SPANNING THE GLOBE. Whoops! At PowerLine:

Our friend Mac Owens writes:

I don't know if you saw this. I think it's a pretty good analysis of the president's Iraq strategy document. [Note] my last paragraph in which I refer to the Copperhead faction of the Dem Party (most of them, led by Murtha-Pelosi) and the Copperhead-lite alternative (Kerry and Hilary). I thought of the link when I read [Paul's] reference to "defeatocrat-lite"..."

No, no, Big Trunk or Trunkrocket or whatever you're calling yourself this month! Owens' note was obviously meant to be private! He was just explaining how you should frame his story because you're a little dense and need that sort of prompting. When you show a guy talking so lovingly about his own column, it makes him look like an idiot.

Which Owens is. So nevermind.

Here's a bonus citizen soldier! Nine-Star General Ralph "Blood 'n' Guts" Peters, one of my favoritest cartoon characters, sounds off about Howard Dean's claim that we can't win in Iraq. The General mocks Dean not only because he "encourage[s] our enemies to kill American troops" (all in a day's work for us traitorous Dems!), but also because Dean "never bothered to serve in uniform" and for "his ignorance of military history." One imagines Jonah Goldberg standing behind the General, shaking his GI Joe at Dean and yelling "Burn! Wicked burn!"

As always with the General, lots of entertaining froth, such as this:

Consider this: Not one of us would consider looking over a neurosurgeon's shoulder and directing an operation. Yet a colonel in our military has more years of formal education — and far more varied hands-on experience — than any surgeon.

Fucking pussy surgeons. I can cut good's they can. (Drunkenly unsheathes his Ka-Bar.) Hold nice 'n' still.

Great fun, but the General grows tedious by pretending to wish fervently for a non-treasonous "responsible and strong Democratic Party." I direct him, yet again (does his adjutant not relay my communiques?), to my Perublican Party Manifesto.

Oh, I mentioned Jonah Goldberg, didn't I? Then I guess I have to mention his latest. It is, as usual, the stupidest thing ever written, and will remain so until he writes something else. Sample quote:

In "Patriot Games," Harrison Ford shot a man in the kneecap to get the information he needed in a timely manner. In "Rules of Engagement," Samuel L. Jackson shot a POW in the head to get another man to talk.

And the audience is expected to cheer, or at least sympathize with, all of it. Now, I know many will say, "It's only a movie" or "It's only a TV show." But that will not do. Hollywood plays a role in shaping culture, but it also reflects it. It both affirms and reflects our basic moral sense (which is one reason why it dismays some of us from time to time).

No person, not even Goldberg, could speak those lines aloud and believe that they made any sense.

To end on a unreasonably high note, here's Free Republic's Friday Toons, made by people who are as crazy as our other subjects but so much more fun, bless them. In fairness, I must point out that some of the cartoons are actually funny, and a few diverge from the Freeper party line. But for the most part it's the usual:

I note with interest that "State of the Union" now features Jeff Jacoby.

This fellow hates newspaper publishers so much, he makes them turn black! (BTW, this isn't racist, why would you think that? You must be racist yourself.)

I'll let this guy wrap things up -- he sure can write a punchline!

SORRY, OLD CHAP. I really hate to say this, but Harold Pinter's Nobel Prize speech was not well played.

In a way I admire it. He had a world stage, and gave from it (or from a TV set perched on it) the explicitly political lecture he wished to give. There is a touch in this of Brando sending out Sacheen Littlefeather, which I also admire. Fuck 'em if they can't take a rant. What makes their party more sacrosanct than the Oscars? It's his party this year, after all.

My quarrel is that he did not explicitly tie his gift to literature -- the occasion for the speech -- to his political argument. This judgement may be based on ignorance of his more recent work, which I have seen mostly on right-wing websites, by which torn pieces covered in wolves' spittle no sensible person could judge it.

That notwithstanding, I do see a break in Pinter's speech that cut his authority as a great writer away from his reasoning as a world citizen. And without that authority his argument, again given the occasion, loses the force it might have had.

All the early stuff about his working method is, or should be, nectar to writers:

In the play that became The Homecoming I saw a man enter a stark room and ask his question of a younger man sitting on an ugly sofa reading a racing paper. I somehow suspected that A was a father and that B was his son, but I had no proof. This was however confirmed a short time later when B (later to become Lenny) says to A (later to become Max), 'Dad, do you mind if I change the subject? I want to ask you something. The dinner we had before, what was the name of it? What do you call it? Why don't you buy a dog? You're a dog cook. Honest. You think you're cooking for a lot of dogs.' So since B calls A 'Dad' it seemed to me reasonable to assume that they were father and son. A was also clearly the cook and his cooking did not seem to be held in high regard. Did this mean that there was no mother? I didn't know. But, as I told myself at the time, our beginnings never know our ends.

This is excellent, largely because it approaches the universal by way of the particular. Not everyone starts as Pinter does, but the conclusion at which he arrives is both philosophically astute and common knowledge – it’s also funny, which demonstrates that the mystery Pinter pursued is one we all can acknowledge, and gives evidence of his lasting gift.

Pinter remains on the right track with his first relating of language to politics:

But as I have said, the search for the truth can never stop. It cannot be adjourned, it cannot be postponed. It has to be faced, right there, on the spot.

Political theatre presents an entirely different set of problems. Sermonising has to be avoided at all cost. Objectivity is essential. The characters must be allowed to breathe their own air. The author cannot confine and constrict them to satisfy his own taste or disposition or prejudice. He must be prepared to approach them from a variety of angles, from a full and uninhibited range of perspectives, take them by surprise, perhaps, occasionally, but nevertheless give them the freedom to go which way they will. This does not always work. And political satire, of course, adheres to none of these precepts, in fact does precisely the opposite, which is its proper function.

