FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

I'm sure I must be someone; now I'm gonna find out who.
•   Amanda Prestigiacomo of The Daily Signal is enraged because the Washington Post ran a long tribute to our outgoing President and didn't do one for George W. Bush back in the day. But the Post is just giving the people what they want, as they say in show biz: Even casual observers will know that Obama is currently very popular, and that his 55% approval rating contrasts starkly with GWB's 34% at the same stage of his Presidency. (I guess WaPo could have done an 18-page "Thanks for the Recession" feature, but what advertiser would have plunked down money for that?) Cripes, even Republicans know this: It's no accident Bush hasn't attended a GOP National Convention since he left office; clearly no one at the RNC wanted to remind the public of how badly they fucked up the country last time they were in charge. In fact, the citizens may have begun to remember what Republicans are all about lately: the incoming Il Douche is at 37% the least-approved incoming President in recorded history. Nonetheless Prestigiacomo feels compelled to cry Liberal Bias, and even Conspiracy:

Perhaps the "fake news" scare was not only an excuse for Hillary Clinton's truly awful candidacy, but a move in a long game effort to get more conservative news suppressed, as if it hasn't been suppressed enough already.

Honey, it's so much simpler than that: If you don't want to get pelted with tomatoes, leave the stage when they start to boo.

•   Robert Tracinski, insufferable culture warrior, bitches out SJW Wars:

In ‘Rogue One,’ The Hollywood Empire Strikes Back 

'Rogue One' is a throwback to the highbrow Hollywood culture that the original 'Star Wars' film rebelled against back in 1977.

Manny Farber he ain't.

Not many people realize that the great conservative filmmakers of our age are George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. Forget about their personal political views, which naturally conform to the left-leaning Hollywood consensus. Think purely in esthetic terms. Lucas and Spielberg collaborated on the two great movie franchises that helped shape the culture of the 1980s: Star Wars and Indiana Jones. 

It’s not just that these films were nostalgic tributes to an old-fashioned style of story-telling, the Westerns and movie serials of the pre-Counterculture era. It’s that the stories were told in bright, primary colors...

But this new stuff is about people who believe in something, which is a drag:

That’s the other thing that’s disappointingly different about Rogue One. There’s a lot of talk in this film about “the cause,” including a scene in which the two lead characters have a tiff about who is more down with the struggle. This probably helps Hollywood leftists feel more at home, because lefties pull this sort of thing on each other all the time. But in the original Star Wars films, there was little discussion of or interest in “the cause"...

It's like when Victor Laszlo told Rick "Welcome to the fight" in Casablanca -- gross, right? It should have ended when Rick got Ilsa to fuck him! That's capitalism, baby -- I stick my neck out for no one! I guess it never occurred to Tracinski that Han joined the rebels for something besides pussy. Or maybe (a stretch, I know) Tracinski doesn't actually give a shit about culture at all, and is just getting with the new realities. Come to think of it, force-choking is a sign of American Greatness!  

• Yet another wan column from Jonah Goldberg, who has been observably demoralized since his Liberal Fascism racket got queered by the election of Republican Mussolini. Or maybe it's not demoralization; maybe he's just taking the opportunity, like other great artists working under constraints, of exploring new frontiers -- in Goldberg's case, of intellectual sloth. The column is mostly "Our Friend The Beaver" phumphering ("With a bullpen of writers like that, it’s no wonder that Washington’s farewell ranks among the great works of literary statecraft..."). Kudos to historian Kevin M. Kruse, however, for noticing this:

Of course, the era of radio and television necessitated — or created the perception of necessity — that presidents address the people directly. Whether that amounted to progress is for others to decide. But until Obama, it never occurred to a president to deliver a televised address from anywhere but the Oval Office.

What a maroon. (Also: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this scale model of the Wall here on my desk in the Oval Office, from which all presidential addresses are given.") Oh, and according to Goldberg Obama's speech was "grandiose" and a "campaign rally." He quotes literally about a dozen words of it. I'll be frank, I don't think he saw or read the speech - I think at best it was on in the background while he was playing Battleship with Jay Nordlinger, or trying to get his fist in his mouth (his own, not Nordlinger's, though you never know, Nordlinger sure isn't earning a salary with his writing). And people think liberals are demoralized! At least we don't have to pretend shit is gold.

ROAD TO DUMBASS-KISS.

I know some of my readers who are over the age of 30 may be wondering when conservatives began agitating for the rights of people on the no-fly list? Answer: Very recently! Because back in the day no-fly lists were all the rage among the rageaholics -- in the Bush years, because it was saving us from Terrah, and in the early Obama years because Obama was keeping it from saving us from Terrah. But now that Democrats are craftily using the list against the NRA with their no-fly no-buy bill, conservatives have suddenly (and, I assure you, temporarily) turned into Clarence Darrow.

Let's look at some old National Review items on the no-fly subject for perspective. Here's Greg Polowitz asking, "If [shoe-bomber Faisal] Shahzad Was on the ‘No Fly’ List, How’d He Get on the Plane?" Here's Andrew C. McCarthy lamenting that "a lot of [terrorism-related] information gets exchanged – but a lot doesn’t – and none of it ever makes it to the no-fly list."

Here's Anne Morse complaining that the ACLU was suing because "the 'no-fly list' violates passengers’ right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure," at which she scoffed and said the ACLU was partly to blame for "security procedures that are lax, politically correct, and likely to lead to another 9/11." (Morse also promoted the Arabs-on-planes-make-me-nervous bullshit of Anne Jacobsen, then popular among wingnuts; Jacobsen later went on to promote an even more bizarre terror-in-the-skies scenario.)

Here's Jay Nordlinger fuming at the ACLU's suit because "The administration is trying to protect us from mass murder, and the ACLU is trying to thwart that effort."

And here's Skree Queen Michelle Malkin raging that the list was not complete enough: If we were truthful, she said, "the 'no fly' list would be known around the world by its right and proper name: the 'go fly' list... to this day, TSA still doesn’t check all domestic and international airline-passenger manifests against the no-fly/go-fly list," etc.

So the NR people were once upon a time mainly concerned that the no-fly list wasn't restrictive enough. But when, more recently, it became apparent that the ability of no-fly listees to purchase weapons could be used against them in the court of public gun opinion, they started to get nervous -- as was glaringly apparent from the very title of this 2015 post "The NRA Is Absolutely Right to Fear the ‘Terrorism Watch List,’" by Charles C.W. Cooke, who was then only recently imported by National Review and so did not have the paper trail of no-fly rah-rah that his colleagues had. The magazine's Cato Institute loaners have also been useful in this respect: Here's Michael Tanner, announcing "the no-fly list clearly violates the presumption that a person is innocent until proven guilty," to the chuckles of older readers.

