THE DIRTY WORK OF CONQUEST. Electrolite points to a horror story in the Independent, about U.S. forces in Iraq destroying groves of rare date palms to punish intranisgent locals.

I suppose the story could be fraudulent or a misinterpretation of facts. It wouldn't be the first time we got fake testimonials from Iraq.

It passes the smell test, anyway. Because even the nicest occupier will sometimes have to play rough with the citizenry.

And we are occupying Iraq. That thought is seldom expressed these days, as we debate the significance of Governor Wolfcastle and what the definition of the word "imminent" is. But we did invade and take over a foreign country, and we are now running it. And this situation will always entail, along with the statue-toppling and the little girls with flowers, the dirty work of conquest.

We can argue about the right and wrong of this particular case, and we have, and we will. But something else is eating at me now, as my attention has been jerked back to the subject by the aforementioned article. This occupation is going to last a while and it's going to cost a lot. The $87 billion is just the tip of the iceberg. Already we're rotating our troops less often, squeezing more out of each serviceman.

So while the question of Administration prevarication is meaningful, it's also kind of important to look at what their malfeasance has got us into. Even if every story about restored schools and liberated children's jails is true, even if this adventure has been a great net plus for the Iraqi people, what will it be, ultimately, for America? Spare me the children's stories of national greatness, and tell me how this will work out better for us than it did for, say, this guy.

THE BRIDGE DECK AT SAN LUIS REY. I used to live on Staten Island, and the less said about it the better, but the ferry trips were the best part of it, especially when I rode home on the exposed starboard bridge deck available on the older vessels, and enjoyed the lovely views of the Jersey coast and the Statue of Liberty. It never occurred to me that the thing could crash. In fact, I was surprised when, a few years back, one of the boats foundered in a storm. I can't even imagine the hull being torn like a tin can on impact, let alone 10 dead and scores horribly injured.

So the report that the Andrew J. Barberi "appeared to speed up when it should have slowed down for docking" is shocking. I recall the pleasureable sensation of the boat reversing its engines and nosing in between the docks; at worst a clumsy entrance meant the sides of the hull would graze the pylons, causing a small, bracing jolt. This occasioned mild groans, gasps, and laughter among the passengers, especially those of us on the foredeck. That must have been what the Barberi passengers were expecting till the last moments, and I shudder to envision myself among them -- or, for that matter, in the place of the pilot, who apparently tried to kill himself after the accident.

There's a guy in Chicago suffering mightily because he tried to catch a foul ball two nights back and appeared, in the superstitious world of baseball, to fatally reverse the Cubs' momentum in the playoffs. I hope he and his fellow Cub fans understand that fate deals blows hard and soft, according to cosmic whims far beyond our ken, and that this constant rain of suffering is only alleviated by good luck and mercy.

THEY'RE ALL AGAINST US! "Not reviewing Coloring the News was, in my view, the journalistic equivalent to the 'blue wall of silence' that the Times often decries..."

...writes the author of Coloring the News.

Later on, a "friend who works at the New York Times" tells this author, quote, "We're gutless careerists. What can I say? The treatment your book got dramatizes the power that liberals have to dominate the discourse and to shut down--or try to shut down--dissidents or those who have alternative points of view."

Quite a mouthful. I would discourage Mr, Goldberg from applying his talents to the dramatic field until he learns to write dialogue that doesn't sound like a political version of the "I Am Muscular Dystrophy and I Hate People, Especially Little Children" monologue they used to do on the Jerry Lewis Telethons.

My own writings are also sadly neglected. I blame Bush.

WHEN BLOWHARDS ATTACK! I thought for sure this Thomas Hibbs thing would be the stupidest piece of written on the subject of Kill Bill:

Now, Tarantino is to be credited with forcing on his viewers a cognitive awareness of his film's liturgy of blood. The question is whether the surface irony is sufficient to justify the willing suspension of moral judgment, not moral judgments about the film's hypothetical causal effects on the behavior of already deranged adolescents but the indispensably moral element we bring to any work of art.

Makes Immanuel Kant sound like the Yellow Kid! But then this monstrosity emerged from the swamp, spewing hyperbole, and topped it:

Set aside what it says about contemporary Hollywood culture that the supposed liberal progressives of this city now ceaselessly mass-market presentations of butchering the helpless as a form of entertainment, even, as rewarding self-expression. Why do we suppose that, with Hollywood's violence-glorifying films now shown all around the world to billions of people... young terrorists around the globe now seem to view killing the innocent as a positive thing, even, a norm?

Me, I had already planned to give Kill Bill a miss, not because it causes terrorism, but because Tarantino sort of sucks.

YANKEES GO HOME. Jonah Goldberg has a long thing decrying the New York Times for backing a Sox-Cubs series. That the Good Grey Lady has money tied up in the Boston franchise does surprise me, but hey, that's capitalism, comrade. (Cut to Grady Little, wearing a Soviet uniform and leering: "The Yankees will buy us the horsehide with which Pedro Martinez will bean them!")

But Goldberg is mostly annoyed because the unexpected stance shows a lack of loyalty, which is "Cosmopolitan" -- not the good kind of Cosmopolitanism one sees in New York takeout menus, he explains, but the bad kind that makes you not care about nothin', and vote Democratic. Plus which, it's arrogant. "The Times is deciding what is best for the world," he says.

Two things. First of all, didn't Peggy Noonan tell us years ago that the "Democrats, God bless them, are Yankees"? Maybe the Times is just trying to show some editorial balance. First they hire David Brooks, now they turn against the Democratic Yankees.

Second, I think there's a simpler explanation. There are many New Yorkers who don't care for the Yankees. Some of us are Mets fans who, in our suffering, do not appreciate -- are in fact damned annoyed by -- the giant-foam-finger triumphalism of the Bombers. Frankly, any pretext for a Yankee pratfall would be okay by us, but how much better if it leads to a Series between two venerable clubs who have waited long decades for this moment?

I mean, Mike Bloomberg is in New York, too, and I don't particularly like him.

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE. I must thank Tim Graham for directing my attention to a hilarious Jimmy Breslin column, in which a junkie freshly released from Rikers seeks to replace Rush Limbaugh on WABC. (Of course, Graham does not approve of the column, but he does show us where it is, and that's good enough for me. Thanks, pal!)

Among Breslin's comments: "Until I found out Limbaugh was an addict on Hillbilly Heroin, which means you can call him a junkie, I couldn't understand how he could keep repeating the same lies day after day. Suddenly, we find that it wasn't Rush the right-wing radical talking. This was just a junkie's babble..."

Now, we're not supposed to laugh at poor Limbaugh. All kinds of former red-meat conservatives who bared their fangs when, say, Jesse Jackson was brought low have rallied 'round Rush, bemoaning his harsh treatment by the SCLM. "His enemies in the mainstream media have greeted his statement with nothing short of outright glee," blubbers John Podhoretz, who then, with astonishing chutzpah, lectures Rush's enemies on tolerance: "Present-day conservatives have our own brand of tolerance and compassion -- and we think they run deeper and are far less condescending than the liberal variety," he ungrammatically but passionately argues. "[Limbaugh] reserved his compassion for those whose tragic life experiences have been formed by the culture of welfare dependency... liberal racists who believe minorities cannot possibly succeed in America without special privileges and special help." (Indeed. Who can forget such vintage Rush bootstrap-philosophical perorations as "Take the bone out of your nose and call me back"?)

Taking pleasure in the fall of moral blowhards has been a lively pastime since before the days of Moliere. It was once even enjoyed by conservatives. And I imagine they'll get back to it after this little, um, interval.

I AM A CLICHE. "Roy Edroso is a really truly New York snarkster of the old school which I also like in a person." This assessment by Sisyphus Shrugged is depressingly accurate, especially when I'm drinking, even among the sunny lefty bloggers who gathered in New York on Friday to exponentiate their lofty thoughts. They were all very smart, sociable people, and I was struck by their similarity in this regard to the conservative bloggers I met at Sasha Castel's New York do last November. Of course, conservatives tend to dress up a little more and to order more expensive entrees. And they're wrong. But these are not crucial distinctions. It might be fun to see them all at a party together. Well, I'm not about to organize that, having been the linch-pin of too many debacles already, but maybe someone else has got sufficient mischief in his soul, and connections, to make it happen.

BUSH (AND BUTT) LIES. Another playful little entry at Instapundit about that fabled "Bush hatred":

UPDATE: Jim Treacher demolishes another alleged example of the same phenomenon, in this case an article blaming George Bush for low-hanging pants on women... Note to fashion writers: If you want to see Bush cement his hold on the male vote, just keep "blaming" him for skimpy women's fashions.

Idle curiosity led me to the link to Jim Treacher, whose money quote from the Slate thumbsucker in question is "Our economy is bad; we're entrenched in an occupation abroad; we mistrust our government at home." That article also mentions Chinese foot-binding, meralgia paresthetica, and Natural Born Killers.

