VEGAS: THE SWAG!

A packet of Advil (Thank fuck! This costs five bucks in the lobby), attached either accidentally or not to a flyer for the book The Enough Moment: Fighting to End Africa's Worst Human Rights Crimes by John Prendergast with Don Cheadle.

Street value: $0.50 or $5.00, depending.

Brochure for AAM (Alliance for American Manufacturing), which "brings together a select group of America's leading manufacturers and the United Steelworkers" to "promote creative policy solutions" of various sorts, all aimed at bettering the lot of the Working Man.

Street value: $0.00.

Brochure for the NEA. "If I were a Wall Street banker," says an adorable little kid, "would Congress listen to me?"

Street value: $0.00.

Flyer offering a "Netroots Special Offer" on "Blue State Digital's Online Tools" (i.e. web building for lefty activists).

Street value: 20 percent off, or, for most people, $0.00.

A notepad embellished with promo for the Union Jobs Clearinghouse, laying a palimpsest of "Putting People to Work Since 1997!" on your grocery lists, phone messages, etc.

Street value: $0.00.

Palmcards from barackobama.com, Emily's List, GLAAD, and Rock The Vote.

Street value: $0.00.

Confusing sticker for Arizona Senate candidate Randy Parraz, resembling a convention pass "authorized" by "Jan Brewer" and "approved" by "John McCain." I think it has something to do with immigration.

Street value: $0.00.

Perfectly clear "F*&#! THE RIGHT" (that means "fuck") sticker from fighttheright.com.

Street value: $0.00.

Flyer advertising AlterNet's Dangerous Brew: The Definitive Party Reader. Contributors do not include me.

Street value: $0.00.

Perhaps coincidentally, a bag of Lipton Tea embossed with Working America promo.

Street value: $0.50.

SEIU refrigerator magnets ("Grass Roots," "I am part of the," "Lesbian," "Diversity," "Hope," etc).

Street value: $0.00.

Button from American Manufacturing that says "Keep It Made in America."

Street value: $0.00.

CD from Mercer Street Records and the Enough Project, Raise Hope for Congo, with contributions from artists including Mos Def, Meshell Ndegeocello, Norah Jones, and Sheryl Crow ("My Name is Mwamaroyi").

Street value: $0.00.

Big book, Generation We: How Millenial Youth Are Taking Over America And Changing Our World Forever (and looking around the room, that's a message this crowd will be very happy to hear; the average attendee age is 13).

Street value: $1.00.

"Totally vegan" Bubble Genius soap bearing Netroots Nation logo.

Street value: $0.00.

Lifesavers from the Center for Constitutional Rights, marked "Don't Suck Up to Power."

Street value: $0.25.

The bag appears to be made out of natural fibers and earth-friendly.

VEGAS 2. Just hauled my ass across the baking highways -- actually a very nice cab driver dragged it; more on that in a minute -- and caught a little of Van Jones. He's pretty damn eloquent, and he believes in that hope stuff that's supposed to be, like, over. I am mostly impervious to this sort of thing, but in addition to being optimistic Jones is smart -- a rare combination! -- and breaks things down well. He said something in the interview segment about the Shirley Sherrod bullshit that jumped out at me; he compared it to his own situation, when he had to split the Obama Administration last year because of some untoward remarks. (He said he didn't want to be a "banana peel" for the President while he was trying to move health care.) He likened media assaults like hers and his to poison viruses and said "we don't have the antibodies yet" to process them: But he expects they will develop (though "in the short term it will be tougher, because there are financial incentives to be more shrill, to be more senational").:

If in fact five percent of the public have an experience like mine, lost their job because of something on Facebook or whatever... then it will stop, because enough people will have seen it and enough people will have had it happen to them or to a friend, that there will be a completely different level of wisdom that emerges in the culture and society... [If] you have confidence in your country, you have confidence that we will adapt as a culture to these changes in our technology.

He sort of makes it hard to be grumpy, but somehow I'm managing. It seemed to take forever to get out of Downtown (and cash money -- I've spent more on cabs than on gambling, or anything else). Also my room at the Rio isn't ready and I could already use a shower -- ask the lovely people I've attempted to engage in conversation! But my driver, a friendly old guy, diverted me with stories of his own life. He wanted to get out of Vegas, but family issues prevented it. He wasn't complaining, though; his mantra was, "I'm the same as anybody else." I took this for a tic at first, but the wisdom of it unfolded for me. I find I'm most unhappy when I walk through this world like a deposed prince looking for his lost kingdom. Maybe it's not just me, either. Maybe that's what the whole Vegas thing is about -- trying to get the universe to acknowledge that we are so Queen of the Slots or Lord of the Buffet or some damn thing -- and maybe that's why I'm not into it.

Oops, gotta get the gift bag before they run out!

VEGAS 1. This has been very interesting in its way. Flying in, I had a nice conversation with a young man who is an associate manager for a large retail chain. He is here to do inventory in one of the chain's outlets and then drive several hundred miles with his "team," as he does several times a month. He lives in Salt Lake City, and pays about 650 dollars a month to rent a nice house just outside of town. He likes the place, though he says there's not much to do there and the bars serve 3.2 beer. After five years of faithful service and first-place rankings in his category, he expects to be reassigned this fall to the Southeast, where he would only have to cover Georgia and South Carolina.

I liked the guy, though he operates under an entirely different set of assumptions than mine, and smelled slightly of poo.

I went to the Rio and found some of the Netroots people I'm supposed to work with, and had the usual problems relating. I lost them at one of the casinos, then came back downtown and wandered Fremont Street, taking in the garish light shows and buying a bunch of chips that I lost in games I didn't understand. Vegas, baby!

Tomorrow, some ground-level Netroots coverage.

UPDATE. I ain't even kidding. The ladies at the tables wielded that spatula thing like the devil flash-frying my soul. I thought I knew how to play Blackjack! Apparently there's more to it than I thought.

They were very nice about it, very professional. When I swung around to check, they weren't laughing out loud at me. Of course, in our age of technological marvels, they may well have been texting LOLs and OL DRUNK IZ DRUNK to each other.

STAY TUNED FOR ANOTHER HARD-HITTING EXPOSÉ. I'm leaving today for that Netroots thing. It is my fond hope to attend some panels there before ruining my own, and take some shitty pictures and provide regular dispatches here.

Not sure how it'll come out. For one thing, I've never been to Vegas before, so I may get distracted. In theory, I should be impervious to its charms; everything I've heard about the place reminds me of Times Square and the middle section of A.I., which is not my kind of scene. Plus I keep imagining douchebags in backwards baseball hats and designer sunglasses yelling "VEGAS, BABY!" and trying to ball cocktail waitresses. But who knows? I did move to Texas, so obviously I have some tolerance for massive vulgarity, and even Fred Flintstone succumbed to gambling fever.

Also, in group situations I sometimes don't mix as well as I might. From what little I know of them, Netroots people are positive, forward-looking progressive teenagers like Matthew Yglesias, who like to trade recipes for Valhalla and play with their foursquares and whatnot, whereas I am an old grump who drinks and sees in every glittering event the Fall of the House of Usher. So my entries may tend toward "Another door closed in my face, security called. Oh well, at least there's porn in my room!"

If you have any Vegas tips I'd appreciate them. I'm staying downtown tonight and on the Strip Friday and Saturday.

GIRL TALK. The Ole Perfesser's links to stuff about gender are always good for a laugh, even when they're not to posts by the Ole Dr. Mrs. This thing by one J. T. Ellison is no exception.

