National Review God-botherer-in-residence David French tells us corporations are people -- and a buncha dang liberal people at that! He knew this even while at Harvard Law:
...my classmates were recruited not just by top law firms but also by top consulting firms and multinational corporations. Very few of them were conservative. Barely any of them were social conservatives.
French was at Harvard in the early 90s. Why weren't these left-wing corporations pushing for gay marriage, a living wage, and trans bathroom rights back then? Musta been Newt Gingrich holding back the red-and-grey-flannel tide. Plus which,
Back when I still did commercial litigation, my larger corporate clients were almost uniformly left of center, and the few Republicans on staff were stereotypical “Wall Street” conservatives. They may have been fiscal hawks, but they positively loathed the religious Right.
They don't hate homos so they don't count.
My small-business clients were far more mixed. Conservative communities tend to spawn conservatives.
Jesus, to hear French tell it, liberals have been totally running American big business for decades, with only a small rump of Mom-and-Pops holding the line. Chamber of Commerce meetings must be total drug orgies by now!
Progressives mock the notion that corporations can have “values” when those values are religious or conservative, but then they endlessly obsess over the progressive culture and values of their favorite companies.
Yeah, I seem to remember the other day Bernie Sanders was talking about how corporations are our buddies. Anyway, French proposes his comrades reverse "the Left's long march through America’s most significant religious, cultural, and economic institutions" thus:
Conservatives must do the hard work of institution-building and institution-joining — of reshaping the notion that the “best” conservatives are those who become activists or politicians. Board members and CEOs can have far more cultural impact than governors or legislators. A single, high-level conservative academic program can place top talent in every major industry.
So French proposes conservatives seize power by... going into business.
Conservative persecution mania is really getting out of hand. If they're not in business -- nor, per French's "long march" statement, in the arts, nor academia, nor the churches -- then where the hell are they? In the military, it would seem, and in think-tanks and wingnut sinecures like French's at National Review. If so, maybe they're not losing because they're blocked by nefarious libs -- maybe they're losing because there just aren't enough of them.
But roughly five years ago, I began to sense a change in the wind. I was encountering not one or two truly counter-cultural students but entire roomfuls of young conservatives who were openly disdainful of the dominant social trends in their peer group. Where their peers demanded participation trophies, these kids threw them in the trash. Where their peers dismissed traditional social conventions, these kids (particularly in the South) were reviving the use of “sir” and “ma’am” in conversations with elders...
And these New Millennials will "sir" and "ma'am" our great country back into its pre-homosexual greatness: "...this new counter-revolution is ultimately built on devotion to God, enthusiasm for our nation’s founding principles, a healthy respect for tradition and our nation’s most valuable cultural institutions, and hard work. This revolution won’t be televised, but it will be on Snapchat..."
Gag. But I looked again tonight and, amazingly, French has topped himself. Get a load:
Free Speech Is Killing Free Speech
Has he changed his mind about Citizens United? I wondered. Ha, j/k -- that kind of free speech is great. But when the NBA moves the All-Star Game because it doesn't support North Carolina's anti-anti-discrimination laws, that's double plus ungood free speech. It's bullying! It's both micro and macroaggressive!
Increasingly, Americans are using their right to free speech to destroy free speech. Rather than seeking to inform, they intimidate. Rather than seeking to persuade, they publicly shame...
It seems odd, given the widespread trolling on social media, to assert that America’s culture of free speech is under threat, but the cumulative effect of shame campaigns and intimidation strategies is that millions of people simply flee the field, leaving the battle to the most extreme voices or to those people who’ve slowly developed the thick skins necessary to maintain a public presence...
And God forbid people like French should have to develop thick skins -- that's for libtards like Katie Couric, who should roll with his punches as God intended. Just as French turned on a dime to declare Millennials soldiers of Christ, so he's flipped on the much-derided concept of a safe space; it's great, he's now decided, so long as he's the one safely spaced.
UPDATE. Comments are (as always) well worth your time, Mr. and Mrs. Blog Consumer. trex does us the favor of noticing that back in 2015, before he got the PC bug, French was all for offensive speech that cut a certain way, e.g.:
In 2007 San Francisco State University put its chapter of the College Republicans on trial for desecrating the name of Allah. At an anti-terrorism rally, members of the College Republicans stomped on paper representations of the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah, which contain the name “Allah” written in Arabic script. Bear in mind, this is a school where activists routinely burn or otherwise desecrate the American flag. Students charged the College Republicans with “attempts to incite violence and create a hostile environment” and “actions of incivility.”
At the time, I worked for the Alliance Defending Freedom, and we filed suit, seeking an injunction against California State University–system policies that mandated “civility” and prohibited conduct that was “inconsistent” with the university’s “goals, principles, and policies.”
Which would be fine, albeit assholish, if French weren't now bitching that the spectacle of liberals boycotting Chick-fil-a is "progressive bullying" and diving into his den of coloring books and videos of frolicking puppies.
Writing about politics and current affairs in the era of Donald Trump ideally requires a variety of traits that do not always, or even often, go together: factual and intellectual clarity, moral seriousness, and a spirit of generosity toward others and humility toward oneself.
Happily for Times Opinion, those traits are embodied to an exceptional degree by David French, who is joining us as our newest columnist, beginning January 30. We are delighted to welcome him.
I’m frankly surprised they picked French over Dreher – they could have had a twofer: Yet another God-bothering rightwing editorial writer, and an “Ask the Exorcist” columnist.
I’ve been over French’s awfulness many times in this space, Substack and elsewhere. The most egregious and amusing examples, like the one pictured above, go back a few years, before French began to cultivate the Reasonable Right persona that the prestige press really goes for. But he can still come up with some corkers, as when, oh-so-regretfully approving of Trump’s first impeachment, French felt obliged to bring up The Clenis (“Yet, in both circumstances, the president was clearly guilty of serious misconduct. Partisanship saved Bill Clinton. Partisanship will save Donald Trump”). Sure, to you, trying to blackmail a foreign government for personal gain seems worse that getting your dick sucked, but to Jesus and French they're equally sinful.
French remains a theocrat who not only wants abortion treated like murder but also actively works (with what the Times calls “an emphasis on the First Amendment”) for the Masterpiece Bakery/Little Sisters of the Poor agenda of sabotaging national health care and minority rights. And his civility act is not merely obnoxious, it’s a cover and a con for American conservatism in all its hegemonic viciousness – the pretense that you can guiltlessly maintain society’s savage inequities if you drop some coins in the poor box. He’s got the Times snowed, but I think at this point most people who can read know better.
At National ReviewDavid French laments that "Donald Trump Confirms Progressives’ Worst anti-Conservative Prejudices," and boy does he ever, but not for the reasons French thinks. He starts with standard-issue bitchery about PC:
In the aftermath of both the Orlando and Dallas massacres, millions of Americans have been absolutely dumbfounded at the response of the Obama administration. In one instance, a Muslim man openly and repeatedly pledged allegiance to ISIS. In the other, a black radical openly and repeatedly declared his intention to kill police officers as retribution for alleged police abuse. In both cases, the administration stated that it may be difficult to discern the attacker’s true motives. Yet when Dylann Roof murdered nine black Americans in Charleston, there was no reluctance to ascribe motive. Why?
