Saturday, March 08, 2008
MORAL RELATIVISM WATCH. Over at Family Security Matters, an alicublog-approved vendor of high-end nuttage, Bob Parks tells us that maybe students who go crazy and shoot up their classmates and themselves are driven to it by the hostile leftist environment of the modern American college. After a familiar catalogue of campus complaints, Parks suggests:Evil people don’t kill themselves [and others, apparently -- ed]. Desperate ones do, and at some point we must have an honest dialogue (if possible) about who is making these kids homicidal. And we should start by talking to those who spend more hours per year around our kids than parents do.
Some of you teachers out there have some explaining to do. Assuming this isn't satire -- Candace de Russy of National Review Online and the Perfesser certainly take it seriously -- we would ask if Parks has similarly examined the root causes of suicide bombing in the Middle East. If not, I suggest he get on it; it would make a hell of a companion essay.
4:53 PM by roy edroso
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HE WHO FUCKS NUNS WILL LATER JOIN THE CHURCH. At Commentary Michael J. Totten, while admitting that Sam Power's A Problem from Hell was "hardly wishy-washy or leftist" (his highest rating!), says he's still glad* she was kicked off the Obama team for calling Clinton a monster. Go ahead, folks, try and guess his rationale -- no matter how smart or familiar with Totten's schtick you are, you'll still be way off:If she thinks Clinton is a monster, what does she think about the dictators of Syria and Iran? She doesn't approve of them. That's obvious. But neither she nor Obama has ever been so "undiplomatic" as to suggest that they're monsters. As with Farrakhan, Obama must not just disapprove, he must also denounce, deplore, double-dog dare and be disgustipated with! Otherwise he cannot be trusted with this nation's highest office.
As for the notion that using stronger words to abuse Hitlery Clinton than dictators is wrong, a quick tour of the blogosphere will show that the Obama campaign staff is far from the worst offender.
Once upon a time, Totten might have pointed this out himself, as proof of his reasonable moderation -- you know, back in the day when he was "defending liberals against attacks by conservatives who lumped them in with leftists," making "The Liberal Case for Bush," and portraying himself as a disgruntled Independent who was driven from the Democratic Party, for which he once allegedly felt a "sense of loyalty or affection," by such extreme SDS types as Oliver Willis.
Now Totten beats up liberals for the Podhoretz family. I would say that Totten was the only one who didn't see this coming, but I have a hunch that he did, too.
UPDATE. I doubt that the comments signed "Michael J. Totten" are really his -- Totten's traditional persecuted tone is missing, which suggests either fraud or extraordinary personal growth -- but they do offer what they call a teachable moment.
The commenter asks if we have read Power's book. The book is neither the subject of the post nor relevant to the case.
Why does he bring it up then? It's the sort of rhetorical feint you're left with when you can't justify your own reasoning, like saying, "Okay, so Mars isn't the furthest planet from the Sun, but I can touch my nose with my tongue."
Logic doesn't cease to be logic because you went to Iraq or read a book. Even if Totten had read the entire contents of the New York Public Library, his suggestion that Obama and Power are soft on dictators because they never called Ahmadinejad and al-Ashad monsters would still be an offense to common sense.
It's a small thing, but it relates to a larger phenomenon. I see a lot of my subjects engaging in rhetorical tactics that at first look merely flawed or inept, but which repetition reveals to be conscious and deliberate. The purpose seems to be to short-circuit logical argument; they're like anti-logic viruses. When I get around to taxonomizing right-wing propaganda tactics, I'll need to include an entry for the Argument from Irrelevant Authority.
*UPDATE II. I should note that Totten didn't say he was "glad" Power was fired. Also that I misspelled Power's name through this post, and have corrected it. I wonder if she's related to Cat?
4:03 PM by roy edroso
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UNLEASHING MY INNER CONSERVATIVE. Crunchy Rod Dreher summons the angels to deliver unto him an Obama parody: "You can't blame Barack Obama for these creepily worshipful viral video ads will.i.am is doing for him, but they are so dead earnest that they're just begging to be mocked -- and Obama along with it."