The title may have attracted the Perfesser -- "'The End of Men'? -- I May Have Married the Last Manly One" has that combination of whining and triumphalism that distinguishes modern conservatism. But there's plenty else to sink your gums into. Ellison tells us that, while her man is both butch and romantic, other men are "a bit too much in touch with their feminine side," hint hint. So far so Palin, and so what, but then, God help us, Ellison provides us with her own history of sex roles:

In the beginning, women had to be protected, because they were the only way to propagate the species. Since men can't nurse, the dynamic was born – men hunted, women tended the home fires...

The pattern that developed stood for a millennium, until the men started going a wee bit overboard and took away all of the rights of women as partners in a human world -- education, voting, you know, the little things.

Took away these rights? Maybe I was out sick for the week of Western Civ class where they told us how pre-modern women gained such rights. Tell me, was it in the medieval period? I bet the male peasants were pissed when they found out they were getting their rights second!

Anyway, women got these rights back somehow, but in the process got stuck with nancy boys. "I think it's safe to say the end of man began with the death of manners," sighs Ellison. What caused that? She doesn't say, but you won't be surprised to learn that women are to blame:

We're all in love with the idea of the perfect man, but when we find one -- that casual, smart, witty guy who's cool and somewhat reserved -- we toss him over in favor of a man who'll go shopping with us, who understands the difference between Louboutin and Choo.

Apparently it's the hag that makes the fag, not vice-versa. Oh, and:

The past few generations have been so busy worrying about Janie getting a fair shake that no one's bothering to teach either of the sexes proper manners.

Also to blame: Sex and The City. (Isn't it always?)

She ends with some uplift:

Real men do exist. They're out there. It's not too late. We can teach them how to treat us. They've shown themselves malleable.

Fellow guys, if your testosterone isn't sending you a Run Like Hell message at this point, I prescribe a few dozen raw oysters.

RACE, TO THE BOTTOM. The absurd hit piece "So Much For That 'Conversation' on Race" in Politico today -- in which the White House, having been caught out by the rageaholic race-baiting techniques of Andrew Breitbart, is criticized for racial insensitivity by Erick Erickson and Abigail Thernstrom, and Obama's record on helping black people is compared unfavorably to Bill Clinton's -- shows just how it works:

• Right-wingers gin up a controversy allegedly proving that the Obama Administration is anti-white;
• Obama, rather than telling them to kiss his black ass, bends over backwards to accommodate them;
• The establishment tut-tuts over Obama's incompetence while the wingnuts go looking for more Black Panthers to scream about.

I don't make Obama for a wimp, so I assume he doesn't tell them to kiss his black ass because he's taken the measure of white insecurity and decided the nation just couldn't take it if he did. I have to admire his restraint. In his place I'd be running around with a torch yelling "Ungawa."

UPDATE. In comments, Hunger Tallest Palin breaks it down: "'And so with great sorrow, I must conclude n!gger n!gger n!gger!'" See also.

UPDATE 2. The method its further exemplified at Gawker, where commenters pull hoary routines like "As a Democrat who voted for Obama... under the bus," and suggesting we avenge Shirley Sherrod by voting Republican.

UPDATE 3: Oh Jesus -- Shorter The Anchoress: May the good Lord show Sister Sherrod the error of her ways and get her to renounce the NAACP, hallelujah!

Wonder if she's seen this?

ANNALS OF LIBERTARIANISM, PART 636,888. Judge Andrew Napolitano had libertarian pitchmen John Stossel, Virginia Postrel, and Nick Gillespie on Fox yesterday. There's a tape, but let me save you some agony:

Postrel said that because "you have to have 51 percent to govern," she encourages libertarians to make alliances with the Big Gummit parties (though she makes it clear that the Democrats are not a real option -- "I would even like to see libertarians in the Democratic party if the Democrats will let them in," haw haw) because "I want libertarians to have a seat at the table." She explained the utility of this:

So, for example, during the Clinton Administration, not a libertarian administration to say the least [laughter] but because during that period the internet first became a big public issue, and a lot of the people who were involved with high tech were kind of Democrat leaning but libertarian oriented people, that made a big difference.

She doesn't say how these techies' libertarian orientation made a big difference, especially since such people went on to donate massively to the statist Obama campaign and continue to contribute to Democrats. Maybe Postrel looked into their souls and divined that, the next time something like ARPANET comes along, they'll join her in denouncing the egregious waste of taxpayer dollars.

Gillespie referred to polls "showing that about 60 percent of people say they want a government that provides fewer services but spends less money," thus "the financial crisis is clarifying a lot of things for people, and they're understanding that government is not the limit to what you can do with your life..." The coordinating conjunction seemed weird, so I checked around and this was the closest thing I could find:

Specifically, according to a June 11-13 USA Today/Gallup poll, 60% of Americans say they would favor "additional government spending to create jobs and stimulate the economy.

Who knows, maybe he meant a poll conducted among citizens with tricorners and Gadsden flags which has been censored by Journolist etc.

Napolitano asked Gillespie why libertarianism is "suddenly in vogue" and -- with a we-so-naughty chuckle --"why is it acceptable to have these conversations on national television." Rather than replying, "Because we're on Fox, duh," the Fonzie of Freedom explained that "politics is a lagging indicator of where American society and American culture is... what we're seeing I think is politics catching up to where America has been going for the past 20, 30 or more years." Unfortunately he did not cite as evidence the growing superstardom of Nick Gillespie, but he did manage this:

A key factor to libertarian ideas is the idea of choice, that you should be allowed to experiment with your own life, with groups, trying to come up with new ways of living. We've seen that massively in most of our lives.

And what relevant example sprang to his mind?

You can go to a Starbucks and get a million different coffee drinks. Everywhere you go you get more individualized service, better service, more responsive service, innovative service. I think what we're seeing is that finally politics, again a lagging indicator, is catching up to where America has been.

Makes ya proud, don't it? From a nation of shopkeepers to a nation of baristas -- serving freedom! And some people say libertarians lack poetry.

Also: John Stossel gives Napolitano and "Glenn Beck" credit for spreading the freedom doctrine.

AESTHETIC STALINIST TRAINING CAMP. I see the little Zhdanovites at National Review are tackling Mad Men. Say hello to the new kid, Charlotte Simmons Natasha Simons:

Mad Men has lost its way a bit; Weiner, wrapped up in adoring his main character and the intricacies of a period he wants to evaporate, has fallen into a quicksand trap, not wanting to move on, despite his obvious political loyalties to the ’60s generation.

When all you have is a dogma, etc. Unable to leave well enough alone, Daniel Foster offers a response, in which he says people watch the show to indulge in the "the gray flannel and sharkskin tones we've been trained to find so stultifying" -- trained by whom I can't imagine; art directors, who as we know are all communists, have been crazy for this shit for years -- and that the conservative mindset was beautifully expressed by Tony Soprano.

When he realizes all the exits are blocked, Foster engages in a more sophisticated form of Goldbergism, aka Le Phart:

But since I have no interest in re-adjudicating the battles of the 60s, I prefer to embrace this schizophrenia rather than posit it as the horns of an existential dilemma.

That kid seems built to miss the point, but he will never miss a meal.

SHORTER ROSS DOUTHAT: It's time for white reparations.

UPDATE. Aw Jeez, Holy Rod Dreher:

One workplace of mine was proud of its diversity, but it had, as far as I could tell, not a single Pentecostal working as a reporter or editor.

