Friday, June 20, 2008
OOGA BOOGA. Spike Lee quotes Parliament:"The money's going to other things," he said. "That's going to change though." As applause escalated, he added, in a clear reference to Barack Obama, "We'll have a real chocolate city." Cute, right? Not if you're from the vanilla suburbs! The Perfesser blows the dog-whistle, and barking commences. Daily Pundit:Does this mean I can start referring to black people as "chocolates?" Or does it mean that Spike Lee is a racist dumbass? Uh...Has anybody asked Obama yet whether he's going to turn Washington, D.C. into a "chocolate city?" That would make for an interesting press conference.
And how would that work, exactly? Line up all the honkeys at gunpoint and march them across the city line? Don't ever show this guy Blazing Saddles; he'll shit his pants.
Some go for passive-aggression -- they're not complaining, they're complaining that somebody is going to complain! American Pundit says, "I'm sure the MSM will begin blaming conservatives for the remark any minute now." Macsmind says, "With this radical's rantings I wonder how long before someone throws his skinny ass under the bus." Gateway Pundit echoes many in the cracker-American community when he asks, "Could you imagine if a Republican would say something like this?... A 'vanilla city?'" Yeah, and what if we made our own version of "Roots" where we showed how black people oppressed white people? I bet they'd be really mad then.
Michelle Malkin notes ominously that Lee "will be an honored guest at the Democrat National Convention." Keep this under your hat, but I hear a lot of other black people will be there, too. They'll be waving machetes and singing "Right Time."
Jesus Christ. They scare easy, don't they?
3:50 PM by roy edroso
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MORE NAGS & SCOLDS. The panic recently exhibited at National Review's The Corner over the possibility that women might be learning sex tricks from gay TV gagwriters has spread to one of the Review's other stupid blogs. An unnamed author at Phi Beta Cons, a NR blog devoted to denouncing schools as PC indoctination centers, says Sex and the City ain't the only liberal porn-squad turning our daughters into tramps:PBC's Candace de Russy, along with others, fought a mighty battle to ban sex fairs at an upstate New York state college that featured various toys and manuals for every manner imaginable of the polymorphous perverse. The author refers to de Russy's ravings over a 1997 SUNY New Paltz exhibition, which made de Russy a heroine among conservatives and a laughing-stock among everyone else, but did nothing to stem the tide of collegiate sex. Which just goes to show that, among the cognoscenti, no culture war skirmish is considered a failure if it wins another job for another otherwise worthless wingnut.
The author also complains about the Columbia University student health services website, which two or three years ago "advised on such questions as how to manage a threesome and how to clean a bloody cat-o'nine-tails between sadomasochism sessions." This raises two questions. First, why do conservative sex critics always sound like their most recent contact with BDSM was Tom Lehrer's "Masochism Tango"? "Bloody cat-o'nine-tails between sadomasochism sessions," yeesh. Again I plead for field work: someone take these noobs to a munch.
Secondly, noting the subject-appropriate shift in the hook, will this sex madness go 'round the horn, so to speak, among NatRev blogs, with similarly subtle changes of emphasis? Perhaps the Liberal Fascism blog's Jonah Goldberg will claim that the Nazis liked sex (not that conservatives don't like sex but it's different because boy I sure hate Nazis don't you? which I believe is central to my point); Planet Gore will claim environmentalists just want to turn down our thermostats so we'll all have to huddle for warmth, leading to orgies; and Larry Kudlow will talk about how great sex is when you're coked out of your mind.
Meanwhile Crunchy Rod Dreher's summer replacement host does her best to get with the Puritan program. She starts with Seventeen magazine, an easy lay-up (gasp! sex tips! children read this! etc), but then gets greedy and tries to blame modern sexual mores for some girls in Massachusetts who purposefully got knocked up, when it's clear the precocious breeders were merely emulating their sisters in the trailer parks and planned communities of the red states.
Next she'll blame liberals for teaching the young'uns to dip snuff, because we're all about the sex and drugs. In fact, if things stay uncomfy for conservatives in general this summer, as they retreat into madness and fantasy they'll probably come up with all kinds of crackpot equivalences. The alleged liberal fondness for group sex, for example, will be linked to our collectivist ideals. And libertarians will be presumed to masturbate compulsively.
10:40 AM by roy edroso
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HOUSE NUDNIK. Do you wonder what distinguishes A-list, mainstream media wingnuts from the mob that howls beneath them? It's the little things. Message discipline requires that they all refer to people or causes abandoned (or imagined to be abandoned) by Obama as "under the bus." Indeed, it has become a verbal signifier by which conservatives identify one another, like "stuck on stupid" and "My wife thinks I'm at a Bible conference, let me suck your balls."
But David Brooks of the New York Times uses "under the truck" instead. See the difference? It shows style, and what an independent thinker he is. And his theme -- that Obama isn't the airy-fairy idealist McGovernite his rabid enemies daily portray him as, he's the ruthless hypocrite his enemies also daily portray him as -- is likewise stylish and contrarian. Next week he may tell us that he likes snail darters, personally, though he isn't sure he should let his own sentimentality destroy the livelihoods of ordinary Americans who eat at nonexistent salad bars and have the same kind of respect for their quaint little name brands that Brooks has for Chanel and Peugeot.
