Tuesday, October 21, 2014

SHUT UP AND... SAY, WHAT IS IT THAT YOU DO EXACTLY?

Well, I see conservatives are bitching that the Met dared to put on a well-regarded John Adams opera called The Death of Klinghoffer. Plenty of Zhdanovites to choose from, but let's go with John Podhoretz; he's been awful a long time without notice. He accuses the Met of trying to stir "controversy" with the 23-year-old opera:
The point is not that “The Death of Klinghoffer” shouldn’t be performed. Fine, let it be performed. When it comes to anti-Semitism, “The Merchant of Venice” is far worse. But then let it be protested as well without whining.
Because if you protest our protesting, it's whining; if we protest your protesting (say, in Ferguson), it's just reasoned debate.
No one gainsays the question when people protest the staging of “The Merchant of Venice,” because every honest person acknowledges what is profoundly offensive about it even as they admit it is an undeniably great work.
As witnessed by all the celebrity wingnuts protesting whenever The Merchant of Venice plays. Whoops, sorry, no Palestinians in that one! (Maybe he means this.)
Perhaps there are people who can honestly argue “The Death of Klinghoffer” is a work so aesthetically vital every culturally literate person must see it or be deemed a Babbitty boob.
Remember, whenever you make a case for a work of art and John Podhoretz doesn't like it, what you're really doing is insulting simple, salt-of-the-earth folk like John Podhoretz.
No, what they wanted was a nice, comforting, fake controversy, one of those controversies that makes something seem larger and more relevant. This is a violation of the true aesthetic purpose of an arts institution.
Spoken like a guy who used to review movies over a little meter that showed how "left" and "right" they were.

You know how you can recognize propaganda from other kinds of bad writing? By the inescapable sensation that it couldn't have made any sense even if its author had actually tried.

UPDATE. "I've never seen The Death of Klinghoffer, and the fact that Rudolph Giuliani has valiantly joined the protesters is not convincing enough for me to oppose its performance," says mortimer 2000 in comments. "Has Donald Trump weighed in yet? His take is always much more persuasive."

To Podhoretz's charge that the Met's staging is "a violation of the true aesthetic purpose of an arts institution," tigrismus answers, "It's the Metropolitan Opera. Their 'true aesthetic purpose' is to perform opera. Which they did." Sorry, comrade, the new idea is that all citizen-art will first be approved by rightwing fussbudgets -- maybe in this case we can call them anti-social justice warriors. Of course, as coozeldad reminds us, such a protocol would drastically reduce the available options: "These morons top out at Richard Strauss or whatever they can hum along to. Anything other than that is art fags."

Lulz also to cole -- "Can't wait to read Kevin Williamsons's review! I hope it involves plenty of phone-throwing!" -- but really, as usual the commenters have my own work beat, go look.

Monday, October 20, 2014

BUTCHING IT UP.

As he's the king of the rightbloggers, it may be instructive to excerpt a number of Instapundit Gelnn Reynolds' posts from today:
7:00 AM: TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Lehigh Acres woman arrested for sex with 15-year-old... 
7:48 AM: THAT’S DEEPLY DISAPPOINTING: Cathy Young: The Federalist Society Caves to “Rape Culture” Orthodoxy... 
10:38 AM: AS THEY SHOULD. THE NEW POLICY IS A POISON PILL FOR HIGHER EDUCATION. Harvard Profs Hate New Campus Sex Laws... 
12:27 PM: LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: Welcome to Oculus XXX: In-Your-Face 3D is the Future of Porn... 
12:42 PM: TINA BROWN: Women Feel “Unsafe” With Obama... 
1:00 PM: THIS IS UNSURPRISING: Women Prefer Male Bosses Even More Than Men Do... 
2:44 PM: TEACH WOMEN NOT TO LIE ABOUT RAPE! (CONT’D): Woman claims she was sexually assaulted, admits it didn’t happen... 
6:39 PM: FORBES: #GamerGate Is Not A Hate Group, It’s A Consumer Movement. Related: #GamerGate Makes the Left Uncomfortable Because Gamer Gaters Have Adopted the Left’s Tactics... 
9:38 PM: JUSTINE TUNNEY: “The 900 pound elephant in the gamer/sexism debate, is they’re really just attacking autistic people for clumsy social propriety"...

9:47 PM: SHOCKER: Vegetarians Have Much Lower Sperm Counts...
You may perceive a pattern. The Perfesser has never been a fan of women's lib, but in the past has been content to occasionally float fanciful cointelpro, like his wingnut versions of Cosmo, and to dream of robowhores. What else could he do? Electorally, he was outnumbered. But this election season, with the Democrats' war-on-women strategy growing long in the tooth, the Perfesser seems to see an opening, and to believe that the Angry Nerds of G-gate will bring some fresh energy to the Lost Cause, if they can be spurred to action by tales of virago manrape, lesbo-liberal anti-fuck squads, and such like. Either that, or he figures the midterms are a cinch for the Republicans, and hopes he can convince them afterwards that he delivered an important constituency, one that should be rewarded with an Anti-Witchcraft Amendment or something like that.

The rest of his posts are mostly about Ebola, which just makes it perfect.

UPDATE. The night of the following day: "21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Why I Visit Prostitutes," "SHE SHOULD HAVE BEEN MORE CAREFUL ABOUT BODILY FLUIDS, I GUESS: Monica Lewinsky: I was 'patient zero' in Internet bullying," etc.

Thursday, October 16, 2014

EVERYTHING OLD IS NUTS AGAIN.

We seem to be entering a Republican retro phase. For one thing, just like in '01 the GOP brethren are all keen for Boots on the Ground in the Middle East (Operation 'What Quagmire?'). They're even talking about WMD and citing the New York Times as evidence. Somewhere Judy Miller is laughing her ass off.