This is inarguable. Shortly thereafter:

Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.

Well... okay... but...

As every single person here knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Quaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured it was true. It was not true.

The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it.

Here you get the feeling that only the thinnest reed connects Pinter’s argument with its target: he has begun to compare the quest of earnest travellers toward truth, such as himself, with that of professional liars. It isn’t that the argument is too big for the target – though I think it is – but that one has nothing really to do with the other.

By the time we get to the painful descriptions of Reagan’s Nicaragua policy, Pinter’s argument is as far off the mark as a bird’s argument with a cat. It is beyond the province of literature, and, I fear, there is nothing in it that can wrest the argument back toward terms more favorable to literature. That may be Pinter’s assessment, too, and while I appreciate his dire conclusion –

I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.

If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us – the dignity of man.

-- the speech, meant to accent the "crucial obligation," because it plays on the enemy's field is forced to leave its weight on the "enormous odds."

It may be that Toni Morrison’s Nobel Speech has as little relevance to the real, bleeding, scheming world as Pinter’s, and Lord knows I prefer his work to hers. But her Speech hinged on a metaphor – a blind woman trying to discern the fate of a bird in hand – and tightly connected her gift, such as it is, to the enemy it faced in the State:

The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek - it must be rejected, altered and exposed.

I would be remiss not to mention the Speech by the Russian poet Joseph Brodsky:

"How can one write music after Auschwitz?" inquired Adorno; and one familiar with Russian history can repeat the same question by merely changing the name of the camp - and repeat it perhaps with even greater justification, since the number of people who perished in Stalin's camps far surpasses the number of German prisoncamp victims. "And how can you eat lunch?" the American poet Mark Strand once retorted. In any case, the generation to which I belong has proven capable of writing that music.

This is not to play Dueling Oppressions, but to recognize that oppression remains what it has always been, as art has, and though the former tries like hell it has not in all these centuries been able to eradicate the latter. Pinter might have spoken of the particularly seductive language oppression, Western-style, has learned to deceive its subjects; what a speech that might have been!

But we already ask too much of our artists when we ask them to tell us how they do what they do. And I note with displeasure that the Nobel Speeches get longer each decade – look at Knut Hamsen’s! If Pinter’s speech disappoints you, read the plays. They contain everything you need to know.

TIGHT-LIPPED, CONDESCENDING, MAMA'S LITTLE CHAUVINISTS. The right wing observes the 25th anniversary of John Lennon's death:

• New York Post wishes Lennon could have gotten to know and love Rudy Giuliani (then, at least, he'd merely be in jail instead of dead);
• Washington Times hopes Yoko Ono, having been "mugged by reality," has become more conservative (maybe they should send her a card);
• NRO crackpot tries to convince himself that he and John Lennon shared some of the same politics, because he rilly, rilly likes John Lennon's music. Which, come to think of it, explains a lot of that "Top 10 Conservative Movie Trailers/House Music Records/Book Jacket Designs etc." type of horseshit that they do over there.

SHORTER PEGGY NOONAN. (to the tune of "Who Put The Overalls in Mrs. Murphy's Chowder") 

Now me Grandma came from Ireland a hundred years ago
And she had things so much tougher than them boys from Mexico
True, Mexicans risk life and limb to get into th' States
But Grandma briefly wore a card all marked with names an' dates

One night me Grandma had to sleep out in th' open air
(I guess th' campesinos, bein' campers, wouldn't care!)

Now Mexicans are runnin' wild -- Lou Dobbs showed me th' tapes -- 

And they laugh at dear old Grandma as they come to pick our grapes! 

Chorus

Who let th' Mexicans in Peggy Noonan's country?

Soon racially we'll be naught but gallimaufry

Grandma slept upon a bench

Now I'm grand as Judi Dench

No Mexicans in Peggy Noonan's country!

PUTZ COUNTER PUTZ. Finally saw one of those "blogjams" at PJOSM Whatchamacallit. It went something like this:

Like my colleague, I was against the war in Iraq. I wanted instead to invade Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, and kill everyone in them and replace them with our own illegal Mexican immigrants. Still, the Iraq thing is going great.

I must disrespectfully disagree that the Iraq war is going well. Just look at the evidence...

Why isn't President Bush sending AmeriCorps volunteers to plant trees in Iraq? I eagerly await your response.

What? I don't see what that has to do with...

 

 
Why do you keep dodging my questions? This is typical of the Left. Don't you agree that the left threw poisoned kittens over my fence in an attempt to make my Rottweilers sick?

That's terrible, Michael. I guess some Leftists are pretty crazy, sure. It didn't used to be this way. I have fond memories of when they had that I Ain't Gonna Play Sun City thing and the Boss sang along. I guess things have changed...

Why do Leftists fart in elevators and then say I did it? Why do Lefists make me look bad by wearing certain fabrics, like gabardine and flannel, with a flair I cannot achieve? Your evasions do nothing for your case. Again, I keep agreeing with you that Bush erred in not biting open the throats of the illegal detainees and marching into the World Court, hauling their corpses in with one hand and giving the judges the finger with the other! We are not so very different, you and I.

 
Actually I am very much against the mistreatment of our detainees. But, hey, that's a discussion for another time

MARK TWAIN VS. MAX BOOT. At OpinionJournal Max Boot sings -- as Homerically as such as Boot can manage -- the praises of Leonard Wood, a doctor-soldier who assisted greatly in the subjugation of the Philippines and Cuba during America's earlier age of empire. "Never has Wood's example been more timely," says Boot. Here's part of that example as described by Boot himself:

...[Wood] dealt ruthlessly with all opposition. The primary threat [in the Moro district of the Philippines] came from juramentados, knife-wielding assassins who thought that they could win a place in paradise if they died fighting Christian infidels. To defeat them, Wood shelled numerous cottas (forts) containing not only enemy fighters but also women and children. His scorched-earth policy sparked controversy but achieved results. Moroland had been temporarily pacified by the time Wood left for Manila to take over as military commander of the entire Philippines in 1905.

