NEW VILLAGE VOICE POST UP...

...about the La David Johnson case, the ferocious attacks on family advocate Rep. Frederica Wilson, and the stink of racism around it all.

For reasons of space I had to leave out Jonah Goldberg who, perhaps sensing that the Starship Troopers Gen. Kelly-worship the brethren were indulging wouldn't age well, tried another, still dumber approach: “What if Kelly was actually lecturing his boss?”  Sure, to you littlebrains, it appears Kelly was sucking up to Trump, but “if you can take off the partisan blinders and restrain your tribal instincts, it’s not all that hard to see” that Kelly was sending Trump coded messages, says Goldberg. Since most of us very clearly missed that, I'm surprised Kelly didn't give a second speech to clarify.

PUT NOT THY FAITH IN PUTZES.

Remember the National Review "Against Trump" issue? I knew back then it was bullshit, but let us recall, indeed savor, the closing passage of their lead article from January 2016:

Some conservatives have made it their business to make excuses for Trump and duly get pats on the head from him. Count us out. Donald Trump is a menace to American conservatism who would take the work of generations and trample it underfoot in behalf of a populism as heedless and crude as the Donald himself.

Flash forward with me now to this week, where we join brave Jonah Goldberg, who likes to advertise himself as tough on Trump (to the credulous applause of dummies: "So tough on Trump"!) in mid homina-homina:

But first I should explain something. As I’ve said before, I do not consider myself a “Never Trumper” any more for the simple reason that the label is inadequate to the times. Never Trump, as I saw it, was about the primaries and the election. Once elected and sworn in, Donald Trump was the president, and to whatever extent “Never Trump” was a movement, it had failed. I call myself a “Trump skeptic,” because, among other reasons, I don’t buy any of the hagiographic explanations and justifications for his behavior. Other former Never Trumpers hold onto the label. Others don’t. This just helps illuminate a point lost on many Trump supporters and left-wingers alike: Never Trump was never some coherent, unified thing. It started as a hashtag on Twitter as far as I can tell and included people of diverse opinions and tactics, some of which I never subscribed to.

Ironically, the people who cling to the term the most are actually Trump’s most ardent supporters...

Yeah, whatever, Tubby. Go change your pants and get back in line.

This is a reminder that these people are all as full of shit as it is possible to be without getting hauled away by Don's Johns. If you, like many good folks (not me, though!), were taken in by Chief of Staff John Kelly ("John Kelly, New Chief of Staff, Is Seen as Beacon of Discipline" -- NYT; "Why John Kelly is President Trump's Last Hope" -- Time), and considered him an Honest Conservative and a True Patriot, and were thus surprised to see him work a Trumpian con (it's all the black lady's fault!) at the behest of his boss today, well, take comfort that you were not alone, and that it's not only difficult to be as icily cynical as me but also probably not healthy. But please, try and take a lesson from the experience: There are no "good ones."

WHY THE OTHER THREE SOLDIERS' FAMILIES DIDN'T GET CALLS.

"Hello?"

"Hi, this is President Trump. This a bad time? If it's a bad time just say so."

"No, sir, it's fine."

"Good. OK, how ya doing? You taking some time off or you still going to work?"

"Excuse me?"

"Either way is okay. I'm not saying anything. What I am saying is, there's lots of jobs out there for people who want to work, that's all. Unemployment's the lowest it's ever been, is all I'm saying. Listen, sweetheart, I'm calling because, uh, I understand your -- boyfriend? Husband. I can't make out these chicken-scratches they give me here, very bad handwriting, the worst. Anyway, your husband had some kind of accident over in -- Niger? I say that right? Niger. Thank God. I guess they told you about it, but it was news to me, and when I heard I said, the President of the United States must call this woman and tell her that, uh, Private, Private what's-his-name died a hero. Captain. General. Private. They told your husband, don't do it, don't do it, what's-your-name, don't be a hero, his friends in the streets and in the NFL, they said this to him, or so I'm told. They don't respect anything, these people, it's disgraceful, and we're going to do something about it. But your husband, he went ahead anyway and enlisted, it's not like he was drafted, because we don't have the draft and I don't think we should have one, but we'll see about it, anyway he went over there and not ten minutes later they shot him dead, they, well maybe he blew up or was in a car crash, whatever it was it killed him, it's terrible what's going on over there. But you know, he didn't have to be in the Green, the Green Forces, he could have, I don't know, he's musical, right? Your husband? Looks like a guy with a lot of musical talent. He could have been a singer or maybe washed cars or, but, phew, he took his shot, you know what I mean, he took his shot and boom, he's gone. What can I tell you... Hello? Look, I can understand it's rough for you, I'm gonna personally send you a little something, okay, just an envelope with some cash in it, think nothing of it, I do this all the time... Hello? [disconnects the call] Well, I'm not doing that again."

UPDATE. National Review's Rich Lowry is always a miserable Trump suckup but on this subject he really outdoes himself. First, he says, "it appears to be correct that Obama didn’t call all the families of the fallen" -- when Trump very obviously implied Obama didn't call those families at all before he got rattled and backed off. (Lowry also gets extra chickenshit points for adding "it doesn’t mean it was right for Trump to use that point as a bludgeon," as if Trump had made a credible accusation but went a little too far by insisting on it.) Also:

Three, Trump’s “knew what he signed up for” statement seems horrible in isolation, but it’s hard to know what to make of it except in context and listening to the conservation. Even the Democrat congresswoman says that Trump said “it hurts anyway.” On the other hand, the family confirms that it was upset by Trump’s call.

We can't really know what went on because on the one hand we have the word of the world's most notorious liar and, on the other, that of a grieving widow and her friends -- how can you figure out which one's telling the truth? Plus the grieving widow is black!

Now, Trump is engaged in a fight over what he really said. Is it too much to ask that everyone back off this one and not to add to anyone’s distress and leave condolence calls — if nothing else — out of our poisonous political debate?

Leave President Trump alone!  You're really just hurting the people he wants you to think are lying about what a piece of shit he is.

THIS WOULD MAKE AN ATHEIST OUT OF MOTHER TERESA.