Also, a scant six years after capitalism shit the global financial bed, we're seeing a resurrection of capitalism-rocks boosterism straight out of the Reagan era. Regulate financial institutions? Hmmph! scoffs Veronique de Rugy, veteran richie apologist, at the Daily Beast. "Regulators are often captured by the industry they regulate at the expense of everyone else," so let the banks police themselves, just as corruption among the cops means we should leave street gangs free to sort out their own affairs. (Talk about little platoons!)

Hernando de Soto in the Wall Street Journal actually ties Yay Capitalism to ISIS:
As the U.S. moves into a new theater of the war on terror, it will miss its best chance to beat back Islamic State and other radical groups in the Middle East if it doesn’t deploy a crucial but little-used weapon: an aggressive agenda for economic empowerment... 
As anyone who’s walked the streets of Lima, Tunis and Cairo knows, capital isn’t the problem -- it is the solution.

"I get a closer, cleaner decapitation with Gillette!"

De Soto tells us that Shining Path was defeated in Peru mainly by capitalism ("These new habits of mind helped us to beat back terror in Peru and can do the same, I believe, in the Middle East and North Africa"), and only incidentally by increased force of arms and oh yeah, authoritarian rule funded by the U.S. via tariff relief and narco-war military aid. Well, at least in this case there's no functional democratic tradition to topple, and the next wave of Chicago Boys can implement their Shock and Awe Doctrine with a clear conscience, assuming some friendly unipolar superpower can keep their offices from being blown up by whoever replaces ISIS (but what are the chances? We'll be greeted as entrepreneurs!).

Speaking of entrepreneurs, here's Reihan Salam at Slate with "In Praise of Amazon -- Jeff Bezos’ company is not the problem with American capitalism. It’s the solution to our economy’s ills" -- and boy, doesn't that call to mind "you mark my words, [it] will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA." Salam thinks we don't give enough credit to our Titans of Industry:
Most of us believe that patents—legal monopolies that entitle you to all of the benefits from your invention for a limited period of time—are an OK idea because you have to give people some ex ante incentive to do the hard work of creating new things. You and I might both believe that the U.S. patent system has gotten way out of hand, but it’s hard to argue that patents are always a terrible idea. But what about the incentive to engage in the kind of complex coordination that creates enormous value, that raises productivity and delivers lowers prices, that can't actually be patented?
There's something wonderful about Salam having to hurriedly gin up some respect for the patent system so he can use it to show the littlebrains how important intellectual property is -- you dopes love this so-called "inventor" who just wants to clean up the environment or some junk, well how about someone who invented a way to crush his competition and capture markets? Shouldn't he get a fancy certificate, too, along with protection from the FTC?

Next they'll all start wearing red suspenders and smoking cigars again.

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

INEPT EVEN AT SPREADING PANIC.

One of our most esteemed conservative writers approaches the important subject of Ebola:
While disposing of a body in a mass grave, one man in a hazmat suit turns to another and asks, “When did we run out of body bags?” 
“Two days ago.” 
Fortunately, the scene is only from the movie Contagion, though it’s probably close enough to what is going on in parts of West Africa right now.
Surprise, it's National Review legacy pledge Jonah Goldberg, talking about something he understands (a stupid movie) and something he doesn't (everything else, except maybe delis with the best deals on Cheetos and Mom's List of Names of Librul Fascists I Can Use). Boy, I bet West Africa's like that movie Contagion -- not very popular and it stinks, amirite!

After some pro-forma slurs on Gwyneth Paltrow, Goldberg suggests that liberal Hollyweird has been covering for Obama fake-epidemic-wise:
Contagion broke away from the shackles of the genre. Ross Douthat put it well in an essay for National Review, calling it a “pro-establishment thriller.” Government officials, the scientists, even the military were all competent and determined to do the right thing. 
It was a fascinating departure from the speak-truth-to-power cinema of the Bush years and even Hollywood’s paranoia in the Clinton years. (In the movie version of The X-Files, FEMA was a villainous cabal.)...

Given the timing, I think it’s no accident Hollywood produced Contagion. After all, Obama was going to restore faith in government.
Thus were the lofo sheeple lulled into a false sense of security by a liberal disaster movie. But now we know the CDC is stupid because some people in Texas got Ebola.
We now have our own version of Contagion playing out in real time.
From the Wikipedia on Contagion: "The Minnesota National Guard arrives to quarantine the city... Meanwhile, the death toll reaches 2.5 million in the U.S. and 26 million worldwide..." The current Ebola situation in America is more like Terms of Endearment than Contagion.
The disease is different, of course, and so is the response. Still...
Just wait a second and contemplate the Oh For Fuck's Sakeness of that.
...Still, I have little doubt that the real-life players at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institutes of Health are as well-intentioned as their cinematic versions.
What the fuck does that even mean? That's like saying, "Oprah Winfrey is not really like Lizzie Borden. Still, I'm sure she has nice table manners, just like Lizzie Borden."
But they aren’t nearly as reassuring. They keep telling us they know what can’t happen right up until the moment it happens. They put the theory of their expertise ahead of the facts on the ground...
In other words, unprecedented event is unprecedented, so scientific protocol is worthless and we're all going to die like in that movie. I know some scribble has to occasionally appear under Goldberg's name from time to time, but there are so many wingnuts trying to panic the country with Ebola now that I assume conservative movement leaders take it seriously as a propaganda theme -- aren't they concerned that Goldberg's clowning might spoil it?

UPDATE. In comments, mortimer2000 brings us back to 2006, when Goldberg was telling us to "Give Bush a Break" over Katrina:
And of course there were real tragedies involved in that disaster. But you know what? Bad stuff happens during disasters, which is why we don't call them tickle-parties... 
Long before Katrina, New Orleans was a dysfunctional city in a state with famously corrupt and incompetent leadership, many of whose residents think that it is the job of the federal government to make everyone whole...
It's not as if he's completely inconsistent -- in both cases, he clearly can't give a shit about the people who are suffering.

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

HOW DOES HE DO IT?

