It’s not hard to find praise for Nellie Bowles, who writes a weekly column for The Free Press, a website owned by her wife, Bari Weiss. “If you don’t read Nellie Bowles every Friday, you’re living a sad, bleak and empty life,” says Free Press columnist Niall Ferguson. Conservative writer Caitlin Flanagan says Bowles’ column “is really funny, and captures the exact spirit of the ’70s writers I loved and knew so well.” Free Press columnist Joe Nocera wrote that “everything she does is funny and smart,” in response to John Podhoretz’s tweet about how Bowles “carries the soul of a Borscht Belt comic deep within her.” Bowles was recently described by Weiss as “the darling of Tom Wolfe and Joan Didion” and “America’s funniest writer.”
Writers with such skill and observation will find that there is no shortage of opportunities to create sharp, entertaining, and enlightening prose in the current political and cultural climate. With that in mind, let’s take a look at what Bowles has to say about the U.S. war with Iran, a topic she grappled with on Friday.
→ Trump at war: We are officially bombing Iran. And Iran is bombing everyone it can. They have reportedly launched missiles, drones and deck chairs at the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Azerbaijan and Turkey, as well as Israel, their favorite target to bomb. But it looked quite depressing. We are winning very clearly. Really, really easily. Trump said the following about the war schedule: “We also expected four weeks to remove the military leadership, but as you know, it was done in about an hour, ahead of schedule.” And Trump said this about who should be Iran’s new leader: “Well, most of the people we had in mind are dead… We had people in mind for that group who were dead. And now we have another group. Reportedly, they may be dead as well.” “They are wasting time. Khamenei’s son is a light player. He should be involved in appointments like Delsi (Rodriguez) in Venezuela.” This will be done the Trump ancestral way with a swimsuit competition in the resort’s indoor and outdoor pavilions. In other war news, an American submarine torpedoed and sank an enemy ship for the first time since World War II. Welcome back to Water Wars! There is incredible video of a fighter pilot being shot down over Kuwait. In a bright and cheerful atmosphere, locals approach her from the dust bowl. They thank her for what she is doing and offer their help (thank God she didn’t end up in Minneapolis).
what. I have to admit that I don’t get much influence from Didion, Wolfe, or the Borscht Belt in “Welcome back to water warfare, baby!” It must have come from a much larger influence. Maybe Mark Twain?
In any case, the answer is yes. Nellie Bowles is America’s worst writer.