Let us pause briefly to think what America's new bestest friends, the Iraqi People, would think to hear such activities described as exemplary behavior of conquerors toward the conquered. Then let us hear the same incident as reported by a very different sort of journalist from Boot -- Mark Twain:

A tribe of Moros, dark-skinned savages, had fortified themselves in the bowl of an extinct crater not many miles from Jolo; and as they were hostiles, and bitter against us because we have been trying for eight years to take their liberties away from them, their presence in that position was a menace. Our commander, Gen. Leonard Wood, ordered a reconnaissance...

Our soldiers numbered five hundred and forty. They were assisted by auxiliaries consisting of a detachment of native constabulary in our pay -- their numbers not given -- and by a naval detachment, whose numbers are not stated. But apparently the contending parties were about equal as to number -- six hundred men on our side, on the edge of the bowl; six hundred men, women and children in the bottom of the bowl. Depth of the bowl, 50 feet.

Gen. Wood's order was, "Kill or capture the six hundred."

The battle began-it is officially called by that name-our forces firing down into the crater with their artillery and their deadly small arms of precision; the savages furiously returning the fire, probably with brickbats-though this is merely a surmise of mine, as the weapons used by the savages are not nominated in the cablegram. Heretofore the Moros have used knives and clubs mainly; also ineffectual trade-muskets when they had any...

General Wood was present and looking on. His order had been. "Kill or capture those savages." Apparently our little army considered that the "or" left them authorized to kill or capture according to taste, and that their taste had remained what it has been for eight years, in our army out there - the taste of Christian butchers.

One hates to use the phrase, tainted as it is by the touch of the Ole Perfesser, but: read the whole thing.

In any contest between a propagandist and a genius, you may be sure the early returns will favor the former; but thereafter the tide may turn. Boot regrets history's neglect of Wood, though I would say in this case history is actually maintaining an embarrassed silence on him. I suspect Clio's treatment of Boot will be less kind.

I OUGHTA GO TO WORK, BUT I AIN'T GONNA DO IT/BECAUSE I'M REALLY JUST NOT QUITE UP TO IT. It’s low-hanging fruit day. I mean, who really wants to follow the "You take back what you said about Uncle Irving" thread at The Corner? It’s like Long Day’s Journey Into Night as performed by the Willowbrook ’72 Dramatic Society. Today I just don't have that much jam.

So let’s indulge in some really dumb shit. Tbogg points to this charmer’s “Rock Songs Conservatives Can Love.” Now, you all know by now how I feel about the relationship of art to politics – if the former is not master of the latter, bullshit ensues. And many if not most overtly political rock songs, whether you like the politics or not, are terrible – for every “London Calling” there are a dozen or more like “Gun Control” or “Do They Know It’s Christmas” or that horrible thing your sister’s boyfriend sang about apartheid at the 1983 talent show.

But when I read trenchant analysis like this --

Camper Van Beethoven - Might Makes Right (anti-Iraq war but with only in one line. Ignore the line and the song plays like “Team America”)

-- what can I say except, hey, buddy, let me help you out with some real conservative rock songs:

“No Feelings” – Sex Pistols

“White Minority” -- Black Flag

“I Live, You Die” – Flotsam & Jetsam

“Pray I Don’t Kill You, F****t” -- Run Nigger Run (Steve Albini project!)*

“N****r Loves His Possum” -- Collins and Harlan*

And anything by the Allendale Melodians! Here’s me bus! Bye!

UPDATE. Oh, for Christ's sake, the madness is not limited to the margins -- one of the numbskulls at The Corner is now compiling his own "conservative rock song" list! Feel free to send him my suggestions.

UPDATE 2. Lotsa good suggestions -- "I Don't Care About You," Fear -- "Suit & Tie Guy," DRI -- "Killing an Arab," the Cure -- and, meta as always, Jeremy Osner suggests "Psychotic Reaction" by the Count Five.

Let me say this in response to commenter Kyle -- because he contends honorably, and because it has to do with what we always talk about when we talk about culturewar here: I don't see evidence for the subtler argument you attribute to SMB. His language is as knuckleheaded as that found at The Corner, where conversion of otherwise poli-sci-neutral artworks into rightwing rah-rah is a thriving business. The difference between "songs that conservatives would find especially agreeable" and "songs that were written to cheerlead for conservatism" is as real as you suggest. But the words you put in front of these phrases -- "looking for" -- changes everything. That's what our nemeses do, because they can't imagine any art that isn't -- oh that phrase -- politically correct by their lights, and by making such lists encourage a false understanding of what art is for. If we get to the point -- a point these guys are working toward -- where a person can't enjoy a song or a story or a poem without first being assured that it reflects his reified world view, then we are lost, not just politically but as human beings.

I mean, "Okie From Muskogee" and Leonard Cohen's "The Future" and Graham Parker's "You Can't Be Too Strong" are great songs. If I worried about where they fell on some bean-counter's notion of a political spectrum, I'd be deprived of their pleasure. And some poor kid sucked into the blogosphere's sorting machine may never get the chance to enjoy them as I did.

Even Rod Dreher could enjoy the Clash. Jesus Christ. If that clueless Flanders can enjoy music without a political imprimatur, why can't everyone else?

UPDATE 3. They just keep getting worse. Highlight of this particular "Everyone I like must be exactly like me" fantasy: "I feel [Lennon] would have become a card-carrying Republican and voted for President Bush in the 2004 election. Perhaps his latest song would have even been a cover of 'G-d Bless The USA.'" J-s-s Chr-st, what an -ssh-le.

