NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about rightbloggers on Brussels, Obama's travels, and the T*d Cr*z S*x Sc*nd*l. This one's kind of impressionistic because, as I mention at the top of the column, the madness is running at spaceship speed; one minute it's VIOLENCE and ISLAMORADICAL WHATCHAMACALLIT, the next it's FROSTBACK SEX LIES and all along TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP. I fear the pace and ADHD will only get worse, and by June these columns will read like late Céline, with violence, depravity, and disgust exploding along ellipses like firecrackers on a string.

And there were things I had to leave out! For example, Da Tech Guy's encomium to Muslim-hating rage-queen Pamela Geller, whom he calls "The Prophet from New York":

As I watch the image of Barack Obama in Cuba celebrating one of the worst dictatorships in the history of the Western Hemisphere as they demand the return of Gitmo and attack the United States it would seem Pam Geller was understating the issue. We have not seen an American President so committed to the defeat of the United States since Jefferson Davis.

I've seen some awkward comparisons of Obama but this one takes the shoo-fly pie. I assume the Obama-as-Jeb-Davis thing will be cited in future The-Real-Racist ^TM arguments; no one will remember how it started, but it had to be something Real-Racist!

...I predict if our republic does not fall, 50 years from now after I’m dead and gone, people will look back at Pam Geller and speak about her the same way we now speak about William Lloyd Garrison.

I agree: Most of them will say, "Who?"

THE PEOPLE, UNITED, CAN NEVER BE DIVIDED. Atlas Pam Geller claims PayPal cut her off on account of the jihad. RS McCain steps up to the plate:

Some are suggesting a boycott of PayPal but — good Lord! — how else am I supposed to pay for my daughter’s wedding next month? I need that money, and since Amazon ended its online payment service, PayPal’s got a monopoly.

Let’s hope PayPal can be made to understand that they’re being used as weapons in a financial jihad against truth and will rescind their fatwa against Geller. In the meantime, those who wish to help Pamela Geller and SOIA can send checks by mail to...

Somewhere a Tea Party Patrick Henry impersonator is weeping.

UPDATE. Atlas Pam follows up with more crazed skree about Obama the Muslim. I just can't understand why McCain won't go to the mat for her -- clearly she's asking all the right questions except, "What happens if I don't take my Haldol?"

UPDATE 2. So funny in so many ways, Five Pounds of Racism in a Two Pound Bag Feet of Fury:

Those who trumpet the advent of YouTube, Google etc as tools that have "permanently changed the media landscape" and will make it easier for right thinking people to get their messages past the legacy media blockade, take note:

These sites are all just tools, privately owned by individuals with fears, weaknesses and a perfectly commendable desire to make money.

That "perfectly commendable" is great -- it's like all that quivering anger she was showing at the weak, fearful tools at YouTube and Google had to get sucked up once the Free Market police showed up. But sir, they love jihad -- Quiet, soldier! They're part of the Invisible Hand Alliance, and God damn it, we can't touch 'em!

The follow-up's even better:

These tools belong to people who are not like us and don't like us in many ways; we must develop our own independent YouTubes and Googles to ensure that developments like these will have minimal impact in the future.

Don't they already have those? Pajamas Media? QubeTV? People's Cube? I guess they have to develop new versions -- powered by whining! When they're ready, please send the press releases here -- I can always use a laugh.

Apparently the cries of "dying MSM dinosaur lamestream media" will henceforth apply to YouTube and Google as well. Somehow I don't think they've thought this one through.

UPDATE 2. Gates of Vienna:

Conservatives and libertarians and Jews live in a world whose default is leftist and under-the-radar anti-Semitic and anti-black.

GoV makes the common mistake of imagining that, because they are conservative-libertarians and sympathetic to Jews, all conservatives, libertarians, and Jews are therefore as paranoid as they are. Well, if I were them I'd imagine myself a bunch of fellow-sufferers, too.

Inevitably, the Old Perfesser:

YouTube’s reputation, on the other hand, takes another hit. Perhaps the perception is inaccurate, but people on the right are beginning to feel that YouTube can’t be trusted. If I were YouTube, I’d be trying to address that somehow.

I was going to say this is another category error, but maybe by now "on the right" is a straight-up synonym for paranoid. As to the Perfesser's references to what YouTube should do to get back in his peeps' good graces, I think he overestimates his power. Or maybe he just wants his readers to believe everyone's clamoring to duplicate the success of his sponsored Amazon links. Makes sense -- we all know what a credulous bunch Instapundit readers are.