He gets his wish from a National Review cats-paw. But it suuuuucks. I mean, it makes P.J. O'Rourke look like George Ade it sucks so hard.
"Where the hell is SPY magazine when America needs it?" cries Dreher, forgiving for the moment the curse words and anti-sharia cynicism that worthy publication favored.
24 hours later, Dreher wonders why some people mock him in the comment boxes. "I consider the possibility of ending this blog," he warns, "because it takes up so much of my time."
They really do want it all: nothing but mockery for their enemies, nothing but approval for themselves. Grown men and women, mind you, often with well-paying jobs -- which, despite the tanking economy, you (and they) know they'll keep.
They're the best argument I can think of for corporal punishment, as their Mommas and Daddies obviously didn't beat their asses hard enough when they were children. I suggest we avail the upcoming election to redress this shortcoming retroactively.
2:50 AM by roy edroso
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MANUFACTURING INSPIRATION. I was alerted by Ann Althouse to this attempted viral vid for McCain. Althouse thinks it's brilliant:We see images from the past (intercut with views of the galaxy). Images of Churchill and Roosevelt seem to embody a mystical sense of tradition. Even though I was trying to look at this ad with a critical eye, I kept getting chills. At one point — TR looking out onto a crowd — I thought: This is the feeling of being conservative — it is a deep emotional sense that the past matters and flows into the present and makes sense out of the future. The problem -- well, one of the problems -- with the video is that "being conservative" apparently means attempting the inspirational charge of Obama videos with some of the same technology but none of the actual inspiration.
I am sympathetic to the McCainiacs in this instance, as my own world view would be best represented by quotes from Carlyle's History of the French Revolution and Celine's Journey to the End of the Night, and the music of Roky Erickson. The McCain vid is no less hallucinogenic and hopeless as a firestarter.
It attempts to marry Churchill's "We will fight them on the beaches" and Theodore Roosevelt's "Man in the Arena" speeches with McCain's noble Vietnam sacrifice. But what gives Althouse "chills" will probably get a chilly reception from voters taught a mere four years ago by the then-powerful Republican Party to disregard John Kerry's Vietnam service. However much conservatives complain about disrespect for our fighting men, their 2004 Swift Boat campaign (and its dry-run, the 2002 campaign against Max Cleland) fatally closed a circle on Vietnam veterans: if liberals made their cause suspect, conservatives -- perhaps never suspecting that they would one day need to cash the chips -- made its servants untrustworthy for electoral purposes.
Conservatives have been aggressive about trying to dispel the smoke and smash the mirrors of the Obama media enterprise. I suppose they think that, because disillusionment has been so successful a part of their stock in trade for years, they will win with it one more time. Maybe so. But when they try to use for their own purposes the kind of media magic they've spent years debunking, they shouldn't be surprised when it doesn't go over.
They will be surprised, of course, or will profess to be. For them, media tricks are something only the other side uses, and when they appear to work, it's outright fascism. But their own media machine cannot be crying "fascist" all the time, and must attempt, when votes are needed, to manufacture inspiration. No wonder their efforts are so feeble. In the real world, when a client has cut its ad agency off at the knees, the commercials always turn out to be crap.
1:25 AM by roy edroso
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Friday, March 07, 2008
ANNALS OF LIBERTARIANISM, PART 3,488. At The Atlantic, Megan McArdle argues that public funding and use of fire departments is justified because it protects Randian Supermen from the possibility of stray flames from some damn free-rider's house:We force everyone to pay into fire departments because fires have very bad negative externalities: if your house catches on fire, unless you live on a rural farm, there's a good chance that your neighbor's house will burn down too...
