MORALITY PLOY.

Shorter Jonah Goldberg: Y'ever notice there are no real heroes on TV or in comics anymore? Not like when you were a kid? Hello? Hello, anyone still there? Farrrt frt frt farrrrt....

In other words, all the young'uns are friggin' and fruggin' and doin' their own thing, baby, and "it’s impossible to predict what Integrity 2.0 will yield — because no society in the history of Western civilization has so energetically and deliberately torn down its classical ideal and replaced it with do-it-yourself morality." Stop the presses! Apparently everyone in the media just recently discovered Nietzche, perhaps in a viral clip from Adult Swim.

Really, that's pretty much it. The essay's other distinguishing feature is a higher-than-usual count of intentional jokes, most of which sound like P.J. O'Rourke failing a competency hearing.

Oh, there is one telling bit -- Goldberg mentions the internet trolls who, not yet having a gamergate to rally 'round, focused their misogynistic rage on Anna Gunn during the run of Breaking Bad:

It got to the point where the actress (Anna Gunn) who portrayed the poor, beleaguered Mrs. White wrote an op-ed for the New York Times complaining about the tsunami of hate aimed at her character, which had spilled onto her in real life as well. In liberal pop culture, this was the equivalent of yelling “I’m telling!” and running to the principal’s office.

?

Gunn blamed the whole thing on sexism. Her complaint may have some marginal merit, but it’s also really, really, really boring. The more interesting explanation (i.e., my explanation) is that “purely formal” integrity is just about the only kind of integrity our popular culture celebrates anymore...

Somebody actually got hurt but tscha, let's get back to the real evil, namely the questionable morality of Game of Thrones characters.

ANNALS OF THE CULTURE WAR, PART O.F.F.S.

Let's see, what's a new movie culture warriors might --

5 Conservative Themes Hidden in Interstellar

Oh for... John Boot, ladies and gentlemen:

3. Christian teaching continues to be immensely powerful. 

Though we won’t go into detail about it, there is an element introduced in the second half of the film that celebrates the story of God sacrificing His only son in order to give salvation to humankind.

Christ imagery in a movie? That's a new one.

4. Climate change isn’t going to doom us. 

Nolan’s Dust Bowl sequences seem to be the latest iteration of the idea that climate change is going to have sweeping consequences. The difference in this film is that, thanks to the confidence and competence of the Cooper character played by McConaughey — his motto is, “We’ll find a way, Professor, we always have” — there isn’t the slightest doubt that Nolan’s view of climate change is that it is simply another of the many environmental situations that man is equipped to cope with...

Just the thing to get people to stop worrying about climate change: Civilization as we know it may be wiped out, but we'll find a wormhole and pull this thing out!

Sometimes I think these things are written on bets -- it's the only possible justification for paying the writers.

UPDATE. Way back on October 30, James Pethokoukis actually wrote a National Review post called "Just What Are the Politics of Christopher Nolan’s New Film, Interstellar?" You hope for his sake and humanity's that he's kidding, but...

Is Nolan making a point about the Common Core? Fiscal austerity? Or just about the belief that we need to focus exclusively on problems here on this planet and forget about space exploration? That last one affects folks on the left and right. You have liberals who think NASA dollars might be better spent on universal pre-K. And just the other day the Federalist ran a piece...

Someone give this guy a Princess Leia doll and a bottle of NyQuil.

TROLL: PAGES FROM A SPORTSMAN'S NOTEBOOK.

On the last post alicublog had a troll infestation -- that is, we had one troll donning multiple identities, which was observable by the IP addresses and by the lack of variation in style. Not that his tone didn't change: He started out kind of funny, then devolved to tired the-real-racist material ("can't be arsed to even mention Mia Love or Tim Scott, because, you know, the narrative"), then finally personal insults ("You are some stupid unemployed loser who edits for a free libtard blog. Definition of libtard loser," "how are your tits," etc).

I don't like to delete comments or ban commenters, but in this case it eventually became necessary -- and required some diligence because the guy kept coming back with new names. But the effort may have been worth it because it yielded this poignant moment:

The need for acknowledgement, and to humble the object of one's obsession by compelling it -- this, let future generations know, is the essence of troll. You're welcome, internet!