UPDATE FINAL. Oh, yeah -- I must say that, of course, their YouTube thing should be protected under the fair use parody exemption. Defend to the death their right to say, and all that. But it's awfully funny to see wingnuts clamoring for their rights under the example of 2 Live Crew.

FUCK YOUR BLOODTHIRSTY GODS, CONT.

I hear Pam Geller held a Draw Mohammed event in Texas which drew some unwanted attention (well, unwanted by normal people, anyway -- I'm sure Geller is delighted). I wonder why she didn't invite me -- I have after all been the internet's boldest, baddest blasphemy-be-unto-him artist since 2006:

I'm joking, of course -- the noted rageclown Geller doesn't do free-speech events, she does skree-kill-Mooslims events, in which I have no interest. Nonetheless, I defend to the death their right to harrumph harrumph harrumph. Now where's my medal?

UPDATE. Nobody likes Pammy.

BENEATH THE BOTTOM OF THE BARREL, PART 429,467. I know nothing she does should surprise me anymore, but this Pam Geller "exclusive" repeating some comments by the New York mosque's Feisal Abdul Rauf is tendentious beyond belief.

For example, she quotes Rauf on the "genesis of conflict": "If gender is not what distinguishes us we'll look at skin colouring and say: niggers or whities, or whatever, and we create an ethnic conflict..." Here's how Geller interprets it:

Reverend Al Sharpton was unavailable for comment. Too busy endorsing the Islamic supremacist mosque. Rest assured, the tolerant Imam Rauf will not suffer as Dr. Laura did (and she was making a "word" point, Rauf is using it.)

It just goes on like that. Rauf says that when he saw in Fahrenheit 911 an Iraqi woman whose home and family had been destroyed by Coalition bombers, he understood how jihadi terrorists could be recruited, while adding, "it is true that it does not justify the acts of bombing innocent civilians, that does not solve the problem..." Geller's takeaway:

And the Imam is conspiracy theorist - 911 was an inside job:

Even if you're not interested in this conflict, but merely know how to read, you have to be appalled. It actually made me want to believe that she's cynical enough to have thus misread Rauf's statements on purpose, because if she really thinks they mean what she says they mean, I'd be forced to pity her.

UPDATE. If you feel you haven't lost enough respect for humanity yet, go over to the Hit & Run post about Ron Paul's mosque statement, scroll down to the comments and check out the libertarians arguing that liberals are keeping the mosque issue alive as a political ploy. No, serious. Bonus: Cameos by Jim Treacher!

RALLY KILLER. This is by far my favorite blog post at National Review:

And yes, it's that "G. Reynolds."

Poor Matthew Shaffer. In this blog established "to track dramatic political events in North Africa and the greater Arab world," he put up ominous posts about the region for almost two months, including this one from February 10, 2011, in which he predicted, "Even if Mubarak does step down, unless some ingenious plan to hand all power to the military is concocted, he will be deferring to Vice President Omar Suleiman," and this one from February 23, 2011, about Obama's speech on Libya, in which Shaffer wrote, "NRO’s Jim Geraghty summed it up on twitter: 'Ya hear that, Gaddafi? You keep pulling these stunts, and we’ll continue to evaluate all options! So you better think twice!' and 'BOOYAH! Hillary Clinton to Geneva. Bet you didn’t see that coming, huh, Colonel.'"

I wonder what made them give Reynolds the keys so late in the game? Maybe he had a post from Pam Geller he thought needed wider distribution, but was distracted by a flock of nanobots.

I assume they still keep the thing up because Jesus told them to be ready for the Big One in Iran.

(Actually a close second-favorite NR blog post is this one from Bench Memos, in which Roger Clegg rages that all the Wealth Creators have betrayed him with diversity -- at least it is for the moment; as they say on Egypt Watch, the situation is fluid.)

AND THEY'LL KNOW WE ARE CHRISTIANS BY OUR WHINING.

I think most of my readers will agree that the murder by ISIS of Christians in Egypt is bad, right? Well, that's not enough for conservatives -- you have to agree with them that Christians here in the States are persecuted, too, or you suffer from "anti-Christian bias." Here's Rod Dreher's brain-teaser on the subject, from his evocatively-titled post "Lions & Christians in America":

The mass martyrdom last week of the 21 Egyptian Copts at the hands of ISIS is a sobering reminder of what real persecution looks like. Yet it is also the kind of thing that people in this country who fear and loathe Christians point to as an argument-ender when Christians complain about social injustice against themselves, e.g., “Get back to me when they’re chopping Christian heads off, then we’ll talk.” I would point out that ISIS is throwing gay men out of high windows to their deaths, and the crowds below are finishing off the job with stones. No secular liberal would — nor should — accept the argument that gays in the US have no right to complain against discrimination because they don’t have it as bad as gays in ISIS-held territory. So let’s put that cheap argument to bed.