At National Review, Jay Nordlinger quotes himself:
One day, no one thought of gay marriage (or few did). The next day, “civil unions” were the far-out, progressive position. The day after that, if you favored civil unions but not gay marriage, you were a Klansman. A Nazi. That’s where we are now. Try refusing to bake a cake for a gay wedding, or refusing to rent your hall for such a wedding. Just try it.
As enraged as Nordlinger is because you can't discriminate against gay couples, he is more enraged that Obama and Biden changed their minds on the subject:
Running in 2012, of course, both Obama and Biden sang a different tune. They had had an epiphany or something. (Is “epiphany” too religious a word for our modern society?) 
Here’s the grating thing: They scorn people who are against gay marriage as, basically, Klansmen and Nazis. The blink of an eye ago, they themselves were against gay marriage (officially)! But now the people who hold that same position — the Obama-Biden position until May 2012 — are Klansmen and Nazis?
I suppose someone called opponents of gay rights Nazis and/or Klansmen, but this is the first I've heard that Obama and Biden did so. Anyone got the link?

In a later post, Nordlinger again:
I watched the Kentucky Senate debate last night — the debate between Mitch McConnell and Alison Lundergan Grimes. I am a partisan Republican and an admirer of McConnell. Even if I were not, however, I think I would have the same view...
After that, I should have known better than to keep reading.
Grimes was a robot, and an often nasty one. She was scarcely a human being.
Why, this is the kind of reductive language I expect from Klansmen and Nazis!

Both posts end with Nordlinger weeping that politics is too dirty for him. Well, I'm glad something is. In addition to these deathless insights, Nordlinger does articles: This is from his latest one:
But I must say, I find it increasingly difficult to read things on the Internet. I click on an article, and I’m not taken to the article: I’m taken to an ad instead. Then there is this experience: Loud music will suddenly start playing...
Jonah Goldberg at least has family connections. I assume Nordlinger has lurid pictures of Buckley locked away somewhere; nothing else explains his persistence.

Monday, October 13, 2014

LIKE THE WAR ON SCIENCE, ONLY DUMBER.

National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins, probably annoyed that Republicans who couldn't give two shits about medical research are whooping up Ebola like it's an STD Obama is giving to white women, came out and said that budget cuts to the NIH have adversely impacted their development of a vaccine.

The response from the rocket scientists at Twitchy, Michelle Malkin's troll factory, is that Collins is a "fool" and a stoopid egghead just trying to "exploit this outbreak to get more funding" for his precious NIH but news flash Mr. Bigbrain Twitchy goin' VIRAL with a hashtag (#TookMoneyFromEbolaResearch) that will alert the sheeple to what really robbed your stupid science-people boondoggle:
Not mentioned: The $3 trillion Iraq war which, if Republicans get their way, will soon be going for 4.

Twitchy's hashtag has indeed been picked up by other operatives, and will soon educate the masses thus:


The portion of the electorate that is not screaming EBOLA WE ALL GON DIE through beaks stuffed with lavender will, I am sure, see right through this nonsense. But we need a majority! (travelling music)

Friday, October 10, 2014

FRIDAY ROUND-THE-HORN.

•   The Nobel Peace Prize just awarded to Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzay (the latter of whom was famous shot by Taliban creeps for daring to go to school) has become, as everything in the world does sooner than later, an excuse for trolling prior NPP winner Barack Obama by conservatives and libertarians (but I repeat myself). The low-water mark (so far) can be found at American Thinker where, after some standard-issue anti-Obama arghblargh by Rick Moran, major Thinker Thomas Lifson is allowed a "dissent" in which he denigrates the Award as an affirmative-action participation trophy:
Yes, this is not as terrible as awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama based on nothing (unless you count being half black), but that is not the same as getting it right... 
Neither of these young women have anything to do with peace or fraternity between nations. Even though they inhabit two nations with a long history of mutual antagonism.
The Nobel Committee has hijacked the Prize, and now awards it to anybody that semi-plausibly can be identified with some sort of good works. It has become a PC award, and, as in the case of Yassir Arafat, has gone to monsters, or, as in the case of Jimmy Carter, people who have made the world a worse place. 
Instead of patting the Nobel Committee on the back we should be mocking them for mush-headed egotism in their deviation from the explicit instructions of Alfred Nobel.
Yeah, better it should go to guys like Teddy Roosevelt and Henry Kissinger. This is one of those occasions where "Christ, what an asshole" is both the most appropriate response and woefully insufficient.

•   Torture enthusiast Andrew C, McCarthy is pushing #Benghazi again via a front group's open letter to Trey Gowdy. McCarthy has been very open about wanting to impeach Obama for oh why not; in this case, the argument boils down to Leon Panetta's talking smack about Obama, let's get him on the witness stand ("the need for such an inquiry has become both indisputable and even more urgent"). I suppose he'll do it again when the Postmaster General puts out a book. Meanwhile Jonah Goldberg does his bit in the midst of a fart-filled flogging of the Secret Service scandalette:
Neither answer excludes the other, and both speak volumes about this White House’s problems. The underlying scandal is fairly minor. But if the White House would falsify records and lie to the public about this, is it really so hard to imagine that it would deceive the public – and Congress – about larger issues like, say, Benghazi?
Get used to it: When the Republicans take the Senate, it's gonna be this 24 hours a day.

•    On a happier note, I have added two blogs to the "Forget About Politics" sidebar that may give you some pleasure, both by former colleagues at the Old Firm. Life along bumpy dirt roads started as a series of Facebook posts by one colleague (who for some reason wants to be known as josegarcia333) about his upbringing in Texas and Mexico; he eventually realized he had more to say than Facebook could accommodate. You know how, once in a great while, someone starts talking about their childhood and you realize they're not just running a highlight reel but actually telling a story? That's this. Also added, lutheran liar looks at life, by Alice Henry Whitmore, ace copywriter and in this venue a composer of bagatelles which always brighten my day and might yours; here's an example. The most durable thing in writing etc.