The obvious answer is “political correctness"...
I'm guessing the "millions" of dumbfounded Americans were about 98% white. I'm also guessing this is the part of Obama's speech after the Dylann Roof massacre that French is complaining about:
The fact that this took place in a black church obviously also raises questions about a dark part of our history. This is not the first time that black churches have been attacked, and we know the hatred across races and faiths pose a particular threat to our democracy and our ideals.
So to avoid political correctness, after Dallas Obama should have talked about America's dark history of black people oppressing and murdering white people. Fair's fair! (Actually I think French is just pissed that after the Charleston murders people got down on the Confederate flag, despite his eloquent defense of it.)
Anyway eventually French says that his and his buddies' own "reason and truth" would carry the day among the American people were it not spoiled by people like Donald Trump -- the Presidential nominee presumptive, you may recall, of the Republican Party:
The result is a movement built on spite, in which the desire to enrage progressives creates a continuous font of speech and conduct that works mainly to confirm the progressive world view. In the name of defying political correctness, Trump and his fans do absolutely nothing to temper the worst progressive impulses and do much to appall and repulse everyone else. They leave the American people without a morally defensible choice. It’s the scold versus the asshole. The scold feels vindicated, the asshole feels gleeful, and everyone else feels despair.
Make no mistake, Trump is not beating political correctness; he’s feeding it.
Again I remind you: Trump is the Republican candidate for President, and all the talk about how he's not really a conservative because he once talked about taxing the rich (only to back right off later) is a load of bullshit. Trump is actually the best possible avatar of contemporary conservatism. Because aside from the license to be an "asshole," as French puts it, what does conservatism have to offer voters? A sound economy? That was revealed as nonsense in 2008. Foreign policy? Ask your Republican aunt how eager she is for another Mideast war. Social policy that reflects the public will? Straights are cool with the gays now, and conservatives are outside the group hug screaming about bathrooms; white Americans are even starting to get what black people go through, which explains why conservatives keep stepping on their dicks explaining themselves on the issue.
No, political incorrectness -- that is, being an asshole -- is the only big seller left on the shelf. That's why the top career politicians in the Republican Party are flocking to Trump. Unlike the guys in the PR Department, they don't have to pretend to be nice.
UPDATE. Comments are marvelous, as usual. smut clyde notes, "If Trump is any guide, the central weapon of the War on Political Correctness is the call for the Wahhmbulance after any criticism he receives from others." Just so. Attend, for example, the weeping and wailing (led by the New York fucking Times!) over Justice Ginsberg calling Trump out. Few of the brethren noticed that the Judicial Code of Conduct that might restrain such comments does not apply to Supreme Court Justices (why should they, when Times reporters don't notice it?), and none could admit that Ginsberg is 100% right about Il Douche and truth, in the book of all wise men as well as in defamation cases, is an absolute defense. Instead they snarl about "Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s unhinged assault on Trump" (Seth Lipsky, New York Post) etc. One of my favorites is the Daily Caller's "[Andrew] Napolitano: Ginsburg’s Trump Comments ‘Damages The Reputation’ Of The Court." Andrew Napolitano! That's like Dwayne Johnson saying what a shitty actor Daniel Day-Lewis is. It's something, isn't it, that the people who in this life have the most need of shame possess so little capacity for it.
As someone who has litigated many, many academic freedom cases, I have profoundly mixed feelings about this move. First, I know and understand that tenure is designed to guarantee freedom, to prevent political pressures from impacting scholarship. It’s designed to preserve academic independence. In fact, tenure has protected a number of outspoken conservative professors (including some of my clients), men and women who would have been fired long ago without tenure protections.
But...
At the same time, however, academic independence is a fiction. In the real world, leftist groupthink dominates academic departments, conservatives are easily weeded out before tenure – mostly through the hiring process itself – and even many (if not most) tenured dissenting professors live “in the closet” to avoid the social and professional consequences of public disagreement on key cultural or scientific issues. The result isn’t freedom but instead permanently entrenched ideological conformity.
Freedom not only isn't free, it isn't even real if it results in too many liberals. French then offers what may look to the casual observer like a defense of tenure...
Yet this same overwhelming conformity means that the immediate consequence of lifting tenure protections wouldn’t be greater diversity but even worse ideological persecution as the few conservative professors would face hostile departments stripped of the bulk of their legal protections. Ending tenure without simultaneously overhauling departments (including departments’ academic missions and hiring practices) simply won’t contribute to the cause of liberty. Yes, it might make it easier to make financially-motivated cuts, but it’s hard to see any short or medium-term increase in true academic freedom.
...but his GOP buddies are probably reading that and saying, "You know, he's right -- we ought to stuff the faculties with wingnuts, then make it easy to fire the ones we don't like!" Whether that was French's intention I leave to you, but read his closing before you decide:
Finally, there are downsides to tenure beyond its effect on liberty. Place any group of people outside of the normal boundaries of accountability, and they are likely to abuse that autonomy. Tenured professors are no exception, with their ranks including a host of colleagues who simply coast on their job security. They care little for teaching, behave horribly towards students and colleagues, and even slack off their research efforts. They occupy seats that could be taken by better, more conscientious teachers and scholars, and no one can move them until they retire or die. While preserving true academic freedom is worth tolerating a limited number of deadbeats, the deadbeats become much less tolerable if academic freedom is failing.
Jeez, why do we have this stupid old "tenure" in the first place? French is insufferable even when he's on the right side -- for example, you can believe Laura Kipnis got a raw deal from Northwestern and still want to sidle away when French says nuh-uh libtards, you're the real enemies of free speech; for many of us that may be a merely instinctual reaction, but French's post today shows why that instinct is absolutely correct.
• A snippet from a recent Roy Edroso Breaks It Down newsletter (TO WHICH YOU SHOULD SUBSCRIBE, he hollered with one hand to the side of his mouth like a newsboy in a '30s Warner Brothers picture, IT'S CHEEEEAP ™):
And let’s not pretend that a national popular vote elevates every citizen’s vote in a way that the Electoral College does not. Your vote counts in each state, and the fact that your state is overwhelmingly red or blue is no more or less demoralizing than the popular-vote idea that your single vote is thrown into a pool of 130 million others.
So the Republican voting in D.C. (where Clinton won with 90.9% of the vote) presumably feels himself more connected to the result than he would if his vote had a chance of contributing to a winning margin. I don’t think even French believes that.
I bring this up because the aforementioned wave of wingnut Electoral College defenses by Very Serious Commentators, all full of Founder Worship and rEpUbLiC nOt A dEmOcRaCy yak, has been followed (as if so ordained by Morning Memo!) by some dumbed-down (well, more dumbed-down) versions tailored to the Trumpenproletariat in bottom-feeder media such as the Washington Examiner, where David M. Drucker writes under the interesting headline "Republicans resigned to Trump losing 2020 popular vote but confident about Electoral College":
Some Republicans say the problem is Trump's populist brand of partisan grievance. It's an attitude tailor-made for the Electoral College in the current era of regionally Balkanized politics, but anathema to attracting a broad, national coalition that can win the most votes, as past presidents did when seeking re-election amid a booming economy.
