HEADLINE SAYS, "OBAMA CAN'T SWIM." The first U.S. President to declare his support for gay marriage is getting a predictable reaction from idiots. I think Gerard Vanderleun deserves some sort of prize, though. His first rapid response was that Obama is gay:

As the country's majorities again confirm at the ballot box they are not in favor of gay "marriage," the nation's ostensible leader continues an evolutionary decloseting whose speed is lapped, so to speak, by the platypus. The delay is puzzling to me. Given the fact that Obama is the gayest straight man ever to hold the office of the president, I fail to see what the problem is in his coming out of the closet on a rocket...

Gee whiz. I wonder if Obama will come out or not. He could of course avoid taking a "position" simply giving Andrew Sullivan one hot evening in the Lincoln Bedroom and leaking the photographs to Blueboy.com, but some things are just too revolting to evolve into.

Vanderleun then stuck up an old post in which he pretended to be cool with gay marriage ("can't we take a step back and draw a deep breath, smell the winds of change and admit that Gay Marriage is a done deal?"), while describing himself (quite unnecessarily) as "compulsively heterosexual."

This kind of nutshells the schtick all around: It's not that they're against gay people (notwithstanding that only this morning they were beating their chests over the defeat of gay marriage and civil unions in North Carolina) -- it's all about the flip-flopping, or the attack on religion ("BREAKING: Obama casts faith aside," "Obama Continues Attacks On Christian Church... He just threw MILLIONS of Christian Americans under the bus," etc), or Obama is looking for "gay money" or some shit.

It would be one thing, a very small thing, if you could believe for a nanosecond that all these guys who say they have nothing against gay people would actually be glad marriage equality got a little closer to the goal line so long as Obama could be denied any credit for it.  But they don't care about that; as we saw with the Osama Bin Laden hit, they don't care about anything except winning.

Obama's a politician, but at least he's playing out his string in the right direction. The other guys are more like those deranged spouses who'll shoot up a crowded room just to get a bead on the one who made them feel small.

UPDATE. BTW 2nding this.

UPDATE 2. I mean, come on -- Aaron Goldstein at The American Spectator:

Now I happen to support same sex marriage. But Obama is only supporting it because it is now politically expedient for him to do so.

This isn't Murder in the Cathedral, it's American politics. Lincoln didn't issue the Emancipation Proclamation till halfway through the Civil War. We take what we can get when we can get it.

Also, Goldstein seems to think Obama is planning a Grover Cleveland, or maybe a John Quincy Adams:

But let's say Obama loses in November. He has a ready made excuse for his defeat. Obama can say that the forces of darkness (i.e. opponents of gay marriage) are to blame for his defeat while patting himself on the back for his "courage" in supporting same sex marriage. It also helps to position him for a comeback in 2016 or 2020. Make no mistake. If Obama loses this fall it won't be the last we see of him. By that time with a greater presence of voters born after 1980 chances are there will be more voters in favor of gay marriage which would give Obama an opportunity to claim he was ahead of the curve.

"Claim he was ahead of the curve" is a hell of a thing to say under the circumstances. But you know you've really gone off the edge of the table when you're accusing a sitting U.S. President of supporting gay marriage in an election year so he can win some other election. Maybe next they'll accuse him of angling for U.N. Secretary-General.

UPDATE 3. I might have known: In comments (which are excellent BTW) sxp151 informs me that Niles Gardiner already accused Obama of angling for U.N. Secretary-General:

President Obama seems increasingly uncomfortable in domestic US settings, but highly energised when speaking abroad, especially to audiences that are traditionally anti-American. Which is why, if he loses in 2012, which is now increasingly likely, he might see the position of UN Secretary General as a natural fit.

It bothers me, because I'm just trying to get laughs, and they're trying to take over the world. I should have the advantage.