This week NR has promoted an anti-no-fly-list article by an intern, which makes sense, because he's probably not only too young to have any embarrassing published opinions on Bush-era civil-liberties outrages to his credit, but also being indulged in the traditional youthful libertarian phase, the conservative equivalent of Rumspringa.

Better late than never, I guess. And who knows -- maybe associating civil rights they're not so hot about with guns will make conservatives more likely to support them. I know: Let's tell them that married gay people fuck each other with AR-15s!

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the unlikely candidacy of Dr. Ben Carson and the likely coming end of it. It would be nice to say that Carson's campaign will founder because Republicans will come to their senses and realize he can never be elected, but it's more likely that the outrages he keeps emitting will become tiresome even to the hometeam crowd. Unlike the mighty Trump, Carson doesn't seem in control of what he says -- it just seems to leak out, like the stuff your poorly socialized uncle starts muttering after a few drinks, or a Jay Nordlinger column. Plus he doesn't bellow like Trump, which among the brethren is a sign of authority. And at the risk of being The Real Racist ^® I would also guess that when the brethren do fully consent to a black Presidential candidate, that person will be a practiced politician like Mia Love or Tim Scott -- in other words, someone more like Barack Obama and less like Professor Irwin Corey.

UPDATE. This is very funny, from The Hill:

Donald Trump says he was ready to go after Ben Carson for questioning his faith, but decided to hold back after his GOP primary rival apologized. 

“I was all set to go wild, now I can’t go wild,” Trump said on Fox News’s “MediaBuzz” on Sunday. “I’m actually saying, ‘I wish he had hit me.’ No, he’s very smart. I wish he had hit me.”

Trump knows it would be good business to keep Carson around awhile. His schtick might pale faster if he were the only overt lunatic in the field, but with Carson out there, Trump looks like part of a larger nutcake constituency, one he's better equipped than Carson to serve as spokesman. I don't think Trump will be able to prop Carson up much longer, though.

UPDATE 2. I predict this guy will run in 2020.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Song's been going through my mind for some reason. Weep, sad freaks of a nation.

•    I guess 2012 was the last year I paid attention to "Human Achievement Hour," the annual chest-thump in which the Competitive Enterprise Institute says Fuck You to the World Wildlife Fund's Earth Hour by asking True Sons of Liberty to burn up as much energy as possible in celebration of the stinking shithole we've made of the earth, I mean progress. The event remains hilarious. Got some links from a CEI publicist to "Human Achievement of the Day" posts about how guitars only exist because of capitalism and so forth. My favorite is about bitcoin:

These are still very early days, and bitcoin is still thought more as a volatile store of value rather than an emergent system of property rights, but the prospects for this particular human achievement are incredibly bright, if regulators do not find a way to stifle it (by regulating people rather than the system, for example).

This puts me in mind of Hearst on the trail of The Color in Deadwood, except Hearst's psychosis was not the type that kept him in his parents' basement. Murder and dismemberment were more his thing -- the sort of activities in furtherance of capital that the CEI pencil-necks are more likely to dress up in purty language than directly perform.

•   In the high-decibel world of wingnut blowhards it's tough to rise above the din, but in a column about the Bowe Bergdahl prosecution at PJ Media Michael Walsh amps it up:  In addition to standard-issue slur-slinging -- "the Coward-in-Chief and his deliberate thumb in the eye to the honor of the American military," "pathetic little pansy Bergdahl," "painfully stupid Jen Psaki," aargh,  blaargh -- Walsh bellows:

...it’s a rare instance of the military finally asserting itself against a rogue commander who is imperiling the nation and insulting it as he goes. Unlawful orders do not have to be obeyed, even from Fearless Leader; that’s a principle the U.S. clarified at Nuremberg. 

One imagines Walsh parachuting into Fort Bragg, a cigar in one hand and a pearl-handled revolver in the other, crying PATRIOTS! NOW IS THE TIME! Or maybe not: see, everyone's a disappointment to Walsh:

John McCain and Mitt Romney should both be hanging their heads in shame. They could have defeated him, and they chose not to. But that’s America in the 21st century — it never saw a fight it wanted to finish.

Maybe Walsh can stake out a little corner of his mental ward and declare that The Real America. I'll have to read Walsh more often; I haven't seen anything like him since the heyday of Ralph "Blood 'n' Guts" Peters.

•   The composer John Adams recently remarked at Avery Fisher Hall that Rush Limbaugh exercises "casual brutality toward women" -- which, really, is about as close to an incontrovertible statement as you can get -- and to National Review's Jay Nordlinger this is Hitler plus Big Brother:

To this remark, the audience responded with sustained and robust applause. In 1984, Orwell writes of the two-minute hate. The applause in Avery Fisher Hall did not last for two minutes, but it went on long enough... 

You’re never supposed to analogize anything to the Nazis. That’s the rule. But sometimes I break the rule. And I believe I got a whiff — just a tiny whiff — of Nuremberg in Avery Fisher Hall tonight. Collective hatred, and self-satisfied hatred, based on damnable lies.

I suppose this makes me Genghis Stalin, but Nordlinger is a fucking idiot.

HOW DOES HE DO IT?

At National Review, Jay Nordlinger quotes himself:

One day, no one thought of gay marriage (or few did). The next day, “civil unions” were the far-out, progressive position. The day after that, if you favored civil unions but not gay marriage, you were a Klansman. A Nazi. That’s where we are now. Try refusing to bake a cake for a gay wedding, or refusing to rent your hall for such a wedding. Just try it.

As enraged as Nordlinger is because you can't discriminate against gay couples, he is more enraged that Obama and Biden changed their minds on the subject:

Running in 2012, of course, both Obama and Biden sang a different tune. They had had an epiphany or something. (Is “epiphany” too religious a word for our modern society?) 

Here’s the grating thing: They scorn people who are against gay marriage as, basically, Klansmen and Nazis. The blink of an eye ago, they themselves were against gay marriage (officially)! But now the people who hold that same position — the Obama-Biden position until May 2012 — are Klansmen and Nazis?

I suppose someone called opponents of gay rights Nazis and/or Klansmen, but this is the first I've heard that Obama and Biden did so. Anyone got the link?

In a later post, Nordlinger again:

I watched the Kentucky Senate debate last night — the debate between Mitch McConnell and Alison Lundergan Grimes. I am a partisan Republican and an admirer of McConnell. Even if I were not, however, I think I would have the same view...

After that, I should have known better than to keep reading.

