GET THE RAINCOAT OUT OF YOUR LAP, IT'S NOT THAT KIND OF SHOW.

Emily Esfahani Smith, whose ridiculous writing at Acculturated on how everything was better when people were repressed has been treated here, has been writing for The Atlantic too, which makes a pathetic sort of sense. Her latest contains a theater review:

The scene represents a normal sexual encounter between two students. There's moaning. There's orgasming. And yet, it falls flat. While the play wants to promote the idea that this kind of sex is hot and fun, in this scene, it is boring and banal. Erotic sex ideally involves mystery and an electric connection—longing—between two people. But the exhibitionism of Speak About It kills this mystery and longing—it leaves little to the imagination.

Speak About It, by the way, is a "variety of skits and monologues dealing with sexual consent, assault and misconduct, and bystander intervention" developed by students at Bowdoin and now used at other colleges. So it's basically a sexual hygiene play, and while it sounds it's no match for the one in Love and Death, I doubt electric connections and mystery were intended as part of the offering.

The rest is gabble about Allan Bloom, "the hookup culture," and oh Jesus kill me now Lena Dunham, who apparently still haunts these people's dreams.

The economy sucks but apparently there are a lot of jobs for rightwing scolds who tell readers they don't really know how to have sex and then offer them The Closing of the American Mind instead of the butterfly flick.

THEY SEE ME TROLLIN', THEY HATIN'.

By the way, that guy at the American Enterprise Institute is still doing his "Greatest Conservative Rap Songs of All Time" thing. Second installment is "Keep Ya Head Up," because Tupac "attacks contemporary feminist beliefs, decries single-parent families, and calls on men, particularly those in his own African-American community, to step up and take responsibility." Also, "he expresses his hope that a return to traditional values will mean that 'things are gonna get easier' and 'things’ll get brighter.'" Ooh-ooh chile, that's some good rightwing rap. Third installment is "Role Model," because Eminem calls Hillary Clinton a bitch.

I don't know whether AEI's in on the joke or not, but if he's actually getting paid for this, that's so banksta.

UPDATE. Commenter mortimer informs me that the guy has done a new one. I agree with mortimer that the passage he quotes can't be improved upon:

Near the end of the song, all this culminates in a warning to wannabe revolutionaries everywhere: “Dr. Dre be the name / Still running the game.” And this extends, of course, to those who believe that a Marxist utopia can be established through democratically endorsed redistribution of wealth. As Dr. Young explains in “Forgot About Dre,” a song from his next album: “If it was up to me / You motherf****** would stop coming up to me / With your hands out lookin’ up to me / Like you want something free.”

But the best is the guy's exegesis on the Brazilian "Rap das Armas." Looking for joints repping "principled defense of Second Amendment rights," he can't get with popular American numbers like "Cop Killer," as they show a "thirst for wanton machismo," so he picks up this foreign one, which he says "finds its ultimate justification in self-defense against totalitarian government" as it "describes a neighborhood ready to resist." As always, gun nuts find the prospect of fighting the totalitarian police appealing unless black Americans are doing it, in which case it's just pathology.

I feel a Poe's Law warrant coming on.

UPDATE 2. The rightwing rap craze continues! Meet Florida GOP Rep. Trey Radel:

The first [song that represents my views on Washington] that I would have to refer to would be 'Fight the Power,' by Public Enemy. This is a song that... if you really get down to it, reflects the conservative message of having a heavy handed federal government... Chuck D of Public Enemy and I may disagree on certain philosophies of government, but I think at the end of the day— and this is where I take my love of hip hop music— where there have been issues and problems with either heavy handed law enforcement... or heavy handed government itself.

Amanda teases him mercilessly. At least Radel's bullshit makes some kind of real-world sense, though: He's a politician trying to put himself over as a Regular Bro, and acquaintance with one of the 10 or 12 hiphop records all white people know is a definite bro signifier. And his bro-babble shows in its most common and primitive state the childish impulse to claim all the things you like in life -- cool tunes, great movies, choc-a-mut ice creams -- for some stupid ideology.

The Zhdanovism is depressing, though at present I think these guys have as much hope of colonizing rap as Jonah Goldberg has of winning a decathlon.

THE CONSERVATIVE CRACK-UP, CONT.

At National Review Kevin Williamson commends himself on grabbing and throwing a woman's phone during a theater performance because she insisted on looking at messages or something. Williamson was ejected for his tantrum.

While I am torn on the merits (I am against unseemly behavior at the theater, which seems to apply to both parties here), I note that Williamson has said before that he believes in bringing back the stocks for "crimes that undercut shared community life and encourage the further atomization of our society." From his new post I would imagine that he sees the woman's behavior as such a crime and his own behavior as blameless, atomization-wise. And I'm sure his attack is nothing compared to the punishment fantasies his imagination summoned after the incident ("two parties of women of a certain age, the sad sort with too much makeup and too-high heels..." Yeah, he's given it some thought).

I note also that Williamson fantasizes general applause for his actions:

In a civilized world, I would have received a commendation of some sort. To the theater-going public of New York — nay, the the world – I say: “You’re welcome."