LOG CABIN BONFIRE. North Carolina has passed its anti-gay-marriage amendment, and conservatives are rejoicing. I'm really not seeing much of the more-in-sorrow-than-anger, we-love-you-we-just-don't-think-you're-as-good-as-us schtick they pull when they're pretending to be new model wingnuts who wouldn't discriminate against a fly. With a few admirable exceptions, they're either full-throatedly shouting approval or ignoring the news, hoping to keep their hands clean for the next gay outreach.

At the PJ Tatler, Bryan Preston seems to have had a bit too much champagne.

In the aftermath of North Carolina’s vote, this NewsObserver photo may reveal what Barack Obama and the Democrats fear the most. [photo of black people cheering news] Black churches overwhelmingly oppose gay marriage.

This is one of their great dreams: That they can get the blacks to kill the gays for them, thus winning control of the board from the Democrat plantation masters. But after another Dixie cup of Freixenet, Preston grows maudlin:

Democrats use black churches and black pastors to spread their party’s message from pulpits every Sunday during election season. No one should be under any illusions that supporting gay marriage could cost Obama the black vote. It won’t.

A loyal supporter busts some amyl under his nose and Preston comes back to life:

November will be about the economy, full stop. But it could cost him enough of the black vote to hurt him in November. It could erode support and enthusiasm for Democrats generally.

See, hatred of homosexuals can turn America Republican all by itself -- we won't even need the blackity-blacks to do it! It's win-win!

That’s what Obama fears, and it’s part of the reason he did not want to be seen opposing Amendment 1 in North Carolina the day voters approved it. So Obama canceled his event in North Carolina today and dances his ludicrous dance on gay marriage. The only real evolution he is undergoing is tactical. His opinions have been set in stone since he was a sarong-wearing college kid doing crossword puzzles in his composite girlfriend’s apartment.

Ha ha ha ha, ludicrous dance in a sarong! [Minces around PJHQ, limp-wristedly flapping his hands]

Polling on gay marriage may be a bit like polling on Obama’s personal approval rating: Useless. People do not want to tell pollsters that they dislike Barack Obama personally, even though they really do, fearing that saying they dislike him will make them appear racist or mean.

Bet you didn't know that Gallup, Harris, and all those guys send Black Panthers to your house to do the questionnaires.Try telling them you don't like Obama!

The truth is, he often comes off as an aloof know-it-all who either doesn’t know what he’s doing, or does know what he’s doing and is being intentionally destructive. He often comes off as dishonest, hypocritical, and a bit of a jerk. He’s a bore who never says anything interesting unless he’s talking basketball. It’s not hard to imagine him singing the old country song “Lord, It’s Hard to be Humble When You’re Perfect In Every Way” and mean it.

Give Preston credit: He's neatly encapsulated the entire conservative case against Obama, except for, you know [pushes in nose, sticks out tongue and bottom lip].

Eventually a wearied Preston gets right down to the nub of his argument:

But people don’t want to say that out loud, since we’re all supposed to pretend that he’s someone we’d like to hang out with whether we agree with his politics or not...

Likewise, people apparently will tell a pollster one thing about their view of gay marriage to appear tolerant or with the times, but when they’re alone in the voting booth, they think about the issue in a more serious way.

There you have it, folks: Americans pretend to like black and gay people, but in reality they're miserable bigots like Bryan Preston. 'Less'n ole Bry thinks he's sumpthin' better than they are...

NOTHING MEANS NOTHING ANYMORE. It's hard to pick among the various idiots who heard about the White House staff's booking procedures for families with pregnant members whose kids may be born in time for their tours, and disseminated it as White House Registers Fetuses Skreee Outrage. But you can at least feel almost sorry for Mollie Hemingway at James Poulos' Hipsterbunker, who apparently hasn't quite gotten the hang of soulless apparatchik behavior:

Update: I posted this, then pulled the post on account of believing it must be some hoax. It must be a hoax, right? Why would any White House need this information, much less one as supportive of abortion as this one? It doesn't make sense to me. In any case, here's a copy of the email used to source the story, courtesy of the Washington Free Beacon. 

