INQUISITION DRILLS. NRO's Tim Graham goes off on a bat about the TV series Nip/Tuck. A correspondent defends the show on the grounds that some of its themes could be construed as conservative. This apostasy is too much for Witchfinder Graham, who thunders:

Is there anything more tiresome than finding something "a conservative could love" in the middle of a very sordid show? I haven't seen the show's every episode (I have a low sleaze tolerance), but the characters will act like regular human beings every few weeks or so. If they were really changed, the producers would think they had no show any more.

Bernard Shaw had a great line about giving power to feckless millionaires -- that it was like "giving a torpedo to a badly-brought-up child to play at earthquakes with." Graham makes me think of that. He seems the very prototype of the would-be censor: someone with feverishly strong opinions about the morally right and morally wrong aspects of soap operas, cartoons, etc; someone willing to track Nip/Tuck over the course of weeks, not because it gives him pleasure, but to better qualify his ravings.

Can you imagine if this deranged obsessive had any real power?

Stranger things have happened. Which is partly why I like to keep an eye on these guys.

COUNT EVERY VOTE! Two days of audits and an OAS thumbs-up has not appeased critics of "Landslide Hugo" Chavez' apparent victory in Venezuela. They may have a point. I hope their Supreme Court serves them better than ours did.

I do find it interesting that many folks who profess concern for the will of the Venezuelan people today were much less devoted to the electoral process when it looked as if Chavez would be overthrown in the 2002 coup.

GHOST OF WMDs YET TO COME. Like we didn't know, seeing as we've been hearing it from every bobblehead on television for weeks:

Mr. Bush's advisers said they were girding for the most extensive street demonstrations at any political convention since the Democrats nominated Hubert H. Humphrey in Chicago in 1968. But in contrast to that convention, which was severely undermined by televised displays of street rioting, Republicans said they would seek to turn any disruptions to their advantage, by portraying protests by even independent activists as Democratic-sanctioned displays of disrespect for a sitting president.

Still, I have to ask: how does that work? If citizens gather en masse outside the Republican Convention to express disapproval, how is that good for Republicans? (I am consciously dismissing the whole "disruption" angle, largely out of respect for the NYPD's crowd-control skills, and partly because anyone with a gram of sense will know that any photogenic unpleasantness that occurs will probably be an inside job.)

More interesting is this soundbyte from Dr. Mabuse:

"This speech has to lay out a forward-looking, positive prospective agenda," said Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's senior political adviser. "It has to show -- and to defend in a way the American people want to hear -- his policies on the war on terror."

I'm getting a premonition: Iraq's over (I mean in the Entertainment Tonight sense, not the mayhem and the ever-increasing casualties), terror alerts are losing their mojo -- could this be the moment for Bush's big Iran speech? Stay tuned for the September Surprise!

THE DUMB IDEA FACTORY WORKS OVERTIME. Lord, the things we do to amuse ourselves. A couple of guys (one of them a "recent graduate of Yale Law School") at OpinionJournal propose this:

What would you say if we told you we have a way to add as many as eight new Republican senators to Congress? We could also add eight right-leaning votes to the Electoral College. It's simple, it's fun, and it's perfectly constitutional: Texas should divide itself into five states...

This fancy, the authors say, is enabled by an unexpired proviso in the original Annexation Resolution: "New States, of convenient size, not exceeding four in number, in addition to said State of Texas, and having sufficient population, may hereafter, by the consent of said State, be formed out of the territory thereof, which shall be entitled to admission under the provisions of the federal constitution."

Tee fucking hee. OK, let's all play. The authors assure us that quinfuracted Texas would add "as many as eight new Republican senators to Congress" and "eight right-leaning votes to the Electoral College." Behold a map of Texas shaded in the accepted red/blue manner to indicate Congressional representation by party:



I don't see as how the GOP, even considering their substantial gerrymandering skills in this region, can do better than three out of five here. That could give them a few new Senators, but that Electoral College powerhouse of 32 votes will be scattered to the winds.

Also, if we take the "sufficient population" part of the gag into account and consider the liberalizing effect of large urban centers in states like Illinois and Michigan (which the new Texasettes will closely resemble), it could be that over time our side gets four out of five, at least.

I know it's the weekend, but have they run out of Swift Boat Veterans already? This is lame even by their standards.

UPDATE. Texas blogger Amanda of Mouse Words has an excellent post about this, pointing out that "Conservatives in Texas have always been in love with Texas's 'special'' right to divvy itself up... Most people who think it's a nifty idea think so because it would mean that they could move to one of the 'whiter' states that would be formed. Great glee is expressed particularly in the idea of just slicing El Paso and the whole Rio Grande Valley area from the rest of the state."

WE ALSO EAT BABIES. This Andrew Stuttaford post bears repeating in full:

One of the more bizarre aspects of the Left these days is the way that it has aligned itself with defenders of hard-line Islam. The motives for this vary -- from sheer political devilry, to reflexive hatred of the West, to blind faith in multiculturalism.

Well, this disgusting piece of legislation is a reminder of the company in which today’s ‘progressives’ find themselves:

“A law banning gay sex has come into effect in Zanzibar, with homosexual men threatened with 25-year jail terms and lesbians facing seven-year sentences. "This is what we have been aspiring for. If the government takes such steps, the country will really move ahead," said Sheikh Muhammed Said, a local Islamic leader. The law was brought into effect by President Amani Karume's signature last week, the attorney general's office said. Parliament passed the bill in April. The islands, a semi-autonomous part of Tanzania, are largely Muslim.”

Did I miss a memo? I don't recall endorsing "defenders of hard-line Islam" -- I'm guessing that means the Taliban and those guys -- and I'm certainly not keen on jail terms for homosexuality. Maybe I'm a moderate or something.

Oh, wait, I forgot: election in progress.

JOURNALISM 000. It's been a while since anyone brought up irony, but get a load of this from the Metro Section of today's New York Times (registration required):

New York neighborhoods do not announce their sea changes. There is no news release or banner draped across the street. Sometimes there is just a certain guy, and a thing that guy does, and before you know it the neighborhood has made one of those subtle shifts, the sort that keep New York City fascinating.

The neighborhood is Williamsburg and the guy is one Todd Fatjo, a former record store clerk who is moving to the Bronx to live with his girlfriend. That's really all there is to it, but the story goes on for a thousand words, these among them:

[Fatjo and his roommates] held five parties during their tenancy that Mr. Fatjo would later describe as major, defined as involving three separate sound systems blaring away in different parts of the apartment. "It was just insane," Mr. Fatjo said...

He wrote with a simple yet passionate eloquence, speaking directly to his peers in a parlance that showed him to be of the place and moment. "If you've ever been to my duplex loft you know how truly dope it is," Mr. Fatjo began...

If you have to ask why proximity to multiple 99-cent stores might be an advantage, you will never know. Mr. Fatjo's truly dope duplex loft is not in the gentrified Williamsburg of investment bankers and corporate media types. Those 24-hour bodegas he mentioned have bulletproof glass...

Love is a funny thing. It can spin a cynical hipster around like a record (baby, right round, round, round), and it has done a number on Mr. Fatjo, who is 28. He quit the music store this year and took a job showing apartments in Manhattan. He is working toward a broker's license, and this month he had the Afro shorn to a nice, respectable wave...