* -- titles expurgated to please illiterate bureaucrats at Google, who consider straight quotations (with quotes around them, even!) to "incite hatred against, promotes discrimination of, or disparages an individual or group on the basis of their race or ethnic origin, religion," etc.  Please, nobody tell them about The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and N***r Jim.

SHORTER MOE LANE, OR CONSERVATIVE ARTS APPRECIATION DEFINED: Here is a long, derogatory review of a film I have not seen.

UPDATE: A commenter points to a related post by Doctor Mrs. Professor Reynolds, in the comments section of which DMPR vomits contempt upon artists in general, then complains that they don't want to hang out with her. Somebody ought to check the Instahouse for stupid gas.

FORWARD, KVETCH! Meet Keiran Michael Lalor, shown here posing with right-wing celebs and yelling at protestors. Lalor has served his country in Iraq, a fact which all his published work announces. As you can see from the photos, he is a fine specimen of a lad with a shaved head and a "I have killed many men and I will kill you" look omnipresent in his tiny eyes. You do not want to fuck with this Marine.

We do not hear much specific about Lalor's military service, but we do know that he has been held prisoner and tortured -- not by the Iraqis, but by the professors of the Pace Law School. Hear his woeful tale in today's New York Post, as he describes his student days as a series of psychological torments that would not be out of place at the Hanoi Hilton:

I started law school just days after returning from a tour of duty in Iraq. Orientation centered on a case of determining the rightful owner of a painting stolen by a soldier in World War II.

It struck me as odd that with countless legal decisions in Anglo-American jurisprudence, the school chose — as an introduction to the study of law, during a time of war — to focus on a case where the bad guy was an American soldier.

The professor leading the class used examples from his practice to illustrate legal concepts. And he had cut his legal teeth defending draft dodgers, so his lessons typically involved a bumbling and heartless U.S. military persecuting a saint-like draft evader.

Yes, Good Soldier Lalor is forced to listen to this filth and worse: "a guest speaker compare[d] U.S. soldiers to Nazis... one question on the final exam of her legal ethics class incorporated an anti-military theme mocking operations in Iraq..."

There is more, but I can see my readers are overcome, so I will spare you the details.

I have to ask: why is Lalor attending this Stalinist indoctrination center? For one thing, there are plenty of fundamentalist Christian law schools -- Jerry Falwell has one! -- which I'm sure would welcome a mean, lean, logic-killing machine like Lalor.

For another, it's not like Lalor didn't know what he was getting into. According to an earlier column, this is his second stint at Pace! Highlights from his 2001 tenure:

I was then in my first few weeks at Pace Law School with a front-row seat to the left's post-September 11 reaction...

[My professor] mentioned the "My Lai massacre" in Vietnam, slavery and the treatment of American Indians as examples of American terrorism. Twenty-five miles from Ground Zero, where rescuers struggled in hopes of finding survivors still alive, this law professor chose to focus on the blemishes in our history as an introduction to our first post-September 11 class. I have to give him credit for being on the cutting edge of liberalism because at this point the now notorious International Freedom Center slated to occupy Ground Zero was just a twinkle in the left's eye...

A few months later, I left law school when my Marine Corps Reserve Unit was called to active service. We prepared for the war that had been brought to our shores on September 11 and resolved to defeat the enemy. At school, some students and the bulk of the faculty seemed markedly unconcerned about U.S. victory or defeat. There was a reflexive, leftist preoccupation with trying to understand, defend, and excuse al Qaeda. The rhetorical energies of my teachers and some classmates were focused not upon responding or defending the country but on proving the U.S was somehow to blame...

...and so he came back a took a seat in the same school, where, chained to a desk and withstanding horrific assaults to his patriotism, he bravely blinked out a New York Post column in morse code.

One might ask why, but, for that matter, why do I bother to read and write about this crap? I guess we both just like to complain!

THE CULTURE WAR'S REAR ECHELON. Writing is a hard dollar in any case, so I can understand why a lot of marginal scribes have over the years flocked to National Review, the Claremont Institute, etc: they're always hiring, it seems. I have myself written utter hogwash for corporate clients, so I will not judge these factota on moral grounds. (Oscar Wilde could. When a friend of his whose hackwork offended Wilde shrugged, "A man must eat," Wilde replied, "In your case, I fail to see the necessity.") But as a professional, even as a mercenary, I find myself increasingly offended by the increasingly low quality of their work.

Not that it was ever good. During the Reagan-era goldrush of right-wing propaganda gigs, tractability trumped talent -- prickly Old Guard authors like Karl Hess gave way to faux-contrarian bloviants like R. Emmett Tyrell (who, with the aid of a thesaurus, impersonated an author just badly enough to convince the sub-literate that he was one, and thus emblematized his profession and his age).

But nowadays it's even worse. Consider that it took two authors to write this. Most of the piece summarizes the plot of a comic book -- and while this job is poorly performed, it at least gives the reader some tangible details and images; the passages that are (apparently) meant to analyze the comic book actually make it harder to tell what the thing is doing or trying to do:

If satire is the stuff of Jonathan Swift — intelligent, probing, witty, sharp, and scathing — then Liberality falls woefully short. It is, in fact, none of those things. Walking a blurry line between oblivious self-parody and conscious self-deprecation, it is a hysterical, hilarious romp through a nightmarish right-wing fantasy land...

Regardless of how Liberality's humor is intended, it's there in spades. On the back cover of one of the comic books, Hannity's metal fist clenches a squirming caricature of an Arab terrorist by the throat, holding him up in a gesture of triumphant contempt. Purposefully or not, it is the perfect culmination of this carnival of colorful absurdity.

