterly offering. Until, due to other work obligations, ennui, or preferences for means of expression besides the straitjacket of stringing words together (for a short spell in 2014, dance became my medium of choice), I let the column lapse altogether, leaving millions of readers bereft. Or at least the 10 or 20 of them who bear some familial relation. But now, after a two-and-a-half year sabbatical, I am tanned, ready and rested. Or tanned, anyway—I’m just returned from the beach, and my wife forgot to bring the SPF 30. Tucker insisted on checking the non-compete clause in my contract, discovered I didn’t have a contract, and said, “Do whatever the hell you want to do, you’re dead to me anyway.” Old pals look out for each other. So I’m bringing the column back. This time, for the STANDARD, the magazine where I have hung my hat since its inception in 1995 (back in the ancient days when brave souls actually started magazines, the kind you can hold in your hand and swat bugs with)—and where I occasionally even come into the office, a privilege I try not to abuse, as familiarity breeds contempt.
At the Daily Caller, we called the column “Ask Matt Labash.” Here, we are calling it “Ask Matt Labash,” since as conservatives, we hate change. The title remains self-explanatory. I am Matt Labash. Feel free to ask me a question on any subject: relationship woes, current events, fly-fishing, pop culture, ethics, personal hang-ups, spiritual malaise. Whatever is captivating/fascinating/ailing you. Anonymity is guaranteed if requested. All aliases are honored. Questions may be edited for clarity/sanity reasons. But I generally let readers fly their freak flags, as I enjoy hearing the voices of others nearly as much as the sound of my own. Plus, you help me pad out the column.
Our only limits, subject-wise, are our own imaginations. And my shallow generalist’s knowledge base. But even then, there are no limits. As I have Bing, which I search regularly. Not because I’m a naturally curious person, in search of small truths on the path to enlightenment. But rather, because I’m a proud gold member of Bing Rewards. Only 438 more searches, and I get five dollars off my next burrito bowl at Chipotle.
To kick things off, I have canvassed my wide circle of friends and detractors for questions, to give you the gist of how it works. And from now on, both gentle and un-gentle readers alike can get in on the action by sending their questions to [email protected] . The idea, if “idea” isn’t too strong a word, is not to think of this as a mere interactive column. Rather, think of it as communion. Or at least our modern, debased version of communion. Communion in which you ask a question as I pretend to listen, anticipating what I’m going to say well before you’ve finished speaking. Then as I answer, you checking your phone distractedly, clicking on the sponsored content on how to shrink your enlarged prostate, never to return. Welcome to the Golden Age of Communication! Let’s get started:
Dear Matt,
Sometimes I can’t shake the unbearable sadness. What do I do?
Yours,
Lost in the Dark
Thanks for kicking us off with an easy question. First, I always start with prayer. As I’m a firm believer in miracle cures. Not for baldness or obesity or incontinence. But in a more metaphysical sense. Miracles don’t always happen. And arguably, don’t even often happen. But when they do, many problems can be solved at once. If you want your ship to come in, if you want to buy the indoor family-room hot tub, get double-D implants, and have ne’er-do-well relatives hit you up for their next mortgage payment before they’re foreclosed on, you can’t just buy the beef jerky when you go into Wawa—you have to buy the Powerball ticket. In a crassly spiritual sense, God is that Powerball ticket. Except in my experience, He pays out a lot more frequently, even if it is often in much smaller dividends. Maybe even nearly undetectable ones. Sometimes, maybe you only get a tolerance for pain, instead of a cure. But unlike with Powerball, it costs you nothing to ask. (Matthew 7:7 “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”) Or, if you’re just a good old-fashioned secularist who has a vague belief in some Larger Force, look at it this way: A God who is capable of making things as beautiful as brook trout, Blanton’s whiskey, and Olga Kurylenko (I suggest looking her up on Bing, especially if you’re hungry for Chipotle) can ameliorate your simple marital woes, your abusive boss’s unreasonable demands, or your inexplicable melancholy. These things are possible. All things are. Just look at the range of human experience, statistically speaking. The unexpected happens every day. Trust the weirdness. Expect it, even.