The fate of the truly dope duplex loft may be a sign that the hipster scene is fading in Williamsburg, or who knows? Some new generation could reinvigorate the neighborhood with its own brand of cool. As for Mr. Fatjo, who is fast becoming just some guy who has a job, the end of the party is bittersweet...

Here's my question, and I ask it in all sincerity: is there any way to tell if the reporter is kidding? The hipster-exodus story is a staple of metro sections, and one can get a lot of resonance out of some schlub's life changes if there is any trend or home truth with which to hook it up. But this guy just got a new apartment and a new job. Williamsburg has been gentrified for years, and from what I can see, from my vantage point a few blocks from Mr. Fatjo's dope duplex, kids are still shoving dollar bills through bulletproof glass. So what's the story? People move? Williamsburg has condos?

I wouldn't bring it up if I could be sure the reporter was just filling a news hole with a lazy-ass story -- hell, I've done that plenty of times. But I have this nagging suspicion that I'm hoping you can allay. I worry that this is actually news. I worry that, if the Olympics weren't on hand with its many color photo opportunities, Todd Fatjo would be on the front page. (Bad enough that today's actual front page had a story about the political significance of Bush hugging John McCain.) I worry that I've had my nose buried in the editorial, sports, and comics sections so much in recent months that, without my noticing it, all absolute values were completely overturned and I am now living in a Bizarro World where Todd Fatjo is copy!

Or maybe it's just a joke. I'm not ruling that out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHY IS REDSTATE DOWN? POSSIBLE REASONS:#5: Refused to pay ISP portion of fee that would go to unconstitutional federal taxes. #4: Still looking for all-heterosexual web design team. #3: Decided to eschew web, will use mind power to beam messages directly into the brains of constituents. #2: Alan Keyes took a baseball bat to their servers -- claims he thought he was in the offices of National Review. And the number one reason Redstate is offline is: Rope-a-dope! (cue music)

UPDATE. They're back! Never mind.

MORE GOOD NEWS. The butched-up Kerry campaign seems to be working. Evidence: it has inspired Deep Thoughts on manhood from the Ole Perfesser. First, apparently after doing bong hits all night with his much smarter father, the Perfesser hallucinates Kerry morphing into LBJ: "The constant photos of Kerry with Harleys, guitars, guns, and soldiers... it's, like, blowing my mind." OK, he didn't say the last clause, but he did say,

Lyndon Baines Johnson was another President with a silver star and a short combat career who seemed to feel that he had a lot to prove. Might Kerry's rather clear desire to be seen as a tough guy make him a surprisingly resilient warrior? Or might it backfire, as it most likely did with LBJ?

He does answer himself, convincingly, "I don't know," but all hope of drug-induced revelation and the attendant humility before God are dashed when he tells Oliver Willis, understandably confused by the tenured radical's pipe dream, to "read it again," as if Willis were a slow freshman and Reynolds' gibberish A Theory of Justice.

Today Reynolds gets back on the horse at his mainstream media gig."The party that gave us Al Gore's earth tones is now the party of swaggering machismo," chortles the Perfesser. "But it rings kind of hollow." Hollow why? Because Reynolds and his pals say so, that's why -- with references to commedia dell'arte, yet!

What I am actually enjoying here is the sound heard throughout the land of the Right blowing a gasket, because The Big Stiff seems to be putting it over. This drives them nuts for the usual reasons, but what twists the knife is that Kerry's doing it with a schtick they thought they had patented -- oh, they would have included more homosexual panic, of course, but that flag thing, that butch thing, that's got © GOP all over it!

So don't you fret, my children; when the frothers tell you that the Democratic candidate is too manly, that ain't nothin' but good.

IT COULDN'T HAPPEN TO A NICER GUY. The Mayor has been playing cagey with the UPJ protestors and their demand for a Central Park demo during the RNC, but his game with the cops is about to run down, I should think:

Weeks away from thousands of anti-Bush protesters converging on the Republican convention, police union members employed to control the crowds on Thursday stepped up their own threats to disrupt the meeting.

"No contract, No convention!" about 20 off-duty officers chanted before Mayor Michael Bloomberg arrived to open an HIV/AIDS services center -- the latest protest by police and firefighters who have publicly hounded the mayor for weeks over a contract dispute on wage increases.

They've been working without a contract for two years.

For most of us citizens, it has been a little unnerving, having a rich mayor who can do whatever the hell he feels like doing -- apeshit smoking and noise bans; on-again, off-again property tax increases -- knowing that if we finally get up on our hind legs and kick him out, he can always buy an island someplace and rule that; but his well-unionized opponents know they've got him now. Rudy may be whispering in the shadows, Fuck 'em! Show 'em the back of your hand, like I did! That's all they respect! But Bloomberg must be worrying, insofar as worry ever penetrates his dense skull, that the last-minute cop comity in his old home town, Boston, will make him look bad -- what will his friends at the Club say?

Now the officers are keeping him up nights, which is very bright -- a man accustomed to getting himself and his friends around by private jet may be driven mad by even the mildest inconvenience.

Whatever happens, he looks like an asshole. Which is only just.

The massive number of energized local Democrats, plus the cops -- it's a nice little coalition. And the words "Mayor Ferrer" -- what a nice ring they have.

I'm starting to like this Convention.

YOUR CHOICE. You can go to OpinionJournal today and read Brendan Miniter's piece on how Kerry was wrong not to go to post-hurricane Florida, or you can wait until Miniter is dead and go view his private papers at Bob Jones University, where you can compare the published column with the one he almost certainly wrote at the same time, in case Kerry did go to Florida, calling him an opportunist, French, etc.

I would not be making such charges were Miniter's scribblings not so consistently content-free that their only imaginable use is as the rankest sort of propaganda.

ERA OF GOOD FEELING. In a day of tactical evasions, John Kerry talked down a MoveOn.org anti-Bush ad, apparently in solidarity with John McCain, who had talked down the Other Swift Boat Guys' anti-Kerry ad. I see the political usefulness of this for the Big Stiff, and invite him to denounce my own ravings as well if it will help him defeat the fascist scumbag space-alien freak Illuminatus Bush.

Meanwhile the Mayor has invited RNC demonstrators to don "Peaceful Political Activist" buttons for discounts on hotels, Broadway shows, and other tourist attractions. Well, if it'll get me 10% off at Applebee's, I guess I can behave myself. But if the wings aren't hot, all bets are off.

RATHER WELL PUT. In case some of you were wondering why New Yorkers are hatin' on the RNC*: here. (Thanx Ezra.)

* "A recent survey by a Manhattan public relations firm found 83 percent of those polled do not want the Republican convention in town. When asked why, more than half, 53 percent, were worried about traffic, street closures, and security hassles." -- WABC-TV. (Found by Margaret.)

WE KEEP TELLING THEM CONSERVATISM IS COOL, DAMMIT. WHY WON'T THEY LISTEN? Michele Catalano:

I'm not a huge moralist and I don't think there is no place for sex - or sexuality - in our society. But there is a big difference between promoting sexuality and promoting sex.

I forget, which is the good one -- sex or sexuality?

I see this blitz of breasts on even network television every day and it saddens me to think that my daughter is growing up in a media-crazed society that rewards most the women -- and girls -- who show the most. Maybe I've become a bit of a prude in my old age, but I cringe when I see women parading around in next to nothing because I know that teenage girls are impressionable and will emulate these women...

That reminds me: I don't have a TV Guide -- anyone know when women's floor exercises are back on?

