HOMAGE TO ALAN BROMLEY.

I just wanted to let you know that, while the meth labs of the right have been cooking up new forms of idiocy, there is still room for the old favorites -- Joel B. Pollak of Breitbart.com:

I was at a dinner recently where I happened to be seated at a table with new acquaintances of the liberal political persuasion.

Yes, that's right -- the liberal dinner party routine! What did the silly liberals do at this party, Pollak?

We went around the table introducing ourselves. As I said that I work for a "conservative website," a man at the far end of the table made his displeasure known by booing.

Pretty fast start, but if I were directing this thing, I'd have had the liberals assaulting him before he could say a word, intuiting his conservatism by his well-tailored clothes and manly figure.

These were professional, accomplished, senior members of the community. They had never met a conservative before.

Of course they've never met a conservative -- Pollak suggests they work for a living, whereas "wealth producers" pass their days in think tanks, on editorial boards, and at wingnut welfare playpens like Breitbart.com; how would they ever get together?

Attend these puny liberals' reactions to Pollak's wisdom:

Instead, I began to face questions: you really support what Boehner is doing? Yes, I replied. He's doing the right thing by standing up to the president. Gasps...

"They can't stand the fact that a black man is in the White House!" someone interjected.

That's not true, I said. Oh, yes it is, they said...

Hard to believe these liberals are professional and accomplished, as they are apparently also nearly pre-verbal. Also, when Pollak defended Boehner's shutdown, he says, "that stunned them. 'What? You really believe that?...'" They didn't know conservatives are Republicans, either. Well, such is the state of our civics education these days.

Of course whenever someone runs this bit, I am put in mind of Alan Bromley, the Shakespeare of the liberal dinner party whom I discovered in the early days of this blog. He had a pretty good sideline in allegedly verbatim conversations in which he lectured angry Muslims, but his real stock in trade was showing silly liberals drinking their "mediocre Chardonnay" and toasting the assassination of George W. Bush at their silly liberal parties.

If you wonder what happened to Bromley, good news -- he's branched out into the lively arts. Here are some of his lyrics:

They say I can’t be right cause I care about those below so I’ll argue
And fight with those who don’t know
Cause there’s a war going on outside nobody’s safe from
Christians Jews Hindus and Muslims... 

Like to party and drink every Friday nite even tho I still think
We got a battle to fight
I know I’m right despite the critics views unscrunch your feet and put
Yourself in my shoes
We only get a fraction of what’s going on from the news they say I
Can’t be right I think they got it confused
I go and cop more ice I think I’m losing my cool I may be a lot of
Things but I’m nobody’s fool
Good grades like I got it on with teachers in school had to educate
Myself cause they didn’t drop jewels...

As the composer of "Love Juice in All Three Holes," I'd say he's onto something. Next stop: Interpretive dance!

ESPRIT D'ESTOPPEL. She's no Alan Bromley, whose stories about silly liberals whom he easily minced with his rapier wit remain models of the genre, but Pajamas Media's Belladonna Rogers is at least making a great effort. Here she's giving advice to some possibly real person who doesn't know what to say to liberals with whom she is, unaccountably and distastefully, forced to attend parties:

Before you attend another party, practice saying calmly, “I don’t accept the premises underlying your assumption.” Say it as many times as necessary to feel comfortable uttering that sentence whenever you encounter a liberal.

In the context of your dinner conversation, here’s how it would go:

“What do you mean?” the shocked liberal will ask.

“First, I wouldn’t assume that anyone to whom you put that question would vote for Obama under any circumstances.

“A second premise of your question is that I vote as a woman. That’s a classic Democrat assumption.”

Again, you’ll be facing a flummoxed liberal.

A word of warning: the more you say, the more the liberal’s response will turn to enraged apoplexy. By the time you’ve finished lucidly expressing your views, the liberal will react like a shrieking, psychopathic hyena being laced into a straitjacket.

Remarkably, this goes on for hundreds of words, with phrases inserted about the similarly ridiculous reactions to be expected when you talk to liberals as she advises: "Let the liberal experience the panic attack," "expect a temper tantrum," "The liberal will become irate, perspire profusely, then shout," etc.

I used to marvel at the longevity of this genre, but no longer. It's getting clearer all the time that what these guys want more than anything is to humiliate their opponents in public. But these chances don't come often in real life even when you're not champing at the bit for them, and thus might have the sangfroid to pull it off; for someone who's so invested in such scenarios that she must indulge fictional encounters that inevitably prove her superiority in argument, it must be nearly impossible. (Also, why are they always partying with liberals if they dislike them so much? Must need them to score drugs.) So the stories live on about how if you say the right words to a liberal he'll vomit with fear and you will be Queen of the May.

