TORTUREGASMS AT NATIONAL REVIEW. Peter Moskos has an op-ed proposing that, whenever possible, we subject convicts to floggings rather than incarceration. It's a flawed but genuinely interesting thought experiment -- not one of those "What if you stupid liberals were Hitler CAUSE YOU ARE!" thought experiments you get from conservatives -- the purpose of which is made plain by its closing: "If it takes a defense of flogging to make us face the truth about prison and punishment, I say bring on the lash."

But this sort of argument can only be conducted among adults who have learned to control their retributive impulses -- which lets out the boys at National Review, who of course see it as a chance to talk about their enjoyment of human suffering. Andrew C. McCarthy:

Jonah, this dovetails with a thought experiment I’ve been pushing for a while now, in rebuttal to the claim that waterboarding (as it was administered by the CIA on three top al-Qaeda detainees) is torture. If you gave every inmate serving, say, two years or less in prison the option of being waterboarded or completing his sentence, what would he choose? I’d be stunned if less than 95 percent chose waterboarding.

McCarthy thinks that if you were offered a choice between two years in prison and some waterboarding, and you took the waterboarding, then you obviously don't think think waterboarding is so bad. As usual, the very concept of consent eludes them. (That's McCarthy's head shot up there; looks like he's cumming in his pants over the prospect of manning the "Torture or Time?" booth.)

Even worse in his way is Kenneth D. Williamson:

Jonah and Andy: I’m not entirely sure about flogging, but I have long seriously advocated the return of stocks, especially for crimes of a nature that inherently degrade public life... I think 24 hours in the stocks for defacing a public space with graffiti would be appropriate, especially if the stocks were set up at the scene of the crime...

And you know who'll be there early with rocks!

But I also think that government should mostly do its business in public, including its punitive business. Public crimes ask for public punishments.

When they bring back public hangings, the victim won't be the only one to pop a boner.

As for the flogging, I remember thinking in the case of young Michael Fay — you may remember: the snot-nosed American punk kid who got himself caned in Singapore back in 1994 — that the punishment was probably appropriate to the crime, perhaps even a little on the lenient side.

Interestingly, Moskos says in the op-ed, "Some would argue that flogging isn’t harsh enough," and that if this is their counterargument, "then perhaps we need to question our humanity."

Seems a good place to put this:

HOCKEY RIOT IN VANCOUVER. I must say I'm surprised that Matt Drudge hasn't colored in the rioters' faces with magic marker, spurring another wave of conservative outrage.

In the absence of negritude, maybe they'll blame it on socialized medicine. If these guys had rickets, they wouldn't be able to riot!

UPDATE. Commenter KC45s gets there early: "Don't worry. They're working on the theme of 'liberal Vancouver' and 'Canada's San Francisco' even now. The posts would be up already but the crew at NR haven't been able to find the city on a map yet."

ANNALS OF THE CULTURE WAR. I have been encouraged to review the latest opus of Ben Shapiro, boy culture-warrior, this one in National Review and about the "twelve best conservative TV shows." It is a noisome task. The descriptions are moronic ("I may be the only person on earth who believes that Lost skews conservative on political matters..."), as is indeed the whole thing. But this statement is worth noting:

You’ll see that many of these shows were also created by outspoken liberals — so this is a tribute to those gutsy liberals who didn’t toe the party line.

This is really how Shapiro, and his fellow operatives, think about TV, movies, literature, etc. They think all the studios, presses, and writers' rooms are actually devoted to advancing leftism -- that in real life the show-runner begins each day by asking, "How can we speed the coming of the dictatorship of the proletariat?" And if Shapiro likes a show, he imagines that some of these minions have bravely rebelled by inserting conservatism into their work.

It's sort of like when people who generally look down on TV think the shows they enjoy come from the creators' attempt to insert a little artistry into the commercial product. This is a simplification, but at least it acknowledges the forces of art and commerce. In Shapiro's case, though, it's all political, because that's what he thinks everything is. When he gets a pair of shoes that fit comfortably, he probably gives a prayer of thanks to the cobbler who resisted liberal orthodoxy to provide them.

Shapiro's height of lunacy is reached in his coda, where he offers to "help television save itself." From what, I wonder? Television is doing well enough that someone could afford to pay Charlie Sheen $2 million an episode. And when its producers are dissatisfied with the money they're making -- and they always are -- they innovate in ways that have nothing to do with politics (as with reality shows -- small investment, big profits). But Shapiro insists:

In truth, only Hollywood can save television. And Hollywood can save television only if they give up their liberal agenda and focus on what they should have been focusing on all along: pleasing the American people, regardless of political viewpoint.

The American people have already voted with their eyeballs -- they want Snooki and celebrity drug addicts. That's capitalism, comrade, and a better lesson in conservatism than Shapiro can manage.

OOGA BOOGA. Some Guy at RedState:

Whether our best and brightest want to admit to it or not, law and order disintegrates daily in America...

Thus, I believe that the eventual GOP candidate for President has to ignore the accusations of racism and make this an issue. This is bigger than just a shot at political advantage. The blood of innocent people cries out from the stained and filthy alleys of our lawless urban streets.

I'm sitting here in Harlem; why has no one knifed me yet? Let's see what the FBI says in their Preliminary Annual Crime Statistics for 2010:

...the nation experienced a 5.5 percent decrease in the number of violent crimes and a 2.8 percent decline in the number of property crimes in 2010 when compared with data from 2009...

Violent crime declined in all city groups. Cities with populations of 250,000 to 499,999 saw the greatest decline in violent crime (6.9 percent). Violent crime in non-metropolitan counties decreased 6.4 percent, and in metropolitan counties, it declined 6.0 percent.

What's Some Guy talking about then? Oh, he saw some stuff on Drudge about black people committing violent crimes -- like the story that excited this eruption from the brethren last month. Says Some Guy:

The offenders portrayed were primarily young, black males. Those who listen intently for dog whistles heard them.

And by that he means liberals who pretend not to know that Drudge is way ahead of law enforcement in noticing ObamaAmerica's black violent crime wave.

But at least some patriots have got the guts to tell the truth:



Noted civil rights activist Robert Stacy McCain steps up to defend this ad: "Are people really so dense," he asks, "that I need to explain what Ladd’s video was intended to accomplish?" No -- no one's that dense.

UPDATE. See also, too.

CUE SINISTER MUSIC. Kathryn J. Lopez interviews an Archdiocese lawyer on the coming menace of gay marriage in New York. As usual, they can't tell us exactly what we're supposed to be afraid of, but at the close the lawyer takes a shot:

As for intolerance, here’s an omen of how it’s going to be here in New York — a sign posted on the Facebook page of a Democratic state senator of her office door, with an arrow pointing to the floor, reading “Bigots and Homophobes Please Put Your Literature Here.” That’s what we have to look forward to if this bill is passed.

