SHORTER ACE O. SPADES: (through angry, helpless tears) Why don't you stop picking on someone your own size?

UNQUALIFIED. Eugene Volokh on a columnist who complained about St. Rudy Giuliani's Vote-For-Me-Or-Die-in-a-Terrorist-Attack bullshit:

Now Giuliani's speech may well be unsound; I'm not a Giuliani partisan, and I have no desire to defend it on the merits. But I'm puzzled, as I often am about such arguments, by the claim that "milking one's 9/11 reputation for crass political gain is, obviously, despicable"...

Imagine a surgeon who, in the wake of some disaster, does what many see as a superb job of saving many patients. He then goes to hospital managers and says that the hospital's patients will do better if he (rather than his rivals who he thinks haven't shown such skills) were given a promotion to an even more responsible surgical position.

Would we fault him because "milking [his] reputation [formed during a deadly disaster] for crass [careerist] gain is, obviously, despicable"?

Well, this analogy holds only if the surgeon's record includes the following:

• A spotty performance including some exceptional saves and many incredible bonehead errors, costing the hospital millions of dollars every year.
• Alienated the hell out of nearly the entire hospital staff, patients, benefactors, etc.
• On one exceptionally trying day, found the super-special operating room he'd built (at great expense to the hospital) for such days was completely useless; still, performed his duty as dictated by his office without shitting his pants.
• Tried unsuccessfully to avoid mandatory retirement by strong-arming the doctors who were in line for his position.
• In applying for a more prestigious hospital leadership position, declared that an operating room should be run every day the way his was on that Great Day when it was blown up -- that is, in crisis-triage mode, with lots of fear, panic, and running around. Also let it be known that he no longer believed in any of the shit he pretended to believe back when he was at that other hospital -- except for the part where he was hailed as America's Surgeon.

Also, if I were Volokh I'd be careful about defending Giuliani with the image of an angry, lisping duck.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. Back from DC now, with no bad Von Hippel-Lindau-related news at present. Thanks for all the goodwill. I did less sightseeing than usual, mostly strolling and working on my sunburn and taking drinks at the rooftop bar of the Hotel Washington. There I met an heiress of indecipherable middle age whose family, she claimed, had once owned the hotel, but had sold it for ready cash. She drank Irish Coffee, though it was after midnight, and said she no longer bothered with doctors as they had poked and prodded but never done her any good. Well, you can't argue with success.

I did have dinner with Thomas Nephew, who's a prince -- smarter and better educated politically than I by several orders of magnitude, as his weblog daily demonstrates, yet still willing to engage my bilious, jejune prattle. He happily maintains a wife, child, and pets, and also an easy-going sense of humor and perspective, despite his proximity to the thrumming engines of government that comprise much of his subject matter, which would drive me madder than I am -- I wonder how he does it? He matched me beer for beer, so I doubt that he takes sedatives. Remarkable fellow.

Also saw the Jasper Johns show at the National Gallery. The exhibition was full of studies and multiple versions, which added to the impression that any subject, however silly, may be elevated by talent and obsessive hard work. It's just amazing how much energy is still in those paintings, even when they're so thick with scrawls, smears and impastos that the lines of force seem to be cancelling each other out. It's like the subjects -- targets, cans, compasses, legs, and assorted gee-gaws -- so mesmerized him, simple as they were, that they became mysteries that he had to paint his way out of.

OCCAM'S RAZOR TO THE RESCUE. Andrew Klavan at City Journal:

The thing I like best about being a conservative is that I don’t have to lie. I don’t have to pretend that men and women are the same. I don’t have to declare that failed or oppressive cultures are as good as mine...

Of course, like everything, this candor has its price. A politics that depends on honesty will be, by nature, often impolite. Good manners and hypocrisy are intimately intertwined, and so conservatives, with their gimlet-eyed view of the world, are always susceptible to charges of incivility. It’s not really nice, you know, to describe things as they are...

Man, if I had a dime for every ill-mannered little shit who believed that the cold stares provoked by his bigoted drivel were proof of his incorruptibility and his hearers' intolerance... well, I might have enough money to be one of those little shits myself.

