Welcome James
Posted by: Scott W. Graves | 07/31/2007 10:10 PM
By Hugh Hewitt
Dear Red County Reader:
You may have noticed that each new issue of Red County has become a more compelling read. It is moving towards a goal of being a "must read" by anyone interested in the center-right politics that define the majority of the modern GOP. Targeting the readers who made up that majority is a shrewd strategy for the press barons running this start-up, because there is absolutely nothing in that niche. Sure, political coverage is available from The Weekly Standard, but nothing beyond politics and most of us live quite happily in a politics-free zone 23 of 24 hours.
With each issue Red County is rolling out new features and voices designed to get a grappling hook into your consciousness so that you begin to ask yourself "When does the next Red County arrive? I'd like to take it on the plane."
This issue sees the debut of a regular column by James Lileks. It is one big hook, and it will not be easy to get out. Don't try.
Lileks is quite simply one of America's four funniest writers, a distinction he shares with Dave Barry, Bill Bryson, and Mark Steyn. (And Bryson now lives in England, so he may be off the list.) Lileks can be quite serious, and his subject matter is as varied as your life, but he is nearly always funny. Wonderful writers somehow manage to pull that off on a daily basis. It is the rarest of commodities: wit on command. Most Republicans lack the "witty" gene. We know this and thus try and compete with Democrats on other fields, like logic and facts.
But now that we have identified some entrants, we need to get them out and about. Lileks lives in the tundra way north, known to us as Minnesota, where he has been scribbling away for the Minneapolis Star Tribune for a quarter century. Lileks has also been churning out books and syndicated columns, all of which can be viewed at his website www.Lileks.com. He is an able and experienced broadcaster, and perhaps the first widely-read blogger, though there could be an argument about definitions there. No matter, he has a huge online audience which checks his Bleat every Monday through Friday. Lileks has many hobbies as well and an encyclopedic knowledge of, well, pretty much everything. He is the only guy I know who might be able to take Dennis Prager and Michael Medved in a Jeopardy game.
He also collects Hummels, but everyone has some quirks.
When Red County inked James to a deal that will see his byline in every issue, I celebrated the deal as a crucial moment in taking the brand national. "I grew up in a turquoise rambler in Fargo, North Dakota," reads Lileks introductory biographical note at his website. "Faux stone out front, tailfins in the garage, knotty-pine paneling in the basement, and boomerang-patterned formica in the kitchen."
"That pretty much explains it all," Lileks added.
It does, and it doesn't.
Most of Red America's voters--though by no means all of them--grew out of the baby boom's wonder years--the absolute best time to have ever been a kid, and a time of a shared culture. Example: Pretty much everyone between the ages of 40 and 65 know a Laugh-In joke when they hear it. Nearly all of them think Walter Cronkite did a fine job reading the news. Most can remember black-and-white television. Most have a few score albums in the attic they are loathe to part with.
This shared cultural upbringing produced an outlook on the world of today which, while largely unspoken, is very real: A desire that the world be at least as welcoming to their children as it was to us.
Lileks knows this very simple truth and he writes from it. No matter what the subject, there is a sensibility in his paragraphs that understands how lucky our demographic is to have been born when and where we were. Lileks writes as well as the dad of a youngster, with all the concerns for the future that such fathers have, and as a middle-aged man looking forward at fewer years than he has already lived.
And he does so with a smile and a wink, and you will love the column, and thus Red County even more. Welcome James.
Dear Red County Reader:You may have noticed that each new issue of Red County has become a more compelling read. It is moving towards a goal of being a "must read" by anyone interested in the center-right politics that define the majority of the modern GOP. Targeting the readers who made up that majority is a shrewd strategy for the press barons running this start-up, because there is absolutely nothing in that niche. Sure, political coverage is available from The Weekly Standard, but nothing beyond politics and most of us live quite happily in a politics-free zone 23 of 24 hours.
With each issue Red County is rolling out new features and voices designed to get a grappling hook into your consciousness so that you begin to ask yourself "When does the next Red County arrive? I'd like to take it on the plane."
This issue sees the debut of a regular column by James Lileks. It is one big hook, and it will not be easy to get out. Don't try.
Lileks is quite simply one of America's four funniest writers, a distinction he shares with Dave Barry, Bill Bryson, and Mark Steyn. (And Bryson now lives in England, so he may be off the list.) Lileks can be quite serious, and his subject matter is as varied as your life, but he is nearly always funny. Wonderful writers somehow manage to pull that off on a daily basis. It is the rarest of commodities: wit on command. Most Republicans lack the "witty" gene. We know this and thus try and compete with Democrats on other fields, like logic and facts.
But now that we have identified some entrants, we need to get them out and about. Lileks lives in the tundra way north, known to us as Minnesota, where he has been scribbling away for the Minneapolis Star Tribune for a quarter century. Lileks has also been churning out books and syndicated columns, all of which can be viewed at his website www.Lileks.com. He is an able and experienced broadcaster, and perhaps the first widely-read blogger, though there could be an argument about definitions there. No matter, he has a huge online audience which checks his Bleat every Monday through Friday. Lileks has many hobbies as well and an encyclopedic knowledge of, well, pretty much everything. He is the only guy I know who might be able to take Dennis Prager and Michael Medved in a Jeopardy game.
He also collects Hummels, but everyone has some quirks.
When Red County inked James to a deal that will see his byline in every issue, I celebrated the deal as a crucial moment in taking the brand national. "I grew up in a turquoise rambler in Fargo, North Dakota," reads Lileks introductory biographical note at his website. "Faux stone out front, tailfins in the garage, knotty-pine paneling in the basement, and boomerang-patterned formica in the kitchen."
"That pretty much explains it all," Lileks added.
It does, and it doesn't.
Most of Red America's voters--though by no means all of them--grew out of the baby boom's wonder years--the absolute best time to have ever been a kid, and a time of a shared culture. Example: Pretty much everyone between the ages of 40 and 65 know a Laugh-In joke when they hear it. Nearly all of them think Walter Cronkite did a fine job reading the news. Most can remember black-and-white television. Most have a few score albums in the attic they are loathe to part with.
This shared cultural upbringing produced an outlook on the world of today which, while largely unspoken, is very real: A desire that the world be at least as welcoming to their children as it was to us.
Lileks knows this very simple truth and he writes from it. No matter what the subject, there is a sensibility in his paragraphs that understands how lucky our demographic is to have been born when and where we were. Lileks writes as well as the dad of a youngster, with all the concerns for the future that such fathers have, and as a middle-aged man looking forward at fewer years than he has already lived.
And he does so with a smile and a wink, and you will love the column, and thus Red County even more. Welcome James.