•    Comity coffee break over -- everyone back on your heads! PJ Media kingpin and crackpot Roger L. Simon:
It’s time for Republicans to give serious thought to what happens if they win the Senate and House this November, as it looks increasingly that they will. While not exactly Pyrrhic, this victory will present a whole range of potential problems and traps that could negatively affect this country’s future and the world. And as we know, we are living in precarious times. 
Barack Obama is a man unaccustomed to losing. Life has been exceptionally kind to him, sailing, as he did, through balmy Oahu sunsets, college, law school and career on into the presidency with scarcely a bump... 
This man is angry but highly unlikely to go into an anger management program. Imagine what will happen after November. We could be looking at behavior that would fit the very definition of “acting out,” anti-social but on a global scale. And he still has two more years in office...
Don't tease us, Rog, tell us how specifically Obama's gonna go mental!
The Environmental Protection Agency could become a virtual American gestapo...
Shit, I knew I should have changed out my lightbulbs! Oh well, at least the camps will be smoke-free.

Thursday, October 09, 2014

WHEN WE FAILED TO INVADE RED CHINA, IT WAS LIKE KILLING MLK ALL OVER AGAIN.

This Jeffrey Lord conniption at The American Spectator is inspired by that Bill Maher/Ben Affleck controversy. Most of it is grrroot, I hates me a mooslim, but are you ready for the really crazy bit? All right, Igor: Release... the bats!
And what were those freedom riders and other civil rights leaders of the day asking for? They demanded what we now call “boots on the ground.” Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy responded to various crises in places like Little Rock, Arkansas, and Oxford, Mississippi, by sending in those boots — the National Guard. Various segregation hot beds targeted by civil rights protesters were flooded with federal marshals. When dogs and fire hoses were loosed on peaceful demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama, or a church was bombed killing four little girls, or when the Bloody Sunday at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, occurred — with demonstrators being beaten to a pulp in full view of the cameras — the demand from Americans for action rose even higher. When three civil rights workers were yanked from their cars, murdered and their bodies stuffed in an earthen dam? When a Detroit housewife named Viola Liuzzo was shot to death as she drove a black fellow-civil rights worker to their next stop? As with the reaction today to the videotaped beheadings of American journalists, American public opinion angrily rallied for action.
Record scratch -- cross ya neck! No, you didn't hallucinate it -- Lord just compared the American civil rights movement to our latest skirmish in the War on Whatchamacallit.
What is the difference between all those Klan lynchings and the horrendous murders of “non-believers” in Islam committed by jihadists? One group committed its crimes in the name of racial superiority, and the other today commits its savage acts in the name of religious superiority.
Also, one was right here in the fucking United States and the other is in the Mesopotamian wreckage of our last few idiotic Middle East safaris. Nonetheless Lord insists they're the same thing, to be fought the same way, and brings all his rhetorical skills to the argument, e.g.:
Can you imagine the outcry if the authorities then or today — classified or re-classified the murder of Emmett Till as simply a case of “domestic violence”?
Which is pretty funny, considering that Lord is also the author of the classic AmSpec article, "TRAYVON, SHARPTON, AND HOMOPHOBIA: Did anti-gay prejudice lead Trayvon Martin to attack George Zimmerman?"

Still, I suppose we should be grateful that Lord is pretending to support civil rights, as he does from time to time, if only as a subterfuge; vice pays to virtue and all that.

PLEASE KILL ME.

Remember Kevin D. Williamson calling for women who have abortions to be executed by hanging? We can now top it. (Who says the spirit of competition is dead in America?)

Ladies and gentlemen, at American Thinker, Laura McCall:
National Review Online roving correspondent Kevin Williamson recently tweeted an uncomfortable opinion about the status of post-abortive women. He feels they should be prosecuted for first-degree murder. His recommended instrument of justice is a bit archaic for our times, but I will leave that aside for now. 
I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Williamson, even though I do not possess any formal education in ex post facto law, retributive justice, or even the organization and gradation of moral theories.

I agree because I had an abortion. That’s all I need to know.
Don't worry, she doesn't go into any of those agonized self-inspections one expects from abortion journalism -- in fact, she rather abruptly switches roles, from penitent to prosecutor:
Mr. Williamson is picking up the pro-life argument exactly where it keeps stalling out: at the place that occupies the next logical step in the sequence... If there are no societal consequences for such heinous behavior, what are we saying about the nature and gravity of the crime? About ourselves?
I would answer, "what it says about the nature and gravity of the crime is, it's not a crime; and about ourselves, good for us." YMMV.
The fact is, abortion is first-degree murder and many women should be prosecuted for it. Of course, as with any judicial process, there will always be extenuating circumstances and exceptions.
Come on, Laura, don't go wobbly on us now!
The people who can most effectively make this argument are women like me. We have a problem, though. The denial that helped us maintain an equilibrium following our crime also put us in a place we should not be. Many of us stayed there. We went on to marry and start families, and now they must be protected. We ingrained ourselves into the fabric of normal, everyday life, with its relationships, responsibilities and institutions. We constantly battle and weigh our aching desire to expose to others where we really belong. But who will listen? Who will adjudicate?
I will! Cut the sob-story, sister! I've seen your kind before. The killers all come cryin' to me, "Spare me, Your Honor, I got a wife and family!" But in the eyes of The (Ridiculous Fake) Law, you're still a lousy abortion-murderess, and you're gonna get what's comin' to ya. But you're right, hanging's archaic, so we'll give you lethal injection; and if it hurts more than it's supposed to, just remember: it's a market solution!