I'm persistently disturbed by the notion that most of our fellow citizens are intellectual children who need to be forced to do what is good for them even at massive cost to their liberty, and ours. Presumably residents of low-density states like Wyoming and Montana, where widely-spaced homes may burn without affecting others, would happily opt out of this public service racket. Here's an opportunity for McArdle and her fellow big-brains to exploit the natural-born libertarianism of frontier state citizens! Ask them why, if they value their liberty, they pay fire insurance for paupers when they could, at reasonable rates and with money saved from taxes, hire their own personal FDs. The ensuing, untamed conflagrations in Shantytown will provide welcome diversion on dark Big Sky nights, and if your own private firemen fail to perform when the time comes (and what are the odds on that, free citizen? You're too smart to have accidents!), you (or your survivors) can take them, or the corporation that owns them, to court for damages, the way nature intended.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: imagine this woman on a lifeboat.
12:11 PM by roy edroso
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INDOCTRINATION. With the right to volunteer for Iraq threatened from within and without, schools still celebrate Earth Day? This will not stand, says James Lileks:Had a long conversation with (G)Nat today about whether all life on earth will be destroyed soon by pollution. She’s in an Earth Day play... It ends with a hymn to nature that makes the Romantic poets look like strip-mining company CEOs...
If she was worried about this stuff, I’d be steamed. It’s no great accomplishment to fill second graders full of dread and existential catastrophe... I know it’s terribly irresponsible of me, but she’s seven, and I want her to play and laugh without heed. Then it's a good thing his local school board (back before it was taken over by Feducrats) declined to accept Lileks' proposed 9/11 Day script. One set of lyrics has reached my desk:Since the film to scare us straight
For a new Film Board must wait
Lift your voice in terror song:
New York will be nuked 'ere long
Martyrs call out from the grave:
Give me a gun, show me the cave
Grit your teeth and raise your thumbs
'Til great Red Alert Day comes
Against the world we'll stand alone
They also serve who piss and moan Me, I won't be satisfied until evil abortionist judges mandate a yearly Feast of Reason for middle schools. If you don't like it, cheer up; it will probably be the kids' last contact with Reason in any form and, like most school experiences, will leave them averse to it for the rest of their lives.
8:15 AM by roy edroso
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IT DON'T MAKE MUCH SENSE THAT COMMON SENSE DON'T MAKE NO SENSE NO MORE. "Obama's Rezko Ties Escape National Radar," says... CBS News.
To restate: a national news outlet (on its blog, and blogs are widely predicted to replace the dinosaur MSM sometime in 2005) reports that national news outlets are not reporting the story it's reporting. And is linked by the Ole Perfesser, who covers everything the MSM won't, which means everyone has seen it.
So strong is the force of habit that, though the temptation is strong, I probably won't stop writing about such total offenses to logic, if only so I can say that for the record, we tried.
12:04 AM by roy edroso
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Thursday, March 06, 2008
GODZILLA NOT-SO-VS. MOTHRA. Hugh Hewitt interviews Christopher Hitchens:CH: You [Obama] cannot run as Mr. Clean if you’re doing this. You can’t run as the great, new clean breath of a new generation if you’re doing this kind of old trash in Chicago racketeering, deniable racketeering, and if you’re going to an ethnic-based hate Church, as simple as that, and a Church that endorses a man who even when he answered the question disowning him, you’ll notice Mr. Obama, Senator Obama I should say, refers to as Minister Farrakhan.
HH: Now I don’t know that it’s a hate Church. Have you done your work on this?
CH: Yes, it is. Look, a Church, I’m sorry, a Church that sells Creationist literature, that is essentially ethnic-based, is not…
HH: Well, Creationists don’t hate anybody.
CH: …that likes Farrakhan, who’s a fascist, and Qaddafi…
HH: And they have said that? They have said that? That’s fair.
CH: Yes, they’ve endorsed him…
HH: Liking dinosaurs is not hate.