That's because it's hard to take notes when you're snake-handling.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP. This one's about the increasing similarity between rightbloggers and fringe figures like Alex Jones. The operatives are actually beginning to indulge the idea that the Democrats and the Republicans conspire to keep the sheeple down -- except, in their telling, it's actually mostly Democrats with a few RINOs collaborating, and the solution is not real revolution but a GOP Congressional sweep.

I'm not sure who's supposed to be conned by this. Maybe it's not meant to sway any voters; maybe it's seeded in by the high command and targeted at the blogbrethren themselves. Think about those people -- the Sissy Willises, the Mark Noonans, and other such like. Can you imagine being daft enough to pump so much creativity and personal energy into anything so tawdry as a partisan political campaign -- and for free? Their engines must run very hot indeed, and it occurs to me that keeping such crackpots on board may be worth at least a line item in the Republican budget. They're annoying, but they're energetic, and God are they loyal.

UPDATE. The schtick seems to be taking hold. At National Review Daniel Foster grabs a poll that shows "Washington elites" feel differently about the recession than us ordinary Joes. Soon he'll be dressing up like Tom Joad and soliloquizing, "Maybe a fellow ain't got things of his own, just a little piece of the Permanent Things," and "Wherever there’s legislation so's corporations can evade responsibility for their crimes, I’ll be there," etc.

Others speak of the impending demise of the elites in grand promo copy: "What you’re sensing is the leading edge of a transformation more far reaching than the discovery of the usefulness of fire," raves Daily Pundit, "or the transition into agriculture, or the advent of industrialization." Or sliced bread! "Whether you call it the Singularity, or the technological revolution, or simply magic, the fact is that we are in a virtuous spiral upwards as regards to what we know, what we can learn, and what we can do." Sounds like someone just saw his first 3-D Pixar cartoon! He should go build castles in the clouds with Bill Whittle till it wears off.

STORY OF MY LIFE. The Voice blog on which I used to labor, Runnin' Scared, has won the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies' AltWeekly Award for Best Staff Blog. I feel like Moses at Pisgah, or Gloria Grahame at the end of In a Lonely Place. Congrats to my erstwhile colleagues.

THE FEAST OF UNREASON, PART II. Oh Jesus, Jonah Goldberg on Mel Gibson, today:

But I'm much less inclined to buy this conventional wisdom that he's a mainstream conservative of some kind.

Jonah Goldberg on Mel Gibson, 2004:

It's funny, we can go on for weeks in the Corner judging what various liberals and/or celebrities do and say without anyone saying "Why is that your business?" But, every now and then, if someone turns their attention on what a conservative icon does, we get the "who's buisness is it?" complaints...

I know he's stupefyingly lazy, but couldn't Goldberg at least look himself up?

THE FEAST OF UNREASON. Mel Gibson was beloved of wingnuts back when he was expressing his drama-queendom by torturing Jesus onscreen rather than by demanding that his girlfriend blow him before he burns the house down. Now that Gibson is a laughingstock, how do they react?

OK, [David] Brooks is working his way around to discussing Mel Gibson, but, by golly, it sounds like… well, Obama.

Earlier I gave Moe Lane credit for having "some sense of shame, or at least awareness of what others find shameful." I can't say that for Commentary's Jennifer Rubin, or for an increasing number of these people.

SHORTER CRAZY JESUS LADY: Mr. English Prime Minister, heed the advice of this drunken Irishwoman: Everyone in America hates Obama, because he's too much like a schoolteacher and not enough like a Rotary Club speaker. Also he doesn't love America! But you do! I know you do! Show us, and you can be our new daddy! I won't even say anything about your damn liberal policies until your polls start to slip, if only you will let me sit at your feet awhile. Why, from this angle you look like Reagan! [vomits]

PROJECTING IN WIDE-SCREEN AND 3-D. It's increasingly clear that minority rights remain a sore subject for conservatives, and that their present strategy is to insist that blacks, gays, and liberals are the real oppressors.

Yesterday I showed you an American Thinker genius who explained how liberals were using homosexuals to steal straight people's self-respect ("The primary pathway the Left currently uses to decouple childhood sexual development from self-individuation is the gay rights agenda"). But AT's kind of a clearing house for crazy, so let's turn our attention to the opinion of highly respectable libertarian Ilya Somin, expressed during yet another tedious discussion of the "liberaltarian" schtick:

Most liberals do not in fact agree with libertarians on civil liberties, the war on drugs, and gay rights... On gay rights, libertarians favor laissez-faire, while liberals tend to favor antidiscrimination laws that restrict the freedom of private organizations.

See, it looks like liberals advocate more for gay folks' rights than conservatives, but they favor getting those rights through legislation, which is anti-freedom by definition, rather than by the magic of the marketplace. Why, if liberals had their way, we might wind up with another abomination like the Civil Rights Act! Forbid it, Almighty Paul!

Meanwhile the Washington Times tells us celebrity black people Barack Obama and Eric Holder are the real racists --and they have proof! Dictionary proof!

By now, the default judgment about the Barack Obama-Eric H. Holder Jr. Justice Department is that it discriminates intentionally on the basis of race. By the precise definition used in the American Heritage dictionary, the department is racialist.

Plus they have tiles on the triple word score! The WashTimes also says that the DOJ allocates its resources differently now than it did under Bush, therefore the black people who took it over are favoring their own over Whitey. Basically it's the Reconstruction section of Birth of a Nation written in code.

I may have to come up with a new name for this increasingly popular sort of hallucinogenically bad pseudo-argument based on race panic. "Honkydelic," perhaps.

UPDATE. To be clear, reverse-discrimination complaints by privileged white people have been with us for a long, long time. But these are normally dull, unimaginative "how come they can say nigger and we can't" pro-formalisms. Conservatives are really riled about it now and, as the cited posts show, escalating to a new level of hilarity. A golden age, friends!

UPDATE 3. Right on time: Moe Lane of RedState says Sheila Jackson-Lee is the real racist; also, that she's stupid, and that having a majority-black district will reliably produce a stupid Representative. In Lane's defense he tried to disguise his point with lots of extra words, so he does have some sense of shame, or at least awareness of what others find shameful.

UPDATE 3. Also in comments, zuzu reminds us that under Bush the DOJ Civil Rights Division became a living tribute to Alan Bakke. And thanks Hunger Tallest Palin for the proofreading!

WE HAVE COME FOR YOUR CHILDISH ARGUMENT. While some conservatives are explaining how the NAACP are the real racists, others just carry on beating up gay people.

I told you last week about a new crop at American Thinker of alleged and amateur psychologists who sought to prove President Obama is nuts. This shrink squad is apparently a regular feature at that site.

For instance, now there's one "Andrew Foy, M.D." explaining "The Left's Psychological Assault on Independence." Doc Foy explains with charts and quotes from Hayek and Goldwater that liberals weaken their victims' wills with welfare, which "results in dependence (counterclockwise circle) and leads to the fiscal condition America now finds herself in." Foy prescribes voting Republican. No word whether this paper has been peer-reviewed, but I'm sure somewhere in the time-space continuum there's a gulag where it would go down a treat.

Astonishingly, Foy's is not the cream of the crop. That honor goes to "Bookworm," author of a monograph on how leftists are trying to faggot up your children.

