DOG WHISTLE GEOPOLITICS. "Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew, long known as the Kissinger of the orient", behind a veil of cigarette smoke and with eerie lighting, lays some Realpolitik on the Moonie News Bureau's Arnaud de Borchgrave:

The United States, said this key player in every major Asian event for almost half a century, "should realize Afghanistan cannot succeed as a democracy. You attempted too much. Let the warlords sort it out in such a way you don't try to build a new state. The British tried and failed. Just make clear if they commit aggression again and offer safe haven to Taliban, they will be punished"...

Iraq was a mistake, Lee said. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with al-Qaida or Sept. 11. It was a costly diversion from the war on al-Qaida. "I cannot see them winning, and by that I mean able to impose their extremist system ... even if we can't win, we mustn't lose or tire. We cannot allow them to believe they have a winning strategy and that more suicide bombers and WMD will advance their cause and give them a chance to take over"...

When asked this week about the advisability of the United States or Israel bombing Iran's nuclear facilities, Lee fell silent. He was about to express an opinion, then changed his mind. "I can express no views on that," he said lowering his voice.

If you think the Mask of Lee Kuan Yew will strike remorse for our national screw-ups in the conservative heart, you aren't focusing on the big issue: a foreign authoritarian tacitly approves bombing Iran! Hear John O'Sullivan at National Review Online:

Alas, Lee is not eligible for the U.S. presidency. But whoever is elected should listen to him.

At The American Scene, James Poulos catches the fever:

I’ve been watching the BBC production of “A Dance to the Music of Time,” and just yesterday — prior to having this morning three consecutive dreams about zombies, perhaps on which more later — I thought, yes, general war is probably going to happen in my generation’s lifetime. One way or the other.

So Afghanistan and Iraq didn't turn out so hot -- that was due to our foolish American obsession with democracy on the one hand, and winning so-called elections on the other. Third time's the charm! Just ask a guy from a place where you can get arrested for spitting on the sidewalk and couldn't legally buy gum for 12 years. (On the plus side, they're cool with trans-fats.)

Lee Kuan Yew probably could have gone on a full-throated rant against habeas corpus, trial by jury, and the fools who called him mad, mad, when he built his secret underwater lair, and these guys would still only hear the bit about Iran. I don't know why it's taking them so long to warm to John McCain. Maybe he should start telling the brethren where he got his campaign finance reform ideas.

SEAMLESS GARMENT WATCH. At National Review Online, Mark Steyn points his light-saber of outrage at a story about some Muslim women who won a French "family medal" for, I guess, having a lot of babies.

"So when Mark Steyn writes about changing demographics in Europe, apparently he wasn’t kidding," notes the linked correspondent, Andrea Mrozek. Oddly, her blog is called ProWomanProLife. Since I hear racism is a crime up there in Canada, I assume it's the religious affiliation and not the color of these French former fetuses that removes them from her approval.

I see that one of Mrozek's colleagues approves of Angelina Jolie's gigantic blended family; has she not considered that Jolie is unchurched and tattooed, and that her superbrood might pose as great a threat to Western Civilization as those of the Muslim ladies? Clearly they need to do some more thinking about unintended consequences.

LA RECONQUISTA. Though conservatives are trying to reconcile, or maybe just concile, with John McCain, some are not yet completely on board. Mark Steyn at National Review Online:

I'd say McCain definitely papered the house. I arrived at CPAC just before Mitt began to speak and was struck by the number of young student-ish types milling about in McCain T-shirts. While my minder went off to check her coat, I was loafing around the lobby, heard a conversation in Spanish, and noticed it was three of the McCain T-shirted students. Which struck me as odd: you don't hear a lot of Spanish at CPAC.

Wait -- Michelle Malkin was there, and she couldn't sense the Mexican presence? Either she's slipping or they're disguising their scent with an all-Arby's diet.

[Cue sound effect]

OUR TIME IS NO. Meanwhile some liberals take the opposite tack from Steyn's: trying to talk themselves out of supporting a candidate they support. Publius at Obsidian Wings:

Although I remain an Obama supporter, I do fear that I’m allowing myself to be enchanted in an intellectually juvenile way. Of course, like you I suspect, I think of myself as more sophisticated than the crowds that vacillated mindlessly from Brutus to Marc Antony. But the truth is that I’m not all that different. I too am all too human, and thus susceptible to the same types of appeals, even if they come dressed in different clothes.

Michael Dukakis isn't doing anything. Why don't we draft him and spare ourselves all this charisma?

[Cue sound effect]

MOPPING UP AT SHOW WORLD. But hold on folks -- there's another viable candidate in this race. I speak of course of Mike Huckabee. He picked up the all-important James Dobson endorsement ("Dobson emphasizes that when he endorses candidates, he is doing so as a private citizen and not as a representative of Focus on the Family, a tax-exempt organization"). This cements Huckabee's position as the heat-sink for such evangelicals as remain committed to the Party, and assures a grand spectacle at the Republican National Convention. Mark your calendars: September 3, Snake-Handler Night! First three rows may get bit.

Oh yeah, Clinton. In the Wall Street Journal her candidacy receives the healing touch of that great conciliator, Peggy Noonan. She calls the former First Lady "lethal" and compares her to Rasputin. Then Noonan bats her eyes, adds, "That is how reporters see Hillary," and takes the high road:

And that is a grim and over-the-top analogy, which I must withdraw. What I really mean is they see her as the Glenn Close character in "Fatal Attraction": "I won't be ignored, Dan!"

Normally the withdrawals come after the slurs are done. But after many years of Bushmills and Old Ronnie, I am surprised that Noonan can face withdrawal at all.

[Cue sound effect]

GOING HOLLYWOOD. Randy Quaid has been banned for life (!) from Actor's Equity due to shenanigans he and his wife pulled on an ill-starred musical stage production. As reported by Film Drunk, the changes include physical and verbal assaults on fellow thespians, but this is probably the hanging offense:

The couple [Quaid and his wife, presumably - Ed.] tried to rewrite the script, to eliminate characters. Randy "felt free" to change blocking, lyrics and lines during performances, and repeatedly failed to show up for note sessions and rehearsals.

You have to be John Barrymore (or maybe Nicol Williamson playing John Barrymore) to get away with that shit onstage. Film Drunk is unsympathetic to Equity: "Why do we still have the theater? Don't they know you can go film shit on location and do special effects and stuff and then play it back without the actors having to be there? Theater nowadays is pretty much like when rich people go camping. 'Ooh, let's drive out to the woods and pretend we're poor!' Good idea, dad, you fucking yuppie."

I know he's kidding, but in a recent Newsweek roundtable of film actors, I was astonished to read this:

Did you rehearse at all for "Atonement"? [James] McAvoy: Yeah, for three weeks, which is kind of unusual. I usually dread rehearsal for film because I've found that film people will never know what to do except sit in a room together and make you say your lines 5,000 times...

Daniel, do you ever rehearse? [Daniel] Day-Lewis: I prefer not to. [George] Clooney: They'll do stuff like put tape on the floor and go, "OK, now you're walking in and three vampires are going to come out over here." And you're pretending that there's vampires across from you and everybody is laughing at you. I don't find it helpful in any way.

Millions of dollars at stake and they don't like to rehearse! No wonder Quaid thought this airy-fairy business of blocking and getting the lines right had gone the way of spats and the four-in-hand.

I wonder if this has anything to do with the large tonal difference between old movies and newer ones. About a year back I saw a clip from The Good German on Charlie Rose. The film's star, George Clooney, was Rose's guest. He told Rose that the filmmakers had gone to great lengths to recreate the feeling of old movies -- black and white, old-fashioned lighting and dialogue, etc. But in the clip Clooney and co-star Cate Blanchett, though properly costumed and made up, acted like they had just walked in from the commissary and started bullshitting. They couldn't even stand in a manner appropriate to the style. The whole retro effect was totally blown from the first entrance.

I think Clooney and Blanchett (and Daniel Day-Lewis, for that matter) are as good at what they do as Tyrone Power and Barbara Stanwyck were at what they did. But it occurs to me now that there's a larger difference between the old and new versions of the craft than, in my aesthetic ecumenicalism, I usually consider. Even Marlon Brando and James Dean put in stage time -- on Broadway yet! -- before they became film stars, and when they did people considered them revolutionary, or mumbling nonconformists. Today their performances from the 50s look almost mannered compared to what we get today.