Grimes was a robot, and an often nasty one. She was scarcely a human being.

Why, this is the kind of reductive language I expect from Klansmen and Nazis!

Both posts end with Nordlinger weeping that politics is too dirty for him. Well, I'm glad something is. In addition to these deathless insights, Nordlinger does articles: This is from his latest one:

But I must say, I find it increasingly difficult to read things on the Internet. I click on an article, and I’m not taken to the article: I’m taken to an ad instead. Then there is this experience: Loud music will suddenly start playing...

Jonah Goldberg at least has family connections. I assume Nordlinger has lurid pictures of Buckley locked away somewhere; nothing else explains his persistence.

CULTURE WAR IS TOO IMPORTANT TO LEAVE TO THE CULTURE WARRIORS.

I've mentioned before that Armond White had a good record as a legit if insane film critic before he joined  National Review. I suspect they hired him because he occasionally says mean things about liberals (either that or there's a reeeaally big Spielberg fan over there that I don't know about), but the readership seems not to be responding well to him. I think that's because White is not sort of doctrinaire doofus they usually go for  -- not like Jay Nordlinger, for example, and his "this is really a lovely scherzo in Beethoven's Ninth, it reminds me of how liberals love Castro" horseshit. White is on a mission, and unlike his colleagues he doesn't appear to have read it from a telegram from the High Command.

For example, while NR's Jesus freaks were all in spasms about The Giver, because it's supposed to be anti-abortion or something, White gave them "The Giver: Pseudo-Rebellion for Conservative Sheep." The comments to that one are lovely (sample: "I'm going to see it tonight. Cal Thomas recommended it and I value his opinion on any subject. This movie reviewer? Never heard of him").

Who knows what they'll make of White's last few efforts: First, he describes 2004 as "the year film culture broke" because it saw "the media’s lynch-mob excommunication of Mel Gibson and his film The Passion of the Christ, soon followed by the Cannes Film Festival’s ordination of Michael Moore’s anti–G. W. Bush documentary Fahrenheit 9/11." So far so compatible, but White works up a rich froth that might have even the regular punters backing away from the podium:

It was moral vandalism, sullying ideas and totems sacred to many. Such a fundamental offense devastated civilized behavior in ways many still have not realized. It drove a wedge between the public and the elites who make movies; the very ground we walked upon as enlightened, cultured people was scorched like Ground Zero at the World Trade Center... 

From 2004 on, even “entertainment” movies were made and received with deleterious political and moral bias.

This is loony and conspiratorial even by culture-warrior standards, but wait, there's more: Later White listed "20 signs of a broken film culture," a list of entartete kunst including some films I'll bet National Review readers like, including The Dark Knight ("used the Batman myth to undermine heroism, overturn social mores, and embrace anarchy"), Knocked Up ("Judd Apatow’s comedy of bad manners attacked maturity and propriety"), and Lincoln ("Spielberg succumbs to Tony Kushner’s limousine-liberal cynicism to valorize Obama-era political chicanery"). Comments to that one so far are also delightful ("How many times are they going to see the comments and realize we don't like him?").

There are all kinds of ways to look at this, but the big point for me is that people who are serious about the arts -- not serious about using the arts as a way to spread the usual dreary propaganda, but about the arts themselves -- are not just capable of surprising readers, but extremely likely to do so. And that's terrific. I hope National Review surprises me and hangs onto White so he can rave away like this on their dime. Who knows, maybe one or two of them will be improved by his example.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...on the situation in Ferguson and the related rightblogger identity crisis: Should they let their lipstick libertarian experimentation go beyond the vanilla stuff, and into kinky places that might outrage Jennifer Rubin? Questions remain!

Lots of excess material here: In the section about rightbloggers claiming Ferguson has something to do with Second Amendment rights -- as if America would tolerate black citizens open-carrying en masse; forbid it almighty Reagan! -- I'd hoped to include this Tim Cavanaugh rant at National Review, in which Cavanaugh is so enraged that Tom Toles alluded in a disparaging manner to the NRA in a Ferguson cartoon that he starts emitting stank from every hole -- calling Toles "The Worst Cartoonist In America," snarling about "cheap and half-baked premises" and "barnacle-encrusted clichés," comparing Toles to "monstrous dictators," saying he "keeps his finger right on the pulse of 1979," calling his draftsmanship "visually repulsive" (not aurally repulsive, I guess)... it's so unhinged that Cavanaugh's lack of a coherent point doesn't explain it. Maybe it's a Nast/Tweed or a Goebbels/revolver thing?

UPDATE. If you want some idea of how the Ooga-Booga Squad is whipping the Lipstick Libertarians among conservatives, look at The Corner at National Review this morning. Samples:

• "Ferguson Protester to Cop: ‘F*** You, N*****’." (The protester is black and the cop is white, so you can imagine how this will enrage your typical NatRev reader.)
• Victor Davis Hanson: "The gratuitous looting and street violence, the almost instantaneous rush to blast the police by soon to be presidential candidate Rand Paul; the arrival of the usual demagogues — Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson ('state execution'), and the New Black Panther Party... so reminiscent of the Trayvon Martin Case..." If you're playing the Racist Pundit Talking Point Drinking Game, that's four stiff shots right there.
• Jay Nordlinger: "Black person kills white person. Zzzzz. White person kills black person — the world stops." Once again white people get the short end of the stick! Also: "Michael Brown’s life or Trayvon Martin’s life would be just as valuable if a person of a different color had done the shooting" -- which is to say, from Nordlinger's perspective, not at all.

MY EYES... ZE GOGGLES DO NOTHING!

The election's not till tomorrow,  and one should never count one's chickens etc., but let's start early celebrating the reign of Mayor de Blasio just because it makes wingnuts so mad.

I want to focus a minute on their Big Bill's a Red thing, which they seem at one point to have thought would stop the juggernaut. Wall Street Journal:

Bill de Blasio Should Ask Me About the Sandinistas 

The New York mayoral candidate still fondly recalls a regime that I fled in terror for my life.

Yelling at di Blasio for "fondly recalling" the Sandinistas makes as much sense as yelling at someone for saying he liked The Motorcycle Diaries.

Twenty-five years is a long time, and people change. But on this subject, Mr. de Blasio has made clear that he has not.

Clearly! He's always demanding people call him El Caudillo and brandishing a machete.

Cliff Kincaid at Renew America:

The media whitewash Obama-backed Marxist candidate

...Incredibly, De Blasio says he still supports the Sandinistas and remains influenced by liberation theology, which was manufactured by the old KGB to dupe Christians into supporting Marxism.