At the outset Bookworm apologizes -- you can almost hear her professorial chuckle -- that her sex story will not have "voluptuous women in slinky, abbreviated clothes, or scantily clad men with rippling pecs and washboard abs." But if you're a culture warrior you might ejaculate anyway, as "this article focuses on the sordid, depressing, government-controlled side of human sexuality... from the viewpoint of a state intent upon gaining maximum control over that same individual." Insert your own Dominique Francon rape fantasy!

Back "before the 1980s, when the Judeo-Christian, Western tradition, though battered, was still ascendant," Bookworm tells us, patriots had the freedom to be straight. But then came the day of the government sex-slavers! Here the professor, perhaps hoping to soften up the crowd, denounces Islamic misogyny for several paragraphs before getting down to the real enemy:

What's interesting is that, because the Left expresses itself in terms of "freeing" people's sexuality, many people miss the fact that it is every bit as sexually controlling in its own way as Islam is.

Doesn't say why we would want to do this -- just plain evil, I suppose.

The practical problem for the Left when it tries to attack individuality as expressed through sexuality is the fact that a person's sense of an inviolate physical self develops quite early, during childhood...

The Left, therefore, needs to decouple self and body as early as possible in a person's development -- and it does this by bringing its own peculiar notions of sexuality into the realms of child-rearing and education.

Bookworm brings in as an example the 60s German pedophile ring on which Rod Dreher -- a kindred soul if ever there was one -- recently tried to blame the Catholic boy-fucking epidemic. Those guys were leftists, so they are connected by cords of wingnut ectoplasm to Obama's youthful acquaintance with Frank Marshall Davis, who wrote erotica and thus was also a child-rapist. And to what does this pervert magically connect?

The primary pathway the Left currently uses to decouple childhood sexual development from self-individuation is the gay rights agenda.

Can't get much plainer, can she? Which may be why she goes straight for the bigot disclaimer:

Many of us who believe that gays and lesbians should be free to pursue their personal lives free from discrimination...

Here I direct you to Bookworm's other writings on the topic, a quick skim of which will show that her primary feeling toward gay people, at least as publicly expressed, is hostility. (Here's a particularly fat slice of her loathing. Keywords: Gay Pride, "Piss Christ," "naked ugly boobs," "leather and chains." She might as well have written it under hypnosis.) And she especially wants them kept away from children:

Robin of Berkeley describes a group called "Gender Spectrum," which has the ostensible goal of allowing "transgender, gender bending, [and] gender nonconforming" children and teens to hang with each other and share their experiences. She rightly sees this not as an effort to promote tolerance, but as a way to make it "cool to dabble in polyamory and gender nonconformism," thereby "destroy[ing] the West by degrading traditional values."

We can laugh at this obvious lunatic, whose bubblin' crude is largely hidden from public view at a rightwing funny farm. I mean, it's not like she writes for the New York Post -- where Andrea Peyser today has a column about how a movie featuring a lesbian couple with children disgusts her and should, she is sure, disgust all decent people. Not that she's prejudiced, either. "Folks are happy with gays living together," she assures us. "But bringing children into the equation is a deal-breaker." Even if the equation is a movie.

Wow, glad this came after Pride Week -- it would have been a downer.

UPDATE. Edited for clarity, spelling.

UPDATE. Must commend D. Aristophanes' gloss in comments: "First we learned that lefties are the 'real' racists ... now it turns out that we're the 'real' sexists and sexual oppressors. I will not be surprised to learn soon that we're the real robber barons, evangelicals and Dick Cheney."

WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH AIRLINE PEANUTS THESE BLACK PEOPLE? The NAACP was mean to the Tea Party, so Tunku Varadarajan leaps to counter-attack. Perhaps he had already seen Sarah Palin's Facebook post explaining how the legacy of Ronald Reagan protects America from the racism of the NAACP, and figured he couldn't top that for gravitas. So he starts with a few jokes!

NAACP: Can we all agree that it stands for the National Association for the Advancement of Cynical Politics?

"Amirite?" was invented for material like this.

...can anyone deny that the “colored” part of the organization’s name is no longer preservative of anything that is at all meaningful?

Colored: Who the heck says that in the America of today, unless you’re a very, very old friend of the late highwayman (as in dedicated asphalt, not armed robbery) Robert C. Byrd? Which is why no member of this once-courageous black organization will spell out its full name. Everyone says, instead, “N-double A-CP”: To elongate the abbreviation is to expose oneself to derisive—or, worse, baffled—inquisition. (“Dad, Mom, what’s with the ‘colored’ thing?”)

Gotta admit, that's a novel approach. But he's obviously new to stand-up. He should have suggested alternatives, like the Funky Fresh Forum, or the National Association of Black People Who Admit Reagan Was Funky Fresh. Or maybe the Hitler Negroes. Depends on the crowd.

But anyway, what are they bitching about? As countless white rightwing panels on race have said time and again, these people are their own worst enemy:

If black Americans are suffering due to our current economic woes, Obama’s own policies are hardly helping them. The NAACP can’t bitch about “the Man” anymore because the Man is Obama.

See, Obama's like the crack peddler they reflexively defend out of sullen disrespect for Whitey. Yet they refuse to see it! Maybe more comedy gold will turn them around:

In fact, the Tea Party is a greater friend of black Americans, one might say, than the administration, and is much more representative of America than the NAACP. (There are many more black members of the Tea Party—however you define that movement—than there are, by definition, non-black members of the NAACP.)

The Tea Party has admittedly been a windfall to black conservatives, dozens of whom have found employment at their events. And now that they're fighting the NAACP, expect even more such job opportunities to open up! Just try to look cheerful at the auditions.

And that's about it as far as the carrot goes. Thereafter Varadarajan explains that the resolution will backfire on the NAACP and their precious Obama. Now, lest you think this is because America, as imagined by Varadarajan, will punish the head black guy for the statements of some other black guys, you couldn't be more wrong!

No, Varadarajan expects this result because Obama's complicity in the resolution is proven -- first, because Varadarajan feels it ("Let there be no doubt that nothing would have been tabled at this NAACP meeting without President Obama’s imprimatur"). Also, because Michelle Obama appeared before the group earlier, and though she talked about obesity, you know that somewhere in her jive was coded Kill Whitey language. Also, "Many in America already believe that she is a black militant in mufti, and her headlining of a gathering which cast the Tea Party as racist will have been noted by a good many ordinary, non-radical, middle-of-the-road Americans..."

OK, I take it back -- the guy actually is saying white America will punish Obama because some other black folks said somewhere else that a bunch of white people are racist, and that he approves of it.

I'm beginning to think that, having drummed Teddy Roosevelt out of the GOP, these guys will next go after Lincoln.

UPDATE. Thx proofreader for proofreading.

HOW BULLSHIT WORKS, PART 52,822. I see an anti-Obama billboard is in the news again. This one, in keeping with the state of our national discourse, compares Obama with Hitler and Lenin, generally drawing a funny-cuz-it's-true response from the conservative belligerati.

This brings to mind the previous political billboard cause celebre, a Bush "Miss Me Yet?" one in Wyoming, Minnesota (no, not in two states, in a town in Minnesota called Wyoming), which was alleged to have caused "lib fury," and was the occasion of many claims like this one that people across America "miss Bush, not because Bush was a great president but because he was better than Obama," though the billboard was financed by a group of businessmen rather than by a nationwide groundswell of children sending in their pennies to overthrow the tyrant via outdoor advertising.

It also reminds me of those Obama Joker posters that were also supposed to be a big deal, though they went up in very few actual physical locations -- they mostly manifested on the sidebars of wingnut websites, yet were also alleged to represent widespread popular hatred for the President.