Do you retain a sentimental feeling for Christianity, despite the fact that many American Christians actually worship money and Trump and Rod Dreher exists? Here, this article at Reason may cure you:

Are Free Minds and Free Markets Compatible With Christianity?
A baker's dozen Christian libertarians weigh in

If you know libertarians, you may have some idea of the kind of "Christians" they would know. And no, there isn't a single hippie-dippy "Blessed are the poor" pussy in the bunch. Right out of the gate:

"In my mind, capitalism is what happens when you have the absence of initiated force, and that's perfectly compatible—beautifully compatible—with Christianity. Capitalism simply means the freedom of individuals to make contracts and to engage others in a peaceful and voluntary way. That's precisely what Christ taught." —Lawrence W. Reed, president of the Foundation for Economic Education and author of Rendering Unto Caesar: Was Jesus A Socialist?

Reed's book is available online, and it'll make your average pig-eyed Jesus grifter doff his cap in tribute, full of stuff like this:

In his book, Biblical Economics, theologian R. C. Sproul Jr. notes that Jesus “wants the poor to be helped” but not at gunpoint, which is essentially what government force is all about...

This reminds me of the capital punishment bit in Beyond the Fringe, in which a warden argues for it while escorting a prisoner to his doom: [Warden] "You don't want to be cooped up for life." [Condemned prisoner] "Yes, I do want to be cooped up for life." [Warden] "Come along, now, you're playing with words."

Quotes from the other disciples of Ayn Christ include "Who nailed Jesus to the cross? The state!" and this, my favorite:

The more I read, the more I realized that there's nowhere in here where Christ attempts to use the tools of violence to accomplish his objectives. In fact, it was so extreme in the opposite direction that even self-defense wasn't used by Christ and the early Christians. They chose martyrdom.

I can see why he likes that. Blessed are the meek, they're easier to rob and kill! They talk a lot about how they, in the name of Christ, would not countenance government programs to feed the starving and house the homeless because that's violence, and violence is so ungodly it trumps their need to survive; but I bet if you went for their wallets (or even a crumb from their tables) they'd come up with a gun pretty quick.

I will only add that Kevin D. Williamson, one of the most vicious wingnuts going, is listed here as "National Review roving correspondent and a Catholic convert." As the old saying going, Jesus is alright but his friends are a bunch of fucking assholes.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about Trump's double-barreled blast at Obamacare and the conservatives assuring an anxious Republic that they're not losing health insurance, they're gaining freedom.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Tweedy maybe leaned minimalist a little too much here, but they still got some funk on it.
•   It would be not only wonderful but also hilarious if the Harvey Weinstein controversy actually did put a crimp in powerful men using their clout to exploit women. I say hilarious because conservatives are betting they can turn it to their political advantage.They're currently using it to beat up on women as hypocrites because they didn't speak up sooner. Their attacks on Clinton for having accepted campaign donations from Weinstein because "everybody" knew about his crimes are already old news; now we have wingnuts doing the same witchfinder-general routine on actresses like Jane Fonda ("‘Found Out About Harvey About A Year Ago’ And Didn’t Say Anything" -- Daily Caller), and Meryl Streep ("Sophie’s choice was between her career and her conscience, and let’s just say she didn’t agonize over her pick" --  Kurt Schlichter). That the actresses who get the most heat are outspoken liberals is no accident; the whole wingnut play is that Hollywood is corrupt because it's lefty, and vice-versa, and this scandal rejuvenates all their old Hollyweird slurs; that's why you have guys like Jim Geraghty at National Review crying "Hollywood, you don’t get to lecture us about anything anymore" -- they have no interest in sparing women workplace indignities, they just want their ancient prejudices and those of their readers validated, and a source of opposition funding neutralized. The fact they can't admit, to their suckers or to themselves, is that it was wealth that insulated Weinstein, not political orthodoxy. That's the part that's most Trumpian about the whole affair -- not so much the simple, shameless hypocrisy of President Pussygrabber's fans decrying Weinstein as the blithe misdirection of outrage from the actual perps onto whomever one needs to smear. However, if the thing blows up like it seems it might, conservatives might find whirlwinds aren't so easily steered. I can understand why they think they're protected; they got their chief predator elected president, and another big one is making his comeback after just a few months offstage. But if their wall of white women voters shifts with this wind, it'll be something, especially since they won't notice (because they don't listen to them) until it's too late.

• As to Trump's gut-stabs to Obamacare, conservatives are of course thrilled. So far the most interesting reaction has been Peter Suderman's at Reason, which may serve as a template for conservatarians who'll need something to shout from the scaffold once Trump's yokels realize they've been had. Written apparently after the association health plan decision was announced but before the subsidies decision was, Suderman's post describes the political difficulty with undermining the ACA:

There is something clever, almost cunning, about Obamacare's policy scheme: It requires unequivocal political support from an administration in order to avoid accusations that the law is being undermined. It is a kind of joint political-policy trap, in which the only solution to the law's failings is to bail it out.

Insidious -- a policy that, like Social Security and Medicare, makes people angry at you if you "reform" it! All Trump's really trying to do, Suderman says, is offer people who've been forced to buy essential health benefit coverage even though they'll never get sick "less regulated, less expensive alternatives" that will cost them little and, if they get hit by a car, send them Mercurochrome and a bill. "The order is less a direct attack on Obamacare and more of an attempt to escape its failings," he says. "Yet the reaction from defenders of Obamacare has been to accuse the president of undermining the health law." By defenders he must mean the American College of Physicians and all the other experts I've seen who say this is an invitation to a tailspin. Suderman admits okay maybe that'll happen, but the important thing is, if it does it's not Trump's fault -- the thing is, we have to do something and anything we do kills it, so I guess the thing is doomed:

This would be true, however, of practically any effort to create more insurance options outside of its regulatory scheme. The law effectively requires total buy in, from market participants and from political overseers, in order to function. The result is situation in which the only way to avoid undermining the law is to prop it up. Obamacare is built to allow no alternative and no escape.

There was an alternative -- a repeal and replace plan, three crap versions of which Republicans threw in with a towel before running off to the woods. They weren't serious about killing Obamacare because they have constituents who would turn them out if they did so; Trump, senile and vicious, can imagine no such outcome for himself, and knows only that the black bastard can't get away with it. Enablers like Suderman have their own motivation -- something they call liberty, which always involves great sacrifice, in this case the sacrifice of even a hint of the decent coverage that Europeans take for granted. They better pray that the hint wasn't taken.