Based on this, if some nut on the other side of the world is persecuting your affinity group, you're being persecuted here as well, or should at least be treated as if you were. I wonder if Dreher knows that ISIS is a champion killer of Muslims, and would agree that we should for that reason hold our domestic Muslims as a persecuted group as well, and tell their stateside critics like Pam Geller and Daniel Pipes to fuck off.

No chance of that -- you can read farther down Dreher's post about the media's "normalization of homosexuality," just a small number of paragraphs after Dreher was using gays as a point of comparison with Christians. At National Review, Jim Geraghty also thinks the newsies are unfair to American Christians; he heads toward the same affirmative-action argument we often get about conservatives in the press, but is smart enough to realize that most reporters are probably at least nominally Christian -- or else Jewish, and he can't complain about that; think what Bibi Netanyahu would say! -- so he takes an interesting tack:

Last night I argued that in most media newsrooms, the notion of Christians as victims doesn’t fit their usual narratives. Fournier argued that there are a lot of Christians in the Times newsroom, and that the Times has a lot of reporters in the Middle East, covering ISIS, at considerable risk to themselves. Both points are true but neither really refutes my argument. 

For starters, sure there are Christians in the Times newsroom, but not particularly representative ones. Here’s Nicholas Kristof, New York Times columnist, back in 2003: “Nearly all of us in the news business are completely out of touch with a group that includes 46 percent of Americans. That’s the proportion who described themselves in a Gallup poll in December as evangelical or born-again Christians.”

So it's not enough for reporters to go to some modern Church where anything goes -- one has to roll hard and roll holy! Picture the new breed of newsroom quota-Christians: Fear-God Gump and Barebone McGillicuddy, working on a Style section piece about a hip new way to handle snakes.

My own solution would be regular cats-for-Christ slideshows, which should give everybody what they want, or at least deserve.

UPDATE. Mmm, them's some good comments, e.g., Megalon:

[Dreher says,] "The mass martyrdom last week of the 21 Egyptian Copts at the hands of ISIS is a sobering reminder of what real persecution looks like." 

Yes it is. That's why you and your cohorts in this country trying to claim that having to accept a paying job to bake a gay wedding cake means you're being persecuted the same way is so offensive. Especially when it's coming from a man who often talks like he's about ten minutes away from converting and joining IS himself.

Also, Hob runs down Kristof's shady "a group that includes 46 percent of Americans" = fundies claim and finds it possibly lacking. I wouldn't be surprised, but then, the claim is 15 years old -- maybe since then millions of Americans have got born-again, moved to the haunts 'n' hollers, and stopped voting, which explains how Obama won twice.

UPDATE 2. If we ever get Cats for Christ (no not this one) off the ground, I think we have to use ADHDJ's topline: "I'm not purrfect, just furgiven."

ROD DREHER VS. AMERICA, AGAIN.

If you haven't looked in on Rod Dreher at The American Conservative lately, I have to warn you: as difficult as this may be to believe, he's gotten creepier. It may be due to the added difficulty he must anticipate in peddling his coming Benedict Option book (basically, monasticism with wi-fi) now that Trump's in, because its entire potential readership is now thinking, hey, racist shitgibbon elected = problem solved!

Obviously Dreher's aware of this; before the election, when he thought Trump's nomination was a sign that even his beloved GOP is now godless, he was spieling out flimflam like "When the smoke clears after November, the Benedict Option will be all we will have left." But since the election, while Dreher is naturally pleased that a reactionary is in power (though his image demands he be dainty about it -- every third post is "I didn't vote for Trump, but I'm glad because [insert jubilation over liberal suffering here]"), he's also obviously sweating the pre-sales:

Trump is not a religious man, but I hope that with Mike Pence whispering in his ear, he will make good on these hopes.

I can easily imagine Pence whispering in Trump's ear, "If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine," and Trump saying, "you have my attention."

It is also to be hoped that a Trump administration, which will replace Scalia, can also replace one or more other SCOTUS justices, and lock in a court majority solidly in favor of strong religious liberty protections. So far, so good, I think. 