FUN WITH WORDS.

I thought I'd seen some far-out iterations of the "liberals are the real racists/sexists" schtick, but Ann Althouse has pushed out the frontiers. Charlie Pierce did a fun election night round-up, full of lively insults ("James Lankford... a red-haired fanatic who believes that welfare causes school shootings.... Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin..."), and Althouse complains:

1. Why is "red-haired" considered acceptable as an insult?

?

2. Why is it considered okay to call attention to what seems to be an eye disorder? Whether something is wrong with Scott Walker's eyes or not, the epithet "goggle-eyed" is disrespectful to all of the people who suffer from conditions like esotropia.

??

Eventually she explains, sort of:

(By the way, "escadrille" is how you say "squadron" or "small squadron" in French. I'll refrain from adding an anti-French kicker, given my attention to political correctness above.)

After running this through BabelFish, I have determined that she means you liberals are all into political correctness (yes you are libtards you like to kiss it and hug it), yet you yourself are being offensive to red-haired people plus squinting is a medical condition etc. Who's the real esotropia-ist now?

I see a bunch of people in the news calling for compromise between the camps, but it's hard to know how to even begin a conversation with people like this.

(She also thinks it's bad to make jokes about hayseeds for some reason. I'm sure glad no one ever told Paul Henning!)

MORNING BETTING LINE OF IMPEACHMENT ARTICLES:

9-1:   Miscegenation with Hitlery
7-1:   Questioning the tax-exempt status of non-partisan Obama-fighting organizations
6-1:   Treason by not sending The Expendables with jet-packs to fight ISIS
5-1:   FEMA camps (special guest appearance by Colin Powell to show us where they are)
4-1:   Treason by making Marines hold umbrellas over him, thus leaving America defenseless
5-3:   Treason by sending Central American child-moocher-soldiers to invade the Confederacy
2-1: #Benghazi
1-3: #Benghazi Plus (e.g., Obama did #Benghazi so he could get with Chris Stevens' boyfriend, for a golf bet, etc.)
1-5:   Resisting arrest

If there's time, we'll also see the Anti-Witchcraft Act, the Mandatory Fracking Amendment, and the National Apology for Reconstruction. But mainly they'll spend the first few months tunneling under the Mall and attaching a giant Hoover to the Treasury to suck public money out of Big Gummint control and into the pockets of their campaign contributors. Priorities!

Ah, my dears, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

UPDATE. Ugh -- okay, who's the person you least want to hear from on this topic? (Besides the troll in the thread, I mean, and I swear I didn't create him just so my brilliant commenters would have something to do.)

Give up? Surprise, it's Megan McArdle, who tells us the President was too high-handed with the Republicans in 2009, instead of generously offering to work with them on their shared goal of providing Americans with a national health care system, and "his presidency has never recovered from that mistake." If only he'd been more conciliatory!

Oh, and according to McArdle Obama's not the only Democrat to blame:

The Tea Party Republicans who unnecessarily brought the government to a halt, and double-unnecessarily cost their own party many key elections, have much to answer for. But the Democrats who helped create them have some accountability, too.

You gotta admit, it takes some crust for a Koch celebrant to blame American politics' biggest astroturf boondoggle on the Democratic Party.

Then McArdle says Obama should now work with the Republicans so Hillary will have an easier time of it in 2016 -- you know, the way Clinton's cooperation with Gingrich paved the way for the Al Gore Administration. Then she waves impeachment like a stick to punish naughty Obama --

The American public might view an impeachment over policy with less distaste than they did an impeachment over intern nookie. And if they remember the lessons of 1998, and decline to take the bait --

[Pause here to ask: Lessons of 1998? Who on God's green earth looks back at the Clinton impeachment and thinks, "God, why didn't we nail him when we had the chance"?] 

-- Obama could find his favorables in a Bush-style free fall that dooms his putative Democratic successor. If I were an adviser, I’d counsel against taking this course. But then, I am cautious by nature.

"Cautious" is a polite word for it.

GOTV.

