ONE OF SEVERAL NEXT-TO-LAST REFUGES OF A SCOUNDREL. One blessing of the Schiavo mishegas ("mishegas" being the new "kerfuffle," people! Recognize or I'll start using "yakahoola") is that it's been keeping our minds off the usual bullshit (albeit with new bullshit, but hey, change is our friend!). Wingnut mentions of Michael Moore alone have declined 47 percent in the past two weeks. But Hugh Hewitt had to spoil it with a type of "thought experiment" familiar to students of the genre.

Some of Hewitt's fellow-travelers (Jarvis, Sullivan et alia), afrighted by the circus in Pinellas Park, began to suggest that the Religious Right might be disembraining conservatism unduly. True-believing Hewitt probably knew that the hit was, if nothing else, well-timed, and thereby dangerous; he reached into his ordnance; not much there besides Jesus, and the enemy was just throwing that back at him, with contempt; finally his fingers found the anti-anti-Semitizer -- a sort of stink bomb that leaves a whiff of odium on an opponent's arguments in even the most irrelevant circumstances -- and, after a moment of doubt, Hewitt put it in the launcher:

It is a useful exercise to run through Jeff's piece and substitute "the Jews" for the "religious right" and all pronounces referring to the "religious right." Jeff is of course not anti-Semitic...

"Useful" indeed! I myself find it "useful" to re-state all the bad things said about me as if they were said about the Jews -- "The Jews have no sense of responsibility, they shit on everyone they love, the selfish bastards," "The Jews are a constant disappointment to their family," "The services of the Jews are no longer required," "I think the Jews and I should stop seeing each other," etc. It may not disprove my opponents' arguments, but it makes them look bad, at least in the little theatre of my mind. And, as we have seen, in extreme moments that may be good enough.