But this surprise Trump win in no way obviates the need for the Benedict Option. All it does is buys us a little more time, and maybe a little more space within which to build it. My great concern is that conservative Christians who were beginning to perceive the danger to our faith coming from an aggressively secularist government will now allow themselves to believe that everything is fine, because we are going to have a GOP president and a GOP Congress 

Nothing could be further from the truth!

The inappropriate boldfacing, I am embarrassed to tell you, are Dreher's. Anyway, now that BenOp is off, get-rich-quick-wise, it's back to Dreher's Get-Ready-Man Routine, where he yaps that the world is a-comin' to an end and only Throne and Altar will save you.

Now, aficionados may recall that Dreher is as strong an anti-Islamist as Pam Geller except when it comes to the prospect of liberals in power, which quickly turns him fundy-ecumenical, e.g., "I probably have, re: fundamental morals, more in common with the first 500 people I'd meet in Cairo, Damascus or Tehran than the first 500 people I'd meet in Park City, UT, during festival time," etc. Better to co-reign in Allahworld than to serve fags a wedding cake!

Well, Islamists are not much in the news lately, and Dreher has a short attention span, so he's turned to a new authoritarian avatar: Vlad the Election-Hacker. Check out his post called, I ain't making this up, "Putin, Our Tsar-Protector?"

Dreher is troubled by a New York Times story about the corrupt cooperation of Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church (which is also Dreher's current faith). "Framing Putin sympathy in such stark and alarmist terms — as the media tended to frame Trump sympathy — obscures far more than it illuminates," he whines. Then he tells us about "two young Catholic men" he met on one of his frequent Benedict-Option-related vacations "who expressed sympathy for Putin" because....

...[they] had come to believe that European governing elites did not have their interests at heart, and who (the elites) were committed to de-Christianizing Europe at every opportunity... they respected the fact that [Putin] is a strong leader who embraces his country’s Christian religious heritage, and seeks to defend it and its teachings, especially against cultural liberals whose views on sex and gender are destroying the traditional family.

They sound like agents sent to tantalize Dreher. It seems to have worked, though: "And you know what?" he says. "I agreed with them, broadly." Then he quotes "the neoreactionary writer Ash Milton" and Megan McArdle, who agree with him that liberals want to oppress Christians with homosex. Then:

So: Vladimir Putin is a global leader who openly rejects and defies this memeplex, which dominates Europe even more than it does America. Finally, religious people may say, somebody stands up without apology to these people who are trying to crush us.

I try to imagine the working-class Catholics with whom I grew up in Bridgeport, Connecticut saying, "Thank God for the Russian dictator who will stand up for our values!" but can't.

...We have to keep our eye on the ball here: that the Russian state really is using culture and religion as a propaganda weapon against the West. But that doesn’t make the moral and religious ideas the Russian state weaponizes wrong or illegitimate! Never forget that the United States does the very same thing to advance secular liberalism, especially LGBT advocacy...

Sometimes I feel like giving up on America, but then I look at something like what Dreher wrote and think: You know what -- why should I? It's those assholes who gave up on America, not me; so fuck 'em -- I'll stand with America against them.

UPDATE. You know who else will defend Pooty-Poot against those who question him -- even if they're Soviet refugees? Dana Rohrabacher, California Republican and Trump Secretary of State short-lister:

Bianna Golodryga: When you talk about human rights abusers in China much can be dsaid about Russia in that regard as well.
Rohrabacher: Oh, baloney ― where do you come from? How can you buy that?
Golodryga: I come from the former Soviet Union, that’s where I came from. I came here as a political refugee. That’s where I came from.
Rohrabacher: Oh, OK. What country did you say you came from?
Golodryga: I come from the former Soviet Union, from Moldova
Rohrabacher: Oh, well then that’s good, then the audience knows that you are biased.
Golodryga: I’m biased because I am an American citizen who was born in a foreign country?
Rohrabacher: Yeah yeah, when you start saying that Russia... Did you know there have been no poitical reforms in China? None.
Golodryga: I'm not saying... I'm not advocating that China be our best friend. I'm talking to you about Russia right now.
Rohrabacher: You just said that Russia and China are the same. I'm sorry, they are not.
Golodryga: I said they are both human rights abusers. How am I wrong?
Rohrabacher: How are you wrong? In China they don't have opposition force?
Golodryga: And Russia isn't accused of murdering journalists?
Rohrabacher: Okay, look. I’ll let the public decide with that last comment where you are coming from. The bottom line is what’s good for America is to prioritize, as I did when I worked with Ronald Reagan. I wrote most of his speeches on this issue.
Golodryga: And what would Ronald Reagan think about your thoughts about Vladimir Putin?
Rohrabacher: He would love it. Maybe you forgot that Reagan was the one who reached out to Gorbachev with his hand open... and...
Golodryga: Are you comparing Gorbachev to Vladimir Putin?
Rohrabacher: Absolutely I am.