TOGETHER AGAIN FOR THE FIRST TIME!

Rod Dreher's back from another of his extended Parisian foodie boondoggles -- I swear, for someone who's always going on about Little Ways and common people he spends an awful lot of time in Yurrup, and not doing missionary work neither -- and has resumed his usual Ben Op/Get-Ready Man routine, supplemented with great lashings of Harvey Weinstein because it fits with his Fallen World scenario. But give him credit -- I looked in because I always expect him to exceed himself, and by God he has delivered.

This post is mostly about how 1.) Mark Lilla would be perfect if only he accepted Christ as his personal savior, and 2.) Ta-Nehisi Coates is a racist. At first I thought this was the plum of the post:

Ta-Nehisi Coates and [neo-Nazi] Richard Spencer are both atheists who have found a strong source of belief in their respective races.

But as loony as it is, it's of a piece with other Dork Right attacks on Coates, like this woo-woo at The Federalist by Dimestore Douthatwith Threenames about how Coates, in his perfectly reasonable prediction that America's inequality might lead to violent confrontation, is "feinting toward violence as a means... of achieving social justice," as if Coates had done the interview bare-chested and bandoliered and simultaneously strangled a white man.  (I can imagine Threenames in 1963 hearing Malcolm X talk about chickens coming home to roost and muttering, "see, what'd I tell you about those people.") No, the plum comes at the end:

Only a strong Christianity can counter this nihilistic tribal religion. But this we do not have today. I am on record as strongly disapproving of some of the antics of Milo Yiannopoulos, but he and I are on the same page here, in this excerpt from an interview with America magazine, which he says they refused to print...

By "on record as strongly disapproving," Dreher means posts about Milo like "CPAC Welcomes Pederasty Advocate." But convinced as Dreher is that gay marriage will destroy America (see his Obergefell essay, "Democracy Is Dying; Persecution Is Coming") unless he and his God Squad can destroy it first, he's nonetheless pimping for this recently-gaymarried aging twink because in the alleged unpublished America excerpt (Milo is a master of persecution-as-self-promotion), he praises in his lubricious way things Dreher loves: the military ("Now the men in uniform are much better men than I"), muscular Christanity ("too many in the Church keep masculinity hidden or the subject of shame"), and Rod Dreher:

I’m with Rod Dreher: Anybody who only preaches a namby-pamby God, and not the highly masculine God of Scripture, is leaving young men vulnerable to the monstrous false gods of race and ideology.

Looks like Milo is eager to be gathered in from the wilderness, and has wisely pegged Rod as among the easier gatekeepers to grease. Hope he at least got a reacharound!

THE DEATH OF THE PET ROCK.

Y'know, most of the time I occupy myself here by making fun of Jonah Goldberg and other mentally defective sinecure jockeys, and part of the reason for that is I don't want to just come to you good people with my opinions. I understand pure opinion, untainted by close reading or analysis or even evidence that the opinionator has walked a time or two around the block, is the real high-stakes game in today's media, and that's why Chris Cillizza is making, what, eleven million dollars to put out shit like "It took Hillary Clinton five days to issue this statement about Harvey Weinstein" (She has, so now we can go back to waiting for Greg Gutfeld to denounce Roger Ailes, I guess) and "Donald Trump is acting like a fifth-grade bully" -- boy, that'll twirl some tassels in the head office, huh fellas! Get a load:

Lyin' Ted. Lil' Marco. Low Energy Jeb. Crooked Hillary. Little Rocket Man. Pocahontas. 

It worked like a charm in the campaign. Trump's voters loved his lack of political correctness. They loved that he called politicians out. They loved that he refused to apologize for anything. 

The laughs Trump got from his name-calling masked a far darker -- and more toxic -- iteration of Trump's bullying.

"Far darker"! [yells into kitchen] Honey, did you know about this? GTFOOH. Trump has been like Pere Ubu meets Idi Amin for two years and suddenly Cillizza is playing Edward R. Murrow.

So I don't want to be that guy, in general and on principle, but you know what, it's been a long day and the last column was pretty good, so what the hell, I figure I can take five, stretch out and bloviate like the big boys a while. So here's what I think about this latest ooh-Trump-did-bad-this-time shit.

The hundred-dollar haircuts have been telling us for months that all the anger at Trump is coming from overeducated sissies like themselves and is therefore invalid -- that you millions-and-in-fact-majority of voters who hate Trump should just get with the Wisdom of the People and accept that squirrel-gun gomers rule America, lauded by their herald Salena Zito (let's see if she's still at it -- "who in D.C. or New York goes to a 'Gun Bash?' Plenty of people do in the West Newtons of the country..." ugh, guess she is). It may have seemed a lot to ask us, to read this defeatism week after week in their magazines and watch it on their newscasts, but the production values were excellent and besides, $100 Haircuts don't care -- they can afford to be self-abnegating, because their post-broadcast cocaine, hookers, and microneedling always lifts their self-esteem considerably. And anyway there were the funny news shows to indulge our alienation and outrage, so the serious newsies could stay all Questions Remain and This is When Trump Became President.

But all of a sudden now everyone is noticing Trump's approval isn't so hot anywhere -- not even in squirrel gun territory. Previous polls had a pall -- maybe those bad numbers were just all those educated, non-crazy majority voters, and we all know they don't count! Now even Bumfuck was standing down. Suddenly the White Working Class Whisperers aren't get the phone calls; J.D. Vance can't get his circus of star-spangled opioid addicts booked till Christmas.

Are the yokels coming around? I have a hunch on which I would so far lay only small money but, like I said, it's my day off so here goes: I don't think anybody has changed their minds. I think what they changed was the channel.

There have been plenty of people who would roar "hell yeah" every time Trump peed in the pool and a pollster asked about it. But it wasn't because they loved him. What America experienced last November was not so much a groundswell as a shrug: why not, at least it'll be fun. And it might even work.

I still believe a lot (not all!) of them are racist, sexist shitheels -- I believe this because I've seen them. But even shitheels have lives to live, just like the rest of us. And like the commercial fads that used to briefly animate the heartland in the dull years between conflagrations -- disco and boot-scootin' and C.B. radio -- Trump had his moment. I wouldn't say he jumped the shark, if only because "jumped the shark" has jumped the shark. But the numbers are running the wrong way. I mean, heartland Americans are acting sympathetic toward Puerto Ricans even though Trump specifically told them not to -- he even said "Puerto Rico" like it was black dialect at a Young Republican picnic to remind them that he was white and they weren't. Yet they sided with Chico against The Man. What's that tell you?