All very silly and a typical example of overdetermined culture-watching and the need to fill pages at regular intervals. But who takes this stuff seriously? I sure don't, and I'm willing to believe nearly anything bad about Bush. I doubt even the author gave it much thought. (I hope not, for her sake.)

Treacher, though, goes ballistic: "It's George W. Bush's fault, just like everything else! WMD = Wow, Mamalicious Dimples! I mean, check it out, his name is BUSH. That's why chicks want to walk around with their BUSH sticking out. Get it?"

All told, Treacher's direct mentions of Bush (and bush) outnumber Slate's, five to zero. IP is reacting to Treacher, so by the time this bagatelle gets the major-blogger spotlight, it's perceived as another bleat of Bush hatred from the wimpified masses of liberal sheeple.

The blogosphere increasingly resembles the old gossip game "Telephone." I lament my own part in it, but I can't seem to stop myself either. Maybe it's time, in the words of the late lamented Donald O'Connor, to start suffering and write that symphony. Or, alternately, to stop suffering and write that symphony. Or anything else.

NEGRO PROBLEM. At NRO's The Corner this morning, Jonah Goldberg addresses a black person. Is this a first? Here is some of JG's response to a TAPPED post by Melanie Alston-Akers (the subject is a Hillsdale College ad about which no sane person gives a shit):

I'm sure it's possible that other blacks of different political persuasions, including conservatives, would draw the same conclusion as her about the ad. I am also sure that many blacks would not (I know this because I heard from some). I do not think those blacks are any less authentically black.

If you haven't read Alston-Akers' original post, you might assume from Goldberg's bit about the "authentically black" that she had accused Af-Ams who disagreed with her of Tomming or Oreohood. If you have read it, you know that she made no such claim -- unless you are of the sort who believes he knows the Angry Negro script backwards, and so just substitutes bits of it for the actual words of the darker person speaking.

What is it with this guy and black people?

THE POLITICIZATION OF EVERYTHING. George F. Will is pissed. "California's recall," he correctly notes, "[was] a riot of millionaires masquerading as a 'revolt of the people.'" (Quick, NROers! Send someone to The Corner to accuse Will of making class war!) Plenty more vinegar further down: "Schwarzenegger conservatives -- now, there is an oxymoron for these times..." "voters full of self-pity and indignation," etc.

I don't much like Will, but I have to admire his stay, as they used to call it. He's one of the few conservatives who does not undergo a sudden philosophical transformation whenever he thinks of Rainier Wolfcastle. He believes today what he believed last month, and so is appalled to see many former scourges of Clinton and preachers of governmental responsibility sucking up to a tit-grabbing power freak who has so far resisted any explanation of his gubernatorial action plan (unless you count waving that broom).

This is just another symptom of the growing politicization of everything. The sane response to the election would be, from Democrats, "too bad we lost," and from Republicans, "too good we won." But victory and loss are too binary for the electoral tea-leaf-readers, who have grown so numerous as to necessitate the creation of endless niche ideologies to accomodate their careers: would you like a gay post-Reagan English conservative, or a deranged Jewish former Black Panther? Or would Madame care to see something in a bullshit liberal?

So the recall is crushed and sifted and some conservatives decide it points the way to their future. Tireless GOP cheerleader Deborah Orin speaks in the New York Post of a "Terminator wing of the Republican Party " that will succeed by aping the examples of Wolfcastle and Giuliani. So, I guess if Bush gets in trouble next year, he can just feel up Condi Rice and divorce his wife for a quick electoral boost.

Most of the time I'm disgusted by what these people believe in, but increasingly I find that I am disgusted at nothing.

MORE BULLSHIT about how Tom Brokaw et alia are fighting for Saddam from General Ralph Peters. A sample:

Far too many journalists refuse to acknowledge the truth about their role in this age of endless news cycles and global access to reportage. Even when reporters don't make up the news, they make the news by selecting what they report.

Stop the presses -- Stories Revealed to Have "Angles"! Nuttier still is the notion of a "role" for the press, which Peters later expands with "the media must face up to the responsibility that goes with their influence." Dig below the permafrost of the General's hauteur and you'll see a fairly old-fashioned view of those who express views contrary to that of the state. Perhaps the General thinks the New York Times is run like Stars & Stripes. (Of course, not even George Patton could get Bill Mauldin kicked off S&S back in the day, so maybe the General has a different journalistic model in mind -- one that predates John Peter Zenger.)

BALLOT INITIATIVES FOR ME, BUT NOT FOR THEE. Few political boundaries can withstand star appeal. Already conservative backers of Governor Wolfcastle are making pre-emptive excuses for his upcoming term.

Mickey Kaus:

You want a tax increase if cutting the budget isn't enough to close the deficit? Schwarzenegger's the man for that too. As a nominal Republican, he is in a position to attract at least some Republican votes for a budget package that includes both taxes and cuts.

Quick, class -- what is the single issue that Wolfcastle ran on? Tax cuts! Very good! Well, in the immortal words of the Alleycats, nothing means nothing anymore.

More interesting is Kaus' suggestion that Wolfcastle move to "amend the state Constitution to get rid of the paralyzing requirement that two-thirds of the legislature approve any budget." If the two-thirds rule has any logic at all, it is that it makes it harder for larcenous political coalitions to hijack a budget. If Wolfcastle were to muscle this provision out of the state Constitution, it would not be for the benefit of the state's economy, but for the benefit of Two-Term Arnold.

A more breathtaking scam is proposed by David Frum. "Schwarzenegger won’t be able to change California," he deadpans, "unless he changes the way in which California is governed." Frum then proposes the death of Cali's easy ballot initiatives. "These constitutionally protected programs take priority over everything else the state does, including things that are less glamorous but more important... Schwarzenegger knows this well: after all, he entered politics with his own poll-tested budget proposal..." [emphasis mine].

If Arnold makes a terrible botch of things -- not an unimaginable event -- look for Frum to endorse an end to California's terribly unhelpful recall provisions.

MEME-ORIES LIGHT THE CORNER OF MY MIND. The golden days of the Fifth Column seemed to have passed. Things had been quiet along the traitor-baiting front, and conservatives had been content to portray liberals as, say, sex-fiends or as sissies, rather than as enemies of the state.

Now Bob Bartley comes running out of the woods hollering Hoo-ah! Let's do it again!:

...having won overwhelming public support, [Bush]now faces home-front guerrilla assaults as well.

The latter problem is the serious one. With press coverage starting to balance the good news and the bad, we're coming to understand that on the ground in Iraq the guerrillas are isolated. The Baathist remnants and Arab militants have nothing like the external sanctuary and superpower support that sustained the North Vietnamese and anti-Soviet Afghans. For the moment terrorists can still ambush Americans and assassinate pro-peace Iraqi leaders, but exhausting them is only a matter of time and patience.

Which of course is where the home-front guerrillas come in.

I think I may have heard a couple of other guys saying that liberals were giving aid and comfort to the enemy by saying mean things about Bush, but at the time I thought it was flashbacks. Can the eminence gris of Opinion Journal guide wingers back onto this particular warpath? I'll be watching with interest, and my passport handy.

NEO NUDNIKS. I must quickly fling some scorn on the New York Times Magazine's "Neo-70s" issue, which promotes the harebrained idea that because some 21-year-olds are wearing bro caps and bellbottoms, we are "doing" the 1970s again -- except without the sex, the drugs, the fun, or the talent.

Leading this badly misguided clue hunt is a stupefyingly bad essay by James Traub (registration required, dammit). This dweeb moved to New York the same year I did, but remembers the old days only as a series of muggings and murders, and says of our current, homogenized era, "If that was Yuppified, I'd take it" (in response to the only dissenting voice in his story, described only as "an aging hippie"). 70s New York, theorizes Traub, was Martin Scorcese; 90s New York is Neil LaBute. Yet still he defends that great lattefication! "The bourgeois bohemians, in David Brooks's pungent phrase," gushes Traub, "have turned areas that were no-go zones when I first came to New York into outposts of boutiquedom."

Then, after some obligatory Rudy-kissing ("New York got its swagger back: Giuliani rode high in the saddle..."), Traub begins to notice a problem -- businesses are leaving. (It would seem that, in the Traubian vision, all that is New York hinges on the migration patterns of banks and brokerage firms.) And without the big, big money, where will we get latte consumers? "The question," Traub says, in a sentence the hopefulness of which degenerates in an almost beautiful way, "really comes down to whether the city can not only attract but also keep all those bright, eager, ambitious people who flock here, despite the high taxes, the restrictive regulations, the sky-high real-estate prices, the poor schools, the deteriorating services."

