Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 879

Wal-Mart Holds a Food Drive for Its Own Struggling Workers

An Ohio Wal-Mart is holding a food drive for underprivileged families who can't afford Thanksgiving dinner, which seems like a noble enough venture, until you realize the collection box is for the store's own workers, who are apparently in need because Wal-Mart doesn't pay them enough.

As the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports, the collection reads simply "Please donate food items here so Associates in need can enjoy Thanksgiving Dinner." The photo is making the rounds via the union-backed group OUR Walmart, which has been organizing walk-outs and heightening pressure on the retailer to pay a living wage since a major round of strikes last Black Friday, followed by large-scale resistance in early September.

At any rate, the food drive is eerily well-timed for those pushing back against the retail giant. The National Labor Relations Board is reportedly about to announce that it will file charges against Wal-Mart for retaliating against striking or unionizing workers. ThinkProgress reports that the ruling may mean backpay or reversal of disciplinary action for workers. If nothing else, the food drive puts a dent in the company's own consistent claim that it pays competitive wages. Despite those longtime complaints, Kory Lundberg, a Wal-Mart spokesperson, touts the collection as evidence of the store's culture of caring, as he told the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

"It is for associates who have had some hardships come up," he said. "Maybe their spouse lost a job.

"This is part of the company's culture to rally around associates and take care of them when they face extreme hardships," he said.

Of course, the real way to "take care of" Wal-Mart associates, most of whom earn below $25,000 a year, would be to pay them enough that they don't need to turn to a collection plate to afford Thanksgiving. Maybe soon enough the massive retailer will follow McDonald's' lead and simply tell its workers to sign up for food stamps.

OUR Walmart, meanwhile, is organizing further strikes today in Cincinnati and Dayton, with more to follow on Black Friday.

       

Dick Cheney Actively Supports Gay Marriage (in Non-Election Years)

The inter-Cheney war over gay marriage hasn't ended just yet. Former vice president Dick Cheney — torn between one daughter's love and the other's ambitions — issued a statement on Monday that landed heavily on the side of the latter.

Liz Cheney is running for Senate in Wyoming, a state that, as of July, opposed gay marriage by a wide margin. Over the weekend, as we reported, she and her sister Mary — an out and married gay woman — got in a public dispute over Liz's rejection of legalized same-sex marriage on a Fox News broadcast. "This is just an issue on which we disagree," Liz told the network in rejecting the practice, prompting Mary to reply, "[T]his isn't just an issue on which we disagree — you're just wrong — and on the wrong side of history." In a separate message on Facebook, Mary's wife, Heather Poe, pointed out that Liz offered her unreserved happiness at their wedding.

Last month, Dick Cheney was content to have his daughters "speak for themselves," as he told CNN's Jake Tapper at the time, clearly not willing to go much further. In the wake of his daughters' dispute, though, he and his wife Lynne didn't have much choice but to weigh in.

Statement from Dick & Lynne Cheney on gay marriage pic.twitter.com/poXjyqVpZg

— Luke Johnson (@johnson) November 18, 2013

This is an issue we have dealt with privately for many years, and we are pained to see it become public. Since it has, one thing should be clear. Liz has always believed in the traditional definition of marriage. … Compassion is called for, even when there is disagreement about such a fundamental matter and Liz's many kindnesses shouldn't be used to distort her position.

That statement makes it clear that Cheney, an on-the-record supporter of gay marriage, is on Team Liz. His words echo hers; she told Tapper that, "I love my sister and her family and have always tried to be compassionate towards them. I believe that is the Christian way to behave." The condescending reference to compassion that both use is likely an effort to explain to a conservative electorate what Heather and Mary saw as happiness.

The message they hope to send to conservative voters is the only reason the issue came up at all. A conservative PAC supporting the incumbent, Sen. Mike Enzi, released an ad in October suggested that Liz's opposition to gay marriage came with significant qualifiers. The Fox News appearance is part of her effort to distance herself from the (admittedly timid) olive branch she offered on the topic in 2009, as seen at right, when she suggested that states should be allowed to pass their own laws on the practice and that the State Department decision to extend benefits to same-sex partners was warranted. "My family has been very clear on this," she said. "We think that freedom means freedom for everybody."

Less so around election time, it seems. For what it's worth, there's at least one thing that Wyoming Republicans like less than gay marriage, which they oppose 62 to 15: Liz Cheney, who trails Enzi 69 to 17.