This explains more than anything else I can think of the vogue for Newt Gingrich.

GUARANTEED VERBATIM. I see Bookworm Room has a post about how his stupid liberal friends (who, incidentally, all regret voting for Obama) won't listen to Rush Limbaugh. It even has dialogue!

Me: I challenge you to listen to Rush for a half hour.

Him: No. He’s an idiot.

Me: Have you ever listened to him?

Him: No.

Me: Then how do you know he’s an idiot?

Him: He is. He’s a wacko. He doesn’t know anything.

Me: How do you know that?

Him: Are you trying to make me mad?

Ho ho, such stupid liberals! Now who's intolerant? Heh indeed. (I wonder if they were all cab drivers.)

But wait! From my own verisimilitude labs, a conversation with a silly conservative who refuses to clean the poop out of his pants:

Me: Won't you just try it once? You'll be more comfortable and people will stop running from you in disgust.

Him: No. I fear change.

Me: Wasn't life better when you didn't have poop in your pants?

Him: Yes.

Me: Then wouldn't it be worth it to clean the poop out your pants?

Him: Scream, wail, you're oppressing me etc.

Does anyone believe these things? Even his fans must know it's made up.

Which reminds me: What's Alan Bromley up to these days? (Besides -- heads up, readers! -- a suspected malware site? Sample Bromley representation of Presidential dialogue: "Hey, Abbas, how ya doin', this is Hussein, yeah President of the USA… wazz up?" Bless him, he hasn't lost his touch! )

THERE WAS SHRINKAGE. National Review enlists a psychiatrist, Dr. Irwin Savodnik, to tell us the meaning of Obama's visit to Martha's Vineyard. Among the Doctor's interesting findings:

Tony is the word for the Vineyard — style uber alles: In Chilmark, it’s Birkenstocks, creased shorts, a well-worn T-shirt and — to top it all off — a low-brow Red Sox cap. Anti-Bush stickers stare at you from rear bumpers while Obama rules the road from every Jeep and SUV, not to mention the occasional (and embarrassing) Hummer. While the whole island tilts left, if you’re really a committed radical-left politico, you have no choice but to reside in up-island Chilmark, where the Far Left, still obsessed with dragging the Bush/Cheney duo into Federal Court, spends its summers.

National Review describes Savodnik as "a seasonal resident of Martha’s Vineyard," from which we may assume that he is a glutton for punishment, or perhaps a claimant to the journalistic throne of Alan Bromley.

In fairness, the Doctor shows more allegiance to Edgartown, which he finds "less ideological and quintessentially New England" than Chilimark -- home of former prosecutor Linda Fairstein -- and where he "had the strange experience of nearly running into a post-jog, diaphoretic Bill Clinton with my bike, which evoked a nervous smile on my face and a full body tremor that propelled me all the way home," which he may feel strengthens, in a projective way, his standing to psychoanalyze the current President from a distance:

It’s not the sharp difference of opinion between the president and the public that has hurt him. It’s how he thinks. Barack Obama thinks differently from Bill Clinton. He’s more doctrinaire, passionate about his ideas, fixated on a single path for the country. He ran as a man above the fray, the man who ushered us into post-racial America. Unlike Clinton, Obama looks to a hardened ideology that draws its inspiration from the storming of the Bastille, a Rousseauian social contract, and the dialectical struggle between the haves and have-nots...

The president chose Chilmark for his well-earned vacation because that’s where the utopians go. And like many utopians, he wants to transform all of us into the idealized participants of his dream. I suspect he hears his inner voice more loudly than he hears the shouting crowds of unruly moms, grandmas, and sick kids. It would be best for his presidency if he were to put a lid on that voice and tune in to what the cheering and jeering off-island crowds are telling him. Were he to hear them, he might learn some deep truths about the people over whom he presides and -- most importantly -- about himself.

Dr. Savodnik has come a long way from 2004, when he said about a similar attempt to shrink George Bush:

[Bush on the Couch author Dr. Justin] Frank acknowledges he never met Bush, much less interviewed him on his couch. There is not an ounce of psychoanalytic material in the entire book... Frank justifies his method with the argument that others, such as Jerrold M. Post, have conducted 'at-a-distance leader personality assessments.' Freud himself tried it, when he collaborated with the journalist William Bullitt on a book about Woodrow Wilson, but it was, to say the least, not a high point of Freud's career... Mostly, though, Frank is blind to the underlying silliness of his enterprise.