The thrill is gone. Women's marches and Trevor Noah didn't have much to do with it, and neither did common sense. The guy just wore out his welcome.

That doesn't mean he won't rise again in the polls. He'll kill some people, or applaud their killing, and that'll animate the base; he'll probably start a war, too, and some will always follow the bloody flag. But the cycles will be more normal, more responsive to the usual social and economic fluctuations than the testosterone surges of '16. Trump will golf and blab and tweet and roar just as Hammer had to haul out the parachute pants year after post-glory year. He'll still do a lot of damage, sure, but don't they all?

In short, the battle will be what it always has been, in reality -- against the rapacious, gun-crazed, life-hating, prion-diseased Republicans who need to be marched into the sea if we are to live. Probably a good thing we got the focus back on that.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the Harvey Weinstein revelations and the Milo revelations, and how it came to be that a liberal movie producer getting nailed for sexual harassment became an issue for Hillary Clinton, while a collusion of rich conservatives to promote Nazism in the United States is a non-story.

UPDATE. There's no end to the idiocy attendant on the Weinstein story, but the idea that the New York Times, which broke it, is bad because they didn't break the story sooner is just wormhole-to-another-dimension ridiculous, leading to this M.C. Escher sentence at RedState:

The Times is as responsible for Weinstein’s continued harassment of women as it is for his firing from The Weinstein Company.

I talk a lot about the eternal victim complex of conservatives, but in a way this is one of the best examples yet: Most of the time they refer to the Times and all the Mainstream Media the way Trump does -- as fake news, a joke, failing, etc. Then, when it suits them, the Times is all-powerful, the one force that can make or break Harvey Weinstein. RedState is supposed to be a journalistic enterprise -- why couldn't they, or National Review or even Breitbart have gotten Weinstein, brave truth-tellers that they are? They're the kind of shitheels who scream that all the cops are on the take, then call 911 when they lock their keys in the car and bitch about how long it took them to get there.

HOWL YE, FOR THE DUH OF JUDGEMENT IS AT HAND!

If it's The American Conservative and the headline and header image look like this...

...and the author is someone whose parents actually named him Addison, you might expect some kind of kulturkampf fodderstompf, but Young Addison exceeds expectations:

It is the cosmopolitan D.C. crowd’s version of a riot: a horde of young men and women descending Sunday morning onto hundreds of barely differentiated joints to swallow down the same bottomless mimosas and “small plates” fashioned from the week’s leftovers.

I thought the D.C. version of a riot was a riot. (Or any anti-Trump protest, since all such events are automatically classed as riots by order of the Central Committee.) Also, I'm not one of the juvey brights Young Addison endeavors to diss, but I have been to a brunch or two and they do not resemble the joyless trough-feedings Young Addison describes unless someone is forced to invite their parents.

It is known as “brunch,” but the refined flavor of that word no longer reflects what it has become. Today it’s about extending the party. Brunch food is hangover food, and brunch is the finale of the quasi-religious weekend trifecta: bar crawl, Tinder hook-up, hungover brunch and hair-of-the-dog Bloody Marys with well vodka.

Oh, so that's his complaint -- brunch replenishes them for more ungodly revels!

Of course restaurants don’t advertise it this way.

I don't see why not. If they told the locals brunch is really mandatory debriefing for sex and drunkenness, they'd be booked through Valentine's Day.

But brunch in D.C. has evolved to be little more than a way for the young urban elite (today’s yuppies) to make their messy weekends look neat, drunkenness hip, and materialistic desires something other than hedonistic. It is a peculiarly coarse, even uncivilized ritual, cloaked in the respectability of Sunday morning.

Oh no... oh you're kidding...

Brunch has replaced Sunday worship. The bottomless mimosa is the blood of Christ.

Hallelujah brothers, we've found Ross Douthat's backup scold! 

But Young Addison is not just mad at sex, alcohol, and ungodliness -- he's also mad at all the other things you'd expect a priss like him to be mad at:

This city (I refuse to call it “this town”) is supposed to be a seat of diversity, ever more valued in the era of the “Resistance”; it is anything but. The brunch spots, as noted, are all the same. So are the patrons.

My thumbed teeth and spray of holy water on your diversity, your resistance, your colloquial speech! And also -- he says, unballing his fist, smoothing his hair and affecting unconcern -- it's awl suh-o boring:

Washington, more than many cities, is home to hordes of young people—of every race and ethnicity to be sure—who watch the same television shows, wear the same clothes, spray the same perfume, bend their necks towards the same few websites on the same little screens...

Gad, what a bunch of phonies! Oh wait, he's not done:

...speak with the same clean, clipped, often-too-fast accent, practice the same American religion which glorifies the utterly unattached individual, and live the same aimless life in which overthrowing the President of the United States is a more realistic prospect than getting married and having a family.

It just goes on and on like that, but I must note one other thing: Young Addison suggests all these damned kids trying to get phoney-baloney desk jobs are wasting their time and should look into trade school instead; "there are thousands more graduates of political science and government relations than there will ever be political scientists and government relations managers." A quick check of LinkedIn shows Young Addison attended the University of Maryland School of Public Policy -- literally inside the Beltway -- rather that Loyola Gonzaga Ave Maria Unaccredited, then interned at the D.C. think tank Worldwatch Institute before taking a gig there, from which I guess Opus Dei reassigned him to TAC. Shop class for thee but not for me! Well, I do recall from my spell in the One True Faith that hypocrisy is one of the requirements.

I must thank him for one thing, though, besides the laffs: Longtime readers know I hate D.C., overstuffed as it is with soulless careerist shits and dull as dun next to my Old Home Town, so it's nice to be brought into sympathy with the place, even if only for a moment.

On, another thing: That Young Addison is denouncing brunch when his obvious model and TAC head boy Rod Dreher is in the midst one of his frequent Parisian foodie boondoggles is a howl in itself.

INTRODUCING THE PANTLOADOWN.

