Glenn K. Beaton is a writer and columnist living in Colorado. He has been a contributor to The Wall Street Journal, RealClearPolitics, Powerline, Instapundit, Citizen Free Press, American Thinker, Fox News, The Federalist, and numerous other print, radio and television outlets. His most recent book is "High Attitude — How Woke Liberals Ruined Aspen"
My book was published April 18, 2023 and is available on AMAZON. I would be grateful if you would read AND offer a review on Amazon, which is very important for the book to get traction.
Here are a few items of “Advance Praise” by people I really respect who took the time to read advance copies:
“Aspen, Colorado, is one of the most celebrated places in the United States, but like any other community it has its preening airheads, community-minded heroes, political bigots and ripoff artists. What most communities don’t have, however, is an alert critic who has seen it all and can write it up. Glenn Beaton is to Aspen as Thorton Wilder was to Our Town. He lived there for many years, got to know it all, and, finally, in disillusion, abandoned it. This book tells you why.”
–Peter Wallison, author and White House counsel to President Ronald Reagan
“I, like 327 million of my 328 million fellow Americans, could not care less about Aspen, Colorado, but Glenn K. Beaton did the impossible. His witty and charming history of Aspen magically makes you care. He takes readers from its silver mining roots to its ski resort days laughing all the way. In between are visits from Johnny Depp, Hunter S. Thompson, and the 10th Mountain Division. I want Glenn to come back in one hundred years and write the sequel in which liberals are driven away by some Pied Piper” –Don Surber, retired newspaper man and Substack writer
“Glenn Beaton tells the history of Aspen with grace and bite. Although the history is one of dramatic cultural decline, Beaton displays his wicked sense of humor throughout. Reading the book is a pleasure I greatly enjoyed. Beaton both entertains and instructs, for Aspen’s story as he tells it illuminates alarming nati0nal trends that threaten our survival. Indeed, I am afraid it may give the avant garde thinkers of my hometown ideas that will hasten its further destruction.”
–Scott W. Johnson, Minneapolis attorney and PowerLine co-founder/contributor
I have only one criticism of the just-released book by long-time superstar FBI agent Thomas Baker entitled “The Fall of the FBI.” It really should be entitled “The Winter of the FBI.” That’s how bad things have gotten in the upper echelons of the Bureau.
It wasn’t always that way. More than half the book is a collection of true crime stories that illustrate the competence and professionalism of the Bureau in the old days. Most end with the bad guys in jail.
Baker had a first-hand view of these cases because he was involved in many of them. He was the first FBI agent on the scene at President Ronald Reagan’s shooting when he happened to hear the news report on the radio (recall that the shooting took place right in front of the press who were following the President). Baker was in the neighborhood and sped to the scene, arriving just minutes later. He became in charge of the investigation.
There has been a spate of high-profile violence lately by women who think they are men and, especially, by men who think they are women.
In Nashville, a woman pretending to be a man slaughtered six in an elementary school, including three 9-year-olds. Beforehand, the shooter had written a “manifesto” that evidently justified her shooting spree on the grounds that the school – a Christian grade school – failed to endorse her perversion. (We don’t know for sure what the manifesto says because the cops won’t release it – which suggests that it does indeed say that.)
Some of the “news” media were instructed by their bosses not to reveal the sex part of the story. It came out anyway, but in the meantime I’m sure the bosses felt virtuous in censoring it. Think about that. The “news” media feels virtuous when they censor facts that are newsworthy, but only if those facts reflect badly on Democrat constituencies.
In the 1977 action-comedy “Smokey and the Bandit,” Burt Reynolds plays a bootlegger named Bo. Everyone calls him “Bandit” because the name “Bo” was apparently too informal for his friends.
The script was so trite that the actors made up much of the dialogue as the cameras rolled. The alleged plot centers on a rich Georgia businessman’s offer of $80,000 to Bandit to drive to Texas and back to fetch him a semi full of Coors beer. In both the movie and real life, you may recall, Coors was illegal east of Texas at the time.
Of course, the illegality of Coors was an accidental marketing coup for the company. The beer’s mystique of illegality partially offset its taste of water. Gerald Ford used to smuggle a few cans back to DC from his vacation house in Vail. Before that, President Eisenhower regularly had the Air Force airlift cases to the White House.
So, you see, the movie is a true story.
Except the cross-country car chase. Bandit gets a truckdriver to drive the semi, played by two Kenworths, while Bandit drives a car, played by a black ’76 Trans Am – four, actually – fitted with 455 engines.
I know what you’re thinking but, no, the Trans Am was not transexual. But it was indeed black. With a lower case “b.”
The filming was hell on wheels. But until the stunt men beat them to death, those black Trannys could really go. In one scene – filmed long before computer generated images – they jumped a river with the aid of an Evel Knievel booster rocket attached to the rear. The things they put in the rear of that Tranny.