The lawyer refers to this, from the office of the totally awesome Senator Diane Savino; she specifies the sign is for "hate mail," and anyone who's grown up in America can imagine what that must be like. Yet we're supposed to be troubled that the Senator isn't giving these scrawls the careful attention Lopez and the lawyer think they deserve. It's the thin end of the wedge! Soon people will stop taking literature from Klansmen.

When you're reduced to demanding respect from people you consider perverts, it's probably time to throw in the towel.

AFTER PARTY. I didn't watch last night debate, and have instead relied on the transcript. This insulates me from the participants' legendary charisma, so I can't say how their performances might influence whatever people actually saw it.

On that head, though, some of the responses were interesting. I credit the much-mocked Tim Pawlenty with a fine piece of traditional political sloganeering in his answer to a question about fixing the American mess with tax cuts. He wouldn't just cut taxes, said Pawlenty -- "We're proposing to cut taxes, reduce regulation, speed up this pace of government, and to make sure that we have a pro-growth agenda." Someone over there should be negotiating for the rights to "Harder Better Faster Stronger" as a campaign song.

It is generally accepted that Pawlenty had a bad answer on "Obamneycare," but probably really lost the crowd by admitting he had once been in a union, though he recovered somewhat by supporting right-to-work laws. The good reviews for Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann are understandable even from the transcript. Everyone of course shook their fists at Obamacare, but Romney actually said something coherent about the difference between his state plan and the national one; this may protect him from Tea Party wrath, as it has that federalist angle that's popular with GOP activists these days. Bachmann avoided saying the kind of egregiously crazy things that have made her a national punchline (grading, that is, on the GOP curve for crazy), and benefited from the discussion of TARP, as she's one of the few candidates with any credibility on what has become of late the default Republican position.

All of the candidates were serious -- at least in their pronouncements; when and if one of them is elected, all bets are off -- about defunding the government, from Social Security on down. They worked to outdo one another in denouncing the outrageous regulations and expenditures of the Obama Administration, the EPA, the National Labor Relations Board, and NASA. Romney's answer about denying disaster aid to ravaged communities is considered bizarre by sane people, but these were Republicans he was talking to, and they probably accepted his general premise: "Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that's the right direction. And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that's even better."

The odd thing is that this year Ron Paul, despite his persistence at these events, has been marginalized, not because his ideas are extreme, but because in the current Republican Party they are mainstream (except on defense issues, where he is still treated as the crazy uncle). The only question is which of the others will be put forward as the blow-dried avatar of the new feudalism.

UPDATE. I can tell you now, down here where it's too late, that if you had one roundup to read it should be that of Gin and Tacos:

Anyone else enjoy the surreal sequence in which Pawlenty, Romney, and Bachmann tried to out-tax-cut one another? Romney proposed taking the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%. T-Paw one-upped him with 15% last week. Tonight, Bachmann threw down to the tune of 9% (with no capital gains tax, estate tax, or AMT…and a tax increase on the lowest bracket). It was like watching three children fight over who loves mommy more.

He also dumps cold water on the notion that Rick Perry will fly in to save them all, as the actual candidates have been working for years to get nominated and Perry starts from zero. Good point, though there is another undeclared savior figure who has been pursuing her own non-traditional campaign since Election Day 2008.

ALWAYS SOMETHING THERE TO REMIND ME. At National Review, Ben Shapiro offers the high-toned aesthetics we've come to expect from that publication:

Ferris Bueller: What Could Have Been

And what does Shapiro wish had been added to the film? Explosions? Godzilla? Slave Princess Leia?

Surprise! What Shapiro thinks it needs is some propaganda.

This weekend marked the 25th anniversary of the release of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. As Kathryn has written, the original script for Ferris Bueller’s Day Off contained a bunch of conservative lines...

Only one problem: They didn’t make the final cut, for some odd reason (my theory: studio execs didn’t want to offend liberals … like them). Instead, what we got from Ferris Bueller was a proto-Simpsons view of adulthood and being a teenager. All the adults in Ferris Bueller are invasive morons — including a principal who wants desperately for Ferris to stop cutting class — and all of the adolescents are brilliant, witty, and charming. That was the conflict that summed up John Hughes’s world: he was a conservative, but he was also an advocate for taking teenage angst just a bit too seriously for conservative tastes.

Hughes was also a maker of popular films who wanted people to enjoy them more than they might enjoy something like, say, Atlas Shrugged Part 1. I bet it never occurred to Shapiro that this might have factored into Hughes' decision not to load up a fucking teen comedy with political material.

As you know, I have no real interest in politics and mainly write this blog to discharge nervous energy and entertain my friends. But if there's one thing I would like to keep in front of the public, it's the Zhdanovism of the American Right. As all their blather about "taking back our culture" shows, they really think "art" is just a fancy word for indoctrination, and believe that if only they can transfer control of the cameras, stages, presses, etc to the right kind of people -- that is, apparatchiks as pinched, soulless and controlling as they are; rightwing Robespierres -- then art will cease to be a problem and become part of the all-encompassing solution. Mostly they're ridiculous, now, because they haven't figured out a way to make it happen; but never underestimate the determination of a would-be commissar.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP -- alas, more Weinergate. But what can you do, it's what the people want. Me, I'd like Weiner to hang in there, just to see what would happen to all this fapping without a climax; if nothing else it might teach the brethren some staying power. But the new angle is that Weiner's taking dirty pictures at the Congressional gym will be grounds for impeachment, and as the establishment has shown itself disinclined to stick up for Weiner, this may be their excuse to shut him down.

Whenever the moment of ecstasy occurs, it will not have taught anybody much of anything. I see at NewsBusters Noel Sheppard is mad that ABC had a bunch of women discuss the case.

ABC's "This Week" actually used the occasion of Congressman Anthony Weiner's (D-N.Y.) sex scandal to discuss whether this was "a good moment for women."

During a lengthy segment, host Christiane Amanpour along with her exclusively white female guests proceeded to bash members of the opposite sex with ABC's Claire Shipman actually saying, "A group of all white men are not going to reach the best decisions"...

I get the feeling the presence on the panel of Whoopi Goldberg or Angela Davis would not have lessened his outrage.

Yet, as we've seen from the media in recent years, attacking white men is not only acceptable, it's all the rage.

I don't know about you, but as a successful white man who has raised two wonderful children that both will likely be very successful members of this society, I'm getting awfully tired of the reverse racism and reverse sexism in this nation.

I marvel that "successful white men" are so prone to complain.

Is this really what my son who has just graduated from college has to look forward to the rest of his life, or is all this white male-bashing going to some day soon run its course?

Dare to dream, Sheppard; though the Glenn Beck rally seems to have done you little good, maybe you can get up your own Million Honkey March and agitate for rights of white males. (Actually, that sort of thing goes on in a distributed fashion all the time -- they're called shareholder meetings.)