If this one fetuscide isn't enough to get her on the gurney, there are some other local crimes the DA might like her for:
Meanwhile, dichotomy abounds. This past summer, a gentleman in my neighboring community changed his morning day-care routine; he accidentally left his infant son in a sweltering car for hours, and the child died. The father was prosecuted. An acquaintance of a coworker sits in our local prison for having shaken his infant following a sleepless night of colic and crying. The child died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Dad is a married man in a professional career who has no prior criminal record or history of substance abuse.
Two suspicious deaths in the same jurisdiction, and no one looked at the self-abortionist in their midst? Reopen the files, I say. If we're going to kill people for having abortions, we might as go whole hog and profile them, too.

UPDATE. From McCall's comments section:

Wednesday, October 08, 2014

LET'S MAKE IT NICE AND SIMPLE.

Let's see if we really need to read Charles C.W. Cooke's latest on George Will not getting to speak at Scripps University.
This is the college’s prerogative, certainly. George Will has no right to speak at Scripps. Nevertheless...
Thank you. Next!

I really don't see what's so hard about this. This is even less on the line than the cases involving all those millionaires were not allowed to keep their positions just because the PR wind shifted and -- oh yeah -- their contracts said they couldn't. Liberty University doesn't have to let me speak at their events, and Scripps doesn't have to let Will speak at theirs. Too bad for both of us.

Call me when they show this kind of interest when some poor person loses his job.

Tuesday, October 07, 2014

THE VIRTUE OF CLUELESSNESS.

I have noticed that, while once Ayn Rand fans boldly lorded over the littlebrains the wisdom of their hero, and were forever threatening to Go Galt, lately they've grown quieter and more defensive. Maybe they flew a little too close to the sun with their 47%/"looters and moochers" talk in 2012, from which waves of mockery (some of it from Obama!) ensued, and now even Paul Ryan has forsaken Rand. Her acolytes have retreated to worship secretly in their catacombs, only rarely emerging to issue apologetics, such as that Robert Tracinski piece about how Rand characters were not all about money but actually on a transcendent quest for love.

The latest of these, by Hunter Baker at The Federalist, offers more of the same -- the title, "The Devil And Ayn Rand: Extending Christian Charity To John Galt’s Creator," tells you most of what you need to know. But it also has one of my all-time favorite Randsplaining paragraphs, and it's at least as good out of context:
At this point it makes sense to return to the famous scene from “Dirty Dancing” in which Rand’s accusers put words in her mouth and leave no room for response. “Some people count and some don’t.” The implication, given the class dynamics in the film, is that the rich have worth and the poor do not. But Rand would have been outraged at the thought. In her economy, a shiftless man of wealth would rank well below a blue-collar welder who performs his craft with excellence (and probably also a talented dancer at a resort).
I would love to hear Baker's Randian exegesis on the walk-off challenge from Zoolander and how it shows the refinement of craft in the spirit of competition.

NOT LIVING IN THE REAL WORLD.

This CM Phillips thing I found at American Thinker resembles other modern conservative hissy-fits in which the Obamaization of America is blamed on something resembling linguistics. (You know the schtick: because liberalism is inherently awful, indeed anathematic, it can't possibly be its policies  that attract people to it, so its popularity must be due to some Jedi mind trick.)

But Phillips' essay is distinguished in two respects. First, while ordinarily these guys cite Saul Alinsky as the primal trickster with whose strategies liberals bamboozle the weak-minded, Phillips cites George Lakoff, who may be even less read than Alinsky, even by those conservatives who have pretty much memorized Alinsky in their struggle to prove he's the Mr. Big of contemporary liberal politics. (Maybe Phillips is just showing off for his friends.)

Most of  Phillips' numbered examples of how "liberals frame issues in narratives" which "undermines conservative’s positions" are  typical gibberish -- they call us "tea baggers," Phillips fumes, which is a "sexually offensive" slur on "decent Americans" who are the "moral opposite of the crude, law-breaking left’s Occupy Wall Street crowd," arrgh blaargh.

But then he gets to a few that I find instructive, because they're so obvious about something that usually gets soft-pedaled:
6) Trickle down -- The “trickle down” frame paints a picture of money trickling into the economy as the rich pay for their indulgences. This is just wrong. The rich are usually successful business owners... 
5) Capitalism -- Capitalism was Marx and Lenin's derogatory term for the free enterprise or entrepreneurial system. Even conservatives use this term too frequently... 
3) 1% -- The narrative is: “the top 1% have all the money, so there is little left for other 99%.” The top 1% pays more in taxes than the bottom 90%, but that is not enough for the Democrats. They attack the 1%, and if the greedy Democrats could, they would tax the heck out of the top 49%. The other 51% would keep them in office.
Notice that? Phillips got through all of these economic topics without once mentioning the global financial collapse of 2008, not to mention the slow-motion collapse of the American economy in the preceding years, from which we all continue to suffer.

If people are mentioning capitalism in something other than respectful terms, it's not because George Lakoff told them to, but because of what are regrettably still current events: While capitalism may have been possible to overlook when it was just quietly picking our pockets, it became impossible to overlook when it started breathing hard, thrashing, and foaming at the mouth. And the rich were not an issue until the ranks of the poor and verge-of-poor grew to include nearly all of us, and many more  than previously began to recognize that the 1% were not just lovable drunks from Dudley Moore movies, but an interest group whose interest ran directly and sometime violently counter to their own.

Yet Phillips can't even acknowledge that. To guys like him, nothing really exists except the epochal struggle of good conservatives and evil liberals -- not in Iraq, not in New Orleans, and certainly not in the market. It's like what they think about charges of racism -- that's just some kind of word you liberals are using; it doesn't have to do with anything real.

I remember when it was the liberals who were supposed to be the head-in-the-clouds, disconnected-from-reality types. They were assumed to have spent too much time looking at books but not enough time seeing life as it is -- you know, like Meathead on All in the Family. But as the ranks of wingnut welfare recipients have swollen to feed vast online opinion factories, they seem to have taken over meathead production. Another market triumph! 

Sunday, October 05, 2014

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN...