IF IT WEREN'T FOR CHEAP IRONY, WE'D HAVE NO IRONY AT ALL. The only two entities I have found that responded favorably to the victory (such as it is) of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela are The Islamic Republic of Iran and the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It's an ill wind, I guess, that blows no one some good.

More ominous still: John Derbyshire will no longer buy American cars.

Ah, big deal. Everyone knows the real threat to our Republic is insolent teens and wide-band watches in the Marshall Field's catalogue.

A CITIZEN RESPONDS. The Mighty Mighty Reason Man has chewed out the Kerry campaign for its lame responses to the Republican spin machine. "There's a lot of dirt gonna be thrown your way in the next few months, and the time to pattycake with this bullshit is over... what your crew needs to do," he advises, "is set up a resource, a central repository of factual bitchslaps across the jaw of all this character assasination."

Who am I to argue with Reason? But allow me to add a nuance. The GOP is not dishing out truth, it's dishing out, as MMRM correctly calls it, bullshit -- smears, deliberate misreadings, and mountainized molehills. In the feral playground that is current American politics, one looks weak even trying to counter much of it logically. Edwards can point out very reasonably that Cheney is quoting Kerry "out of context" and a thousand operatives will react as if he were the kid with asthma challenging the assertion of bullies that he caught asthma by being gay -- that is to say, with more abuse.

So if the Kerry operatives are going to get talking points, maybe they should go more like this:

On Cambodia: "Aw, hell, man, you know how it is. Guys get together at the VFW Hall, have a coupla drinks, they say all kinds of shit. It was spooky back in 'Nam, man, and Kerry was smoking a lot of the good weed, so maybe in his mind he was in Cambodia. Hey, hit me in the stomach, hard's you can."

On Kerry's "sensitive" remark: "When he said 'sensitive,' he meant sensitive like an ultra-thin Trojan condom. I mean, when you get in there, you want to feel it, know what I'm saying? We think Bush's approach is more like a ribbed condom, betraying a deep insecurity that he can produce the desired effect. Plus which it's probably loose and he only has a piss-on."

On gay marriage: "Dude, why you care so much about it? Got troubles in the bedroom? Jesus Christ."

On a varieties of other issues: "Oh, no you didn't. Oh, no you didn't. Pundit, please."

Alternately, the Kerry people can simply repeat the interrogator's questions in a high-pitched voice.

It's worth a try, and if it doesn't work everyone will have forgotten about it in a week.

WHATTAYA WANT ME TO DO, DRAW YOU A PICTURE? SPELL IT OUT FOR YOU? AS LONG AS YOU LIVE, DON'T EVER ASK ME MORE! Pretending to be mentally retarded, Daniel Henninger marvels at a Democratic fundraiser with rich Hollywood stars. "Isn't it becoming harder by the day to take the Democrats seriously as the party of the common man and the left-out?" cried the faux dumbass.

Sigh. Here's the top ten list of contributors, from OpenSecrets:

1. Goldman Sachs -- $3,910,296. 51% to Democrats; 49% to Republicans.
2. National Assn of Realtors -- $2,062,839. 51% to Democrats; 49% to Republicans.
3. Morgan Stanley -- $1,882,535. 33% to Democrats; 67% to Republicans.
4. Microsoft Corp -- $1,768,446. 64% to Democrats; 36% to Republicans.
5. Time Warner -- $1,730,995. 75% to Democrats; 25% to Republicans.
6. Citigroup Inc. -- $1,659,287. 50% to Democrats; 50% to Republicans.
7. SBC Communications -- $1,632,381. 32% to Democrats; 67% to Republicans.
8. Wal-Mart Stores -- $1,585,410. 19% to Democrats; 81% to Republicans.
9. UBS Americas -- $1,584,828. 37% to Democrats; 62% to Republicans.
10. Intl Brotherhood of Electrical Workers -- $1,556,630. 97% to Democrats; 4% to Republicans.

If the Dems are not "the party of the common man and the left-out," that sure doesn't mean the Republicans are. All us po' folk are fighting for an ever-shrinking slice of the American pie. If you trust Bush, Cheney, et alia to give you a bigger one, God go with you. But let's not make believe that the presence of Bruce Springsteen at a Donkey fundraiser means that the GOP, of all entities, has become the party of the little guy.

McGREEVEY. We can almost entirely ignore the pundits' reactions to this, because they are hamstrung by politesse. Indeed, the intemperate Tacitus is having such trouble working this corner that he has spun out of the blogosphere and into the ionosphere, at least:

The coincidence of the rumored harrassment suit -- or imminent social exposure -- is a convenient excuse for an action that was ultimately inevitable. Pace those who feel sorry for him, a victim of society and its mores he is not. Which is not to say he shouldn't be.

(Had to slip that in there, didn't he?)

Second, it's worth pointing out that McGreevey came to office in the fall '01 election season -- part of an incoming class of Democrats that included faux-Republican Michael Bloomberg and Virginia Governor Mark Warner. Some good conservatives went down in that cycle. Why mention this? Because it puts the lie to the Democratic canard -- repeated by no less than John Kerry himself -- that the President has relentlessly used 9/11 for partisan purposes from the get-go. His popularity was assuredly at its peak in the months of that grim fall season, and he refused to use it in the service of electioneering or his own party. Count me among those who thought at the time that he should have -- and were appalled that he did not. Next time you hear this line dragged out for ritual flogging, quash it dead: in the heat of the crisis, the President was President alone. Those who give him no credit for it do so because they, by contrast, are partisans all the time.

What the hell is this guy talking about? normal people might ask. Go to the dictionary and look up "sublimation." McGreevey's resignation and disgrace have nothing to do with Bush, 9/11, and "faux-Republicans" -- unless you live over your head in a murky swamp where homosexuals are senior partners in an imagined tyranny that has been keeping every decent American down, and must use issues of national security and authenticity to give some socially-acceptable form to your inchoate rage.

For source matter, look at the lumpenprole response to the gay side of McGreevey's revelation:

Who is the person he had the affair with? Barney Frank?!?!??!?!

This is probably due to the fact that they have a relationship similiar to the Clintons. A Business relationship.

But where are the NOW people screaming that he placed his wife and child in EXTREME DANGER with AIDS and other STD's!!!! Where was his respect and love for them and their health??

Maybe he should hook up with Marv Albert and Howard Dean! Yeeahahahahhahaa!!!!!!!

Dump your dumocrat legislators in Nov. if they don't force the sodomite to resign this week.

And:

Mind you, the guy didn't say he was bi-sexual, but that he was homo. He looks as though he is a bit on the thinnish side (yes, I am using code for possible aids).

Far from accepting deviance, we should buckle down and reinstate society's stigmas.

We are seeing the groundwork laid for the 'Closet Homo Defense' here.

The sad thing is that there are sick perverts like this in even more powerful and prominent positions. McGreevey is a start -- but we need to flush them all out.

There are many more, but I'm just sick of looking at them, though you may go and find them even in the "respectable" quarters of the Web.

The procurement of a sinecure for McGreevy's inamorato is a matter yet to be dealt with, and it certainly will be, but let us not (pardon the expression) mince words: the national result will be an intensification of the Republican Fags 'n' Flags strategy for the Presidential election. It's a good idea for them, too. I mean, what else have they got?