You're all smart folks, readers, but I fear most of you lack the certain something that might vault you into Brooks' league. But they're doing wonderful things with neurosurgery these days, and soon may be able to paralyze the parts of the brain that govern moral judgment.
8:30 AM by roy edroso
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Thursday, June 19, 2008
EUREKA! It's like a magic formula: Sex And The City + gay marriage = rightwing meltdown.
Inspired by the recent Maggie Gallagher essay about how gay-married guys are all into orgies, National Review's Fred Schwartz performs Talmudic analysis on... Glamour magazine. "Judging from our popular press," murmurs Schwartz, "the idea of threesomes is no longer all that outré in the straight community either." Attend Schwartz as he peers through his magnifying glass at the tiny, smut-rich type; the receptionist at his dentist's office calls his name again, louder, but Schwartz is transfixed:In the June issue of Glamour, under the heading "5 things to say no to," item 1 is: "Any threesome in which you're committed to one of the other two." If you're not committed to one of the other two, presumably, Glamour would say: "You go, girl!" It's like the hormonally-induced, lurid storytimes of my extreme youth (The National Enquirer says she's a nymphomaniac! That means she'll fuck anyone! She'll fuck, like, two guys at once!) reenacted by a guy wearing a tweed jacket and chewing on a briar pipe.
But there's still an ingredient missing from our mind-poison, and Lisa Schiffren brings it: "The people responsible for making threesomes seem ubiquitous among young women," declares Schiffren, "are, among others, the writers and producers of Sex in the City."
Sooooo it's just a perceptual problem, then, of the sort from which Professor Schwartz suffers? Not quite: in similarly weaselly, insecure language, Schiffren explains:The original HBO series was frequently, and I always thought correctly, said to be written by gay men, who projected a lot of the norms and behavior of gay culture onto the female characters. And the homos, through the bridging device of cable television, introduced our dewy-fresh maidens to "particular, often distasteful sexual practices that may or may not have come into fashion" and "gay norms posing as practices heterosexual females might enjoy."
Oh, Lisa, honey, I was sucking assholes when you were still sucking your thumb, and neither my ladyfriends nor I learned it from any TV show. As for the general role of same-sexers in the development of our sexual menu, it's strictly a chicken-or-the-egg thing to me, but as it is Pride Month, I'd be happy to give the gay guys some credit. It would certainly liven up the P-Month middle-school educational pageants. Maybe they can even ID some specific gay guys to put on the poster: JACK WRANGLER: FIRST TO SPLOSH or something like that.
I think the Review should raise the bar for Schiffren and insist she do a little field research the next time she tries something like this. They could start her out slow -- with a butt-plug, perhaps. Or the removal of one.
UPDATE. Tbogg's alternative take is essential reading for fans of the genre.
2:25 PM by roy edroso
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THIS GIG DOES HAVE ITS LITTLE COMPENSATIONS. Obama figures: I'll just opt out of public financing, rely on the huge sacks of cash ordinary people keep sending me, and leave the Republicans to "game this broken system." Much screaming no fair! from people who never liked public financing (or public anything, except hangings) in the first place.
This ripe example at RedState is headlined Obama Breaks His Word, Again (Bumped.) It starts out slow, but the Citizen Journalist soon loses his composure:I'm just not sure what to say about this. I shouldn't be shocked, but somehow it does shock me to see how a candidate for POTUS can be so vapid, and yet still lead in every major poll currently.
Does Barack think we are stupid, or are we just stupid? Time will tell, I guess.
I am very depressed about the future and am perilously close to full blown anxiety here. It just seems so simple. How can we even be considering letting this man have the keys to the WH? How? How? How? Why? Why? Why? Now this is --
Wait. You know what? Let's forget the analysis and just enjoy the moment. Eat it, whitey!
10:33 AM by roy edroso
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Wednesday, June 18, 2008
AMERICA'S SECRET SHAME. Practically every fucking cracker asshole and the Indian guy at National Review are insisting that they've never heard anyone make fun of black people. But they all report widespread, indeed seemingly epidemic, anti-Semitism. You know, when people in the United States talked about ghettoes, I had no idea that's the kind they meant.
I used to think these guys and I lived in different worlds, but now I'm thinking in terms of universes.
Added flava: Obama campaign leaves a few Muslim folks out of a photo op, for reasons any sensible person could understand: winger honkies are outraged. "This incident once again shows he is part of anything other than a post-racial campaign," says Confederate [!] Yankee.
If Obama gets shot, I expect the Roberts Commission will rule that he was resisting arrest.
UPDATE. This excursion through the fever swamps has been clarifying for me. Before, I didn't understand why The Anchoress kept calling Obama's perfectly unremarkable behaviors "presumptuous." Now I realize she was just looking for a new way to say "uppity."
UPDATE II. erlking in comments: "Can we start talking about 'Obama Derangement Syndrome' now?"