How does this sort of thing get published?

Desperation is a possibility. Figure that every young toff who announces himself to the wingnut network by joining the local YAF or Protest Warriors chapter will eventually be recruited by agents of Scaife or Moon. These lads and lasses cannot be forever happy working in the mailroom. They know that to break out, they either have to blow George Roche (or his not-yet-disgraced equivalent), or publish something high-profile enough to make a name and a place on the path to editorships and junior analyst slots.

Think how many essays this must engender! And think what sort of people are writing them: Bible-college yearbook editors; clench-fisted debate-club nerds; and, probably more than anything else, political hacks who sincerely believe that literary greatness, like everyone and everything else they have yet encountered in their short lives, must fall to their energy and powers of persuasion.

For the most part these are young people who lack both the experience to comment sensibly on real-life experiences, and the patience or depth to comprehend theoretical abstractions. And, like nearly everyone else in these United States, they think that first-class writing is distinguished not by clarity but by opacity.

So they pick topics that will not get them called for ignorance -- because their editors don't know about them, and nobody else cares about them: comic books, movies, TV shows, celebrity bloggers, etc. On such bare themes the young Turks hang words, metaphors, subordinate clauses and apothegms in (their articles suggest) whatever order they happen to come to minds only hazily acquainted with the rules and traditions of English composition.

Like all amateur artisans, they lay their materials on thick. When they make a mistake or intuit how lost they are, they just add more. Eventually the accretion is so monstrous that it seemes singular: maybe, the budding authors muse, this is what they mean by style.

Such monstrosities pour over an editor's transom. The editor sighs; there is no money in the budget for remedial education, and he has no time to educate all the sprats himself. He keeps hoping they'll get better; but they don't. They spend their free time horsing around. The males try to mack on the females, and the females try to make each other jealous. The editor wonders why they didn't go into advertising. Maybe if Rupert Murdoch owned an agency...

Meanwhile his boss -- a moneyed crackpot who lives in a Georgian mansion in North Dakota and practices incessantly at his private rifle range to prepare for the coming Mexifornian invasion -- looks in: any new talent coming up?

The editor hands over some of the less deformed creations. The boss scans the copy of one, cannot make heads nor tails of it. This is not unusual, but it seems even worse today; maybe, he thinks, it's time for a new contact lens prescription.

Nonetheless he sees keywords of which he approves -- Hannity, Liddy, Limbaugh, Rand -- and that pleases him. That's usually as much as he needs to see when reviewing the magazine, certainly: he will trace the conservative signifiers just far enough to assure himself they are connected with flattery, and the liberal signifiers far enough to assure himself they are wedded to scorn.

In this respect, all is well with the article; if he cannot quite follow the through-line, he figures, it may be a "youth" thing. The kids have their own language; funny books, iPods and so forth. Who is he to judge? The boy wouldn't be aboard if he weren't right on the issues.

And his approving grunt cues the dawn of a brilliant career.

It may of course be simpler than that. Maybe the places are like monkey houses before the advent of humane zoo management: a chaos of screams, leaps, and masturbation. Maybe the cause is not so much editorial desperation as depravity. Maybe the stuff is generated by computer programs while the interns and tyros lay around the office smoking crack.

But speculating on it sure beats the snot out of reading it.

WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING FOR AGAIN? The U.S. military is planting pro-U.S. stories in Iraqi papers. Jeff Goldstein thinks that's OK -- indeed, commendable, because "the truth of the matter is, we need to win the war before we can worry about leaving behind a pristine democracy..." (not to mention intact buildings, electrical grid, etc). He also says people who don't like it, including Justin Gardner and the editors of Reason, are engaged in "sanctimonious posturing," "gin[ned]-up outrage," etc.

When guys like Goldstein start hollering at guys like Gardner (of Donklephant, a centrist site that makes Joe Lieberman look like Eugene Debs), you know their war isn't going well.

Goldstein also says the frauds are "no different than, say, the LA Times or the New York Times reprinting press-releases from the anti-gun lobby." Sadly, he does not list their rates. But I'll bet the Iraqi papers charge much less!

THE DECLINE OF THE CONSERVATIVE INTELLECTUAL CLASS, PART INFINITY. It's late 2005, but National Review Online runs yet another gurgler about how South Park is rilly neat and conservative and neat. Jesus Christ. Must be the right-wing equivalent of a golf penalty -- "That's alright, old chap. Just write us a South Park piece and we'll call it square." "Decent of you, Dickie. Here, I'll use this cocktail napkin."

This one is dumber than most, and includes this prescription:

In World War II our most talented writers, directors, and actors helped the war effort. This time around we might similarly challenge young, creative Americans who understand the streets of the Middle East, the humor of the young there, and what forms of ridicule could really work against the Baathists, the Shiite theocrats in Tehran, al Qaeda, and the Wahhabis. It should be possible to figure out how such a team could be guided by Parker’s and Stone’s genius.

Might the article actually be a plant for Albert Brooks' Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World? Alas, no. The byline reads "R. James, Suzanne, Robert, Daniel, and Benjamin Woolsey." R. James Woolsey, his 2001 bio tells an incredulous us, "is an attorney and former director of the C.I.A (1993-1995) who labels U.S. policy on Iraq over the past ten years 'feckless.' He strongly advocates a thorough investigation into Iraq's possible linkage to terrorist attacks against the U.S. and has sought to prove the Iraq connection in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing." Well, no wonder he's spending a lot of time with his family these days!

You may think this is the nadir, friends, but so long as Jonah Goldberg draws cupcake fumes, there is always a lower depth. Watch for it!