...is not at the Village Voice this week. Nor will it be hereafter. Village Voice Media informs me they're cancelling the Rightbloggers column forthwith for budgetary reasons. I swear, when I went by the Voice offices each week to pick up my sacks of Kruggerrands, I thought those malnourished children were some kind of joke. Apparently not. Things is tough in journalism!

Well, six years is a good run. Now it's time to start suffering and write that symphony.

In any event, I had a column ready, so here it is, on my own premises: It's about the Ebola, and how Obama snuck it in America's back door because he hates this fucking country and wants to see it overthrown by radical Islam, which totally rocks.

Have a look, have fun, and if you have comments leave them here. As for next week and the weeks to come, I'll figure something out.

Friday, October 03, 2014

FRIDAY ROUND-THE-HORN.

•    Like Lorenzo Semple DuBois says in The Producers, they try; man, how they try -- Tim Cavanaugh of National Review:
Vice President of the patriarchy Joe Biden used a common anti-woman epithet to describe the strains of being a second in command during a visit to Harvard University Thursday. The misogynistic slur was treated as a harmless bit of Joe-will-be-Joe japery by local media. 
“Isn’t it a bitch, that Vice President thing?” Biden said after student Sietse Goffard identified himself as student council vice president at Harvard — whose former president Larry Summers famously said in 2005 that women might be underrepresented in science and engineering due to a “different availability of aptitude at the high end.” (Summers went on to serve on the Obama administration’s economic brain trust but was later beaten by a woman in his quest to become chairperson of the Federal Reserve Bank.) 
In a report on Biden’s use of the term “bitch” — a technical term for a female dog that is frequently used to deny women agency and silence female voices...
The word "bitch" has many meanings: It can also be applied to a person of either gender who whines on and on about insignificant shit.

•   I speak roughly of rightbloggers, but in reflective moments I think: Surely they have some decent qualities. For example, now that there's a visitor to our shores suffering from Ebola virus in a Dallas hospital, they wouldn't use his misfortune to try and drum up panic among the ignorant -- well, okay, maybe some of the stupider ones would, but surely not the big names in the field?
And while I’d like to know more about how this freelancer may have caught it, he’s a westerner, presumably aware of the dangers and how to avoid infection, not treating people with Ebola, and he still got infected. That could happen to anybody, of course, but it makes me wonder if this strain of Ebola is easier to catch than we think.
I take it back, they're all scum.

•   Speaking of which, I see that asshole Matthew Continetti has honest-to-God  written something called "The Case for Panic," in which he uses the traditional conservative premise that government can't do anything right to encourage Ebola pants-pissing among his co-delusionists.  He even closes with this:
Know hope? That’s passé.

Know fear.
I have to give him credit -- that's as eloquent a summation of modern conservative philosophy as we're ever likely to see.

Thursday, October 02, 2014

BRINGING A PUTTY KNIFE TO A CULTURE WAR.

Last week I mentioned some kulturkampf krap from the folks at libertarian flagship Reason. They are apparently serious about pursuing this editorial direction and have enlisted Meredith Bragg and Nick Gillespie to devise a list of "The 5 Best Libertarian TV Shows Ever," available as a video (no fucking way) and as text -- here is a sample:
The Wire (2002-2008). Widely considered one of the greatest TV shows of all time, this Baltimore-based drama has been called a visual novel that explores and analyzes class, race, and politics from multiple viewpoints and perspectives. Different seasons keyed in on different institutions—schools, police, the media—and the ways in power was exercised and abused, often in the name of helping the underprivileged.
I assume this is just Gillespie's way of getting back at David Simon.

Read it and weep -- or read my three alternative entries. And devise some of your own in comments!
Twenty-One. Not only did this pioneering game show feature the sort of intellectual feats of strength at which libertarians excel (you should see us at Quizzo Night!), for a brief, magical period (until the statists shut it down) contestants were allowed to freely engage in informal business arrangements with like-minded entrepreneurs -- or, as the littlebrains would say, to cheat -- which made for a more enjoyable entertainment product and demonstrated the cultural superiority of capitalism. 
The Flintstones. Not being acquainted with the work of Hayek and Ricardo, people of the Paleolitic era lived in Rousseauian confusion and squalor. What would the experience of early man have been like if he had access to a capitalist model? The Flintstones answers this question: It would be like early-60s America, but better, because the meddling hand of the state would be nowhere to be seen. While business thrives, crime in Bedrock is non-existent; Fred and Barney refrain from predation and rapine because their behavior is positively influenced by engagement in "little platoons" such as the Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes, and of course by the threat of deprivation should Mr. Slate fire them from the quarry, the "safety net" not having been invented because you can't make a net out of rocks. Saber-tooth tigers gotta eat something! (Bonus: It's a total rip-off of The Honeymooners, and if it weren't for the whole "intellectual property" racket we'd have lots of quality shows like this.) 
Hannibal. It's a miracle the liberal network NBC allowed this story of a truly free man on the air. Most of us are so ground down by the politically-correct conventions of our age that we can't even begin to know what we want, but Dr. Hannibal Lecter not only knows, he also gets it, and lets neither so-called "morality" nor the bumbling fascist police stop him. At last -- for the first time since Dallas went off the air, a character to whom libertarians can really relate.

Wednesday, October 01, 2014

...UNTIL GOLDBERG WRITES SOMETHING ELSE, PART 3,402.

