NRO cruise
Page 3 – Including Night Owl #1
Nov 23rd
The panels began in earnest on Sunday. After the interview of Sununu and Thompson, John Miller moderated a panel of Tony Blankley, John Fund, Ralph Reed, Mona Charen and Bob Costa on The Politics of 2012. Fund is the most optimistic about our country. The rest, (including me) not so much. I have noticed that on the 4 cruises I’ve attended since 2009, the tea party has continued to gain steam and credibility with the NRO crowd. We started out as a footnote, and now are considered real players. That’s a good thing.
The next panel tackled the Economy. Kevin Hassett, Ramesh Ponnuru, Deroy Murdock and Tracie Sharp along with moderator Kevin Williamson were impressive and pessimistic. At one point Hassett took us through a non-Tarp scenero which would have been infinitely better than what we got. Books will be written about that.
Sunday night was our first Night Owl. Night Owls are comedy nights on the cruise. Well our brand of comedy which means political people making us laugh over political things. (It would be funny to drag a non-NRO person into a Night Owl session to see if they even cracked a smile. It may be all too much inside baseball.)
The topic: Reflections on Barry
The speakers: Lileks, Andrew Klavin, SE Cupp and Michael Walsh as moderator.
I’m not sure I recall much said about Barry. After all, what is there to say? Whatever the motive, he has taken this country on a ride toward destruction, and it is getting harder by the minute to find things to laugh about.
But laugh we did. These are funny and talented people. And we are all on the same team which might just be the best part of all.
Page 2: Politicians are boring
Nov 22nd
One thing was abundantly clear on this year’s cruise – politicians are pretty boring. Everything out of their mouths sounds like a recycled stump speech, written to offend no one and inform even fewer people. I’ve been a fan of Fred Thompson forever, but I can’t believe he didn’t put himself to sleep with his recent NRO performance. On Sunday Jay Nordlinger interviewed both he and Governor John Sununu and I can’t remember a thing either one said. Later in the trip Tim Pawlenty joined us and seemed to drone on and on as well. Others say he got better in the second half, I was probably snoozing by then. Later in the cruise I suggested we have a politician free cruise next year. Many others agreed. I go on the cruises to learn things I don’t know. Politicians are rarely willing to be that revealing.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Saturday night I sat down at dinner and a few minutes later SE Cupp and her friend James sat down next to me. It was about 3 minutes before we realized we had grown up in the same town 27 years apart. We actually lived about a quarter mile from each other, practically in different centuries, but still that was fun.
SE is an interesting woman and very accomplished for her mere 32 years. She has written 2 books: Why You’re Wrong About the Right and Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media’s Attack on Christianity.
The most fascinating thing to me about SE, as her book title suggests, she is a huge defender of religion, particularly against the liberal media, and she is an atheist. Since I struggle with the concept of God and am also a protector of religion I was fascinated by her struggle. She would like to believe but is not there yet. I asked why an atheist and not an agnostic and she shook her head and shrugged. I understood.
NRO Cruise recap, page 1.
Nov 21st
I’m lucky enough to have just returned from my 5th NRO cruise, which was great, like all the others I have been on.
The weather was good, and the water blue but the consensus is that the cruising part really doesn’t matter. We are all sick of the Caribbean but where else can you go in November? A room in a heated cave might be suitable as long as we have the speakers and our fellow cruisers to spend the week with. And at this point, I have no idea who I appreciate more – the scores of people who after spending 5 vacations in a row with, I now consider good friends , or the speakers who more often than not, tell me something I don’t know.
Most everyone, famous and not, agrees that the world is ending, there is little hope, and it was fun while it lasted. It’s hard to see a way out, and harder to see the person who will get us there.
Jim Geraghty said it best Saturday morning when he told Caro and I that should we lose the 2012 election, the post-election cruise will just keep going and never return to port.