Election season has brought the usual crop of conservatives telling you that too many people vote so you filthy paupers should desist and to leave the franchise to your betters. In the last ditch, knowing that you won't vote Republican, they may try and steer you toward their deceptive niche brand. But by and large they'd rather you just gave up.

National Review legacy pledge Jonah Goldberg has been doing this routine for years but never gets any better at it. Perhaps sensing his audience has become jaded, this year he's added a hook designed to excite them:

They just can't quit Lena Dunham, see; she's like the anti-Fox Fembot and her very existence, even on the fringes of popular art, enrages them. (I understand Goldberg's second choice was "Why Obama's birth certificate shouldn't be allowed to vote.") National Review even has an actual editorial about Dunham, as if she were ISIS or the Cyprus question.

Back to Goldberg: How's the content? Bet you're sorry you asked:

Dunham says that "voting is kind of a gateway drug to 'getting involved.'" 

This is a widely held view and, as far as I can tell, there is absolutely no truth to it. But even if voting boosted civic participation, the very idea puts the cart before the horse. It is like saying you should buy a car because that way you might learn to drive or take the test and then study for it.

Similarly, it's like reading a book to become smart, which is backwards; everybody knows that only smart people with Van Dykes and designer specs can read books cuz they've been properly educated in liberal fasciology -- try and read without that, and you might learn the wrong things.

Anyway, you know how they feel about you voting -- and in America's redder precincts on Election Day, their message is spread by deeds rather than words. So let's go ahead and vote, then, if only because it pisses off the idiots.

UPDATE. So, when's the impeachment start?

ANNALS OF THE CULTURE WAR, PART 438,283.

Remember in the summer of 2009 when some guys put up Obama/Joker/Socialist posters, took pictures of them, spread them around the internet, and claimed it was about a national wave of resistance to the tyrant Obummer? And how every once in a while they, or someone like them, will put up some more posters, and claim it's "part of a larger campaign by street artists who are filling cities with political messages in opposition to the current administration," except you never see them anywhere but at rightwing websites?

Well, here we go again, except -- record scratch! -- this time it's a different black Democrat:

Blar har, in your face Maxine Waters!

Normally this sort of thing at this time of year is associated with the word "desperation," but Steven Hayward of Power Line has learned a new word, apparently, and is perhaps over-eager to put it to use.

So I learn from my students that the new descriptive term for showing someone up is “flexing”—I suppose a reference perhaps to what body builders do in a gym? Not sure, and I’ll make a point of asking for a more complete explanation and proper usage guide in class next week. 

But even before then, it appears someone is flexin’ ol’ Maxine Waters, the openly socialist Democratic Congresswoman from south central Los Angeles...

I think Professor Hayward hasn't quite got it . In the classic sense, you would have to have something to show off in order to properly flex. "I made an ugly poster of you while you cruised to victory" doesn't really qualify.

At American Thinker, Thomas Lifson explains what it's really all about:

The left long ago discovered the subversive power of street art. By expressing forbidden thoughts in a flamboyant manner, guerrilla posters plastered in walls, on utility poles, and in other public spaces can plant seeds that quietly sprout and grow where they can’t be seen: in people’s minds.

Well, we can sprout in people's minds, too, libtards! Our interns know Photoshop.

BOO.

A big Count Floyd ah-woooo for Daniel J. Flynn of the American Spectator, who has given us the culture-war Halloween essay of the year and perhaps all time.

Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, and Michael Myers kill kids rushing to become adults. Is it too much to ask of the ghoulish trio to apply their talents toward adults rushing to become kids? 

The grownups who have decimated the ranks of trick-or-treaters by aborting 10 million of them in the last decade offer penance for their sins against Halloween by dressing up in place of the missing children.

I can hear you all out there in the darkness, going blink... blink... Let me explain: See, us godless liberals killed all the kids in the womb and stole their costumes, and now enact a grisly, Walpurgisnacht travesty of what should be a red-blooded, cowboys-and-princesses American Halloween!

One way thirtysomething Halloween enthusiasts recoup the money spent on costumes involves not dispensing candy. One can’t help but notice the same couples, dressed in the late night as a sexy Ebola nurse and her doting patient, hiding in their kitchens with the lights out earlier in the evening when the doorbells ring.