       

Prescription Drug Abuse Isn't Just for Rural Areas Anymore

More than 300,000 people died from drug poisoning in the U.S. between 1999 and 2009. That first year, opioid analgesics—drugs like methadone, oxycodone, and hydrocodone—were responsible for 21 percent of drug poisoning deaths. By 2009, that number had increased to 42 percent, or 15,597 dead, making prescription painkillers the leading cause of drug-poisoning deaths. 

We've known for some time which types of U.S. communities have been hit the hardest by this country's prescription pill crisis (rural ones) and which states have the biggest problems (those on the Gulf Coast, in Appalachia, and the southwest). But a new series of maps published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine shows that the problem has spread, and now reaches virtually every part of the country.

Using a technique known as small-area estimation, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers Lauren M. Rossen, Diba Khan, and Margaret Warner assembled three county-level U.S. maps showing the age-adjusted death rate for drug-poisoning between 1999 and 2009. Viewed chronologically, the maps are startling:

And in .gif form:

What we're seeing here is that over the decade-long period covered in the study, the number of counties that had more than 10 drug-poisoning deaths per 100,000 residents increased from 3 percent to 54 percent, and the drug-poisoning death rate increased 394 percent in rural counties and 279 percent for large central metropolitan counties. The study authors say 90 percent of those deaths were related to prescription drugs, opioids in particular. 

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While Rossen et al. argue that "estimates of the burden of drug-poisoning mortality at the county level may help inform" various programs, ranging from law enforcement to treatment and prevention, these maps also show us the costs of acting slowly. Health officials in New Mexico, which leads the nation in opioid deaths, are working quickly to make the anti-overdose drug naloxone as widely available as possible.

And yet it wasn't until just last year that the Office of National Drug Control Policy announced its plans to lift restrictions on naloxone's availability. The FDA still hasn't decided whether to recommend it be made available over the counter. Meanwhile, the above maps are likely to get even more red.

       

The Moment Steve Ballmer Broke Up with Microsoft

After thirty long years, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer finally stepped down this year, signalling the end of an era at the tech titan. For the first time since his announcement, Ballmer opened up to the Wall Street Journal about his departure. 

Last year Ballmer, 57, was facing intense pressure from Microsoft executives to turn around the company, and to do it quickly. Ballmer had been the company's CEO for over thirty years, guiding them from his Harvard dorm room with classmate Bill Gates to record profits, but his time was starting to wind down. The company failed to capitalize on the emerging mobile or social markets. "Maybe I'm an emblem of an old era, and I have to move on," Ballmer tells the Wall Street Journal now. "As much as I love everything about what I'm doing, the best way for Microsoft to enter a new era is a new leader who will accelerate change."

In October, he told the Microsoft board his plan was to stay with Microsoft for another four years. He wanted to wait until his youngest son graduated high school before retiring. Ballmer even started holding "cloak-and-dagger" meetings to find his eventual successor. After meeting with a friend, longtime Ford executive Alan Mulaly, Ballmer vowed to change his management strategy. He usually ordered his lieutenants to hand in detailed reports, and encouraged divisional competition. His new initiative was meant to foster cooperation and simplicity. His lieutenants weren't sure how to handle the "New Steve." Ballmer's fellow executives wanted Microsoft turned around quicker than Ballmer's four-year plan, and they weren't hesitating to let their dissatisfaction known. 

That's when Ballmer realized it was his time to leave: 

Mr. Ballmer says he started to realize he had trained managers to see the trees, not the forest, and that many weren't going to take his new mandates to heart.

In May, he began wondering whether he could meet the pace the board demanded. "No matter how fast I want to change, there will be some hesitation from all constituents—employees, directors, investors, partners, vendors, customers, you name it—to believe I'm serious about it, maybe even myself," he says.

His personal turning point came on a London street. Winding down from a run one morning during a May trip, he had a few minutes to stroll, some rare spare time for recent months. For the first time, he began thinking Microsoft might change faster without him.

"At the end of the day, we need to break a pattern," he says. "Face it: I'm a pattern."

Shortly thereafter, Ballmer drafted his letters of resignation and informed the appropriate people that he would, in fact, leave the company so new blood can take over. As it turns out, Mulaly is one of the top candidates to replace him. 

