So tomorrow I’ll submit my review of Dan Baum’s Gun Guys, A Road Trip. Just so you know it won’t be a whitewash, here’s an email from TTAG reader totenglocke: “In his interview with the WSJ, Baum blames all gun owners for violent crime and insists that law abiding gun owners must be held responsible for the crimes of a handful of people. This interview (and others that exist) show that Dan is most certainly NOT a gun rights advocate and is in fact a gun control advocate. He is merely playing the “I’m a gun owner and I support gun control” card and I’m assuming that TTAG is not aware of his anti-gun statements due to your promotion of his book It might be beneficial to take a deeper look into Mr. Baum and give readers a more thorough view of his agenda.” I am aware and I will. Meanwhile, this is funny . . .
We found a place at a long table in the deep shade with two sweaty brothers named Tom and John, who wore T-shirts that read “living with a german builds character!” and “i got schützenfaced at schützen-fest.” They were eager to explain to out-of-towners that just because Cincinnati looked dull and unsophisticated didn’t mean locals didn’t know how to rock out—within reason. “It’s like that book, The Millionaire Next Door. People here live below their means. But they party! The beer consumption, the sausage consumption—it’s off the charts. People here know how to party, but they don’t get out of hand!”
“Look! You got kids here! Families! But we don’t get out of hand!”
“Hitler, you know, didn’t want to fight in the west,” Tom said suddenly. “All he wanted was lebensraum for the German people.”
Margaret and I stared at him for a long moment. Where did that come from?
Maybe it was the heat, or the beer, or the racket of the guns. Margaret suddenly stood, cocked her head toward me, and casually said to them,
“Dan here? Jewish.” Then, to me: “Gotta pee.” And off she walked.
The brothers flew into a panic. “I’ve got a Jewish friend! Great guy!”
“They say the DA of Cincinnati is Jewish! Great guy!”
A shout went up; someone had shot off the last piece of the scepter. A hearty man in full deutsche garb plunked himself down next to me and thrust out his hand. “Mike Rademacher,” he said, with Babbitt-like vigor. He had a Vandyke beard that was starting to whiten and brown eyes that sparkled behind heavy glasses. His hat was so coated with cloisonné pins, and sported a gamsbart so enormous, that it was a miracle he could hold his head upright.
“That’s one hell of a hat,” I said.