"Trump's populist brand of partisan grievance" is "tailor-made for the Electoral College"? I wonder if James Madison had that in mind.
Others argue that neither Trump, nor possibly any Republican, could win the popular vote when most big states are overwhelmingly liberal.
“California, Illinois, and New York, make it very, very difficult for anybody on our side to ever again to win the popular vote,” said David Carney, a Republican strategist in New Hampshire.
Since it's rather giving the game away to say "Most people don't want our candidate to be President," they're arguing that most people is the wrong people -- libruls whut live in fancy states where they have highfalutin' sundries like soap and toothpaste. (Drucker is so grateful for the Trump campaign's help in filling his column that he ends with some bullshit about how the Trumpkins expect to lose the popular vote again but win the Electoral College even bigger in 2020 -- “We look to maintain and expand the Trump map" -- mainly, it would seem, to impress even more crushingly on Americans that the dead hand of the Founders -- manipulated as a cat's-paw by the modern GOP -- doesn't give a shit what they think.)
"You think all those red states would stick around and be in the United States if they kept losing to New York, New Jersey, California and Illinois?” Hannity asked. “I tend to think not.”
The final tantrum is always secession with these people. This time I say let them go, and we can establish generous refugee programs for the non-assholes who will flee the New Confederacy.
Surprisingly, it has to do with what party you belong to! Smith also heaps insults on John Kerry, perhaps because he was out of Purple heart band-aids.
We know Smith is shit; his previous nadir was his expression of hand-rubbing glee that "Lefty Actors Are Beginning to Fear Donald Trump" because the controversy over a Shakespeare in the Park peformance of Julius Caesar had stirred the wrath of such prominent conservative thinkers as Laura Loomer. But this is a new low even for him. I admit uncharitable characterizations of David French's late-life enlistment (he went in as a JAG), for example, have crossed my mind, but I wouldn't give them voice to slam him because a.) like sports victories, enlistment and posting to war zones counts no matter what the particulars, b.) there is so much else to criticize French for, and c.) I'm not a total asshole.
The most interesting thing about Smith's garbage post is I haven't seen any conservatives criticizing it. I would say that in an age when senior Republicans can freely slag the war hero Alexander Vindman, it's no surprise. But then when would it have been? I remember when Saxby Chambliss slurred disabled war hero Max Cleland to win the Georgia Senate election, and National Review had headlines like "Max Cleland, liberal victim," arguing that sure, there was "a tough anti-Cleland ad that Chambliss broadcast featuring Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein" but "the ad didn’t morph Cleland into either of these figures or say that he supported them," so no one would make the connection. The fact is -- and I keep telling you -- Republicans are no good and haven't been for a long, long time.
I missed this when it came out in 2014. I heard it sucked. Not so!
• The Federalist having done its part for the "New York, with its record low crime rate and record high population, is collapsing thanks to libs" shtick, National Review sees and raises with Deroy Murdock's and Brett Joshpe's "De Blasio’s Dystopia" -- subtitled, LOL, "This is what a socialist New York looks like." Cue sinister 70s saxophone music! The one thing everyone I know back in the old town is bitching about is the state of the subway, but Murdock and Joshpe don't mention it -- their major concerns are ancient wingnut wouldn't-wanna-live-there tropes from the Lindsay era. For instance, homelessness -- not that the authors are concerned for the welfare of the unhoused, mind; they refer to temporary housing for these poor souls as "homeless-hotel staycations," har har. No, they're worried the bums "can be prone to violence," unlike domiciled criminals, who gently ask to mug you. Then, I swear to God, they complain that they (or somebody -- the authors do not identify a witness; maybe a cab driver told them about it) saw someone shooting up on the street. In broad daylight! I know Murdock's lived in New York a long time, so I assume he lost a bet. As for Joshpe, he appears to be a baby lawyer who doesn't get why his Ivy League education and condo deposit doesn't buy him a blight-free passage down these mean streets. Mamaroneck's calling, buddy!
• Also at National Review, David French has a thing about how Ben Shapiro is the victim of an "online mob" because a lot of people said they don't like him. Regular readers know this is par for the conservative-victimology course, but two things about it are noteworthy. For one thing, in the incident French is describing, the "online mob" yelled at a guy who promoted Shapiro, not Shapiro himself -- apparently conservatives can be Twitter-mobbed in absentia! But more interesting still is the way French kicks off this bad-faith-fest about how progressives are mean to him and his buddies:
I’ve got some questions for my progressive readers. When you think of Colin Kaepernick, do you define him by his quiet kneeling and many thoughtful interviews? Or do you define him by the socks he wore once, dehumanizing cops as pigs?
When you think of writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, do you define him by his hundreds of thousands of eloquent and meticulously researched words? Or do you define him by his call for violence in Baltimore, or his dehumanizing statements about the heroic cops and firefighters who rushed into the World Trade Center on 9/11?
Is Samantha Bee defined by the time she accused a cancer patient of having “Nazi hair”? Or when she used a vile epithet to describe Ivanka Trump?
The idea is supposed to be that, just as these alleged offenses should not limit our understanding of these liberal icons, so Ben Shapiro "is the sum total of his work. He is not the isolated hot take or tweet" and should not be judged solely by these gotchas. But wait -- all the stories French links to that beat up on Kaepernick, Coates, and Bee are from National Review -- and three of them are written by French. And they're all ridiculous cavils -- like Kaepernick's pig socks -- that led to wingnut shit-fits online. Where's the National Review story -- or even brief blogpost -- by French telling us we shouldn't judge these liberals by these isolated incidents?
• Last week Megan McArdle shared with the world her 12-point secret to happiness which somehow did not contain "get paid a lot to write terrible shit." Most of it was about being nice to people -- not peons, just those near and dear, and perhaps donors -- and one item was "save 25 percent of your income," which led to her being smacked around by people who understood that saving 25 percent of one's income may be easy for her, but hard for low earners who did not, as McArdle did, come from moneyed professionals. This led to a McArdle Twitter tirade about how she had to eat ramen for a while and how the left was mean to her. Later she wrote about how rent control would be very bad for rents, as if rents could get any goddamn worse. All this reminded me, not only of how terrible McArdle is, but how fucked out conservatism is in general -- that is, that sliver of conservatism not devoted to Trumpian nationalism, the kind that six-figure columnists have to push. Increasingly our citizens are taking a second look at socialism, rent control, single payer etc. because uncontrolled Reagan-style capitalism has obviously fucked us over, and all its handmaidens like McArdle can do is groan NOOOOO DOOON'T IT WILL BE VENEZUELLLAAA with a flashlight under their chins and talk bootstrap penny-saved-is-a-penny-earned gush. What market is there for that, besides New York Times managing editors? At least the full-on Trumpkins offer the pleasure of unreasoning hate. Yet still they heap money on her and I'm wearing a cardboard belt! Sigh, I am too childish-foolish for this world.