Radicals always think The People are with them, despite all evidence.

BTW Williamson is also the guy who said Gabby Giffords' emotional but non-assaultive response to the Congressional gun vote was a "childish display."

WHERE THEY'RE COMING FROM.

It's a springtime for scandal in D.C., and most of the brethren are luxuriating in it. But there's a weird nervousness to their energy, and I think I see where it's coming from. DaTechGuy:

As a criminal investigation begins we’ve seen some the “I” word, Impeachment thrown about.

Now a lot of that is on twitter, but that’s no big deal, a lot of words are thrown about on twitter, but some of it has been thrown around in the press.

The funny thing is a lot of the people doing so are of the left,

This is not an accident, the left understand that talk of impeachment now would be a disaster, not to the president, but to those building the case against him.

He then tells us a story from Tip O'Neill's autobiography about how, back in Nixontime, Rep. Robert Drinan's early impeachment bill was briefly an impediment to the later successful impeachment drive, and comments:

I’ll wager not too may members of the Tea Party have read O’Neill’s book, nor GOP members of congress but I’ll wager plenty of people on the left have. They understand that if the GOP moves early, before democrats are on board, it becomes a party issue so they are going to do their best to force our hand before the facts are in evidence.

I don't know what's crazier -- that he thinks The Left is trying to protect Obama by talking about impeaching him (are Rep. Jason Chaffetz and all the other wingnuts talking about it double agents, then?), or that he thinks we all read Tip O'Neill's autobiography. (I guess nobody told him we only read Alinsky and porn.)

Over at National Review, the excitable Charles C.W. Cooke has an article celebrating the traditional conservative distrust of government, but goes a great deal further than the usual arghblargh. He calls the Founders' writings on the subject "codified paranoia" and seems to mean it positively ("and America is better off for it"); in fact, his article is called "In Praise of Paranoia." He affects to believe the recent IRS fuckup is "government tyranny" and says, "the IRS has done America a considerable favor... Next time an authoritarian [!!] explains how, say, a national gun registry will be just swell — and labels its naysayers as neurotic — his opponents will have a new and useful shorthand: 'IRS scandal.'" (For this analogy with the Tea Party scam to be perfect, actually, the people trying to get guns would have be intending to murder someone with them, and the tyranny would be that some of them would be delayed by the government in doing so.)

Later, chatting about his essay with friends, Cooke adds:

Odd as it might sound, having a sizeable portion of the population reflexively take the view that the government would hurt them if it could is, I think, a good thing. There are no black helicopters and there may never be any black helicopters. But isn’t it positive that people are worried about them?

Cooke has said some pretty crazy things on this head before, but now reveals himself quite literally committed to irrationality. I don't think he's the only one. For years they've cherished this dream, and now something shimmering in the distance convinces them that it's come true. They've been waiting for Amok Time so long that they can't even hold back enough to make it look good.

ANNALS OF THE CULTURE WAR, TV PARTY EDITION.

William F. Gavin at National Review on Mad Men:

...the show has degenerated into absurdity, loss of focus, and meandering plot lines. The main character has become eccentric, distant, increasingly mean-spirited, and disoriented. 

Gee, come to think of it, this sounds just like the Obama administration, doesn’t it?

At dinner tonight, Gavin told friends, "This soup is thin and bitter -- like Obama!" Leaving the restaurant, he buttoned his jacket and remarked, "The night's gotten cold, like Obama's relationship with the press. Or maybe like the corpses of the babies slaughtered by Planned Parenthood." But no one was left to hear him.

Elsewhere in the same venue, Greg Pollowitz:

Somebody Should Get Fired Over SNL's Benghazi Skit

It’s gotten to the point where I’m amazed when SNL is actually funny or relevant as political satire, but Saturday’s cold open wasn’t just a dud as a joke, but completely offensive to the four Americans who lost their lives in Benghazi.

I imagine Pollowitz drunk at some bar, yelling "This jukebox is full of lies!" Like I often say: Do they even know any normal people?

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the Benghazi hearings and the inevitable rightblogger judgement that Obama and Hillary Clinton are guilty of murder and/or treason. Imagine how pissed they'll be if Obama isn't impeached! Actually we already have some idea.

CULTURE WAR: A NEW LOW.

Some guy at the American Enterprise Institute has started a "Greatest Conservative Rap Songs of All Time" list.  His first choice, a Justin Bieber joint, is intolerably stupid but, as always, the whole Zhdanovite idea is the stupidest thing, as shown by his mission statement:

The songs I discuss express support not just for pro-family social values, but also for small government and peace through strength.

If this list doesn't include "Mind of a Lunatic" I call bullshit.

UPDATE. I got another nominee:



What? Admittedly his flow's a little sticky. But hell, you might say conservatives invented rap.

AS USUAL, UNCLEAR ON THE CONCEPT OF CONSENT.

Shorter Charles C.W. Cooke: If Michelle Knight had voluntarily aborted, she'd be just as guilty as Ariel Castro.