I thank Traub for a good laugh there, but my gorge rises again at his suggestion (delivered quickly, as if the author had suddenly noticed the near-fulfillment of his word count) that our city's solution may be "more theater, more cafes, more bookshops." (Hey, kids, let's put on some Neil LaBute!) "Let the bankers leave for Stamford; we'll make do with the radio-car drivers, the bartenders and the graphic designers."

You fucking Yuppie dipshit. You and your asshole friends drove our rents through the roof -- now who can afford to open a theatre? And even if we had access to a theatre (or a dance studio, or a film collective, etc), how could we afford to do anything other than the most explicitly commercial work, the cost of living here being what it is? You made this nightmare for us, and now you're willing to wave it off and decree that a cultural renaissance is in order. Tell me, when you came here (maybe on the same train as me), did you begin immediately to brown-nose the Times' management? Then you probably have a nice financial package to insulate you against the worsening economic times. So you'll forgive the rest of us -- "the radio-car drivers, the bartenders and the graphic designers," not to mention the actors, writers, musicians, etc., for not sharing your sangfroid. I'll say this, though: if the murderers, junkies, squeegee men, et alia do come back, I'll kiss the motherfuckers if they manage to drive you and everyone like you out of my city.

GUN NUTTINESS. Instapundit suggests that an alleged drop in the American murder rate (I say "alleged" because his source is the Washington Times) shows that "liberalized handgun-carry laws" aren't a bad thing. An arguable point, but instead of developing it, the Ole Perfesser decides to gild his lily by gloating over an increase in gun crimes in Britain "despite a near-complete handgun ban."

I'll say this for the Second Amendment folks -- they aren't selfish: they want gun rights not only for themselves but for everyone, including those who don't want them at all.

If the idea here is to assert that the more guns you have, the less crime you have, I have to ask if the Perfesser has ever heard of a small community called New York City. Here we have experienced huge drops in the murder rate several years running. It may surprise the Perfesser to note that this was not achieved by handing out service revolvers to the citizenry. Quite the contrary:

The NYPD gun strategy uses felony arrests and summonses to target gun trafficking and gun-related crime in the city. NYPD pursues all perpetrators and accomplices in gun crimes cases and interrogates them about how their guns were acquired. In a proactive effort to get guns off the streets, the NYPD's Street Crime Units aggressively enforce all gun laws.

Also, "New York City has some of the most restrictive local licensing requirements for Federal firearm dealers in the country."

By the Perfesser's logic, we should be drowning in our own blood, and our few surviving citizens begging him and his hayseed brethren to throw us a cache of weapons to stop the violence.

I am willing to accept that, as a citizen of a great metropolis, I'm not always sensitive to the ways and means of folks living in the vast Central Suburbs. I just wish they'd show us the same consideration sometimes.

ADDENDUM. Somebody has responded to this bit with mild, Vermont-style demurrers on gun rights in general. I had imagined that my earlier essay on the subject was so widely known that it didn't need mentioning, but I see now that I was deluded. I'm pretty cool with the Second Amendment. I don't think gun laws are necessarily good or bad -- I think the good ones are good and the bad ones are bad. What's a good gun law? Roughly, one that doesn't interfere with your right to bear arms or the legitimate government function of keeping the commons safe (i.e., free of crime sprees and casual violence). I swear this Venn diagram shows a lot more overlap if you look at it from a disinterested POV.

MOVIE NIGHTS. I've been called a crank, and can't deny it, but I'm a crank like Dennis Hopper was an asshole in Out of the Blue. "You think I'm an asshole!" he roared as he poured his own beer over his head. "Alright! I'm an asshole!" Then he showed that he hadn't poured the entire beer over his head. "But," said Hopper, "I'm not a fucking asshole!"

I am not a fucking crank, and so enjoyed School of Rock this weekend. It has no characters to speak of, and nothing is at stake; all the plot complications are laughable, as are the Lessons in Life. (Fancy Jack Black telling anyone that rock isn't at least partly about sex and drugs.)

But the movie is a crisp bit of product with a great idea in the middle. Actually I think you have to have a bit of crank in you to fully appreciate it. (I'm not talking about meth, but I suppose that would help too if you could sit still long enough to watch the thing.) Because the idea that kids today need to be schooled in the art of rock is very cranky. It's epiphanic for greybeards such as myself when Black asks what the kids like and they uniformly cite unspeakably lame contemporary radio staples -- and Black cries, "What are they teaching you in this school?" and draws up a flow-chart of rock history. Robert Christgau couldn't have cranked it up better.

The movie panders L.A.M.F., but surprise, it's me and mine that are being pandered to. About time! So I raise my goblet of rock to it.

Also saw Lost in Translation, aka Antonioni for Dummies. Murray and Johansson are cute, but I wonder how the movie would have worked if everyone they loved or came in contact with hadn't been such morons.

JONAH GOLDBERG'S ANALYTIC METHOD REVEALED. "Surely, spending a billion dollars to turn around one criminal is too much, even if it would work. No one's proposing spending a billion dollars per prisoner, but the point remains the same. "

THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT NEEDS NO SNAPPY HEADLINE. "A White House official I spoke to was particularly pleased by the increased hiring of temporary workers, which he sees as a good sign about robust economic growth to come." -- Ramesh Ponnuru, NRO.

CAL GOP SCRAMBLES FOR COUNTERSCANDALS! Via the Right's most reliable apparatchik, this story about Carl Reiner (!) on Chris Matthews (!?) is headed down the media stream:

What Reiner said, with a kind of comfortable, humorous familiarity, was "Shfartze-negger"...

Reiner returned to a modified, less-offensive version of the pronounciation later in the conversation, but what remains recorded for all to hear is kind of ugly. The first half of "Shfartze-negger" is the Yiddish version of the N-word. The second, appended to the first half with humorous irony, was apparently intended to mean what it sounded like.

So, if I understand this correctly, the guy thinks Reiner called Schwarzenegger a nigger.

Sorry, try again.

A CULTURAL DISADVANTAGE. Speaking on Rush Limbaugh's idiotic comments about the Philly QB, Jay Nordlinger makes this interesting statement:

I’m reminded of something that I’ve discovered in recent years. I work in Conservativeland, and I’m used to speaking freely. I’m used to not having to abide by a speech code or any other restriction of political correctness. And then sometimes I leave Conservativeland, and continue to speak freely--and sincerely--and then find that I startle people. They’re not used to hearing it.

Well, that's right, we're not. The Mother of All Dittoheads goes out in front of millions of sports fans and says -- freely, certainly; sincerely, who knows -- that McNab hasn't been "that good from the get-go. I think what we've had here is a little social concern in the NFL. I think the media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well." And those of us who are not convinced that a pro-Negro conspiracy, aided and abetted by the liberal media, has foisted an unskilled quarterback on the unwilling Eagles, are startled.

Meanwhile another Limbaugh, David, tells the world that liberals are "waging an undeclared war on Christianity." The book's cover is graced by a lion, apparently comparing the plight of American Christians to that of the biblical Daniel. Piquant as I find the thought that Ted Kennedy, the ACLU, and a handful of others have got the Prince of Peace and his millions of adherents on the ropes, I cannot take it seriously for a second -- even after no less keen an observer than Ann Coulter has told me that Limbaugh's book "makes you cry for your country" and "wonder how much longer America can survive liberalism." In fact, I cry with laughter, and wonder how anyone, in a land bejewelled with churches, and led by a President who talks about Jesus all the time, could believe such hooey.

I am equally mystified by the invitation by Ned Flanders (aka Rod Dreher) of the Dallas Morning News (registration required) to weep for conservative journalists. In the "overwhelmingly secular" atmosphere of newsrooms, Flanders tells the huddled, shivering conservative scribes, "you will have to distinguish yourself by the strength of your writing and reporting." Not like those liberal journalists, who merely have to commit sacrileges for their paychecks. (Flanders, by the way, preceded his Dallas stint with plum gigs at the New York Post and the National Review, so I'd say he's wearing his persecution remarkably well.)

You'd think that after all the time I've spent in Conservativeland, merrily mining such profound observations as the abovementioned for this site, that their free-thinking ways have not rubbed off on me. Yet, when I see an underperforming black professional athlete, I don't assume he is employed merely as a token; I remain unconvinced that Christians are about to be holocausted by the Democratic Party; and I marvel that an industry dominated by Fox News can be called unwelcoming of right-wing reporters.

Must be a cultural thing.

MAGGIE, NOT A GIRL OF THE STREETS. Sometimes I wonder if my political writings are, like all my other writings, merely manifestations of a deep neurosis that might be better vitiated by therapy or antidepressant drugs. Then I read Maggie Gallagher and think, well, if they let this nutcake publish, surely there must be a place in the sun for me, too.

Gallagher is annoyed by boomers that don't act their age. You know, 50-year-olds with nose rings, grandparents who don't want to baby-sit, and the like. (That's really her point. This is how people get the impression that writing is easy!)

