It's all about the bass

For a while there during the Obama Administration, I got regular fundraising calls from the Republican Party - back in the days when they were just authoritarian adjacent. Anyway, a typical call would begin with a recording of moral exemplar Newt Gingrich bitching about something that the pinko Dems and their Kenyan imposter leader were up to. After the recording, I would be asked to stay on the line and speak to a representative. Why, yes I'd be delighted! The agent who was standing by would shake the tin cup in my ear for a while, interspersed with asking questions. I would mildly push back on some of the more outrageous claims they would make, going back and forth for a while, figuring that if they were willing to waste time with me there would be fewer bucks to put in their coffers. So less money squirreled away to wreck democracy a few years down the line.

Needless to say, I never gave them any money, even though with every refusal to donate, they'd lower the ante on the next ask. 

My favorite convo was about Michelle Bachman. When they asked who I thought might be the nominee in 2012, my answer was that I thought she was a comer. The representative agreed. She was "hearing a lot of good things" about Bachman.

Finally, after years of playing fake-footsie with them, some guy I was talking to asked, "You're not a Republican, are you?" I fessed up. And that's how I got off the call (and mail) list. 

I'm not 100% how they got my number to begin with, but if I had to guess, it would be that I subscribed at that time to The Wall Street Journal. (Surely, The Economist wouldn't have sold me out...)

Another odd-ball list I got on was for the Lubavitcher rebbe, one of the leading lights of Hasidic Jewry. They never called, but did send me a nifty little white plastic license plate with something embossed on it in Hebrew. That and a letter addressing me as "Dear friend of Hasidic Jewry." Sorry, bubbele. My guess was that my name had made its way to Brooklyn from a donation I made to the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

My latest is even weirder: a subscription to Bassmaster: The Worldwide Authority on Bass Fishing. Entirely unsolicited, and not running out until next August.

Nothing against bass mastery, but, huh?

It's not that I don't like fish. I do. And I can even imagine myself fishing - although in my imaginings I'm in my waders, standing in a frothy stream, surrounded by murmuring pines and hemlocks, contemplating the universe, and casting (with fly, of course) for trout. Not in a speedy speed boat gunning around a lake.

Among other things, waders are a lot cheaper than the Skeeter speedy speed boats advertised on the inside cover. They cost over $70K.

I'm guessing that those are for the pros. Because there are, in fact, professional bass fishermen. Women, too, I suppose, but little evidence of that in the pages of Bassmaster, which I suppose would have to be renamed Bassmistress. 

Never say never, but I can't see all that many women getting excited about the giant sized Copenhagen  chewing tobacco packs ("Satisfaction since 1822"), which is another full-page ad. Comes in wintergreen. Too bad, as it says on the tin, "can cause mouth cancer." This differentiates Copenhagen from Skoal. ("Classic mint...can cause gum disease and tooth loss.") And Skoal's ad uses an African American model, but I've gotta say that bass fishing sure does look like a white man's world.

Grizzly tobacco - pinch? chew? chaw? - doesn't warn about the health risks, but does admit that "smokeless tobacco is addictive."

And if you're wondering where cigarette ads went, well, Winston used to taste good like a cigarette should. But now it's "plant-based menthol. Enough said." But it's not enough said, because the ad also carries the Surgeon General's Warning.

Tobacco aside - that and the speed boats - bass fishing looks like a relatively healthy pursuit. You're in the great outdoors, away - one would hope - from social media, trying to catch something that (as long as it doesn't come from a poisoned lake) can make for a healthy meal.

I'm wonder how they got my name. (Can the Nature Conservancy have sold me out?) Or why they wanted it. Can't be a ton of bass masters in my zip code.

Anyway, it was fun to get the November-December issue. I just hope that they don't keep me on their list until next August. 

Guess if I hear from them again, I'll have to tell them to go jump in a lake. (Politely, of course...)