Somewhere Bob Packwood is laughing his ass off.

UPDATE. IOKIYAR FTW.

FAMILY VALUES, NEXT PHASE. When Naomi Cahn and June Carbone put out Red Families v. Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture last year, showing red states had more teenage mothers and more divorces than blue states, conservatives didn't have a lot to say about it. Ross Douthat was pleased to hear that the teen moms of Fritters, Alabama weren't having abortions; NewsBusters revealed damning evidence that Cahn and Carbone are liberals; and Eve Tushnet thought it was snotty and elitist of Cahn and Carbone to point these disparities out. But in the main they were quiet.

At least Kyle-Anne Shiver seems to have gotten the message and even taken a clever angle, as revealed by her article at American Thinker, "Morally-Schizoid Liberal Women and Their Weiner Husbands."

After informing us that liberal women are sluts prone to "running to the OBGYN with neurotic frequency, to make sure their alley-cat lifestyle has not resulted in any of the dreaded, fertility-destroying sexually transmitted diseases," Shiver explains that it is futile for them to expect their spouses to be faithful.

Certain that one of the men with whom she has copulated without strings will suddenly morph into a faithfully monogamous creature the minute she can convince one of them to say "I do" in front of a few witnesses, the liberal woman marches blindly down the aisle towards near-certain, adulterous doom. Yet, no amount of honest reason can dissuade liberal women from this self-destructive, moral myopia.

I admit, at first I was too caught up in the ridiculous caricature to see where she was going. But further down Shiver spells it out:

Any woman, who still believes that males are naturally monogamous and that a wedding ring is anything more than a little band of gold, needs to take a long, hard look at the sham of a marriage on display between Congressman Weiner and his wife of less than one full year. Afterwards, if said woman still does not see the lifelong value in chastity before marriage and a pair of shredder scissors in the kitchen drawer afterwards, she needs to take a very large bucket of ice cold water and dump it upon her own head.

The lifelong chastity bit we may dismiss as a tic, since even Shiver can't possibly believe that will be the result. But I take her expression of contempt for the notion of elective marital fidelity as a cry from the heart. And given her point of view, she may also see the copulating conservative-region youth as refreshingly wised-up compared to neurotically cautious liberals. No running to the OBGYN for the red-state kids, except to get help with their numerous pregnancies. And if their divorce rates are also great, it may be that experience has simply given them more modest expectations of marriage than have the ladies of Massachusetts and New York, and they take the forsaking-all-others charade less seriously.

I would advise conservatives to grab this and run with it. If tradition prevents them from endorsing sexual freedom outright, they can at least let their constituents know that they understand them, and consider them more enlightened than the stuck-up Yankee bitches who think they can hold a man forever with their fancy birth control and delayed marriages. What a vote-getter that might be! They can start on it as soon as they've finished milking the Scandal of the Century.

I must note one other fragment from Shiver's article:

I've seen some of these women nearly go completely insane as they receive one of those now-common, "So sorry I may have infected you" love notes from a former "lover."

Now-common! And yet Hallmark hasn't created cards for the occasion. It's enough to put you off your faith in capitalism.

UPDATE. Comments are choice, with lots of Hallmark STD poetry. Some commenters, such as Cato the Censor, wonder, "If she hates lib women, why does she hang out with them so much she's usually around for the VD mail?" Regular readers will know that culture warriors often pretend to have liberal friends, so they may report back to their readers the things these liberals say and do, most of which are, in a literal sense, unbelievable. Ripe examples here, here, here, and here. All fine efforts, but not as good as the totally true story of my encounter with Jeane Kirkpatrick and a backwoods preacher.

I DIDN'T KNOW THEY STACKED SHIT THAT HIGH. I see Texas Governor Rick Perry is expected to join the 328 other Republicans running for President. Aside from being a total Jesus freak, a secessionist, and an all-around posturing asshole, what has Perry got to recommend him? From the encomium of an obvious operative at the Texas Tribune:

Given the current economic climate, Perry has a unique and compelling story to tell that America is ready to hear. As governor of Texas, he has presided over the most dynamic and successful economy in the nation.

Texas is dominating in job-creation and economic dynamism, even in a national recession. In the last 10 years, Texas has created 730,000 new private-sector jobs.

Interesting! And how did Texas/Perry do it? In manufacturing? No, that's a bust. In info-tech? Likewise. Construction? There was a boom a few years back, but that's all done now.

There is one category of growth, though, that accounts for about 400,000 new Texican jobs:


The category? Education and Health Services. That's right, two professions that don't create anything, and that Republicans hate -- the first because, conservatives now tell us, it's full of traitors (though maybe they trust Texas' politically-corrected schoolbooks to keep teachers in line), and the second because it helps people. On the other hand, Texas is a right-to-work state, so conservatives may be pleased to know that a lot of those bedpan-cleaners aren't being paid a living wage.

As if this didn't make him a suitable enough candidate, in 2008 he was Rudy Giuliani's family-values factotum.

He has as good a chance as any of them, I suppose. 2012 will turn on the economy; if it stinks, the GOP is in; if not, not. All that's at issue is, which of the party's frothing madmen will be in the captain's chair at the time. Perry's advantage is that there are a lot of Republicans who think America should follow the Texas model -- i.e., possess a lot of oil, which finances you doing whatever crazy shit you want to do -- and strongly relate to authoritarian douchebags. Perry's disadvantage is that the Republican base is easily distracted by other people at least as crazy as he is.

I'm still calling it for Palin. To paraphrase Lisa Simpson, nobody out-crazies her. Though maybe Perry can come to the Convention with a snake in each hand and stampede the delegates.

UPDATE. Hold on, we have new evidence for the theory that Jonah Goldberg makes everything worse. His latest "Goldberg File" has arrived via email; it's not online yet, but I doubt he's smart enough to edit it before it gets there. Among his offerings:

One last point, since I raised it on Twitter yesterday. I think there's a non-trivial possibility that Rick Perry turns out to be this cycle's Fred Thompson.

I understand that there are lots of reasons why the analogy shouldn't hold.

I'll wait a moment for you to compose yourselves. Ready?

Perry's a much more serious campaigner with a lot more fundraising potential. But there's just something about this that reminds me of Thompson (who I am a fan of, by the way). Fred came in looking so awesome on paper -- and that was part of the problem. It was as if he got in the race less because he wanted to be president and more because he found the argument for why he should run so compelling... But I just get the sense [Perry's] running because there's a compelling case for him to run, which is not quite the same as a compelling desire.

Similarly, when Scarlett Johansson expressed a sexual interest in Sean Penn, he probably responded, not out of genuine interest in sex with Scarlett Johansson, but because it just made so much sense on paper.