UPDATE.Mild edits for clarity. As to T's national security angle, I see WorldNetDaily got a copy of the hymnal: "Given that New Jersey was where one of the 9-11 planes originated from... one would think McGreevey would have vetted his security czar closely... According to a sexual harassment lawsuit to be filed shortly by Cipel, perhaps McGreevey did vet him ... a little too closely." Using the same standard by which the President is often judged, though, I'd say McGreevey and Cipel did a great job -- no one has blown up New Jersey on their watch, have they?

WE'RE ONLY IN IT FOR THE MONEY. David Frum on Kerry's plan for government purchase of cheap Candian scrip drugs:

...drug re-importation is a cheap and cynical non-solution to a real problem: the unfairness of asking Americans to pay the whole cost and more of new drugs while the rest of the world pays less. But it’s no kind of answer to cut prices in the US: In that case, innovation could disappear entirely. (emphasis added)

The scene: a high school chem lab in the Midwest.

TEACHER: Congratulations, Timmy, on your acceptance to Stanford! As my best student ever, I'm sure you'll make a great translational pharmacologist.

TIMMY: (exhaling a cloud of cigar smoke) What's in it for me?

TEACHER: I beg your pardon?

TIMMY: You heard me, cloth-ears. This Kerry mug wants to buy drugs on the cheap from Canada. That'll cut into Big Pharma's racket but good -- and then it's bye-bye, fat signing bonus from Eli Lilly.

TEACHER: But surely your interest in medicine grows from a desire to help your fellow man?

TIMMY: What put that in your nut? There just one reason anyone gets into the pharmacology game -- and that's the sweet do-re-mi. You think I spend my nights drawing time-concentration curves just to heal some poor sap in a charity ward? Harvard gave Otto Krayer his own private jet, for Chrissakes. I won't so much as pick up a beaker for less than six figures.

TEACHER: But Timmy, what will you do if not pharmacology?

TIMMY: (shrugs) A little of this, a little of that. I'm pretty handy with a shiv. I've had offers from the Sudanese government and JPMorgan Chase, but I'm keeping my options open. So go tell your highbrow friends to lay off Bush, or us pill-packers will cut off your flow of new life-giving drugs but pronto, get me?

TEACHER: (placing the back of his hand to his brow) My faith in the younger generation is shattered.

TIMMY: (aside) I guess now would be a bad time to tell him all his engineering prodigies are going to work for Halliburton.

(Aaaaaannd... scene.)

AND ALSO I DISAPPROVE OF WHAT I JUST DID. The Vanderbilt student newspaper slots two AP dispatches to humorous effect. First:

A statewide poll last month by Middle Tennessee State University found that only 20 percent of Tennesseans support gay marriages, and about one-third favor gay civil unions... Also, Tennesseans were nearly divided in the poll about whether the U.S. Constitution should be amended to define marriage as a relation only between a man and a woman.

Immediately after:

More than half of adult Tennesseans have trouble reading well enough to understand a street map or to calculate postage, a new study on adult literacy shows.

Professor Reynolds' tenure explained! ad hominahominahomina... (Found via Alice.)

I should take this opportunity to note, in the spirit of Andy Kaufmanesque self-reproval, that my only travels in the Volunteer State centered around Nashville, where I met some of the nicest, brightest people in the world, along with many musicians.

SELF-DETONATING LOGIC BOMB OF THE DAY: "My position against gay marriage is essentially libertarian, although I've never managed to convince my libertarian friends of this." -- Cathy Seipp, NRO.

THEY DON'T MAKE CULTURE WARRIORS LIKE THEY USED TO. Really, I miss Pat Buchanan. At least he could write -- vicious ravings, sure, but well-turned! Sadly, the Right couldn't abide Pat's alleged anti-Semitic stink, and has replaced him with a squad of pablum pukers who, while perhaps even crazier that Buchanan, utterly lack his chops.

One of these is Duncan Maxwell Anderson, last seen in this space comparing Jesus to a Marine. Twelve years ago he was telling America how the nefarious, little-known Securities and Exchange Commission ("The Securities and what Commission? The SEC was founded in 1933 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt...") was going to destroy multi-level marketing. Today Anderson runs something called Faith & Family magazine -- yes, it has a weblog, where you can can read ALL CAPS exhortations to avoid Calvinism, as well as some extremely confused Constitutional theory -- and runs something called High Tor Media, whatever that is (There was once a very fine playwright named Maxwell Anderson, and he wrote a play called High Tor -- if this DMA is in fact his progeny, let us take up a collection to have some spikes driven into his coffin to arrest the poor man's spinning.)

Occasionally, mystifyingly, Anderson writes for the New York Post. Today the Post has published his "A Time for Manhood," which treats the ancient conservative Daddy Party theme (Right is Strong, Left is for Homos, etc). Even poor, crack-brained Peggy Noonan knows that this sort of thing requires an angle, however trite -- but Anderson just combines various cliches as a child might mash together lumps of Play-Doh. And they're not even current cliches -- there's "Let's Roll" again, and when was the last time you saw Alan Alda used as a symbol of liberal emasculinity? On an episode of C.P.O. Sharkey?

Though I must admit, comparing the Democratic Convention to "the Berlin Olympics of 1936" is a new one. Incomprehensible, but new.

Meanwhile we have Jonah Goldberg explaining why feminism is to blame for girls' pants with words on the butt (all the while explaining, as is his increasingly pathetic wont, that he's no prude). And Dennis Prager, defending his right to beat on children ("why should a 12-year-old girl be immune from adult criticism?"). At least he's found an adversary whose stage of intellectual development may not have exceeded his.

Such are the new Shondekommando. Go here, punks, and see how it's done. If you're gonna be nuts, at least be articulate!

HOW MUCH TO MAKE THIS GO AWAY? I'm surprised it hasn't dawned on anyone else: our treatment of Libya basically says you can do whatever you want to innocent civilians as long as you pay for it afterwards:

Libya agreed Tuesday to pay $35 million to some victims of a bloody terror bombing at a Berlin disco nearly two decades ago, making another step in Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's effort to rebuild relations with the West.

The deal, coming after much larger settlements for the bombings of two U.S. and French airliners, does not cover 169 American victims, including two soldiers who died in the blast at the La Belle disco on April 5, 1986. Lawyers are seeking separate compensation for them in U.S. courts.

Agreed to by German lawyers and officials of a Libyan foundation run by Gadhafi's son, the settlement deals with 163 non-U.S. citizens, including Germans who were wounded and the family of a Turkish woman killed by the bomb...

In Washington, State Department spokesman Adam Ereli welcomed the accord, but he emphasized that the claims of U.S. victims also must be met.

Maybe one day Bin Laden will hold a pan-Arab telethon to pay off the vig on the World Trade Center.

LAFFS. This Slate article about the literary efforts of three Maxim associates is so much funnier than I expected that I must, in gratitude and wonder, share. The author, Dan Chiasson, turns some delightful phrases -- e.g., "Itzkoff's promise to 'consider the torturous path that any piece of copy had to follow before it ever appeared in print' might well mark the all-time low-water mark for the quest narrative..." -- and the careers of the authors on view say more about the collapse of literary culture than a thousand Roger Kimball essays ever could.

I am especially grateful to be made aware of Felix Dennis, who has led a fascinating life and now builds a poetry career for himself out of money and balls. Good for him! If his hoary verse fails to raise his literary profile, they will at least damage Tom Wolfe's.