Bucket-footed press critic Jonah Goldberg thinks he's got a hot one:
I must say, there’s something about the way accused White House intruder Omar Gonzalez is constantly described in the media that bothers me. I keep hearing him called “Army veteran Omar Gonzalez.” It’s true he’s an Army veteran. So I’m not disputing the fact.
Oh Jesus.
But I have a little trouble with the relevance. I know there is a cottage industry out there trying to hype up the threat of returning vets as the real source of domestic terrorism (we all remember the DHS-report controversy).
That's why, every time a veteran knocks over a liquor store, the liberal media runs his mugshot next to a picture of Tim McVeigh.
But it’s worth noting that Gonzalez’s alleged motivation was to tell the president the atmosphere is collapsing. In other words, while PTSD — or some other mental defect — may be to blame for his delusions, describing him as “Army veteran Omar Gonzalez” doesn’t really tell us anything about his motivations. It doesn’t fit into the “narrative” save as evidence that he might have PTSD. But to use “Army veteran” as a euphemism for PTSD sufferer is somewhat obscene.
People think Gonzalez might have PTSD because a family member told reporters he had PTSD. His bizarre post-service actions may reflect a madness independent of post traumatic stress disorder, which is why responsible media and public officials have been pretty good about not saying for sure that he has it -- with the understanding that the modifier "responsible" excludes some people, like Howard Kurtz ("The fact that Gonzalez, a war veteran suffering from PTSD, even made it to the door"), Darrell Issa ("...a crazed, solo, knife-wielding veteran with PTSD..."), et alia.

This is why Goldberg is very careful about decoupling his "calling Gonzalez a veteran, though true, is unfair" charge from his charge that something something media PTSD. He's not smart, but he does possess a certain low animal cunning.

Goldberg goes on --
... But compare all this to the coverage of Alton Nolen... He’s never described as “Muslim Alton Nolen” or “Islamic extremist Alton Nolen.” And that’s probably right. But why is Omar Gonzalez not afforded the same standard? In the case of Nolen, I suspect part of the reason is that the press, like the White House, is very reluctant to say anything that might cast aspersions on the larger Muslim community.
This is bullshit. The New York Times, like every other news source on the planet, has told readers the guy is a Muslim. (The Times said "Mr. Nolen is a recent convert to Islam," which is the same thing as "Muslim Alton Nolen," unless what you're going for is some sort of pejorative lilt a la "Dirty Dingus Magee" or "Evil Roy Slade.")

As for calling him “Islamic extremist Alton Nolen," that would be much further out than suggesting Gonzalez might have PTSD -- though (as detailed in my recent Village Voice column, which you really should read or at least click on) there are plenty of media outlets that are not only doing that, but also asserting that Nolen is part of a jihad army, fanning out across the heartland on the orders of some Islamic Mr. Big.

Goldberg's big close:
That’s perfectly defensible (though calling the beheading simple “work place violence” is indefensible Orwellian nonsense).
Nolen went to his workplace and committed violence. Newspeak!
But shouldn’t the larger community of Army vets get at least the same deference?
"Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we're not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America" was funny in the movie, Jonah, but as you may have noticed at parties, if you want to be asked back you're gonna need some fresher material.

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

LET US CLASP HANDS OVER THE BLOODY CHASM.

Ole Perfesser Glenn Reynolds thinks Obama should pick a Republican for Attorney General because bipartisanship:
Perhaps President Obama — and, for that matter, future presidents — should take a lesson from the way we handle the Department of Defense, and apply it to the Department of Justice: Consider naming someone outside his own party as attorney general... 
Having a Defense secretary from the other party makes war bipartisan, and reassures members of the opposition that the powers of the sword aren't being abused.
Defense -- you mean Chuck Hagel? I remember that confirmation fight -- here are some typically bipartisan Instapundit posts by Glenn Reynolds from that time:
CHUCK HAGEL: “Let the Jews Pay For It.” Related: Obama Expected To Pick Hagel.

WHY IS CHUCK HAGEL STILL IN THE MIX? [quote from Jennifer Rubin screed about Hagel's unacceptable positions, including "poisonous animosity toward the Jewish state."] Personnel is policy. If Obama appoints Hagel, you’ll know what his policy is, regardless of what he says. 
CHUCK HAGEL: It was a war for oil! [quote from Billy Kristol screed about how Hagel's "far left" and "vulgar and disgusting charge" proves he's a peacenik nogoodnik; "Is President Obama really going to nominate this man as secretary of defense?"] Well, really, isn’t Hagel a perfect fit?

SO HOW’D THAT HAGEL HEARING GO? “It is very clear from the testimony that Sen. Hagel will not be bringing the potato salad to the next Mensa picnic.” And that’s from a Democrat... 
DAMAGED GOODS: Hagel's Brand Suffers from Confirmation Battle. I think the original plan was to nominate a Republican who could take the blame for defense cuts — and actions. I don’t think Hagel can fill that role usefully now, even if he’s confirmed.
Etc. After Hagel got in, Reynolds did posts on him like "JAMES TARANTO ON MILITARY JUSTICE: Hagel’s Science of Logic: The Secretary compounds Obama’s unlawful command influence," and "WITH THINGS FALLING APART ALL AROUND THE WORLD, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel Is Talking About the NFL. UPDATE: From the comments: 'And even there, he’s punching above his weight.'" That last one, by the way, was from nine days ago.

So yeah, reach out, Obama. The Perfesser's got your back.

Their occasional swinging of the bipartisanship incense pot probably doesn't convince much of anyone anymore, but it's always good to be reminded that our cynicism is amply justified by their mendacity.

Speaking of bullshit, guess who agrees with Reynolds, and in the sort of convoluted language that shows he's hoping no one holds him to it:
I'm not sure I want war to be bipartisan but the idea of a Republican AG would really restart any number of conversations that have stalled out or stopped due to acrimony all around.
Ladies and gentlemen, Nick Gillespie for the libertarians, serving their traditional role in these interparty disputes.

Monday, September 29, 2014

CONSERVATIVE (AND LIBERTARIAN) OUTREACH TO WOMEN IS GOING GREAT, CONT.