I wonder if, during the 2006-2008 Democratic ascendancy, anyone thought to make billboards, placards, broadsides, flyers, palmcards, or anything like that suggesting that the Clinton years were preferable to the Bush era of national financial ruin. Probably not, because no one in their right mind would think such a puny stunt would get national press coverage.

Though if you even considered comparing Bush to Hitler, that merited a nice blast of Fox News outrage.

UPDATE. I knew this story could use some Jonah Goldberg and, bless him, he delivers.

Some folks are asking me what I think of the latest billboard controversy. At first I was under the impression from readers that it was Obama with a Hitler mustache. I think that sort of thing is awful and indefensible. But I misunderstood...

I don’t like this billboard either, and I don’t think the Iowa tea-party chapter behind it should have put it up. That said, it’s not as bad as Obama in a Hitler mustache...

Why doesn't Goldberg just claim he's made a Godwin densitometer out of a stapler, and post numbers that defend his otherwise incomprehensible assessments?

Extra points for Goldberg lauding the St. Louis Tea Party "for taking a higher road than the NAACP" by trying to sic the IRS on them.

VEGAS, ONE NIGHT ONLY! Forgive my not keeping up better. In the words of Toulain Vantrecs, I've been... ill. Since I've just disappointed you all so terribly, this is a good time to announce that I will appearing at this year's Netroots Nations in Vegas -- not, as I had hoped, performing my Tribute to Morty Gunty, Come On, Lady... I Laughed When You Came In, but on a panel that will include Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown and the Sadlynauts, Damon Poeter and Brad Reed.

This is a disaster waiting to happen. First of all, the topic of discussion, near as I can figure it, has to do with comedy and political blogging, a combination as propitious as bourbon and frogurt. Second, I know Reed and Poerter, or whatever they're calling themselves these days, and while they can be very funny in private conversation, you give them a soapbox and they'll start bellyaching about the "working man" like W.J. Bryan in a Chautauqua tent till even the union delegates have to retire in disgust. Also, and I believe this is no surprise to my regular readers, Reed is in the advanced stages of tertiary syphilis, and frequently not in his right mind.

I'm still not sure why they invited me -- it is well known among the shut-ins support group we call the blogosphere that I am both pathologically shy and a hardcore alcoholic, and when pushed into the spotlight have been known to self-medicate till both my personality and speech are so distorted that members of my own family fail to recognize me (though they may have just been pretending, out of embarrassment). So, though I would like to please, and have rehearsed several passages from the Toastmasters' Guide which my friends at Daisy Dukes say are sure-fire, I fear we're going to end up with something like this:



The panel was assembled by someone named Amanda Marcotte, who is originally from Texas. Women from there, I have learned, usually marry at age 15; yet Marcotte, 20 if she's a day, remains unwed and childless. (She recently moved to New York, where her condition is common and therefore less shameful.) She will be on the dais, and if I can form words I will make a point of asking her if she hasn't tried putting more effort into her makeup and acting less bossy.

HARVEY PEKAR. He was a professional curmudgeon who bragged, often aggressively, on his working-class roots ("One day I had to fight five guys") and "fucked up a great thing" with Letterman mainly because he couldn't stomach even the appearance of kissing ass. But make no mistake, Harvey Pekar was a poet. The American Splendor comics with which the recently deceased Pekar made his name are full of incidents and conversations that the rest of us might have found dull, or merely diverting, if we had viewed them without Pekar's illumination. As it was, he made even the mumbled how's-it-going talk from street corners and cafeterias sing.

I don't have any of them on hand, but I remember several American Splendor stories with pleasure. I'm thinking now of one episode in which Harvey runs into a bearded day-laborer buddy (I think Gary Dumm drew this) who tells him how he got a job by making it clear in the interview that "I don't give a shit." Even in real life the story would tickle you -- the laborer puts his feet on the interviewer's desk, looks him straight in the eye, and throws a match in the wastebasket, setting it on fire -- but Pekar and Dumm highlight many small unnecessary beauties in it that give it more than anecdotal life. For instance, the worker explains that he immediately quit the job -- "They wanted me to be a human screwdriver. Fuck that!" -- and makes a sharp chopping gesture which is emphasized in the comic by a motion line. The gesture pops for us probably like it did for Pekar when he was listening and watching, and tells us something about the character. (I still wonder about that guy. He wore old-fashioned glasses, and smoked a pipe.)

And so on, through fights at work, bad dates, cancer, talking to this guy he knows. The stories are pretty good, but it's the privileged moments that stick: The way Harvey plops Joyce's bag in the trunk and slams the hatch, the way his body twists when he yells at a co-worker (and how she calls him "sweetie" though she's totally pissed, which just makes him madder), or the way two girls look at each other when a co-worker tries to sell them pickled okra as a cure for lady problems. Sometimes it looks very proletarian -- after all, his was a working life, and even his artist subjects tended to live in squalor -- and we may be grateful that someone was making art out of the sort of world most of us live in, full of bills and bosses and disorder, rather than the upper-class fantasies most pop crap revolves around. But the joy is not only that he noticed them, but also that his ear and eye exalted them.

The Robert Crumb collaborations usually led, as one might imagine, to more Zen results (like the hospital vignettes: "Bitch, you bettah help me!" "Mister, you keep talking to people like that, you're gonna have a haa-aard way to go!"), which just point up Pekar's gift for detail. Crumb, who can be very astute about these things, said Pekar's work could be "so staggeringly mundane it verges on the exotic," which is only almost right, because the mundane is exotic, always, if you know how to look at it. Pekar knew.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP. It's a post-mortem of the wacky conservative World Cup coverage -- from the imputations of anti-Americanism against soccer itself, to the pathetic insistences by rightwing nerdlings like John J. Miller that it was okay to watch the World Cup so long as you had your magic red-white-and-blue glasses on.

It's all good, or wretched, depending on how you look at it, but do spare a moment for the horrifying Matt Labash article I used as a framing device, "Living Like A Liberal." Labash strenuously imitates the style of P.J. O'Rourke, which should offend the sensibilities of anyone who has not been on cocaine and Reaganism continuously since 1980, and which I thought even conservatives had given up. Does anyone still think this "I shit in your rainforest! Hey, I was just 'letting it all hang out!'" crap is satire? O'Rourke always struck me as a transparently fake young fogey in the manner of R. Emmett Tyrell, buying the affection of older investors with spats, cravats, and unapologetic reactionary cant which at its most cruel probably looked to them like jokes, especially considering all the cocaine.

While I also find more recent rightwing schtick such as The Mildly Concerned Ivy League Grad annoying, it has at least the saving grace of novelty. I had assumed that O'Rourke impersonators would be as rare as Gonzos manques by now. Alas, there's at least one of 'em left to be stamped out.

Also, Labash thinks Bowling Alone is a liberal bible, and that people who prefer actual maple syrup to Aunt Jemima are just being contrary. I don't know if you can even sell that one in the cowtowns anymore.

NOBODY KNOWS THE TROUBLE SHE'S SEEN. Yeah, we have been a little content-light here, haven't we? OK, let's do a Sunday post. Culture war? Why not, it's a popular favorite.

Darleen Click gets mad at Joel Stein for some mild jokes about Indians (the subcontinental kind, not the Native-American kind):

Imagine if this appeared in National Review written by Jonah Goldberg... Of course, this is Joel Stein in Time so any attention by the MSM to this rather bizarre “humor piece” is even less than Clinton’s defense of Kleagle Byrd.