But someone must explain this to me, if it's not a hoax. Why would the White House need this information? I mean, I tell my children about the baseball games they attended in utero. And I even let them count it toward their list of stadiums they've visited. But, then again, I'm pro-life.

Then, buried down in the comments section where no normal person will see them:

OK, so the idea appears to be that if your child will be born by the time of a scheduled tour, you register him or her before they're born. 

At least that sort of makes sense. 

Still fascinating that such an abortion-supportive regime would treat unborn children as people.

Yeah, and the Obamanazis' so-called "census" (Where's that in the Constitution, huh?) also asks for your -- get this -- "place of birth." Birth! They admit babies are born! What a bunch of hypocrites!

Doesn't matter. At the GOP convention every speaker will make a joke about the registered fetuses, as well as the fake birth certificate, the Michelle Obama "Whitey" tape, etc., though everyone will grow grave and silent when the multitude honors Andrew Breitbart and pledges to avenge his murder.

I'm beginning to incline toward conspiracy theories now, myself. At present I strongly suspect these guys are all paid off by the DNC.

CULTURE WAR FOR DUMMIES. As a sensible person might have guessed, Jim Downey, the guy who wrote the unused Saturday Night Live sketch about Obama and Bin Laden, denies there was anything political about its absence from last weekend's show. Of course there is always something political going on behind the scenes at a professional entertainment concern, but the politics are usually that of the show's often constitutionally insecure workers (as hundreds of sour SNL reminiscences demonstrate), and not the tedious sort that usually concerns us here. Who knows who's trying to screw whom over there, and on what basis? But it probably isn't foreign policy.

Nonetheless as I mentioned yesterday the exclusion became a Thing among rightbloggers, who seldom sputter more than when the subject is, even just ostensibly, culture, pop or otherwise. E.g.: "Good politically-oriented comedy usually has an element of courage. It's not blind in the left eye with microscopic vision in the right," lectures some guy at Ace Of Spades, quoting Bergson, I think.

National Review even brought in Wall Street Journal comedy legend John Fund, who explained to readers, in his famously winsome style, that the "censored script" was in point of fact and on the merits a laff riot, and called for collective action against the unfair practices at SNL:

I’ve never met Jim Downey, the author of the scrapped script, but I can only hope people who believe in equal-opportunity potshots rise to his defense.

Fund probably thinks it works like the morning news shows: Make a big enough stink that they have to make sure you have equal time, and when they do keep bitching about bias until they're afraid to ever seriously challenge you.

UPDATE. They're still at it. Some guy at Gene Lalor's blog provides a timeline of the conspiracy:

In deference to complaints by arch-racial agitator Rev. Jesse Jackson and in conformity with a concerted effort to compensate for alleged discrimination toward African-Americans in the entertainment industry, Hollywood and television producers caved and today blacks are more than well-represented on the silver and TV screens.

They bent over backwards, upside-down and every whichway to assure blacks that the entertainment industry was not only not racist but that they would slander conservatives in the process in order to prove their how liberal they were.

DailyCaller.com revealed that “SNL” has caved again, this time to advance the Obama 2012 re-election campaign.

Tim Meadows was the thin end of the wedge!

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the rightblogger confusion over the composite characters in Dreams From My Father.  This shit is so stupid that at this point I don't think they even care if anyone else is reading it, let alone convinced by it -- they're just sitting in the back making fart noises, figuratively speaking (though perhaps literally, too).

UPDATE. In keeping with our recent Sunday night tradition of putting something stupid by Ann Althouse in the Voice link post, here's Tbogg on the stupid something. Because who wants to risk staring directly into that mess?