AN ERRAND BOY SENT BY GROCERY CLERKS TO COLLECT A BILL. As to the recent Vietnam-related doings of the VRWC (Vast 'Re-elect W' Committee), I note that the medium seems to have become the message, as the blogosphere congratulates itself on holding the media's feet to the fire. You know you've reached the tertiary stage of scandal-mongering when the subject becomes "Look how much braver we are than CNN."

The Swift Boats Vets For Truth seem a minor annoyance: some of Kerry's comrades like him, some don't; at least we're thus assured he's no Raymond Shaw. The Cambodia story is a little stranger, though.

I find the John McCain's quick defense of Kerry on the Vets' ad, and his disinclination (not to mention Bush's) to leverage the Cambodia story on the stump, very interesting. It may be mere, collegial courtesy on McCain's part, as conventional wisdom has it. It may also be that McCain knows how these boys operate from previous experience -- in fact, some of his opponents are still at it -- and he wanted some of his own back.

But it may also be that both Kerry and McCain know some things about America's operations in Southeast Asia -- no so much through their combat (and McCain's POW) experience as through their work on a Congressional POW/MIA inquiry years ago -- that they're not prepared to get into.

Kerry's and McCain's MIA work was sufficiently shady to arouse the interest of Sydney Schanberg -- the sentinel of My Lai and Abu Ghraib -- who still thinks Kerry and McCain were less devoted to uncovering the truth than they should have been. Given what we do know about Vietnam, I would be shocked if Kerry and McCain didn't have secrets about the War and its aftermath. Whether these secrets are dishonorable, or merely disturbing and (in someone's view) politically or diplomatically necessary to keep, is unknown to me.

But I would say that if Kerry is less than transparent about his service, there many be more than one reason.

Time may tell much more -- there was a lot no one knew about America's Cambodian adventures until someone dug it up, so someone may yet dig up something on Kerry's Cambodian adventure, or lack thereof, too. Or it may be that this thing sinks back into the vast, unexplored backwaters of history, and the political operators will content themselves with working whatever unease its moment in the media sun has stirred up.

DEMOCRACY! WHISKEY! SEXY! Al Jazeera has been closed in Baghdad. Attend the voice of censorship, sounding suspiciously like Elmer Fudd:

"They have been showing a lot of crimes and criminals on TV, and they [send] a bad picture about Iraq and about Iraqis and encourage criminals to increase their activities," Iraq's interior minister, Falah al-Naqib, said.

PM Allawi cited the recent bogus beheading video as part of their reason for the station's 30-day timeout. I guess Reuters and AP will be the next to feel the wrath of the world's newest republic.

If you're waiting for a MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT item on this from the Ole Perfesser, you will wait a long time indeed.

DO TELL. Ramesh Ponnuru:

...again and again [Wieseltier] suggests that liberals are sadly lowering their standards to match those of conservatives. Right. We had this great, civil, elevated political discourse until Limbaugh and Coulter came along, and it's too bad that liberals are now meeting fire with fire. I don't have the space, time, or patience to go into all the counter-evidence here, which could stretch all the way back to the Goldwater campaign or, for that matter, to William F. Buckley Jr.'s first coming to public attention. Suffice it to say that no right-winger wrote a major book talking about killing Bill Clinton during the 1990s.

I assume that final crack refers to that new Nicholson Baker book, which so sorely vexes some conservatives' understanding of such arcane literary terms as "fiction," "character," etc. But what's the rest of it about?

It's really too bad he doesn't have the patience, because I would love to hear how the Daisy ad stacks up again McCarthyism (both original and throwback varieties), Nixon's plumbers, the various bullshit Clinton prosecutions, and yeah, while we're at it, Limbaugh and She Who Cannot Be Named, and all the other dirty tricks without which modern conservatism is nearly unimaginable.

Maybe they're saving that one for the cruise.

THE QUARRELSOME QUADRENNIAL. Since I have but two topics, myself and politics, and I am sick of both (hey, guess the ref!), y'all have fun with HarpWeek's Presidential Elections 1860-1912.

I have some feelings about these spellbinding horror stories of pride, ignorance, slander, and power madness, but I'll leave that alone for now. I just figured you guys would like it.

HE LIKED YOU BETTER WHEN YOU WERE A PUSSY. After being called traitors again and again and again, liberals got sick of it and started fighting back, which has prompted one "Doverspa" of RedState.org to ask, "Where Are The Reasonable Liberals?"

the center-left and center-right have been able to respect each other despite their differences in the past... I continue to hear the conservative critique of liberal programs... but the liberal critique has changed. The President (and by association all Republicans) are greedy, racist, and terrorism is a political ruse to scare the nation. President Bush probably knew about 9/11 ahead of time, he wants to repeal the Civil Rights Act, and he wants to enrich all of his rich buddies while screwing anyone who works for a living.

Yeah, when Kerry hollered "No blood for oil! Bush lied, people died!" at the Fleet Center, I knew the jig was up.

So conservatives are all sweet reason, are they? Let's see what kind of friendly, collegial criticism they're dishing out at one typical, mainstream right-site -- RedState.org:

Why should any believing Catholic vote for a Democrat, given that the Donkey Party's one sacrament is abortion on demand; and why should any Catholic who takes her faith at all seriously vote for John Kerry?

...it is nonetheless dismaying to watch the Donkeys descend into ahistorical madness... Clearly, the Democrats are either slowly self-destructing or acting out one heck of an ideological spasm. More power to them, I say.

...Osama bin Laden fan [Washington Senator] Patty Murray...

Congratulations, Democrats. You've just nominated for yourself an epistemological zero.

...one wonders if the modern Democrat party might have read too many comic books in its time... John "Kiss Me If You've Seen the Photo of Me Kissing Ortega" Kerry...

That's just in the past week or so, and not to speak of the Comments section.

Let me be clear. As a practitioner, I have nothing again hardcore invective, and I get a kick out of the RedStaters', which employs advanced vocabulary words and, on occasion, wit. But to sigh, at the same time you are using these flammable chemicals, that you are so very disappointed that your once "reasonable" opponents now use such techniques is rather like complaining that the kid you used to bully in third grade came back for the first day of fourth grade with some martial arts lessons under his belt. Nobody likes a bully, much less one that complains about the quarrelsomeness of his former victims.

THE RIGHT HAND DOESN'T KNOW WHAT THE OTHER RIGHT HAND IS DOING. From the Washington Times we get a story about two talk radio hosts who wish to unseat a congresscritter whom "they deem soft on issues such as border security and benefits for undocumented aliens."

We don't know this official's name. Neither do the show's hosts, John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou of KFI-AM in Los Angeles. The unlucky legislator will be chosen by their audience over a long and arduous campaign.

The "winner," as chosen by the listeners, will be announced the day after Labor Day. The hosts then will use the airwaves to pursue the representative's political downfall in November's election -- and have a little fun.

"We've made it like a reality show -- we've got drums beating in the background, stuff like that," Mr. Kobylt said.

Five nominees are named, all, BTW, Republicans who are not hardline enough to suit Kobylt's and Chiampou's taste.

Elsewhere in the same edition of the WashTimes, one Barry Casselman denounces the "self-styled (sic) 'cultural' elite" that seeks to defeat political candidates.

I am not saying that comedians and entertainers are not citizens like everyone else, with the right to express their political opinions. But in our American society, celebrities enjoy many special privileges of fame and wealth. And when these privileges are misused, we are all the poorer for it...