ANNALS OF LIBERTARIANISM, CONT. Let's look into what prominent libertarians say about the Weiner case. Surely they won't want him thrown out just for dick pics -- they're pro-freedom, and philosophically consistent; they hate Democrats and want to legalize weed! Nick Gillespie:

A lot of people say that there's lying (not a good thing) and then there's lying about sex (also not a good thing, but a more understandable thing). But then there's lying about cellphone porn and tweetpics by saying that the attacks on you may be the "point of Al Qaeda's sword," or some sort of super-terrorist cyberhack of a sitting member of Congress. Which is what Weiner says above (via CNS News).

That's such an awful lie on every possible level that I think it should really remove any doubt about his fitness for office. It's one thing to do stupid things and cover them up with misstatements and obfuscations. That's wrong but understandable, at least within certain limits and when it doesn't directly impact his job. But to play the Al Qaeda card in an attempt to throw folks off the scent of an embarrassing (not even illegal!) misstep is really something else...

Yes, Gillespie is actually affecting to take seriously Weiner's sword joke -- a joke even the dimmer rightbloggers get. And with the help of the ridiculous Conservative News Service, yet! Gillespie even warbles about "the very city that suffered the greatest terrorist attack in U.S. history" as if he were a GOP Congressman from Fritters, Alabama pretending to love Jew York on 9/11 anniversaries.

Well, surely the artist formerly known as Jane Galt won't play the witch-doctors' psuedo-moralistic game!

But I also don't think it works to say that it's nobody's business but the couple's whether people keep their marriage vows. Andrew [Sullivan] has been a great proponent of gay marriage--not civil unions, but marriage. Why was it so important to call it marriage, if everything about it is entirely private? Why not stop with legal equality and leave marriage to the heterosexuals? If all the benefits are private, then a combination of legal visitation/property sharing rights...

[Blink.] [Blink Blink.] OK. So -- if Weiner's digital cheating isn't our business, McArdle wants to know, then why do you want gay marriage, Andrew Sullivan? I guess she knew this would piss him off enough to distract him.

Also:

Did [Mrs. Weiner] show up at his campaign events? If she did, they were both happy to have the marriage be part of a very public persona.

And so they both deserve to suffer.

Society takes a greater interest in marriages than in other relationships because society, as well as the individual, has an interest in strong marriages...

While Jane Galt morphs into Maggie Gallagher, let's turn from Weinergate to the doings of the most prominent libertarian in the U.S. Senate:

To Rand Paul, Legal Immigration Is Also a Concern

It’s common to hear a senator express concerns about illegal immigration these days, but Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, is also concerned about legal immigration.

“We have 40,000 students coming to this country from all over the world,” he said. “Are they would-be attackers?”

I grow more convinced every day that libertarianism only exists to give young Republicans something marginally less repulsive to call themselves when they're trying to get laid.

WHY, THIS IS HELL, NOR ARE WE OUT OF IT. Nothing like a little Anchoress to put things in perspective:


Admit it, your first reaction was Wha, or some variant thereof. Why is our favorite Jesus blogger sharing an ungodly interest in alleged male chest hair trends? True, The Anchoress likes frivolities such as American Idol -- even though she acts ashamed of it sometimes. But this is getting into unseemly, Ross-Douthat-on-Jennifer-Aniston territory.

The easy explanation is that Obama's breastplate is smooth, so Th' Anch may take the trend and tease it, so to speak, into something about how America is turning away from hairless socialism and toward carpet-chested AmericaJesusism. Still, it seems a pretty thin reed to --


Ah, I get it now! Obama, Weiner -- a smooth chest is the Mark of The Beast! (Using Selleck was clever, but why not Kelsey Grammer? He makes Mark Hand look like Michael Phelps.)

The text is almost superfluous, but you should see this:

Our social behavior (and our values) seem to be suggest a devolving away from maturity and toward a collective case of arrested development that has all age-groups exhibiting the entertainment sensibilities, critical-thinking skills and moral giddiness of 14 year-olds.

Whereas Obama, Weiner, and chest hair are part of the grown-up discussion. Oh, The Anchoress a little earlier:

To my way of thinking, the saddest part of this [Weiner] story is Barbara Walters devolution; this once-respected newswoman...

See what I mean about perspective? In fairness, she's barely worse than her compatriots -- e.g, James Taranto:

How exactly does that make [Weiner] different from a family-values conservative who turns out to be struggling with homosexual desires?

Long story short: Weiner took down an old statue because it was sexist, ha ha. Also, he said he liked that his wife was smart, which is totally hypocritical because his digital sex talk doesn't resemble the correspondence of Abelard and Heloise. Therefore he, and all feminists, are just like Republicans who hunt cock in toilets while denying gays the right to marry, because penis.

Shorter still, Taranto thinks anodyne, pro-women statements are the equivalent of legislating bigotry. As usual, this bunch's misunderstanding of sexual behaviors is really a misunderstanding of consent.

I'LL TAKE PARIS. Saw Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris the other day and loved it. Yes, loved. I haven't had a good run with late Woody, but Midnight in Paris is the first one since Match Point that I'd really like to see again.

The McGuffin you've heard: A Hollywood hack goes to Paris with his fiancee and moons about how he wishes he were there in its fabled '20s; he gets his wish, and things get complicated. Knowing how enamored Allen is of Days Gone By (he sometimes wants to make me yell "everything has to be old and in black and white!" like Sophie Crumb), I was nervous about that going in. But it's Allen's leading man who's goofy about Paree, not Allen, who isn't so enamored of it that he can't make jokes. Good jokes, too. ("Of course it doesn't seem strange to you!" the hero at one point tells Salvador Dali, Luis Bunuel, and Man Ray. "You're surrealists!") Anyway, the movie's not really about that.

It helps that Allen has Owen Wilson in the lead. Wilson dispenses with Allen's tics and gives us a chummier kind of alienation. He's not as nervous as Woody, but when he's put in situations (nagging fiancee, pseuds, his first moments in the magical past) where his generous natural charm just doesn't cut the mustard, he responds with his own kind of discomfort -- he's as Owen-Wilsonian as usual, but a little more insistent on it. (There's something extra hilarious about his fiancee telling him that, along with everything else, his rival is an expert on wine, and Wilson responding, enthusiastically, "No! Really?") So we get a Woody-type hero who's not stuck with Woody-type behaviors, and can respond to him as a guy who might be alright if he didn't let himself get so crowded by idiots.

The Lost Generation scenes are fun, especially when they include Corey Stoll as an Ernest Hemingway who talks a lot about the brave and true and good, and asks Wilson if he wants to box as if he were asking him to step out for a smoke. But the pleasure deepens when Hemingway and the others talk sense to Wilson -- that is, tell him some things that he can take back to the 21st Century. This, and the device of having the hero transported from the same spot at midnight every night, are clues that the time-tripping is just a way of getting the hero to acknowledge a deeper reality, and to face his problems in the here and now. To me it's much more satisfying than The Purple Rose of Cairo, where the dream of interaction with movies is cursed to disappoint. However wised-up that vision may seem, it's not as powerful, nor as dramatically rewarding, as a dream that leads to a real awakening.