Klavan has overthought the sitiation. If he's not "the sort of person you want to be seen with," it's probably not because he's "the sort of person willing to speak the truth" about Muslims, poor people, etc.; it's probably because he's an asshole.

(Hat tip to Sven)

AND AS HOWARD ROARK RAVISHED DOMINIQUE, HE CRIED, "WON'T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?" Megan McArdle, known at her own blog as "Jane Galt," says:

In the wake of the Virginia tech murders, there has been a lot of editorialising about gun control and mental health interventions. But I haven't found a single editorial addressing one factor we know creates these mass murders: reporting on the mass murders. In the next few weeks and months, even over the next few years, expect to see copycat killings inspired by Cho's actions. The more saturated the media coverage, the more such events we are likely to get. But as far as I know, few papers have taken to advocating that we cut down on news coverage of these events.

Funny, I was just talking about bullshit libertarians, and here we have someone named after a fucking Ayn Rand character who thinks free markets, while good in their place, just don't apply to news.

I don't want to hear any more crap from these people about how I hate freedom because I want to use tax money to give medicine to sick paupers.

SERVICE ADVISORY. I had a discussion with Editor Martin the other day. He's down in Georgia working with the CDC on public health issues. He marveled at the CDC's effectiveness, and especially marveled that the incompetence that emanates from the Bush Administration like stink lines from a cartoon skunk had not damaged the CDC as it has so many other Federal entities. We speculated that perhaps even the Bushies balked at imposing their maladministration upon agencies of public health -- and then we thought of the FDA and Walter Reed Hospital.

Well, who knows. CDC is perhaps both good at its job and good at holding the line. I suspect the same of the National Institutes of Health, which I visit every year as a subject in their Von Hippel-Lindau study. Their facilities are amazing, their staff top-notch, and they accomplish amazing things.

I hope I'm of some help, though my interest is not entirely altruistic. The good news is, if they find tumors in you, they take them out, and they're very good at it. The bad news is, they sometimes find tumors. I've had a few pheochromocytomas out, and for ten years I've been running on only a tiny sliver of adrenal tissue. Pheos tend to recur, so chances are one of these years I'll come back from Bethesda an Addisonian, like JFK. Again it's a good news-bad news situation -- your face gets puffy and you have back problems, but you get to run the country and ball Marilyn Monroe (or, I am assuming, her contemporary equivalent).

Tomorrow I'm off for four fun-filled days in Medical Disneyland, during which time posting will be light.

BRING BACK THE BLACK PANTHERS! Gosh, the Perfesser sure is laying it on thick with the gun posts, isn't he? Columbine in the New River Valley really put the zap on his head.

Clearly the poor man is suffering from Posse-Comitatus-itis, a disorder characterized by itchy trigger fingers. As long as the fit is on him, we will never hear the end of his plaintive cries for universal gun ownership -- by force if necessary.

Fortunately I know the cure:



Bring back the Black Panthers! In the 60s there was no more outspoken group of gun-rights enthusiasts. The Panthers marched in state capitols, bravely brandishing their firearms in defiance of those that would take away their Second Amendment rights.

No swifter cure for Posse-Comitatus-itis has been found! Soon open-carry laws were shutting down all over the place -- including California, where the sight of black folk with firearms worked so effectively on Governor Ronald Reagan's Posse-Comitatus-itis that he signed the Mulford Act.

Displays of armed negritude will work like lightning on the Perfesser's condition, and on the cracker community he serves.

Then we'll only have to think of ways to get him to shut up about everything else.

THIS WAS SOMETIME A PARADOX, BUT NOW THE TIME GIVES IT PROOF. "[Glenn] Reynolds describes himself as a libertarian, specifically a libertarian transhumanist." -- Wikipedia.

"As a libertarian myself, I'd love to see the nation run under small-government principles..." -- Instapundit.