I wonder how much the shift in acting style drove the shift in film style from that period forward. Elia Kazan, a man of the theatre (and a founder of the Group Theatre), related as easily to Method acting as did Nicholas Ray, who had barely touched the theatre before making movies. Thesp-wise, theatre was where the action was then. Now fewer directors and actors jump from theatre to film; film acting has gone sui generis. Most pre-Method movies look clipped and impatient compared to most later ones; might the longueurs and discursiveness of post-theatrical speech and behavior have informed the way directors filmed it?

Both theatre and film have seen some changes in the past half-century, but in the former they've been convulsive, and in the latter continuous. A big, hammy, gestural turn is not out of fashion onstage (I saw Brian Cox do one last month), but in movies it's a speciality pulled out for special stylistic occasions, like a Robin Williams vehicle. Some aspects of John Cassavettes' improvisational films still look almost as far out as they did when they came out, but the acting in those films will be familiar to anyone who has seen a dozen films made in the past ten years.

I wonder where it will all go next. Despite the way we perceive it, mainstream film acting still isn't totally naturalistic; as long as there's a story, the playing has to be somewhat pointed. But if the top actors have begun to find rehearsal beside the point, it may be that more layers of artifice will begin to fall away. It may be that prestige acting in 2020 will make the current stuff look stiff and ancient. Or maybe it'll go the opposite way, and we'll see the aged Clooney tackle the New Expressionism. I kind of look forward to finding out. If it's all too modern for me, I can always go see the latest equivalent of RV or Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

SHORTER JAMES LILEKS. You derisive sub-Menckens with your free iTunes and your Thai food! The Islamo-fetal-liberalfascist is at the gate! You -- you -- ah-choo!

ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF MEGAN McARDLE. 06 Feb 2008 12:22 am: Going vegan makes buttered popcorn smell weird.
06 Feb 2008 12:26 am: Silly pollsters!
06 Feb 2008 01:39 am: Matt and I are on the internet.
06 Feb 2008 08:30 am: Obama's behind, but InTrade thinks he's a winner. What's that about?
06 Feb 2008 10:39 am: Health Nazis fanny about going "Blah blah blah!" Well, if you reform all those fat smokers, they're going to wind up costing us money. Did you ever think of that? Huh?
06 Feb 2008 10:54 am: Bastiat sure pwned those trade protectionists. No but seriously, Bastiat framed the "Broken Windows Fallacy," right? And when I was at the Bastiat Awards, my window was broken! Weird, right?
06 Feb 2008 11:12 am: Tort lawyers all want to wealth-transfer doctors' money to their greedy sick clients, and doctors react by testing sick people to see if they're sick. Oh, bother, I don't know. You should go read someone who knows what they're talking about.
06 Feb 2008 11:30 am: Ha ha! Noah Millman's Mom-in-law fucked up her ballot! And some people think Bush stole the election! Honestly.
06 Feb 2008 11:34 am: Some people think Obama lost. But the Obama people think they won. You know what I think? Media bias affects elections.
06 Feb 2008 12:27 pm: Paul Krugman got BDS and went from a really good economics columnist to teh suck. Don't you find? Mark Kleiman does. Can't we just get rid of people like Krugman? Oh, I should talk.
06 Feb 2008 02:07 pm: Clinton paid Mark Penn $4.3 to lose or win or whatever she did! Consultants get paid lots but they avoid some of the unpleasant duties of Presidential candidates.
06 Feb 2008 03:16 pm: Heath Ledger had everything going for him, and he still took drugs.

We could fulfill much of the nation's energy needs by breaking into the graves of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., and James Russell Lowell, and using their spinning corpses as turbines.

...AND FINALLY, ACCEPTANCE. McCain-hatin' conservatives have given us some precious moments of laughter but, as expected, they are slowly beginning to get in line and, also as expected, it doesn't take much. Mona Charen at National Review Online:

John, I too just got the McCain robocall and it seemed particularly aimed at conservatives. McCain promises to be a small government conservative who will appoint conservative justices, respect life, do border enforcement before any other immigration reform, and win the war on terror. Nary a word about global warming or Guantanamo. He "humbly" asks for our votes. If this is a hint of what is coming at CPAC, it suggests that McCain's famous vanity is not getting the better of him this time. He seems to be willing to meet conservatives more than halfway.

Talk, even "Straight Talk," is cheap, and Charen's price ain't so high neither. At CPAC, expect McCain to go "Reagan Reagan Reagan 9/11," and hearts to flutter.

Braver brethren are even suggesting that Super Tuesday was a crippling blow to the Democrats. Dave Price at Dean Esmay's site:

Two, Obama didn't win a clear victory. Now the Dems are in the worst-case scenario that the candidate with all the momentum is slightly behind, meaning the next few months will see a bitter struggle for the nomination that will consume vast amounts of money, drive up the eventual nominee's negatives, split the party, and force their candidates to pander to their base while McCain is campaigning to the middle as a general election candidate.

I'm always willing to expect the worst, and this doesn't even convince me. This pre-Tuesday poll graph, and Tuesday's high turnout, suggest continuing, healthy enthusiasm for both Democratic candidates. This is the opposite of a Party tearing itself apart. Obama has raised over two million dollars in less than 24 hours and there's plenty more where that came from. If Clinton is indeed running out of money, she will probably recede, and contrary to Republican mythology, she is not likely to sabotage Obama's chances, harpy-like, on her way down. Without money, how would she be able to?

Finally, at The Razor, a real post-End-Times right-wing fantasy:

If she loses and Obama wins, don’t expect her to fade away. She’ll be sidelined for awhile, a long while if Obama is successful, but will no doubt play havoc with an Obama Agenda. I would expect her to be as cooperative with an Obama legislative agenda as Chuck Hagel has been to the Bush one.

Dream big, Citizen Journalist. It beats your waking reality cold.

MY OSCAR SLOG CONTINUES. The biopic is of necessity a limited genre. To succeed, it must stay tightly focused on the pains and triumphs of a subject sufficiently famous to command our attention. In most cases, this keeps the filmmaker from connecting the story to a broader vision, which is why so few of them are works of art. The rare exceptions usually involve a historical figure who has obtained the status of myth, which leaves the filmmaker free to project his own story onto the audience's received impressions of the hero. (See Rossellini's The Rise of Louis XIV or Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln or Stone's JFK. Among the rare exceptions to the formula I would include Preston Sturges' The Great Moment.)

Still, lower-order biopics, from The Story of Louis Pasteur on forward, can be entertaining, and La Vie En Rose is a fine example. Edith Piaf's art and suffering are legendary, and the film mainly amplifies them, from her pathetic beginnings as a whore's child shunted through brothels, to her apotheosis as a great singer whose songs fulsomely reflect her pain, to her wretched, broken end.

The second-best feature of La Vie En Rose is a time-jumping narrative that links all the stages of Piaf's suffering, so that her spirit and attainments are never viewed far from their context. History is always closely linked to destiny, which is not a brilliant philosophical idea but which provides a lifeline that is easy to follow.

Its best feature is Marion Cotillard as Piaf. She picks up seamlessly from the equally fine child actors who play her younger self, brilliantly imagining what their terrors and enforced self-possesion would become in adulthood: a sad monster you'd want to protect if you could get close enough to do it. Her mood swings visibly recall her earlier dramas, which are glowingly evident in her spindly, uncomfortable body and her open, ever-sorrowing face. Her childishness is by turns ugly or appealing, and never leaves her, even in decay and at the threshold of death. If Piaf had not already been a legend, Cotillard's performance would have created one for her, which is to say she achieves the rare gift of great mimicry that is also great acting.

UPDATE. Much astute criticism in comments, and some proposed higher-grade biopics. I don't think The Madness of King George is about G3 so much as it's about what a great thing hereditary monarchy was, at least compared to what replaced it. The hallucinatory Ken Russell biographies are closer to the mark. I should mention Fellini's Casanova, which is about a lot of other things too, including hilarious summations of the French, Spanish, Italian, and German national characters. The central character, seen at one point expounding on one of his own books in front of a page from it stuck with excrement to a prison wall, certainly embodies something larger than himself. Western Civilization, maybe.

BIG NIGHT: AS OF 12 A.M... With Missouri and California still up for grabs, it looks like a decent night for Obama, who didn't get the big prizes but is splitting delegates almost even with Clinton. McCain is cleaning up but forgotten man Huckabee, with record-setting evangelical support, is putting up some numbers. Romney is hanging on by the phrenic nerves.

Super Tuesday turns out to be a magnifying glass for the race at large. Obama is stripping off ever-larger pieces of the Clinton victory march, but she's still marching and he's still stripping. McCain has broad support, but the fringes (with the establishmentarians roughly represented by Romney and the snake-handlers by Huckabee) are holding out.