And that's what our hero gets. As easy as it was to predict how the bookstall girl would react when the rain came down on her and Wilson at the end, it still touched me in a way that I'd long ago stopped expecting from Woody Allen. It's rare enough, and welcome, to find such a witty, literate script, but to also get a nice touch of romance at the end -- well, it was well worth the price of admission. I hope Allen's in good health, because suddenly I'm interested to see what he does next.

UPDATE. Late as it is, I want to mention that commenter aimai has some good objections to the movie, which (also in comments) I attempt to answer.

THE REDEEMED CAPTIVE. Last week, while he was hard on Weiner Watch, I asked Lee Stranahan on Twitter what he meant when he said he was a liberal. After all, these days when he's not parsing penis pictures he mainly works on Breitbart's Pigford/Shirley Sherrod jihad. He got pissy:



But now, because of Weinergate he is, as they say, outraged at Chappaquiddick:



I teased him about that, got this response:


Before someone starts yelling about Marching in Lockstep and Thought Police, let me say that I'm in no position to enforce anyone's orthodoxy, and am somewhat unorthodox myself. But Stranahan's behavior would baffle any neutral observer. He's in favor of all those liberal things, but because Anthony Weiner got caught sexting, Stranahan doesn't want to be a liberal anymore (except for purposes of market differentiation)? Also, he works with Breitbart, who repeatedly describes liberalism as a near equivalent to Satanism; does Stranahan think that after he's helped Breitbart take down some more liberals with penis pics, Breitbart will help him get Single Payer?

But there's really no point in asking these questions. This kind of redemption narrative works fairly reliably. Take a walk down memory lane to see this 2003 summoning of the pro-Bush liberals (scroll down to July 22) -- Michael Totten, Roger L. Simon, Gerard Van Der Leun [!], et alia. With a few exceptions, none of these guys are even pretending anymore. And I will tell you right now that the chances that we'll see Stranahan working to take down opponents of gay marriage the way he's worked to take down Weiner are very, very thin.

I guess there's a call for this sort of thing. Some people think it's great that David Brock was a big wingnut before his conversion, and some even trust Andrew Sullivan's mood-swing toward the left. Maybe such people see converts as living testimony to the power of their cause. But this is America, and these are operatives; maybe they're not responding so much to the tug of conscience as to a market opportunity.

SO, WHAT'D I MISS? Went to Southpaw this evening for the Moth "Story Slam" event, which kept me from the Weiner sext show. So I'm not up on the commentary, which I'm sure is lush.

I see also that Andrew Breitbart bum-rushed the show with a movie supervillain performance, complete with threats and self-pity. It does not seem Breitbart was looking for the affection of the American people, who for the most part don't know who he is, but for fear and respect. Among normal people, this will probably go over pretty much as it did in the Austin Powers films, but I expect the political class will take it as intended.

Weiner says he's sticking around. It'll be interesting to see how that goes. The claims of underage girl involvement or other actual crimes haven't played out, but we have been left to wonder if they will, which is of course the whole idea.

I would say we've entered an interesting phase of American politics, but we've been it that for a while. This just ups the ante. Over time I expect we'll find ourselves reentering the era of the Breitbart of his time, James Callender -- some of whose allegations, you may remember, have been vindicated by history. It remains to be seen if we'll wind up with the sort of governance we had back in those days. Knowing how the backwards trend in our history has worked out so far, I'm inclined to think not.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP about the Anthony Weiner case and the rightblogger treatment of the women involved. This should help greatly with the conservative crusade to claim the mantle of true feminism. As citizen journalists continue their investigations of TweetDeck and yfrog in hopes of nailing down who sent what to whom, there's been plenty of time for discussion of Gennette Cordova, Huma Abedin, and Ginger Lee; in the future there'll probably be much talk of "Betty," "Veronica," and "Ethel," too. Maybe May 21 really was the apocalypse, and we're all in hell.

ANNALS OF THE CULTURE WAR, PART 5,344,023. Speaking of drama queens, The Anchoress is culture-warring this week, too, plumping fellow Jesusite Barbara Nicolosi's column on how Hollywood is promoting euthanasia. (The Anchoress also suggests that the simultaneity of Nicolosi's column, the death of Jack Kevorkian, and the publication of Ben Shapiro's book about Sesame Street Socialism make "an interesting trifecta... The battle is visible and invisible, and this week it seems to be stepping up!" Well, it's classier than seeing Jesus on a piece of toast.)

Nicolisi gives propaganda advice to the brethren:

Our response to the mercy-killing machine must be more than an occasional op-ed piece; we need a shrewd and all-encompassing cultural strategy if we are going to make a good fight in the euthanasia war.

Shrewd means that we fight smart. It means appealing to the emotions of the masses through stories, not non-fiction tomes. Songs, not philosophical tirades. Heroes, not pundits.

Okay, Nicolisi, you have my attention! Let's see what you got.

If we’ve learned anything from the abortion wars, it’s that the words “choice” and “right to choose” set our cause back decades. We need an emotionally winning language for this fight. The other side should not get away with christening themselves “mercy killers”; they are “death dealers,” “elder abortionists,” “needlers.” Please, not “death with dignity”; let’s get there first with “medical murder” and “unnatural death.” Not “end-of-life clinics” but “human garbage pits.” We need slogans like, “Make your insurance adjuster’s day; let him kill you.” Or, “Everything we know about euthanasia we learned from the Nazis.”

Greenlight! I can see it now: Dying Miss Daisy, with the old lady convincing her would-be elder-abortionist not to drive her to the human garbage pit. I think we can get Michael Moriarty.

DRAMA QUEEN. Lionel Chetwynd, a rightwing Hollywood martyr known mainly these days for his videos with Roger L. Simon, has written an indignant Letter of Resignation from some group you never heard of (the Steering Committee of The Caucus for Producers, Writers & Directors) to protest the anti-conservative bigotry of some guy you never heard of (Vin Di Bona), which he learned about from Ben Shapiro's book about how Sesame Street is trying to turn our children into socialists.

Whatever normal people may think of this slap-fight, Chetwynd takes it very, very seriously:

Shame on all of them. Their sickness is an infection that belongs in Europe of the 1930s.

It's like a beer-hall putsch, only with cocaine.

This is a time of inflamed political confrontation, evoking Bleeding Kansas of the 1850’s or even the Civil War itself.

In this reading, Chetwynd is Topsy and Obama is Simon Legree.

I realize, now, the enormous special obstacles put in my path by my supposed colleagues, obstacles that over the years made earning a living or a quiet pursuit of my trade so unusually onerous, were not a matter of political difference; they were a declaration of my unworthiness to be one of them. The rejection was not of my ideas, but of my person.

