Q: If you brawl or bicker with anyone this Thanksgiving who will it be and why?
My inspiration for this year’s holiday question came from freelancer Evan Gahr. At Thanksgiving lunch this afternoon at the Harvard Club in Manhattan, he writes in to The Mirror about an impending fight he’s going to have with his “dickface brother-in-law.”
Gahr’s answer specifically is: Roy Pomerantz. “He is one of the three Jews in the country with no sense of humor or irony,” he writes. “The other two are Noam Chomsky and a Jewish accountant in Omaha, Nebraska. Roy is a Columbia classmate of Barack Obama and Harvard Law School classmate of Elena Kagan. He has a bizarre grudge against me that dates, in part, to 2009 when I clusterfucked him into giving me a dopey essay Obama wrote for a student newspaper at Columbia. It was not online and missing from the Columbia Library print archives. The library had every issue of the student paper except for the one where the essay appeared. Another classmate sent Roy the essay. He refused to give it to me.”
So Gahr, ever the phone enthusiast, sprang into action: “I called Columbia VP of communications David Stone and got his secretary. Message not returned. So, per Marty Barron, I called at 6:15 figuring correctly he would answer the phone.” Next: He convinced Stone to tell Roy to give him the essay, asking, “Does Columbia really want to be known for withholding info about Obama from the public?”
Roy ultimately turned over the essay. Gahr broke the story.
But all is not bueno between between Gahr and Roy: “Flashforward to last night: Roy bitched out my sister because I was taking pictures of my nephew at his birthday party. [So were three other people.] She then bitched out my mother.”
And now for answers from a bunch of other journalists around town…
“Alas, I am in Cancun and do not expect to raise my voice much less brawl with anyone. The Mexican sunshine and salchichas are that good. Back this weekend though boo. Have a good gobble day!” — documentary filmmaker, ex-TWT editor, longtime freelance journo Sam Dealey.
“Just got your email this Thanksgiving morning in Sorrento, on vacation. If I bicker with anybody this Thanksgiving, it will be my waiter: Why is my Prosecco not chilled enough???” — lefty radio host Bill Press.
“I’ll probably brawl with my mom. And not just because she’s 70, and I try not to talk to anyone over the age of 60, in the interest of ‘staying young.’ But because she insists on making real stuffing, as opposed to Stove Top, which I prefer. After all, I don’t know where she got her recipe. From one of her delinquent friends? From Ladies Home Journal? From Goop? [My mom’s a lifestyle blog/Paltrow whore.] What’s even in stuffing anyway? Lamb entrails? Metal shavings? Industrial waste? With Stove Top, I know exactly what I’m getting. It says so right on the box. In addition to the three sticks of butter you add yourself, there’s all natural ingredients like enriched wheat flour, chicken fat, disodium guanylate, disodium insosinate, and BHA, BHT, and propyl gallate. You know — the good stuff — like we used to grow on the farm. After all, I have to be careful what I put in my kids’ bodies, so that they can grow to be healthy and strong, as I’ll need someone to lift and diaper me after the Thanksgiving dinners of my senescence. I’ll be way too tired by then to actually make it to the head. And I plan to be around long enough to burden my children. The least I can do, in exchange for their exorbitant school tuition. What can I say? I’m my mother’s son.” — The Weekly Standard‘s Matt Labash.
“Bob Beckel, the worst fat fake Democrat fuck of ALL time because a) he tells America he’s a Democrat and b) he blindly fed into the bullshit edited clip of me saying I ‘WANTED old white people to die.’ Sadly for that half shit, I never said that. Yet happily, I’m thankful Beckels called me an idiot. To quote Forrest Gump, stupid is as stupid does.” — lefty Blue Nation Review editor Jimmy Williams.
“I will likely bicker and brawl with James Carville. His LSU Tigers visit my Texas A&M Aggies tonight and I hope he throws up his gumbo when we kick that ass tonight in College Station. I’ll be there to witness it!” — TV One’s Roland Martin.
“It will be with my liver because my British in laws are in town and they see my proud celebration of ‘Ving as an act of aggression.” — The Bill Press Show’s EP Peter Ogburn.
“Anyone who tries to change the channel from football will trigger my turkey-day wrath.” — The Hill‘s editor-in-chief Bob Cusack.
“My family and I are trying to negotiate a Black Friday trip to the movies — and it’s getting pretty heated. My sister wants to see ‘Mockingjay,’ others are for ‘Foxcatcher,’ I’m in the ‘Nightcrawler’ contingent. If we can’t come to an agreement by the end of tonight, I fear it will devolve into a real-life ‘Hunger Games’-style battle. Pray for us Betsy.” — Business Insider‘s Hunter Walker.
“I will brawl with my ingrained sense of inadequacy and bicker on Twitter with the same jerks I bicker with when it’s not Thanksgiving.” — The Daily Caller‘s infamous Patrick Howley.
“I am smart enough to play the role of Switzerland at family holiday dinners. I agree with everyone on all issues. I am careful not to talk to two people at the same time who might disagree in which case I could get caught. :)” — FNC’s Greta Van Susteren.
“Whether there should be sausage in the stuffing, because my Democratic in-laws are too mortified to talk politics, and I’m too embarrassed for them to go near the topic. It’s like having family members who just celebrated getting 1000 in the SAT — no-one wants to talk college or careers in front of them or their parents. Next year, with Hillary on TV, we’ll argue politics and stuffing.” — Anonymous Washington journo #1.
“The TSA, as always.” — Tucker Carlson, FNC host and editor-in-chief, The Daily Caller.
“Metro …you know what you did.” — WaPo‘s Jackie Kucinich.
“I’m most likely to fight with anyone who gets between me, stuffing and bourbon. However, I fully expect Ferguson to incite some heated conversations at our dinner table.” — CNN’s Matt Dornic.
“It will likely be whoever my waiter is. Good service is so hard to find in DC. Even on Thanksgiving.” — The Washington Examiner‘s Eddie Scarry.
“Hmm. Better take the Fifth on that one! Truthful answer would probably result in divorce.” — Anonymous Washington journo #2.
“Guns. My father and brother and I are going shooting on Black Friday and my mother HATES guns. [My father is a cop and my brother is a Marine. She really lucked out.]” — Tristyn Bloom, reporter, The Daily Caller.
“Alabama fans, because War Damn Eagle.” — Breitbart‘s Jeff Poor.
“The idiots on I-395 out of DC who see snow and driving rain as an a opportunity to test the theory that 6 feet is an adequate stopping distance. To the guy in the Jeep, you were wrong. But I think you now know that now.” — Grae Stafford, video editor, The Daily Caller.
“I think I might be bickering unwittingly with the super-smart and fabulous syndicated columnist Tina Dupuy. We are psychic twins and usually communicate telepathically, but she’s been taciturn and frankly a bit cold recently, so I prolly stuck my foot in it somehow and jammed up the extra-sensory comms channel. It happens.” — White House Writers Group’s Brett Decker.
“I’ll brawl with the waiter if my turkey is dry. And if anyone I’m related to calls me, I’ll send it to voicemail.” — syndicated columnist Tina Dupuy.
“I don’t give out my secret weapons.” — BuzzFeed Chief of Staff Ashley McCollum.
“Prius drivers. Always bad, always in my way. Even worse, Prius drivers shopping Black Friday sales. We’re definitely going to fight.” — White House Writers Group’s Anneke Green.
“Haha. I won’t be a very interesting part of your roundup. I don’t usually bicker at Thanksgiving! Happy thanksgiving!” — WSJ‘s Byron Tau.