Can't help but notice! Who says the Spectator doesn't do reported pieces?

Thereafter it's a jumble of cultural signifiers -- Ray Rice! Milton Berle! -- till inevitably it's time to blame Obama for evil abortion Halloween:

Surely the National Parent sets a bad example here. Pajama Boy, that cradle-to-grave sponge “Julia,” and the health-care act regarding 26-year-olds as dependents entitled to coverage from their parents’ insurance plans all recast adolescence long beyond its biological boundaries -- 25 is the new 12.

This is even better than the gibberish Flynn came up with for Martin Luther King Day. Party on, cowboy!

UPDATE. Just found that Flynn did something very similar last Halloween ("The scariest thing about Halloween isn’t the goblins... It’s adults who impersonate children"). It's lighter on the abortion than his current holiday column, but it does have topical references (50 Shades and Miley Cyrus, remember them?) and a terrific title: "WHOREOWEEN."

TOO MANY CREEPS.

While people argue about the absence of honkies from that catcalling video, let us not forget that some people (hint: wingnuts) are less likely to worry about that than about how feminazis ruin everything.  At Patheos, "John Gabriel, Ed.":

Apologies to the video editor, but “how you doing today,” “how are you this morning,” and “have a nice evening” hardly count as harassment. If they do, I’m violated by polite tourists, panhandlers, and assertive shopkeepers every time I stroll along a busy city street.

If, when he reciprocated these greetings, they were reliably followed by "I wanna suck your sweet pussy" or similar sentiments, he might feel differently. Oh, and get this:

For better or worse, I’ve never followed fashion. Not only have I never catcalled, I still open doors for women, surrender my seat on public transport, and ensure that I treat them with an extra measure of kindness. I was notified by several liberal men on Twitter that this is A Bad Thing.

Sure you were, buddy.

Found via Ole Perfesser Instapundit, who amplifies with some of his traditional cracker-barrel wisdom:

And let’s be honest. What makes these catcalls offensive isn’t that they come from men. It’s that they come from low-status men. Like an unconsented kiss from President Obama, if the catcalls came from George Clooney there’d be much less female outrage.

You all know I enjoy extrapolating from the text, but I'm not even gonna try and visualize the fantasy life from which this kind of thing emerges. Don't these guys have mothers?

Title ref:


UPDATE. In comments, D Johnston:

That line ["And let’s be honest. What makes these catcalls offensive isn’t that they come from men. It’s that they come from low-status men"] is straight out of the MRA playbook ('You wouldn't think it was creepy if I were rich and attractive')... It's yet another example of how the right blogosphere is beginning to absorb the Men's Rights blogosphere. Or maybe the MRA blogs are more like some horrifying gamete, bringing the right blogosphere into a new stage of being?

I've noticed the coalescence of the Men's Rights and conservative movements, too; it gets more obvious during events like the Santa Barbara massacre and Gamergate, but it's always there (and of course in the works of the Perfesser) like a stalker. You just have to challenge them a little tiny bit and it comes busting out.

UPDATE 2. I swear commenter ALPHA.MALE is not a sockpuppet I made to give you guys something to play with.

GIVE MY REGARDS TO BUMFUCK.

PJ Media:

GOP Cities Have Cheaper Houses than Dem Cities

Ole Perfesser Instapundit:

WHY DO DEMOCRATS HATE POOR PEOPLE? Liberal Cities Like L.A. Face Much Higher Housing Prices.

TownHall:

Most Expensive Housing Markets in US are in Liberal Districts 

...Correlation or cause? Union work rules, land availability, and building restrictions (or lack thereof) are all likely in play.

I thought these guys believed in the free market, but they seem not to understand that when people want something a lot, the price goes up, and when they don't want it so much the price goes down. Ordinary citizens pay large sums just to visit New York City; it makes sense they would pay top dollar to live in it, unless you've convinced yourself that it must be awful because of all the blacks and socialism.

Conversely, I don't see anyone paying top dollar to live in Fritters, Alabama, despite the many advantages of Republican government. Sorry for your self-esteem, comrade, but that's capitalism!