Again in fairness, while Dr. Frank has put in some time in D.C., he shows no evidence of having vacationed in Crawford, Texas, and thus had not the geographical excuse for at-a-distance leader personality assessment that Dr. Savodnik has.

Also, even before Dr. Savodnik dismissed Frank's analysis of Bush, he felt comfortable explaining that Howard Dean's scream was "signaling of primitive emotional states," proving that "were [Dean] to become president, we would be besieged with dangers" and that as President he "would disorganize and abandon us to our deepest anxieties." Which even non-professionals may recognize as a cry for help.

IN THE GHETTO. There's a book out called I Can’t Believe I’m Sitting Next to a Republican! Christian Toto enthusiastically reviews it:

Nearly every field features liberals unwilling to consider “evil Republicans“ as peers. Conservative TV scribe Burt Prelutsky tells the author that liberals don’t “have to listen or discuss. They’re the good guys, and there is no other side"...

School administrators won’t leave their ideological perches, but it’s a parent’s duty to fight back if only to prevent the problem from worsening.

Conservative professionals not named Limbaugh or Hannity risk plenty by speaking plainly about their political ideas, according to Stein. Right-leaning psychiatrists get ostracized by their fellow doctors. Professors seeking the fast — or even turtle-like — track to tenure better plot out a Plan B.

I thought these guys were populists, yet they mainly discover prejudice against their kind while toiling in academia, TV, TV reviewing, and psychiatry. We also hear of the indignities they suffer in Hollywood and in journalism, and at "cocktail parties." There are no reports of abuse from sawmills and factories. Are they treated well in such places, I wonder, or have they just never been to them?

Toto concludes:

What Stein wants is a world where liberals respect conservatives enough to break bread with them without trotting out the “fascist” label. Sounds like a modest request, right?

We may be years away from such a place in society, if it ever comes to pass. But for now conservatives can take solace in the fact that they’re not alone. Stein does a credible job of illustrating precisely that with enough humor to cushion the pain.

I'm trying in vain to recall any equivalent tales of woe, book-length or otherwise, from liberals during the Reagan and Bush years. When Republicans ruled the earth, I'm sure a few of us must have felt misunderstood and isolated. Yet we never managed to make an industry out of complaining of it.

Of course, conservatives also complain when they hold power. The poet laureate of the style during the reign of W was Alan Bromley, who seemed never to go anywhere without encountering torrents of liberal abuse. Peter Berkowitz and the genius behind Mallard Fillmore have done some fine work in this vein, too -- but I better pull back now or we'll be here all night. (I will say that other authors in the genre find also that liberals like to beat up other liberals. What hateful people we must be! It's a wonder anyone talks to us, let alone votes for our candidates. Yet here we are.)

How this wallowing in victim status may effect their electoral chances I can't say -- though I do observe that nobody likes a whiner -- but it can't be good for their tender psyches.

YOU'RE RIGHT. THIS ACT HAS GOTTEN STALE. I'M GOING TO SEEK NEW HORIZONS. I forgot what I had against libertarians (Eloise at the Atlantic being a poor example of, well, anything) so I went to Reason's Hit and Run blog to refresh my enmity. There I found

• A lengthy example of the "I saw a silly liberal who said a silly thing" genre mastered by Alan Bromley and other conservative writers with active imaginations and absent editors -- very fine of its kind, but lacking a cab driver.
  
  
• A proposal that New Orleans replace Somalia as the official Libertarian Paradise since the citizens are "rebuilding on their own" thanks to a lack of competent Federal assistance. (Oddly, the author fails to make the obvious connection with the recent Chinese earthquake, the effects of which we may assume will teach self-reliance to millions.)
  
  
• Appreciative guffaws over Tim Cavanaugh's jovial response to the latest gay marriage controversy, basically saying that the concerns of silly gays are "boring" and their opponents are much more fun, and like who cares because someday we'll all look back on these days of second-class citizenship and laugh, especially if we're first-class citizens ourselves. (A timeline for the looking-back-with-laughter is not offered, but I'd advise those looking forward to it to find something to pass the waiting time, such as reading every book in their local library or knitting a cover for the barn.)

Actually most of it was inoffensive and some of it was even trenchant, at least to this statist's tired old government-worshipping eyes. But the fact remains: libertarians stand too close to you when they talk, sing along with Frank Zappa songs (even the obscure ones), and smell.