Last week I mentioned the  spate of  conservative complaints about Emma Watson's very measured feminist speech at the U.N., which apparently spoiled their bedtime Hermione fantasies. Since then, in Time magazine -- a major outlet of what was once called the Liberal Media, for reasons lost to history -- Cathy Young of Reason has delivered the libertarian response. Guess how that goes?
Sorry, Emma Watson, but HeForShe Is Rotten for Men
Until feminism recognizes discrimination against men, the movement for gender equality will be incomplete.
Lots of weeping about "anti-male biases in the court system," and how if a woman beats up a man (as they frequently do) no one sympathizes, whereas if a guy beats up a chick everyone gets bent out of shape, etc. This pretty much comports with what libertarians usually say about women's rights. I wouldn't be surprised if folks started catching on at last that social issues don't mean as much to libertarians as the transfer of wealth from paupers to the deserving rich.

While his colleagues were raging at Watson, Kevin D. Williamson of National Review kicked it old school with a rant about Lena Dunham. the Brooklyn actress who started driving culture warriors crazy during the 2012 campaign, and whom, despite their protestations of disgust with her tattooed ass, they just cain't quit.

Dunham wrote a pamphlet for Planned Parenthood (or, in Williamson’s view, “a gang of abortion profiteers”) called “5 Reasons Why I Vote (and You Should, Too),” spurring his column-length sputter. Mostly it was about  how voting is stupid (“the most shallow gesture of citizenship there is”) because people with whom he disagrees get to do it (and are only doing so “as an act of self-gratification,” not to get candidates elected) and seem at present to outnumber him and his lunatic fringe. But Williamson managed to stuff unchivalrous comments about Dunham in there, too, and plenty of abortion ravings, including an assertion that women have abortions out of a “desire to fit nicely into a prom dress."  "FWIW, I've been dumping of democracy/voting fetishization for almost two decades," cheered Jonah Goldberg in response.

Later Williamson went on Twitter to tell people that women who had abortions should be hanged as murderers. The boy will go far.

Our favorite stray ladyragebit, though, is a line from Bryan Preston at PJ Media. Angered to learn that Alicia Keys was appearing naked for some social justice thing, Preston seethed, “She and the [New York] Times see this as ‘empowering.’ Is it empowering that an insanely successful woman and mother believes that getting naked before the entire world is the best way to draw attention to her cause? Or is it just plain old attention-whoring from her, and sucking up to leftwing celebrities from the New York Times?” Fucking bitches, with their whoring and sucking! 

“Yet here she is,” sneered Preston, “being all empowered. Naked, to push for gun control.” And now, his piece de resistance:
Try confronting an Islamist madman like this.
Message discipline is message discipline -- squads of headchoppers roam America's streets! Even in the midst of ladyrage, there's always time to pick on Muslims.  

Sunday, September 28, 2014

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about Alton Nolan, the mad jihadist of Moore, Oklahoma. The idea this guy is just a nut who happens to be Muslim seems to elude the brethren, who affect to believe that Nolan's attack on his ex-workplace means Oklahoma is now crawling with ISIS sleeper cells. Well, maybe it'll give the boys on the range something to talk about, though I suspect they're too smart to fall for it.

UPDATE. In comments, randomworker: "Now, if someone was selling (at flea markets out of the back of their Impala station wagon) a semi-automatic beheader that could behead up to 20 people before needing a reload, I imagine the bedwetters would be calling for some kind of regulation on that device!"

Friday, September 26, 2014

FRIDAY ROUND-THE-HORN.

•   Though it's been days since Emma Watson's perfectly sensible feminist speech at the U.N., willful misunderstandings keep rolling in from our conservative brothers and sisters. There are, as you would expect, the usual blarhars from local oafs: Watson "hopped on the misogyny-patriarchy-rape-train," says Phil Elmore at WorldNetDaily; Breitbart's Milo Yiannopoulos yammers on about Watson's "figure-hugging overcoat" and "ten-thousand dollar outfits, with jackets cut perfectly to accentuate every curve of her body," apparently to make clear that the bitch is asking for it. But some conservatives put a little spin on their spin, so to speak,  portraying Watson's speech itself as anti-feminist. When Watson said, "Fighting for women's rights has too often become synonymous with man-hating. Feminism, by definition, is the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities," Rush Limbaugh pounced: "Right there she's telling you, feminism, as she learned it, means man-hating, means men are the enemy, means men are predators, rapists, brutes, purse snatchers, muggers and all that." "EMMA WATSON CONCEDES WOMEN 'ARE CHOOSING NOT TO IDENTIFY AS FEMINISTS,'" headlined Breitbart's Tony Lee. Etc. The weirdest bit so far, though, comes from Heather Wilhelm at The Federalist:
...[Watson said,] “I think it is right that I should be able to make decisions about my own body.” (Here, of course, was a bout of wild applause.) “I think it is right that women be involved on my behalf in the policies and decisions that will affect my life.” (Good thing all women think the same!)
In other words, the leftists who hijacked feminism have twisted it to be about female autonomy and basic human rights, whereas it used to be all about the music. They musta got that from Alinsky!

•   As near as I can figure this out: Katy Waldman wrote a column objecting to an A.J. Delgado column about how women make up rape accusations. Later Cathy Young also published a column about how women make up rape accusations. Brendon Bordelon finds the liberal hypocrisy: All three columns appeared at Slate! Thus:
Slate Attacks NR for ‘Crying Rape’ Column, Then Uses Exact Same Headline Months Later
Slate could avoid this sort of thing by not publishing Delgado or Young, both of whom are incredibly awful wingnuts, but then by the rules of conservative victimhood that'd be censoring/oppressing them. You can't win (except in elections).

•   Grim laughs from the American Enterprise Institute (catch the byline):

Whereas Yoo refused to obey the Geneva Conventions, and has no regrets at all. Every time I see that man's name, I get the same feeling that comes over me when the narrator at the end of A Man For All Seasons tells us Richard Rich died in his bed.

•   To me, it's not even so much that Ilya Shapiro compared Eric Holder to George Wallace -- "please proceed, wingnut" is usually my reaction to something like that -- but more that he (or his editor, assuming despite appearances that he has one) removed the reference without acknowledging it. Come on, buddy, you've deprived us of a perfectly hilarious explanation.