UPDATE. I can't believe people are still going on about this. (Oh, of course I can believe it -- it's standard-issue Liberal Plantation crap.) As he has in the past, National Review's Kevin D. Williamson suggests that if you can't buy a three-bedroom house in the liberal city of your choice, you're being oppressed:

Progressivism is a luxury good for coddled urban professionals; it immiserates everybody else.

Why then, I wonder, don't New York's poor head out like the Okies of yore to the promised land of North Dakota? "Maw, I can smell the fracking from here!" Except the rent in those boom towns is no bargain either -- though of course you're probably closer to a Wal-Mart and a Chick-fil-A, so there are cultural advantages.

UPDATE 2. Williamson's other recent expression of sympathy for the poor is amazing: he would like to imagine shoeshine men paid more when they work on more expensive shoes, though he offers no method to accomplish this save the free market, which from recent evidence seems unlikely to come through. For this daydream philanthropy Williamson considers himself morally superior to liberal policy wonk Eva Longoria. I swear they recruit these people from nuthouses.

THE WORSE, THE BETTER.

What’s Bad for America Is Good for Democrats

I'm beginning to think National Review's Dennis Prager is just toying with us now.

...Even today, after decades of feminism, most Americans agree that it is better for women (and for men) — and better for society — when women (and men) marry. Yet, when women marry, it is bad for the Democratic party; and when women do not marry, even after — or shall we say, especially after — having children, it is quite wonderful for the Democratic party. 

Married women vote Republican. Unmarried women lopsidedly vote Democrat. 

It is both silly and dishonest to deny that it is in the Democrats’ interest that women not marry. 

Which is why we make them wear those ugly Birkenstocks and not shave their legs.

Also, "the more a black American considers America a racist society, the more he or she is a guaranteed Democratic voter," which is why Democrats make such obvious efforts to stir up racial resentment: Prager offers in evidence Ferguson, which only really got out of control when Debbie Wasserman Schultz went down there and started setting trash cans on fire.

The Democratic party cultivates singlehood, black anger at America, Latino separatism, victimhood, group grievance, and dependency on government... 

The Democratic party has been become a wholly destructive force in this country. Even though you may not intend to, if you vote for any Democrat, you contribute to that damage.

I was waiting for him to tell me that doctor in New York purposely spread Ebola to drum up business for the Democrat-medical complex. I think even people who refer contemptuously to wingnut welfare can agree that Prager is one of those poor souls who really couldn't survive without it.

UPDATE. Elsewhere at National Review, Tim Cavanaugh

The Only Ebola Panic Is Being Caused by Doctors and Nurses

The theme of the article, near as I can pick out of the fevered prose, is that the conservative Ebola panic brigade does not exist, it's really elitist public health officials and a New Yorker writer who are trying to spread "Ebola panic among people who didn’t go to college" by saying there's no reason to panic when there really is because look, bowling shoes, but Cavanaugh is totally not trying to panic you, plus Chris Christie's a RINO. Someone should take Cavanaugh's temperature, or at least quarantine him.

UPDATE 2. Mollie Hemingway, having made a similar we're-not-the-panic-you're-the-panic case before, returns with more of the same and worse:

I’m sorry, but if you read the phrase “based on science” and don’t immediately guffaw at the unfounded arrogance and unchecked assumptions of it all, you are probably a typical reporter.

People wonder what happened to the Know Nothing Party -- well, wonder no more! First climate studies, now epidemiology -- wonder what branch of science conservatives will come out against next? (I know, I skipped psychiatry.)

AT LAST!

New York Post:

Comrades, it's finally here! After six long years of pretending to be a moderate -- giving America a Rube Goldberg reform system that keeps all the current health-care capitalists enriched, for example, instead of the true socialized medicine other developed countries enjoy -- Obama's finally going radical! We were all disappointed when he didn't come through after the 2012 election, I know, but this time for sure -- because after 2016 there won't be any way to run bullshit stories like this, and the gutter press will have to content itself with "Hillary = Obama's Third Term." (They're already testing this one out.)