ABC only gave me pieces of the candidates' speeches. McCain sounded like he was speaking at his own retirement dinner. Clinton sang the old songs in the traditional, plangent manner. Huckabee was an easy-listening version of Huey Long. Obama had by far the best words, as usual, and slung them loose and low-key -- under the circumstances, the most appropriate form of optimism. Romney's traditional impenetrability stood him well on a bad night.

Cali has 441 delegates -- according to this report, proportionally distributed except for 81 at-large delegates who go to the winner, not to speak of the super-delegates, PLEOs, and unpledged. ABC has called it for Clinton but I'm not going to touch it, partly because it's way too early and partly because, as of my pulling of the lever at P.S. 100 on Monitor Street at 8 a.m. Tuesday, I am an Obama supporter, as if you couldn't tell.

UPDATE. Romney factotum Hugh Hewitt reports on the night: "A Divided GOP... McCain has strength across the country and a lead in delegates, but nowhere near 50% of the GOP's votes." Keep hope alive, Snowman!

UPDATE II. Or keep hate alive, as Classical Values blogger Eric does: "Hillary is speaking and according to someone in the know, 'she looks like she's had some major makeovers'... But she still has that same shrill, grating voice... She brays..." If Hitlery takes the nomination, at least I'll have copious bile-streams from true believers to report to you folks.

UPDATE III. As usual, the best reason for even a modish, mawkish, wigger Obamist such as myself to yet tender some affection to Clinton is Whitewater dead-ender Andrew Sullivan, who in the wee small hours quotes Ari Fleischer on the ease with which Der Alte will defeat Hillary. Much as I dislike her, I do believe Clinton could appear in the General Election debates wearing a Nazi uniform and with two pencils sticking out of her nose and still give McCain a run for his money. However much trouble she's having at present with her opponent, she is very, very fortunate in her enemies.

MO' FAMILY, MO' PROBLEMS. I can recommend, for good old-fashioned theatrical pleasure, Steppenwolf's production of Tracy Letts' August: Osage County, now on Broadway. The acting is top-notch (two understudies were in when I saw it, but the cast showed little strain), Anna Shapiro's direction keeps it rattling along wonderfully, and the sharp dialogue and plot twists would hold even a restless child's attention (though I don't recommend that you take children to it).

It's a big-cast family comedy-drama, sort of a cross-breeding of Clifford Odets and Kaufman and Hart with modern swears and peccadilloes thrown in for roughage. The basic idea is three sisters from an Oklahoma academic/literary family -- which long ago graduated from corn liquor to scotch, but still shows its coarse roots -- are brought together, along with various friends and relations, by the disappearance and presumed suicide of the Old Man. Grudges and secrets are aired, and disappointments luxuriated in.

The signal achievement of the script, besides keeping us interested over three hours plus, is a great feeling for the bonds and burdens of family. The girls all want to have their own lives, including the one who has seemingly been shanghaied into the caretaker role, but none has been very successful at it, and Letts is great at showing how strong the gravitational pull of even (maybe especially) a dysfunctional family can be. The crossing orbits and collisions are fun to watch, and with 13 (!) characters you get a wide range of dynamic shifts for your money.

The only problem is the usual one with most sprawling entertainments like this: long on mood, short on payoff. The third act wobbles as the characters line up to get their hash settled. Then the richness and size becomes a thicket the author has to hack his way out of. Letts may be doing more complex writing than, say, William Inge, but when Inge worked on this scale his dramaturgy creaked less. (Lett's modish touches don't oil the joints any better, either -- Inge had a pedophilia subplot in Bus Stop, too, and though it was less clinically detailed I think it has a large edge in sadness and desperation.) Eldest girl Barbara turns out to be our protagonist, and interesting as her story is -- her alpha passive-aggression gets transplanted from the family she's tried to make to the one she was born into -- it is not so much illuminated by the other human wrecks onstage as it is in competition with them.

It seems churlish to complain when Steppenwolf has given us a intelligent script and a scale of production we don't usually get from pinchpenny straight-play Broadway budgets. I only note it for the record, and hope Letts keeps going big and gets further. As it is there's an awful lot of good theatre going on at the Imperial, and they aren't charging any extra for it.

MORE ON THE NEW FASCISM. Yesterday I posted on The American Spectator's John Tabin, who compared a popular Obama music video to "Triumph of the Will." Today Tabin responds:

Maybe I wasn't clear. No, I don't mean that I smell liberal fascism in "everything inspiring" or "any show of enthusiasm by fifty or more liberals for anything or anyone whatsoever." I mean that a bunch of people beatifying a politician by reciting, in unison, a speech of his that climaxes with the words

We are one people, we are one nation, and together we will begin the next great chapther in the American story with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea: Yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can

is a message devoid of any content beyond a call to unity of the collective as an end unto itself, complete with a very deliberate aesthetic embodiment of that message. If that doesn't strike you as even a little bit fascistic, I guess I can't help you.

From Ronald Reagan's address to the 1984 Republic Convention:

The President. Is there any doubt that they will raise our taxes?

Audience. No!

The President. That they will send inflation into orbit again?

Audience. No!

The President. That they will make government bigger then ever?

Audience. No!

The President. And deficits even worse?

Audience. No!

The President. Raise unemployment?

Audience. No!

The President. Cut back our defense preparedness?

Audience. No!

The President. Raise interest rates?

Audience. No!

The President. Make unilateral and unwise concessions to the Soviet Union?

Audience. No!

The President. And they'll do all that in the name of compassion.

Audience. Boo-o-o!

The President. It's what they've done to America in the past. But if we do our job right, they won't be able to do it again.

Audience. Reagan! Reagan! Reagan!

The President. It's getting late.

Audience. Reagan! Reagan! Reagan!

To be fair, I could have picked another example of political convention call-and-response from either side of the aisle. "A message devoid of any content beyond a call to unity of the collective as an end unto itself, complete with a very deliberate aesthetic embodiment of that message" would properly describe any one of them. So would "classic American political oratory." The fact that Obama's supporters also have cool music and the ability to sing something other than "No!" "Boo-o-o!" and "Reagan!" doesn't make them fascists. It just makes them better at it than the people Tabin supports.

And I suspect that -- rather than any genuine fear that Obama is the new Hitler, Jesse Dylan the new Goebbels, and Yes We Can the new Horst Wessel Lied -- is really what's bothering him. In the Jonah Goldberg era, allusions to the Third Reich are the new "no fair."

SUPER BOWL HIGHLIGHTS. Doritos told me they were giving a young performer a "break" and then showed me a singer with an Interscope Records contract.

Someone at LifeWater thought, "After this game all America will be talking about the Dancing Lizards!" but what they'll probably be saying is, "That was a pretty good Gatorade ad."

That was the least annoying "anti-drug" ad I've ever seen, which just makes me want to kill the ONDC without pain and spare their families.

Sisyphus! I went to college, I get it! Optimism! I'm American, I get it! The Yukon Hybrid! I -- What?

Dell = Mac for the change-averse.

I may actually see a super-hero movie in a theatre instead of an airplane.

Tide Stick wins, using the ancient advertising arts of shame and fear.

The game was pretty good and the Heartbreakers sounded fine. Tom Petty looked like a villain in a Quentin Tarantino movie.

BATTLE OF THE BANDS. Ericka Andersen of RedState grudgingly admits that the awesome will.i.am Obama music video is indeed awesome. She asks:

WOW. ANYONE GOING TO MAKE ONE OF THESE FOR MITT?

Here's an entrant:



And let's not count out Mike Huckabee:



Too bad the CIA wiped those interrogation videos: they could have run those with Ted Nugent shredding in the background and gotten their message across quite clearly.

UPDATE. American Spectator's John Tabin calls the Obama vid "A Real Triumph of the Will" and adds "Jonah Goldberg's book becomes more relevant by the minute." So not only is every social welfare program liberal-fascist; everything inspiring is, too. I've got to tip my hat -- that outstrips even my cynicism.

UPDATE II. "It's All Over: Liberals Take Over '24.'" "It is over. Conservatives will no longer have even a single show on network television anymore." I hate to give them good advice, but if they put more effort into electing their candidates and less into symbolic analysis, they might be better off.

A PUKE AND HIS SHIT, OR VICE VERSA. Rod Dreher, refreshed after leading an orgy of recrimination over a porn clip (covered here), is up and at 'em again, leaving the foreplay to venerable scold Jim Sleeper before getting to the money shot:

Sleeper goes on to say that not only should conservatives stand up to corporate interests that pornify the public square, but that liberals ought to quit defending the degradation of the public square by asserting free speech rights...

