“In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.” - John Irving, The World According to Garp.

There’s this running joke in “Garp” about genes. Garp is the result of his mother Jenny Fields inseminating herself through a one-time coupling with a brain-damaged war vet, and so his genes are suspect to some people. (John Irving didn’t know anything about his own father, and credits it with stimulating his writer’s imagination.)

Garp’s wife Helen wonders about genes, too; her mother left her and her father when Helen was too little to remember. Garp’s mother Jenny doesn’t seem think about it all all - she was raised in a proud New England family and repudiated it by becoming a nurse, something her family seems to confuse with prostitution.

Genes always seem to out in a John Irving book, although not in the way you’d think. (The family of Stew and Midge Percy, quite proud of their lineage, plays a major role in Garp’s life.) And that made me think of Jonah Goldberg, who has somehow been anointed as a political voice worthy of respect.

It’s gotta be that weird fixation on the genes, since we know he hasn’t accomplished anything that wasn’t the result of his Medusa mother’s connections. In The World According To Wingnuts, genes are the justification for all kinds of nonsense. Is there a prominent wingnut whose children haven’t gone to work for the family business?

I think it’s the inbreeding. When you mate two distorted minds, the offspring are hobbled, unfit for anything involving risk, independence or creativity.

In other words, they never grow up. But in The World According to Wingnuts, that’s perfectly okay.