Since announcing his plans to step down in August, Ballmer has done well for himself. The now-former Microsoft CEO made $1.7 billion since his departure from the computer company, so there's no reason to cry for him. (He was already a billionaire, but still: leaving your baby is always hard.) It was an amicable departure, too, with a proper send off at his last employee meeting that included a special mix-tape. Break-ups are always easier with mix-tapes. 

       

'SNL' MVP Watch: Lady Gaga Lives for Cheap Applause, Accents

Coming off of a streak of a few very solid episodes featuring hosts with real acting chops (Kerry Washington; Edward Norton), Saturday Night Live gets stuck in neutral, though that's not really the fault of a game Lady Gaga.

There's something altogether ungraceful about Lady Gaga, which places the ongoing art-school project on fame that is her career in an interesting light. More polished and she'd be a more uncomplicatedly enjoyable popstress, but every time she makes an ungainly transition onstage or makes a completely dunderheaded, Jo-Calderone-style spectacle of herself, there's at least an implicit acknowledgement that she's making this up as she goes along, and that can be rather exciting. The same, honestly, could be said about Saturday Night Live, which regularly gets shown up for not being as polished as something like Comedy Central's Key & Peele, but which, in all it's bloated, hit-or-miss, cue-card-reading awkwardness, is all the more interesting for the fact that they're essentially winging it for 90 minutes on a Saturday night.

Lady Gaga made for a decent fit as a guest host this week, breaking out a host of silly accents, taking more than her share of opportunities to make fun of herself (hey, when the public says you copy Madonna and may have a penis, you steer into that skid for comedy sometimes), and, perhaps in exchange, finding all sorts of excuses to play her music. Ultimately, it wasn't Gaga who kept this week's episode stuck in a middle ground of amusing-but-not-uproarious. Precious few sketches has the energy of some of the better moments of the last two weeks. Some cast members fared better than others, and a week when we get Jay Pharoah and Nasim Pedrad busting out their Kanye-and-Kim can never be considered a lost cause, but nothing felt indelibly great.

Considering, however, that SNL can often be received by its audience as a competition between cast members -- was this a Vanessa Bayer week or a Kate McKinnon week? -- we've decided to bestow a weekly MVP designation, in order to properly recognize extraordinary performances that rise above, and to better track throughout the season who is bringing it. I think we all know in our hearts that last season was dominated by McKinnon and Cecily Strong, but this year, we can prove that with math!

2nd Runner-Up

We ended up with a tie among our runners-up, so we're giving out honors to both Vanessa Bayer and Taran Killam. After a few weeks of settling into a rut of playing bland setup characters, Killam re-asserted himself this week, donning the requisite bad wigs/facial hair to play Adam Duritz in the sketch about terrible cover songs that will never see the light of day, because music rights are a cloud over the land (but they made the weather, and they stand in the rain and say SHIT, IT'S RAININ'). But the real reason Killam finds himself in the MVP race this week is his Weekend Update appearance as Jebidiah Atkinson, bitchy 1860s Presidential speech critic and runaway train of nastiness that even a semi-major flub near the end couldn't derail.

Bayer, meanwhile, only had one real chance to impress, with Spotlightz Acting Camp, a Stagedoor Manor spoof wherein unbearably precocious kid ack-tors ham it up while reenacting scenes from grown-up movies. Bayer's overeager actress had some vocal similarities to Jacob the Bar Mitzvah Boy, though none of that kid's nervousness about performing.

1st Runner-Up

Lady Gaga, for all her awkwardness, proved to be a game SNL host. Defying expectations, she appeared in nearly every sketch and was more than willing to participate in jokes at her expense. In the cover song sketch, she poked fun at the "Born This Way" vs. "Express Yourself" controversy from a few years ago, which was well-executed and well-placed if not timely. (Also strange considering the Katy Perry vs. Sara Bareilles controversy was only passively mentioned a few weeks ago.) Her best sketch, though, was when she played a desperate, old spinster version of herself. She led Kenan Thompson around her apartment, desperately trying to jog his memory so he'd remember her. It balanced her desperate self-promotion with enough jokes at her expense to work. The sketch ended on one of the saddest notes SNL will air all season. 