I hope this fuckfest keeps rolling and winds up on Capitol Hill. Imagine the hearings: Dreher, in a choked voice, explaining that he can't submit his evidence because it is too disgusting for even adults to contemplate, let alone the children who might have innocently tuned to C-SPAN. Maybe we can even get Tipper Gore back into the act. She's still got it. Put her up there with Mary Landrieu and I'll testify.

FIGHT THE REAL ENEMY. Terrorists kill over 70 people in Baghdad using mentally challenged "suicide bombers."

Stop for a moment. Note your first instinct. Upon whom does your disapproval tend? The people who sent the bombers to kill?

Boy, are you way off.

The Ole Perfesser:

And Austin Bay emails that this may be the start of the "Terrorist Tet" he's been predicting. As Bob Owens notes, some people here at home are all-too-eager to help. Just like last time.

Dan Collins:

So it interests me that today, in the wake of two bombings in the pet markets in Baghdad in which mentally disabled people–Down’s Syndrome sufferers, apparently–were used as mules to carry the explosives and remotely detonated, killing dozens, brings, not condemnation and outrage from the media and from lefty bloggers, but satisfied derision toward those who say we are winning in Iraq.

Confederate Yankee:

The ever-objective, ever-unbiased New York Times saw fit to exclude the horrific detail of their alleged mental disabilities from their reporting of the day's massacre. It might upset their readers, and cause some confusion over who the real enemy in Iraq is (George Bush).

I'm beginning to think we don't even have troops in Iraq. Maybe it's all some kind of Capricorn One bullshit. Because why would we bother fighting over there when the people our greatest patriots really hate are right here in the United States?

PWNED. I like to think I get around, at least on the internet, but Beliefnet's Rod Dreher did me the favor of calling attention to the "2 Girls 1 Cup" video. Rawwr! Two hot chicks eating shit and puke. I mean, does it get any sexier? (I'm not linking to it now -- I'll save it for a fundraiser or something.)

Almost as good is the way Dreher sells it:

...don't worry, I'm not about to link to it from here... suffice it to say that it's really too disgusting even to describe here. There is no way I'm going to watch it, because I don't want those images lodged in my brain. If you watch the reaction videos Slate has compiled, as part of a discussion of how in the Internet age we process taboos, you'll get an idea of how unutterably grotesque this video must be.

...something so horrible it beggars the imagination... I know that the way I'm writing about it will make lots of readers want to see the clip. I'm sorry about that, but there's really no other way to write about it. If you are bound and determined to let your curiosity win here... images you are going to have burned into your brain forever...

What kind of society do we have when that kind of information is easily available to people, especially to children? What kind of society...

If the newspaper gig doesn't work out, Dreher can always get work as a copywriter or a carnival barker.

This reminds me of something an old friend told me once. He was doing a computer gig at a corporation and one of his colleagues, assuming from my friend's free-and-easy attitude toward sexuality that he was in a position to hook him up, asked for URLs that would bring him to "exotic" porn. My friend demurred but the guy kept bugging him. Finally my friend pointed him to some hot pukkake action. "He never bothered me again," he told me.

Some people aren't so easy to dissuade, apparently. Maybe the End Times commentary (and the calls for censorship and Jesus in the comments) makes the experience more exciting for some people. Well, different strokes and all that.

Oh, Dreher adds that "defanging [the video's] horror with ironic distance... I find that the scariest reaction of all." I have mixed feelings about adding to Dreher's excitement with this post -- I barely know the guy. The internet is indeed a scary place.

UPDATE. Oh, alright, here's the video:

FRIDAY VIDEO FEST.


The Poet Laureate.


The Queen.


The King.


Jack.


The Gods.

IT'S ALL A CONSPIRACY. Jeff Jarvis sees damnable prejudice at the New York Times -- against Hillary Clinton.

I was amazed that on today’s New York Times front page, I couldn’t find a mention of Hillary Clinton’s victory in Florida — not even a reefer (jargon for a promo box)...

I went to the Times Square newstand to look at the Washington Post. Clinton’s victory is right at the top of the page aside McCain’s. I would call that proper news judgment.

Yes, it’s true that Clinton officially won no delegates because the Democratic Party is punishing Florida. But that, itself, is a story...

If I were a communications student, I’d be doing an analysis of the Times’ coverage of Clinton. There is a pattern here.

Yeah, pretty thin, right? I'm sure they'll all be happier when Democrats stop running against each other and they can get back to telling us how much the liberal media loves Hillary Clinton.

UPDATE. Shoulda known Confederate Yankee would get into the act:

Are we to believe that the Times editors were unaware of the pending article on Bill Clinton's apparent influence peddling when they gave Hillary their endorsement less than one full week ago?

In a large news organization it is indeed possible that the editorial staff who wrote Clinton's endorsement was unaware of the pending Bill Clinton/Giustra article... but I doubt it...

Publishing the Clinton/Giustra article on this day, so close to Super Tuesday, seems indicative of ill intent on behalf of the Times.

Perhaps Hillary isn't their real choice for President after all.

Cue sinister music! Liberal perfidy, wheels within wheels! Who knows what they're up to, but you can bet they're up to something.

Both these guys blog a lot. Maybe media criticism is easier when you're totally insane.

A PARTY OF SHOPKEEPERS. As in 2004, conservative Republicans are angry that a former member of the U.S. Armed Forces may become President. They point out his lack of respect for the real heroes: Chief Executive Officers. At National Review, Mark Steyn:

I'm getting a bit tired of Senator McCain's anti-business shtick. The line about serving "for patriotism, not for profit" is pathetic. America spends more on its military than the next 35-40 biggest military spenders on the planet combined: Where does he think the money for that comes from?

At the Wall Street Journal, James Taranto sticks up for his constituents, hitting hard McCain's suggestion that when Romney was at the top of the corporate food chain, he may have been profit- rather than people-oriented ("he managed companies, and he bought, and he sold, and sometimes people lost their jobs"):

But the idea that Romney would be less qualified because his decisions meant that "sometimes people lost their jobs" is perverse. Political and military leaders often have to make tough decisions in which people lose their jobs. One thinks of Truman firing Gen. Douglas MacArthur...

Real Republicans know how to deal with impudent soldiers as well as redundant workers, CEO stylee! Their resistance to the Man on Horseback would be admirable if it were not transparently conditional. And some of their comrades are even less skilled at concealing it. An amusing cognomen at RedState writes:

If having shed blood for this country was the ultimate qualifier for the Presidency, I hope, but don’t believe, that John McCain would acknowledge there’s a line, miles long, of men as or more qualified then he. Men who don’t use their status as ‘war heroes’ in the way leftists used the term ‘racist’ on the 1960's and 70's – to shut down argument and thought.

I'm surprised he didn't embed a clip from Born of the Fourth of July to show how war heroes can also be dirty hippies. At Right on the Right, Justin Higgins offers an audio argument that he thinks Romney should have used against Mr. Patriotism Not For Profit:

That is a line the Democrats use to characterize those who support this war but are not serving in the military. It's a chickenhawk argument that should not be used against our fellow Republicans. We are in the House of Reagan and the 11th Commandment stands still... the only reason that I think you do not get the privileges of the 11th Commandment of Reagan is because you are not a Republican...

Give him credit for candor, even if he only comes to it because he's too dim to dissemble.

Of course if McCain gets the nomination we'll be hearing more about duty, honor, and country, but for now their sudden enthusiasm for civilian control of the military provides an entertaining sideshow. I just hope they can get this thing settled before they start wheeling out the Manchurian Candidate references. I hate to see a veteran treated so shabbily.

"BUT I'M AMERICA'S MAYOR!" "AND WE SALUTE YOU FOR IT. DON'T COME BACK, NOW." It wasn't supposed to go down like this. People had been talking about a Giuliani Presidency since shortly after the September 11 attacks. After the 2004 elections he was the Republican front-runner, and remained in that position until December of this year, when it all went to shit.

What happened? Captain Ed Morrissey blames the media. Others talk about his insufficient obeisance to the GOP's social conservatives -- though the former Mayor had tacked far enough right to gain the endorsement of Pat Robertson. Poor campaign planning, the dwindling of 9/11 as an emotional touchstone, and other excuses are being rolled out at this writing.

Few mention the most obvious factor. Since the first Presidential debate in May, voters have been getting to know the candidates. They've been on TV non-stop, often speaking directly to cameras. And citizens who till then had a vague, patriotic memory of America's Mayor somberly handling the grim duties of that extraordinary time now saw a different person entirely.

