SUPER METATUESDAY! Cableless, I could not watch tonight's debate, so I will follow the example of conservatives who review movies they haven't seen and review the debate as it took place in the minds of National Review Online contributors.

Kathryn J. Lopez starts the evening's festivities:

I Never Thought I'd Say This, But... I may be angry on behalf of Hillary Clinton. This debate is starting out with Clinton on the defense. Obama bettter get treated like she is.

It would seem a little late for K-Lo to go feminist-deconstructionist, but apparently neither clocks nor spell-check exist in Rightwing World.

Mark Krikorian: "Maybe I'm not as smart as these two, but I have no idea what they're talking about." Why "but"? Both propositions are clearly correct.

"Could Hillary's problem be that no adviser can say 'save the b**ch for the second half hour'?" Wow, K-Lo, that didn't last long!

Stephen Spruiell tries to go substantive, but the whole thing's about what a b**ch Clinton is. Under the usual Bizarro-World formula, we might reasonably conclude from this that Clinton is winning decisively, but there is a Twilight of the Gods atmosphere about their savagery that renders the usual predictive mechanisms inoperative.

Mark Hemingway just admitted that Alan Keyes is a political tomato-can. Such is loyalty in the late conservative era.

"If Fox did this to Hil, the Left would go ballistic. But this is their hometown channel" -- Andy McCarthy. I don't see how I've remained a doctrinaire liberal so long without access to Wolf Blitzer's morning agenda.

"Without condescension, with a gentle nudge, he puts her back in the kitchen" -- Kathleen Parker. Tomorrow's talking point: Obama wants to put Hil in "kitchen"! Long discussion of Obama's sexism, probably absorbed from his hateful mother.

"I don't think Russert's doing it on purpose, but..." Were I blessed with faith in a Liberal Media, I'd believe this were the trick: to avalanche on Clinton in full view of the NatRev types so that their brains fry trying to comprehend how we, pledged in blood though we are to the evil Clinton empire, could treat her so badly. I mean, it's not as if she were Alan Keyes!

Don't Use the L-Word! [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

I wish there were a candidate delighted to be honestly and authentically called a liberal or a conservative. I like partisanship. To paraphrase Gordon Gekko, "partisanship is good."

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, "You're a stupid fucking load, K-Lo."

So rattled are the NatRev crew by this exercise that those members determined to comment on world affairs afterward lose their usual acuity. "The Washington Times has issued instructions that henceforth it will use illegal immigrants rather than illegal aliens," mourns Andy McCarthy. He completely missed the part about gay "marriage"! I don't really know what really happened in Cleveland tonight, but if it put these guys off their customary homophobic feed, it can't have been too bad.

UPDATE. Ann Althouse: "Obama is confronted with his 'most liberal' ranking. I find his talking tiresome and will need to check the transcript to see if he said anything interesting." I don't know what we'd do without the blogosphere -- probably go down to the tunnels of Grand Central and ask Mole People to extemporize. Meanwhile the Ole Perfesser recommends Stephen Green's "drunkblogging." Sample: "Hillary getting all sarcastic in not a pretty sight. Neither are her hips in that bright yellow jacket." Green gives drunkenness a bad name, and the Perfesser gives a bad name to everything else. Andrew Sullivan is freaked out that Obama only "denounced" Farrakhan, as opposed to -- what? Producing a Farrakhan doll and biting its throat open? Later, chided by correspondents, Sullivan says "I find Obama's calm distancing insufficient" and " I also think this will be used against him and worry that it will become a distracting issue" -- by which he means, "Here's what I'll bring up when I inevitably support McCain." Did you know The Atlantic used to publish Mark Twain? Sh, sh, don't cry -- soon the old crazy man will be President and then we will all join Daddy in heaven.