CH: They’ve done business with Mr. Qaddafi... Whee, dueling hatreds! Also: Hewitt compares Clinton's call for admittance of Florida and Michigan delegates to "John Calhoun announcing that the Constitution did not matter, that he had reserved the right of nullification," and Hitchens tells us that Latinos won't vote for black people, and that Clinton will "lose the African-American vote decisively" but still be elected President of the United States.
You don't get this stuff on NPR. I still hold out hope that some enterprising broadcaster will give Ross Perot and Jesse Ventura a talk show, but more Hewitt 'n' Hitchens will do nicely, so long as they can keep the coffee mugs filled with Scotch.
12:06 AM by roy edroso
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Wednesday, March 05, 2008
McCAINMENTUM. McCain love is sweeping the nation! Or at least that sector comprised of well-placed political gasbags. At National Review Online Rich Lowry marvels:How incredible is it that Bush and McCain are having a love-fest at the White House, and Democrats are at each others throats in an increasingly bitter contest that involves the hot buttons of race and gender? Not incredible at all: I suppose the hope was that, in the thick of the "increasingly bitter contest" among Dems, no one would be paying attention. I did notice that McCain's Bush-hug was more perfunctory than last time, and may have to be visually enhanced (or soundtracked with ominous low-cycle hum) in future Democratic campaign commercials. Lowry adds:Polls show that older whites are relatively immune to Obama's charms. Was there ever a better time—if Obama is the nominee—for Republicans to turn to an old white guy? Actually national elections are nearly always a good time for Republicans and old white guys. But Lowry is doubly confused: even Cialis ads nowadays feature relatively youthful-looking "older whites," rather than someone who looks like McCain. It's an aspirational thing. Maybe future campaign spots can show John and Cindy in bathtubs, and the tagline, "When the time is right, will you be ready? Vote November 4th!"
Backyard Conservative does his bit, counterintuitively:And this Dem attempt to paint McCain as a rerun of Bush. Don't make me laugh. McCain a compassionate conservative? Get real. I guess this means the orgy of compassion we've experienced under Bush is over. Mortgage defaulters, extraordinarily rendered prisoners, flood victims, and holders of worthless American greenbacks -- get ready for real pain!
But you don't have to be a putative conservative to feel the McCainmentum. Over at Slate, Jeff Greenfield tells us that in Presidential politics, "Bugs Bunny always beats Daffy Duck," except if the contest has yet to be determined, in which case Daffy McCain has a clear advantage: "And it may be that McCain will be the candidate to break the losing Daffy pattern, because he'll be able to argue successfully that in a dangerous world, you need a president more in touch with the dark side of human nature." Greenfield's Warner Brothers iconography is insufficiently expansive: with the famously irritable McCain, we may find ourselves in Yosemite Sam territory. Certainly Obama qualifies as a long-eared galoot.
Alas, I fear this race, and American life in general, is more likely to resemble a Tex Avery MGM cartoon.
10:49 PM by roy edroso
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AND HERE COMES PRIDE UP THE BACK-STRETCH, HEARTACHE'S A-GOIN' TO THE INSIDE. I watched both Clinton's and Obama's speeches last night, and it struck me that each has distinct strengths and either could do well in November. Pretty bland sentiment, right? Well, one thing it has going for it: in that nuthouse we call the blogosphere, you won't hear anything like it. What you will hear is stuff like this:It's done. We all have to endure this...
I couldn't watch it. Sorry...
To keep oneself from despair, it does seem to me to be valid (and not just Obama spin) to recall that a short time ago, Clinton was supposed to crush Obama in both Texas and Ohio...
I just had a Jager shot, and hope to get drunk very soon. A MySpace blog for Barry O? No, it's Andrew Sullivan, gazing with wild surmise upon the Clinton victories but unlike stout Cortez, alas, unsilent. As a hideous hybrid of blogger and credentialed pundit -- something like Rosie Grier and Ray Milland in The Thing With Two Heads, but without camp value -- Sullivan gives us with one head the modish indie-cred of Obama enthusiasm, while the other, hidden at present from view, limbers up its tongue for an inevitable reunion with its fellow six-figure blabbermouths in praise of John McCain, maverick. You read it here first! (But probably thought of it much earlier.)