Tell it to Pope Francis. National Review's resident pencil-neck Jay Nordlinger:

The man who will probably be our next mayor, Bill de Blasio, is almost a perfect leftist. He and his wife even honeymooned in the Castros’ Cuba. This reminded me of Pierre Trudeau, of whom it has been said, “It tells you everything that he honeymooned in the Soviet Union"...

Here is an uncomfortable question, liable to be damned as McCarthyite by those who don’t want to address it: If the likes of Trudeau and de Blasio were born under Communist dictatorship, what would they do in their adult lives?

Those of us over a certain age will recognize the tropes, including the "So how about that, Mr. Smarty-Pants Communist?" bit at the end that just assumes de Blasio's Communism (he's just like that Trudeau, you know), done with confidence that it'll get the citizens pulling their chins and going, "Say, 'de Blasio' does have sort of a Red sound to it!"  Ditto Deroy Murdock:

... the ad reinforces the fundamental mythology that fuels de Blasio’s campaign: The filthy rich refuse to pay what they should in taxes, and must be shaken down to benefit poorer New Yorkers, whom these dandies have stiffed.

It’s a truly touching narrative — worthy of Charles Dickens or perhaps Karl Marx.

We got rid of the Commies, and it's only a matter of time before we get rid of literature and empathy too. Then the conservative revolution will be complete!

But as de Blasio has racked up the points, even Kincaid has had to catch on that his red-baiting was getting him nowhere -- "But there's more to this story than Marxism, which most people think is a dead ideology that has no relevance today," he sighs -- and switch to the new attack line about di Blasio inviting hoodie-hood boys to bum rush the show and take your daughter to Plato's Retreat.

It looks like that's not working, either.

Quick, there's only a day left -- someone tie de Blasio to Obamacare!

UPDATE. I was kidding about Obamacare, but on Twitter Mike Di Paola informs me that the New York Post's Bob McManus actually went for it in August with "De Blasio's Big ObamaCare Problem." di Blasio had complained about the winnowing of New York's hospitals (e.g. St. Vincent's), and McManus informed him that it was his own fault, and Obama's, because

New federal, state and local laws and regulations — soon to include ObamaCare, with a vengeance — are vaporizing the financial incentives for unneeded and extended hospitalizations, for example. Hospitals are now sharply penalized for such practices. 

The changes have slashed patient populations — and so pushed many financially marginal institutions straight over the edge. (See above, Long Island College Hospital.)

Meanwhile, both the government and insurers have been heavily incentivizing “wellness initiatives” — quit-smoking and diet programs and so on — meant to dramatically cut hospitals out of the picture.

Trying to improve healthcare ruins everything! There are also some ravings about how di Blasio wants hospitals to stay open so he can funnel phoney-baloney jobs to his pals at SEIU, but really, it's just the typographic equivalent of someone throwing whatever rock, mudball, or candy wrapper he can find at a target he can't hit.

COME ALONG, WE'RE GOING TO THE TRANS-LUX TO HISS WILLIAM BUCKLEY.

Jay Nordlinger, who practices what at National Review passes for whimsy, tells us (as he has apparently done before) that hissing is for commies:

Speaking of longstanding complaints: I have always objected to hissing. And, all of my life, the Left has hissed. They’ve hissed movies, plays, music, me — anything they don’t like. I’m sure that conservatives have hissed, along the way. Frankly, I have never been present for this.

Liberals also loudly unwrap candy at the opera, I'm told.

Believe it or don't, this is not the craziest thing that went out under Nordlinger's name today. Here's a letter he says he received:

My girlfriend works at a retail clothing store in Chicago. She has recently had some issues with her manager (long stories, details don’t matter). 

Today, she was told by the manager, “Because you do such a good job selling, the other employees are intimidated. They are intimidated by your success. We want to move you to a fitting room [outta sight, outta mind], so other employees have a chance on the floor. I just want to have an environment where all people are equal and everybody does the same.” 

She has already found another job, and is leaving. By the way, the store called her into a meeting a few months ago and told her, “Employees said that, in the breakroom, you mentioned having a Bush-Cheney shirt. Some of them thought that was offensive, so we would like you not to speak of it at work.”

Astonishingly, Nordlinger seems to buy this ridiculous story of a retail business where the manager doesn't want a super-salesman on the selling floor because liberal fascism: "We can accept this kind of country — just accept defeat, or a kind of dhimmitude," he sighs. "Or we can push back. Push back in myriad ways, at myriad turns." He doesn't name the letter's author; Heywood Jablome, I'm guessing; sounds like his work.

And then someone sends him another Penthouse Letter, which he also buys:

Here’s some pushback for you. Someone on my team once complained to my boss that I had weighty books on my desk, which intimidated her. It made her reluctant to ask me questions. (She was reluctant, all right, but for different reasons.) The boss asked me to keep my books in a drawer, rather than on the desk itself. I adamantly refused, and challenged my boss to fire me for my refusal.

I've half a mind to send him a letter about how my liberal boss was intimidated because I have such a big dick.

ANNALS OF THE CULTURE WARS: A VERY SPECIAL JONAH GOLDBERG EDITION.

The Pantload on Downton Abbey:

I do wonder what the left, particularly the British left, thinks of the show. For starters, one of the chief villains is gay.

We can stop right there; you could make a parlor game out of guessing Goldberg's other insights ("the whole point of the show is to sympathize with the landed gentry," "the one fairly radical lefty in the show... remains something of a bore," etc). The thing that defies imagination is: What does he think is going on? Is he trying to using conservative hanky code to find if Abbey's producers would like to provide the entertainment on the next NR Sadcruise? Or is he laying the groundwork for the case that, when the history of early 21st Century conservatism is written, Julian Fellowes will be the Goldwater of the Kulturkampf? (After all, as Goldberg's colleague Jay Nordlinger noticed years ago, Fellowes once complimented America. Maybe he's a mole in the commie arts community, and can be recruited to make movies with Bill Whittle.)

Oh, one more thing, from the aesthetic part of Goldberg's episode review:

Indeed, the whole show felt bizarrely cut up, like they had to put it together at the last minute.

At last he's talking about something he understands. [Farrrt.]

NO WAY TO GO THROUGH LIFE, SON. Jonah Goldberg says some guy says conservatives are obsessed with Elizabeth Warren.

Meh.

We could stop there; Goldberg isn't likely to make this argument any more convincing. Might be fun to watch him try, though.

But does anyone really believe that George Will(!) was challenged or threatened by Warren’s spiel?

George Will is the Most Interesting Man in The World.