Bandit’s scheme was for his Trans Am to act as a “blocking car” for the semi full of Coors. He would commit multiple illegal mayhems along the way to distract the cops from the semi full of Coors illegally crossing state lines – the true crime.
Bandit succeeds wildly and wildly succeeds, with the help of an unplanned accomplice. Shortly after Bandit loads the semi with Coors and starts back to Georgia in the Trans Am with the semi in convoy, he picks up a damsel named Carrie played by Sally Field.
Carrie is distressed about her impending marriage to a creep, so she has run away from her wedding. Minutes into her dash, Bandit encounters her on the highway. Bandit rescues this runaway bride, and she hops into the Trans Am. In the passenger seat while they’re tooling along at about 90 mph, she acrobatically swaps her wedding dress for jeans.
It’s not clear why this bride in a wedding dress had a pair of jeans handy. But you would, too, if they fit you as well as they fit the 30-year-old Sally Field in 1977.
Carrie is a New Age type and Bandit is, well, not. They have nothing in common except, halfway into the movie, bodily fluids. Rumor is that it wasn’t all acting.
It turns out that Carrie’s groom, whom she’d abandoned at the altar, is the son of a fat, stupid, southern hick sheriff named Buford T. Justice, overplayed by Jackie Gleason. Furious that his son and Carrie won’t be honeymooners, he sets out to retrieve her.
Sheriff Buford T. Justice – everyone else calls him “Smokey” but he invariably calls himself by his full name and title – spots her in the cisgender black Tranny and gives chase. All the way back to Georgia.
Sheriff Buford T. Justice announces to anyone who will listen that, among sundry other crimes, Bandit has feloniously violated the Mann Act. For readers who are not lawyers or perverts (ah, but I repeat myself) that’s the 1910 federal law that criminalizes the transportation across state lines of “any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose.”
That is fairly, um, broad, especially since the law offers no definition of “woman.”
I’ve always thought this law, named after the sanctimonious and probably felonious Illinois congressman who sponsored it, James Robert Mann, was inaptly named. He should have gotten another congressman to co-sponsor it, such as Iowa Congressman Frank Wood, in order to call it the “WoMann Act.”
Or Massachusetts congressman William Lovering in order to call it “LoverMann Act” or Mississippi congressman Thomas Sisson in order to call it “SissyMann Act” or Indiana congressman William Cox in order to call it, well, you get the idea.
Also, I’ve always wondered about the precise meaning of the word “Act” in this context, which is also undefined.
In any event, this law against interstate debauchery always had the intended effect of terrifying my young psyche. I made a point of never dating across state lines, though as it turned out my precaution was unnecessary.
I won’t spoil your viewing pleasure by telling you how the movie ends. But there were a few sequels, so you can guess that the stars made out OK.
The latest sequel was released just this spring. Fat, stupid, southern hick Sheriff Buford T. Justice is played by a fat, stupid, northern hick District Attorney named Alvin Leonard Bragg.
He’s after Bandit again, played by a certain former reality TV star. Bandit has graduated from running liquor to running for president and from driving a Trans Am to driving a golf cart.
The charge in this sequel is not a Mann Act violation, but something more like the Mann-ure Act. In fact, it’s hard to figure out what the charge is. There’s the hush money that Bandit paid to a porn star to keep quiet about their affair but nobody says hush money is illegal – it’s not. Maybe it’s illegal here because Bandit used his own private money for his own private affair rather than using campaign donations.
All I can deduce legally – and bear in mind that I’m a lawyer – is that when you’re running for president and you buy women and other personal things, you’re required to use either campaign donations or maybe a charitable foundation.
Whatever.
The part of Carrie originally played by Sally Field, who is now 76, is played by a young woman named Melania. Carrie still looks pretty good in jeans. Carrie and Bandit still have nothing in common – this time not even bodily fluids. The relationship between them is strictly acting.
Alvin Leonard Bragg, DA brags in front of the cameras over and over that he’s gonna get that Bandit, by gosh, and he’s chasing him hard but hardly catching him. As in the original movie, you sense that he’s making everything up as the cameras roll. He’s every bit the pompous, ridiculous, overplayed ham of Sheriff Buford T. Justice. He truly outdoes Jackie Gleason.
At his next press conference, I’m half expecting him to bellow “Awt Cawney!”
Bandit these days has a mixed reputation as something of a storied, charming rascal, sometimes without the charm, though I personally think the stories of pee-pee tapes and Russian collusion came straight out of Hillary’s sick and sordid imagination or perhaps is just a classic case of her projection.