Alas, the actual article is a disappointment. Under "war on terror," for example, I had hoped to learn how Obama hates this fucking country and wants to surrender it to radical Islam, which totally rocks; but instead we hear about a "whitewash" of the Bowe Bergdahl case (remember him?). I fear Sperry, Dick Morris, and the rest are just warming us up for the inevitable impeachment, at which Bergdahl will be one of the 238 high crimes and misdemeanors the GOP will prosecute.

This one's a little more promising:

The Orwellian-sounding regulation would force some 1,200 municipalities to redraw zoning maps to racially diversify suburban neighborhoods... 

It’s part of the administration’s ambitious agenda to eliminate “racial segregation,” ZIP code by ZIP code, block by block, through the systematic dismantling of allegedly “exclusionary” building ordinances. In effect, federal bureaucrats will have the power to rezone your neighborhood.

Gasp! I'm surprised they didn't put this invasion-of-the-blacks thing up front. Maybe they're saving it for their illustrated election-day flyers.

FRIDAY ROUND-THE-HORN.

•   Jonah Goldberg is doing his usual propaganda from a slightly higher horse than usual today:

You may boil down your beliefs to a series of ideas, but odds are that every lesson you ever learned came at the end of a story, either one you lived or one you watched unfold. All great religions are taught to us as stories. Every great journalistic exposé came in the form of a story.

Much like great novels, which, Goldberg earlier informed us, are "inherently conservative."

We evolved to learn through stories. We may as well be called homo relator, or storytelling man.

What's Latin for "bullshit"? Goldberg then tells us that while the things conservatives believe are ideas and the revealed word of the living Reagan, everything believed by liberals is just a bunch of stories (maybe fairy stories, har har why you gettin offended), including those so-called "studies" by so-called "scientists" with their "environmentalist" Gaia myths about how pollution is bad for you. ("If science could settle, man would never learn to fly or read by electric light," puffs Goldberg. Wait'll you stupid eggheads see the money he'll make on his fart-powered Cheeto-stuffing machine!)

Another example:

For much of the summer, large numbers of Americans insisted that the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., was one kind of story. It was a tale of institutional racism in which the police are the villains and young African-American men the innocent victims. This was the storyline many in the media wanted, and it was one they were determined to get. 

Now, as a grand jury goes about prying fact from fiction, the story is falling apart as a matter of legal reality. But you can be sure the story will live on for decades to come. That’s in no small part because...

...of centuries of actual African-American experience?

... because many decent Americans have locked themselves into the belief that the heroic chapter of the civil-rights movement can never end. The story must go on so they can continue to cast themselves as the heroes.

Gotta love that "decent" -- when you're telling black people they're just playing the victim, Goldberg seems to think, throw in a nice word and no one can complain.

•   I see Rod Dreher has identified a new liberal-who-hates-liberals-which-proves-liberals-suck. I thought Mickey Kaus had that market cornered. For half the column Dreher quotes the guy copiously, then tells us he read somewheres about another guy, "a white man who had grown up in a hardscrabble way... and he was expected to deprecate himself and apologize for his Straight White Male Privilege," so see, it's all true. The very best part of this plea for you-other-guys to be tolerant:

It’s not that I believe conservatives are free of these things; it’s that in my own world, it’s usually the liberals who behave this way.

Also he doesn't seem to get Woody Allen jokes.

•   Oh God, Ross Douthat drew the short straw at Dracula's castle and thumbsucks over why liberals have a lot of newspapers and TV shows while he's stuck with Fox News. Allow me to synopsize his three possible reasons:

1. Liberals are "open-minded" and conservatives are "conformist sheep." Ha ha, as if!
2. The only people who read The New Yorker and junk like that are arty-farties and other members of the "liberal clerisy" who live on welfare/Soros checks, while "well-educated and well-informed conservatives are often businessmen" who "treat their media consumption mostly as a source of information rather than identity," so there. Plus liberals can waste their time reading about foreigners and operas because they don't have any children to beat.
3. Damn liberal media!

Too bad the free market isn't giving him the media empire Douthat really wants -- one that everybody thinks is smart and cool. Then Douthat could quit the New York Slimes and join it!