Now that I can believe.

Next up: How the failure of Hollyweird liberals to cast Kelsey Grammer as Batman is Birkenau all over again. (h/t Dan Coyle)

SHORTER DOROTHY RABINOWITZ: All that stuff we've been saying about the deficit and big government? Everyone knows that's bullshit. So we have to start talking to voters about something they really care about: Foreign policy.

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RACE TO THE BOTTOM. Michael Potemra on populism:

So with the Palin-Trump summit meeting, we got an indication of who she is — and, I hasten to add, it’s not only a negative indication, even for those of us who are unimpressed with Trump. Sure, on the negative side, she’s saying, I’m impressed with Donald Trump. Not a good sign in a potential president. But, on the positive side, she’s saying, Yeah, I’m impressed with Donald Trump — you got a problem with that, Mr. East Coast MSM Intellectual? And that, I think, shows a level of comfort with herself that we would like a president to have.

In other words, Palin's sumptuously-covered meeting with the buffoon Trump is good because it reaffirms Palin's contempt for the media and comfort with herself. This is so dumb I thought at first Jonah Goldberg had written it. Then I found, to my astonishment, that Potemra was answering a relatively innocuous Goldberg post on the subject. He out-Goldberged Goldberg! Jonah, watch your back.

UPDATE. The one time I'm nice to Goldberg, commenter Froley has to spoil it -- regarding Goldberg's desire for an NRO Bus Tour, Froley writes, "he could easily waddle into the Ken Kesey role and travel the country by bus (appropriately named 'Farter') with his band of less than merry NRO pranksters -- LSD and marijuana replaced by Cheetos and Mountain Dew." WE BLEW IT!

ALL ABOARD THE FREEDOM EXPRESS! Rand Paul:

I’m not for profiling people on the color of their skin, or on their religion, but I would take into account where they’ve been traveling and perhaps, you might have to indirectly take into account whether or not they’ve been going to radical political speeches by religious leaders. It wouldn’t be that they are Islamic. But if someone is attending speeches from someone who is promoting the violent overthrow of our government, that’s really an offense that we should be going after — they should be deported or put in prison.

Oddly, there's nothing about this at Reason, Rand Paul's hometown paper. Though there you can find a post by Nick Gillespie about Reason's Let's Destroy Social Security poll, and how the poor people they inexplicably included in their sample skewed the results, even though Gillespie keeps telling them it's for their own good:

I realize that such a shift entails a lot of technical issues but the idea that the government should operate an inefficient redistributive program that basically takes from relatively poor and young people to give to relatively wealthy seniors strikes me as plain awful.

A libertarian affecting sympathy for the parasitic sheeple! Reminds me of the courtly manners of Bluebeard. I'm beginning to think libertarianism is just a stealth marketing campaign for feudalism.

PAST IS PROLOGUE. The Michelle Obama "Whitey" Tape was one of the more absurd frauds of the 2008 election season. The alleged bombshell was never produced, and over time most of us -- aside from Larry Johnson and Rick-Rollers -- forgot about it.

Now (h/t Media Matters) a World Net Daily column by Mychal Massie gives the Whitey Tape a revival:

A tape that was reportedly filmed in 2004 during the Rainbow/Push Coalition Conference at Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church has mysteriously disappeared from public view. The tape allegedly showed Michelle Obama hysterically ranting about "Whiteys" and savagely attacking Bill Clinton as responsible for African genocide. The wife of Louis Farrakhan was one of the honored guests.

This is the cream of the "Questions Remain" jest -- every bit of bullshit you've ever heard from these guys, no matter how loony, remains in their armory, and occasionally they'll even try to use it. After a while even those of us with trusting natures grow jaded. So if you wonder why people are skeptical of their claims about Weiner, think about Whitey.

THE TV IS SENDING HIM SECRET MESSAGES. Ben Shapiro has a book out about how TV is trying to turn you Red:

Look at Friends. Great show. Well-written. Well-acted. Funny. Bet you didn’t think it was political per se. But not only did the show feature a lesbian wedding during its first season, an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, and on-screen fights over condoms, the show promoted the substitution of friends for family as moral guides and sources of responsibility. Marta Kauffman told me that she was trying to use the show as a vehicle for acting out “that time in your life … when your friends are your family.” Kauffman actually got nastier than that...

Also, a producer allegedly refused to accept Shapiro's spec script because "he would never work with someone of my political persuasion." If only Aaron Spelling were still alive!

Shapiro's making author rounds and told the New York Post that Sesame Street is a communist plot.

'Sesame Street' tried to tackle divorce, tackle 'peaceful conflict resolution' in the aftermath of 9/11, and had Neil Patrick Harris [a gay actor] on the show, playing the subtly named "fairy shoeperson."

He also complains about a 2007 Sesame Street episode that made fun of Fox News (and other news networks without the same elaborately constructed victim status). I like to think Post reporter Cynthia R. Fagen was having a bit of fun with this button:

And Shapiro said one of the "Happy Days" writers admitted to him that the show "had a whole subtext" of attacking the Vietnam War.

"If you really look for it, you can find it," the writer says.

I wonder if there's anything in there about how Wide World of Sports was propaganda for the U.N. Or if Shapiro interviewed Mark McLeod.

UPDATE. Comments are delightful, and remind me to remind you of Shapiro's other adventures in the Lively Arts: In 2009 he told us that "Since 1948, Israeli film has been heavily focused on undermining Israelis’ patriotism – and Israelis have bought into it," which explains the persistence of Bibi Netanyahu, and compared Wanda Sykes' performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner to "Richard Pryor speaking at a White House Correspondents Dinner for JFK and failing to mention the civil rights movement."

Shapiro's analytical skills really shine, recalls Substance McGravitas, in his list of the 10 most overrated directors, topped by Alfred Hitchcock. His premise is, "[Hitchcock] was the Stephen King of the silver screen: he made films with great premises, but he never knew where to go from there"; he defends this mostly with adjectives.

A few readers note that Shapiro is a member of the board of Declaration Entertainment, which was considered here last July and has so far produced no features but lots of Bill Whittle videos.

WANK SQUAD. In my previous Weiner/Twitter post, I referred to the brethren's morbid interest in Gennette Cordova as a Monica Lewinsky dream-object. Speaking of which, Robert Stacy McCain:

Why didn’t I have any qualms about naming Ms. Cordova? First of all, her identity was never really “secret” to anyone who knew how to use Google. She was already being named at other blogs, and by people on Twitter.

Second, Ms. Cordova had obviously basked in the reflected glory of her online connection to the famous congressman, so that in April, after she Tweeted out that Weiner was her “boyfriend,” her friends teased her about her “crush” on him. Having welcomed such publicity in April, why should she shun publicity in May?