FURTHERMORE, FUCK YOU. Prairie putz James Lileks has enjoyed imagining New York nuked. Now a spate of upcoming national-disaster shows gives him that old feeling:

If they were smart they would run two shows Tuesday and Wednesday night, one set in Midwestern town of medium size, the other set in New York. The latter would collapse into anarchy, I suspect, and the former would do nicely. A town like Fargo, for example, doesn’t need elevators. New York is rather dependent on them. Elevators and money. Take them away, and what do you have? More good people than bad, but guess which side has most of the guns... The Fargo series would be different, of course. Smaller towns tend to be more socially cohesive. Plus, all that wheat and all those guns.

Yeah, we city folk don't know how to handle a shootin' ahrn. And we don't know how to live among people, either, not like the folks in Lileksland:

In Minnesota, local news stations filmed people getting trampled at the front entrance as hundreds poured into a local Wal-Mart. Extreme measures were used in the northwest where some stores used police to control the mob. One policeman in Washington used pepper spray to stop shoppers from endangering each other.

If you fucking hicks can't act civil-like during Black Friday, I shudder to think how you'll handle Doomsday.

As for us, we had a bit of a disaster four years ago. Handled it pretty well. Asshole.

UPDATE. Sample response: "I'm from MN. fuck you." This gentleman is well within his rights. When responding to insults to my hometown, I sometimes fall back on the barroom argumentative style, and forget that other patrons may hear it and take it amiss. Apologies to the good folks all over this great land of ours who are not adult males living at Jasperwood.

WHAT A REPUBLICAN CALLS HIMSELF WHEN HE WANTS TO GET LAID. The sirens went off and the local precinct has been notified. Volokh:

For instance, the long New York Review of Books article not once mentions the word "libertarian," while at the same time treating libertarians, such as InstaPundit, as "conservatives." InstaPundit (the most widely read of the "conservative" blogs that the author mentions) does have seemingly "conservative" takes on many issues, but of course it's miles away from conservatives on many social policy issues.

... sorry, could hardly catch my breath for a moment. No matter how many times I hear it, the Instapundit/libertarian gag still cracks me up.

The Ole Perfesser's observable priorities begin, of course, with self-promotion. Second place goes to promotion of that thing they call the Blogosphere (which in his case is nearly the same thing as self-promotion). But thereafter it's all straight-up conservative politics and support for the Republicans who implement them.

One need only scan any given page of the Perfesser's site to see how deeply in the bag for the GOP he is. Hell, even at this writing (with the Perfesser pointing to the Volokh cite!), here's what we find:

• Love to Lieberman, the Kaus of Connecticut;
• Homage to John Bolton;
• Hiss boo to Kyoto;
• Stroking internet commerce;
• Times-bashing;
• Link to incredibly feeble rightwing clown who will hereafter be the Perfesser's loyal slave;

Etc. ad nausuem. Check it yourself if so inclined.

As a Volokh commenter put it, "Note, for example, that [Reynolds] has blogged about the Sandy Berger scandal a whopping 102 times, but has mentioned the Abramoff scandal exactly once. 101-1 is pretty telling, is it not?"

Whither the Perfesser's libertarian cred? Hell, during the last election he even bailed on gay marriage, shrugging that it was a "generational thing" not worth getting riled over, and sternly warning his gay readers that opposing Bush and the FMA would cost them in the long run: "It's possible to package gay marriage as a move toward traditional values and away from 1970s style hedonism (not that there's anything wrong with that). But again, you have to make the case, not call names, if you want to win people over."

So every once in a while he talks smack about the Patriot Act, while working hard to make sure the people who wrote and passed it stay in office. He does seem to support teen sex -- in fact, he takes a keen interest in it -- and Lord how that man loves guns. But that makes him more eligible for a spot on an FBI watch-list than on the editorial board of Reason.

Let's be frank. Real libertarians are as rare as pieces of the True Cross. There are plenty of guys who'll say they're "mostly libertarian" when there are social or sexual points to be scored by it. There are celebrities who use their swingin' libertarianism as a differentiator within their market: their libertarian rap may be no more substantial than the equivalent liberal rap of the Robbins-Sarandon crowd, but the cool factor is much higher. You can call them libertarians if you like; I prefer the more old-fashioned usages, "fraud," "hypocrite," and "bullshit artist." (Say, maybe the Perfesser is a libertarian after all!)

BONUS. My person favorite libertarian site right now is Build Freedom. They're feel-good, empowerment types. They preach "libertools" -- that is, "any tool that can be used to liberate yourself from an 'unwanted condition' in your life... Pecunix, e-gold, and similar alternative currencies and payment systems may become powerful libertools for individual economic empowerment." They quote Ayn Rand. They praise "freedom engineering" and bemoan the tyrannical State. They invite you into their "Coalition of Freedom Lovers" ("Anarcho-Capitalists, Classical Liberals, Conservatives, Constitutionalists..." etc). And they also invite you into their money-making schemes ("Find out more about 'Mr. X' and 'Blind Front-End Marketing!'").

Water finding its own level -- that's what freedom's all about, baby!

NICE FREEDOM OF SPEECH YOU GOT HERE. BE A SHAME IF SOMETHING WAS TO HAPPEN TO IT. (JOSTLES PRINTING PRESS.) In a recent Captain's Quarters fumlination on the damn librul media, we find this odd note:

Until the media starts reporting honestly from Iraq, the divergence will continue to grow as civilians continue to operate from ignorance, while the military operates from a position not only of intelligence but from experience. The real danger presented will be the self-fulfillment of the Starship Troopers (movie, not book) paradigm, where the only people qualified to control the military are the military themselves -- and the press will have created that atmosphere based on their short-sighted adherence to their anti-military and anti-Bush biases.