•   If someone told me years ago that one day a big-time wingnut hack would be denouncing appeals for calm during a public health emergency and telling people science is bullshit -- well, actually, I would have believed it; I've always been pretty cynical.

SICK, SICK, SICK.

I knew Heather Mac Donald was ridiculous, but Jesus:

The public-health establishment has unanimously opposed a travel and visa moratorium from Ebola-plagued West African countries to protect the U.S. population. To evaluate whether this opposition rests on purely scientific grounds, it helps to understand the political character of the public-health field. For the last several decades, the profession has been awash in social-justice ideology. Many of its members view racism, sexism, and economic inequality, rather than individual behavior, as the primary drivers of differential health outcomes in the U.S. According to mainstream public-health thinking, publicizing the behavioral choices behind bad health—promiscuous sex, drug use, overeating, or lack of exercise—blames the victim.

That's why, instead of fooling around with pump handles, John Snow should have just had cholera sufferers put in the stocks for spreading miasma.

...The public-health profession has a clear political orientation, so it’s quite possible that its opposition to a visa and travel moratorium is influenced as much by belief in America’s responsibility for the postcolonial oppression of Africa, and suspicion of American border enforcement, as it is by a commitment to public-health principles of containment and control.

The philosophy behind this is that anyone who wants to help people is some sort of freak and therefore can't be trusted despite their training and accomplishments in the relevant field, and we should instead listen to political hacks like Heather Mac Donald.

When seen from a distance of years, this alarmism will disgust and embarrass our descendants. But the spreaders themselves are only looking as far ahead as Election Day.

WORST FAN FIC EVER:

Richard Fernandez at PJ Media:

And when the papers lionized Bill ever after for doing the ‘right thing’, she probably didn’t understand. That was the saddest part. I wish for sentiment’s sake that Bill had said: “although I have decided not to leave my wife, Hillary, it is I who bears the predominant responsibility for what happened. Leave Monica alone.” Would that he showed as much sand as Edward the VIII, who whatever his faults gave up the throne and took what was coming. “I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as king as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love.”

I liked my Skyler White slash fic better. I'm curious; how is it that a presumably grown man doesn't know  people sometimes have affairs with people who are not necessarily the love of their lives?

But the truth lady, is that he was never worthy even to hold your hand... He had his chance on the Pelennor Field and left you to the Nazgul.

OK, never mind, I get it now.

I SAY! BUT SURELY YOU DON'T HAVE TO HIRE THEM AS WELL?

Charles C.W. Cooke of National Review rags on Wendy Davis and sees in her ordinary political maneuvering, as he sees in everything, the thin end of the Liberal Fascist wedge, resulting in this:

In this manner, too, have we come to discuss the ever-diminishing scope of private property rights, our debates centering nowadays not on whether individuals should have a general right to decide whom they will serve, but on why anybody would be asking these questions in the first instance. Think you should be able to decide who comes into your bar? Drop the act, Bubba, you must be in the Klan.

Cooke, relatively new to this country, seems not to have fully accepted that here in the states you can't just tell certain types to stay out of your bar ("the law says I have to serve him," like this man says), and that the sheeple have lived with this injustice for so long that they no longer question it. Well, that just gives Cooke another freedom to fight for!

Like Chris Christie expressing his impatience with the minimum wage, this is a useful reminder of what these guys are really about.

UPDATE. It's always nice to have someone who knows what he's talking about in comments, so take it away, Scott Lemieux:

Hmm, let's see what one radical Trotskyite had to say about the "general right" of "individuals" to "decide who they will serve":

"[I]f an inn-keeper, or other victualler, hangs out a sign and opens his house for travelers, it is an implied engagement to entertain all persons who travel that way; and upon this universal assumpsit an action on the case will lie against him for damages, if he without good reason refuses to admit a traveler." -Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England

You'd think someone with an Oxford education might be aware of this, but...

UPDATE 2. Cooke's reactions to Scott -- basically "sputter, sputter, asshole!" -- are worth noting and indeed @squarelyrooted has noted them.

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.

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.

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.

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.