They saw a former prosecutor who had never been lauded for his people skills, who had been elected twice as New York Mayor only because his toughness was perceived to be the harsh medicine the beleaguered City needed. But no one was looking for harsh medicine now, and without squeegee men or collapsing towers to justify him to the moment, Giuliani had to sell himself on the going terms. Republicans had swooned for the Great Communicator and the Compassionate Conservative, but here was a short bald man dressed like a successful banker and grinning. They had seen little of that grin in September 2001, and maybe a flash or two on a talk show since. Now they were accosted by it on an almost daily basis and, having the ordinary perceptual skills of human beings, they may have recognized it as the smile of someone who doesn't actually like people.

And he didn't have to be smiling to convey that impression. Giuliani talked about immigration and the economy and health care as if they were things he could bat into shape the way he batted Gotham into shape. He constantly reminded us that he wasn't pandering, as if that weren't obvious.

It is often counted it a deficiency in our politics that voters rely on personal impressions when they choose a President. Maybe we do cut too much slack for the candidate we would, as the saying goes, like to have a beer with. On the other hand, if we perceive that a candidate would happily confiscate our beer and jail us for violating the Open Container Law, it would just be common sense to deny him our support.

UPDATE. Some alicublog commenters saw it coming on more mundane terms. "I long ago predicted," says cleter, "that I wasn't sure who was going to win Iowa or South Carolina, but I was pretty sure it wouldn't be the pro-choice, pro-gay, thrice-married New Yorker. And the New Yorker wasn't going to beat the guy from Massachussetts in New Hampshire. I should be on one of the gas-bag pundit shows! My pundit powers are awesome!"

I submit that nearly any alicublog commenter removed to such a milieu would immediately cause traditional talking heads to unionize and declare reality an unsafe work environment.

SAVOR THE MOMENT. McCain takes Florida, and the National Review folks try to make lemonMcCade. "'Nominee presumptive John McCa.....' Sorry, I can't say it. Not yet," weeps Michael Graham. "So it is over. Finished. In November, we'll be sending out our most liberal, least trustworthy candidate vs. to take on Hillary Clinton—perhaps not more liberal than Barack Obama, but certainly far less trustworthy... I'm off to climb into a bottle of Bushmill's." At last, something we can agree on!

"I'll shut up after this post," says Kathryn Jean Romney, "but Romney has been ON since Michigan. It may prove — it may have been proven tonight — to be too late. But this guy speaking right now, is hitting important issues, making you feel good about America, as you should..." There's some sad things known to man, but there ain't too much sadder than -- oh, what am I saying, she's hilarious. Love ya, K-Lo.

"McCain's Reading from a TelePrompTer. And he probably shouldn't. It's a stilted read and makes him look old. He's much better off the cuff." This from Jonah Goldberg, showing his usual grasp of historical events.

"At least the Florida GOP race was won and lost discussing the issues," Mark Hemingway consoles himself. "By contrast the Democratic race — where everyone seems to be marching in lockstep when it comes to policy and the arguments are superficial — seems to have an even nastier edge, especially now that Bill Clinton has injected Obama's race into the debate." This from a man who once said, "If I were John McCain right now, I would strut straight across the Senate floor and kick [Tom] Harkin in his grandfatherly crotch."

Ramesh Ponnuru is spinning hopeful analogical scatagories: "Kemp replaces Gramm/Romney, du Pont is Forbes/Giuliani albeit from Delaware instead of New York, Robertson is Buchanan/Huckabee, and Bush is Dole/McCain." Did you know that Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln, and Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy?

Mark Steyn, currently under Canadian fatwa, is naturally inclined toward more dire fantasizing: "Tonight was a big win for illegal-immigration amnesty, remorseless socialization of health care, and big-government solutions to global warming... If McCain wins in November, he'll be eager to show he can 'work' with a Democratic Congress. If Hill wins, she'll want to make a mark, fast. And, if it's Barack, ditto with bells on. A bipartisan consensus committed to change you can believe in." Well, if the frostbacks put him in prison, he'll have his imagination to keep him warm.

The one thing that would have made it perfect is a Giuliani withdrawal. Alas, he's procrastinating:

Although Giuliani did not say he was quitting Tuesday night, he drifted into the past tense during his concession speech to more than 100 supporters in a half-filled hotel ballroom in Orlando.

"Leaders dream of a better future and then they help to bring it into a reality," he said. "That capability of leadership doesn't end with a single campaign. If you believe in a cause, it goes on and you continue to fight for it."

That's still pretty sweet. I'll return to the subject after Rudy! has done the Long Goodbye in front of Ground Zero, surrounded by bagpipers playing "Amazing Grace" and editorial assistants promoting his next book, Losership.

We must take our pleasures where we can, friends: in a few weeks they'll all have remembered that McCain is a War Hero and a better human being than that Bitch/Black Guy.

UPDATE. Megan McArdle: "Giuliani concedes. The bit of the speech I saw was classy. Like most New Yorkers, I kind of think he's a maniac, but I was touched." Yeah, tonight just gets better and better.

BLOOD SIMPLE. There Will Be Blood may be the strangest Best Picture Oscar nominee since -- well, ever. Like the Oscar-nominated oddballs The Elephant Man and The Piano, it's soaked in enough rich period detail to satisfy Ismael Merchant, but it takes a relentlessly eccentric approach to storytelling -- it fact, the plot (independent oilman Daniel Plainview scraps out a big claim in turn-of-the-century California) is more like a private agony writ huge. John DeFore astutely calls it "both an epic and a miniature" -- though it has a great scope of events and scale of ambition, only a few of the characters matter, and actually maybe only one of them really does. And we barely get to know him, because there is not that much to know.

Plainview is all ambition -- "I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people." Of course we may expect such a creature to attract unsought obstacles. The biggest of these is Eli Sunday, a deranged charismatic preacher whose father's oil-rich land Plainview has swindled for himself. Plainview could buy Sunday off with a small show of respect, but this he refuses to give.

Why? We suspect that Plainview sees something like God in Sunday, and though it is little spoken of, we have reason to believe that for Plainview God is the force that seeks to thwart him: that kills his men, blows up his wells, broke his leg. (Here be spoilers.)

Sunday seems to believe the same thing. But though they are locked in struggle, the two men don't have the same ends. Plainview wants dominion over the earth, Sunday dominion over men. (Later, we'll see that each wants a little of the other, too.) When circumstances give Sunday an opportunity to kill Plainview's plans, he doesn't do it -- he prefers to use it to torture Plainview at his weak point, his anguish at "abandoning" his adopted son, and thus exact a more personal revenge that exalts his own power to save souls.

Plainview submits to save his claim. The oil flows, the fortune is made.... but There Will Be Blood.

This leads to an ending many critics find problematic. I disagree. It's formally audacious, but the whole film has been that -- this is just a new, shocking type of audacity. Suddenly it's years later, we're in a little room, and under bright lights Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano (Plainview and Sunday) act their asses off in a chamber drama/cage match. And there's Blood!

I suspect the arguments over the ending have less to do with the tone shift than with an unease with the whole film that the mini-gotterdammerung ending throws into relief. For me, the ending satisfactorily fulfills the story. But what about that story?

In reducing it to its crucial elements, I fear I may have skewed the impact of the film as a whole. The struggle with Sunday is important, and that character is beautifully realized by Dano: full of mad energy in preaching and in rage (and reminiscent of a young Gene Wilder when his voice frantically scrapes the top of its register), but dazedly calm when the fit is not on him. His Biblical mood swings are an intriguing foil for Day-Lewis, who gives us a more clinical psychological reality, in which the madness appears in streaks suppressed by his drive to get the job done -- until there is nothing suppressing it at all.

I can't quite put my finger on when it becomes clear that Plainview is depraved. The madness of his drive is clear from the time he drags his shattered leg to the assayer's office rather than to a doctor. And even his first speech, to a community whose land he wishes to drill, shows us how strange he is. I have seen Day-Lewis' voice compared with John Huston's; my buddy Bob heard Jack Palance. I heard a man who is sure of himself but hiding something so deep that it has calcified his speech, albeit into pleasing patterns.

It's a good choice, as they say, and it affords Day-Lewis enough vocal headroom to play bravura when he needs to. But while his confrontations with Sunday are key, they are few, and the rest of the ample time leaves us with this man and the weaker characters, whom he can do nothing but negate.