"A LOOK AT WHO'S TAKING AID AND COMFORT from Harry Reid's statements." -- Instapundit (link is to Eugene Volokh, often cited as a libertarian but undeclared as such, who says that Senator Reid is "strengthening the enemy's morale as well as by weaking our own soldiers'" by saying that the Iraq War is lost).

Here Perfesser Reynolds denounces NBC for encouraging "copycat mass shootings" by running its freely-obtained Cho footage.

Here is Jane Galt/Megan McArdle, another libertarian, explaining why the overthrow of Roe v. Wade would be a good thing, using an internationalist argument ("The restrictions that could actually be passed at the Federal level would probably bring our abortion law roughly in line with the rest of the world's").

We could go on and on with this, but why bother? With all props to those brave souls who cleave, come what may, to a coherent libertarian line, in the broad swath of public discourse "libertarian" is not a philosophical affiliation at all, but a grace note one adds to one's conservatism as a distinguishing feature (or, we might say, marketing ploy) to gain a wider audience, mostly consisting of people who are vaguely ashamed of current American conservatism.

This is why, despite my predilections, I try not to refer to myself as "libertarian-leaning" -- not out of contempt, but out of respect. Words should have meanings as specific as reason can make them, or all hope of using reason to dig out of the mess we're in is lost.

UPDATE. I made two little changes: in the penultimate graf, I changed "philosophy" to "philisophical affiliation," and I removed "the word" from "the word 'libertarian.'" Because how can a word be a philosophy? I mean really! My only excuse is that I post these things shit-ass drunk, just to test my skillz.

SHORTER DAVID KAHANE. For the Virginia Tech massacre, I blame the liberal moral relativist Alfred Hitchcock.

RIGHT WING "MEDIA CRITICSM" EXPLAINED. The Ole Perfesser, back in ole times, razzed "Big Media" for not showing video of terrorists sawing off Nick Berg's head. But now NBC shows some footage of Mad Dog Cho -- in which he does not saw off anyone's head -- and the Perfesser starts dropping Kaus turds and other effluent to tweak Big Media for not shielding the public from the grisly spectacle of a guy posing with guns and knives.

Similarly, but as always more spectacularly, Ace O. Spades is outraged that NBC showed the Cho footage ("They might as well be inviting the rest of the idiots in the stands to take a lap around the basepaths"). Then he goes mad with rage that the Em Ess Em hasn't given heavy play to a gruesome rape/torture/murder story. (Mr. Spades believes liberals are covering for the rapists/torturers/murderers because they're black -- which brings up an interesting question: If we're spiking that case solely to protect African Americans, does our heavy Cho coverage mean we're attacking Asian Americans? Or is it all about getting Whitey, whose votes we presumably do not need?)

When you read anything by these awful people that has to do with what should and should not be covered, please recognize that they are not trying to inform you. For them everything -- news, art, science -- is propaganda. There is no aspect of human life which they do not see an opportunity for partisan advantage.

That's why I'm so hard on them -- not so much because they're wrong on the issues, but because they're twisted freaks who seek power, and that sort always needs resisting.

SHORTER BYRON YORK: I don't acknowledge a difference between reality and make-believe.

SHORTER JOHN DERBYSHIRE: PC liberals won't let you say this guy was crazy! Let us celebrate my great courage.

SHORTER KATHRYN J. LOPEZ: I'll be at this party, and I will have had a lot of beer.

GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE -- WORDS AND PICTURES DO! Crunchy Rod Dreher finds the real Virginia Tech culprit:

This is what you get too from a society that tolerates all manner of lurid, explicit violence in its visual art, and forbids nothing except the impulse to forbid. I don't think for a minute that everyone who watches slasher films, or who plays violent video games, or who reads sadistic novels, or who listens to violent music, will turn out to be Klebold, Harris or Cho. Clearly that's not the case, and it would be stupid to claim that. But... no taboos... nihilistic... culture of death... moral imagination... gurgle...