• Further proof that conservatism is fucked out: Not one but two idiotic National Review columns on how it's great to pray to Jesus for your football team to win. "Yes, God Cares about Football" by -- who else? -- David French is excruciating; French starts by basically admitting that there's no reason to talk about this -- there's been no recent backlash against God-bothering footballers for him to defend against ("Perhaps event militant atheists were grateful to see the Patriots lose") -- but he figures he'll go ahead and homilize anyway, and oh how I'd like to know what great preachers like John Donne would make of this:
Moreover, there’s something specific about football — distinct from other sports — that can concentrate a person’s faith. Yes, football is more religious in part because of its southern strongholds (the South is more religious). Yes, football is more religious in part because it’s disproportionately black (African Americans are more religious). But I’d also posit that something else is in play: keen awareness of human fragility...
So football is God's Favorite Sport, as opposed to basketball -- which, French has previously told us, is too "clustered in progressive urban centers" (pushes in nose, pushes out lower lip and tongue) for His taste. What could be worse? Well, French actually inspired colleague Nicholas Frankovich to chime in, and Frankovich manages to work in the paranoia French was too embarrassed to affect:
The question [Is it appropriate to pray for victory in sports?] embarrasses believers who are anxious to be taken seriously in public and goes to the heart of why they feel that anxiety to begin with. In theory, they still enjoy freedom of religion in the public square, but the social reality is that what they enjoy is the freedom to worship in private. Under the law, they are free to speak as if those parts of their religion that clash with materialism were true, but they risk some loss of social stature and credibility among peers when they exercise that right. Their problem in this regard is not legal or political. It’s social, cultural, and intellectual...
The "freedom to worship in private" bit is actually related to a fundamentalist trope about how Godless liberals are trying to trick believers into being grateful they can go to the church of their choice when real freedom means raving and snake-handling in public. Only, in this case, the allegedly proscribed conduct is praying for Jesus to cover the spread. Man, why do these Christians even stay in this country if they don't like it here?
• I don't commend our comments section enough, so I will do so now, with special attention to commenter keta's own version of McArdle's 12 Steps. Sample: "If you're going to praise someone, lay it on thick. Nobody ever died thinking, 'geez, I wish I hadn't been such an obnoxious phony suck-up without an ounce of integrity in my entire being.' Get that nose up in there." But really, they're all winners.
• Aha, this again: "San Francisco Bay Area Experiences Mass Exodus Of Residents," reports a local CBS News outlet. The proof points are a study from the kind of think tank that has David Brooks do their keynote address; some lady from San Jose who's moving to Tennessee to escape SJ's "sanctuary city status"; and "Operators of a San Jose U-Haul business" who "say one of their biggest problems is getting its rental moving vans back because so many are on a one-way ticket out of town." This of course is being repeated credulously by wingnuts ("IT’S OFFICIAL: There’s a mass exodus happening in San Francisco"). But I've seen this sort of "Har everyone's leaving the blue cities" yak before -- sometimes even with moving company stats!-- yet San Francisco is still growing, as are other big cities, because nobody wants to live out in Bumfuck if they can help it. Part of the Trump strategy is to make sure fewer Americans can help it, of course, and also to strip wealth from the cities and make them less attractive, because keeping people stuck out in the great land of meth and assault weapons helps turn them angry and crazy enough to vote Republican. But that could take years to move the needle if it happens at all. Meantime they can just go on telling themselves that cities are expensive and crowded because no one wants to live in them -- which contradicts their alleged economic beliefs but, as we just saw with the budget bill, they don't really believe that shit anyway.
I’ve greatly enjoyed reading the many responses to Tucker Carlson’s now-famous monologue. We’ve had contributions from David French, Kyle Smith, Kevin Williamson, Yuval Levin, David Bahnsen, Michael Brendan Dougherty, Mike Lee, Ben Shapiro, Mona Charen, Jonah Goldberg, David French again, Kevin Williamson again, David Bahnsen again, Jonah Goldberg again, and more. And that’s just on the website. The question has also been discussed at length on many of NR’s podcasts, and, of course, on Twitter....
Forget the rest of Cooke's post; forget anything else written about Carlson's allegedly inspirational speech -- except what I wrote about it in my newsletter (Subscribe! Cheap!) and quoted in a previous alicublog post. Instead contemplate that Cooke has cited the deep thoughts of no fewer than 11 major conservative thinkers on a dumb TV speech by a racist Fox News bowtie buffoon.
It seems like for the past week every conservative bigwig in the country has weighed in on what is essentially standard-issue You Snobs Care About Foreigners Well What About The Poor Hillbillies on Opioids gush as restated by the heir to the Swanson TV Dinners fortune. I knew Trump had gutted their movement, but this is like an Evelyn Waugh parody, like a sub-basement of a nadir of intellectual decay -- it's as if Cooke had an even lower opinion of his own karass than I do, and set out to make conservatism look stupid. It's too bad we can't have a reliable accounting of who finances this crap, because I really suspect it's mostly supported by rich wastrels as a joke to see how many among the dummies who still support this movement will catch on.
Apple said it “does not tolerate hate speech.” Facebook accused Mr. Jones of violating policies against “glorifying violence” or using “dehumanizing language..."
These policies sound good on first reading, but they are extraordinarily vague. We live in times when the slightest deviation from the latest and ever-changing social justice style guide is deemed bigoted and, yes, “dehumanizing"...
French is speaking on behalf of his own buddies who get thrown off other people's internet property from time to time -- like Muslim-hating scream queen Pamela Geller and her Jihad Watch. French's defense of Pammycakes' hate-site: "It’s controversial, to be sure, but it is miles from The Daily Stormer." Oh well then.
Then French runs through the innamalectual dork web's greatest woe-is-me-I'm-a-victim hits ("Just ask Evergreen State College’s Bret Weinstein"), and, get this, tells Facebook et alia to use his own chosen standard when deciding whom to throw out:
The good news is that tech companies don’t have to rely on vague, malleable and hotly contested definitions of hate speech to deal with conspiracy theorists like Mr. Jones. The far better option would be to prohibit libel or slander on their platforms.
To be sure, this would tie their hands more: Unlike “hate speech,” libel and slander have legal meanings. There is a long history of using libel and slander laws to protect especially private figures from false claims. It’s properly more difficult to use those laws to punish allegations directed at public figures, but even then there are limits on intentionally false factual claims.
This reminds me of a TV variety show sketch I saw as a kid, in which Paul Lynde and Martha Raye played show-biz types. "I'm only willing to do a nude scene," Raye said with her nose in the air, "if it has redeeming artistic qualities." After looking her up and down, Lynde replied, "Who asked ya?"
I mean, this is like if some asshole starts tearing up your house and, as you're pitching him out the door, he starts naming conditions under which he'd be willing to leave quietly. At that point you only hope that when you throw him off the stoop he lands on his head.
Douchebags like French, Glenn Reynolds ("This is absolutely the first stage in a coordinated plan to deplatform everyone on the right") and Ben Shapiro ("Suggest that Caitlyn Jenner is a man, and you might be violating crucial social-media 'hate speech' taboos") come swaggering up making demands like this because they're so accustomed to bullying cowards like the New York Times editorial board that they think, in any situation, all they have to do is yell YOU'RE DEPLATFORMING ME like Rudd yelling "Diplomatic immunity" in Lethal Weapon 2 and they'll get what they want. Guess what, guys: Revoked.