Well, some 50-year-olds look better with piercings than others -- I think Susan Sarandon with a nose ring would be cute, whereas some younger actresses, like Brooke Shields, would be an eyesore. But hey, no accounting for taste, and who the hell cares? Normally I might let Gallagher slide off into the bin of harmless crankage. But some of her deficiencies range beyond mere annoyance.

As previously noted here, Gallagher is a tireless agitator for social revanchism, who seeks to "defend marriage" by making divorce more difficult and gay marriage nearly impossible.

Outwardly her grumblings seem like the harmless, playful discharges of negative energy one gets from old people in folding chairs on many suburban lawns. Her whole rap on youthful behavior in unyouthful people is about decorum, not right and wrong, as even she admits ("this is not so much immoral as deeply depressing").

But you have to wonder why someone with her serious social agenda spends so much time criticizing behaviors that, however unseemly, hurt no one. One guess is, Gallagher seeks to shame her opponents into doubt, and thence to conversion. She perhaps figures that we libertine hordes are so simple-minded, having cut all our high-school and college classes in favor of weed and wild sex, that we can be easily teased into compliance -- that, shown as if by a mirror how awful nose rings look ornamenting our grizzled visages, we will retreat from all such youthful enthusiasms with such shock and revulsion that it will send us ass-over-tip into the land of beaming breeders, obscenity-free cable, and regnant heterosexuality in which Gallagher resides.

Or maybe she's just nuts. Yeah, let's go with that one.

DEFINING DEMOCRACY DOWN. A very strange post from Peter Robinson at NRO's The Corner. He admits he "goofed" on a political matter -- and that's weird in itself, because these guys will usually only cop to error on matters of much less significance.

But the rest is weirder. Robinson, it seems, originally thought McClintock had won last week's California gubernatorial candidates' debate. But, he now admits, that was because he had only heard it on the radio -- now he knows better, because people who saw it on TV have told him that Schwarzenegger looked "relaxed" and "in control."

He also said he was wrong about WIlliam Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying" being a better book than Stephen King's "It" -- he had originally read them both in page proofs, and had not then realized how much better the typography and cover design of the King book would be.

Kidding. Now, I am aware of the old Nixon-Kennedy anecdote -- the people who heard the debates on radio thought Nixon did better, but the TV watchers preferred Kennedy. This speaks to a long-lived but still rather childish idea that the thing "won" by Kennedy could be considered a debate in the old-fashioned sense, e.g. a contest of ideas and their articulation, when in fact that event, though rhetorically and intellectually still leagues ahead of our modern pifflefests, helped define debate down as a riskier sort of campaign stunt -- it might go badly, the other guy might interfere, but whatever happens you'll still get your talking points and image projections across to millions of likely voters.

You may think Bill Clinton looked better wandering around that Oprahless talk-show set than George Bush I in 1992, but that speaks to Clinton's campaign team's marketing skills, not the candidate's abilities as an advocate and public servant.

Still, Clinton did hire the team, and execute the strategy and that counts for something. And one could grant Robinson that point if he'd made it. But instead he gives us this:

Now, I still think very highly of McClintock. And every scrap of news I can glean from the Schwarzenegger camp confirms my suspicion that Arnold has exactly zero idea what he’ll do when he becomes governor of this great state next week. I remain convinced, in other words, that a candidate’s message counts. But a candidate’s temperament and personality count, too. As they watched the debate, voters seem to have been looking for someone with whom they’d feel comfortable, sensing, correctly, as far as I can tell, that the next governor will need both presence and good humor to deal with the mess he’ll find in Sacramento. By the time the debate ended, Californians had decided they like Arnold.

Despite my misgivings about the man’s program, I can’t say I blame them.

Two things here. First, who knows what Arnold's actual temperment and personality are? He's an actor, remember? In fact, all the other candidates on that stage are actors of a sort, too -- conceivably better than Schwarzenegger, at that.

Also, I agree that presence and good humor are appealing qualities. But if those are the trump criteria for a candidate -- and Robinson is strongly suggesting that they are -- then why not Senator Tim Robbins, or Congressman Johnny Depp?

Because it will come to that. The Republicans are at present better than the Democrats at fielding celebrity candidates -- I keep hearing that Dennis Miller will start riding the elephant soon. Eventually, the Dems will wise up and start running movie stars, too. Then I expect we'll hear less talk from Robinson about how, while ideas are important and all that, you can't blame citizens for choosing a telegenic cipher.

I only hope I can hang onto my righteous indignation when that happens, because as much fun as it would be to see Tom DeLay strain for spotlight as Congressperson Sarandon hogs the camera, it probably won't be so great for the Republic.

NO, "DUDE," IT'S WHAT YOU WOULD DO IF YOU HAD ANY GUTS. "As Jimmy Kimmel, a comedian on ABC-TV, put it: 'People throw the term "politically incorrect" around a lot, and normally it's a lot of bluster, but Vice truly is un-p.c. Their brand of humor is what I would do if there were no "standards and practices" on TV.'" -- New York Times September 28. (Thanks Margaret for the tip.)

IN LIEU OF THE BLOODY SHIRT... My nephew started college in New York this month, and stays with me on school days. He is a fine young man, and I hope college gives him not only a good education in forensic science, but also in the ways of the world.

Therefore I hope no such killjoys as this are lurking in our Statehouse:

[Virginia] Delegate Robert G. Marshall, who last spring denounced James Madison University's "SexFest 2003," is now demanding answers from another state school: Virginia Tech.
Mr. Marshall said Virginia Tech misused taxpayer funds last week when school officials allowed Virginia Tech TV to tape on campus a "Sex Talk Live" show during which students discussed sex.

Apparently the kids discussed and, to some extent, handled sex toys and contraceptives. That doesn't even sound like fun, let alone an outrage. Nonetheless, Marshall is mad:

"Virginia parents do not send their children to Virginia Tech to take part in [sexual] titillation," said Mr. Marshall, Manassas Republican.

Of course they don't, you stupid redneck -- but sexual experimentation has been part of the college experience since time immemorial anyway. Hell, my college dorms looked and smelled at all times like a cross between Animal House and The Harrad Experiment.

I am grateful for many reasons that I do not live in the Confederacy (though I do miss its barbecue and most of its people, whose generosity and excellent manners would, or should, shame us Yankees to blushes), and one of them is the stronger motivation and propensity their politicians have for waving, in lieu of the bloody shirt, the cum-drenched dildo. Of course, we have such jackasses up here, too, but we blow them off more easily -- when they tried a similar stunt at SUNY New Paltz, the Chancellor basically told them to fuck off.

I'm sure many of the Virginia kids' parents don't like the idea of a sex fair. I doubt they much cotton to that there evolution neither, but I assume the college will continue to teach it, because that is their responsibility.

I mean, if the schools don't teach our kids how to use ass-beads, who will?

THE GOVERNMENT WE DESERVE. Tech-tank director Sonia Arrison wonders whether Governor Schwarzenegger will be good for Silicon Valley. Well might she wonder. The sources in her article venture predictions no more trustworthy than the aching bones of a hillbilly weatherman:

"He is a pro-growth, pro-business, low-tax guy and this is what the Valley thrives on and needs," says Chris Alden, entrepreneur and founder of Red Herring magazine.

Red Herring? Say, didn't they go out of business? (Actually, the magazine was reanimated, albeit in web-only form, this month -- perhaps the Arnold election convinced its backers that a strong market for bullshit was in the offing.)

Michael Mahoney, a managing director at EGM Capital, a hedge fund that focuses on technology and telecommunications, agrees. The Valley appears convinced, he says, that Arnold "will get the state back on the right track with regard to finances and regulation."

But how? Arrison's sources caution against taking the fiscally prudent statements of Schwarzenegger advisor Warren Buffett too seriously. "Warren Buffett speaks for Warren Buffett," says "a Republican venture capitalist who recently hosted a huge Arnold fundraising dinner." Really? Then what's Arnold employing him for?

The true value of these prognostications is perhaps inadvertently revealed by another commentator:

James Hong, founder of the Internet dating site HOTorNOT.com, echoes a concern that many were willing to say only off the record: "I don't think he has exposed enough of his viewpoints on some of the issues that I think are important to us."

No shit. Schwarzenegger has in this campaign been a near-perfect cipher, and his fans, accustomed to projecting their hopes and dreams onto his lumpish visage, continue to see in him just what they want to see. This goes double for the internet guys Arrison cites. Remember, it wasn't long ago that these schnooks were cheerfully ushering us into the "New Economy," without warning (or even awareness) of the trap door and steep drop at the other side of the threshold. Now I'm supposed to listen to them on politics?

THERE'LL ALWAYS BE A BILKO. Further proof that the Brits have better taste than we (at least in culture -- I won't vouch for their food): this new Radio Times U.K. poll, in which residents of the Scepter'd Isle voted "The Phil Silvers Show" the best TV comedy show of all time.