TO BRIGHTEN YOUR HOLIDAY. Courtesy of Dr. Helen, the mother of all awful-liberals yarns -- not told by one of those legendary taxi drivers, or even Alan Bromley, but in my judgment outstripping them all:

My sister and brother-in-law are D.C. area residents and wear their politics on their sleeves. I quit arguing with them some 20 years ago when they stated that Reagan was responsible for the Yellowstone Park forest fires. I realized then I could not have a rational discussion with them.

The problem I have with this stuff is that my brother-in-law starts yelling. Who wants to converse with someone who’s attracting attention from all the other diners in a restaurant. I finally decided that he doesn’t really want a reasoned conversation. He just wants to shout down anyone who disagrees with him, so why bother?

So far, so what, you may be thinking: we've seen better in any old Dr. Helen comments thread. But hang on -- the guy's just getting warmed up:

My dad is as mean as a snake. All 8 of his kids bear the scars and deal with them in different ways. The last time I saw him was 5 years ago at the rehearsal dinner for my younger brother’s wedding. He was picking on my niece, and she not being used to that treatment slapped him in the face. I told my Dad to knock it the f—k off. He took exception and we started a fistfight in the restaurant. My dad was so bent out of shape that somebody stood up to him that he didn’t show up for the wedding, and I gladly stood in for him, next to my Mom, in all of the wedding pics.

I cherish Christmas with my family: A day with the estrogen poisoned females of my clan; children yelling and grubbing for the bounty that comes with the crass commercialism of the holiday; the ever present fear that my brother, four Christmases banished from the family for alcohol related lunacy, will crash his drunken, six foot, four inch body through the front door and spray the room with lead. Ah, Christmas! I strap an Officer’s Compact Colt .45 into a pancake holster on my hip in case the door comes off its hinges at the party, pack up my hastily purchased gifts, and I wade into this thing called Christmas. Ho, ho, ho, who wouldn’t go?

And now the kicker:

Through the years of Republican bashing followed by Kumbaya sing alongs (I kid you not), I have found the best strategy is to simply keep my mouth shut.

Surely you see the genius of it. Instead of trying to seed little quotes and anecdotes throughout the story to preserve the political through-line, our author veers into seemingly unrelated tales of spectacular family violence, and at the climax, with a last sneer of contempt for the enemy, retreats into Norman Bates muteness...

Wait -- what? These paragraphs are separate anecdotes?

Well, maybe it's like Casy says -- maybe a Dr. Helen commenter ain't got a soul of his own, just a little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to every Dr. Helen commenter. Maybe the individual miseries of the poor wretches who come to Dr. Helen's door for a bowl of soup and maybe some rational emotive behavior therapy are hopeless by themselves, but together they gain stature, dignity, and hilarity.

May all of you enjoy a Thanksgiving free from fistfights, gunplay, and Kumbaya. Unless, of course, that's your idea of a good time.

UPDATE. "Guys," says commenter Craig, "that block quote from Dr. Helen is four different anecdodes from four different respondents. Don't try to mash them all up."

Admitted and addressed in the original post. (See the last three grafs.) And what's wrong with mash-ups? Larry Lessig would approve!

DUDE, THAT'S HARSH! I didn't like "The Gates" much, either, but check out Alan Bromley, heretofore best known as the right wing's preeminent dramatic fantasist:

But this day, I realized that Christo and his wife had hoodwinked us all and forced us into their monotone vision, one that is anti-American...

Anti-American! Will Christo and Jean-Claude be spirited to Gitmo? If he is as skilled at voices as he is at dialogue, perhaps Bromley can pass the Feds an incrimating tape.

I note also that Bromley objects to the color of the curtains: "...saffron, the color of the Hare Krishnas? New York is a city of Catholics, Jews, Protestants, Muslims, of people who are black, white, brown and yellow, and variations of all of the above, and we relish it, benefit from it, and, at our best, learn from it."

So not only are the artists anti-Americans, they're also anti-Catholic, -Jewish, etc. Or pro-Krishna. Same diff, I guess.

I stick with my original, scholarly judgement: "Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick."

PLEASING THE AFFILIATES. I welcome our new advertisers, Dirty Flower, a fun daily read w/pictures, and whoever is selling Steve Hicks' book -- which I freely admit (in that orgiastic spirit of disclosure currently sweeping the opinion racket) I have not read and probably never will read.