Goddamn librul racists! Stein is called out by Kal Penn, whom Click says "strikes the appropriate sacastic response" before remembering that Penn is the former Associate Director of the Obama White House Office of Public Engagement, and thus a racist, too, by definition. Rewriting being against the rules at Protein Wisdom, Click just forges ahead:

Penn doesn’t quite get it. Leftists get a pass when it comes to engaging in racist stereotypes because their motivations are always pure. Non-leftists are never motivated by anything but the most base of hatreds.

If only Penn had said that -- or even Ramesh Ponurru! But they didn't, so the job of explaining liberal racism falls to Click. Sigh. Why don't minorities appreciate how hard conservatives are working for them?

THE CONSERVATIVE REVIVAL, PART 43,899. At The Corner, Mike Potemra thinks he's seen another sign of American revival:

I had no idea, until seeing this commercial, that there was a roller-derby league centered in Manhattan. I went online to see when the next match was; turns out it’s Saturday night at the Hunter College gym. Tickets, unfortunately, are sold out. You read that correctly: The Saturday-night roller-derby match is sold out, in 2010, on the Upper East Side. The limits of the possible are changing in this country, continually, and not just in politics. If you stop and think about it, every day should be the Fourth of July.

No one warned this poor dork that the Gotham Girls roller derby shows, which I had the pleasure of watching last year, are more modern, punk rock, and girl-powerish than your average conservative culture cop could countenance. "This probably isn't a family-friendly entertainment," warns comrade Daniel Foster. "... the girls of the league have handles like 'Surly Temple' and 'Angela Slamsbury.'" (This is where Mom drops the meatloaf and Dad angrily rustles his newspaper.)

Foster also quotes from his own coverage of Gotham Girls as "a cub reporter writing arts & culture for a New York weekly," in which role he observed,

At what point did Gen-X’s fervent commitment to irony become indistinguishable from Gen-Y’s earnest enjoyment of kitsch?

You can see why National Review snapped this guy up.

Comrade Potemra is on the spot: Admit doubleplusungoodness, or attempt to defend the aggressively-named warrior princesses? He takes the coward's way out:

You mentioned both irony and kitsch; maybe roller derby succeeds in working at different levels simultaneously? And, come to think of it, maybe it always did? Quite coincidentally, I was reading yesterday a Franciscan religious tract from 1951...

Go ahead and read it all if you dare, but I warn you: it's the sort of thing at which even Ross Douthat might throw up his hands and cry, "Oh barf."

I wonder which of these boy geniuses will be the first to write about how hypocritical it is that he was refused admittance to a lesbian bar.

ALL CLASS. NYT:

Whether it is their residence, a second home or a house bought as an investment, the rich have stopped paying the mortgage at a rate that greatly exceeds the rest of the population.

More than one in seven homeowners with loans in excess of a million dollars are seriously delinquent, according to data compiled for The New York Times by the real estate analytics firm CoreLogic.

By contrast, homeowners with less lavish housing are much more likely to keep writing checks to their lender. About one in 12 mortgages below the million-dollar mark is delinquent.

But I thought ACORN was to blame. You mean the biggest culprits are actually rich white people?

Somebody tell the Tea Party guys -- I'm sure they'll readjust their outrage accordingly.

SHOOT-OUT AT THE FANTASY FACTORY. You may have been wondering what that crazy bastard Bill Whittle's been up to lately. Around the time we first heard of him, Whittle was trying to build a city in the sky. That didn't pan out, and he retreated to making lunatic videos for PJM.

But now -- with trumpets from The Ole Perfesser! -- comes Whittle's big play: Declaration Entertainment.

In a promo reel, Whittle explains that the hippies ruined Hollywood. "Everything I learned about the Vietnam War, I learned from Francis Ford Coppola and Oliver Stone," says Whittle. "From them I learned Vietnam was an unwinnable quagmire fought by drug-addled psychopaths, serially murdering innocent villagers just for fun."

That may not be what you got out of Apocalypse Now and Platoon, but you don't have the advanced mind Whittle has. Look, he's already moved on to another Hollywood target: "You know who the reliable standby enemy is in Hollywood films today?" he asks. "You are. "

At last! I thought when I heard this. The doctors told me the voices weren't real, but I knew they were after me and I was right!

Alas, Whittle's fantasy turns out to be more reliably Republican: "If you're pro-business, pro-military, pro-Christian, and for limited government and individual rights and responsibilities, then you and everything you believe are the enemy of Hollywood films today."

He turns the show over to a montagist who explains that Hollywood became godless, not because of hippies so much (Whittle must have been out for a smoke break when they made this), but because U.S. films are now using "capital from all over the world." Much like the rest of American business, we'd say, but it's worse in films because it means that, "instead of making American movies and then selling them to the world," these rootless cosmopolitans "make the world's movies and sells them to Americans."

And "it should be no surprise that the values that make it to the screen are very different than the ones Americans are used to seeing." This is punctuated by a little cartoon movie-going child blushing, and cartoon Mom and Dad covering his eyes, to underline the point: Not only Coppola and Stone, but also makers of sexed-up movies from Porky's to The Hangover are part of the anti-American flicker-bombing campaign!

And that's where Declaration comes in: They promise films without "anti-heroes standing up against tradition" or "greedy businessmen or CIA bad guys." (They don't promise not to show tits, though. Maybe they plan to take that up after the launch.)

How do you get these retro films? Just become a member! You'll go "behind the scenes" to see "your movies" being made. You can even "win chances to appear in the movies themselves" and tell moviemakers what you want them to film...

If this begins to sound more speculative than actual to you, your momma didn't raise no fool: Declaration says it will fund its movies with membership fees. As soon as enough of these come in, they'll get straight to work on The Joe McCarthy Nobody Knew. "Declaration Entertainment is not another production company," says Whittle, "it's a movement, it's a revolution..."

And unlike in other revolutions, you don't have to man the barricades -- you don't even have to attend a Tea Party. You just send in your money and Declaration's propagandists will do the heavy lifting for you. You can get in on the revolution for as little as $9.99 -- but there are also "executive membership packages" for $10,000, $50,000, and $100,000 which include perks like autographed scripts and on-screen credits. (Throw in a few more bucks and maybe they'll cast your niece!)

Based on this, Declaration promises to do for filmmaking what Pajamas Media has done for blogging -- that is, burn through its seed money and piss everybody off.

I see a way forward, though: DE should offer films with a high-weirdness factor which can be enjoyed by both serious patriots and giggling, stoned unbelievers -- like Michael Moriarty's Hitler Meets Christ. Plus there are old movies they can get cheap, like the recently revived If Footmen Tire, What Will Horses Do? , or even remake -- how does a new version with Bo Derek grab you?

These are economical work-arounds that can, with a little creativity in the bookkeeping department, keep Declaration afloat until the Republicans get back in and resume dishing out patronage.

GRADUATING CLASS WAR. I think I have discovered (via Josh Treviño) a new watershed in the internet's slow strangulation of journalism:

The daily routine seldom varied. Mr. Nicholson, 24, a graduate of Colgate University, winner of a dean’s award for academic excellence, spent his mornings searching corporate Web sites for suitable job openings. When he found one, he mailed off a résumé and cover letter — four or five a week, week after week.

Over the last five months, only one job materialized. After several interviews, the Hanover Insurance Group in nearby Worcester offered to hire him as an associate claims adjuster, at $40,000 a year. But even before the formal offer, Mr. Nicholson had decided not to take the job.