And if faith fails you—and I don’t offer this glibly—try denial. Not denial of faith. But denial of your own worst impulses. Denial, exactly zero professionally-trained shrinks will tell you (lucky for you, I’m not one of them), is a completely underrated quality. If you can pull it off, try it. It often works. Some of the happiest people I know are people in touch with their own feelings, who then deliberately ignore them. Because those feelings often don’t do them any good. They just get in the way of what needs to be done. Try denying your own paranoia. Your own pessimism. See if you don’t feel at least a little bit better. If you are a sentient being who reads the internet, there’s a lot to be gloomy about. Ignore it, as best you can. I’m not saying ignore the suffering of others, especially if you can help alleviate it. I’m saying ignore the manufactured suffering that often afflicts us unwittingly. Mostly by clickbaiters who are paid to bring us the bad news, which now surrounds and overwhelms us 24/7. Often, I find, there’s a button I can push to make myself feel better. The “off” button on my computer. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Though I don’t recommend hitting it before you read the weeklystandard.com, a beacon of uplift and light. (Sorry, my ad guys made me say that.)
Dear Matt,
You seem like the kind of guy who hates not only science and technology, but the entire idea of human advancement. I know this because I read your unhinged attack on Twitter a few years ago. Has mankind made any progress in the last hundred years that you approve of?
Kelly J.
Van Nuys, CA
Cars and air travel are pretty great. Also, I’m unapologetically pro-electricity and indoor plumbing, even if I frequently urinate outside just for fresh air/to feel closer to nature. I enjoy streaming video as well. Lastly, there’s been a lot of genocide in the last 100 years. And I’m for selective genocide. But only if it involves Silicon Valley executives. I kid (sort of). But only because I still can. Before they figure out how to make an algorithm do the same. And trust me, they will.
Dear Matt,
Who would win in an Ivanka/Chelsea cage match?
H.L.
Ooof. Tough one. If they stand toe-to-toe, and box, I think Ivanka has the reach advantage, not to mention much longer legs, which she’s light on. (Sinewy, tanned stilts that I’ve taken the liberty of looking up on Bing, bringing me ever closer to my $5-discount-Chipotle goal.) But if they go MMA, then there’s the more compactly-built Chelsea, who, with her lower center of gravity, could easily tilt the Valkyrie over, making short work of her. Because that’s when Chelsea’s jiu-jitsu training kicks in.
I’ve met Ivanka once, briefly. Well before this election cycle. It was a simpler time that I like to call “the early 2000s.” We were at some swank Washington D.C. party, although not so swank they they didn’t have elaborate port-o-johns set up for human inevitability. As Ivanka was coming out, I was going in. Taken aback by her presence and beauty (and also under the influence of copious amounts of open-bar Jesus Juice that had been served at this particular function), I don’t remember exactly what I said, though I do remember it was something vaguely inappropriate that I was trying to pass off as casual small talk. Such as, “I hope you lit a match in there.” She was not amused. And in fact, she looked at me with the kind of ice-queen contempt that could leave a man smitten for life, as only those who have no use for us are capable of doing. If her stare had been a flavor of gum, it would’ve been Dentyne Ice Arctic Chill. It was the sort of ruthlessness that makes me naturally want to give Ivanka the cage-match edge.
But then…there’s Chelsea. I have never met her. But I expect if I did, she’d say something perfectly polite and predictable such as “I believe the children are our future,” or “It takes a village to raise a village idiot,” or “Please make out your check to the Clinton Foundation,” or whatever the Clintons say when lecturing—on smiling auto-pilot—a roomful of Goldman Sachs investment bankers at five hundred grand a throw. Mind you, I don’t like to say anything negative about the Clintons, partly because I’m not one of those nut-job irrational conspiracy-minded Clinton haters, partly because I don’t want them bumping me off like they did Vince Foster. But behind the artificial smiles, there is something even more ruthless about Chelsea than Ivanka. I suspect when push came to figure-four leg-lock, Chelsea would imprint Ivanka’s face on the mat, or worse still, shred her pouty mug on the chain-link. Chelsea would eat Ivanka’s heart for breakfast, preferably with a dollop of hot sauce, like the kind her mom pretends to keep in her purse in order to seem like a Regular Gal. I’ve known a lot of regular gals, most of whom carry purses. And precisely none of them have ever asked me if I’d like to borrow their hot sauce. Even when we’re eating at Chevy’s Fresh Mex, which I frequently do, since I embrace our Latino and Latina hermanos and hermanas, unlike Ivanka’s dad.
But hot-sauce fraudulence aside, my money is on Chelsea…..
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him here.