How dya like that! as Doberman might have said. Apparently the adventures of Sgt. Bilko were re-run in Britain for some years after the show disappeared from U.S. syndication (I recall seeing a few episodes as a boy). Still, it's noteworthy that the Brits' memories reach back even that far. We have a museum for stuff like Silvers' show over here, yet only TV scholars (and boy, there's a funny concept, huh?) even know who Silvers is anymore.

Maybe Bilko reminds Brits of Jonson's "Volpone." Or maybe they like him because he suits the traditional European view of Americans -- crass and avaricious to the point of insanity, but energetic and amusing in the throes of our greed. Maybe the show stirs half-vengeful, half-fond memories of the "overpaid, oversexed, and over here" Yank servicemen of WWII. Or maybe the bureaucracy of Bilko's Army still has resonance for the notoriously bureaucrat-bound British. After all, "Yes, Minister" also made the list.

The win-place-show was Bilko, "Seinfeld," and "Fawlty Towers" -- not bad! I blush to admit I haven't seen many of the UK offerings that placed (though I have fond memories of the hilariously sour "The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin"), but nearly everything I recognize is choice.

Now could you blokes send us a few decent rock bands, please? And take back your DJs.

DO I STUTTER? Brendan Miniter wants to infuse the dreary social studies cirricula of our schools with good old-fashioned American history. So do I. Of course, Miniter feels the best way to achieve this lofty goal is to repeat GOP fundraiser anecdotes about people who "warned against singing patriotic songs like 'God Bless America'" in the days following 9/11. "Heroes? Pooh!" Miniter imagines such unpatriots saying about traditional history instruction, "Nationalism? Bah! Western civilization? You've gotta be kidding!" So much for consensus-building.

Miniter's piece is rich in sneers at "liberal educators" and "Social-studies theorists," as is the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation-funded document toward which he steers his readers. This document's contributors all have impeccable educrat credentials (CV sample: "Jonathon Burack, a former secondary school history teacher, has for the past 20 years produced secondary school history curriculum materials... He demonstrates the pervasiveness of postmodern cultural relativist epistemology in our nation's schools..."), but I suppose if you're right-wing, you can be forgiven even an education degree.

While these folks favor the same confrontational approach as Miniter ("The keys to Rome are being turned over to the Goths and the Huns"), they are very solicitous of the Bush administration, even though the No Child Left Behind Act signed by our "education President" ignores social studies altogether. "This was not meant, heaven knows, as a hostile act," contributor Chester E. Finn assures us. "The authors of NCLB are patriots..."

The swipes at multiculturalism and "moral relativism" are familiar, ceaselessly repeated, and tiresome, more an incantation than an argument, but if you can make it to the passage by J. Martin Rochester, charmingly titled "The Training of Idiots," you're in for a treat. Rochester blames ahistoricism and its fallout, including our depressingly low voter turnout rates, on "America-Worsters," and prescribes that "we need to create fewer doubters and cynics."

Fewer doubters and cynics! How is this to be achieved -- extra sessions of the Breakfast Club? Sorry, Principal Vernon, but if you want less doubt and cynicism in schools, you shouldn't be yelling at teachers -- you should be yelling at our political class, which has done far more to inculcate our young with these characteristics than any diversity program.

FEEL-GOOD MOVIE OF THE YEAR. On the entertainment front, I finally caught "American Splendor" last night. A friend had complained to me that the movie doesn't give enough attention Harvey Pekar's real innovation -- the quotidian, working-class life stories in comic-strip form. Those are excellent, of course, and the most interesting of them aren't about Pekar at all -- they usually start with Harvey running into a buddy, and the buddy telling a long story. (My favorite, drawn by Gary Dumm, is about a guy who accompanies his pal to a job interview, decides to fill out an application himself because he's bored, sets the interviewer's trash basket on fire and still gets the job, and quits after one day -- "They wanted me to be a human screwdriver. Fuck that! The next day I went over the wall.")

But the movie's about Pekar. His biographical details are old news to many of us, though it is fun to see them fleshed out on screen. (The scenes of Pekar and Crumb giving birth to the "American Splendor" books are catnip to aging bohemians like me.) The small, private agonies and ecstacies of the old crank, though, are the real meat and drink. Paul Giamatti plays Pekar gnarled -- his default facial expression is a sneer. To me, this seemed like an act at first -- like Pekar's hollering prole routine seemed on Letterman. But when I got used to it, it was perfectly charming. His sneer, it turns out, isn't contempt, but disappointment, with himself and the world (a disappointment made understandable by the wonderfully cruddy Cleveland locales). But sometimes he's not disappointed. Things go well with the books; he finds love; he beats cancer; he takes pleasure from his peculiar friends and from the little stories they give him.

I think it's a good thing to be reminded that you don't have to be a grinning, positive-thinking idiot to get something out of life. The movie's being marketed as an offbeat thing ("Weird, different, fascinating!" says Moviechicks), and some of the unusual real Harvey/movie Harvey film tricks point that way, but at bottom it's about a real guy who manages to do alright without being like Rocky or Rudy or any of those fist-pumping clowns. You could call it a "feel-good" movie, in the old usage favored by Hollywood blurb writers. I don't see that one in movie ads anymore, come to think of it; they're more likely to advertise their entertainments as a "thrill ride" -- great synergy for the afilliated theme-park attractions, I guess. I don't like rides, but I don't mind feeling good.

DEM TWO. I only know yesterday's Democratic debate from its transcript, and so cannot offer commentary on John Kerry's haircut or Wesley Clark's podium manner or any other such details of importance in accredited commentators. But the text is not embarrassing, nor even too dispiriting.

Not that the candidates aren't a little silly. With so many participants, these debates currently resemble open auditions for a junior college production of All the King's Men, aspirants for which have been mischievously told that Willie Stark was modeled on John F. Kennedy. Even relying on the transcript, I can see each player strutting and fretting his or her sixty seconds upon the stage, and hear the grinding of gears as the moderators, more spineful than most such I've experienced, redirect a candidate's attention back to the question at hand.

One has to love the evasive answering techniques on display. No one, but no one, directly addressed the "Free Trader or Made in America" question. And rightly so, because it's a very unfair question. But still, since when do politicians need a good reason to wriggle, and since when do I need a good reason to enjoy their wriggling?

WILLIAMS: Beginning with Congressman Gephardt, it's the subject of trade. Do you wear the label "free trader" or "Made in America"?

GEPHARDT: I'm for a progressive trade policy and I will be a president who will lead not only America but the entire world toward a trade policy that will help every business and every worker in the world. That's what we need.

That doesn't just fail to answer Williams' question -- it fails to answer any question.

Lieberman got a few more jokes in, even one playing on the word "fucked." What would Tipper Gore think? More importantly, what Lieberman's really about? A lot of that culture-scold thing he works so assiduously on the hustings falls away at these debates. It's refreshing, and his relaxation shows a keen awareness that nothing at this stage of the campaign means much of anything, a trait which must be admired. It may be that Judgmental Joe dons and doffs the hairshirt as easily as an actor dons and doffs a costume. That would be a relief. Well, his old man did run a package store.

Dean seems a little rattled ("These days I feel my need to restate practically every position I have based on all the things these guys have said about me in the last three or four weeks"). But who wouldn't be? When you're the frontrunner and you've got nine challengers, one of them a late entry with military props, you have a right to some prickliness. Frankly I'd like to see him punch through that hoarse, Jerry-Brown-vintage faux-outrage and show some real anger. You're supposed to be Jed Bartlett, for Chrissakes! Smoke a cigarette or something.

I do find it remarkable that, regarding global trade issues, most of the candidates have staked out an ideological corridor that one might call "mend NAFTA, don't end NAFTA": renegotiate existing treaties so that the global little guy gets a fairer shake. That sounds pretty middle of the road, which is to say, possibly acceptable to a majority of voters. And that's weird, because we tend to think of these issues in apocalyptic terms -- global enslavement vs. anarchy. It's downright soothing to imagine that we might find our global trade routes smoothed by legislation, not littered with molotov cocktail debris. Probably a false hope, but hey, a guy can dream.

I still think the old dogs have the pole position, and if a time-traveller zipped in here now and told me it was all Kerry, I wouldn't be at all surprised. But it's September 2003. Who knows? Moreover, who cares?

I must add that I am pleased at the figure Revered Al is cutting these days. The most cheerful, if not the proudest, vote I ever cast was for Sharpton when he ran for Senate in the 1994 Democratic primary. What a wonderful thing it was to answer "Sharpton!" when my friends asked how I voted, and what entertaining responses I got! If you're a little further down my list this year, Rev, it is not due to lack of affection, but to the nagging fact that in the national crisis we now face, we need the sturdiest beam possible to hold off collapse.