"Reflected glory"? Lots of us have internet crushes. For a particularly ripe example, see Ace O'Spades on Christina Hendricks:

I'd hit that with the berserker fury of a dozen Norsemen. I'd hit that so hard she'd sing the aaa-aaa chorus of The Immigrant Song.

I'd hit that I like I turned a Bag of Holding inside-out and dropped it into a Portable Hole.

Hitting that would fill me with such transcendental bliss...

Ugh, let's stop there. Spades has taken to calling Cordova "The Comely Coed" and mooning over her tits.

Elsewhere the brethren refer to Cordova as a "Swirly Young Thing" (?), "Femme Fatale," "buxom and willing to be interviewed Seattle woman," "busty Seattle co-ed," "DEMOCOMMIE SCUMBAG JOURALISM STUDENT IN THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF SEATTLE" (that's for those who like rough talk), etc.

"Gennette was not alone," Jim Hoft reveals, "Weiner’s Twitter Friends Include Pages of Young Lucious Fans." Some of his followers are attractive women, apparently; guy's a regular Bluebeard. Others are in a state of Questions Remain because Weiner has a teenage Twitter correspondent. McCain is following the teenager and calling her "Little Miss Potty-Mouth." Wonder how they'd react if Weiner and a bunch of other Democrats met one of his teenage fans face to face? ("'He came up to me, grabbed my hand, and shook it,' said Joe the Plumber. 'If I didn't know any better I would say he was 30 years old.'" Yeah, that's what they all say.)

In the realm of deep analysis, The American Jingoist* tells us Weiner's marriage is all a front:

As for Weiner, I was not fooled by his recent marriage to Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s alleged paramour. I always thought it was a backdoor Democrat deal. The rumor mill was rife for years. Huma and Hillary were closerthanthis. Everybody knew.

You'll be hearing a lot more of this sort of thing as the boys remain hard on the case.

*UPDATE. Just realized that sham marriage story was only repurposed by The American Jingoist -- it originated with Atlas Pam.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the rightblogger reaction to the NY-26 special election -- doubling down, basically, on the Coupons for Codgers Welfare plan, and nominating its author, Paul Ryan, for President. There's something wonderfully daffy about that. It's as if the French Socialist Party decided to run Dominique Strauss-Kahn anyway.

From the outtakes, some guy at RedState:

Democrats only come into power when they are successful at persuading people through tools of anger, envy, jealousy, bitterness, and the GOP doesn't fight back because they are afraid to and won't stand and fight for what they believe in. These tactics are exploitative of course but only serve to keep them in power and in the ultimate end, make our country something it was never intended to be: A Marxist state.

In the midst of a fight that is supposedly about how best to maintain a giant entitlement program, accusing the opposition of Marxism is a bit rich. Still, I wonder: why don't the Democrats try it? Just for grins, have Harry Reid come out one day and denounce Paul Ryan's Big Government share-the-wealth Welfare plan. It makes no sense, but that hasn't stopped anyone before, and maybe it'll make the bastards nervous.

PUMP IT UP UNTIL YOU CAN FEEL IT. I'll be interested to see what comes out of the Anthony Weiner case. (There's just no way of referring to it that doesn't sound suggestive, is there?) True, it's a motley crew that's after him -- including not only Breitbart but also Lee Stranahan, one of those Left-left-me types who thanks to Shirley Sherrod is outraged by Weinergate.

But they can't be wrong all the time. Take the National Enquirer -- they had John Edwards dead to rights, and their recent claim that Arnold Schwarzenegger used highway patrolmen to bring him girls seems to have been taken seriously by the state attorney general*, though I haven't heard any wingnuts applauding their Pulitzer-worthy reporting in this case. (The Enquirer may also be right about Seth Meyers dating Martha Stewart. That's another one the Lame Stream Media won't touch.)

So if Weiner did in fact send some girl a picture of his bulging underwear, that'll be weeks of hot copy and Republicans deluding themselves that they can grab his Congressional seat. (Wait'll the folks in Rockaway Beach hear about Paul Ryan's Coupons for Codgers Welfare program! They'll rise up against their Democratic plantation masters!)

And if Weiner did no such thing, we'll get a few days of can-you-prove-that-I-was-intentionally-misleading-you? and then on to the next bullshit. In other words, the usual.

UPDATE. From Datechguy:

So since Stacy is giving reporting lessons I took the liberty of calling congressman Weiner’s office, the recorded messaged referred me to a press number to call after hours. I called the number and the gentleman named Joe who answered claimed I had the wrong number so I called back the congressman’s office to confirm the number in question (it was correct) and called the press number again. It now goes directly to voice mail. I left my name and home and cell numbers at both locations, and I’ll let you know if anything pans out, but I found that reaction…interesting.

Yes, it's interesting that on Memorial Day weekend no one at Weiner's office was available to call back someone who calls himself Datechguy.

*UPDATE 2. In comments M. Bouffant informs me that the Cali AG isn't going after Schwarzenegger after all. I hope this doesn't sully the Enquirer's hard-won reputation.

UPDATE 3. From Stef at Daily Kos, the best summary of the case that this is all bullshit. Actually, maybe only the second-best, as the continued spinning by Robert Stacy McCain is pretty damning too, as it consists of the sort of thing you expect from these guys whenever they're cock-blocked: Irrelevant hair-splitting, and the desire to get Ms. Lewinsky (or whatever she's called in the latest dream-incarnation) alone in a room and really get to the bottom of this:

She is not — not — describing someone who “hacked” Weiner’s Twitter account, a subject about which she expresses no special knowledge.

Also, this: “There have never been any inappropriate exchanges between Anthony Weiner and myself.”

All righty then: Define “inappropriate,” Ms. Cordova.

By your own admission, you publicly described a married congressman as your “boyfriend,” which some people might consider inappropriate.

I advise Cordova to pick up some pepper spray.

GIL SCOTT-HERON, 1949-2011. Alec Wilkinson's New Yorker article on him from last year is well worth your time; so's Heron's Vibe interview from 1994. That Heron could be, to say the least, difficult is not surprising; what's surprising is that, in this world, more of us aren't. I never complain when a great artist produces less over time, or stops, because it's a miracle that we get art at all, let alone genius.

Last night I pored over a bunch of Heron's stuff and was struck by the great seriousness of it; he had, God knows, a sense of humor, but he didn't clown, and he certainly didn't front. He seems not just to have considered his subjects, but also to have inspected them, carefully and over a lifetime, and his insights are of a very high order. If his introspection was less successful than his inspection, that's just how it goes sometimes, a lot of the time.