A top surrogate for Donald Trump said Tuesday that House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) was "playing the race card" for condemning Trump's recent attacks on a federal judge because of his Mexican heritage. Earlier in the day, Ryan called Trump's comments about the judge the "textbook definition" of racism.
"Speaker Ryan is wrong and Speaker Ryan has apparently switched positions and is supporting identity politics, which is racist," Trump supporter Jeffrey Lord, a member of the Reagan administration, said on CNN Tuesday when asked about Ryan's concerns.
Trump as a political phenomenon may be unusual, even unique -- but as a political cause, Trump is just the same rightblogger nonsense I've been covering for years: bigotry, self-pity, and tax breaks for the rich. Now that he's turned his racist bilge on a Republican judge, Republicans are up in arms, but in few days some transgender chick will go to the wrong bathroom and everybody will shake hands and head back to the barricades.
No wonder few of French's rightblogger buddies pledged themselves to his momentary cause -- except to bitch that the liberal media was smearing him, a bait they'll rise to anytime for anyone, though Commentary's Noah Rothman was in this case stirred to especially sputterific rage:
Like an amateur anthropologist mishandling an artifact with a cultural significance they fail to grasp, the self-styled arbiters of American political standards glibly denigrated French’s traditional values with a child’s recklessness.
Pee yew. Rothman also lashed out at liberals "who consider themselves enlightened and effete." Heretofore I have been happy to let others call me effete, but if you guys are starting to own it maybe I will too. Reclaim the E word! Spiro's had it long enough.
Over at National ReviewEliana Johnson writes a heroic account of those Six Days in June when French, tormented by "the terrible thought that Americans would be left with the choice of two of the most corrupt leaders in politics," considered a run. There are several highlights. For example:
What counsel did [Mitt] Romney, who has publicly excoriated Trump, have to offer? Well, not to run. “As a data-driven guy, it was hard for him to see how this is possible,” French says.
As a data-driven guy! "Let's see -- zero plus zero, plus zero -- let's not forget the zero -- and here's another zero -- gosh darn it, call me Poindexter but I don't see how this adds up." Also:
“I have no idea who he is, but he’s already got my vote, because I don’t like the other two candidates,” another woman, an African-American, told NBC.
See, he was already doing outreach. Ah, what might have been!
As I've said before (and it's not just me and the leprechaun who tells me to burn things saying so, either, but also credentialed bigbrains at major publications) that the Kavanaugh nomination has basically blown the whole NeverTrump and KindaTrump and JustTheTipInTrump phenomenon, making it obvious that Trumpism is conservatism and vice-versa. And it's had the knock-on effect of making rightwing authors who were previously pitched as prim-and-proper True Conservatives into something more suitable to Trump Time -- that is, trolls.
Take David French, one-time NeverTrump Presidential contender, who has gone on since the dawn of Trump about how real conservatives like him were fighting for the True Cause despite, not enabled by, the vandal Trump; last year he was blubbering over "O’Reilly, Ailes, and the Toxic Conservative-Celebrity Culture," in which he lamented that conservatives' reflexive defense of Fox News "knifework" had "reached its apex in the person and personality of Donald Trump."
A Conservative’s Guide to the 2018–19 NBA Season It’s the only sports guide in America that owns the libs.
That's right, French is doing a John Miller "50 Greatest Conservative Rock Songs" thing, only for basketball. The thing is mostly dull analysis on the level of sportstalk radio call-ins, but punctuated with breakers like "The Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Division. Cheerfully inept"; The Beto O’Rourke Division. Expensive busts"; "The Nikki Haley Division. The future’s so bright, they gotta wear shades"; and "The William F. Buckley Jr. Division. Intellectual juggernauts."
That last one's about the Celtics because "this team was built from the ground up by basketball geniuses to contend for a decade." I would say this is not so much a reach as a reach-around, except I think that gets the positioning reversed. French has done dumb sports things before -- see "Yes, God Cares about Football" -- but this is the first time one can actually feel him straining and cracking his knees to get himself down to the level of the hoi polloi. Marco Rubio talking about Trump's dick was awkward, but this is just depressing.
Speaking of Buckley, with the re-enrollment of hypertroll Kevin D. Williamson, National Review is looking less and less like a classy-conservative operation and more like any other dumb wingnut site. Lately most of the donation pleas I've gotten from them seem to star the latest rightwing blonde-with-big-glasses, Kat Timpf. Here's the top of one such pitch:
Fox News couldn't have done it better. That leaves only a few NROniks still working an inta-mallectual grift anymore -- Jonah Goldberg has gotten too lazy to even laugh at, so I guess we're talking Ramesh Ponnuru and substitute Dreher Michael Brendan Dougherty. When they can be inveigled to don the clown suit, National Review will have completed its transformation into a Gateway Pundit for people who like a little heritage with their bullshit.
• Quentin Tarantino pissed off some cops, so David French of National Review went argh lieberal Hollyweird I’ll show you and all those so-called “critics” how it’s done! Here French explains to Tarantino why Tarantino is “the Most Overrated Director in Hollywood.”
Your movies, however, are terrible. And I don’t mean “morally reprehensible” or “too violent.” I mean they’re simply bad.
Strong opening, surely he has a killer argument coming up.
But don’t tell the movie press. Rarely has so much celebratory ink been spilled on a director who has made such dreck. Ever since Pulp Fiction — your best movie — they believe you’re an artist, but over time you’ve proven to be nothing more than a splatter-film director who can attract top talent.
I wonder why those top actors want to work with Tarantino instead of, say, Eli Roth. Must have something to do with liberal media bias. Anyway:
And you’re the least original splatter-film director in the United States. You simply can’t stop making the same movie. Consider your recent offerings.
To sum up: A lot of his movies have a revenge plot and mayhem. Don’t anyone tell French about Jacobean tragedy. Or the Elizabethan, for that matter. Anyway:
And yes, I know that I just said that I don’t hate your movies because they’re morally reprehensible, but let’s be honest: They are pretty vile. You gotta admit, you love that N-word.
So he’s “politically incorrect.” I thought conservatives loved that.
...Everything else about your movies can be ludicrously unrealistic (think of the mighty mountains of Mississippi in Django Unchained, the fiction of “mandingo fighting,” or virtually any scene in the Kill Bill series)…
Leave it to French to fact check works of fiction. I mean, come on, Hitchcock, birds never act like that!
…And the media — mostly — is fine with it. Why? Because you’re an “artist.” But mostly because you’re liberal. So all the typical double standards apply.
When I go around yelling “nigger” and attacking people with swords, I get in trouble, but you do it and you're an "artist"! Also, liberal media bias because, come on — that's what French has; that’s the only reason why he bothered — he doesn’t give a shit about art (excuse me, “art”), he’s just throwing shit because he doesn't like QT's politics. Indeed, from this wretched example it seems as if he’s never tried or learned how to explain what’s good and bad about a film in his life. It’s always sad when propagandists pretend to be critics, but why is it always the least qualified ones who try?