THE SONG IS OVER. The great Tom Lehrer -- author of The Vatican Rag, MLF Lullaby, and Poisoning Pigeons in the Park -- went back to academe a long time ago, but I was still unnerved to hear (via an especially good Altercation this a.m.) that Lehrer is too pissed off to write any of his masterful satirical ditties about our current condition: "'I'm not tempted to write a song about George W.Bush," quoth the master. "I couldn't figure out what sort of song I would write. That's the problem: I don't want to satirise George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporise them."

Lehrer is of course of the old school, with attitudes formed in a time (perhaps really just a brief historical respite) when America didn't start wars, we finished them (and opposed to the current vice-versa), and people were still inclined to laugh bullshit off the national stage.

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it isn't just anger that prevents Lehrer's Bush song cycle. In the aforementioned interview he has a lot of smack to say about modern comedy ("The people who go to comedy shows are kids that don't know anything, I think, and so you have to make jokes about your girlfriend or your family or that kind of thing -- only make them as vulgar as possible"). Well, yes. There's no point in satirizing something if no one knows what you're talking about, or even, perhaps, what satire is.

I may be mistaken but I detect a bit of sadness in Lehrer's responses. Not maudlin sadness, but the world-weary sort ("I have become, you might call it mature -- I would call it senile -- and I can see both sides..."). This may be the natural state of aged satirists, as the late careers of Twain, Swift, et alia also demonstrate. You watch the Big Show long enough and certain patterns of behavior, mostly brutal and self-defeating, emerge; sooner or later, you get tired of pointing them out to people who came in late. Or decide that it would really be a shame to reveal these plot twists to them, and thus spoil a brash and diverting (if somewhat tawdry) entertainment.

Maybe I'm just projecting here.

ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL. I'm not one of those phony populists who go on about trial (I mean trahhhl) lawyers and tort reform and such like. (I didn't say I wasn't a phony populist, mind -- just that I'm not one of those phony populists.) But this is bullshit: the lawyer for Maurice Clarett, the Ohio State sophomore whose super-early entry to the pros is prevented by NFL rules, seems to claim some sort of bias against his client:

"I see Maurice's case as a league trying to make certain players, young players, who are often poor, wait on earning a living, while the N.F.L. and colleges, either directly or indirectly, make millions off of them," Milstein said. "To me, his situation is about another huge entity trying to take advantage of a smaller group of people who don't necessarily have powerful voices themselves.''

Clarett is entitled to the best defense, of course, and that sometimes means working such specious angles as this. I am not outraged at shady legal tactics per se (not like Sam Waterston seems to be in every single episode of Law & Order). It's all in the game.

Two things do bug me. One is the idea that Clarett has a God-given right to play in the NFL. The NFL is, basically, a club. For those who enter this club as players, a certain amount of rough-housing may be expected. If the proprietors decide that applicants must reach a certain age or level of experience before smashing into their other members, why is that our business at all? Shall we next haul into court those carnival ride operators who display YOU MUST BE THIS TALL TO RIDE signs, on the grounds that their inflexible standards deprive precociously thrill-seeking seven-years-olds of their God-given right to a place on the Tilt-a-Whirl?

The other thing is more under the surface. Clarett is going to Ohio State University. Now, maybe he isn't the best student; maybe he is in fact of that species of jock who disdains all book-learning as "weak." Maybe OSU is wasted on him.

Or maybe he does value the opportunity, but because a man is dangling million-dollar bills to draw him out of it, thinks he should do the "right" thing and earn major scrill instead.

All other things being equal (and they are not, if the NFL still objects), Clarett should have the opportunity to chuck his OSU diploma for a few more years of bigtime money. Isn't it sad, though, that such a choice is increasingly, and for so many people, a settled question -- fuck school, take the cash?

If I get Milstein right, he believes (on behalf of his client) that education is some kind of condition of servitude to be thrown off as soon as a money-earning opportunity turns up. I suppose a libertarian case can be made for this, just as it could be made for child labor, which is one of seven hundred reasons why I'm not a libertarian.

But this really goes beyond policy issues, because laws cannot touch what is rotten about this. Do we really think so little of our minds that we can't even consider their upkeep a nobler thing than a quick buck?

CITY OF SAPS. I hear they had some kind of concert in the Park last night. Dave something. Had a nice crowd, they say.

Unlike any concert in the Park I remember, though, this one required tickets for entry. Now, I don't have any interest in the watery Mr. Matthews, but even if I did, the idea of having to present a ticket stub to get onto the Great Lawn would have turned me right the fuck off. (And at the end of the day, when you get in, it's Dave Matthews. What a rook.)

I also understand that some people paid for their tickets. I assume these guys got preferential seating. If not, they're saps.

But it appears we are increasingly a city of saps. Things that were once ours by right of citizenship are regulated. Next thing you know, there'll be a dress code in Sheep Meadow. Or a red-yellow-green code for Fifth Avenue.

And what do the punters do about it? Nothing. From what I hear, they didn't even boo fucking Bloomberg, the most hated man in the City. I remember going years ago to a Mozart concert in the Park -- not even a rock concert! -- and when some coporate schlub came out and read the name of the corporate sponsor (Citibank or something equally repulsive), the air rang with loud, prolonged howls of outrage. "They're doing this for you," said the corporate schlub, "even if you don't know it." The booing redoubled.

The City has gotten too much into the habit of accomodating transients -- the college punks, the foreign investors, the career burnishers stopping off for a few resume enhancements before fucking off to Vail or St. Paul or where-the -fuck-ever. Once upon a time, you came to town and got kicked in the ass, and either you learned a little something from that or you left. New York was a problem you had to solve. The conflict between you and the Demos was what we used to call an educational experience -- you know, like boot camp. Asking New York to accomodate your own suburban reality would be like asking your drill sergeant to chill out. Not only was it not going to happen, it wasn't supposed to happen -- not if each new citizen were to learn the valuable New York lessons of life among different kinds of people with competing interests.

Now new people come to New York and the Mayor and everyone else try to make it as much like the gated communities whence they came as possible. Look at our lovely Park! You have your pass, of course?

Well, maybe next year we can have a riot or something.

AND HOW COULD I EVER REFUSE/I FEEL LIKE I WIN WHEN I LOSE. I had not realized that Bush's sole purpose in addressing the U.N. yesterday was the humiliation of our allies. Yet it would seem so, from the fulsome coverage on the Right.

John Podhoretz boo-yahs, "Bush did not say the United Nations was irrelevant. He also didn't say that the ground gets wet when it rains. Some things are irrefutable matters of fact even if they aren't discussed openly." "A diplomatic spanking," crows Clifford D. May.

David Frum likens the Europeans to a sheriff who is "too cowardly – or too corrupt – to do the job," and Bush to... oh, fuck it, you know how that meme goes.

Zev Chafets observes that when Bush got around to what many of us thought was his real business at the General Assembly -- asking for troops and money to clean up the mess he'd made in Iraq -- he "sounded like a bored teacher doling out busywork. Why not help Iraq write a new constitution? (You diplomats are good with fancy words and, anyway, we'll check everything over.)" Chafets even implies that Bush's references to the world sex trade was "slightly malicious" toward the delegates, in that many of them are "famously social." (Of course, Chafets has had other crazy notions in his time.)

The most fiery froth comes from General Ralph "Lock and Loathe" Peters. "Democrats will whine for weeks... Chirac -- a moral pygmy... The only myth greater than that of the French resistance is the myth of French charm," etc. (The General seems to back up Chafets: "The Germans, Belgians and French -- are the most notorious sexual predators in the developing world." Love to see that research report!)

Why does their savagery spike so? Well, it can't have been pleasant for these guys to admit that we wanted the Axis of Weasels' help in the first place. From "Bush signals he may skip U.N." (March) to "U.S. considers UN-backed force for Iraq" (September) is quite a distance to come down in six months. The Washington Times was palpably broken-hearted to report earlier this month that "European commentators reacted to the Bush administration's decision to enlist U.N. help in Iraq with somewhat smug satisfaction." Whut we doin' askin' them frogs fer he'p now?

Since politics is, to many these days, naught but a game of signals and shadow-puppetry, it matters less to these commentators what trade-offs and backstage deals are leading to the lukewarm resolution likely to come out of Turtle Bay this week, and more that it be seen as a smashing victory for President Flight Suit. The best way to wipe away the taint of Bush's reversal is to play up those aspects of his pitch that might be interpretted, however tendentiously, as in-your-face, WWF mockery.

They perhaps hope by this method to arrest the erosion of poll numbers currently suffered by their Leader. But if a speech and some spin could distract our attention from Wesley Clark, how little will it take to distract our attention from the speech and spin as well?

Probable answer: very little and less every time. By the time the election rolls around, expect to see operatives waving bright, shiny objects at voters right outside the polling booths. The only question is, will we go for it?