The cautious use of the word "danger" notwithstanding, doesn't this guy sound excited by the prospect of entering the Spartan world of Starship Troopers for really-real? Maybe someone ordered a life-size Carmen Ibanez action figure for Christmas!

The psychopathology continues in comments:

Ever read "Seven Days in May"? If the liberals and their MSM counterparts are successful, that old 60's novel may be way more prophetic than even its author intended.

It is an observable fact that American conservatives are getting weirder by the day, but it still throws me when they take famous fascist-takeover scenarios and blame the outcomes on liberals. I wonder if they think the Jews brought the Holocaust on themselves by acting too Semitic.

REWRITE. The actual Iraq war isn’t going so hot, so rightwing citizen journalists are putting their hope in the movie version:

Bruce Willis is apparently making a film based on the superb Iraq War reporting of blogger Michael Yon…

Okay... finally a pro-democracy, pro-US involvement feature film about Iraq. I'm placing a bet right now this movie will go through the roof, to the consternation of many of Willis' peeers.

Simon’s I-betcha I-betcha fantasizing is carried forward in comments by various littlebrains proposing that Bruce Willis put Warren Beatty in his movie and then kick his ass.

Though Simon is a Hollywood insider, I got the drop on him with these leaked pages from the original Willis screenplay of The Boys of Company 9/11:

(As sunlight glints Michael-Baystyle on the desert sands, the Boys move in slow-motion over the ridge: GAMER HOUSTON, a goateed demolitons expert who carries a rifle and a skateboard; CHARLIE WANNAMAYKSUMTHINUVIT, a quarrelsome Cherokee with a doctorate in astrophysics; SCUNGILLI “SCUZZ” DYSLEXIA, a street-wise street-kid born on the streets with street-smarts; GRIMACEOUS T. “ME HUNGRY” JONES, a large, simpleminded Negro; and their leader, Sgt. BUTCH COJONES.)

COJONES: Alright boys, take a break.

(All flop to the ground except CHARLIE, who keeps walking)

SCUZZ: Eyyyy, yah crazy Injun! Da Sarge says take a break!

CHARLIE: (stopping) I did not hear the husky, masculine whisper of Big Chief.

SCUZZ: Well, get de feathers outta yer ears, Red Man! I wanna win dis war pronto and get back to de Apple by Rosh Hashanah.

JONES: M-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-me hungry.

GAMER: Yo Sarge, so we’re stopping in like the middle of this like desert? What’s up with that?

COJONES: You boys ever hear of “rope-a-dope"?

SCUZZ: Yeah, sure, I know dat one! We usedta play dat routine on the Yancey Street gang! Yuh go someplace where yer pract’cly beggin’ ta get massacred, see, but yuh leaves a few guys hidin’ out nearby; so when de udder gang comes on out ta massacre yuh, den your udder guys crack dere skulls! Some fun! Dat what we’re doin’, boss?

COJONES: Yeah, that’s what we’re doin’, Scuzz. Only there’s a catch. We don’t have a second wave from our own gang to help us when the fighting starts.

GAMER: Like what! Like why not?

COJONES: (lighting up a Camel straight) ‘Cause some sob-sister ex-Marine Democrat got ‘em pulled out of Iraq, that’s why.

SCUZZ: Lousy no-good Democrats! I don’t know why I keep votin’ for ‘em!

JONES: W-w-w-w-w-w-w-when we start k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-killin’, boss?

CHARLIE: (ear to the ground) The trembling of the earth says killing comes soon, oh large, marginally-retarded one.

(Hundreds of TERRORISTS are coming fast over the sands on genetically-modified super-camels. They brandish rifles and the severed heads of hostages, and wear giant I HEART SADDAM buttons. They are led by Princeton Professor CORNEL WEST, to the back of whose super-camel is tied COJONES’ girlfriend, TESS, wearing provocatively-torn clothing.)

COJONES: (aiming rifle) Try not to hit Tess, boys. I sure would love a bowl of her chili when this thing’s over.

(Extended battle scene. Each of COJONES’ men kills dozens of TERRORISTS, sometimes while making character-appropriate wisecracks – e.g., “You are like so dead” and “Dat’s for me brudder – he got a bad falafel onct.” Intercut scenes show MICHAEL MOORE and SATAN at their San Francisco bunker, observing the battle on closed-circuit TV. For a time the battle seems lost; JONES is badly wounded, and lies across a fallen camel with arms outstretched in a Christlike manner. Then, miraculously, thousands of ordinary IRAQIS come running over the sands to bury the TERRORISTS in flowers and toppled statues. Their leader, FEHEED “ROCKY” ISHKABIBBLE, riding a white stallion, calls out to COJONES:)

ISHKABIBBLE: Hey, Cojones! Got a present for you! (He holds up the severed head of RAMSEY CLARK.) With the thanks of a grateful nation!

JONES: (as his wounds are tended) R-r-r-r-r-r-r-radical!

SCUZZ: Is dat yer final answer?

(The BOYS all go “woo” and hug everybody.)

Unfortunately this fragment does not include the final “Showdown at the U.N.” scene, but I’m told that Warren Beatty is being considered to play Kofi Annan, who gets his ass kicked.

IT'S CRAP, AND IT'S CONSERVATIVE! We are always being told by our wingnut brethren that the liberal media ceaselessly indoctrinates helpless citizens into buggery, bestiality, treason etc.

But when polls make conservatives gloomy, they apparently get in the mood for counterintuitive changes of perspective. Then it is time for S.T. Karnick, whose stock in trade is to find conservative-safe TV shows and report hopefully on them. Last December, in a review of House (!), Karnick wrote, "A few TV episodes do not a religious revival make, but they are much more than we had a decade ago."