The comedians and entertainers who have hijacked the political debate to publicize themselves are doing no service to their country.

Seasoned readers will not need to be told that Casselman is talking about entertainers who "are conducting a class war against President Bush."

Casselman is described as having "reported on and analyzed national politics since 1972." You'd think that by now someone would have told him about talk radio.

A ONE-WAY TICKET TO OATMEAL, NEBRASKA. NRO's Mark Goldblatt, having recently dismissed black people as "the most hypocritical, most paranoid, most pretentious group of people on the planet" (next to the French, of course), now dumps on my fellow citizens and I, declaring that "New Yorkers, who pride themselves on their sophistication, seem honestly to believe that calling the president names constitutes a compelling argument against his policies."

Goldblatt's defense of his slanderous proposition isn't worth addressing -- he doesn't understand the difference between a reason and an excuse, let alone the difference between righteous indignation and blind rage -- but I note with curiosity that Goldblatt lives in New York, himself, and this gets me to wondering about all these blue-state Republicans who bitch about the evil residents of the blue states. Can you imagine living in Bumfuck, Mississippi -- by choice, not because you had to -- and writing screeds for the Bumfuck Herald-Dispatch about what a bunch of villainous cretins the citizens of Bumfuck were? Forget about the ass-kicking that would surely ensue (Bumfuck has not the culture of toleration our own metroplis enjoys); what would motivate an individual to voluntarily remain in such a self-created hell?

Goldblatt, Brooks, Sullivan, (and on a bad day, Richard Brookhiser) et alia: there are many fine hamlets, villages, gulches, junctions, and corners in this great land of ours to which you may repair to write smack about the City. Why not go to them? Better still, why not go to Hell?

CRAZY JESUS LADY GOES FREELANCE:

I do not think a lot of modern conservatives have taken on their philosophy because they were brought up in it, schooled in it, and swallowed it whole. And I don't think a lot of them became conservatives because they read a book by Hayek or Adam Smith and thought, "Ah ha, this seems sound!" I think a lot of people in our time who have become conservatives did it because they had a certain and particular kind of mind...

...the kind that goes Hey, this is E-Z! I just gots to remember 9-11 and the sancticity of marriage! Such folk will rejoice to know that Peggy Noonan is comin' to inspire them!

...a week ago, while watching the Democratic convention, I made a decision.

I am going to take three months' unpaid leave from The Wall Street Journal and attempt to support the Republican Party in the coming and crucial election... This will take a bite out of my finances but I can do it. Actually most of us, when we die, wind up with a few thousand dollars in the bank. We should have spent it! I am going to spend mine now.

Noonan has been a speechwriter for Reagan and Bush I, a CBS producer, an NYU professor, a Wall Street Journal columnist, an MSNBC and NBC commentator, and author of several books. She also got upwards of 50 grand for services to Enron before they went down in flames. If she only has a "few thousand dollars" in the bank, maybe she had a bad night rolling bones with Bill Bennett.

What the Crazy Jesus Lady will do for the GOP is at present a mystery. All she will reveal is, "I decided it's good to be on TV in whatever venue seems right when you feel you have something important you want to say." Maybe she will stand outside the Today Show studios early in the morning, waving a cardboard placard saying JESUS HATES DEMOCRATS. Maybe she'll replace Dennis Miller's chimp. Or maybe she will get a local public access TV show that features miraculous appearances by the Virgin Mary and denunciations of homosexuals.

I for one will miss her.

REASON WHY WE HATE THE REPUBLICANS #4,751. From NY1:

During the GOP National Convention, which runs from August 30 to September 2, no cars or buses will be allowed on streets from Sixth to Ninth Avenue, between 31st and 33rd streets. In addition, people on foot will have to show identification to get anywhere from 33rd to 31st Street between Seventh and Ninth avenues, and police will escort them to their destination.

“That’s not going to be good,” said one woman who works in the restricted area.

Know what burns my ass most about this? While the neighborhood is in lockdown, Giuliani will be inside the Garden telling the Republicans how much real New Yorkers (i.e., rich, white, vicious, constipated ones) love them.

I GUESS IT'S TRUE -- LIBERTARIANS REALLY ARE JUST CONSERVATIVES WHO SMOKE LOTS OF WEED! Virginia Postrel:

Gay Marriage Is Not the "New Abortion"... The comparison doesn't hold in one, very important respect: Abortions are sad. Weddings are happy. Having an abortion -- or having a friend or relative who has one -- may make you more supportive of abortion rights, but it won't make you celebrate the idea. Abortion won't make you smile.

People support abortion rights out of fear. They support gay marriage out of love. There are, of course, non-emotional arguments on both sides of both issues, but the fundamental feelings are different. That changes the politics, particularly with time and experience.

The same holds true with estate taxes, otherwise known as death taxes. Because death is so sad. So, you see, Republicans are against it. Because they're all dynamistic and shit.

You know what else is a downer: Hospitals. I was in a hospital once and it freaked me right the fuck out. So when I think about health care, I don't go to my happy place.

Dudette! That's some righteous dynamism!

A HERO FOR THE 21st CENTURY. Cathy Sieff goes to an anti-Bush book launch party, to see how the bluer half lives, and to write snide things about them for NRO. This "My Cuh-razy Liberal 'Friends'" scenario is ancient by now, but Sieff distinguishes her script with a fascinating new character, a Spicolli manque called Peter Stuart. Sieff describes Peter as if he were real, but he is really much too good to be true.

Peter used to make punk docs, and retains, his creator tells us, "a taste for the transgressive":

Peter, in fact, has long collected Feral House books, and often used to horrify his wife by hauling out the serial-killer volumes to share with dinner party guests.

Let us hope the soon-to-be-former Mrs. Stuart is not litigious.

But seeing the rise of Islamofascism up close in Europe moved [Peter] hard to the right, and now he always seems to be getting into it with someone.

I'll bet!

When a woman in the audience began reflexively laughing at the mention of "Christian fundamentalists," though, Peter turned to her and snapped, "What's funny about Christian fundamentalists? Are Islamic fundamentalists funny too?"

Pete's a caution. My favorite part is when the evening's author "suggested that military troops are underfunded 'so all the profits can go to Halliburton,' Peter raised his hand and pointed out mildly that 'actually, the $87 billion you're referring to was for rebuilding Iraq. So that's a little different, isn't it?'" I've been going over that sentence with an archaeologist's brush, and I still can't see what the hell Peter is talking about. But I suppose that's the joke, huh? Sort of a "Dude, Where's My Car?" thing.

I look forward to seeing a rough cut.

GIVE UP HOPE -- VOTE BUSH! The New York Post's Nicole Gelinas acknowledged on Monday that selling the voters on his rancid economy was "W's challenge." Whereas Kerry offered a "fuzzy-headed promise to create 'millions of good-paying jobs,'" wrote Gelinas, Dubya can only offer them blood, sweat, and tears, and Gelinas is forced to admit that "after four years of tough times, voters can't be blamed for seeking out a shining economic vision" -- of eventual emergence from crippling debt, one supposes, or of someday sending a child to college.

Despite a weak effort to "blame the fact that Bush has never had a charismatic Treasury or Labor Secretary" -- yes, we all remember how Robert Reich and Lloyd Bentsen set our hearts aflame! -- the article ended on a note of despair.