For a while in the 1980s I had a girlfriend with a Farfisa.
• Conservatives are tumbling to the fact that if anything's gonna save 2016 for them it's stone cold racism. National Review's David French, a bless-your-heart I'll-pray-for-you Christian, does his bit with a post that shocked even me, and I've been reading his wormy shit for a while. It's called "The Hidden Reason Why Americans Dislike Islam" and that reason seems to be: Because Muslims are no damn good. Seriously. Reflecting on his spell in the Army, French writes:
I spent enough time outside the wire and interacting with tribal leaders to get a sense of the reality around me, but the younger guys on the line spent weeks at a time living in the heart of the local community. I remember one young soldier, after describing the things he’d seen since the start of the deployment, gestured towards the village around us and said — in perfect Army English — “Sir, this s**t is f**ked up.”
It is indeed. While it’s certainly unfair to judge Indonesia or Malaysia by the standards of Iraq or Afghanistan, it’s very hard to shake the power of lived experience, nor should we necessarily try.
Let that last clause sink in for a moment. Maybe his Muslim accountant is okay, but that'll never shake his ugly memories of the sub-humans whose homeland he was kind enough to invade and occupy.
After all, when we hear stories from Syria, Yemen, Gaza, the Sinai, Libya, Nigeria, Somalia, Mali, Pakistan, and elsewhere they all fit the same depressing template of the American conflict zones. Nor is the dazzlingly wealthy veneer of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, or the other Gulf States all that impressive. Tens of thousands of soldiers have seen the veritable slave labor that toils within the oil empires and have witnessed first-hand their casual disregard for “lesser” life.
You all know how depraved the Saudi princes are, right? Well, even the poor ones are like that! The next graf is amazing:
But this same experience has caused us to treasure the Muslim friends we do have — in part because we recognize the extreme risks of their loyalty and defiance of jihad. That’s why American officers fiercely champion the immigration of local interpreters, even to the point of welcoming them into their own home. That’s why there’s often an intense connection with our Kurdish allies, the single-most effective ground fighting force against ISIS.
As French has said before, lest anyone think him racist, there are a few good ones -- and they're all named Gunga Din! In fact, I'm beginning to think French watched that movie before he slagged the entire world Muslim population:
I bet he's looking forward to a gig with President Trump's Department of Mooslim Relations. (Bonus: At one point French says, "Even more disturbingly, it seemed that every problem was exacerbated the more religious and pious a person (or village) became." If only his programmers had put in a capacity for reflection!)
• Camille Paglia in the Hollywood Reporter! On "girl squads"! Well, this should win her a brand new audience! Imagine the sunshine people reclining poolside and opening their HR to this:
Given the professional stakes, girl squads must not slide into a cozy, cliquish retreat from romantic fiascoes or communication problems with men, whom feminist rhetoric too often rashly stereotypes as oafish pigs. If many women feel lonely or overwhelmed these days, it's not due to male malice. Women have lost the natural solidarity and companionship they enjoyed for thousands of years in the preindustrial agrarian world, where multiple generations chatted through the day as they shared chores, cooking and child care.
Paglia has the soul of a gossip columnist but not, alas, the chops.
Now, I’'m not necessarily saying we should meet ISIS at Dabiq and give them the Islamist Ragnarok they want. But I'’m not saying we shouldn't either. My point is if they want to have one big mano-a-mano fight between the forces of the West and Mordor, it’s purely a tactical question whether we should give it to them...
Oh Jesus. You can read the rest if you like; it's nearly quitting time.
Now that the Republican Presidential front-runner has anted up his bigotry, conservatives are trying harder to disown him. But it really cuts against their grain. When Trump proposed keeping Muslims out of the U.S., David French had just put up a post at National Review all about how dangerous Muslims are -- the title, in fact, is "Dispelling the ‘Few Extremists’ Myth – the Muslim World Is Overcome with Hate." Among the choice bits:
...jihadists represent the natural and inevitable outgrowth of a faith that is given over to hate on a massive scale, with hundreds of millions of believers holding views that Americans would rightly find revolting...
To understand the Muslim edifice of hate, imagine it as a pyramid — with broadly-shared bigotry at the bottom, followed by stair steps of escalating radicalism...
The base of the pyramid, the most broadly held hatred in the Islamic world, is anti-Semitism, with staggering numbers of Muslims expressing anti-Jewish views...
The next level of the pyramid is Muslim commitment to deadly Islamic supremacy. In multiple Muslim nations, overwhelming majorities of Muslims support the death penalty for apostasy or blasphemy...
Etc. To be fair, he stops short of calling them vermin. If you said something like this about Christians, French would file a hate-crime complaint. You can imagine some goon reading this and thinking Shee-it, them Muslims sound awful, I better vote for Trump an' keep 'em all out!
But today French is trying to distance himself from Trump. Not on the grounds of their mutual beliefs, mind you -- French reiterates that "it’s foolish to admit a class of refugees when we know the world’s leading terror army is attempting to infiltrate the displaced masses or recruit from their ranks." But the ones that are here already, they can stay, French says -- and we can let in a small, select group of "good" Muslims, such as "interpreters who’ve laid down their lives to serve our warriors downrange... members of allied militaries who are training to be the Muslim 'boots on the ground,'" et alia. Everyone else can go die in the sea.
Oh, then he talks about what a menace political correctness is. Which is weird, because he and they are really just waiting to put in a nominee who can be as racist as Trump but keep his mouth shut about it.
UPDATE. As has become his habit of late ("We Didn't Start The Fire: Who Created Trump?"), Matt Lewis of The Daily Caller emerges again to tell us that Trump's strong support among Republicans is bad for Republicans, especially when they were getting so pumped up denouncing Obama after his pro-reason terrorism speech:
Yesterday, the media cycle was focused on radical Islamism and President Obama’s inability to counter it. Today, Donald Trump has changed the subject. But it’s not just that. Yesterday, the view that radical Islamism was a serious threat that President Obama has not taken seriously (polling backs this up) was a persuasive mainstream position that evoked sympathy and agreement. Today, it’s marginally harder to make that argument.
Now when Ralph Peters calls Obama a pussy, people will think we're intemperate! At the end Lewis admits Trump will probably get a boost from his statements -- another case of Republicans being unfairly made to look bad by other Republicans!
It is no accident that President Obama’s America has given rise to Donald Trump.
It defies explanation, but I'll try: Everyone thinks Obama's a failure and hates him (never mind showing Domenech polls that suggest otherwise, those are all run by liberals), and "our modern elites respond to that rational distrust by smearing it as vile hatred, which further divides and toxifies our politics." In other words, if you point out that their argument is wrong, that just makes Republicans more insane and racist -- so it's all your fault! "And Trump is a perfect personality to exploit these divides," Domenech goes on, "offering the promise of an authoritarian who represents the people in place of an authoritarian who represented the elites." I hope you're proud of yourself, liberals!