Now Karnick sees double-plus-good messaging all across the boob tube -- but with this caveat:

...in network TV in recent years the unconventional has increasingly been used to make conventional moral points. Thus comedies today are bluer than ever before, but they indicate a serious longing for more order in the characters' romantic lives. Similarly, today's dramas are blood-red but express a positive view of conventional morals.

Let's look at some of Karnick's examples of this Great Awakening:

Hot Properties (ABC) tells the story of three female real-estate agents, and guess what: more sex jokes. In the premiere episode, sluttish behavior by two of the agents came back to haunt them — but not enough to make a moral point.

Hear that, ABC? Next time make it more like Don Giovanni. That's TV comedy gold.

...CBS's How I Met Your Mother tells the story of a conservative, young, urban male who really wants to get married and has found the woman he thinks is right for him. The comedy flows from the fact that the cues regarding romance no longer make sense to such a person.

I've seen this show, and "flows" is not a good word for what the "comedy" does. The "cues regarding romance" appear to bellowed zero entendres which would not make sense to anyone, liberal or conservative.

I am particularly fond of this one:

Fox's Kitchen Confidential and ABC's Freddie follow the same format of showing the value of traditional morality while presenting lots of overly frank, sexually oriented jokes and story material.

What does it say for traditional morality that you have to spike it with tit jokes and sleaze in order to get people to swallow it?

Of course, under all the bullshit, there is a kernel, tiny and hard, of truth: very old-fashioned ideas can adopt a contemporary guise. That's why directors keep dressing Shakespeare characters like cowboys, corporate lawyers, etc. But this stuff here ain't Shakespeare. It's just the usual crap with homey sentiments stuck to the ass-end in order to fool suckers.

Looks like it works, too.

SHORTER JONAH GOLDBERG. Snotty atheists are like Marxists and scientists who think I love my wife and turkey sammiches because of the chemicals. But God must exist because burp, wet fart, tee hee. (Runs out of room.)

(Warning: only read the Goldberg if your tolerance to him has been built up over time. It damn near made me puke, and I'm a expert spelunker.)

GET READY FOR ANOTHER "LIBERALS ARE RACISTS" THREAD! The folks at OpinionJournal are grateful for...

Our friends the Mongolians. The press corps had a high old time mocking President Bush for visiting Ulan Bator this week, but Americans are lucky Mongolians aren't as cynical as journalists. Despite its small population, the country is keeping 150 of its troops in Iraq. As recent converts to democracy, Mongolians have a better appreciation for freedom's struggles than do certain Europeans we know...

...not to mention certain (that is, most) citizens of the United States, who, as BTC News points out, find Bush less acceptable than torture. (Though Bush is apparently ahead in polling for the Heisman Trophy... oops, wrong Bush.)

You take your advantages where you can: Conservative Voice sees great things in the U.S.-Mongolia alliance: "Mongolia Could Become a Strategic Ally," it proclaims, without offering any reasons why the economically-frail, sparsely-populated nation would so serve, other than this: "In the 13th Century Chinggis Khan brought China to its knees and made his Mongol warriors the most feared and respected Cavalry on Earth." Maybe Bush's plan is to bring someone dressed like this to his next meeting with Putin, and have him pick his own teeth with his sword while glaring like Odd Job at the Russian President.

I see a problem with the budding alliance, though. Didn't Genghis Khan outlaw torture?

"WHAT IS THIS, DISCOVERY?" WELL, IN A WAY, MS. ALTHOUSE. Ann Althouse tells us that rude jokes at Atrios mean that Democrats (not merely Atrios and his commenters, but Democrats) believe "women who don't hew to liberal dogma deserve sexual harassment." She doesn't accept Atrios' claim that the jokesters had their tongues in their cheeks:

Sexist jokes galore, and I ought to just learn to laugh about it. He seems to lack a shred of sensibility about how pathetically retro-male chauvinist that is. I'll say it again: Democrats have a long, long way to go to convince me that they care at all about feminism.

Wait till Althouse sees Blazing Saddles! Then we're in for a long, dotty post about all those racist white Hollywood actors tossing around the word "nigger."

Thankfully for Althouse, there is an alternative to the chauvinist Dems: the Republican Party. We may assume she finds the GOP more in sync with her wymyn-friendly agenda, as she voted for and reliably supports the Bush Administration, and her faith in them is such that, when SCOTUS candidate Alito was revealed to say that "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion," Althouse responded positively, saying she was looking forward to the "debate" comparing "the full set of conservative legal positions... with the liberal positions."

One thinks of John Reed walking up the steps of the Imperial Palace in Reds: "Boy, this Kerensky's some socialist!"

To be crystal clear: I can imagine an abortion-neutral and even an anti-abortion feminism, and even grasp the concept that people who joke about being sexist dirtbags may be covering up for actual sexist dirtbaggism.

Pointing out the (theoretical) hypocrisy of others, however, is not proof of one's own intellectual consistency. Althouse claims her feminist mantle by proclamation. That's her right, of course. I could call myself a monarchist, or a member of the Greenback Party -- it's a free country. And I guess I could insist, as Althouse does, when people point out that my postings in no way support such a self-interpretation, that it would take hours for me go dig up proof to the contrary, which it is not worth my while to do.

And it isn't, unless you wish to make an argument capable of being taken seriously by serious people. But if identity politics is your thing -- as increasingly seems to be the vogue on the right -- then why bother?

UPDATE. Echidne of the Snakes called this bullshit earlier and better.

UPDATE II. Topic engenders predictable willful misapprehension. CV's commenter is a peach, too: "The Left swallows everything up into its government-control agenda. They use workers, Negroes, women, homosexuala, Jews to promote socialism and Communism -- and then discard them when they have outlived their usefulness to the collective." What, we're already done with the Negroes? I needed them for my production of The Green Pastures!