Meanwhile Sullivan's fellow desecrator of The Atlantic, Megan McArdle, liveblogs as if it were a painful duty for herself rather than for her readers. Sample inanity:8:44: Chris Matthews says that this is between the Starbucks crowd and the Dunkin' Donuts crowd, a nifty political analogy as these things go. Then he utterly spoils it by hastening to add that he likes both kinds of coffee equally well. Myself, I'm an unabashed Dunkin' Donuts girl. Considering that McArdle uses expression like "fannies about" in everyday speech, I thought she met her caffeine needs with a tiny Cimbali machine concealed in her bodice. After hours of useless prattle, she gets to the money shot:I keep nodding off, and doubt I'll be able to stay the course. I leave you with the thought that the longer this drags on, the more likely this is to become a Pyrrhic victory for whoever wins. You bored Megan and enraged her mum! That'll teach you to fanny about! And so she begins her slow turn from Obama supporter to McMaverick. You read it here first! (But probably never cared one way or the other, lucky you.)
Meanwhile those fortunate operatives who never had to pretend-like the black guy go for straight-up bullshit: K-Lo at National Review Online and The Ole Perfesser both suggest that Rush Limbaugh's marching orders to Texas Republicans gave Clinton her Lone Star victory by linking to an article... that says it didn't happen.
I think I'll spend the rest of the campaign saying stuff like "it's a real horse race" and "[leading candidate] has a commanding lead." Easier on you and me!
UPDATE. Sullivan's already giving free advice to McCain:At some point McCain should also risk a fight with some of the uglier elements of the far right. The country is sick of figures such as Ann Coulter, the conservative columnist. A Republican version of the famous “Sister Souljah moment” in 1992, when Bill Clinton publicly took on an African-American rapper for violent anti-police rhetoric, would signal a willingness to shake things up. I knew he read me, but I didn't realize he was stealing my material. Credit where it's due, though: with the humor removed, the idea sounds almost plausible. Lucky for me, and too bad for Sullivan and America, that no such "moment" will ever take place.
12:48 PM by roy edroso
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Monday, March 03, 2008
BATTLE OF THE BRANDS. With a couple of big Democratic primaries coming up, no one's paying much attention to John McCain, which may be what convinced the Ole Perfesser that it was safe to run this reader comment:If John McCain were to end up running against Obama, he should run a Dwight Eisenhower 1952 style campaign. Washington outsider/insider maverick, military background, the older wiser man, the symbol of sacrifice, patriotism, common sense, and morality, against the young, inexperienced, selfish yuppie narcissist.
The intellectual main stream media elites did not like Eisenhower in 1952, and the MSM and academics derided Ike for the next 40 years or more. McCain cannot try to be as cool or hip as Obama, but he could go with his strengths, and like Eisenhower be the anti-cool candidate, the candidate of the silent majority. McCain's record of service is distinguished, but does not include winning World War II. Neither is he running after twenty years of Democratic rule.
Symbolic analysis only gets you so far in politics. Having heard lots about Obama's youth appeal, we are bound to hear from the other side encomia on age and experience. Military cred helps with the mix. (McCain's in on the game, as shown by his recent reference to himself "on the point of the spear.")
It may be that we are so saturated with inside political information these days that even amateur analysts begin to think of these races as if they took place in a vacuum, or in a focus group. We're used to thinking of campaign messages as another form of marketing: find the target, flatter their prejudices, and sell them the product. But the kind of thinking on offer here misses even the essential logic of marketing: people have needs as well as psychological profiles. If the patriotic brand of detergent doesn't do the job, even patriots may turn to the hippie brand.
The "change" mantra is so associated with Obama now that we might miss what was brilliant about grabbing that association: people are dissatisfied with their government. The appeal of the change message existed before Obama turned up with cool posters and dazzling speeches. Despite the tactical adjustments that the Obama surge necessitated, Clinton's essential message remains that she is the better candidate to affect change.