Like the rest of our subjects, Domenech basically agrees with Trump; he, too, thinks Muslims are toxic and "elites" are losing the War on Whatchamacallit with their "tolerance" bullshit ("Republicans have spent much of the past three years wringing their hands over how to win the white working class – Donald Trump is showing them how: by confronting and rejecting the values and authority of the elites..."). But he got the Trump-bad memo, so he portrays Trump as a menace while embracing his message. Look, it's at The Federalist -- it's not like it has to make sense.
"The author advises Marco Rubio’s campaign for president." Presumably he advises on non-sequential thought, because his column is just the usual rightwing froth crowned with an "if it weren't for Joel Grey singing 'Wilkommen' there'd have never been a Hitler" assertion. And actually that's not new either: Conservative factota have been trying to blame Trump on Obama, or draw parallels between the two men, since Trump became the front-runner, and because they've saturated their little world with this false equivalence, there's no longer any reason to even pretend to back it up with evidence.
You may have noticed the statistical review on white working class mortality covered by the Washington Post:
The mortality rate for white men and women ages 45-54 with less than a college education increased markedly between 1999 and 2013, most likely because of problems with legal and illegal drugs, alcohol and suicide, the researchers concluded. Before then, death rates for that group dropped steadily, and at a faster pace.
And you might have thought, as I did, well, no wonder: the white working class was doing great for decades after World War II, but in this generation it's seen its jobs offshored, then onshored at much lower wages -- and the jobs that stuck around don't pay so well either. Having excavated everything that can be excavated from the poor and the black, our system has taken to chipping at the lower end of the middle class. Between the economic and the emotional toll of this de-privileging, no wonder so many of these people are killing themselves, quickly or slowly.
National Review's David French read the same story, and of course his conclusion is that liberals are to blame:
While the economic challenges of working-class voters are well documented, the cultural challenges are just as notable.
You may think trying to raise kids on twenty grand a year is rough, but your lack of culchah is just as much of a problem -- and cheaper for me, so let's tackle that first!
At every turn, the cultural aristocrats cause harm. Mocking poor whites is among the last acceptable forms of bigotry.
You mean like "Li'l Abner"? Or "South Park"? French is unclear -- I assume purposefully, and that the picture he wishes to paint is of callous urban sophisticates laughing at a meth-addled cracker, rather than of salt-of-the-earth middle Americans laughing at "The Beverly Hillbillies."
Even the white working-class voters struggling with declining wages, declining health, and increasing despair are derided as somehow “privileged.” Those who speak for them are labeled bigots.
Like how they treated this fella. Obviously it was class warfare against white people.
Meanwhile, people keep dying, and families fracture. This is more than just mocking suffering, though — it’s celebrating the disease while rejecting the cure. Self-indulgence is the animating force behind the sexual revolution, and the sexual revolution is gutting the working class.
If you callous sophisticates hadn't done so much coke and had so many orgies, right out there where people could see it, Cletus and Brandine would never have took to moonshine and sex with their cousins.
As Murray notes in his book, cultural progressives flood the nation with messages celebrating hedonism and sexual experimentation even as they tend to preserve their own wealth and power through remarkably restrained and disciplined personal lives — getting married, remaining faithful, and investing in their children. They don’t practice the hedonism they so loudly preach.
Make that "if you callous sophisticates hadn't etc. etc. and nevertheless managed to live happy productive lives, etc." Why, it's like having to put up with a cheerful atheist -- it sets a bad example for the proles!
On the one hand you have wingnuts like French crying that the middle class is collapsed or collapsing because of Playboy and rap music; on the other you have wingnuts like David Harsanyi who claim that this shit economy is actually "dynamic" and you should all go get Uber jobs and feel the dynamism of a week-by-week struggle to afford a hovel and slop. Pick your confusion; doesn't matter which, so long as millionaires get all the tax breaks and we zero out welfare.
UPDATE. At The Federalist Ben Domenech gets in on it. He implies -- slightly more gently than other benefit cops like Jonah Goldberg -- that the growing ranks of erstwhile workers on disability are swollen with frauds. And natch, it's about the culchah:
As a cultural matter, the picture is even worse. The surrender to the permanent trap of disability payments is a consequence of a loss of a certain American working class stoicism, which grappled with the tragic nature of life with what was essentially a 19th-century mentality.
We were a stronger, more American America when crips were left to forage or beg.
It was hard enough to deal with such a vision before the disintegration of working class marriage in the country – notice the contrast drawn by Charles Murray between the attitudes toward marriage and the experience of divorce in the white working class versus professionals.
When we've finally turned into the neofeudal hellscape of Lang's Metropolis for real, I expect there'll be a statue of Charles Murray in every town square.
UPDATE 2. Some very fine comments here. e.g., Susan of Texas:
What is it about white culture that is destroying white Americans?
You vote for politicians who outsource your jobs. Your own crap job, when you can get one, is hard on the body and soul- and dignity-crushing. You go to the doctor for pain-killers to ease the bodily pain and take too many to anesthetize the mental pain. You fatally poison yourself with drug and alcohol anesthetics or get a DWI and lose more jobs or drive away your family. (I'm still waiting for someone to tell us how getting married and not having kids will create factories out of thin air.)...
Worth going in and reading in full. I should add that, especially when you get past a certain age, physical labor is hard on you -- which is something you might miss even if you were a waiter at 20 but never a fry-cook at 55. Go to any actual working-class neighborhood and you'll see some people limping or hobbling from the bus to their homes -- and if they stiffen up they tend not to work it out at the yoga studio. I wonder if French and Domenech have ever seen this, or if they think it's really like the Seven Dwarves whistling to and from the mine.
I can't tell you how many times I've heard those words. Most commonly, I hear it when I discuss some of our more extreme family choices of the past five years, like joining the Army Reserves, volunteering to deploy to Iraq, serving for a year during the Surge in Diyala Province, the extensive travel of my civilian job, and even my thriving video game hobby and all-around science fiction geekery.
My response is simple: "Have you even tried to ask?" The answer is almost always negative. There's a look of resignation, and we move on.
This is an odd mix. Their wives won't let them play video games, read science fiction, or enlist in the military? Maybe French's fellow males are just making up excuses for not joining him in Iraq or cosplay. I so would, dude, but, you know, the missus.
French instead reads the situation to mean that bitches be all up in their manhood.
...the ideal man becomes—in many essential ways—a woman: emotionally available, always eager to talk, never afraid to shed a tear, and ready, willing, and able to shoulder the household workload.
Because if you talk to your wife, occasionally show your feelings, and help with the dishes, how can you possibly kill a bear, serve in Iraq, or go to Worldcon?
French sees another problem: The girly-men and their female keepers misunderstand the Bible.
There's an alternative, of course, and the alternative is biblical. No, not the soft-spoken, ultra-sensitive version of "biblical" that dominates the evangelical small-group, but the robust, aggressive, and honorable example of the actual men of the Bible. There, men go to war at God's command. There, men face death, far from home, for the sake of Truth. There, men confront the powerful and call out injustice. There, men actually lead.
I suspect this article is really advance work for a sequel to 300 called 666, in which God, played by Vin Diesel, commands an army of righteous, oiled-up soldiers of Christ to take out the Whore of Babylon.