That gets to my point: The reason conservatives responded to Warren’s “declaration” is simply that liberals were relentlessly hyping it. It didn’t become a YouTube sensation among conservatives. It became YouTube sensation among liberals who were inspired by it and then conservatives responded to that.

He's not obsessed, you're obsessed.

It’s an important distinction because to listen to liberals, Warren’s argument strikes fear into the heart of the right because it’s so powerful and super-terrific. It really doesn’t and it really isn’t.

Well that was elegant.

I’m sure Will wrote a column about it not to pay “enormous tribute” to her brilliant insight. Rather, it’s because liberals wouldn’t shut up about it.

Didn't you hear him? HE'S NOT OBSESSED YOU'RE OBSESSED!

In other words, the conservative response to Warren isn’t nearly as interesting as the liberal reaction.

And by "interesting" he means dur hur hur.

The real question is why is liberalism so arid and why are liberals so dejected that when a liberal politician offers a fairly trite exegesis on the social contract, leftwing bloggers stand up and cheer like it’s a St. Crispin’s Day speech?

The real question is why liberals are all jerks. Except he thinks he ought to fancy that up, so he gets a thesaurus, and calls Nordlinger to get the name of an awesome speech by whatshisname, the Hamlet guy, except not Hamlet because everyone knows that's Cuomo's dad.

I like to think Goldberg knows how stupid this is, but enjoys the fact that they have to let him get away with it. He has to have one admirable quality, at least.


UPDATE. Many alicublog commenters disagree that Goldberg has to have one admirable quality. Maybe the ability to appreciate absurdity isn't it -- I think Alanis Morissette would walk away from Goldberg muttering, "This guy doesn't understand irony at all" -- but there has to be something, if only because he's one of my favorite comic characters and I would like him to have the dimensionality of a Tartuffe or a Hank Kingsley. Maybe there's a little boy in Africa he writes letters to. ("Dear Mtumbo, how's it hanging?")

Spaghetti Lee reacts badly to "Meh." I understand; I've written about it before; it's the characteristic vocal tic of a specific type of suburban douchebag who thinks his unqualified, monosyllabic opinion on anything matters because you can't see his house from the road -- the bleat of the burgher who resents every moment the world isn't kissing his ass.  I must admit Goldberg uses it perfectly.

UPDATE 2. Also in comments, Duncan takes offense at my rough handling of Goldberg. I see what he means, but believe he misunderstands me. As I intimated earlier, I view Goldberg as a character and not as a live human being. And in this incarnation he delights me. What look like my gross physical insults to him are only good fun and even in a way (excluding his wretched politics and writing) not unkindly meant. I don't think of Goldberg as fat so much as appetitive; or if he is fat, he is fat like Falstaff, or stately, plump Buck Mulligan, or Junior Samples -- that is, he is outsize, expansive, suitable for State Fair exhibits, one of those giants with whom the world sometimes demands our awestruck attention. His Cheetos are to him as the bow to Orion, and his farts as the wound of Philoctetes, except worse-smelling. I am not insulting him -- I am immortalizing him.

THE ETERNAL OOGA-BOOGA. Some time back, during the Donald Trump Presidential boom -- Remember that? Good times! -- I came across some nut who claimed to be a White House "Insider" who'd soured on Obama and was sneaking out to talk shit about him with a blogger.

At that time he was plumping the Trump campaign thus: "At first I thought it was something of a joke, but since then others have confirmed its legit - and considerable money is already being spent in preparation... I think this guy could win. He really could. And I would gladly work for this campaign."

Judging from his political savvy, he must be a very senior official indeed -- which is damning for Obama!

The Insider has resurfaced, and guess what? Now he's working the Ooga Booga angle.

To "lay out the psychological foundation of the son-of-a-bitch," The Insider tells us what a slob Obama is in his "upstairs office at the White House":

The big screen will be on – the volume loud. You can easily hear it from outside the door. The sports channels are the ones most commonly playing, though sometimes the channel will be set to music, or Fox News...

He often sits with one leg draped over one of the chair’s arms and the other leg stuck straight onto the floor. Shorts, sweats, a t-shirt, and like I said, no shoes or just those sandal things that so many of the younger people like to wear these days... And that desk, it’s a mess. Magazines spread out all over it. Stupid shit too. Real low brow reading material the president is into. People. Rolling Stone. Lots of those tabloid things.

Plus Obama has "like these long-fingered woman’s hands. And his wrists, you could wrap your own fingers all the way around those wrists – again, so much like a woman’s hands." Why, the Insider dreams about those hands.

You can see how a wingnut would be easily riled by this -- the woman-handed, shoeless pickaninny reading Rolling Stone and blasting hippity-hop in the House that Reagan Built! But that's just background for the real story: How Obama will use black riots to re-seize power.

Here's the come-on:

[Interviewer]: What do you mean by we – we are preparing for it? And are you actually saying that Barack Obama would push for race riots to somehow win a presidential election? That sounds…far fetched. Even for this administration.

Insider: Does it? How so? You need to take step back and see more of what has been happening in this country. It’s why this thing went from a concern about the party to a serious concern about the country. Why aren’t you seeing that?

After a bunch more Deep Throat bullshit, The Insider finally gives up a little more intel:

So will he stir up the race issue if it means guilting or scaring white voters to keep him in the White House? Hell yes he will. He’s been doing that shit his whole damn life! You wanna say so what to that? You wanna see this country torn apart by race because we have a president who sees it as a viable political tool?

Tell us, O Insider, how this guilt-or-scare will work!

The race card, the racial thing – whatever it’s gonna be called, it is the number one asset this administration believes it has to win in 2012. Their own polling data has shown that to be true over and over again. But how far are they willing to push that? Race. The charges of racism? I believe all the way if they have to. And they are gonna get people stirred up. And if Barack Obama doesn’t win re-election, watch them stand back while the riots break out, and watch them mouth the words “Burn baby burn.”

Oh no -- what a disappointment! Those of you over the age of 12 and with intact memories will recall that conservatives, some with actual names like Jay Nordlinger, were claiming that an Obama loss would lead to riots back in 2008. It's just wingnut SOP.

I was hoping the Insider, being Inside and all, would have smuggled documents out of the Black House that would tell us in which Popeye's Fried Chicken franchises the guns and ammo were being stored. Shoot, for all her passive-aggressive prevarication, even The Anchoress is more forthright about Obama's use of flash mobs to overthrow America.

But let's not give up hope. Maybe the Insider isn't telling all he knows. Maybe he's holding back. I bet he has a wife and kids -- and they know it. What is it, O Insider? Blink out the answer in Morse Code! Where is Valerie Jarrett drilling the troops? Will the Obama rioters try to trick us into flashing our headlights? Tell us, for God's sake -- the hour of Ooga Booga draws nigh!