Having been in the business I can spot the signs, and the story of apparent layabout Scott Nicholson in the New York Times seems like obvious link-bait. Though it appears sympathetic to Nicholson, the coddling by his upscale parents is right out of old Al Capp parodies of befuddled permissiveness.

When we are told Nicholson "gradually realized that his career will not roll out in the Greater Boston area — or anywhere in America — with the easy inevitability that his father and grandfather recall," those of us who have long toiled at unexalted jobs may be forgiven the impulse to punch him in the nose; ditto when those of us who are not of his generation, and already imagine it to be weak and gutless, learn that such as Nicholson "were raised by baby boomers who lavished a lot of attention on their children."

I was surprised, though, when I came to reconsider the story, how my prejudices, thus inflamed, had caused me to overlook some pieces of information. Young Scott's of a particular class; his Grandpaw was a stockbroker, and the family seems in no way hurting for money. When I was told, “'Going it alone,' 'earning enough to be self-supporting' — these are awkward concepts for Scott Nicholson and his friends," I forgot immediately that both Nicholson and his friends were sufficiently privileged that this variation from the family tradition of smooth career transitions is mostly an emotional problem, rather than the dire economic one it is for millions of less-well-fixed kids and post-kids. (Three of them are entering law school as a fallback. Yeah, why didn't I do that instead of waiting tables?)

That is, I was roused to contempt for Nicholson's whole generation based on the example of some rich kid.

Were I a more paranoid sort, I might think that by using Nicholson as an avatar of disenfranchised youth, the Times was trying to minimize the situation of all jobless young people by making me think of them as slackers. But having been inside the sausage factories I know better. The story is more likely to have had its genesis in a specific access opportunity than in a memo from the Committee for Manufacturing Consent. But a clever editor who heard of it may have foreseen how it would come out, and looked forward to a wave of outraged and dismissive linkage from across the internet. So far I've only seen this, from an apparatchik who can read but still wants to believe ("On the other hand, this story shows that even the privileged, spoiled, affluent youth are hurt by the ObamaEconomy"). But give it time.

UPDATE. Some commenters think, no, this is just the Times typically looking at the nation's problems through the lens of the upper class -- as Linda puts it, "stories about the recession where people struggle along without their nanny, and find that the recession reconnected them with their soul, instead of making them live in a refrigerator box."

That's an understandable analysis but, being profoundly conservative in my outlook, I still tend toward a market solution, and believe that not even Times editors would fail to anticipate the reaction such a story might provoke among normal people. Back at the Voice I used to notice Times howlers about yuppie communes, how successful career women couldn't find husbands, etc. Those I put down to patrician cluelessness. But the Nicholson saga really seems to be asking for it. It's like their version of those hipster stories on which the internet has been fattening for a couple of years.

AND WE'RE JUST THE GUYS TO DO IT! Obama has failed them, so they're bringing their own "team of respected energy, environment, homeland security and response experts" to the Gulf to ask hard questions about the BP oil spill.

This A-Team comes from.... the Heritage Foundation, whose primary response to the crisis so far has been to defend BP, calling the Congressional hearings to which its executives were summoned a "public lynching," and remarking of the $20 billion escrow account to which BP freely agreed, "making 'offers you can’t refuse' may be a great way to run the mob, but it is no way to run a country."

Their first job will probably be spectrographic analysis of the tar balls to reveal their Democratic content.

You will not be surprised to learn that even before leaving the dock, Team Heritage has already come up with some damning evidence:

The President still has never visited Tennessee which was ravaged by deadly floods this spring. Tennessee shares a commonality with Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi beyond geography: a right leaning electorate.

Maybe they'll return with sad film footage of oil executives begging for help from the rooftops of investment banks.

Does this kind of thing con anyone? Besides the Perfesser, I mean.

A LITTLE BAD TOUCH OF DREHER IN THE NIGHT. It's a quasi-holiday, not much doing -- let's go see what Rod Dreher's up to.

How the cultural Left paved way for pedophilia

Ah, the crazy never sleeps at Dreher's.

He quotes a German article about a 60s pedophilia ring run by hippies and professors. Sounds awful, but really, "the cultural Left"? You'd be on much surer ground saying the Catholic Church is directly responsible for all those little boys its priests raped. After all, "the cultural Left" didn't prevent their pedophiles' punishment by sending them to other parishes. (Maybe if we had a stronger central administration...)

Wondering if this crossed Dreher's mind? You must be new here.

I would also like to know to what extent this Leftist anti-bourgeois pedophilia culture penetrated radical circles elsewhere in Europe. Anybody here know? One wonders if the leadership of the national Catholic churches -- I'm thinking right now of the Belgian church, and retired Cardinal Danneels, one of the Roman Church's most progressive top churchmen for decades -- assimilated any of this so-called progressivism in the way they thought about sexuality...

Yes, Dreher's actually trying to build a case that the global Catholic child abuse scandal was actually caused by hippies. To demonstrate his seriousness, he's doing it with a bleg!

Naturally he later denies it: "If you think I'm trying to 'blame' pedophilia on the cultural left (in Germany, or anywhere), you're deliberately misreading what I'm saying here..." ...in a post called "How the cultural Left paved way for pedophilia." Well, if Jonah Goldberg can claim Liberal Fascism isn't about how liberals are fascists, why not?

And I thought I trawled for hits!

UPDATE. Oh my, DocAmazing in comments: "And notice that [Ratzinger's] second-most-famous organizational affiliation was with a group of boys in shorts. Pimpfin' ain't easy." Pimpfin'! V. advanced.

FOR THE LOVE OF GALT, GO, ALREADY! It's always fun when the Galtniks declare that their rich entrepreneurial friends are outraged at this Obama and will rebel in an America of their own devising. Who can forget TigerHawk's on-camera Randroid meltdown about superior producers and inferior littlebrains? Or the unnamed "owner of several companies" who sported Galt cufflinks and pledged to starve his dry cleaners till Obama was brought down?

Now Wayne Allyn Root tells us about his friends, the backbone of America and all Republicans, apparently:

My friends are all part of the economic engine of America: Small business...

I've polled all my friends who own small businesses -- many of them in the Internet and high-tech fields. They all agree that in this new Obama world of high business taxes, income taxes, payroll taxes, capital gains taxes, and workers compensation taxes, the key to success is to avoid employees.

Getting rid of employees -- it's a wonder no one ever thought of that as a way to maximize profits! I was just talking about this to an automated voice at my bank the other day. But how?

My small business-owning friends aren't creating one job. Not one. They are shedding jobs. They are learning to do more with fewer employees. They are creating high-tech businesses that don't need employees.

Creating high-tech businesses that don't need employees! You'd think they're be praising Obama for stimulating their creativity.

And many business owners are making plans to leave the country.

Another innovation! When other people hear of this new "off-shoring" idea, Obama will be in serious trouble.

Root, you will be unsurprised to learn, is a big libertarian, as well as the author of the 2005 classic, Millionaire Republican: Why Rich Republicans Get Rich--and How You Can Too! Among his wealth secrets: "Own Real Estate in International Tax Havens." I smell sequel! Also, bullshit.

THE LEVEL OF DEBATE THE INTERNET DESERVES. Jonah Goldberg declares victory!