Alvin Leonard Bragg, DA’s relentless, comedic chase is rallying the audience ‘round Bandit. His Mann-ifest violations in earlier movies were inartful, even for a bootlegger, but at least the chase back then was mostly honest and entertaining, if stupid. This time, Bandit is being chased just because Alvin Leonard Bragg, DA craves the limelight and the worship of zany Democrats.
Alvin Leonard Bragg, DA won’t catch his target – Bandit is far too fast for him – but BraggaDonkeyO will generate a box office hit for them both. The next sequel is already set for 2024. The word on the street is that in the next sequel it will be Bandit who is the chaser.
Watch for my book in the coming weeks, titled “High Attitude – How Woke Liberals Ruined Aspen.”
In my prime back in the last century, I played a lot of basketball. I was quick, had a good first move to the basket, could shoot OK, and played pretty good defense. At 6’1”, on a good day I could dunk the ball.
But I had little understanding of the game, and was not a good passer. To me, a “play” was a simple screen. Even a basic pick and roll where the screening player rolls off his screen toward the basket to receive a pass from the player he picked for while the two defenders are tangled up in the screen, was beyond my ken. In truth, I wasn’t a good ball player, even at the pick-up game level.
But I knew I could beat the women. In fact, I knew I was as good as the women college players.
Another week, another slaughter in the schools. This time, it was in Nashville.
A cowardly nut blasted into a Christian elementary school and started shooting people. She killed three helpless adults in their 60s, one of whom was the woman headmaster who ran straight toward the sound of gunshots to protect the children in her charge.
And three nine-year-olds.
Police – remember them, the folks the wokesters wanted to ban? – were on-scene within 10 minutes. With fear (who wouldn’t be?) but without hesitation, they too ran toward the gunshots. They did what they were trained to do, and saved lives while risking their own.
It turns out that the dead murderer was a woman who fancied herself a man. She was said to be emotionally disturbed.
Like many school boards, the Denver School Board years ago asked the police for help in quelling violence in the schools. The police succeeded to some extent.
So far, so good, though it’s a poor reflection on our society, our schools, our students, and their parents. In 1975, about 1% of schools had cops onsite. By a few years ago, it was over 50%.
The presence of cops did help. But the Denver School Board was disappointed that the encounters by the school police involved a disproportionate number of students of color.
That was no surprise to anyone paying attention to crime statistics. A disproportionate number of police encounters in society at large involve people of color, and so it’s natural that it would be the same in the schools.
Donald Trump has characterized his impending arrest this week as a political vendetta, and has urged his supporters to take to the streets in protest.
I agree with him that it’s a political vendetta, but disagree about taking to the streets.
It is indeed a nakedly political act by the Manhattan District Attorney. Numerous other prosecutors including sophisticated federal prosecutors have reviewed this same evidence, and have declined to pursue this case.
Rightly so. It’s a lousy case. The legal theory is a stretch. Moreover, the prosecution’s fact witnesses are not credible. One is a former porn star who has been caught numerous times lying and the other is Trump’s former lawyer who is willing to say anything he’s told to say in order to save his own hide.
Layer on top of that a prosecutor who is not exactly a top-notch trial lawyer and is known to get money from George Soros, and you have, as I said, a lousy case, even in New York where Trump has gone from loved to reviled. The prosecution will lose.
The result of that loss will be to boost Trump’s election chances because it will cast him as a wrongly persecuted martyr. Elon Musk – no dummy – declared that the case would guarantee Trump’s election. I wouldn’t go that far, but I do think it will help Trump.
It’s undisputed that the Biden family was taking money from foreign governments. The clearest example is Hunter, who received about $11 million from entities associated with the Chinese and Ukrainian governments, according to NBC News. He failed to pay income tax on at least some of this money.
It’s also undisputed that the emails in Hunter’s notorious laptop referenced “the big guy” at least 41 times in connection with foreign money, and that “the big guy” is his father Joe. It’s undisputed that at least one such email refers to “10% for the big guy.”
Contrary to Joe’s claim that he “never” discussed Hunter’s foreign business dealings with him, it’s undisputed that there are actual photographs that pose Joe (while Vice President), Hunter, and Hunter’s foreign business “associates” together at least 14 different times. It’s difficult to imagine that Joe didn’t say, “Sooo, son, who the f*** are these foreigners and what’s in it for us?”
As a 17-year-old college freshman at the University of Colorado in Boulder back in the ‘70s, my buddies and I used to sneak liquor into the student section of CU football games. Everyone did.
One time, I partied and drank right through the fourth quarter with a friend named Steve, together with our mutual friend named Jack Daniels. After the game, Steve and I stumbled up to the Hill, a retail/residential area adjacent to campus that was a gathering spot. Leaning on one another on the sidewalk with no particular destination in mind, we saw a VW Beetle pull over. A woman cranked down the window and shouted out “Hey, you wanna party?”
We did. We loaded into the backseat of the Bug, and off she drove.
the Aspen beat 