For a simple soul such as myself, raised in a tract house and accustomed to dwelling in slums, all this yak about how the Left has been taken over by postmodernism -- "switched to themes of anti-reason, double standards, and cynicism," as the advertiser puts it -- has no relevance. In my frequent discussions with other liberals, I have never heard one defend or attack a POV by announcing that language is a mere construct. Neither have I heard one say, "Who are we to say what's right and wrong?" -- at least not since the last Alan Bromley article.

I take words very seriously, not only as a professional but also as a moralist. That's why propaganda is the main subject of this site. Stray offenses to reason annoy me, but coordinated, wholesale perversions of reason piss me right the fuck off.

And if it's monolithic anti-rationalism you're looking for, the Right is just where the action is these days. You can read my back numbers for evidence, or we can just pick us a fresh one off the poisoned information tree that we call the blogosphere. Ah, here's some ripe Daniel Henninger:

Mr. Bush's inaugural speech should put to rest the notion of a monolithic American "right." It set off a nice fight on the right among realists, internationalists, libertarians and neocons. (Liberals and the left are simply "against Bush" so it is hard to credit their arguments beyond brute obstruction.)

Still, I encourage you to click the Hicks link. It will gain me some little money, and it may gain you some pleasure, if you're of a certain turn of mind (the destination is an Amazon review page, and here is a sample of the commentary: "I only wish Michel Focualt would have saved us all the trouble by blinding himself with his pens rather then writing such garbage and serving as the flase profit of 'post-modernism' which I see as nothing more then the raw lust for power"). You may even become interested in the book, and read it and tell me about it, which may get me to read it. I have prejudices, but I can be persuaded. That's how we reality-based folks operate.

DRAMA REVIEW. Remember Alan Bromley, whose theatrical dialogues (usually starring very bad liberals made to look ridiculous by the razor-sharp barbs of Alan Bromley) have been reviewed here before? Fans rejoice -- Bromley is back at it!

In his latest creation, Bromley's morning bagel man, "an Arab fellow named Muhammed" (!) asserts that the recent tsunami was actually a nuclear bomb detonated by "The Zionists! The Americans!"

As Muhammed announces that "The Jews stayed away from the towers on 9/11," customers back away. This is quite an extraordinary scene, and one I, a New Yorker for over a quarter of a century, have never experienced -- a deli owner of whatever ethnicity driving customers out of his store with anti-Semitic ravings. Perhaps Bromley carries a little map of places where this sort of thing is likely to happen, or had an agreement with Muhammed aforehand, or manipulated the hapless deli-man into a rage, either by wearing a big ALLAH SUCKS button into the store, or via mind control techniques.

Bromley's rejoinder to Muhammed is a masterpiece of craft:

"The Jews stayed away because it was right before our holiest holidays, when the most observant Jews go to synagogue every morning a week or so in advance of Yom Kippur...

"And when will you accept your own failings for aiding and not confronting terrorism, instead of pushing for some sort of freedom within your homelands? When will you accept that fact that your people, with a somewhat glorious history of achievement, haven't moved forward for hundreds of years, after your losing efforts to conquer Europe? Yet you're here on 26th Street, making a decent living in the United States for your family, making a profit on my bagel, which you're entitled to."

Rolls right off the tongue, doesn't it? It doesn't? Well, versimilitude is hard work, and Bromley doesn't need to work that hard. This is published in OpinionJournal, where the common response is not going to be Who the fuck talks like that? but That's telling him!

The denouement is even more amazing and I will not spoil it for you. I will say that, were Broadway not a leftist province, Bromley would be its toast.

LIFE AMONG THE LIBERALS. For some time I've been a connoisseur of right-wing "life among the liberals" narratives. These wish-fulfillment pieces, typically showing a stalwart conservative (always the author) easily rebutting a bunch of liberal hippies out of old Mannix episodes, are as formally distinctive as Roman colloquys or medieval morality plays: neither the godlike central figures nor their moronic interlocutors have any discernible character traits, and all the pleasure comes from childlike caricatures of opposing thought.

I do what I can to spread awareness of these lulus, so that some future archaeologist may have a less cold trail to follow to these clear indicators of this parlous phase of our once-great civilization. "Behold!" he will say, "They had a highly developed dramaturgy, yet millions preferred these crude Punch-and-Judy shows -- and all for politics! No wonder the assholes got wiped out."

