Opinion | How the winner of the writers strike could be … TikTok

For almost all the showgoers columnist Christine Emba interviewed for her latest project — which features Americans distilling their thoughts on big issues into sticky-note size — self-protection was the No. 1 reason for owning a firearm.

But from what? It’s unclear, Christine writes. For all the right’s focus on the mental health crisis as the real problem, she muses, “the paranoia that fuels gun-buying has come to seem like a mental health issue in its own right.”

The “sharp-edged individualism” of self-protection, she writes, also feels corrosive to society.

Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman pick up on this strain in their column fretting about the right’s enchantment with vigilantism. Not every incident involves a gun — the man Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is praising in connection with the death of a New York subway busker put him in a chokehold — but many do; think Kyle Rittenhouse.

All these incidents, Greg and Paul write, “blatantly celebrat[e] extralegal violence,” and so do politicians who whip up support for the vigilantes.

Paranoia rising, politicians cheering from the sidelines and, as ever, guns proliferating in the name of keeping us safer — it seems like a recipe for an awful mess.

Chaser: Paul asked last week how many guns the right thinks it will take to finally make us safe. Five hundred million? A billion?

Three writers strikes, I’m out

I’m a fan of fair working conditions, so the writers strike has been tough. But I’m also a fan of the 2007 reality competition “Kid Nation,” and of telling everyone I know about this show, which dropped 40 children in a ruined New Mexico ghost town to fend for themselves. So in that regard, the strike has been terrific.

See, “Kid Nation” was of the era when producers turned to reality TV to fill the broadcasting holes left by the 2007-2008 writers strike, as Megan McArdle explains in her column. (One of those was “The Apprentice,” which begat President Donald Trump.)

Today’s fractured, asynchronous viewing culture means hole-filling is less pressing; people watch whatever, whenever on streamers — try “piping in an Israeli thriller, or some old episodes of ‘Little House on the Prairie,’” Megan writes.

But she also warns there’s a new danger to letting a strike go on too long, or recur: “that viewers will exit Hollywood’s closed system entirely for social media apps such as TikTok and YouTube,” which are already siphoning off young viewers.

And mid-millennial newsletter writers: YouTube is where all the old clips of “Kid Nation” now survive.

Chaser: Don’t go thinking TikTokers can’t strike, too, though. Nana Efua Mumford explained Black creators’ 2021 protest for a more inclusive platform.

From public health professor Joseph G. Allen’s op-ed praising the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s new guidance, which in plain talk says that ventilation systems should completely change out the air in a room every 12 minutes or so. A typical home totally refreshes the air less than once every two hours.

Allen writes that this is the first time the CDC has stuck a number to its pro-ventilation stance, and it’s right on the money, according to research he and other experts conducted. Covid infections, flu infections — anything aerosolized — should fall dramatically in buildings that adhere to the standard.

And the Editorial Board adds that even if building managers don’t change things on their own, all of us workers, students, parents, etc., now have “a yardstick to measure by.” We know what a proper air-exchange rate is now, and it’s up to us to demand one.

Debt situation? Alas, still bad. Actually, a little worse!

Contributing columnist Natasha Sarin and former Treasury official Mark J. Mazur note that the GOP’s proposal-slash-ransom-note to end the debt impasse rescinds the funding the IRS got last year to combat tax evasion. The Congressional Budget Office calculated that the rescission would increase the national deficit by more than $100 billion over the next decade, what with all the evading.

Sarin and Mazur crunched the numbers themselves, though, and they say the figure over the next 10 years is actually, uh, nearly $500 billion — and about $1.5 trillion over the next two decades. Clearly, they write, “House Republicans’ newfound fiscal responsibility isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

Columnist Catherine Rampell is focused on another part of the proposal — “perhaps the most destructive, least noticed part,” she writes. It’s called the Reins Act, and its effects would go well beyond the fiscal. Her column explains how the provision would throw “sand in the gears of the executive branch, so that no one can solve any issue. Ever.”

• Author John Green asks why we still allow tuberculosis — a totally curable disease — to kill millions.
• Please remember that St. Jude isn’t the only children’s cancer charity in town, nonprofit organizer Laurie Strongin writes.
• Contributing columnist León Krauze writes that the real immigration tragedy is unfolding on Mexico’s side of the border.

It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s… The Bye-Ku.

Clear the air — quick, before it’s

Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. See you tomorrow!