WORD. If you're a cultural reporter who wants to sell a story to National Review Online, Dan LeRoy ("a freelance writer who has contributed to Vibe, the Hartford Courant and Alternative Press") has the formula worked:

Step one: Pick a topic that no one at the magazine understands -- like hip-hop.

Step two: Focus on an easily-researched group within that category -- like the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network.

Step three: Use lots of proper names, but do no primary reporting.

Step four: Leave the editors in a cheerful mood by imagining the hip-hop community as a potential Republican voting bloc:

..it's hard not to imagine the shockwaves that could ensue if the music was used to fight a different, more destructive, power. Just imagine a Jay-Z or a P. Diddy joining forces with protesters for school choice. Or what might happen if such artists told the world that affirmative action (which didn't help them sell a single album, after all) has gone on long enough.

It looks easy and fun. Maybe I'll try it with, um, let's see, Idlewild. "Could 'You Hold the World in your Arms' be about UN Resolution 1441 after all? 'When you’re secure, do you feel much safer?/When days never change and it’s three years later...' Imagine dreamy frontman Roddy Woomble crooning that to Kofi Annan!" But hell, who wants to listen to that much Idlewild? Maybe I'll just write about my cats. "As Bella stalked the mosquito, her face took on the unflappable, can-do calm of George W. Bush on the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln. I think I'll buy her a little flight suit, and take her to visit Peggy Noonan."

I THINK God put our organs of reproduction in our laps because it looks funny when we spill stuff there.

CRAPTACULAR! Today my copy of the New York Post (filthy habit, I know, but I can't give it up) came free, thanks to AOL, which bought the edition out, nominally to publicize its Dave Matthews concert in the Park for some educratic boondoggle or other, but obviously, really, to give us mouth-breathers who constitute the Post's core audience a shiny new AOL 9.0 disk that may dazzle and extract money from us.

Then I got into work and turned on my computer, which turned on AOL's Instant Messenger, a nuisance our IT overlords foisted on us as a troubleshooting tool (which is more trouble than it is worth, and whose little running blob mascot I would dearly love to shoot). A little screen popped up, as it always does, showing the AIM homepage. Its "What's Hot!" news feature for the morning was called, "'Hey Mom, Want a Happy Meal?' McDonald's New Menu Item." This linked to a Netscape affiliated page, which linked to a CNN Health page (!!), all trumpeting this non-news event (re McDonald's latest diet swill, concocted with the aid of "Oprah Winfrey's personal trainer") in the guise of a lifestyle "story" or a health "story," though it is in fact nothing more than PR writ large.

Meanwhile one of the many AOL ads in today's Post tells me that AOL 9.0's spam filter makes this latest version of the McDonald's of softwares "about as ad-free as New York gets."

Which is setting the bar abysmally low.

Don't sell me, tell me! In fact, don't even tell me.

KURTZ' CASE. Stanley Kurtz, normally found in a damp bed in NRO's fever ward, sweatily tracking his many homosexual enemies with play-armies on his pillow, has apparently been wheeled to a nearby window, the autumn light from which seems to have dissipated his dark mania, albeit briefly.

Today he talks about how polarized we are as a nation. I like this game and I know how to play. I even take Kurtz' point that there seem to be many more full-throated political tracts, liberal and conservative, on the bestseller lists than ever before, and that this may imply a more politicized general public. I don't agree with him, of course -- by his logic, that recent era in which only rightwing tomes like The Way Things Ought To Be and Bias clogged the charts implied that we all of us went solidly right-wing for a couple of years -- but at least I can take him seriously...

...and then, alas! He devotes the last half his post to the Dixie Chicks. "The gulf between country fans who see the Chicks’ remarks as dishonorable," he writes, "and the Chicks themselves... shows that we are dealing with a cultural chasm." This isn't the first time he's dealt with the Chicks -- he previously questioned whether Natalie Maines was of Dixie at all, as a true DC would not impugn her President ("I would like her to try to make things right," he also whispered urgently). But it is the first time he has credited the popular singing group with world-historical importance.

Well, it's progress, anyway.

THE PERSONAL (INSULT) IS THE POLITICAL. NRO's Tim Graham on the Emmy Awards: "...funnier jokes. Especially asking the makers of Fox's 'Paradise Hotel' if they send each episode to the Smithsonian for its cultural excellence, or just shoot it into space to tell alien worlds about Earth's values. Nice conservative tinge to that."

Nice conservative tinge...? Did I miss the meeting? When did we treasonous, America-hating Democrats vote to support idiot reality shows?

Also, please advise: are Chris Rock and Jimmy Durante conservative or liberal humor? I want to make sure I'm not laughing at anything that might get me in trouble with the Central Committee.

Then we have that Lileks guy, who notes the very sweet story of the Honor Guard that stands watch on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington -- they were given the opportunity to leave their posts during the hurricane, and declined to do so -- and then reflexively feels the need to turn it into a smear upon his fellow citizens: "You can break down the entire country into two camps, two reactions to the story: 1. Bemusement. 2. Gratitude." Meaning, one supposes (all one can do in this case is suppose, the statement is so slovenly), that those of us who live in them there Big Cities are confused by this simple tale of honor or duty, as it has no references to deviant sex or Foucault-- while simple sod-bustin' souls such as hisself are moved to hum "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" in time to them clackin' keystrokes.

I despair for my country frequently, and one reliable source of such despair is this kind of bullshit, whereby folks identify themselves and their enemies by lifestyle and mistake this for political analysis. Don't these guys hang out with anyone who doesn't agree with them? If so, how do they explain to them the insulting and reductive portraits they scrawl of them every day?

That's why, though filled with poison myself, I try to confine my commentary to actual perpetrators and spare their peeps. When I go over the cliff, I want to take only the guilty with me. We belong dead!

FREE TO BE YOU AND ME, BUT NOT ON THE DIME OF THE BEE. The cool-kid bloggers ("the thing today is to care passionately, and be right-wing") are honking like geese about the Sacramento Bee blogger who, because of a "contentious statement" (sez the Bee ombudsman), is now subject to the horrible indignity of editorial oversight.

Imagine! A bylined writer for a major daily has to report to an editor! B. Franklin spins in his grave! Why, the whole idea is "inimical to sound and well-established blogging practices," sez Kaus (for an example of these practices in action, see here).

Like I could give a good rat's ass. As a longtime pro writer, I am aware that taking a publisher's shilling is not that different from taking the king's shilling -- it automatically puts one's deathless contributions to the journalistic arts at the mercy of others and their diverse agendas.

This sometimes leads to hair-raising abuses, such as this reported insertion of an uncalled-for and abusive editorial POV to a news story. But look -- you're reading about that abuse right now. Because ultimately the only meaningful oversight of overzealous or ignominious editorial practice is other papers (or magazines or weblogs or whatever). They're the only entities with a strong motivation to uncover this kind of stuff. I thought that, as free-market enthusiasts, the cool kids would understand that.

I wouldn't be shocked if more people have read about blogger Weintraub's problems than read his original post.

BTW, in case you were wondering, here's what got Weintraub in trouble (per the ombudsman's report):

Weintraub wrote that Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante "certainly owed his elevation to the job of Assembly speaker to his ethnic background and to the support he received from fellow Latinos. If his name had been Charles Bustmont rather than Cruz Bustamante, he would have finished his legislative career as an anonymous back-bencher."

Further, he alleged, "it's indisputably true that the Legislature's Latino Caucus advocates policies that are destructive to their own people and to greater California, in the name of ethnic unity." The caucus protested in a letter to Bee Publisher Janis Besler Heaphy.

I defend to the death, and all that, Weintraub's right to tell us that Bustamante got everything handed to him because he's Mexifornian, but that doesn't really imply a God-given right to paychecks from the Bee. If he chafes at his treatment, Weintraub can always go work for his defender, Matt Welch. A cut in pay may result, but isn't that what integrity is all about?

OLD SCHOOL TIES. Andrew Sullivan on Rhodes Scholars: "Almost to a man and woman, they are mega-losers, curriculum-vitae fetishists, with huge ambition and no concept of what to do with it."

Sullivan, according to his booking agents, "came to the U.S. on a Harkness Fellowship, the British equivalent of the Rhodes Scholarship."

Who knows what personal demons drive Sullivan? We are aware of his longstanding animus against Bill Clinton, a Rhodes Scholar who, having won the U.S. Presidency twice, hardly qualifies by any rational standard as a "mega-loser." Maybe he's talking about Kris Kristofferson, an entertainer whose audience is not limited to a small number of well-off conservatives.

Maybe he doesn't know what he's talking about, either.

FOUND OBJECT OF THE DAY. If you want to know why America is fat, check out this innovation from Pepperidge Farm: "Giant Goldfish Sandwich Crackers." The adorable little critters we used to put in our soup have mutated into three-inch-long monsters containing "Real Peanut Butter." 10 grams of fat and 190 calories per serving.