A few months back I discovered one Alan Bromley at OpinionJournal, and recognized him as a master of the form. Well, he's back at it again, and his latest, "No Holiday from Hate," is a peach. One day I expect I will teach a class on propaganda techniques, and "No Holiday from Hate" will be one of the seminal texts.

Bromley is on holiday, sitting on a porch with his family in Cape May, N.J. (Though his characters are mere cyphers, Bromley is always very specific with town names, perhaps from awareness that localities cannot sue for slander.)

One day, sitting next to a couple from Philadelphia, I was asked what I thought about the Democratic Convention and who would win the election. Being in a state between relaxation and boredom, I wasn't sure if I wanted to enter this discussion, so I replied by asking them what they thought the biggest issue was.

Note that Bromley, like other classic heroes of the LATL Narrative, never provokes the argument, and always has some dandy Socratic way of undermining his adversaries' clearly malevolent intent.

"Restoring trust to government," the wife replied, sounding like a Kerry bumper sticker. Her husband, munching a cracker with cheese, nodded in agreement.

"Munching a cracker with cheese" is very good (well, by the standards of the form); no one looks good munching a cracker with cheese.

I sensed my 17-year-old daughter's ears perk beneath her black hair and my wife's spine straighten, both sensing a political storm brewing.

The tension suggested here is merely a vestigial literary device; as in the novels of Horatio Alger, there is so little real danger to the hero that even his loved ones seem to be play-acting their symptoms of concern.

"You don't mean the legend on our currency, 'In God we trust,' do you?" I teased.

"No!" the husband, who had swallowed his snack, sharply responded. "We're in favor of separation of church and state, and would prefer that those words not appear on our dollar bills, just as we want 'under God' removed from our pledge of allegiance. And you know what we mean," he continued, ratcheting-up the tone. "Bush lied to us about the war in Iraq!" The chairs rocked faster.

Bromley's remark would, in company of even normal intelligence, draw perhaps a polite chuckle and a return volley of badinage, but the liberals in LATL narratives always explode upon contact with conservative wit.

Bromley thereafter delivers to his audience of seaside vacationers a long, long Republican speech ("We had Ted Kennedy, who lied about trying to save Mary Jo Kopechne. We had Hillary Clinton, who lied about her billing records..."), and the liberals' only responses are literally these: "Screw you!" "Speaking for myself, any news that helps defeat Bush makes me happy" (this referring to unemployment), and "You're a fascist! We're leaving!"

There is some passing resemblance to versimilitude here -- if I were taking the sun on a porch in Jersey, and some asshole suddenly started raving about Mary Jo Kopechne, I might leave, too, just as I might leave a subway car occupied by a bum who smelled strongly of human excrement. But as portrayed by Bromley, the liberals' retreat is a rout, his tendentious speeches are a blow for liberty, and his family is deeply proud of the spectacle he has made at the beach house (whereas the real-life version suggests a thought-balloon reading, "Another vacation ruined.")

Isn't this what cultural studies are all about -- trying to understand people whose ways of life are otherwise incomprehensible to us? My understanding of conservatives has been greatly enhanced by my study of their culture. And through my close attention to their LATL narratives, I have even developed some sympathy toward them. That is to say, if they need crap like this to make themselves feel smart, they're even more fucked than I thought.

MAN TURNS HIS BACK ON HIS FAMILY, WELL HE JUST AIN'T NO GOOD. I've noticed before that some conservatives like to talk about their "liberal friends" as if they're all incoherent dumbasses, and I wondered how these guys keep getting invited to liberal dinner/cocktail/swinger parties.

Now I'm thinking, maybe they have to be invited -- because they're family:

My cousin, whom I'll call "Bob," just included me in a group e-mail that implied President Bush was anti-Semitic...

I was incensed, and my first reaction was to press "Delete" and erase the offending message. After doing so, I reflected a bit more and decided that my silence might imply that I agreed, so I went to an earlier mass e-mail from Bob and pressed "Reply to All." My trigger finger has now caused a family furor.

I'll bet. The author, one Alan Bromley, gets an angry note from his cousin about the mass reply, which prompts him to round up other witnesses to justify his actions, including a lawyer (!) and friends of his 17-year-old daughter, who say they "respond to the entire group all the time" (as one would expect 17-year-olds to do).

Finally Bromley tells his cousin to "Keep family and politics separate" -- at the end of an article published online at OpinionJournal.

This is why my attitude toward conservatives is slightly different from those of my colleagues. I don't mind in the least their views -- in fact, I quite enjoy them. I just don't like them personally.