UPDATE 2. Whoops, had to fix the link for Tbogg, because I accidentally stuck in one about the latest serious conservative outrage: Saturday Night Live cut a sketch about Obama because bias. No, I'm not kidding. Everyblogger who's anybody from Gateway Jim Hoft to guest Perfesser Ed Driscoll is bitching about it, and about how (breaking!) SNL isn't funny anymore. This is an important front in the culture war, one that's sure to be the making of Greg Gutfield.

Also too: Attention must be paid to the great comments here, including that of Spaghetti Lee: "How do you murder someone Chicago-style? Drown them in tomato sauce?"

SHORTER BYRON YORK: Romney aide Richard Grenell was not forced out by social conservatives. He wasn't really even an aide. Rather, he is a radical homosexual activist who won the trust of the Romney campaign, then attacked it from within as a gay suicide bomber.

HIP TO BE SQUARE. I mentioned in my most recent Voice column Jonah Goldberg's typically incisive response to the whole alleged issue of Obama being too cool:

I wish the ad had at least one or two really solid clips conveying how despearately Obama wants to seem cool, which is always the great coolness-killer. It would have helped set the tone of the ad much better. What would those clips be? I'm not sure, but then again I'm not making the ad. Michael Moore seems to find a way to find that kind of footage pretty easily, and I have no doubt it can be found in Obama's case.

If only we had a picture of him with poop in his pants, holding a commie flag, everyone'd know what a poopy-pants commie he is! Faart. Yet it appears someone took not only this ridiculous subject but also Goldberg's thinly-veiled bleg seriously. At her internet Sunday school, The Anchoress prowls the aisles with a metal ruler and tells you what's cool and what isn't:

Have you heard the news? Barack Obama is cool!

He’s not just cool, he’s way cool; the coolest thing ever!

Too bad she forgot to link to a citation; I'd love to know what idiot said that.

Never having been “cool” myself (or desperate enough to seek its conferral upon me by people I always found to be rather sad trend-followers)...

While you so-called cool kids were friggin' and frugin' in your discos, The Anch was pretending to be a nun. That's totally Goth!

Coolness does not need anyone to define it, but allow me to try.

How much time we would save if only The Anchoress could occasionally remember the thing she said just before the thing she said.

The quality of “coolness” contains within it an attitude of discrete detachment, which is not the same as aloofness. It suggests an intellect attuned to a different frequency—perhaps to a higher muse—but still comfortable sharing the ground with the rest of us. Its muted confidence is so supreme...

On and on goes Sister Malizia's cool lesson, and just as the boys and girls are about to nod off she pulls out the visuals:

Come to think of it, by these definitions, one could safely opine that the “coolest” leaders currently athwart the world’s stage are still England’s Queen Elizabeth II, who recently crashed a wedding simply to wish a bridal couple well, and His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, who takes the daily piñata beatings that come his way in stride, and answers with a blessing.

Somehow I don't think this will get the kids to throw in their porkpie hats for mitres and crowns, much as I would enjoy that.

Meanwhile Ole Perfesser Instapundit uses reader mail to explain how uncool Obama really is:

My theory is Obama represents the supremacy (however short-lived) of the beta-male. The only people who think he’s a hep-cat are hipster betas and 60′s radical-nostalgia dopes (also perennial personal-risk-averse betas who never did anything bold on their own). It’s all projection, much like the rest of the way that demographic operates

The thing about the "I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members" attitude is, it's more impressive when Groucho Marx says it than when some guy who writes letters to Instapundit says it.

How hard this all is for them -- because once upon a time, they were cool. Back in the 1980s Reagan was everyone's daddy, John Paul II did a world tour and danced with the kids, and everyone dressed and wanted to be like characters from Dynasty. Fashions fade, though, and you're left with the enduring values behind what made your heroes cool. In their case that's tax breaks for the rich, endless wars, and persecution of homosexuals. We already had a retro revival of that:

I'm not sure the time is right for another. But who knows? Show biz is tricky.