Don’t look now but Jonah Goldberg has a podcast. The debut is here and no, no fucking way guys; last November I actually listened to a Reason podcast with Nick Gillespie and I still wake up shaking in the middle of the night. But I did read Goldberg’s stupid “G-file” letter on it (no link — it’s for fans!), and I can report that it’s full of the shitty goofy-image-Mad-Libs Goldberg considers jokes, and some director’s-cut insights into his working method:

I’m the first to admit that, like Flamenco Dancing or buffalo taxidermy, solo podcasting doesn’t come naturally to me.

What’d I tell you.

I don’t want to be an “interviewer.” Conversation good, Q&A boring. So I went into this with no notes and nothing prepared.

What a shock. Goldberg is so lazy I’m told when he wants to eat, he has one intern pack his maw with Cheetos and another intern put the belt from an old-fashioned reducing machine under his chin and turn it on high.

…In my imagination, I want [the podcast] to be like being stuck in an airport bar with a relatively sober Hunter S. Thompson, a tipsy William F. Buckley and a few entertaining strangers in the mix.

Yeeeahh that sounds great. Anyway why listen to the actual atrocity when we can enter the World of Pure Imagination:

GOLDBERG: Heidi ho, National Review interns, American Enterprise Institute interns, Heritage Foundation interns, and friends of my mother, it’s the Jonah Goldberg Podcast. I want to thank 3 Doors Down for that righteous musical intro aaaand I’ve just been handed a note, whoa, really nice stationery, “Arent and Fox” it says on the letterhead… okay, that was the last time we’re going to play that particular tune and I just want to say one of the worst things Obama did to this country was make people uptight about copyright laws. I mean think what if National Review was copyrighted. Copywritten. Whatever. I mean, who would have ever heard of William F. Buckley Jr. Or me! Something to think about. But I’m being rude to my guest, Megan McArdle, a columnist for the, uh, Weekly Standard, and I understand she’s working on a book about Puerto Rico and Hurricane Whatshername, isn’t that so?

MCARDLE: Literally none of that is true.

GOLDBERG: Hey, lighten up there, Megan! I’m just flying by the seat of my pants here, no prep, no notes, cuz “facts” and “proper attribution,” I mean boring, right? [tries to do Homer Simpson voice] Bo-ring! Did you recognize that? That’s, that’s, that’s the guy on The Simpsons.

MCARDLE: I’m a proud Bloomberg View columnist and I’m not writing a book about Puerto Rico — though I suppose I could, because I was surrounded by those people growing up in New York, and the fact that they’re still there filling up perfectly good East Village property with their housing developments despite their lack of economic dynamism is one of the worst things about the de Blasio Administration —

GOLDBERG: De Blasio, he’s the worst! You folks can’t see it but I’m giving him a big thumbs-down. And that goes double for Ma-Mumia-something-something whatshername the Puerto Rican.

MCARDLE: I mean God, the Italians, Italian-Americans I should say, they gave us all this gorgeous food that I enjoyed so much when I went to Italy. And what have the Puerto Ricans ever given us, culinarily? I mean guacamole, right? And what else? Refried beans. Yuck. It’s poor people food.

GOLDBERG: Yeah. Pretty ghetto. Pret-ty ghet-to. It’s the internet, we don’t have to be politically correct.

MCARDLE: Is there a gas leak in here?

GOLDBERG: Cheese, that’s cheese. I had a cheese. Have a cheese sandwich. In my pants. Pants pocket. [squeaking noise] That was the wind, a mouse. [rustles papers] Homina, homina. Please go on.

MCARDLE: But anyway, what I am interested in is the inevitable, like it’s so predictable, all these people after Las Vegas, talking about and it’s of course a terrible tragedy but they want to just get rid of the guns, like you could do that, and it’s like, haven’t you been paying attention, I mean like Marine Todd, well I mean not Todd he’s fake okay [laughs], but this other Marine, I saw him on CNN, this man took out an armed robber in a store because the robber did. Not. Know. He was a Marine. And those people? In Las Vegas? I mean maybe they were brainwashed by all those gun-control movies like, I don’t know, tsk, I’m sure you know what I mean, like —

GOLDBERG: Like Stop-Loss and Lions for Lambs.

MCARDLE: Uhhh, pretty sure they’re about Iraq.

GOLDBERG: Uhhhh, pretty sure not.

MCARDLE: Whatever, but these people in Las Vegas who just did what was expected of them and just ran and ducked and died, what they didn’t realize was that the sniper — he didn’t know whether they were Marines or not. Right? I mean, people gave me a hard time after Sandy Hook when I said rush the shooter. But what they didn’t know, and what just occurred to me now, is if the shooter thinks you’re a Marine, and you run toward him, then that shooter is going to hesitate and that’s when you get him, when he’s off his guard! Or if you can’t get to him because, and omigod I just realized this [laughs], he’s like twenty stories up in a hotel window, then you can go [in a deep voice] “Ooo-rah!” Like really loud. “Ooo-rah!” And that gives the police time to get him, because he’s intimidated because he thinks you're all Marines. Now, would it work? Would people do it? How should I know? But it certainly makes more sense than gun control. [Pause] Hello?

GOLDBERG: YES! Got the high score, BITCH! [Sound of chair tilting back and falling, GOLDBERG hitting the ground; GOLDBERG’S voice, slightly off-mike] OWWW! OMIGOD! SHOOT! That’s all we have time for! Oww! I wanna thank whatshername for coming on the podcast. [Loud farting sound] Sorry guys, I said I wouldn't but I had to activate the “gas cushion.” I hurt my bummy-bum real bad! [Cries; Three Stooges closing music]

HORRIBLE CONSPIRACIES.

As you would expect, wingnuts deprived of a dark-skinned boogeyman to blame the Vegas shooting on have already assumed their Defend The Guns posture, with The Federalist's Sean Davis assuring his readers that libtrads r dum because they're worried about automatic weapons, which are highly regulated (and expect Davis to strongly protest this fascist abridgment of the Sacred Second, once things have cooled down!), so you don't have to worry about those except when you do. It is easier to get semi-automatic weapons, but don't worry, those "will fire only one round per trigger pull while preparing the gun to fire another round when the trigger is pulled again," and how many people can you kill with that from a high window overlooking an outdoor concert before the cops get to you? You have to change the magazine every 30 rounds, and then you have to reload, or grab one of the other guns you have at arm's reach. Why, it may as well be a pea-shooter. Davis closes:

The sooner we can all agree to debate the facts, rather than be ruled by our emotions, the sooner we can work together for a solution to the problem of gun violence.