UPDATE. Comments are all comedy gold, but special attention must be paid to whetstone, who sampled The Insider's dialogue ("Fuck no. Listen. And learn some goddamn history before you ask such a stupid question") and judged: "Wow, Mamet really did go off the deep end."

HOME TAPING COLLECTIVE BARGAINING IS KILLING MUSIC. Aw, Jesus, that asshole Jay Nordlinger is combining his two great loves -- classical music and union-busting:

Okay, it is not so lovely down here that I’ve ceased to stew about Wisconsin. This morning, I thought of something that an insider once told me about the New York Philharmonic. I was inquiring about spiraling costs in the music business — also about why we don’t really have recordings or radio broadcasts anymore. A big part of the answer, of course, is the unions: killing or suppressing music, as they kill or suppress so much else. This insider said, “Don’t think of the Philharmonic as an orchestra. Think of them as Local 802.”

And yet some people want the Rockefellers to pay more for their season tickets! Can't we just fire these communist musicians and bring in the Portsmouth Sinfonia?

TEACHER'S PELT. The big teachers' union fight is on in Wisconsin. The Republican Governor Scott Walker claims the government needs to severely curtail the union's collective bargaining power in order to save money; TPM notices that Walker blew a hole in the budget himself and suggests that he did so in order to create this crisis and break the union.

As the Christian Science Monitor headline demonstrates, the union is aware of the stakes: "We’re fighting for our very existence." Conservatives know it too. They have been full-throated in their denunciations not only of the union but of teachers in general, portraying them as parasites -- like Teamsters, only easier to beat up. National Review's Jay Nordlinger has been particularly obsessive in this regard. First:

Teachers used to be something like a holy caste, practically the most honorable among us. I come from a family of teachers. Everyone thought of it as a noble calling. Teachers earned too little, but that was remedied, over time.

Then everything went screwy. Teachers were not just well paid. (“Best part-time job in America,” Lee Iacocca once quipped, to the howls of many.) They were some of the most petulant, greediest, nastiest unionists around...

Then:

In a previous era, long ago, teachers were rather like missionaries. You practically had to take a vow of poverty to be a teacher. Often, a teacher [blah blah, miles in the snow]...

I would never go back to the days of missionary-teachers. They ought to be generously compensated. (Shouldn’t we all.)

Even Grandpa Simpson has his moments of generosity, I guess, but Nordlinger quickly catches himself:

But good grief: These grasping, lying, bullying unionists are enough to give the teaching profession a bad name...

Later:

And everything the teachers do, of course, is for the sake of “the children.” I wish the children could talk back, borrowing a phrase from anti-war movements: “Not in my name.”

Instead of playing in the yard and thanking God for their luck.

For decades now, union militancy has dragged the teaching profession through the mud, robbing that profession of its public spirit, even of its professionalism...

And so on. Funny as it is, I don't find the situation cheering. They're trying to turn teachers into a pariah class in order to normalize their removal from the middle class. The whole energy of our rulers seems devoted these days to squeezing that remnant, and if they are not completely successful in this grand opportunity to reduce its number and further weaken union power at the same time, they will keep coming back until they are.

Their cheerleaders ("Look, I am the daughter of union folk; I appreciate why unions were initially formed") spread the story that the rollback is unavoidable, as the morality for collective bargaining died with their parents' need for it, and anyway "the money is not there." Indeed it's not there, because it has been painstakingly relocated.

Though the state of American manufacturing is so parlous even the CIA is worried about it, "economic futurist" Jeff Thredgold is bullish. He explains:

The common wisdom notes that most of these jobs left in search of less-costly havens, initially Mexico and then China. This is certainly true for a share of the jobs.

However, the most important factor leading to lesser employment was major gains in worker productivity. We simply make more goods with fewer bodies. While overall U.S. worker productivity gains have run just under 3 percent annually over the past 10 years, productivity gains in manufacturing have run two to three times higher.

Maybe Thredgold has good reason to feel confident. There's just been an uptick in the mid-Atlantic manufacturing index. The big winner from this, so far, is Mexican stocks, as the uptick "indicated strength in one of Mexico’s most important export sectors," says MarketWatch. I wonder how much of that money is going to be left over for the guy on the line.

OBLIGATORY MLK POST. It's an alicublog tradition to call out some of our favorite conservative tributes to Martin Luther King Jr. on his Federal holiday. So far cowboy Alan Stang leads the pack, with his essay "UN-CELEBRATE MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY":

...the King holiday was proclaimed, after considerable, racist intimidation, when the nation knew hardly anything about him, not alone because it was inflicted so soon after his death, but because by court order the truth about him was suppressed. Yes, that is correct; we have a national holiday for a man whose wife got a court ruling that suppresses the facts about him until 2027 to spare the intense embarrassment she would have felt had the truth been revealed.

The fella's got a point -- after all, when word got out about Sally Hemmings, there went the Jefferson's Birthday Federal holiday!

Further into the column you can read some fascinating testimony from former Montgomery, AL Chief of Police Drue Lackey about the Freedom Rides:

Those four days on the road had turned into an habitual sex orgy by the time they reached the capitol. King was always seen on TV marching in the front row among clean, well-disciplined performers. It was all a sham. He stayed partying separately most of those days, and would only arrive in a chauffeured limousine for appointed press deadlines, leaving immediately after.

The Lame Stream Media shows white celebrities like Paris Hilton in sex tapes all the time, yet where are the photos of Martin Luther King snorting coke, banging whores, and vomiting in alleys? It's obviously a cover-up.

Most of the others put off at least until nightfall, what they had come for, as this mob had been bused in from across the country and around the world: unemployed Blacks, White students, party activists of both races, on promises of all the free food, booze and sex they wanted.

They reached Montgomery late on the afternoon of March 24, 1965, and spent the night at St. Jude’s where they had been invited. We kept security along with the National Guard, for the local Whites were up in arms. We witnessed them sleeping on the ground all together, and a lot of sexual activity went on throughout the night, with frequently changed partners. This is what the federal government sponsored: a bunch of communists and moral degenerates

So that's how they got those kids to walk into fire hoses and gunfire! You'd think they would have stayed home in Jew York and miscegnated in comfort.

Lackey is also the man who fingerprinted Rosa Parks when she was busted for what radio host James Edwards calls her "bus stunt" ("It never ceases to amaze me how lawbreakers [Parks, 'civil rights' activists, illegal aliens, etc.] are heralded as heroes," etc). Edwards, author of Racism, Schmacism (I'm not kidding), interviewed Lackey a few times in 2008; one of these days I'm going to have to snuggle up with a snifter of Hennessy and listen to them.