I really think McCain's best hope is to tell Bush, Rush Limbaugh, Mike Huckabee, and everyone else to go fuck themselves. He should exacerbate every fight he's ever picked with the Republican Party, and as soon as the nomination is sewn up start telling people how happy he is to have reclaimed the GOP from the scoundrels and con men who had given it such a bad name. At the convention, he should ask Huckabee to pray extra hard for him on his frequent visits to church, because McCain will be too busy kicking ass to attend services. He should tell the bloggers who have complained about his economic positions that he really doesn't know what he'll do in office because he assumes Bush has been keeping two sets of books and he won't be able to tell what measures may be necessary until the team of forensic accountants he will send to Treasury has issued their report.
It's not enough for him to rely on operatives to make his opponents look like just-another-politicians. He'll have to demonstrate that he isn't one himself. It's a tall order, of course, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Keep hope alive!
10:51 PM by roy edroso
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SHORTER JAMES LILEKS. I played "lead" guitar in a rock 'n' roll "gig." My daughter threw up. Then someone gave me a hard time about taking pictures because of 9/11. For years I was totally freaked out about 9/11 ("Make that another smoking crater in New York"), but I have just played a "gig" and so feel really "chill" about terrorism uptightness by "the Man," and will until the Cool Brother gets too damn close to the White House, whereupon I will go back to being a "racist" "asshole."
3:51 AM by roy edroso
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Sunday, March 02, 2008
TAKE THIS SIMPLE TEST. The Charlotte Allen Washington Post article about how women are stupid has been covered to death, but I would like to make a point-by-point comparison between, on the one hand, women as viewed by Allen, and on the other, recent posts at the manliest site on the internet, Ace O. Spades.
Allen: "What is it about us women? Why do we always fall for the hysterical, the superficial and the gooily sentimental? Take a look at the New York Times bestseller list. At the top of the paperback nonfiction chart and pitched to an exclusively female readership is Elizabeth Gilbert's 'Eat, Pray, Love.'"
Ace. O Spades: "I have watched this video over 1000 times and every time I do, tears well up in my eyes." [Link to Budweiser commercial where people waiting for airplanes clap for soldiers.]
Allen: "Depressing as it is, several of the supposed misogynist myths about female inferiority have been proven true... The theory that women are the dumber sex... is amply supported by neurological and standardized-testing evidence"
Ace O. Spades: Apparently finding its 372 male correspondents incompetent to operate PageMill, has new site design done by a girl. "I asked her, 'Look, if you start to play with this, you're not going to make it all girly are you? I don't want it to look like Bethany's MySpace page.' She was offended by the question."
Allen: "I swear no man watches 'Grey's Anatomy' unless his girlfriend forces him to. No man bakes cookies for his dog. No man feels blue and takes off work to spend the day in bed with a copy of 'The Friday Night Knitting Club.' No man contracts nebulous diseases whose existence is disputed by many if not all doctors, such as Morgellons (where you feel bugs crawling around under your skin). At least no man I know."
Ace O. Spades: Post on financially-based agoraphobia ("Some telemarketing asshats have been calling me 10 times a day for over a month now... Its gotten very bad lately... I won't answer the phone unless it rings at least 8 times. Most of the dickheads give up after six, I'm only seen one that persisted to 7 rings.") Post on some book about beating off. Post on the new edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Post linking to clip of crook on motorcycle smashing into a police car in slow motion. (You know, I probably should have just linked to the main site and written "Scroll down.")
Conclusion: While Allen thinks women are good for "tenderness toward children and men and the weak and the ability to make a house a home," Ace O. Spades demonstrates that men can link to rad shit on the internet, and complain. This comparison, like most, is unflattering to males, but I think our larger paychecks and knowledge of sports arcana more than compensate for it.
8:00 PM by roy edroso
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