Hulu pulled her best sketch, of course, so instead here's her strange performance with a surprise guest, R. Kelly: 

MVP

From his first appearance as Rick Ross performing "Cups" from Pitch Perfect to the very end of the show, Kenan Thompson dominated this episode with a strong veteran performance. He's finally settled into the role Jason Sudeikis occupied last season as a strong utility player supporting sketches without hogging the spotlight, and his turn as Lady Gaga's super in the future only reminded us how desperately we need Jean K. Jean to return to the Update desk. Last night's breakout moment, though, was the pre-taped "Mr. Senior" segment on Weekend Update, the grouchy old man crusading against early Christmas celebrations. Thompson had a strong performance shuffling around like an old man, stealing and crushing candy canes in front of two kids, and shouting at a Salvation Army volunteer and stealing her bell. If this doesn't fill you with Christmas cheer, nothing will. 

       

The Cost of Loyalty in Toronto: $5,000

The scandal engulfing Toronto city hall gets sadder and sadder as each day passes. As the embattled mayor, Rob Ford, fights to hold on to his last crumbs of power, the notoriously penny-pinching politician gave each member of his staff a hefty raise Friday. 

As the old saying goes, "loyalty isn't bought, it's earned, but don't tell that to the crack-smoking Rob Ford, who lined his staff's pockets with some extra cash Friday ahead of two votes that stripped him of almost all his authority. In two overwhelming displays of defiance, Toronto City Council voted nearly unanimously to remove Ford of his power of appointment and to limit his emergency powers. Prior to those votes, though, the Toronto Sun reports Ford gave each of his staff members a $5,000 raise. Such is the cost of doing business with a crack-smoking, pot-smoking, hard-drinking, well-fed mayor. 

Which is hilarious considering Ford's solution to every issue he faced over the last six months is always moving forward, and continuing his fight to "save the taxpayer's money." That ideology is apparently selectively applied. But Ford refuses to go down without a fight. His latest counter move against city hall involved threatening city hall with costly legal action from his hilariously named lawyer if city council dismantles Ford's power any further. The Globe and Mail reports: 

Mr. Ford told councillors he has hired veteran municipal lawyer George Rust-D’Eye at his own expense to seek a way to challenge council’s attempts to strip him of his power. On Friday, council overwhelmingly supported two motions to remove the mayor’s ability to appoint standing committee chairs – who make up his cabinet-like executive committee – and whittle down his powers during an emergency. The next big move will come on Monday, with a motion that asks council to “delegate to the deputy mayor all powers and duties which are not by statute assigned to the mayor,” effectively reducing Mr. Ford to mayor in name only, and reduce his staff and budget to that of a councillor.

"The council can’t just come along and say, 'You don’t have those powers, and we’re going to essentially make you into the deputy mayor and the deputy mayor into the mayor,'" Rust-D’Eye told the Toronto Star. That George Rust-D'Eye is the crack-smoking mayor's lawyer is better comedy writing than anything Saturday Night Live could ever come up with. (Which, we learned after last night's cold open, is not much.)

       

The Low Expectations for CBS' 'How I Met Your Mother' Spinoff

The nine-season sitcom staple is officially getting the spin-off everyone knew was coming. And yet, shockingly, the reaction online hasn't been overwhelmingly positive.  

This weekend CBS announced the inevitable How I Met Your Mother spinoff, with co-creators and executive producers Craig Thomas and Carter Bays teaming with Up All Night veteran Emily Spivey to write a pilot script. The new show, called How I Met Your Dad, will have a whole new cast of characters, and will simply be a "kindred spirit" to its predecessor. So far there's no indication Ted or Barney will pop up in Dad continuity, either. Some initial reports, like this one from Deadline, said the new characters would be introduced during the Mother season finale. But Thomas shot down that rumor over Twitter. 

Despite the reassurances that existing characters will stay dead after the Mother series finale later this year, the reaction online has not been kind. TV bloggers are less than excited, to say the least, for a hastily turned-around Mother spin-off. While the original show started as a one of the most innovative, critically acclaimed sitcoms of this generation, through nine seasons the show has forfeited a lot of its early positive press. "You know the bored looks on the faces of the two teenagers at the start of each episode of How I Met Your Mother?" asked Defamer's Beejoli Shah, rhetorically. "I’m assuming some sort of witchcraft was involved," writes Uproxx's Andrew Roberts, while trying to figure out why the show is being turned around so quickly. "Or perhaps desperation is the driving force? I mean losing your highest rated sitcom behind ‘The Big Bang Theory’ would make me run to hills for ideas."