When he is briefly drawn out by a visit by a putative "brother from another mother" (the excellent Kevin J. O'Connor), Plainview only relaxes enough to explicate his already obvious contempt for humanity -- and, in the end, his anger at being made to trust. The closest thing to a love-object in his life is his quasi-son, adopted in infancy from a dead comrade. Little "H.W." grows into an affectless, close-mouthed boy who shadows his father and seems to accept his guidance as love, until an accident leaves him deaf; then he begins to act out viciously, and Plainview sends him away. This leaves Plainview with an obvious psychic wound which Sunday exploits, and which drives him to extravagant anger at people he imagines would "tell me how to raise my family." But it is clear -- even when the boy returns and Plainview smothers him with affection -- that he realizes that he has given the child no real love at all, because he has none to give.

What Plainview has been hiding (until the end, when he has nothing left to hide) is an inability to empathize with any other human being. When we begin to understand this, the film achieves a kind of emotional stasis: we can have terror, terror in abundance, but no pity. Which is to say, we cannot have tragedy. So when the final release comes, it is pure grand guignol: a blood-letting battle of monsters.

For all the extravagant brilliance of his production (every craft aspect of which is stunning), Paul Thomas Anderson has been brutal about withholding the emotional release that such a big movie leads us to expect. It's a chilling sort of grandeur and I can understand why a lot of people find it repulsive. I can't imagine it will find a lot of love at the Oscars, even for Day-Lewis, whose performance peels the fucking paint off the walls. A Gordon Gekko may invite us to sneaking empathy with his lascivious cruelty, but Plainview gives no quarter and can expect none.

FOOD FIGHT. alicublog Editor Emeritus Martin Downs, not heard in these precincts for quite some time, is wasting his health reporting credentials (CBS HealthWatch, WebMD, Master of Public Health, Dartmouth) on a goddamn blog. A goddamn good blog, too, it is shaping up to be. In this post he tells us what's wrong with the latest "counterintuitive" OpEd at the New York Times:

Today, in a Times op-ed piece, "What’s Cholesterol Got to Do With It?" [Gary Taubes] explains one more way in which everything you think you know is wrong, and doctors are lying to you. Bad cholesterol (low density lipoprotein, or LDL) isn't bad, and neither is saturated fat. Bad lipoproteins are bad, and so is a certain kind of LDL cholesterol that's the "smallest and densest"...

...he writes, "Because medical authorities have always approached the cholesterol hypothesis as a public health issue, rather than as a scientific one, we’re repeatedly reminded that it shouldn’t be questioned."

But cholesterol, diet, and exercise are public health issues. Taubes' relentless mythbusting does nothing to help readers make informed choices about their health. It only serves, at best, to make people throw up their hands in frustration. Worse, the take-home message of the three articles I've mentioned amounts to, eat all the fat you want, don't waste your time exercising, and watching cholesterol is for simps.

I am more hesitant than Martin to criticize the placement. Like most of us semi-literate scriveners, I don't like to say someone shouldn't publish in the popular press just because he might be misunderstood. My free-speech fetish to one side, this sort of thing gives ammunition to the folks who think their intel is being suppressed.

But experience shows that Martin is right that most readers won't plug this new information into what has already been discovered about nutrition. It will become a ill-digested piece of folk wisdom that helps us defend to ourselves our decision to consume crap. Those doctors are all mixed up -- look, now they say bad cholesterol is good for you! Might's well have the Three-Quarter Pounder.

Recall the recent Scripps-Howard 9/11 polls showing that ordinary Americans are, in our info-rich era, yet prone to conspiracy theories. Evidence that contradicts or challenges conventional wisdom is to be welcomed, but let's not deceive ourselves that it will lead quickly to better-informed choices. In the short run, and maybe the medium run, we may expect increased cynicism and little else.

The best choice is better education, not just in health but in basic logic. I know, it's a faint hope. But I would like to attach this hobby-horse to that "change we can believe in" bandwagon that's going around.

CRUNCHY CONSERVATISM UPDATE. Rod Dreher contemplates the housing bubble, which of course makes him think about how much better off subjects of Islamic fundamentalism are than us post-Enlightenment heathens:

The Islamic nations -- yes, they've lived lives of relative poverty, misery and unfreedom. I wouldn't trade places with anyone living there, and neither would you. But. But, but, but. They will endure. Robert D. Kaplan saw this for himself, traveling from chaotic western Africa to Cairo. Both places are filled with very poor people, but Cairo, it had a lot more order than anarchic west Africa. The people there managed to live more humanly because of Islam. They had order, they had unity, they had purpose. Islam gave that to them. It also extracted a tremendous cost from them in terms of personal liberty. But they survive tough times. Islam tells them right from wrong, and as Charles Curtis has eloquently written on this blog in recent days, provides them with a sense of communality that is immensely powerful, and which we in the West can scarcely imagine.

Part of the fun of reading Dreher's blog is wondering when he will crack and prostrate himself before Allah. He's already changed religions a couple of times, so maybe he's had enough practice to abandon the Jesus cults entirely and back a winner.

I like living under this messy old pluralism we've got here, myself, but of course that's because I'm a fascist.

UPDATE. As usual, when I am away the comments outstrip the original post for raw intelligence and even elegant expression. I will only add that Gus' news is good on its face, but let us never underestimate the power of Shea to suddenly debilitate great players from elsewhere when they are wearing our uniform.

WHAT DO THE DRUMS SAY, JONATHAN? The recent contentiousness of the Democratic race has emboldened conservatives to hope that, should Clinton take the nomination, she will be abandoned in the fall by Obama supporters angry at her gutter tactics. Some of their operatives, though, are working the Obama beat, and to them falls the more difficult task of making that candidate look like a loser without making Clinton look like a winner. Jonathan V. Last of the Weekly Standard gamely suggests that Obama's South Carolina results were a little dark. "Obama received more identity-group solidarity than Clinton did, even among voters who think he may not be electable," he writes. "The Obama camp is desperate not to let this view of the campaign take hold." But Last sees the evidence:

The huge crowd his victory rally cheered wildly when one of the networks broadcast on the loudspeaker that Obama got 25 percent of the white vote. They began chanting "Race doesn't matter! Race doesn't matter!" A few second later, the campaign killed the TV feed and began pumping in gospel music. It's the first time I've heard them do that--normally they play a steady diet of hipster pop, heavy on the U-2 and KT Tunstall.

Ungawa! Later, in an update:

But what is troubling about tonight is that Obama was unwilling to tell people an obvious truth: that while white voters have supported him in great numbers (elsewhere, if not in South Carolina), black voters have so far been unwilling to support his white opponents. Again, that's not his fault; and it may not even mean anything significant.

But it surely means something that Obama was so bent on denying this fact that he turned his victory speech into an attempt to convince voters of something obviously untrue. One of Obama's frequent promises in his stump speech is that he is willing to tell voters hard truths, even if they don't want to hear it. That wasn't the case tonight.

Yeah, that's a great idea. Obama should have told them that. We may put this down under the general heading of More Advice from Your Mortal Enemies. And if Obama gets the nomination, we'll see some form of it resurrected, maybe under the heading Black Ops.

ARTS & LEGERDEMAIN. The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto remembers this time he got into a heckling match at the Bowery Poetry Club:

Heather and I sat down near the back of the small hall, and things soon took what I feared was a disastrous turn. The mistress of ceremonies, poet Daniela Gioseffi, opened the proceedings with a vulgar rant about Beltway politics -- specifically, her glee over the "fall" of Tom DeLay and Bill Frist, then the Republican congressional leaders. (Rep. DeLay had just been indicted, and Sen. Frist was under investigation for insider trading.)

This would place the action in the fall of 2005. I guess Taranto was saving this for his memoirs but got caught on a deadline.

It was then that I said I came to hear poetry, not politics -- although according to a contemporaneous account I emailed to a friend, I said it in a mutter rather than a shout. Evidently I muttered loudly enough to get Ms. Gioseffi's attention...

I've been to the Bowery Poetry Club, and I know that a mutter can't be heard from the "back of the small room." I also know that the Club has a bar, which may explain the misunderstanding.

Anyway Taranto, to hear Taranto tell it, sure told her. And he deduces that people don't read or listen to poetry anymore because "the world of poetry is so politicized as to exclude from its audience anyone with a distaste for tendentious left-wing ideology." To prove his point, he names other poets who... oh, wait, I can't find them; must be something wrong with my browser.

Slow culture-war day, I guess. But I can understand his point. I got food poisoning in a restaurant a few years ago, and have since then subsisted solely on military-issue MREs. Those damned germ warriors won't catch me twice!

Next week: Taranto recalls a long-ago visit to CBGB and predicts that "gobbing" will doom the commercial chances of punk rock.