Given how much his guns have gone through, I'm glad Davis hasn't lost his sense of humor.

The weirdest thing, though, is David French at National Review:

Before I begin, let me clearly state two things. First, as I note in the title of this post, my observations are based on early reports, and early reports are often wrong. Second, do not read this post as implying any sort of conspiracy theory of any kind. I’m merely noting the facts as we currently understand them — and how they differ from recent mass shootings.

Sounds like the beginning of every Ancient Aliens show, doesn't it? French isn't saying it was aliens but...

So, a person who’s “not a gun guy” has either expended untold thousands of dollars to legally purchase fully-automatic weapons, somehow found them on the black market, or purchased and substantially modified multiple semi-automatic weapons — and did so with enough competence to create a sustained rate of fire. This same person also spent substantial sums purchasing just the right hotel room to maximize casualties. I cannot think of a single other mass shooter who went to this level of expense and planning in the entire history of the United States.

Soros, right? Must have been Soros. Or maybe it's just good old-fashioned American ingenuity! Come on, buddy, we put a man on the moon! Also, the shooter "doesn’t seem to fit any normal profile of a mass shooter" -- at least not the gibbering Muslim profile in French's head. French is a little behind Alex Jones in this regard, but give him time.

UPDATE. French has updated to note that ISIS has "tripled down" on its claim of responsibility for this old white man's attack -- that is, they jumped up and down three times as long as usual and even claimed the guy had a Jihad name, like Ish Kabibble or some shit. It's a clear sign of frustration that no one believes them, yet French is actually doing the old Questions Remain shtick ("a claim I initially discounted"), even reproducing a screengrab of an alleged ISIS communique (issued by "Abu Umayer," which I understand is Farsi for Heywood Jablome) because if this bullshit can misdirect even a few readers who were beginning to wonder why this country is so fucking gun crazy, it'll be worth it. "We’re only scratching the surface of a sad and horrible story," French closes before whipping out the Hypno Hate Wheel and crooning "you are getting sleeeepy, Moooooslims are coming to kiiiiiiill you."

Elsewhere French tells human interest stories to make you feel warm and fuzzy about the oceans of blood -- the title of his post, honest to God, is "‘Greater Love Hath No Man’ — Amidst the Horror of Las Vegas, There Are Stories of Courage and Sacrifice." From the Other Side, Cecil B. DeMille is scowling, "too much." Maybe in addition to clouding the issue it'll earn French some royalties on a few made-for-Christian-Cable movies. At least enough time had passed by then that French had more material to work with than poor Rich Lowry, who last night could only regale his readers with a story about a guy who chugged a beer and gave the shooter the finger. Shortly thereafter the Central Committee decided even the dummies who read National Review wouldn't go for the yee-haw angle, and started laying on the tinny piano music.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about Trump's racist slagging of San Juan's Mayor for daring to suggest the mainland's treatment of her hurricane-smashed home was inadequate.

Among the director's cut bits: Conservatives who try to have their Trump and clean hands too are the worst  -- like Charles C.W. Cooke of National Review, who said, around a pat of unmelted butter, “Early criticisms of Trump on PR were unfair. Now he deserves everything he gets. Utterly disgraceful.” We only have to wait for the next phase, when San Juan finally drains, for Cooke to declare Trump the Kitchener of the Caribbean. (That should come soon enough: Bloomberg found a retired Navy captain who said the operation was doing fine, and RedState reported that a "Benghazi hero" delivered a “glorious smackdown” of Hillary Clinton, who defended the Mayor.)

As usual the brethren worked their populist bona fides by denouncing celebrities who were upset about Puerto Rico. “Bubble Boobed Bimbo Kim Kardashian Trashes Trump Over Puerto Rico,” snarled Conservative Daily News. (They get bonus points for using “triggered” and the bogus Nobody-voted-for-Hillary map.) NewsBusters attacked Lin-Manuel Miranda, the brains behind Hamilton (that musical despised by the brethren for its cast’s gentle rebuke of Mike Pence) and a major fundraiser for Puerto Rican relief, for calling out Trump because Miranda had tweeted thanks to Trump when the operation started and withdrawn it when the full extent of the clusterfuck became known. Miranda apparently doesn’t know what conservatives know — that when Trump fucks you over, you’re supposed to double down on your sycophancy.

THE LAST WANK.

I gave my tribute to Hefner years ago, through my ode to the Playboy After Dark TV show:

You're a little boy in Bridgeport, CT. Mom's asleep and you have the TV on. On Channel 11 you see a POV shot of someone arriving at the door of a penthouse suite. The door opens to reveal Hugh Hefner in a tuxedo. "Oh, hello," Hef murmurs, graciously removing the pipe from his mouth, "So glad you could join us. Come on inside, and meet my guests." The guests include Marvin Gaye, Shel Silverstein, Buck Henry, the Byrds, and, slithering around these celebs, gents in After Six evening wear and chicks in mini-dresses, all carrying cocktail glasses and looking exceedingly comfortable with themselves. I know what I want to be when I grow up! you cry to yourself. I want to be--a bachelor!

The now-dead Hefner's role in the sexual revolution has been overstated, or maybe misstated: he was mainly a savvy marketer. Nudity was already on the scene; he just classed it up, packaging it with serious-people interviews and world-class photography, fiction, and journalism. The symbiosis worked like a charm -- men got the message that the porn was classy because it came with intellectual stuff and reviews of high-end products, and was art-directed and copywritten to the highest specs. It is easier now than it was in my adolescence, or even for years afterward, to see that conflating women's bodies with Bang and Olufsen and dollar-a-word fiction as dream objects was not healthy. But then, capitalism isn't doing our psyches any favors generally.

Anyway, I've been enjoying the obits from comservative writers, who seem divided between those who think commodification is just darn fine and those who insincerely deny that they're fantasizing Hef roasting in hell. At The Federalist, Ben Domenech takes the former side, and continues to prove my theory that when he plagiarized, he did so not out of laziness or panic as most do, but to spare himself the embarrassment of his own writing:

Hefner’s death comes at a time of deep confusion for the country about all sorts of things sexual in nature.