Bonus rounds:

• A black guy who says

King recognized the tyrannical nature of the government, and he would be standing shoulder to shoulder with Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Herman Cain, Allen West, and many others in an attempt to free not only blacks this time, but the entire nation from the very same government that was oppressing blacks during King’s lifetime.

That would be an interesting march, especially when King started regaling Limbaugh et alia with his plans for a guaranteed minimum income for Americans.

• At Human Events, Daniel J. Flynn tells us that liberals, labor unions, and Democrats are the real racists ("The New Harmony commune's exclusion of African-Americans, labor union cries of a 'yellow peril,'" etc), and African-Americans were in deep shit until they were rescued by Adam Smith:

A truly free market works as an antidote to racism. Though contemporary radicals would vociferously deny this, their forebears vociferously charged capitalism with negating racism... Capitalism and racism can't long peacefully coexist.

Exactly! Who can forget those black folk who sat down at segregated lunch counters, not because they were agitators or anything, but because the food there was so delicious and well-marketed that they'd risk a beating for it. Also, "the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott is one of many examples of money trumping bigotry during the civil rights movement," etc.

It's amazing King and all those other civil rights workers got shot -- didn't James Earl Ray and those guys know what a financial bonanza desegregation would be? Musta been socialists.

UPDATE. Michelle Malkin honors the day by demanding "Give the race card a rest," yelling about Al Sharpton, and listing what she considers examples of liberal "race card demagoguery" (sample: "DREAM Act radicals bitterly accused opponents of xenophobia and race traitorism"). Malkin probably wonders why no one invites her to give toasts at weddings.

Oh, and here's a guy who admits he thought in 2008 that Obama was going to "take our nation irrevocably down the multicultural path," but is pleasantly surprised to see him thwarted by "the rise of the Tea Party." When the honkeys in tricorners triumph, he predicts, "then will come the day MLK's dream is fulfilled." Just ask Glenn Beck.

UPDATE 2. In honor of MLK, William Teach beats up environmentalists:

Personally, I don’t doubt that MLK would have simply patted the eco-nuts on the head like a rather slow child still trying to master See Spot Run at age 10, since he seemed to be the kind of guy who wouldn’t want to hurt their feelings by pointing out what nutjobs they are.

Yeah, that's what King would be doing, all right. He'd also have a pick-up truck with a gun rack and a "The Next Time You Need a Cop, Call a Hippie" bumper sticker. It just follows naturally from what we know about the guy.

Later Teach invents more King insults for enviro-freaks, and adds, "do I really have to mention that Dr. King spoke more about equality, rather than 'social justice'?" I guess Teach isn't talking about the MLK who said, "Capitalism was built on the exploitation of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor," but about the one who sounds so convincing reading Teach's lines.

UPDATE 3. Thanks, commenter Jeff, for pointing out Jay Nordlinger's tribute at National Review. Nordlinger notes that King applauded the Presidential election victory of Lyndon Johnson, who signed the Civil Rights Act, over Barry Goldwater, who opposed it. Nordlinger adds this historical gloss:

An older MLK might well have been ashamed of that rhetoric, or at least regretted it. For one thing, Goldwater’s view of government and economics was the opposite of fascist: was the classical-liberal view.

Maybe the MLK of Nordlinger's imagination -- like that of William Teach's, and all the other speculators -- is actually one who escaped the assassin's bullet in 1968, turned 82 this Saturday, and suffers from advanced Alzheimer's Disease.

BREAKING THE DETECTOR. Maybe it's the holiday season, but much of what I'm seeing on the internet today activates the flashing "BULLSHIT" sign in my head. This, from Jay Nordlinger at National Review, is three-alarm bullshit:

Some have said, “You just can’t find cards that say ‘Merry Christmas.’ It gets harder and harder.” I know. Kind of like trying to find products not made in China [senile ramblings]...

I gave up on the “Merry Christmas” front too, where cards are concerned. I just get a pretty card that says “Season’s Greetings” or “Whass Happenin’ on the Holidays?” or whatever. Life’s too short to hunt down “Merry Christmas.”

Bull fucking shit. I was just at a drugstore here in Harlem. There were plenty of goddamn Christmas cards. And this is in Manhattan, epicenter of liberal fascism -- in fact, the woman next to me at the card rack was devouring a fetus (as they do in Europe: out of a cone made from a newspaper, with mayonnaise), while on the sidewalk a bum was persecuting Christians with his mind-rays. Still had Christmas cards.

If you can't find Christmas cards in America, get a flashlight and a map and, while you're at it, look for your ass.

GOTV, PART 2. We'll be getting a tidal wave of bullshit from conservatives today, so we might as well start with Jay Nordlinger. The insufferable rambler looks back, through clouds of Glade Mist, to his first voting experience:

We were all lined up, and a professor walked by — very left-wing (obviously). And from Texas. Therefore, triply left-wing. You know the type? If you’re from the sticks — or what others perceive as the sticks — you have to be the most left-wing guy around. Something to do with an inferiority complex, I guess.

How often must the phrase Get on with it! run through the minds of Nordlinger's associates.

Anyway, he remarks to the person walking with him, “There they are, everyone exercisin’ his right.” It came out, “. . . everyone exercisin’ his raaaahhht.” He said it in an incredibly snide tone: a tone that said, “Aren’t they silly, thinking they are doing something genuinely democratic? They’re just pawns in a system controlled by money.”

That's some fucking eloquent drawl, isn't it? (Then again, Le Petomane could make his farts sound like talking.) (Which I suspect is how Jonah Goldberg writes his columns.)

You will be unsurprised to learn that Nordlinger is enraged that in New York (where he moved to escape the liberal Texans, presumably) voters may receive their instructions in Spanish. "Why would anyone who can’t handle the voting experience in English even want to vote?" he asks. "Have I just committed hate speech? (Come and get me, copper.)" What a scamp! But he must have felt nervous about it, because he follows immediately with a tale of his bravery in insisting on bilingual rather than Spanish-only trash receptacle signage:

I talked with our Hispanic janitors, who said, “They think we’re so dumb. They think we don’t speak any English at all. Even if we didn’t speak English, don’t you think we’d know what ‘trash’ was, after working as janitors for all this time?”

Condescension, thy name is White Liberalism; White Liberalism, thy name is Condescension.

The message is clear: When Spanish-only speakers enter a polling place (as several did mine this morning), the workers should refuse to assist them in Spanish, lest they be thought condescending. It should do wonders for their self-esteem, especially the elderly ones.