Or maybe it's just an effusion of the sort that long predates Hymowitz's book, not to mention feminism, made by guys who are convinced the world would be a lot better off if the stupid girls weren't always around to ruin it.
Almost without my noticing it, David French has become the worst thing at National Review. Jonah Goldberg has, as we know, a distinguished history of stupid, but his recent columns are just so lazy and aimless that they're not even worth making fun of (I mean, look at this shit). Contender Kevin D. Williamson seems at first a clinical sociopath, but once you tumble to his shtick (call everyone else stupid, drop in an obscure reference or two to make it look intellectual-like) it's kind of like Porky Pig tumbling to Daffy Duck's "People shouldn't push me around... I'm a split personality!" routine; the magic is over.
But French just keeps finding new ways to be wrong. Take his Prince column. Yes, seriously, this horrible wingnut Jesus freak wrote one.
Prince died last week, and America overreacted. No, I’m not diminishing Prince’s talent. He was one of pop music’s most gifted songwriters and musicians. As millions shared his more memorable performances, I realized I’d forgotten what a great guitar player and showman he was. He could write hit songs like few others, and he shared his talent freely, “gifting” songs to other artists. In short, he was one of the few pop stars whose fame was fully justified.
You can really feel his pleasure at Prince's work, can't you? You can't? Well, of course not; this is exactly the sort of thing I would write about a NASCAR driver ("I had forgotten what a great NASCAR driver he was... he could turn left like no other") if I were trying to pretend I liked him as a way to win the confidence of someone whose intelligence I didn't respect.
But to spend time on the mainstream and left-wing Internet last week — or to listen to some of the web’s more popular podcasts — you would have thought America lost a national hero, and not merely an immensely gifted artist.
You heathens didn't cry like this when Andrew Breitbart died!
...In our post-virtue culture, we worship celebrity and talent not for its own sake but for ourselves. Their talent is all about us. Their fame is for our amusement. Pop music fills the hymnals in the temple of the self. We are the stars of our own biopic, and we just lost someone who wrote part of the score.
Can't you see how selfish, how narcissistic it is to enjoy music? I mean, music that isn't hymns?
The sentimentality is understandable, given the millions of people who could remember some significant moment in their lives that happened to the sounds of “Lets Go Crazy” or “When Doves Cry.”
(You know he had to look them up.)
...Our country doesn’t lack for heroes, but our true heroes certainly lack for fame. Even on the Left’s terms, valorizing Prince for his transient activism disrespects those who spent their lives in the trenches, fighting for their vision of “social justice.”
Hmmm -- I don't remember "the Left" telling me not to mourn Prince; maybe I missed a meeting... but hold on, brother French has taken up a snake:
For conservatives, Prince was ultimately just another talented and decadent voice in a hedonistic culture. He was notable mainly because he was particularly effective at communicating that decadence to an eager and willing audience.
GLORY HALLELUJAH THIS "PRINCE" WAS A VILLAIN IN A CHICK TRACT, MAKING THE KIDS GO A-FRIGGIN' AND A-FRUGIN' WHEN WHAT THEY NEED IS CHEESUS!
...I don’t say any of this to denigrate Prince or his talents.
Fuck you.
And I don’t say this to shame people out of listening to music they enjoy, though not all music is worth hearing.
You know, like air conditioning or wall-to-wall carpeting.
...but if our hearts are given to these songs and those who make them, then our lives are unnecessarily impoverished.
And then it hits you -- French isn't just ignorant of Prince, or even just of music -- this poor, twisted freak literally doesn't know what art is. He doesn't know its place in human history, or why human beings invented it, or why it persists even when it doesn't make money or is suppressed. He thinks it's upholstery. He thinks it's some sort of trivial comfort. And he thinks so because he's been taught that all you need are Jesus and Bill Buckley and the pleasure you can take from the suffering of your inferiors, and anything else that has a claim on the human soul, whether it's justice or sex or art, must be crushed lest it steal their thunder.
These are the monsters that monsters bred. You think Trump is bad? You have no idea.
It was better before, before they voted for What's-his-name.
This must be the new world.
• Even among the other freaks, thieves, and mountebanks Trump has been hiring, the name Katy Talento, slated to advise The Leader on health care policy, stands out. First, she's a contributor to The Federalist, which as regular alicublog readers know is a bad sign right off the bat. One of her posts on the subject of health care is called "Ladies: Is Birth Control The Mother Of All Medical Malpractice?" and in case you're wondering, she thinks it is (h/t Jason Millman). Romper and Talking Points Memo do a good job of debunking her physiological ideas, but even laymen may gape at her connection of birth control with "economic and relational devastation that has left women and children abandoned by men who now feel entitled to consequence-free orgasms." This nut is telling Trump about women's health care and Congress is defunding Planned Parenthood. So much for the Trump third way, huh? But at least Julian Assange is happy!
The worst among us do not represent us as a whole, thankfully. William Calley doesn’t represent men and women in uniform. Ward Churchill doesn’t represent professors. Jeffrey Dahmer doesn’t represent chocolate factory employees. Aaron Hernandez does not represent the New England Patriots.
Most of us know that. Most of us understand that it’s unfair, inaccurate, and a smear to take the worst individual in a group and contend that all members of a group are “like that.” James Holmes is rare among gun owners. Eric Rudolph is rare among abortion opponents. Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik are rare among Muslims.
Come let us reason together! When have you ever seen a wingnut show charity toward Ward Churchill before this? But then Geraghty takes a graf-long detour for a Seinfeldesque didjaever-notice "authorities keep acting like they never want to admit that a mass shooter is Muslim?" and with a weary Not this bullshit again we are reminded that Geraghty is not a healer but a propagandist and his show of reasonableness is a ruse to soften white readers up for his energetic flame-fanning over those black guys in Chicago who tortured a white guy. It's a typical Trumpian "there's-something-going-on" routine -- encouraging listeners to stretch a specific incident into a general indictment without the assistance of logic. Geraghty also links the usual pull-your-pants-up bullshit from David French, whose dogwhistle is nearly split from overblowing; for one thing, the title is "Chicago is Breaking" but the URL is "black-thugs-torture-white-disabled-man-speak-truth-leftists." For another, French finds room in the middle of his customary Obama's-Chicago ululation for this:
Outlets such as Buzzfeed — ever vigilant in the quest to hunt down and expose celebrity Christians who might actually believe the Bible — write fawning articles about hip-hop celebrities who write and produce some of the most vile music imaginable.
It’s all part of underlying liberal squeamishness about attacking anything that can be labeled authentically “black.” Music “from the streets” is worshipped, no matter its content.
The relevance of French's jungle-music criticism to a crime (the perpetrators of which, I remind you, have been swiftly apprehended) is not immediately apparent unless you're on the same Ooga Booga wavelength as French and his colleagues -- which is just one more reason why it was always a sure bet that, for all their #NeverTrump bullshit, the NROniks would fall in line with The Leader: Game recognize game. Proper conservative clubmen they may be, with good manners and manicured nails, but deep in their shriveled hearts they're delighted to have the cruder Trump and his deranged apparatchiks reverberating their slurs.