There are some lessons in this -- first, about what Rohrabacher clearly thinks is the right kiss-ass message to portray about Russia and China (or, as The Leader says it, "CHAI-na"), and about how Perestroika Mike is like the resucitator of the KGB.  Also, it's fascinating to see how dismissively Rohrabacher treats a Soviet refugee. I'm old enough to recall a time when, if a liberal suggested a change in our Soviet policy -- even after Nixon's detente and Reagan's glasnost -- conservatives would haul out Solzhenitsyn or Mindszenty and go how dare you! These people were in the gulags! And we, poor saps, felt we had to respect their experience.

So it's instructive to see Rohrabacher dismiss Golodryga's experience as "bias" -- and not just because of its breathtaking hypocrisy; it also suggests a way for liberals to fight back on issues where conservatives presume a natural advantage. For instance, when they tell you Keith Ellison can't be DNC Chair because people like Alan Dershowitz claim he's anti-Semitic, try saying "So?" and "you are being very bias." What the hell -- it worked for Trump.

THEY'LL BELIEVE ANYTHING. It appears John Derbyshire got punked:

An e-mail correspondent (Orthodox Christian) sent me the four pictures below, with this message:

This is an accurate picture of every Friday afternoon in several locations throughout New York City where there are mosques with a large number of Muslims that cannot fit into the mosque. They fill the surrounding streets, facing east for a couple of hours between about 2 & 4 pm.

...I have no idea if my correspondent is correctly relating the facts behind these pictures... I move around New York City a fair amount, and haven’t seen such things; but then I’m rarely there on a Friday. Can anyone shed light?

If this kind of obstruction of roads and sidewalks is really going on in Nurse Bloomberg’s city — where a restaurateur can get a four-digit fine for placing a chair on the sidewalk without the proper permit — it’s a disgrace. But give me the facts, someone, please.

I thought something was fishy when I saw one of the pray-ins was filling up Madison Avenue. I've been away from New York for five months, but I knew things couldn't have changed that much.

Turns out the photos are from the once-a-year Muslim Day Parade -- 2009 edition. (Adding to the jest, the photos come from Muslim hater Pam Geller.) They do not represent a weekly event, as Derbyshire's emailer portrayed it.

Of course, if you really want to believe the Mooslims are taking over, why bother to open Google and possibly lose your hate-on?

UPDATE. Derbyshire catches on: "Apparently the city enjoys a Muslim Day Parade," he sniffs (God God! First the Irish, now this!) -- but he leaves the original post as is. Expect your grandma to email you the link in a couple of months, or years.

UPDATE 2. Derb denounces this special parade for Mohammedans -- "To the best of my knowledge... the only one currently dedicated to celebration of a religious, as opposed to national, heritage" -- and is informed that New York has many such parades. (He does have the good grace, I must say, to observe, "today must be Show Up Derb’s Ignorance Day.")

But then he asks:

So can we get the Orange Parade re-started?

Why rely on the bloated socialist State to sanction you, Derb? You and a couple of yer mates should just get a permit and march through Woodside singing "The Sash My Father Wore." I can name a few bars for you to visit along the way where you will undoubtedly receive a bracing reception.

HOW THE MIGHTY HAVE PRATFALLEN. By the time you read this, Kevin Drum's All-Time Wingnuttiest Blog Post Contest will probably have closed. But even if you can't vote, it's worth visiting to read the nominees.

It's also worth remembering that most of the finalists, and even their nominated work, have been praised to the skies by the big-name conservatives. Some of them rode this praise to mainstream success. Ben Domenech blogged for the Washington Post. Steven Den Beste has written for the Wall Street Journal, Ann Althouse for the New York Times. John Hinderaker, aka "Hindrocket," was one of Time's Bloggers of the Year. Hell, a few breaks one way or the other, and Pam "Atlas Shrugs" Geller would have had that Time cover instead of Ann Coulter.

All the hot air in recent years about the blogosphere being the next big thing inflated these worthy contenders to their current Hindenberg proportions, making them all the more satisfying to explode, especially for those of us who knew them when. Stay tuned to alicublog for future nominees.