Weekend Beacon 7/13/25

July 12 - 13, 2025

Even after a week of terrible news, the humor columnist has a job to do: make the readers laugh. Few can pull it off week in and week out. And yet that's exactly what Dave Barry did. Weekend Beacon contributor Andrew Ferguson explains in his review of Barry's new book, Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass: How I Went 77 Years Without Growing Up.

"Barry came to newspapering the way lots of journalists once did, with no professional training or idea of what he was doing. He dabbled at his college paper before graduating college in 1969—'a truly shitty time for America,' as he rightly notes. He hoped vaguely for a job that had to do with writing and eventually, through a friend, landed one as a reporter on a small suburban paper outside Philadelphia. Within a few months, as he also rightly notes, he had learned everything he needed to know to become a journalist. It’s not particle physics.

"He is very good at evoking the pre-digital newsroom. 'I loved the chaotic noise of the newsroom as deadline approached—typewriters clattering; police and fire radios sporadically blaring out staticky transmissions; editors calling out "Who’s up for an obit?"; reporters occasionally, for a wide variety of reasons, yelling "Fuck!"' Things are much quieter now.

"As much fun as reporting was, he left the trade through a series of professional miscalculations and took a job as a writing instructor, giving tutorials to eager but not terribly literate businesspeople. What might have seemed like a career blunder proved invaluable. Journalism is at once the most outward-facing and the most insular trade there is. As a reporter, he writes, 'I assumed that business was boring and monolithic, and that the employees were mostly drones doing mindless jobs, unlike us English majors in journalism keeping democracy alive by covering the regional sewage authority.'

"Pretty quick, though, he discovered what most normal, non-journalistic people know: 'the business world, although it can be boring, is also fantastically varied and complex, and it’s inhabited by all kinds of people, including smart, funny, creative and subversive ones.' This understanding of how most Americans make their ordinary way in our commercial republic struck him with the force of a revelation—one all too rare in the news business. It enlarged the scope of his sympathy without dulling his sense of the absurd. It was the making of him as a writer."

Speaking of absurd, Tehran is claiming victory after U.S. and Israeli forces obliterated its nuclear program. What sort of insanity drives this regime? Michael M. Rosen reviews Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History by Vali Nasr.

"In the 2000s, Iran turned toward developing its nuclear program, which Nasr unconvincingly claims 'was motivated not by ideology but rather by deterrence and Tehran’s pursuit of national interest.' The chaos wrought by the Iraq war spurred the mullahs to implement a costly strategy of 'forward defense,' i.e., empowering and arming Shiite militias across the border, who targeted American troops, and in Lebanon, where Hezbollah, whose leader vowed loyalty to Khamenei, menaced Israelis.

"Soon thereafter, the ayatollahs invested heavily in shoring up the regime in Syria led by Basher al-Assad, a member of a Shiite offshoot, and the Houthi rebels in Yemen, a Shiite group destabilizing another impoverished Arab country. Both adventures led the Islamic Republic more deeply into military and economic dependence on Russia. In parallel, the clerics cleverly advanced their nuclear ambitions diplomatically and scientifically, as a 2015 international agreement appeared more or less to ratify Iran’s self-proclaimed right to enrich uranium. And, at home, the regime continued to batter a struggling democratic opposition.

"Things began to turn in 2018, when President Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal and successfully targeted the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Russia’s war in Ukraine drained Moscow’s resources and commitments to Tehran. Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel resulted in the pulverization of Hezbollah, which in turn collapsed the regime in Syria. Stripped of its proxies, the Islamic Republic’s leadership, nuclear sites, and ballistic missile facilities proved fatally vulnerable to Israeli airborne attacks in June. And now the regime itself teeters; the cause has subverted the nation.

"Perhaps the most apt metaphor illustrating how the clerics’ slavish devotion to its genocidal ideology sabotages its objectives can be found in the 'Doomsday Clock' the regime established in central Tehran, counting down the moments until 2040 when Israel will be destroyed. That clock went offline in 2021 amid massive nationwide power outages, and it was destroyed by an Israeli missile last month."

From one kind of bunker-buster to another, the British Open begins this week, and who better than Jay Nordlinger to review The Golf 100: A Spirited Ranking of the Greatest Players of All Time by Michael Arkush.

"You can ignore all the ranking, if you wish. The ranking is just a 'hook,' a gimmick, if you like. Arkush has produced a collection of 100 articles about golfers: brief lives, mini-bios. They are wonderful. They are full of charm and intelligence. Arkush has read widely, and he has interviewed many of the players themselves."

"The story of John McDermott is actually more poignant than breezy. After his golf glory, when he was still in his mid-20s, he was confined to a mental institution. The following passage is one of the most affecting in the book:

In 1928, Hagen played with him on a short six-hole course on the hospital grounds. His swing, according to Hagen, was "as fluid as ever."

"May I report that Mr. Arkush shares many of my biases, and crotchets, and that this delights me? He knows that the Senior Tour is really 'the Senior Tour,' no matter that they call it 'the Champions Tour.' He knows the person you are paired with in a tournament is your 'playing partner,' not acceding to the modern 'fellow competitor.'

"He is irreligious about the Masters. The authorities at that tournament insist that you refer to the gallery, or the spectators, as 'patrons.' Arkush thinks this is silly. And he thinks the FedEx Cup is a farce.

"Last but not least—oh, not least—he calls the British Open 'the British Open,' not 'the Open Championship.' He will say 'the Open'—about either the U.S. tournament or the British one—when the context is clear.

"Halleloo."

Happy Sunday.

Vic Matus
Arts & Culture Editor
Washington Free Beacon