Also, Nordlinger wonders, what's the point in having sign language interpreters at large events? He supposes it "simply makes others — hearers — feel good." More liberal condescension! Maybe he thinks handicapped seating is a plot to keep the infirm from standing. Comes the revolution, those Tea Partiers in their Hoverounds are in for a rude shock from the Nordlinger Corps.

GOLDBERG RETURNS FOR FURTHER SELF-HUMILIATION. You will recall Jonah Goldberg's attempt to -- well, not so much refute Anne Applebaum's column on conservative anti-elitism as to misrepresent it and then attack the misrepresentation. Even on those terms he did a lousy job.

Yesterday Applebaum responded to Goldberg with extraordinary patience (especially considering that she noticed, as I did, that Goldberg "actually attributes arguments to me that I never made"), explaining in simple words that right-wing bitching about elites conflicts with their meritocratic views, and is particularly ridiculous coming from conservatives who are members of elites themselves.

Goldberg re-stumbles onstage with a bucket on his foot and what he thinks is a winning comeback: What Applebaum doesn't understand about him and his fellow wingnuts is that they use "elite" as code! And he's actually mad that she didn't impute to him the bad faith that he admits of himself:

I’m trying not to let my exasperation get the better of me...

...'cause when I do my face turns red and my pits smell really, really bad.

...so let me explain what I think she is missing. Attacking the Ivy League is a very old, very recognizable shorthand in American political discourse. What Applebaum is doing is reading these statements literally, and painfully so.

I mean, really! I'll bet she doesn't even know about the "uppity" connection! Fart.

Goldberg also isn't done attributing things to Applebaum that she didn't say:

She is also asserting that Ivy League simply means the smartest and the best, as if there was no plausible case that the Ivy League’s reputation is any way overblown or underserved.

I wished as hard as I could, so hard I think I pulled a muscle, that Goldberg would try to make that case immediately, using as an example his skill at walking around with a bucket on his foot. But again God was deaf to my pleas.

As to Applebaum busting him for making shit up, Goldberg huffs, "Applebaum is now moving the goalposts," which in this context means she's getting into the weeds and Goldberg has to noodle it and anyway he has to walk Cosmo and farrrarrrt -- that is, nothing:

What I objected to was the bizarre insinuation that what is motivating Tea Partiers and other conservatives these days is a backlash against elite education, academic achievement, or the rise of the meritocracy as personified by the Obamas. That remains what I dismiss.

This is as fine an example of "You were supposed to hear what I meant to say" as you'll find anywhere.

Goldberg also receives non-help from Jay Nordlinger, who says that Bill Buckley wasn't an elitist despite having every attribute of an elitist because Bill Buckley was always talking about how he hated elitists. Unfortunately he began rambling before he would inform us that George W. Bush may have gone to Yale but he by God cleared brush at his ranch which, by the way, is in Texas.

SOMETHING TO CELEBRATE. Mario Vargas Llosa has won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and good for him. Rightbloggers are ecstatic, but mainly on political grounds. "A consistent voice against repression wherever he finds it and an eloquent champion of freedom in all its manifestations," declares Nick Gillespie. Donald Douglas is happy that the laureate doesn't like Che Guevara. The American Enterprise Institute proudly reproduces part of his Irving Kristol Award acceptance speech. Tyler Cowen seems to have actually read Llosa's fiction, but he's a special case.

Jay Nordlinger at National Review is very happy because while many previous laureates have been "anti-Americans, Communists, and other anti-democrats," and only won because "politics, particularly leftism, has seemed more important than literary quality" to the Committee heretofore, today's winner is "an advocate of a free economy." The judges must have caught freedom fever in the interim. (Nordlinger adds that Llosa is a "fine writer," but seems to consider this the gravy rather than the meat.)

This is the flip side of the pants-shitting rage that conservatives came out with when Harold Pinter won the Prize in 2005. Everything to them is politics, and for the most part they only get interested in literature when it serves their usual tedious yay-boo.

So far coverage from mainstream media outlets and liberal sites has been appropriately respectful and laudatory, as you might expect. It's gotten me interested in Llosa's work, with which I am only glancingly acquainted. Your recommendations for further reading would be appreciated.

NATIONAL REVIEW COVERS THE ARTS. After yet another series of complaints about how artists say liberal things to which conservatives are forced to listen (presumably at gunpoint), Jay Nordlinger addresses an objection:

“That man and his wife can’t expect to go to folk concerts and not hear leftist politics from the stage! Come on! That’s like going to a Chinese restaurant and objecting to the sight of rice.” Well, maybe: I don’t know. Are there right-leaning folkies? Performers, I mean? I bet there are. And I bet many are closeted (as right-leaners are in the classical-music world).

What richness this adds to our picture of persecuted rightwing artists -- now joining the novelists, filmmakers and actors cowering in the attic, we have cellists and hammered dulcimerists! I would especially like to meet the folksinger who trudges from coffeehouse to coffeehouse, blaming the poor reception he receives for his renditions of "Where Has Spiro Agnew Gone?" and "Masters of ACORN" on liberal bias, and taking heart in the examples of Bob Roberts and The Goldwaters.

You might also enjoy this Nordlinger reader letter:

I was a very prolific jazz reviewer for years — live performances and recordings — but totally quit when Obama got elected. The constant e-mails, liner notes, and remarks at gigs that trashed Bush and the Right, while extolling the coming of The One, enraged me, and I just couldn’t take it anymore. Why should I spend one minute of my (volunteered) time helping jazzers when they obviously despise what I stand for?

I like to think this is from Nat Hentoff.

Nordlinger's colleague Benjamin Weinthal catches the bug, and tries an artsy angle on Iran:

Where does the musical film Cabaret, which depicts the rise of German fascism, intersect with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s appearance at the United Nations this week? “It is clear the future belongs to Iran,” said Ahmadinejad in an AP interview on Sunday, which conjures up the eerie beer garden scene in Cabaret in which a young Nazi stirs up jingoism with the song “Tomorrow Belongs to Me"...

The pressing question at the end of the Cabaret scene was posed by the British actor Michael York, who expressed justifiable disbelief about whether Germany’s aristocracy could exercise control over the Hitler movement.

I'm constantly hearing claims that the future belongs to some damn thing or other -- Microsoft, Linux, Matt Meola, walkable communities, et alia. Previously I thought these were just harmless enthusiasms or marketing gimmicks. Now I know they're Hitler! I expect this will be included in the next edition of Liberal Fascism.

Wait a second -- Hitler once said that "the future belongs to color photography." Gasp! His influence lingers to this day! Set the color saturation to zero, for democracy's sake!