JUNO THE ALONE. The Best Picture Oscar nominees have developed a twee-indie slot, filled in 2004 by Sideways (which I considered here); last year by Little Miss Sunshine, which I admired with qualifications; and now by Juno. The hallmarks are high quirk, small scale, and some intellectual flourishes which mark them as upscale entertainments.

Juno goes a little further than its predecessors. For one thing, the twee is laid on with a trowel. The Kimya Dawson soundtrack assures more toothache than heartbreak (though I really hope she goes to the Oscars dressed like a bumblebee or something), and the Wes Andersonian sidebars and psuedo-naive animations indicate that Academy voters are finally warming to New Cool.

Certainly having a pregnant teen who isn't a beaten-down victim and in fact appears in control of her situation is a new one; Sharon Curley had great spunk in The Snapper, but she was grounded in an old-fashioned working-class reality and reacted to it, whereas our current heroine is exceptional in nearly every way and brushes off the social implications of her act as nuisances. She's as much a goddess as her namesake, and such social comedy as Juno provides is based on her and her family's steadfast indifference to other people's expectations. Her frank talk at the Lorings' -- "Maker's Mark, please" (flashes thumb) "Up" -- is funny enough that the other characters barely need to react. Despite some commentary we've heard about the movie, this very successfully removes society as a factor in her journey: her mission to deliver the baby to the appropriate couple is not a social policy decision but pure self-assertion by a precocious 16-year-old who trusts her own instincts completely.

It's to Juno's credit that she finally encounters disappointment in an unexpected way, handles it in a manner consonant with her character, and changes her mind about something important. (Spoiler alert.) When the couple she's picked don't live up to her expectations, she takes (private) time to absorb the loss, and gives the baby to the now-single woman she knows will care for it. If one were to try and put a message on it, it would look more like a plea for single motherhood in a world of inadequate males, and very much beside the point.

The mind-changing is dramatically interesting. (You still reading? I'm still spoiling.) Juno's most important relationship, on the story's terms, is with Bleeker, her best friend and father of her child. If her pregnancy isn't a significant problem for her in any other way -- her friends and parents are accepting, other people don't count, and the destiny her great intelligence and confidence indicate for her seems totally unaffected -- it's the sticking point between her and him. She shields Bleeker from the consequences as an act of love, but this has the effect of pushing him away, and -- classic turnaround! -- dim as he is in many way, Bleeker understands it better than she does. In fact, she doesn't have a clue, even when he tells her, and only the breakup of the Lorings brings her to the conclusion that Bleeker is important to her, not as the father but as the boy she was meant to be with.

If this sounds sentimental, that's because it is. Juno's pregnancy is a McGuffin that complicates her unconscious search for romantic love. Once this sinks in, the movie suddenly feels very slight. Though the tart, teenspeak dialogue and unusual premise make Juno feel hip and wised-up, Juno's gynecological coming-of-age basically leads to a life-lesson straight out of an after-school special. Through most of Juno -- and especially during the development of the troublesome relationship of Juno and Mark Loring -- we expect that the flip tone and emotional distancing of the characters are covering for something deeper. But as it turns out, not so much: everyone's a child, and not much capable of growth. Juno's final discussion with her father (which, significantly, she ends by deceiving him) and her profession of love to Bleeker return us right back to the breezy place where we started, only now Juno and Bleeker are for-reals gf and bf, playing emo bullshit on acoustic guitars. It's kind of a relief, but not a revelation.

Revelation's a lot to ask, though, so let us be content with the excellencies Juno offers. The dialogue really is snappy, and the actors sell it beautifully. It probably says something that the fine supporting cast is mostly from prestige TV shows: they have a great feel for lines that might have choked actors who aren't used to thinking fast. (I'm especially fond of Michael Cera and hope he gets the film career fate has perversely denied that other talented skinny-boy Topher Grace.) Ellen Page so dominates as Juno that I really suspect the movie wouldn't work at all without her. I haven't seen the other nominees but I wouldn't be shocked if she won the Oscar because her performance is so clearly indispensable. She's got the genius-child bull-headedness, and the charm to make us like it.

THE VIRTUES OF HYPOCRISY. Beliefnet's Rod Dreher starts out saying "there's something ...not quite there when conservatives who don't have families give advice and commentary on family-related issues." He tells us how a "conservative acquaintance... explained that the experience of raising kids, especially the one who suffers so much, has made him far less willing to pass judgment on other parents."

You know the drill. After several paragraphs Dreher executes a McArdle Maneuver and ends up talking about murderous teens who won't do their homework and "self-centered, couldn't-give-a-s**t parents." (He also says that having children "made me less quick to judge others harshly.")

Dreher's apparently in a mood to advise his fellow conservative commentators on lifestyle choices. Some days earlier, he told them to leave "Leave the NYC-DC Bubble":

I wonder if The American Spectator would be better off moving back to Bloomington, Indiana. I wonder how different National Review would be if it kept its DC bureau, but relocated its offices to Dallas or Atlanta. Similarly with the Weekly Standard. And so forth. For one thing, there would be much greater attention paid to culture, and less to policy and pure politics.

More attention to culture? Didn't he see Jonah Goldberg's review of Cloverfield? (Spoiler alert: it's about 9/11, "a message worth pondering.")

We've been over this before. Pleasing as is the prospect of Goldberg spending his lunch breaks at the Cracker Barrel in Fritters, Alabama, there's no reason for rightwing columnists to walk the walk. They're big idea men; they have read Hayek and Bloom and Coulter. It is for the lumpen to follow their social prescriptions, while the Smart Ones ponder welfare policy over phyllo-wrapped salmon at Persephone.

It would be easy to twit them for hypocrisy, but let us say this for them: they want others to think as they think, but draw the line at demanding that they live as they live. Dreher wants them not only to think as he thinks -- insofar as they can follow that snaking stream of half-baked ideas -- but also to live as he lives: religiously, away from major cities, with kids, organic food and compost heaps. He's the sort who will worry over "what American conservatism has become," and in the very next post worry over those who are "policing conservatism from within." And he thinks he's being non-judgmental. Some kinds of hypocrisy really are worse than others.

WITH GOD'S HELP, MY LAST CLINTON DERANGEMENT SYNDROME POST*. Back on January 4, when some people thought Hillary Clinton was cooked, National Review's Lisa Shiffren mourned:

Deep in my psyche, in the place that kind of misses the toothache I've been prodding at with my tongue, I am having a tiny little pang of missing Hillary. Not her, but hating her. Hating Hillary has been such a central political impulse for so long now — 15 years... I don't really know what I will do with that newly freed strand of energy.

She needn't have worried. Here she is today:

It is bad enough that the first serious female candidate for the world's most powerful office got where she is (as of now that is the U.S. Senate), by dint of her marriage, and not a career of ever more responsible political officeholding. It is bad enough that we all must work overtime not to dwell on the deal with the devil that constitutes her marriage to the former president: specifically, that she overlook a lifetime of unbridled public infidelity — in return for power.

Hate will find a way. Oh, and there's this:

And really, for all those feminists out there — and I know this is the wrong website for that audience, but I wouldn't be allowed to write at one that reached those women...

For similar reasons, I wouldn't be allowed to write for the National Review, but I will here advise Schiffren and her fellow sufferers: I don't support Hillary Clinton, but when you call her marriage a "deal with the devil" simple chivalry warms me toward her. In fact, crap like this constituted no small part of my rather sentimental decision to vote for her when she ran for the Senate. I suspect I'm not the only one -- and that's part of what she's counting on now. If you're really serious about shutting her down, you might try breaking the cycle of violence from your own end.

* 'til February or thereabouts.

OCCUPATION. Though I'm an old film nerd, there are a lot of esteemed directors whose works I've completely missed. I'm a little ashamed of it, but I must admit now that I was unfamiliar with Jean-Pierre Melville before tonight, because I've just seen Army of Shadows and can't contain myself.

As you might expect from a film about a French Resistance crew, it is one harrowing, nerve-tearing incident after another. There is no attempt to frame them with an overarching narrative; the men (and one woman) do their jobs, get caught or fail to get caught or escape. Between the exploits there is a patient attention to everyday activity that sustains the tension; when you are fucking with the Nazis, just eating a meal or walking down the street is a prelude to more terror. And the actors observable carry the weight of their occupation, in both senses, at every moment, and their seriousness doesn't get tiresome because it is palpably appropriate. What they're doing is heroic, but there is no lingering over that for effect, and when someone gets emotional it has to be tamped down for the good of the cause. (We get a clue that this will be the method at the beginning, when our hero coolly endures some chatter from a jolly Vichy gendarme. Later, the clasping of a hand is allowed to linger, under extraordinary circumstances, but that too must be put aside.)