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HELLO, CRUNCHY, WELL HELLO, CRUNCHY, IT'S SO NICE TO HAVE YOU BACK WHERE YOU BELONG. I have lamented the low profile Rod Dreher's been keeping, but today National Review had him speak on the important subject of... well, let him tell it:

Despite the truly admirable, even inspiring, rags-to-riches story Oprah Winfrey can tell, and despite having done some important and moving shows in her time, I count her influence as a net negative on American culture.

He's still got it!

Take the show she broadcast on Islam three weeks after 9/11. I wrote about it on NRO at the time, criticizing Oprah harshly for her propagandistic whitewashing of unpleasant realities in contemporary Islam. She encouraged viewers not to think about what Islam stood for, but rather to feel positive towards Islam, and therefore to deny anything that countered this preferred narrative.

Which was a big mistake, as all the other daytime shows were addressing Islamic theology. Remember the All My Children Sayyid Qutb storyline? I believe he was played by Al Freeman Jr.

Actually Brother Rod's been getting out more -- here's him at Real Clear Politics on the Rapture. I give him great credit for admitting that he worried about the Apocalypse as an adolescent, and more for admitting that "the radical prospect of rebirth through total catastrophe still tempts me in less culturally embarrassing ways." However:

Living in New York City in the aftermath of 9/11 was, I confess, one of the happiest times in my life. It was also the most sorrowful and anxious, and I would not relive it again for anything. But the truth is that that localized apocalypse gave me a newfound sense of purpose and meaning. After that, I knew who I was, what was happening in the world, and what I was to do.

I guess Crunchy Conservatism is something else we can blame on 9/11. Now I'm really glad we killed Bin Laden.

VISUAL AID. I'm going to start using this in posts. Lord knows there'll be plenty of times when it's appropriate. Thanks, Gawker!

UPDATE. This too. How come nobody told me about gifsoup.com before?

VIDEO REVIEW. Perhaps spooked by the impending Republican defeat in NY-26, Paul Ryan put together an anti-Mediscare video which the brethren are now rushing out. "Another nifty floating charts video," raves Andrew Stiles at National Review and no, he's not kidding. "I think the GOP needs to get this video out there prominently," says QandO.

The laughs comes early when we are told "Washington has not been honest with you" by Ryan, who has been in Congress since 1999 and has only recently become Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. But never mind. His jacket's off and his sleeves semi-loosened. He means business!



Though the music is properly swirly-sinister in the first part and on-hold-music-optimistic in the second, I must say Ryan misses some opportunities with his iconography:

A little "Patient" figurine receives caduceuses ("health care services") from a hospital ("Provider"), which sends little blue bills to a Federal building ("Medicare"), which sends little blue dollars to the Provider. "Medicare reimburses the doctor with your tax dollars and borrowed money, no questions asked," explains Ryan, and several figurines labeled "Taxpayers" are shown to feed Medicare with their own blue dollars. Thus, "the patient is very disconnected from the cost."

Medicare recipients and would-be recipients probably like this arrangement just fine and hope that, despite the ongoing Depression, it can be sustained long enough that they won't have to die of peritonitis in an unheated rooming house. Couldn't the Medicare building have been made into a house of horrors, with lightning bolts and Joe Stalin climbing on the roof like King Kong? Also, while it's good that the "panel of 15 unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats" Obama wants to "set the price" are all RED, couldn't they also have big cigars and perhaps dookie ropes that say PLAYA? (It's nice that, at the end, the bureaucrats sprout briefcases, but these should spring open to reveal taxpayer dollars, condoms, and hypodermic needles.)

Also, when Ryan tells us that under the Obama plan "many doctors will stop seeing Medicare patients altogether," which will lead to "waiting lists and denied care," and the figurines multiply to reflect this, couldn't they be shown lying in their own filth on cheap gurneys labeled "PROPERTY OF UNITED STATES OF SOCIALIST REPUBLICS"?

Some segments need only a gentle tweak. In the Path to Prosperity section, the red "bureaucrat panel" is swept away and the patient figurine grows large, dwarfing the Medicare building; this should please Tea Party patriots. As Ryan explains that Path to P "provides financial support" (i.e. coupons) to recipients, a moving dotted line issues from the full-grown patient toward Medicare; a small adjustment would make this more obviously a stream of urine, expressing the patient's contempt for Big Government.

I would also suggest Ryan remove phrases like "best care at the lowest cost" and "the high quality we expect at a price we can afford," which sound like advertising grifts for a cut-rate product. Also, while "freedom of choice" is a tested marketing concept, the hospital icons do not alter appreciably after the Path to Prosperity transformation; maybe they should be brightly and distinctively colored, and have water slides and other attractive add-ons.

I like the distinct choice at the end: "A government monopoly and a panel of bureaucrats in Washington, D.C." versus "You." Except the voter looking forward to his end-of-life care probably doesn't like to imagine himself all alone. I realize this conflicts somewhat with the libertarian dream of total autonomy; perhaps some imagery can be devised that suggests the company of other rationally self-interested people who will be in the same boat as You, but will refrain from offering You any demeaning help. Maybe the cast of "Seinfeld"?

Final note: Lose the bit about getting the same kind of care members of Congress get. No one believes that.

TEA STAINED. Jack Davis underperformed but it looks like Kathy Hochul has pulled it out in NY-26 against Jane Corwin. I haven't followed this race as closely as I did the Scozzafava-Hoffman-Owens NY-23 election in 2009, but on balance I'd say sending John Boehner out there to remind folks that the GOP wants to turn Medicare into a voucher program was probably a bad idea. (So was focusing on beating up Davis as a fake Tea Party candidate -- they seem to have pulled him back from the 12 percent he had in late polls to about 9 percent, but that didn't do the trick.)

The rapid response team would have us think otherwise. "Republicans suck in New York. Period. End of Story," growls Erick Erickson. "...it will be a stretch to say that it means that the people of suburban Buffalo are telling the country to reject the GOP’s budget plans," assures Jonathan S. Tobin at Commentary. "The complete irrelevance of NY-26," insists Conn Carroll of the Washington Examiner. Etc.

Really? The Chris Lee scandal that led to the special election can't have been helpful. But since the Republicans first gained this seat in 1857, they've held the 26th for all but 17 years. In 2010 Lee got 73.6 percent of the vote. With the flawed vessel removed, you'll think they could have held onto such an advantage.

The Tea Party dream of bathtub-drown'd gummint was a boon to the GOP in 2010, when they did pretty well in western New York. But the Ryan plan and its fallout suggests that, now that the loons the movement brought to Washington are threatening to actually do something about it, it's costing them in a constituency they shouldn't have to worry about: Registered Republicans.

Think they'll get the message?

UPDATE. A beautiful silver lining from DrewM at Ace O'Spades:

On the upside, the GOP got a look at the Democrats playbook on attacking the Ryan plan. We should be better prepared moving forward. Yeah, we shouldn't have been surprised this time but some lessons have to be learned anew.

He's got a point: There is no evidence that Corwin called her opponent a socialist.