UPDATE. I'm not even kidding:

Yet abortion is legal in Ohio, as everywhere else in the United States. This means that if you kill an unborn child in Ohio with the mother’s permission, it’s okay; if you do it without her permission, it’s murder. The unborn child, therefore, is only a life if the mother says it is a life. That makes no logical sense at all.

She's just a bourgeois rentier, is what, and Charles C.W. Cooke wants to nationalize her uterus. I have to hand it to him, though; if you'd told me someone would be insane enough to find an anti-abortion angle in the Cleveland horror story, I'd have predicted it would be Kathryn J. Lopez. Cooke's a real up-and-comer at National Review, and will no doubt loyally join K-Lo and Goldberg in the bunker when the suckers finally wise up and submit their publication to market forces.

THANK YOU, MARK SANFORD.

I already knew Mark Sanford's reelection was hilarious, but though I'm sure Elizabeth Colbert Busch is a nice person and would have represented South Carolina... well, would have been a better Congressional rep than Sanford, I warmed a little to the victor after reading this outburst at National Review by one Hilary Towers, "a psychologist and mother of five":

It is time for conservatives to publicly recognize the widespread phenomenon of spousal abandonment, and the system of “family law” that supports it, for what they both are — a national scandal. 

Among other things, this election result is a searing reminder that we have, as a nation, lost touch with what “redemption” really means — with the true power of God’s grace, which is the power to transform behavior. And behavior, after all, is a reflection of the heart. How much longer can conservative stewards of family values turn a blind eye to the very narcissistic lifestyle choices of our leaders that we are fighting so hard to weaken (and ultimately transform) in society at large?

To put it in some context, those sections of National Review's The Corner not currently given over to Benghazi broodings are mostly devoted to Kathryn J. Lopez's wailings over abortion, and those of affiliated God-botherers like Wesley J. Smith, the title of whose offering "Hollywood Biggies Love Late Term Abortionists" tells you pretty much what you need to know about the tone of the place these days.

In other words, conservatives are still stuck in their post-electoral tantrum, and in this chaos the moral scolds of the movement, who were remarkably easy to silence and shunt to the side when any prospect of victory was visible, have been left free to seize the mic and ululate. Their connection with the world the rest of us inhabit has always been tenuous, but now that they have no reason to compromise with reality they have gone practically Dominionist. So if for nothing else, I owe Sanford some thanks for inspiring the anguish I expect Towers' ravings represents among the fundies. This will make it that much harder for them to pretend to be sane whenever they appear before normal Americans.

Sanford's victory also hasn't done any favors to the logical processes of Jonah Goldberg, who spent the writing period between his third and fourth breakfasts trying to split the difference:

Let me say upfront: I would rather we lived in a society where adultery had a higher social cost. That’s not to say people shouldn’t be forgiving or that there should be no such thing as second chances. But ideally, I’d like it if things were less loosey-goosey. Cheat on your wife, and maybe you don’t get to run for public office anymore.

This prose version of flop sweat goes on for quite some time before Goldberg gets to the nub:

What was on the ballot [in South Carolina] was a choice between a woman who tried to dodge the fact she was a liberal running to advance the liberal agenda of the Democratic party and a conservative whose marriage fell apart because he fell in love with somebody else. I’m not condoning Sanford’s behavior — at all — but...

But there can be no crime bigger than liberalism, and if you people who think "values" is more than a slogan we use to con suckers would just get with the program, Goldberg could stop trying to reach you and devote his pie-hole to greater helpings of pie, as God and Lucianne intended.

[Sanford's] formidable wife didn’t run to the stage to gaze admiringly and forgivingly at her disgraced husband to lessen the political damage. She kicked him to the curb and moved on with her life. Every marriage is different and we can’t peer inside any but our own, but I admired Jenny Sanford’s response.

Of course, one could argue that Huma, Hillary, and Silda were more “pro-marriage” in that they stayed by their husbands. And that just gets us back to how the culture has changed. It’s a fascinating thing.

"Fascinating thing" is Goldberg code for "holy shit, I just obliterated my own point fart, fart..."

Speaking very broadly as there are exceptions all over the place, it seems like liberal political couples work harder to save their marriage after a sex scandal. Again, that’s just an impression. I haven’t tabulated all the cases.

"FaaarrrrRRRRRRrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrt..."

Or do they place less stock in the value of fidelity (it’s just sex, who cares?). It seems to me there are a lot of ways to dissect that. For now, suffice it to say the times have changed.

"...[spectacular, 4th-of-July cannonade of farts and sharts] Not to worry, I'm a legacy pledge nobody expects this to make sense fart, farrrrRRRRRRtt AND IN CONCLUSION JFK was disgusting and Colbert Busch loved JFK, I bet, please don't nobody check fart fart fart, AND IN DOUBLE SECRET fart CONCLUSION..."

It’s absolutely true that conservatives need to wrestle with the question of what we should expect from our politicians. But I’m not sure liberals have anything worth listening to on the subject.

Let's put it this way: That's not an egg he just laid. I hate to replay my greatest hits, but this is the stupidest thing ever written, and will remain so until Goldberg writes something else.