Let's be honest, Dad probably won't work. How I Met Your Mother had a fresh concept at a time when sitcoms were a barren wasteland on television. Friends was cancelled and in its wake nothing rose to replace it. There was trash -- only bad Friends ripoffs and terrible british imports. How I Met Your Mother never reached a Friends-level fever, but it arguably ushered in the next golden age of sitcoms, with shows like New Girl and Happy Endings and The Mindy Project. (Speaking of, The Office's influence should be mentioned here, too.) But Mother also received a boost from two rising, bonafide stars -- Jason Segel and the resurgent Neal Patrick Harris -- to help anchor the show. Odds are Dad won't have that luck. 

       

Bono Stands to Make a Fortune from Forbes Sale

The Irish rock star will make millions whenever the old guard magazine sells thanks to an invest made seven years ago that will likely reap a pretty little profit.

In 2006, private-equity firm Elevation Partners purchased a 45 percent stake in Forbes magazine, which is now for sale for the first time in the publication's 96-year history, the Forbes family announced this week. A leaked internal memo claims there are already many interested parties. Among the many wealthy persons involved with Elevation Partners is Bono, who as the front man for U2 has toured the world, sold millions of records and made enough money to fill many Olympic-sized swimming pools. 

According to Fortune, Elevation paid $264 million in the deal, more than the previously reported $240 million, and received preferred stock as compensation. Elevation will emerge as the major winner in an eventual sale through some creative accounting, Fortune explains: 

Moreover, the deal was structured as preferred stock, meaning that Elevation would get paid back first in the event of a sale (and then share in any gains).

That provision is paramount today, given the asking price. If Forbes sells for $400 million, then minority shareholder Elevation would receive a majority of the proceeds. Not too shabby, particularly given that Elevation had written its Forbes investment down by more than 75%.

Elevation gets paid, and therefore so too does Bono. Everyone else gets paid too, of course. We're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars. There's enough to go around. 

The magazine needs buyers first, though, and the Forbes family will likely look to one of the many billionaires scooping up old media vanguards as personal vanity projects lately. Steve Bezos bought the Washington Post for $250 million. The Boston Globe sold to Red Sox ownerJohn Henry in exchange for a whisp of David Ortiz's hair. But no one has yet lined up to be the billionaire Prince Charming to Forbes' Cinderella. Maybe a certain billionaire mayor leaving office who has received some flattering coverage lately will cast his frisky media-focused eye this way. 

       

Alec Baldwin's MSNBC Show Might Get Canned

Alec Baldwin's ill-fated attempt at late night television may reach an early end. According to the actor himself, his show faces an uncertain fate after his most recent homophobic outburst.  

"Whether the show comes back at all is at issue right now," Baldwin revealed Saturday morning on his Huffington Post blog. Paparazzi cameras got too close to Baldwin's wife and newborn child, who were waiting in a black car, and the former 30 Rock star chased them away. That was fine, but as the incident was dying down Baldwin allegedly muttered "c-cksucking f-g," which was not OK. Baldwin defended himself and argued he actually said "c-cksucking fathead," failing to realize that both words are gay slurs. Facing pressure after Baldwin's outburst, MSNBC suspended his late night talk show, Up Late with Alec Baldwin, which airs at 10 p.m. on Fridays, for two weeks.

His team had an episode planned for the 50th anniversary of JFK's death that will no longer see the light of day because of his suspension. "I am deeply apologetic to Ron Fried, who worked extremely hard with me on that show," he said. But Baldwin is at peace with his show's potential untimely demise. "But if the show dies, its fate ends up being no different than the vast majority of start-up TV programming, and so be it," Baldwn says. "We do take a small amount of pride in knowing that we beat CNN in the ratings each of our nights. (I forget who they had on at that time.)"

Baldwin made sure to separate himself and his scandal from the channel he loves so much "Don't allow my problem to be MSNBC's problem. They are good people who work hard at a job, just like many of you," he said.  Baldwin says he will still support MSNBC even if they choose to cancel his show, so it should not shock that he's firing shots across the bow for the left-leaning network. 