UPDATE. "Weren't these the same guys who insisted that George Bush calling people 'Stretch' and 'Pooty-poot' was a veritable laff riot?" asks Doghouse Riley in comments. mortimer reminds us that Lisa Schiffren wrote "an entire, very wet column" in the Wall Street Journal about how "she and her soccer mom friends" found Bush "'hot' as in virile, sexy and powerful." Not to mention proto-Anchoress Peggy Noonan's swoon over both the President's testicles. Chacun à son ghoul.

WHAT THEY REALLY WANT. 

The conservative vision of the future is the 19th Century, only with sound cannons.

See also.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about rightblogger tsuris over Obama's busy media week, including the Bin Laden ad, the Jimmy Fallon slow jam, and the White House Correspondents Dinner. I left out anything concerning their claims that Obama's dog-eating joke at the nerdprom meant that conservatives scored a great victory, not because they aren't ridiculous, but because I'm just sick to death of Treacher.

SHORTER MICHAEL POTEMRA: Catholics are embracing same-sex marriage; the polls say so. But Catholics also are turning against Obama; Glenn Beck says so. This is good news for Republicans.

UPDATE. In a follow-up, Potemra adds a new proof-point: a Times poll showing that Americans don't think "religiously affiliated institutions should have to cover the full birth-control costs in their insurance plans." But the Administration is not making them, and is in fact going to ridiculous lengths to appease such organizations, the bishops' disingenuousness notwithstanding.

GET YOUR WAR ON, AGAIN. Sonny Bunch reads about the Obama Administration's "creation of an Atrocity Prevention Board, an interagency mechanism that calls for a new means of preventing mass atrocities and genocides," and is moved to sarcasm:

Wow! Such strength! Such fearless vision! I do hope the board shakes their magnificent finger VERY HARD at this:

Then he tells us about a Syrian guy who got buried alive at gunpoint. Or was he shredded in a shredder -- no, my mistake, that was from the Iraq War prep. Still, even if this one happens not to pan out (and the Daily Mail, from which the story is taken, suggests it may not), there are undoubtedly plenty of real horror stories in Syria to make your blood boil. Bunch doesn't wait for those:

But hey, we’re totally going to sanction those bastards into the ground, right? Right?...

I guess not. Welcome to a Brave New World of American Impotence. But hey! At least we’ve got that prevention board manning the walls, keeping the world’s vulnerable populations safe from atrocities!

If you thought this kind of gung-hodaddiness went out with warblogging, it's only because you haven't been listening to Fox News:

“In Syria,” Krauthammer continued, “we have been watching for a year something that isn’t hypothetical. It’s not happening in the future. It’s happening now — 11,000 dead in front of our eyes; the indiscriminate shelling of cities. [Obama] hasn’t lifted a finger. He gives a lot of good speeches... 

“And what did he announce today at the Holocaust Museum?’ Krauthammer said. “He would be establishing an Atrocities Prevention Board. Now imagine that. The Russians are supplying plane-loads of weapons every day. The Iranians are supplying weaponry and financiers and trainers... Well, this really is going to make a difference. I mean, it’s embarrassing.”

 Or reading Commentary, and that reliable action fan Max Boot:

Barring greater action led by the U.S., Assad will remain in power. And I fear that the U.S. may not do anything serious until after the November presidential election. Unfortunately, the way things are going, the killing will still be in full swing then.

Or attending the speeches of potential Republican Vice-Presidential candidates:

Potential Republican vice presidential candidate Marco Rubio said Wednesday that a unilateral "military solution" from the United States may be needed to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb... 

Rubio, 40, noted how Washington should be prepared to bypass the United Nations when "bad actors" prevent the global body from taking meaningful steps, such as on Syria. 

"The Security Council remains a valuable forum, but not an indispensable one," he said. "We can't walk away from a problem because some members of the Security Council refuse to act."

While agreeing with Obama that "global problems do require international coalitions," Rubio reminded the president that "effective international coalitions don't form themselves," but need to be instigated and led by the US. 