3:20 PM by roy edroso
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Tuesday, June 17, 2008
KNEE JERK. At National Review, Maggie Gallagher pleads against gay marriage because she believes it will lead to government prosecutions of religious groups. Also because gay married people have orgies. She quotes "David Benkof, a gay columnist who gave up sex with men when he adopted a Torah-observant lifestyle":I have never been at a soiree with multiple straight “committed” couples in which someone suggests we take off our clothes and see what happens, but I’m sad to say it’s happened with gay friends in long-term relationships. Of course, I know, many men cheat on their wives. But they almost never define their marriage as something that accommodates adultery. I have to admit the whole Catholic Charities schtick is pretty brilliant, allowing conservatives who can't admit to themselves or others that they hate homosexuals to displace their anxieties upon a poor, defenseless major religion. But it might work a little better if they could write more than a few paragraphs without reflexively babbling about cartoon meathook buttseks.
Or, you know, maybe not. Maybe they just ought to go straight to the id, and march (or allow themselves to be pushed in giant vaudeville baby carriages) in their local Fourth of July parades wearing soiled pajamas, flapping their hands disgustedly and screaming PEE PEE! PEE PEE! It's not as if their argument would lose anything in dignity, and it would get us to the punchline faster.
11:41 PM by roy edroso
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THE WAY FORWARD. Well, that's it for Willie Randolph. I thank him for three seasons of joy and bitter disappointment, and a better mix thereof than we got with Art Howe. I wish Jerry Manuel luck, but the long-term course for the Mets is clear: Wally Backman. And, of course, drugs.
6:56 PM by roy edroso
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IN THE IMMORTAL WORDS OF MAX BIALYSTOCK: "DON'T HELP ME!" Earlier we mentioned conservatives who disingenuously complained they hadn't been given proper credit for debunking the Michelle Obama tape rumor. I didn't think they could top themselves, so hats off to National Review's Jim Geraghty:The behavior of the mainstream media is sending a clear message to those of us on the right: do not ever help out the Obama campaign, even if you think the world would be well-served by debunking a ridiculous accusation, because no one will ever remember your efforts to get to the truth. Instead, you'll get blamed for spreading the malicious rumors. One imagines Geraghty in a Boy Scout uniform, trying to muscle an old lady across a four-lane highway. A token of his sincerity may be seen a few posts later, where Geraghty brings up the unfortunate comments of Democrat Fred Hobbs (later referred to as "the Tennessee Democrats"), and admits "Obama has no ties to terrorists... of the al-Qaeda variety." Then, Bill Ayers, the Woods Fund, Rashid Khalidi, etc.
They often try to be courteous like that, only to find their helping hands rudely batted away. Maybe it's time they did some work on their people skills.
6:13 PM by roy edroso
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TERMINATOR 3. We are often cautioned not to "misunderestimate" the President, and his recent suggestion that brother Jeb may try for the job ("We've got another one out there") may be some kind of ploy to energize McCain's base. Certainly Republicans now have a compelling reason to establish a new party leader (that is, McCain's Vice Presidential candidate).
Of course, like most such Rovian plots, it will probably just further demoralize the country.
8:59 AM by roy edroso
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Monday, June 16, 2008
MORE VOICE STUFF. This one's a grab-bag of rightwing plaints: Father's Day, gun to a knife-fight, and the loneliness of the long-suffering commuter.
If you missed the one on Michelle Obama, now might be a good time to have a look, as conservatives are complaining that the "Whitey" Tape story is being pinned on them unfairly. Of course Larry Johnson got that ball rolling, and the smarter conservatives refused to fall for it. So instead of telling us that the story was true, they told us it was believable, given the towering evil of Mrs. Obama. It's an old blogosphere trick, but not so well known that it doesn't bear pointing out.
UPDATE. It's the fake/debunked/we-never-believed-it story that won't die! Today at neo-neocon:If there had been such a tape on which Michelle Obama (or her husband, for that matter) had raged at "whitey"... Such a tape would have indicated a victim mentality and an anger that has persisted despite all her advantages and successes in life -- and, far more importantly, an attitude that would have belied her (or her husband's, had he been the source of the quote) [!] claim to be beyond race... The reason the fake story had such legs is that Michelle Obama is on record as having said a number of things that indicate she may in fact harbor just those feelings... When you can work it like that, who needs slander?
8:13 PM by roy edroso
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TOUCH NOT THE CORNER-OFFICE-DWELLER. Tigerhawk concurs with a colleague: when attacking Obama, let us carefully avoid collateral damage to Republican interest groups:At a moment of ascendant leftism and rising contempt for productivity, Republicans really ought to avoid bashing people who produce wealth, even when they play for the other team. Yes, it is tempting -- Obama's deeply offensive anti-business rhetoric and his sanctimonious promises for change make it very tempting to attack him when he involves people from the world of business in his campaign, but it is a temptation conservatives really ought to resist. Instead, they should applaud him for noticing that effective executives make a disproportionate contribution to the national well-being regardless of their political views. Please review the talking points, comrades: Che Guevara, Hussein, Muslim, elitist, bitch wife, hates Whitey, etc. Stick to the material and there'll be no need to offend our heroic paper-pushers.
8:19 AM by roy edroso
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