That was Monday. Did Gelinas get a call from Karl Rove in the middle of the night? Because the next day, she had an answer to W's dilemma. Yes, you guessed it -- 9/11:

...whenever I hear the Democrats' exultant invocations to those years, I feel a retroactive, physical dread. Much of late-1990s growth — that not already purged by early September 2001 by the reality induced by the burst tech bubble — was built on a false bottom: World Peace...

But we can't go back — and the financial markets can't go back, either. After 9/11, institutional and individual investors were forced to re-price for a costly and permanent new peril: al Qaeda's physical and ideological threat to the miracle that is the Western economy.

Gelinas goes on to explain that, because corporations have had to invest in more insurance than before, and "have spent billions renting and outfitting permanent backup sites far from Manhattan to house employees and data in the event of another attack," it's unreasonable to expect the jobs picture to improve, despite what fuzzy-headed Kerry promised and even despite what the President himself says on the stump ("This economy is strong and it's getting stronger").

The old 9/11 "everything has changed" now seems to also mean, no more getting ahead by working hard. It's kind of a grim analysis -- if you take it seriously. But who's that stupid? Certainly not my readers!

The fact is, while you and I are suffering economically, the market -- even with all those poor, brave investors so overtaxed by terrorism-related outlays -- is not doing so bad. Despite today's oil-related jitters, the Dow remains well over 10,000. On September 10, 2001, it closed at 9,605.50 -- having dropped about 2000 points since Bush's inauguration.

If you can't get a job, or can't get one that pays what your last one did, it's not because Morgan Stanley had to build a safe house in Jersey.

It's because the economy responds to things other than terrorism -- like a decline in consumer spending. Greenspan blames this on high oil prices, but the simplest explanation is that people are running short of disposable income, and of faith that they can safely run up their debt till more money materializes.

Also, the rise in productivity that Republicans like to trumpet is not necessarily a good thing for you and me. In the short term at least, it means that businesses large enough to work it right can make more with less -- including less payroll and less personnel.

Greater heads than mine could submit this to further discussion, so let's just cut it short and say that pulling 9/11 out of one's ass to excuse this Administration's lousy economic performance is probably not going to fly. But that may just be my natural optimism and faith in my fellow man talking.

CITI UNDER SIEGE. I dropped quickly by the Citicorp Center at lunchtime. The Atrium is closed, so only the shops facing the streets seem to be in business; Barnes & Noble and Houston's had what appeared to be a normal amount of traffic.

There were a few cops on each corner and at each entrance -- not as large a force as you might expect, but even one New York City cop carries a lot of weight on the street, and who knows what less-observable presence NYPD has going on.

The surest sign of the change in status was the presence of media trucks parked along Lexington. Most of their crews seemed to be in downtime, lounging on canvas folding chairs when I came by, though one cameraman was patiently recording a cop who held the leash of a panting, happy-looking German Shepherd.

A lot of passers-by seemed, like me, to be gawking a little as they shuffled past, interested in how the City was playing this one. "I can't believe this has become a tourist thing," one guy said.

On the subway steps was a paper seller with a pile of the Daily News, each front page featuring a picture of the Citicorp Center and the word TARGETS.

Just another day.

MOSES SUPPOSES. "We have an Orange Alert in NYC," intones James Lileks. What you mean "we," farmer Jim? Republicans love us when we're terrorized; it's the smell of votes what does it. (By the way, hayseed, New York City has been on Orange Alert since Tom "Rock" Ridge first trotted out his little Playskool thermometer, as Mayor Richie Rich reminded us in his press conference.)

During Ridge and Bloomberg's addresses I must have heard the word "specificity" three hundred times. I imagine a roomful of Republicans running it through with a vocal coach: "Speh-si-FIH-si-ty, speh-si-FIH-si-ty... Mr. President, how about you just let Tom Ridge give this speech?"

I'll roll by the Citicorp Center during my lunch break and let you know how it's looking.

UPDATE. "Kind of like meeting Hunter S. Thompson, except really fucking boring." The comments on this post prove that my primary usefulness here is as a muse to brighter bloggers.

YET ANOTHER REASON TO VOTE FOR KERRY. Via The Nation, spotted by eagle-eye Margaret:

The Democratic party platform that will be adopted this week includes one particularly significant change from the platforms adopted by the party conventions of 1992, 1996 and 2000. During the platform-writing process, the drafting committee quietly removed the section of the document that endorsed capital punishment. Thus, for the first time since the 1980s, Democrats will not be campaigning on a pro-death penalty program.

It appears Kerry, who doesn't "wear his faith on his sleeve," has more in common with Jesus than the famously born-again Bush. Don't worry, George, you can always trumpet your strong personal relationship with Hammurabi!

SHORTER DIANA WEST: My kinfolk don't hate fags proudly, as I do. Damned liberal media!

THE BIG STIFF IN PRIME TIME. I don’t mean to be rude, but much as I want it to work (and it could very well work), I cannot suspend a morbid consciousness of the political purpose of John Kerry’s DNC honor guard tonight.

Max Cleland is a very old-fashioned sort of politician, never mind the wheelchair. He looks proud and wounded all at the same time, and his face glistens in the hard light, as every Southern politician’s has since the days of Henry Clay, and like the most successful of them Cleland seems to enjoy rather than tolerate it. "My body was broken and my faith was shattered…. Although I had lost a lot, I still had a lot left. I resolved to make something of my life." This guy makes me ashamed, as he is supposed to. And you can get a lot of uplift out of that kind of shame in a situation like this.

"No Surrender." That’s a good choice – like all the songs on Born in the U.S.A., tinged with enough despair and regret to make it easier to really take to heart than Bon Jovi.

OK, this’ll be long. Better settle in. But I expect he’ll rush; they all have.

"I’m John Kerry and I’m reporting for duty." Holy shit.

"…because we love our country… united in one purpose: to make America stronger at home and respected in the world. A great American novelist wrote, ‘You can’t go home again.’" Quick, conservatives – find Thomas Wolfe’s commie credentials!

"I was born in the West Wing." Good thing there’s a TV show. "Mother was the rock of our family…" Oh, here’s the personal touch Teresa didn’t put in. "Den mother when I was a Cub Scout… gave me her passion for the environment… march for full equality for all women…" Boy, she sounds like a handful.

"Father… first baseball mitt… Greatest Generation… in the State Department… " Another handful. "I rode my bike into Soviet East Berlin… he promptly grounded me." Ha ha. "Fear in the eyes of people who were not free." I see where this will get to. "I learned what it meant to be America at her best… determined to restore that pride to all that look to America." Do we see that in the Iraqi citizens’ eyes, or fear of the Abu Ghraib torturer? That’s a nut-cutter there, and explains all the toy drives at Instapundit.

"The great gift of service… a Junior, John Kennedy…" Got it. "We believed we could change to world, and you know what? We did… but tonight… we’re going to write the next great chapter… change the world, but only if we are true to our ideals and that starts by telling the truth to the American people… that is my first pledge to you… I will restore trust and credibility to the White House…" Craggy-face Kerry as the voice of youthful America.

"As a young prosecutor… balanced budget… 100,000 police on the streets of America… finally made peace in Vietnam." Nice, tight resume. "Commander-in-Chief who will never mislead us into war… a Secretary of Defense who will listen to the military, and an Attorney General who will uphold the Constitution of the United States." Yeah, not like those weirdos we have now.

"Here is our answer: there is nothing more pessimistic than saying that America can’t do better. We’re the optimists, we’re the can-do people… look at the 90s… we just need to believe in ourselves and we can do it again…" Oh, yeah, Clinton, don’t you miss him?