Though the heroes are out of uniform, this is one of the best war movies I've ever seen. The two top Resisters' visit to London, where they meet DeGaulle and endure a blitz (and the central character, Gerbier, hitches a ride back to France with the RAF and makes his first parachute jump) gives a sense of the wider conflict within which they operate. This is war seen from deep inside, where the planning is endless and everything can go wrong and one can no longer be interested in what came before or hope too much for what may come afterward. "Struggle" and "conflict" are not conveyed by gritted teeth and flexed muscles but by silent attentiveness to opportunity and the occasional run for freedom or quick, bloody strike (and, in one hair-raising case, the dilemma of killing a man without disturbing the neighbors). The clarity is bracing. It makes Saving Private Ryan look like a soap opera.

I want to see more Melville soon, though my accursed taste for contemporaneity may postpone that so I can see a few more of this year's probably-shitty Oscar nominees.

GENERAL DERANGEMENT SYDROME. In Britain, "a story based on the Three Little Pigs fairy tale has been turned by a government agency's awards panel as the subject matter could offend Muslims." You can guess how I feel about it, and I can probably guess how you feel about it.

You may also guess how James Lileks feels about it too, but with him you can never guess far enough. He interrupts his rant to make this observation:

All the brave people waiting for things to get really bad so they can put on their V for Vendetta masks and upload YouTube videos of themselves writing graffiti on stop signs will roll their eyes and shrug their shoulders at this, because A) it’s just more wingnut hyperventilation, B) the people who get exercised have a deeper agenda, which probably involves deportation and gas chambers, and C) it’s just pigs, man...

Dig hard into your memory banks, lefty friends, and see how many people you can recall meeting who remotely match this description. They may safely be said to barely exist. I'm sure Lileks knows this, but he isn't really talking about these near-imaginary people. He's talking about you and me. Because we didn't wake up the morning and say, "I must protect America from this dhimmitude." You and I are not being criticized for our imagined support of the idiots on the children's book award committee, but for not caring so much about foreign idiocy as about the local variety. Which makes us graffitists who use beatnik slang.

We might call this the McArdle Maneuver, or attach it to a law of wingnut nature: any argument against any outrage will inevitably expand to encompass their ancient grudges, regardless of relevance.

Someone should clue Lileks et alia that the repetitive use of non sequiturs doesn't make them Cato, it makes them incoherent.

TRIBUTE. Heath Ledger was a very good actor and I'm sorry he's gone. Looking back, I see that in my review of Brokeback Mountain I didn't speak on his performance. His vocal characterization reminded me, strangely, of Brian Keith in another movie with a gay theme, Reflections in a Golden Eye, when his Langdon was drunkenly muttering about the departed Anacleto. Langdon was openly contemptuous of the houseboy's feminine manner, but in his cups -- and in the presence of his good buddy and screamingly obvious closet case Penderton -- he rumbled and mumbled and moped over Anacleto's "dancin' on his toes."

Keith's Langdon was wrestling with man-attraction, though at a remove; Ledger's Ennis had no remove. He was simple, and love took him like a plague. The way Ledger played him, I got the feeling that if Ennis had loved a woman instead life would still have been hard for him, but loving Jack made it impossible. Still, he had love and kept it, and though his eyes receded they never became angry, watchful slits that dared the world away; they were warm and full of hurt and confusion, and even attracted affection, disastrously. A large part of the sorrow of watching the movie is expecting Ennis to adapt and realizing that he can't.

The words and directing carry a lot but it's the acting that makes the sale. Actors don't just portray, they also imagine, and under any great performance is always a humane conception that makes the display of skill worth attending. Whatever pain was particular to Heath Ledger, on screen the pain was all Ennis'. We should be grateful to have this fine example of the player's art by which to remember him.

WATCHING THE PROS WORK. Andrew Sullivan:

It really is time to acknowledge that Clinton is running for a third term - in flagrant violation of the 22d Amendment.

Gasp! Can we pre-impeach him? Meanwhile a humorous Onion article spurs one of the Protein Wisdom crew to deep thought:

However, in the past, comedians targeted Bill’s inability to keep his pants on in the workplace. This time the subjects are the implied co-presidency the Clintons offer and Bill’s honesty with respect to the political, rather than the personal. Those doing the mocking are not conservative talk show hosts, but left-leaning humorists. As previously noted, a psychological line may get crossed that permanently erodes — to some degree — the style of politics the Clintons made dominant in the 1990s.

You rarely see this sort of bipartisan spirit, let alone respect for "left-leaning humorists," at Protein Wisdom. In fact you rarely see it anywhere. Well, there was that period in '98 when every newsman was tracking Monica Lewinsky and every late-night comic was making cigar jokes. Great days, those. But it was Clinton who had the last laugh.

I hope someone other than Clinton gets the nomination, but in these early innings it is nostalgically pleasing to observe the continued potency of the Derangement Syndrome she and her husband engendered so many years ago.

HOW CAN THEY TELL? Fred Thompson has tottered off the national stage. His supporters are taking it hard. Kim du Toit, who once called Thompson "the man who’s going to get my vote in the primaries," now delivers this envoi: "Thanks for nothing. Good-bye, go back to Hollywood, and fuck you."

But most of the Fredheads alternate between mourning and belligerence. At RedState, where Ole Fred kinda sorta blogged, they are vacillating between the denial and bargaining stages. The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler says, "Now we get to decide which of the remaining horses we’re going to have to ride, if any." At Cold Fury Joe will still vote for Fred; Mike laments "Twilight in America," endorses a new American Conservative Party. Stephen Bainbridge wonders "whether there’s any one of the 4 [remaining GOP candidates] for whom it will be worth holding one’s nose and taking the plunge."

I expect they'll all come around when it's time to vote against Hitlery or that black guy. For now, let us remember the good times. Back when he was only a potential contender for the Presidency, Thompson sent conservative hearts aflutter by making videos like this one, in which he chewed a cigar and threatened Michael Moore with incarceration in a mental institution. How they loved the dazzling fantasy of that tough-talking D.A. from Law & Order stepping out of the idiot box to dispense rough justice to liberals. How Reaganesque it was!

Then he actually entered the race, and soon we were hearing about his "different kind of campaign" -- one in which he did little actual campaigning, or even filing to get on ballots. He was so somnolent on the stump that whenever he showed a flash of vitality, supporters lauded the event as if he were coming around from a long, debilitating illness.

Maybe he never really expected to get very far. Maybe the Thompson demi-campaign was only meant to raise his profile sufficiently to get him better TV gigs. Or maybe he thought all he had to do was show up, and the prize would be handed to him. For a certain kind of conservative, I guess that made him the ideal candidate.

THE PETER PRINCIPLE DIDN'T GO FAR ENOUGH. Early last year, in her much-covered "20/20 Bias" post, Megan McArdle began by announcing that she had been wrong about the war in Iraq, and then proceeded to explain why people who had been saying the war was a mistake all along were right for the wrong reasons, and were also in some way persecuting her:

This has not convinced me of the brilliance of the doves, because precisely none of the ones that I argued with predicted that things would go wrong in the way they did. If you get the right result, with the wrong mechanism, do you get credit for being right, or being lucky?...

What the doves would like to see the hawk's do--"I was wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong about everything, I am a stupid idiot, you are a brilliant figure with god-like omniscience"--is no better a guide to future decisionmaking than ignoring the fact that you were seriously wrong about the Iraq invasion.

This sort of work got McArdle a job with The Atlantic, where she has been writing a great deal lately about her diet, in which, her readers have learned, she will "only eat humanely raised meat" and has "virtually stopped eating bread." In this post she starts out talking about "a very real phenomenon: meat-eaters who are angry at you for not eating meat." She describes these unpleasant encounters, and says "Those who, like me, have made ethical choices about our diets that we haven't asked anyone else to emulate, find the aggressiveness of these encounters puzzling..."

By the end, you may have guessed, McArdle is lecturing vegetarians who are "hectoring" and "humorless jerks" and blaming them for making the meat-eaters mad at her. "You're not only annoying them," he says, "you're annoying me by proxy. Please stop."

If you think old-fashioned magazines are dying now, wait till the bloggers they've hired get through with them.

SHORTER JAMES LILEKS. I can't enjoy Hollywood films anymore because of their steady drumbeat of anti-Bush politics. I am speaking of course of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.