When his commenters are less than respectful, Dreher says, "Do I really have to explain that I don't think Goya or Shakespeare are the same thing as Nine Inch Nails or the collected works of Cho Seung-Hui -- even though they all depict violence in their work?" Watch out, Trent -- God-Boy's a-gunnin' fer ya! Even the love of a few other wingnuts won't protect you from his fully-engaged moral imagination!

Since ten seconds after the VT massacre, every conservative in existence has jumped to inform us that whatever else we may think about it, we must not blame guns. But, boy, are they concerned about ink and pixels! The very idea that NBC might publish some of Cho's ravings has them flipping out.

It says something about their reasoning that they think we can handle semi-automatic weapons, but not words and pictures.

UPDATE. MSNBC is running the Collected Works of Psychonerd:

You had everything you wanted. Your Mercedes wasn’t enough, you brats. Your golden necklaces weren’t enough, you snobs. Your trust fund wasn’t enough. Your vodka and Cognac weren’t enough. All your debaucheries weren’t enough. Those weren’t enough to fulfill your hedonistic needs. You had everything.

I'll be durned! Cho Seung-Hui was a Crunchy Con!

Oh, and folks? If you're forced to commit mass murder now, please don't tell anyone where you read this.

HE WAS A BIT OF A LONER... JUST LIKED TO WRITE THINGS ON HIS COMPUTER... Ace O. Spades wonders aloud why no one ratted out the VT Shooter as a potential mass murderer, then answers himself (unsatisfactorily, of course):

We've been conditioned since infancy with thousands of morality plays that just because someone seems weird doesn't mean they are weird. Or bad. Or dangerous.

The trouble is that weirdness has a pretty high correlation with badness and dangerousness. If someone has a dysfunction that prevents the normal sort of interaction and empathy with one's fellow human beings, well, that's not likely to be a person that's otherwise well-adjusted....

This made me think: what would happen if Mr. Spades were a student, and someone sent the authorities a link to his website? What would they make of Mr. Spades' weird amalgam of self-loathing porn ("The first click is safe, it's the second click -- the click once you get there -- that has a very, very big content warning on it... [splorch]... something has gone seriously wrong with our culture"), misogyny ("they're fucking guys so quickly guys hardly have a chance to catch their names"), numerology ("9/11 3/11 7/11 ...? How about 8/11? I know 7/7 doesn't work.."), and irrational violent rages ("When he dies... I hope his son slaps this stupid fuck right in the face")?

If we lived in the kind of world Mr. Spades favors, he'd be in a nuthouse quicker than you could say Preventive Detention. For the moment we live in another kind of world, and one which I prefer -- though it's nice to know that, once that other world comes around, it will have an upside.

ALSO: THE KILLER WAS RIDDLED WITH STEM CELLS. The blood is barely cold, but Carol Iannone knows what caused the Virgina Tech shootings: co-ed dorms and English Literature.

And I'm sorry, some will really think me foolish, but I don't think dorms should be co-ed, so that crazed, jealous boyfriends can enter their girlfriends' dorms and kill them and the innocent young men who come to their aid. If it had been a single-sex dorm, the killer might not have been able to enter so readily. There aren't enough difficulties getting young people through college these days so that we have to deal with "domestic disputes" in their dormitories as well?

And, sorry again, but thoughts also arise on the killer's being an English major and on the spiritual emptiness of much education nowadays.

He better not have been reading anything by Noam Chomsky! Or French!

Bonus hilarity:

Once a student erupted in rage at a colleague of mine and the administration excused it as a sign of "stress."

And that little boy grew up to be.... CHARLIE MANSON!

Is clinical insanity a requirement at National Review, or just a nice-to-have?

UPDATE. Meanwhile, from Cockslapper Jeff, another 87,000-word version of "I'm not intellectually dishonest, you're intellectually dishonest." Mass murder really brings out the worst in some people.

FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS TO YOUR COLD DEAD HANDS! A gun massacre seems like a bizarre occasion for a Second Amendment pep rally, but the Perfesser was never known for his good taste.