"I am proud that at my side…John Edwards… his life is the American dream…" Every little boy can grow up to be a rich lawyer. Well, it’s true! "Succeed Dick Cheney…" Oh, sorry I was mean to JE. "What can I say about Teresa?" You’ll be asked to, of course. I loved her dipping her head to JE’s shoulder. Maybe by her very weirdness she’s an asset. I don’t mind watching her do her loopy thing for four years.

"Our band of brothers… what we learned as soldiers… every day is extra." That’s ‘Nam talk, son. "We may be a little older… still know how to fight…" You gotta love it -- Uncommon Valor.

"September 11… strength that our firefighters… rescuers… Flight 93… flags were hanging from front porches… it was the worst day that we have ever seen, but it brought out the best in all of us… we were only Americans, and how we wish it had stayed that way…"

It’s all one, you see, the Zen of liberalism. Every facet of public life – fighting terrorism and health care and tax policy -- feeds into the other.

"There are those that criticize me for seeing complexities…" Okay, I’m complex, you got my vote! "Proclaiming ‘Mission Accompished’ certainly doesn’t make it so." Snap. "I will bring back that time-honored tradition: the United States of America never goes to war because it wants to, it only goes to war because it has to… I will wage this war with the lessons I learned in battle… On my first day of office… never be asked to fight a war without a plan to win the peace. I know what we have to do in Iraq… I defended this country as a young man and I will defend it as President." Who is this guy, George McClellan?

"I will never hesitate to respond… no veto over national security… add 40,000 military troops, not in Iraq…" At last, forward thinking. "And we will end the back door draft of the National Guard and Reservists." Hello, this really is news. What about the Coast Guard?

"Strength is more than tough words… I know the reach of our power… we need to make America a beacon… looked up to, not just feared… tell the terrorists… the future doesn’t belong to fear, it belongs to freedom." See citizen, Iraq.

"Right here on our shores… 9/11 commission… I will not evade or equivocate… 98% of our container ships… nuclear and chemical plants… not opening firehouses in Baghdad and shutting them down in the United States of America." His case on competence grounds.

"To those who would question the patriotism… wrapping themselves in the flag… what America is really about… when Americans stand up… that is not a challenge to patriotism, it is the heart and soul of patriotism. You see that flag up there? We call her Old Glory… I fought under that flag…" We know! "From the gun-turret…" We know! "Draped the casket…" We know!! "It belongs to all the American people!"

What are they going to remember? That John Kerry fought in Vietnam and no one better even hint he’s a traitor.

The crowd chants USA! USA! Kerry still wants to hurry through this. "My fellow citizens… Those who talk about family values should start valuing families… taking cops off the street so Enron can get another tax break… big drug companies… windfall profits… I will not privatize Social Security, I will not cut benefits… family, faith, hard work… that is the American Dream…" Kerry as Boston Irish politician, beating the same pulpit (not literally, of course) as a 19th-century Mick alderman pledging the workingman a better deal.

"Dave McKuen, a steelworker…" This is a good story – oh, it’s not a story? "Marianne Knowles, a woman with breast cancer…" Hey, this is a good – oh. "Deborah Kromins…" That’s – "25% of our children in Harlem… people sleeping in Lafayette Park… three million…" Well, that was a fast transition from the specific to the general. But narrative is a vanishing art.

"Middle class not being squeezed but doing better… new incentives… manufacturing… good-paying jobs… close the tax loopholes… reward companies that keep jobs in the good old U.S.A… never have to subsidize the loss of his own job… give the American worker a fair playing field, there’s no one in the world that he can’t compete against." Seamus O’Kerry will save your full dinner pail!

"We won’t raise taxes on the middle class, you’ve heard a lot of false charges… roll back the tax cuts on wealthier Americans… making over $200,000 a year…" Some gnome is now rushing to find a $200,000 a year family who can’t make ends meet under ee-vil Kerry.

"Stop being a nation content to spend $10,000 to send a young man to prison… Head Start, Smart Start… a real start…" The old playbook.

"Health care… 4 million people have lost their health care… your payments, your premiums… save families $1000 a year… under our health care plan… Medicare will negotiate lower drug prices… less expensive… a right for all Americans…" That’s the playbook again, and it sounds as good as ever. We will of course have to wait for the bill of particulars, emphasis on "bill."

"Independent of Mideast oil…" Another good page from the playbook. "…not the Saudi Royal family." Yeah, you know, those guys Bush is mobbed up with. Victor Davis Hanson will deliver another rant distancing The Movement from the Saudis, but no one on the hustings reads Victor Davis Fucking Hanson.

"Benjamin Franklin could never have said in his acceptance speech: go to johnkerry.com." You mean we don’t have to listen to much more of this?

"Let me address these words directly to George W. Bush… let’s respect one another… never misuse for political purposes the most precious document in human history, the Constitution of the United States…" What can I say? When he’s right, he’s right.

"Big ideas, not small-minded attacks… divide group from group… maybe some just see us divided into those red states and blue states, but I see us united in one America, Red, White, and Blue… America is not ‘us’ and ‘them’… I don’t wear my religion on my sleeve, but faith has given me hope… Abraham Lincoln… I want to pray humbly that we are on God’s side." Good, he stopped talking for a few seconds, at just the right time and in just the right way.

"They’re American values… if we believe in them, we can build… so much promise stretches before us… " Kitty Hawk. NASA. Microsoft. "WE did that… and now it’s our time to ask, ‘What if?’" Alzheimers, AIDS, stem cells. "A President who believes in science…" A choice, not a idjit. "Do what adults should do…" Oh yeah.

"Patrolling the Mekong…" We kn-- – oh, forget it. "Literally all in the same boat… that is the kind of America… all in the same boat…. Look to the next horizon.. our best days are still to come… Good night, God Bless You and God Bless The United States of America."

Cue "Beautiful Day." I hear a lot smack about the music here, but this is just perfect.

As oratory it was rushed, monochromatic, and lackluster. But. This guy is alright, and he’s running against Bush. Well, you know what I think. What do you think?

UPDATE. From The Corner: "Um, Mr. Kerry, 'that flag,' that 'Old Glory,' that 'Stars and Stripes Forever,' flew upside down on the cover of your book 'The New Soldier.' So why don't you explain that?"

Translation: they're scared shitless.

UPDATE II. Some of my comrades seem to think I've been too hard on the Big Stiff. Let me be clear. I think Kerry should do well based on tonight's performance, but I insist in judging it by Olympian standards. Why? Because, as the man said, there is nothing more pessimistic than saying that America can’t do better.

Don't worry that there is a chorus of idiots spinning the speech down. (I see Lileks, at the lunar end of one of his frequent mood swings, believes a Kerry Presidency will lead to "a smoking crater in New York." Count on it, Prairie Putz; New Yorkers will vote big for that smoking crater!) They're all in the blogosphere, which, as far as Mr. and Mrs. America know, is one long, contiguous series of mothers' basements where stained-shirted Comic Book Guys lurk and play at politics. Which means that they may have well have the wisdom to elect the right guy.

SHORTER JOHN PODHORETZ. John Edwards's expression of concern for ordinary Americans is an obvious rip-off of George W. Bush.

(There's also a lot in there about how the candidate made a lot of promises in hopes of being elected. I don't know why they didn't run this baby on page one.)