"And that is what this administration doesn't understand."

When you hear them talk about "distractions," just remember that there's no distraction like Americans fighting in a foreign war, and it's the only one they've got left that will work.

SHORTER ENTIRE RIGHT-WING BLOGOSPHERE: Obama is sending his coloreds to kill us!

Ace of Spades cites three (3) crimes in which black people attacked white people, and cries, "No national coverage of this racial hate crime pattern in the media." The population of the United States is 311,591,917.

What was it the Crazy Jesus Lady said the other day about aggregating isolated stories? You can get a lot of propaganda value out of that shtick so long as you're only talking to people who are down with your program [play snippet from Theme from "Deliverance" here] and primed to accept that your tiny sample gives an accurate picture of the world. But what does it say about these guys that this is the picture they want to paint?

Worse, in a way: What does it say about the voters they hope to attract with it? Run this racist horseshit by normal people, and the older ones will marvel that anybody still thinks that way and the younger ones will just marvel. But their target consumer will nod ruefully and sigh over the race-treason he's seen going on all around him ever since they started letting those people on American Bandstand. Now, by God, maybe people will see the truth!

Speaking of neo-Confederates, I see Ole Perfesser Instapundit is trying, via a reader write-in, a familiar variation on this hooey:

Don’t be surprised if, as Obama’s fortunes wane, incidents like those of Mobile are insinuated to be a future consequence of his electoral defeat...

Readers may recall that they tried this in the last ditch in 2008 -- telling people that black people were prepared to riot if Obama lost, presumably on the secret orders of the HNIC himself.

Think it'll work this time?

UPDATE. In comments, Mr. Leonard Pierce performs the standard recommended test for such accusations of media "silence" as Ace has made: Put the relevant names into Google News. CBS, ABC, CNN, AP, UPI, Huffington Post, Gawker...  all these Lame Stream Media outlets covered these crimes up by actually reporting them.

There's also some discussion, launched by DocAmazing, of how in the rightwing imagination "Those People can simultaneously be shiftless and well-organized, lazy and filled with violent energy, uneducable and politically savvy..." The Other is mentioned, but I think it has more to do with the logic and characterization standards of WWE and old comic books.

SHORTER CRAZY JESUS LADY: We are at the mercy of Negroes and champagne-swilling government bureaucrats, and it's all the fault of Casual Fridays.

UPDATE. Give Noonan credit for showing how the game is played:

In isolation, these stories may sound like the usual sins and scandals, but in the aggregate they seem like something more disturbing, more laden with implication, don't they?

Similarly, if we stuck three of her columns onto a psych intake form, we could probably get her committed.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the Obama-eats-dogs thing. Again this week, the bonus bit is by Ann Althouse, who offers this analysis:

Notice how the individual will of the child is missing. The father figure teaches; the child learns how to eat. He receives instruction. He has feelings in that he reports the texture (but not the taste) of the various foods, but we hear absolutely nothing about whether he resisted these impositions or felt any sort of disgust. 

Somehow I get the feeling that when young Ann Althouse refused to eat the carrots on her dinner plate, her parents just sighed and got out the Cap'n Crunch.

And now, Obama, President of the United States, is married to a woman who purports to teach us all how to eat. She's not forcing us to do anything. And despite some recent talk on the subject, the government has never undertaken to require us to eat broccoli. But young Obama wasn't forced to eat dog. He "learned." He was "introduced." (Fido, meet Barack. Barack, meet Fido... meat Fido.) It's instruction, not compulsion.

And maybe you will eat what you're told.

Children.

Similarly, W's youthful consumption of Jack Daniels inspired Laura Bush's sinister literacy drives. Yet we resisted the subtle pressure to join a book club. Never surrender!