       

Kendrick Lamar Was Not Pleased with His GQ Cover Story

GQ put Kendrick Lamar, perhaps the greatest rapper of his generation, on the cover of their 2013 Man of the Year issue. But the West Coast rapper's handlers found the accompanying profile "offensive," and "racial overtones" in the profile ruined the honor. 

The Compton native was one of five people the men's magazine chose to grace their annual year-end celebratory covers, alongside Justin Timberlake, Will Ferrell, Matthew McConaughey and James Gandolfini. In an interview with Steve Marsh, Lamar talks about dealing with his sy high expectations, the trappings of newfound fame, his simmering beef with Drake over Lamar's perceived disses in a verse released over the summer, and the ensuing drama ("scrap") at a Diddy-thrown MTV Video Music Awards after party. Lamar was set to perform at the Man of the Year party on November 12, but he was pulled from the bill at the last minute. 

Marsh's focus on the headline grabbing stories that dominated Lamar's year -- a pretty common feature in magazine profiles -- is apparently what set off Anthony "Top Dawg" Tiffith, the CEO of Top Dawg Entertainment, the West Coast record label Lamar calls home. Tiffith released a statement Friday explaining why Lamar pulled out of the performance. Tiffith said he was honored one of his artist's received a GQ Man of the Year cover, but didn't take kindly to the way Marsh wrote about his artist or his label: 

Instead, the story, written by Steve Marsh, put myself and my company in a negative light. Marsh's story was more focused on what most people would see as drama or bs. To say he was "surprised at our discipline" is completely disrespectful. Instead of putting emphasis on the good that TDE has done for west coast music, and for hip hop as a whole, he spoke on what most people would consider whats wrong with Hip Hop music. Furthermore, Kendrick deserved to be accurately documented. The racial overtones, immediately reminded everyone of a time in hip-hop that was destroyed by violence, resulting in the loss of two of our biggest stars. We would expect more from a publication with the stature and reputation that GQ has. As a result of this misrepresentation, I pulled Kendrick from his performance at GQ's annual Man Of The Year party Tuesday, November 12th.

He reiterated his reluctant complains with the GQ honor:  "While we think it's a tremendous honor to be named as one of the Men Of The Year, these lazy comparisons and offensive suggestions are something we won't tolerate. Our reputation, work ethic, and product is something that we guard with our lives," Tiffith said. 

GQ's editor-in-chief Jim Nelson released a statement in response Friday evening. Basically, he's baffled there was any issue taken with the profile:

"Kendrick Lamar is one of the most talented new musicians to arrive on the scene in years. That's the reason we chose to celebrate him, wrote an incredibly positive article declaring him the next King of Rap, and gave him our highest honor: putting him on the cover of our Men of the Year issue. I'm not sure how you can spin that into a bad thing, and I encourage anyone interested to read the story and see for themselves. We were mystified and sorely disappointed by Top Dawg's decision to pull him at the last minute from the performance he had promised to give. The real shame is that people were deprived of the joy of seeing Kendrick perform live. I'm still a huge fan."

Tiffith took issue with parts of Marsh's profile, particularly his focus on drama and his focus on the violent, bloody history of Compton rap. Marsh invokes Tupac, one of Lamar's inspirations, and Death Row Records throughout the profile. At one point compares Tiffith to notorious Death Row impressario Suge Knight, a convicted felon. Here's the part of Marsh's profile that likely inspired Tiffith's ire:

A few hours after the VMAs, we were back in Kendrick's hotel room and everybody was in a lull, staring at cell phones, waiting for news about afterparties. A plan coalesced to hit a party being thrown by Diddy at the Dream Downtown hotel. But one of Kendrick's Top Dawg boys leaned back and said, "Aw, man, I can't go to no club."

Kendrick spoke up.

"We have to go."

"Look at you! We have to go. You're never we have to go."

"You know me," Kendrick explained. "I only go when there's a point. Usually the point is just niggas drinking. But walking through the club the week after I released the 'Control' verse? That's a point!"

Twenty minutes later, Anthony "Top Dawg" Tiffith, basically TDE's Suge Knight, asked if I had had a fun day. I said that I had and that I was surprised by their discipline. "You guys seem so calm," I said.

"Well," Tiffith told me, "we're going to have to call it a night with you, because we about to get uncalm. You understand."

That the passage in question involves an exchange with Tiffith that happened months ago should be enough for everyone to draw their own conclusions.