Tbogg picks up the projection racket going on this subject at Protein Wisdom and other bullshit clearinghouses. And the Perfesser continues to help out. As a Second Amendment sympathizer, I say, go ahead and flood the South with guns. We can start with the Perfesser's own campus! It may turn out that the libertarians are right -- more freedom really is the solution to all our problems!

UPDATE. In a transparent attempt to class up his coverage, the Perfesser puts up a little VT flag at half-mast. At first I thought it was just another product he'd wheedled out of some corporation -- maybe a sexual aid or something. I was looking forward to that review: "When I applied it to my perineum, nanobots of pleasure ran up my spine." Also, the Perfesser says,

...a lot of the sports bloggers are observing a moment of silence for Virginia Tech. That's a nice gesture, and I'll do the same.

How does one observe a moment of silence on a text blog? I like to think the he means that he shut off the techno version of "The South's Gonna Do It Again" that's been playing in his skull since late 2001.

CONSERVATIVES SAY THE DARNEDEST THINGS 2. Jonah Goldberg, 9:55 am::

...one of the things that astonishes me when I visit college campuses is how successful the 21 age limit [on drinking] has been.

Jonah Goldberg, 11:08 am:

But your post gives me a good excuse to clarify one thing: I was not saying that the 21 drinking age is effective (one reason why I'm for lowering it is that I think it isn't).

One day his posts will all just go like this:

Faaarrrrt, faaaaaarrrrrtt. FART. FA A A A A A A A ARrrrrrrrrt. Frt. Fr. F A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A RRRRRT! Phoot.

And his colleagues will still say "Jonah's point is interesting" and then shift the topic.

CONSERVATIVES SAY THE DARNEDEST THINGS 1: "That's why the Post story upsets me. It intimates a 'Screw you' to the socials that is very far from the Rudy I know."

Perhaps what Andy McCarthy means is, the Rudy he knows wouldn't say "Screw you," he'd say "Fuck you," or maybe "Fuck you, bitches, up the ass with a nightstick." That's just the sort of warm. lovable guy he is.

The whole NRO hard-on for Giuliani is hilarious, anyway. Obviously, like me, they expect Saint Rudy to start full-on pandering to the social conservatives any second now. But he keeps holding out -- probably just because he loves giving the back of his hand to people who need something from him -- so the NROniks keep making excuses for him: He didn't mean to hurt you! Not the Rudy I know!

Again, I expect the son of a bitch will eventually reveal that the Virgin came to him in dreams and told him to repeal Roe v. Wade, if this is the cost of the nomination. But I have no stake in his conversion, so it troubles me not.

SHORTER ANDY McCARTHY: Don't call it a lie -- say it was something that could conceivably have been true.

(Then, later, bitch about moral relativism.)

SHORTER OLE PERFESSER: Climate science and the survival of future generations are not as important as my hatred of liberals.

THANK YOU FOR HOLDING ME UP. Finished the run of Los Angeles last night. After three months' involvement with this project, I feel a bit lonesome now that it's done. Mostly I'm a writer, and normally detachment is something I cherish. But working on a play pulled me much further out of myself than I'm used to. For weeks, crowding into a little box stage right, waiting for my cue with a bunch of actors -- have you ever eaten with one? -- was a major annoyance. Now I miss it.

That's one of the amazing things about theatre: it breeds massive egos yet relies upon collaboration. To be part of it, you have to amplify yourself sufficiently to be seen and heard above the common run of humanity -- and then subsume yourself in the shared vision of a play. We were lucky to have a grand vision, and we all worked hard to realize it. Everyone in the show labored to elevate his or her colleagues -- and in so doing we were all exalted.

All that's left now is the kudos, so: If you want to see good theatre, The Flea is always a safe bet; if you want to follow an exciting new playwright, Julian Sheppard is well worth trailing; Adam Rapp is a gee-nee-us; and, if you ever get a chance to play a scene with Katherine Waterston, take it -- it's like playing Horse with Michael Jordan, if Jordan conducted you into the lane and boosted you up on his shoulders so you could dunk. These people lifted me beyond my talents because generosity is included among their talents. May you, in whatever field of endeavor you choose to contend, come across such like.