E286. The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Let’s Go Bruno Edition

The title of this week’s episode—”Let’s go Bruno”—requires some explanation, though you’d be right in assuming that “Bruno” fills the same place as “Brandon” in the more familiar slogan of the moment. In this case it refers to the famous and celebrated child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim. Lucretia was struck by Ann Bauer’s searing article in The Tablet, “I Have Been Through This Before,” which recounts the awful abusiveness and quackery of Bettelheim which somehow never drew any critical attention, and suggests some obvious parallels with today’s COVID mandate mania, not to mention a parallel public celebration of an obviously defective doctor whose name rhymes with grouchy.

Sample from Bauer:

[He] required the unquestioning, devout allegiance of his team to constantly remake reality so that it conformed to his recommendations.

Steve recalls once knowing someone who had been committed to Bettelheim’s care as a child, and who wrote after Bettelheim’s death with the same point in Commentary in 1991: Ronald Angres, “Who, Really, Was Bruno Bettelheim?” The close:

So to the scandal of terror spread by Bruno Bettelheim in his school another scandal needs to be added: the fact that so many people who knew about the terror went to such lengths to cover up for him—and, to judge by the mostly adoring accounts that have appeared in the press after his death, that they are still willing to do so.

We don’t actually get to the Bettelheim story until the last half of the episode, as we cover a lot of related ground getting to that point, including some new whisky reviews, some samples from the Babylon Bee’s brand new Guide to Wokeness, the continued descent of President Brandon, what’s up with Kyrstin Sinema, and the prospects of the Virginia gubernatorial election next week. Lucretia, to my shock and surprise, is actually optimistic about Youngkin’s chances! Otherwise, as she says herself, she’s “mad as hell and not going to take it any more!”

The title of this week’s episode—”Let’s go Bruno”—requires some explanation, though you’d be right in assuming that “Bruno” fills the same place as “Brandon” in the more familiar slogan of the moment. In this case it refers to the famous and celebrated child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim. Lucretia was struck by Ann Bauer’s searing article in The Tablet, “I Have Been Through This Before,” which recounts the awful abusiveness and quackery of Bettelheim which somehow never drew any critical attention, and suggests some obvious parallels with today’s COVID mandate mania, not to mention a parallel public celebration of an obviously defective doctor whose name rhymes with grouchy.

Sample from Bauer:

[He] required the unquestioning, devout allegiance of his team to constantly remake reality so that it conformed to his recommendations.

Steve recalls once knowing someone who had been committed to Bettelheim’s care as a child, and who wrote after Bettelheim’s death with the same point in Commentary in 1991: Ronald Angres, “Who, Really, Was Bruno Bettelheim?” The close:

So to the scandal of terror spread by Bruno Bettelheim in his school another scandal needs to be added: the fact that so many people who knew about the terror went to such lengths to cover up for him—and, to judge by the mostly adoring accounts that have appeared in the press after his death, that they are still willing to do so.

We don’t actually get to the Bettelheim story until the last half of the episode, as we cover a lot of related ground getting to that point, including some new whisky reviews, some samples from the Babylon Bee’s brand new Guide to Wokeness, the continued descent of President Brandon, what’s up with Kyrstin Sinema, and the prospects of the Virginia gubernatorial election next week. Lucretia, to my shock and surprise, is actually optimistic about Youngkin’s chances! Otherwise, as she says herself, she’s “mad as hell and not going to take it any more!”

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