I love the pure products of America, as crazy as they've gone, but these once-cute cracker-fish, now swollen and menacing, dangled by marketers to set off our brand-loyalty bells and tempt us unto arteriosclerosis, depress me.

I suppose I can take comfort in the fact that milk and cereal are now available in bar form. All the sugared goodness of a bowl of Cocoa Puffs available in four quick bites, and portable enough to be consumed on the way to the school cafeteria.

And at least when a bowel obstruction claims us, we'll be conveyed to the hospital in comfort:

The patient weighed more than 600 pounds, said Cusick, Kaiser's director of emergency medical services and AMR's medical director.

The ambulance that transported her may be the first of its kind in the country outfitted -- to the tune of $10,000 -- to handle obese patients.

As more and more Americans become seriously overweight, they are putting a strain on hospital beds, wheelchairs, imaging equipment and even scales. Many hospitals now have extra-wide wheelchairs and extra-strong beds, but hospitals and medical equipment providers are straining to keep up.

The ambulance, a project of Kaiser and American Medical Response, or AMR, is designed for patients between 300 and 1,000 pounds. Kaiser and AMR introduced the ambulance to the public Thursday.

It's a good first step, said Walter Lindstrom Jr., founder of the Obesity Law and Advocacy Center in San Diego.

And not the last one, I'll bet.

QUICK TRIP TO AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE. This ridiculous Charles Krauthammer column has been well and truly spanked already, but I want to direct your attention to one detail from it, which I believe represents a genuine advance in the use of unreason in defense of the occupation of Iraq:

The current complaint is that Bush is a deceiver, misleading the country into a war, after which there turned out to be no weapons of mass destruction. But it is hard to credit the deception charge when every intelligence agency on the planet thought Iraq had these weapons and, indeed, when the weapons there still remain unaccounted for. Moreover, this is a post-facto rationale.

A post-facto rationale! I love it. Sure, now you liberals can say the WMD claim was bullshit, since events have shown it to be so. So post-facto of you!

I also note with interest the reference to "every intelligence agency on the planet," and marvel at Krauthammer's conversion to multilateralism. A short time ago, most of the countries in the civilized world thought we should stay out of Iraq, and Krauthammer told them to go to hell. Now our leaders are caught in an apparent falsehood, and Krauthammer points to a bunch of foreigners for backup.

Yes, yes, I see the distinction. World governments, most of them elected, would naturally be an object of Krauthammer's contempt; but intelligence agencies, even the Russkies', he can respect. Maybe they're where he learned his disinformation techniques.

ABOUT LAST POST AND ABOUT LAST NIGHT. As recently observered here, there is a lot of silliness on both sides of the political divide. I do get more annoyed at the stuff on the Right because, well, that's not my side. And I get very annoyed when conservative commentators are forever challenging liberals to say something bad about ANSWER or Al Sharpton or even the more obviously bad actors like the old Politburo. For one thing, that sort of thing is just hectoring -- instead of Say You Love Satan, it's Say You Hate Stalin, and who needs it?

For another, noting these outrages are what NRO and Instapundit and a zillion other, similar outfits are for. I know speech codes are bad. You know speech codes are bad. But rather than put my shoulder to that already well-advanced wheel, I prefer to talk about Daniel Pipes and the other loons who want to regulate the content of college cirricula they suspect of anti-Americanism. Political Correctness was a cover subject in Time years ago. So sue me if I choose to join the ten or twelve guys on Pipes' case instead.

You know who my favorite web conservative is right about now? Terry Teachout. God knows he's pissed me off in the past, and will again I'm sure, but his About Last Night weblog gives me great pleasure. Sure, he's from the Right. But he's a very astute cultural observer, he knows his subjects, and he writes well.

Recently he did a long bit on Shostakovich and one of his interpreters. There's a lot in the piece about the horrors of the old USSR. That's a popular bloody shirt in some circles, and in lesser hands often causes my eyes to glaze over. But it's absolutely appropriate to Teachout's point, and he writes feelingly about it. I have to say, he ain't wrong.

It's always good to see someone pushing words together toward a greater purpose than the old nyah-nyah. Hell, I might try to do a little more of it myself.

THE LIMITS OF EVEN-HANDEDNESS. At Slate Will Saletan says do not trouble your lefty selves about the splinters in conservative eyes when etc. mote etc. Liberal complaints about conservative bullshit are "shrill," he says, because Clinton lied about arsenic and Gore and David Boies made a bad case to the Supreme Court in 2000.

Well, I was willing to admit he sort of has a point. Partisanship cuts both ways, and we are all sometimes guilty of overemphasis, selective exampling, and other tendentious traits.

But. Then I saw this shit at the Wall Street Journal opinion page, with Jay Nordlinger (two for two today, Mr. Nordlinger! Congratulations!) telling us what a bunch of sissies Democrats are. And so I figure, I'll be more inclined to go along with Saletan's other-cheekism if he can show me something in today's mainstream liberal media anywhere near as psycho.

If he finds something that qualifies tomorrow, that's okay. I'll probably find something even worse. Without trying too hard.

WORDS FAIL HIM. AT NRO Jay Nordlinger talks about the great rhetoric of George W. Bush. "When all is said and done," Nordlinger shouts over derisive laughter, "his presidency may be known for its rhetoric (among other things). Then George W. Bush, the tongue-tied embarrassment, will have the last laugh — yet another last laugh. 'Misunderestimated' once more."

That'll show us. So what examples does Nordlinger offer? Here are all of them from the first half of Nordlinger's article (the thing just goes on and on), freed of his rah-rah framings and attaboy interjections:

He may be alive. If he is, we'll get him. If he's not, we got him.

Ozzy Osbourne: Mr. President, you should wear your hair like mine!
Bush: Second term, Ozzy, second term.

I fully understand... there will be times when people feel a sense of normalcy -- and I hope that happens sooner rather than later -- and that September 11th may be a distant memory to some. But not to me...

One of my jobs is to make sure nobody gets complacent. One of my jobs is to remind people of the stark realities that we face. See, every morning I go into that great Oval Office and read threats to our country -- every morning... Some of them are blowhards, but we take every one of them seriously. It's the new reality.

We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.

America has stood down enemies before, and we will do so this time. None of us will ever forget this day. Yet we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world.

Some worry that it is somehow undiplomatic or impolite to speak the language of right and wrong. I disagree. Different circumstances require different methods, but not different moralities... Moral truth is the same in every culture, in every time, and in every place. Targeting innocent civilians for murder is always and everywhere wrong. Brutality against women is always and everywhere wrong. There can be no neutrality between justice and cruelty, between the innocent and the guilty. We are in a conflict between good and evil, and America will call evil by its name. By confronting evil and lawless regimes, we do not create a problem, we reveal a problem. And we will lead the world in opposing it.

I'm encouraging schoolchildren to write letters of friendship to Muslim children in different countries.

I'm going to talk about homeland security, but the best way to secure our homeland is to hunt the killers down one by one and bring them to justice, and that is what we're going to do.

In the face of today's new threat, the only way to pursue peace is to pursue those who threaten it.

My attitude is, the best way to secure the homeland is to unleash the mighty United States military and hunt them down and bring them to justice. And the best way to fight evil at home is to love your neighbor like you'd like to be loved yourself.

There will be times of swift, dramatic action. There will be times of steady, quiet progress.

This is an unusual kind of war because it sometimes will show up on your TV screens and sometimes it won't. Sometimes there will be moments of high drama, and, of course, good reporters will be going -- all kinds of hyperventilating, about this action or that action. And sometimes you won't see a thing.

Remember, these examples are offered as a defense of Bush's rhetoric. But seen plain, of what do they consist, really? One coherent if otherwise unremarkable attack on moral relativism, a bunch of threats that wouldn't pass muster in a Vin Diesel script conference, a few non-sequiturs (including the strangest application of "Love Thy Neighbor" this side of these guys), one decent joke, and a lot of filler.

While the editors of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations are probably tearing their hair out, I imagine Nordlinger is chuckling, and perhaps collecting a few C-notes from Jonah Goldberg. ("I never thought you'd have the balls to do it, Jay!" "I know. Sometimes I surprise myself.")

DECLINE OF WESTERN CIV: LATEST UPDATE. Tim Blair makes a snotty comment about Gore Vidal, one of our last readable novelists. One of Blair's commentators is excited to learn that Buckley once called Vidal a queer on TV ("My opinion of, Buckley already pretty high....has now attained Stratospheric proportions...."). Another says, apparently with a straight face (no emoticon visible), "Insults are the last refuge of the loser. And Vidal is a loser, big time."

I do hope that, after we have finally returned to outright barbarism, and some future Brother of St. Liebowitz manages to rev up the Internet again, he may find on some long-slumbering server this cautionary tale of what happens when you replace the monkeys' typewriters with Movable Type 2.64. Next Renaissance, let's get this thing right, shall we?