Walter Kirn nails it 🔨

For 26 years, my husband and I owned and operated a dental practice, and we NEVER discussed politics or religion with our patients. It was simply taught to us as good business sense. We had plenty of patients whose political beliefs were wildly different from ours and occasionally one would launch into a political rant right there in our chair. We’d politely listen, nod, and say nothing. When did business owners lose sight of this basic principle? Your customers don’t need to know your political beliefs, and you certainly don’t need to alienate half of them by broadcasting yours. You’re free to express your opinions of course, but why are so many business owners genuinely shocked when their customers exercise that same freedom by taking their business elsewhere?

“By destroying traditional social habits of the people… Liberalism can prepare the way for that which is its own negation: the artificial, mechanised or brutalised control which is a desperate remedy for its chaos.” T.S. Eliot

We'll be there, it's not a spoof. I can't wait

🚨America This Week is back!🚨Thank you @mtaibbi and @walterkirn for patching things up! ❤️ I love this show so much.

Now you know.

Obama is having a psychotic public meltdown over the raid on Ilhan Omar. He’s complaining Trump is weaponizing the DOJ despite the fact that the investigation was started by Biden and the search warrant was signed by a Democrat judge. Never forget Obama himself weaponized the entire Justice Department against a duly elected President. Obama was the one who ordered his own CIA to manufacture evidence against Trump. He’s panicking because he failed to take Trump down. Those who scream the loudest are most guilty.

Arsonists and their cheerleaders will be avenged by the ghosts of the builders of the structures they destroy.

Erik Satie Gnossienne No. 1

This is why I walk. I drive plenty. Half my photography life is road trips, pulling over for neon and grain elevators and whatever the highway hands me. But in a city I walk. I put a camera over my shoulder and walk for hours, no destination, because the city hands you things it will not hand anybody in a car. This morning, my last morning in New Orleans, I turned down a side street in the French Quarter. Not a main street. Just a random turn, the kind you make for no reason at all. And there it was, parked against a wall, lit by a single ray of sunlight. House of Wings. N'awlinz Style Seafood. An old step van with a big red rooster on the side, a little chick beside him, both of them strutting. No vinyl wrap. No QR code. That rooster did not come off a printer. Somebody painted him, brush in hand. Old school. Step vans were built to replace the horse a hundred years ago, for milk and bread and laundry routes. Drivers stood up at the wheel and hopped out either side, a hundred stops a day. The best were skinned in aluminum by Grumman, the airplane company, which is why they do not rust and are still out here working long after they should be dead. Every food truck you have ever eaten from is one of these or its grandchild. This one spent its life delivering door to door and now it sells wings. Same job, same truck. And then look at the wall. Cream on top, red on the bottom, the same two colors in nearly the same place as the paint line on the truck. The truck is camouflaged against its own building. Serendipity. I did not arrange it. I just showed up on foot, with a camera, and it was there. That is the whole secret to photography, if there is one. Serendipity is not rare. It is everywhere, parked on side streets in every city in America. It is just invisible at speed. You have to be out there, walking slow, looking at everything, believing the next corner is the one. I never ate the wings. I left town today and the House of Wings is my unfinished business in New Orleans, along with two girls in a truck in the Quarter in 2006 I would still love to photograph again. Walk your city, camera in hand. And enlarge this one big and look at that rooster.

Small businesses are destroyed. Citizens cower in their homes. Security decrees are issued granting governments unprecedented emergency powers. Surveillance of people's movements & statements is increased. I'm not taking about rioting. I'm talking about Covid. Same job.

“The tiger that rips men open is following his nature; the real criminal is the man who unmuzzles him and launches him on society.” Joseph de Maistre

Western liberals imported the third world into France and other countries in the name of diversity and compassion. They ignored fundamental questions of assimilation and compatibility. They were told it would lead to this and they didn't listen. I pray that France, a beautiful country of amazing people, will stop this madness before more of its landmarks burn. And I hope Americans are paying attention. This is the future congressional Democrats seek for your country.

I went to witness the riots in Paris. I’m going to tell you the truth: it was only young people from African immigrant backgrounds who came to attack our police officers and firefighters, loot our shops, and destroy everything. An elderly French couple in their 80s was robbed and left in their underwear in the street. The steeple of a 150-year-old church was completely burned down. This is not a social revolt for better education. It’s a taste of an ethnic war that took place today.

It’s a very short jump from here to reeducation camps, gulags, and mass graves.

The writing is no longer on the wall because the walls have fallen and some are on fire.

This is what leftist and Islamist revolutionaries just burned down in France. The nation is destroying its own history on the altar of open borders, forced diversity, and third-worldism. These people will gladly do the same right here when given the chance. This is the goal of the DSA and every other revolutionary leftist organization we’ve allowed to operate here. Do not underestimate these people or their intentions. It’s coming.

Hôtel de Ville de Limoges was built in 1883. Third World invaders destroyed it in an afternoon. “Your universe has no meaning to them. They will not try to understand… they will make a fire with your beautiful oak door…”

I took this photograph 20 years ago, in the French Quarter in April 2006, eight months after Katrina. Two girls in a slow moving pickup kept yelling, take our picture, take our picture. One of them got shy and turned away, so her friend pushed her face back towards my camera. Snap. The truck was gone in an instant. As far as I know, neither of them has ever seen this photograph. I wrote that the girl on the left embodies the joie de vivre New Orleanians have, that even the people hardest hit by life here carry a spirit about them. Twenty years of photographing cities later, I still believe that. Tennessee Williams said America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland. San Francisco is home. I have spent half my life photographing New York and New Orleans. There is a lot of truth in that quote, and some days, standing on a corner in the Quarter, I believe every word of it. But I am also in the middle of photographing the 100 largest cities in America, with albums published for 60 of them, and the project has ruined the quote for me a little. Detroit has a grit and a dignity all its own. So does Pittsburgh. So does Memphis, and El Paso, and a dozen other places Williams would have waved off as Cleveland. And of course Chicago has that pizza. And don't you dare try to say Lou Malnati's deep dish is not pizza. Every great city has its own charm. You just have to walk it with a camera until it shows you. So no, I will not take the Williams quote as religion. But back here in New Orleans this weekend, with the food and the music and the art and the people. I understand exactly why he said it. My 100 Largest American Cities collection: flickr.com/photos/thomashawk… Now the part I actually care about. Somewhere out there are two women who were girls in a truck in the Quarter in 2006. Were they sisters? Friends? I would love to take their portrait again, 20 years later. How awesome would it be if this found them? And Cleveland, defend yourself. Tell me why your city belongs on the list. You are one of the hundred American cities I still need to photograph.

Happened at my place once.