RAIN-DANCERS OF THE RIGHT. Peter Wehner, a former Fellow at the Bill Bennett School of Public Scolding and Bush White House strategist who has run for shelter from the upcoming conservative apocalypse to National Review's The Corner, nonetheless feels optimism: "Something good seems to be happening in our land." And that glad tiding is that Matthew McConaughey has referred to the thing growing in his girlfriend's womb as a baby.

"A baby, not a fetus," marvels Wehner. "I wonder how this locution will go down in the militantly pro-abortion world of Hollywood, where the 'right' to an abortion is sacrosanct." Trust me, if McConaughey's career ends in 2008, it won't be due to his use of the b-word -- it'll be due to Fool's Gold.

Things are rough for the right-wing when they jump on proud-parent usage as a sign of the Third Great Awakening. Not even The Corner's normally undemanding readers can stand for it, and they send Wehner complaints -- not, alas, that he has wasted their time with his gibberish, but that McConaughey has not married the mother of his proto-child and is therefore an unsuitable harbringer of moral revival.

Wehner, using some of the skills he no doubt honed at the White House, eats a certain amount of Christer shit before asserting, "I’ll take progress where we can find it. If we are seeing a movement toward respect for the unborn child in Hollywood, let’s accept that — and then, hopefully, we can move toward a greater commitment to marriage."

I suppose the next Hollywood wedding, however doomed, will have them convinced that Christ's Second Coming is right on schedule. (Maybe Jesus did help them with the timing -- they could have got stuck with Eddie Murphy.) Then they can move on to the next step -- getting McConaughey to denounce homosexuality.

Failing that, though, they could raise a small cheer if he tells some reporter that he's not into anal. Or if he gets a nice haircut or holds a door open for a lady or something. These people are like roadside rain-dancers; they can dance through weeks of drought, and still take credit for the shower that breaks it.

UPDATE. gypsy howell makes an excellent point in comments: "Huh. Judging by the number of celebrity out-of-wedlock babies, I was thinking that 'Hollywood' has never heard of having an abortion." What Would Tyler Durden Do concurs. They could add a "Cutest Baby" category to the Oscars and conservatives still wouldn't be satisfied. In fact, when Hollywood finally becomes a giant kindergarten they'll just complain that these "neo-Boomers" will all grow up to smoke pot and have riots.