Maybe for you, buddy.

Embedded in his work was the idea that what we appreciate in one another isn’t sexless. It’s deeply rooted in our differences. Without those differences, sex itself becomes much less interesting.

How can homos enjoy sex, without tits to squeeze? (Lesbos I can see.)

So while he was derided as selling prurience and stereotypes to the profane and stereotypical, he was actually celebrating the sexual complementarity that has bound men and women together since the dawn of time. The fact this idea has become a problematic one in some pockets of American culture is one Hefner would doubtless find absurd – he built an entire empire on it, after all.

I can never hear a wingnut go on about "complementary" boygirl sex without hearing Professor Robert P. George's old rant about "sexually complementary spouses" versus "Masturbatory, sodomitical, and other sexual acts which are not reproductive in type, [and] cannot unite persons organically." Maybe you think of mustard and ketchup. Either way, lol.

On the other side, as I said, lots of highly suppressed hellfire fantasies -- e.g. Susan Wright at Red State:

Does that mean I don’t hope for a peaceful afterlife for Mr. Hefner?

Not at all. My most sincere hope and desire is that as the sun set over Hefner’s life, he had this epiphany of his own mortality, and his desperate need for forgiveness.

Or at least one last orgasm. Wright finishes up (fnarr fnarr) by telling us she won't pray for the heathen, but for "mercy for a society that has too readily forgotten the family and embraced perversion." Hope you filthy sinners appreciate it! I'll close with this remembrance from Anonymous Conservative:

He had the upper lip and naso-labial folds of a man who I would have assumed had been at least sexually abused as a child, if not been outright homosexual.

If these guys have their own version of Hef's grotto, I shudder to think what's in it.

NOW LIFE HAS KILLED THE DREAM I DREAMED.

Weep for Megan McArdle. She's been hurt so many times -- first by the Supreme Court failing to kill Obamacare in 2012: "my day lilies are still blooming beautifully," she said then, bravely, through shaking lips and tears; "...I assume that we're all looking forward to seeing Obama campaign on his large middle class tax hike. Pass the popcorn!" As if Obama's reelection a few months later weren't worse enough, she has lately had to sit through a couple of other disastrous repeal-and-replace attempts; but when last week Republicans' hopes revived for Graham-Cassidy, so did McArdle's, and she dared to dream of a future where the rickety Rube Goldberg ACA version of national health care lay in ruins and the Democrats must beg for socialized medicine in the streets:

The left can pass another Obamacare, or some different, more expansive plan. But to do so, they will have to go through the whole painful process of passing Obamacare all over again: soothe or pay off all the anxious interest groups; find the extra tax dollars to fund it; reassure voters who have good insurance that they will not lose by the new plan. 

This task will be immensely harder in Round 2 than it was in 2010. By the time they get around to it (in 2020, soonest), Democrats will be forced to scavenge for new sources of funding at the same time as every predator on K Street is scouring the landscape to feed our existing defense commitments and rapidly growing entitlement burden.

That'll show those scavenging moochers! So engrossed was she in her vengeance fantasy, she lapsed into that hoary Peggy Noonan passive-aggressive shtick, counseling Democrats to win big by being Republicans:

Can Democrats win back states they’ve lost by marching into 50 capitols and proposing single payer? Certainly not. But they may be able to win back those states by designing local solutions that fit the local politics, economy and cultural values, while pushing those places a little closer to progressive ideals. And in the process, they might bring some political diversity into their own party, which would be good for Democratic electoral fortunes, and good for America.

Well, today Graham-Cassidy collapsed, and mainly for a reason McArdle could never bring herself to even acknowledge: That no Senator who absolutely didn't have to attach himself or herself to this bill would do so, because the bill was as popular as cancer (just one of the many diseases that under Graham-Cassidy would have bankrupted and/or killed many more Americans than before). Even Trumpkins hated it because, as much as they may hate Colin Kaepernick and people who can read and write, they hate even more the idea of dying just so some rich fuck can be richer still.

And this has been the problem with all the repealreplacements -- Republicans have to show voters they're serious about getting rid of the black guy's health care thing, but can't even pretend to fill the gap with something that won't straight-up kill them, let alone something that would actually improve their lives. Anyone who could be held responsible for such a bill's passage would be hunted down by his or her constituents, as the President is fond of saying, like a dog. So they do these little Kabuki shows that always end with them hanging their heads in front of the microphones and pledging to do better next time while Trump raves on his golden toilet.

Because that's all they can do. It's so plain it takes a pundit not to see it.

I'm not a sentimental fellow, but when I imagine McArdle having to confront the fact that the sole remaining health care bill before the Senate now is Medicare For All,  and that even chucklehead outfits like Politico have to admit single payer "is fairly popular — at least in principle" (their strangulated way of saying it won their poll 49-35), well, I can hardly keep from laughing.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the Treason of the Kneeling Football Players. I'm also loving the idea floated by some dummies that patriots should transition from the NFL to NASCAR. How long will football fans tolerate a sporting event in which players strive to avoid head-on collisions?

THEY'RE EVERYWHERE -- IN EVERY NOOK AND CRANNY! AND ME OUT OF TINFOIL!

Sometimes, long as I've studied them, I'm still amazed how deeply devoted your average conservative is to his own victimhood. Whether out of office or, as now, enjoying nearly unprecedented control of the levers of power, your conservative will performatively cower before mouse-shadows he'll claim are the Alinskyite hordes, and plead for your sympathy and probably a fundraiser donation.

Have a look at David French's latest at National Review, about how all the colleges are aflame with anti-Milo riots and, in that small part of the country not occupied by burning campuses, Ta-Nahisi Coates conducts his vast honky pogrom; in other words, a typical David French column. Except in this one, French actually acknowledges that liberals have tumbled (about time, too) to their outrage machine -- that, in the polite words of David Remnick, conservatives "take some examples of exaggerated identity politics… and blow them up on Fox or Breitbart" till they're all thrashing in their Barcaloungers, self-soiled with rage and ressentiment.

To this French gives his defense, or rather his belligerent nuh-uh:

When I read words like that, I think they just don’t know.

Picture French in a James Dean red jacket, kicking a hole in a portrait of Hillary Clinton.