That sort of language clearly rankles my friend Will Wilkinson. I discussed the merits and shortcomings of patriotism with him for a special Independence Day edition of Bloggingheads. I found it to be a largely un-worthwhile discussion. Knowing in advance that Will is utterly immune to any romantic or sentimental arguments (as he might characterize them) for love of country, we were forced to restrict our conversation to sociological and other strategic rationalizations for patriotism. It was kind of like debating love of country with a Vulcan. Except, ironically enough, at the end of the day, I think it's pretty clear that Will is the one letting his emotions get the better of him.

Being your best friend, I briefly scanned the Bloggingheads in question to see whether Goldberg actually made Wilkinson flip out.

My data is incomplete. I could only stand a few minutes. I've heard there are people who have watched entire episodes of Bloggingheads, but I find it hard to believe such supermen exist. What human being could withstand such a punishing assault on their eyes and ears without willfully puncturing them with whatever sharp object was at hand in defense of their own sanity?

I did see Wilkinson ask Goldberg if the War for Independence was justified, and a flummoxed Goldberg reply, "The ends justify the means." Wilkinson gets into the why-not-secession theme, and Goldberg talks about a "Whiggish danger in going over these grievances," perhaps meaning "Wiggish," meaning he was thinking of the powdered wigs the Founders wore in paintings before returning to his customary reverie of a ham sandwich. His closer, characteristically: "This is something I've not spent a lot of time on, but I think it's an interesting distinction and I've always wanted to sort of learn more about it."

Despite retinal bleeding, I skimmed the rest and could not find the Wilkinson meltdown to which Goldberg refers, though before everything went black I did hear Wilkinson theorize that "wars are almost always bad," and Goldberg tell Wilkinson that you can't blame patriotism for war any more than you can blame oil for it. But I may have just hallucinated that.

Perhaps a Corner "reader" will "write in" to request proof, spurring Goldberg to point to 49:01, where Wilkinson blinks rapidly, proving his discombobulation before the mighty reasoning skills of his opponent. Till then I will have to assume Goldberg means that Wilkinson generally seemed to care about what he was saying and whether his argument made any sense, whereas Goldberg was digesting an entire pork butt and couldn't rouse himself to anything like full attention. Now, back to the decompression chamber!

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the Robert Byrd obsequies and how rightbloggers tried to make it about the endemic racist of Democrats. This "the real racists" bit never fails to remind me of Wile E. Coyote, hurtling into the canyon with a detached rock ledge in pursuit.

HAPPY FOURTH. Maybe you were wondering what the anti-abortion movement was up to lately. Here's the latest outrage from Jill Stanek:

The youth pro-life activist group Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust is picketing comedian Jimmy Kimmel's Los Angeles home as I type (read to end) and will be picketing his studio on Hollywood Blvd later today.

The group is demanding an apology, and here's why...

At some point the crew became aggravated by the pro-life activists because they refused to move along and turned one of the hot spotlights on Survivor Ryan Bueler...

Yes: A spotlight. The Hollyweird bastards attacked the fetus-defenders with star power!

Bueler refused to move and for 15 minutes there was a stand-off, during which time a bracelet he was wearing and his sign were partially melted, although he escaped uncooked.

Plus his Gummi Bears were totally ruined. Later Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust (great name for a band, BTW) infiltrated the audience at a Jimmy Kimmel taping and disrupted the show ("Apologize for burning teenagers with high-powered lamps!").



We celebrate our nation's birthday, not just because freedom is precious, but also because it is hilarious.

UPDATE. Not everyone loves America like I do: Here's The Anchoress lamenting the decline of public education from back in the days when she walked ten miles to school and had to live at the bottom of the lake, and proving her point with... an episode of "Jaywalking." Oh, hell, it's a holiday -- let even the developmentally challenged have fireworks! In fact, give them the M-80s and a blowtorch.

NEW CONSERVATIVE WISDOM: RACISM TAKES GUTS. Jonah Goldberg's latest mouth-fart is about reformed Klansman Robert Byrd:

Robert Byrd was a complicated man, but the explanation for the outsized celebration of his career strikes me as far more simple. He was a powerful man who abandoned his bigoted principles in order to keep power. And his party loved him for it.

Of course, if a Democrat of Byrd's era wanted to retain his bigoted principles, he could always become a Republican.

Given the hot new conservative trend toward neo-Confederacy, this may become a talking point: "All you liberals just like black people cuz it's popular. Only conservatives are tuff enuff to be bigots! That's why we keep Derbyshire."

SHORTER JOHN J. MILLER. I previously praised the work of new Poet Laureate W.S. Merwin, but since I learned that Merwin said bad things about George W. Bush, I realize that he is actually wrongthink and doubleplusungood.

UPDATE. In comments, Doghouse Riley does the longer shorter: "In conclusion, Paul McCartney, the Dixie Chicks, and Ward Churchill. Thank you."

HOW COME THEY CAN CALL EACH OTHER FAGGOT AND WE CAN'T? PART 56,232. Now isn't that nice? To make up for civil-unioned gay employees' shortfall in tax benefits versus married straight employees, Google is giving them a pay raise to cover the discrepancy. Conservatives should approve: No public funds expended and, after all, the new conservatism is enlightened and tolerant, not like those liberals have been trying to --

How many straight Google employees will go all “Chuck & Larry” just to make Google pay them a little extra money?

Google’s straight workers last seen practicing their lisps and learning show tunes…

What would happen if a company decided to pay heterosexuals employees more money based on their sexuality? I guess in this upside down progressive liberal world I shouldn’t even bother wondering anymore.

EVIL.

This discriminates against the straights for their "lifestyle" choice and they can sue for it. They can also claim that marriage has been devalued by the continued attempts to allow people who insist on labeling themselves with terms that differentiate themselves from the rest of society, yet demand to share the word that has always represented a union between a man and a woman.

What if a Muslim declared that his religion required him to have 3 wives and skree skree skreeeeee...

Never mind. I was right the first time -- they're just a bunch of deranged asshole bigots who haven't felt a pang for the underprivileged since Allan Bakke and who are flipping the fuck out because a few gay people are finally getting an even break.

UPDATE. Thanks, in comments, to Doc Amazing: "If they had any sense, they'd come out as bisexual and double-bill."

THE PARTY OF JOHN WILKES BOOTH. I noticed back in October of 2008 when Regnery unleashed The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Civil War, a "joyful myth-busting rebel yell" full of fun speculation for conservatives and their kin-folk like "If there had been no Civil War, the South would have abolished slavery peaceably." This sort of reasoning has spread like wild-fahr, as we saw from Rand Paul's argument that without the Civil Rights Act, folks would have jes' naturally started serving the white and the colored at the same lunch counter, and George Wallace would have stepped out of the schoolhouse door and cried, "Come and be learned, my African-American friends."

Now I see from Wonkette and TPM that Human Events is using the thing as a subscribers' premium.

If that doesn't work, they can always try The Turner Diaries, or perhaps a new Politically Incorrect Guide to Thurgood Marshall.

Will these rebs never be Reconstructed?

UPDATE. Today in "Conservative Will Tell You Who the Real Racist Is": Michelle Malkin*, who claims a New York Times "whitewash" of Robert Byrd's Klan past based on a headline, because that's as far as most of her readers ever get before realizing there's no cartoon or sudoku. (The Times article is explicit on Byrd's past.)

Back when Paul the Younger was thought-experimenting with the Civil Rights Act, BTW, Malkin got LaShawn Barber to pen a "Segregation: not cool, but still better than statism!" article. That woman will never miss a meal.

* That post is actually written by Doug Powers. (Thanx Q.) Does Malkin always use ringers for this loathsome duty?