Or maybe they know — but don’t care — the extent to which a hostile, illiberal brand of identity politics has seeped into every nook and cranny of American culture. It’s not the case that conservative Americans sit ensconced in their immense privilege, raging at an irrelevant fringe hyped up by Fox News. Rather they experience identity politics at their jobs, hear their children and grandchildren describe experiencing it at school, and find it so omnipresent on television and online that they can’t seem to find any space (aside from conservative media) where someone isn’t mocking their values or accusing them of being complicit in historical atrocities.

Sounds like a nightmare! Yet, amazingly, absolutely no one I know shares French's experience. If "every nook and cranny of American culture" really were taken over by the ultraleft, people who were not directly employed by the wingnut outrage industry would also notice. Yet the young people I know who are in school don't report being forced to abjure or condemn (as the case may be) whiteness. Neither I nor any of the other working schlubs I know are interrupted at our jobs to troop down to the Cesar Chavez Auditorium for our mandatory two-minutes hate against Trump and the Bible. And given the enormous number of channels on "television" and the infinity of offerings "online," I can't even guess what French means by "can’t seem to find any space... where someone isn’t mocking their values or accusing them of being complicit in historical atrocities," unless he has some haywire version of Parental Controls that has him locked into Rachel Maddow and Lawyers Guns & Money.

The way I see it, were French to acknowledge that his odd theory -- that a country ruled by Donald Trump and a mob of ultraconservative Republicans is actually groaning under the yoke of a leftist hegemony -- is not shared by many more people than subscribe to his magazine, he would have but two possible rejoinders: That libtards like myself and David Remnick, old and white and male as we are, "just don't know" French's pain because we're so numb to the constant social justice warring and Antifa and Black Lives Matter and George Soros that it sounds normal to us -- or we're in on it with them and are lying to protect our international socialist masters and to make it look like French is the crazy one! 

Actually there's a third option: French is just full of shit. Now, why didn't I just go to that first? Hey, I guess in a way his whining worked!

IS YOUR WIFE A GOER? SAY NO MORE, NUDGE NUDGE?

Your moment of Dreher, Part 3,209:

Note the caption. Hey, you should have seen the cover they wanted to use!

Dreher's inspirator this time is Mark Regnerus, who reports that women with liberal views desire more sex than women with conservative views (or at least report something like that on whatever survey he's using; when it comes to this sort of thing, the grains of salt come extra large). This Regnerus attributes not to circumstances or experiences, but to philosophy: "it is a moral good to express one’s sexuality in actions of one’s own free choosing. Pleasure is reached for and should be." This attitude, which may sound healthy to you heathens, Regnerus anathematizes; normal people only have sex when God or grandma demands children, whereas liberal women DENY THE LIVING GOD, and all His works (and probably grandma and her works too, yea even the Pie Baked From Scratch), and thus "have a difficult time attributing transcendent value to aspects of life such as work, relationships, children, and daily tasks.” Look at women with ten children — you never see them wanting sex! And your lady CEO is famously sexless, until the Right Man comes along and she takes off her glasses and shakes out her hair [guitar riff]. In the end, they want more sex only because “they feel poignantly the lack of sufficient transcendence in life” they could have had from Joel Osteen and vacuuming if only they weren't so liberal.

Maybe there's a corollary -- you won't feel like having sex if you have a column to wank several times a day.

NATIONAL EMBARRASSMENT GOES INTERNATIONAL.

Trump's "I will kill you all" speech at the U.N. pleased the expected parties -- his anti-immigration twaddle thrilled the overt racists, the Believers in the Three Magic Words got what they came for ("Trump called out radical Islamic terrorism BY NAME"), and his general belligerence excited chest-beaters such as Florida Republican Congressman Ron DeSantis, who declared, "This is the international UN version of 'draining the swamp'" -- though, to be fair, seeing how draining the swamp has turned out domestically, maybe DeSantis was trying to tell us this speech was bullshit, too. And maybe Trump's brutish base, to whom I suspect it was pitched, liked that he was tellin' off them furriners, if they even remember what the United Nations is (the wingnut operatives in the White House seem to be working from an antique Bircher playbook).

The funniest ones were those who tried to make Trump's rant seem thoughtful and philosophical, like Sohrab Ahmari at Commentary:

If your default vision of liberal order looks like Barack Obama- and Angela Merkel-style transnationalism, you were probably disappointed with Trump’s speech. The features of the Obama/Merkel model are endless diplomatic processes for their own sake; the expansion of transnational “norms” and institutions, usually at the expense of democratic self-government; and a general disdain for anything redolent of nationhood and nationalism and particularity.

Translation: If you have to power to kill and don't announce your intention to use it, preferably in the crudest terms and while wearing a flag pin, you're a weakling. Trump's "alternative vision of liberal order," Ahmari claimed, "would have looked familiar to a Ronald Reagan or a Daniel Patrick Moynihan." I'm sure it would be familiar to them -- from their buddies the Contras. But as little as I think of those two, I don't think they would have wanted America itself to become a banana republic, and its President a caudillo.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the uproar over Jemele Hill calling Trump a white supremacist, and how we all learned to laugh and love again thanks to Clay Travis saying "boobs." It's kind of fitting that the brethren cheered for one of the stupider terms for breasts; if he'd said "I support the Second Amendment and tits" I wonder how it'd go over. (If he'd said "I support the Second Amendment and eating pussy" I know how it'd go over.)

I mentioned the blackcon group Project 21 in the column -- I'd seen them before, and regret not having space to discuss their history. In addition to pushing wonky wingnut causes like genetically modified foods,  they've been sending black conservatives to stick up for white conservatives for years. Here’s Project 21 spokesperson Deneen Borelli, for example, a frequent talking head on Fox, claiming in 2012 that Obama threw the black community “under the bus” by supporting same-sex marriage; here she is that same year responding to the Trayvon Martin shooting with “race-based concerns with Barack Obama, Eric Holder and their involvement with the Black Panther movement…” Most recently Project 21 defended Trump against the CEOs who quit his business councils (“it certainly reeks of corporate America bowing to the will of the anti-Trump resistance movement”) and by bothsidesing the Charlottesville incident. Diamond and Silk can only hope the wingnut sinecures remain so generous into their old age, but I have a sneaking suspicion that if it ever comes time to cut staff, white people won't be in the first wave.