UPDATE. Althouse disputes my characterization. For one thing, she says she was too old for Cap'n Crunch. Come now, Professor, you're being modest! Also:

Here I am explaining my cereal preference to 2 guys including a guy who looks like my dad and has a name like some guy in my adopted home town, Guy Madison.

Is this like El Topo and I'm supposed to get high before going to see it? The whole blog, I mean.

WINGNUT WELFARE MAG AND HOLLYWOOD TAX WRITE-OFF MEET CUTE, PART II. Last year I and some few brave souls saw Atlas Shrugged: Part I, the shitty movie made from part of Ayn Rand's shitty novel. The Galtian supermen proclaimed the film a record-breaking smash, though the actual box office returns contradicted this assessment.

But where some saw disaster, others saw a market opportunity; as the sharks circled, the boys from Reason magazine kept faith with their Randroid readership and ballyhooed the film shamelessly. Nick Gillespie interviewed the principals, offering such deathless observations as, "Does it seem somehow in keeping that the critical reception might be mixed but the audience response is huge?" Matt Welch gave the film one of its rare positive reviews under the headline "This Objectivist Gives Atlas Shrugged Part I a Hearty Thumbs Up," which may have referred to the opinion of a Rand fan he quoted rather than his own -- Welch is slippery that way -- though he did offer that "the look and sound [of the film] were mostly (and surprisingly) handsome, Dagny in particular and Hank were good, and there are some pretty awesome capitalism, bitches!-style moments," which despite the plausible deniability must have goosed the punters good and proper. (They couldn't get Kurt Loder to do the same, for which he was probably forgiven; after all, he may want to work somewhere else again one day.)

Now Part II is in the works, and Reason's back to beat the PR drum for it. Brian Doherty draws the short straw and goes "on the set." He starts with a little revisionism about Part I:

Official critical reception wasn’t so great—though normal folk seemed to like it better than the credentialed tastemakers, according to fim review sites such as Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes.

The film, we remind you, cost $20 million and made less than $5 million, so I guess Doherty means that guys who think their jobs in middle management make them "wealth producers" and that Patrick Bateman had the right idea are the new normal.

And hey look -- production news:

In a move that might prove controversial to fans of Part I, this new movie has been entirely recast—not a single actor reprises their role. Director Paul Johansson, meanwhile, has been replaced by John Putch (a TV veteran with many episodes of Scrubs and Cougar Town behind him).

That might be "controversial to fans," but I'm sure the agents of the escapees are pleased. How does co-producer Harmon Kaslow feel about it?

“The message of Atlas is greater than any particular actor, so it’s one of those pieces of literature that doesn’t require in our view the interpretation by a singular actor,” Kaslow says.

Well played, sir. Doherty seems to have seen some scenes, and reports:

The new Rearden, Jason Beghe (most recently of Californication), plays Hank with far more gruff menace than his predecessor, the suave Grant Bowler. Beghe goes with an intensity that draws you in to him rather than projects flashily, and delivers his lines with a deep growl that almost made him feel like a Hollywood take on a Randian crime boss, someone driven to organized crime in a world where just trying to be productive on your own terms had become illegal.

A crime boss in a world where just trying to be productive on your own terms has become illegal -- sounds like Tony Montana. I never fucked anybody over in my life didn't have it coming to them. You got that? All I have in this world is my balls and my word... Does Rearden get coked up and take everyone out with an M16 and a grenade launcher at the end? They may get my $12 again!

And despite the fact that both Rearden and his metal were invented by Rand in the 1950s, while audiences today participate in an economy where more and more people are living not through mass production but by individualized creativity (what some social scientists are calling the “personalized economy”) Rearden and his troubles still feel more of the moment than they do some sort of outmoded industrial age castoff.

Well, of course. I can see kids watching the trailer and thinking, "As a seasonally-employed barista/DJ barely making enough to split a loft with six friends in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Hank Reardon with a face covered in cocaine is relevant to my interests."

But for the real Randroids -- and, face it, who else would pay any attention to this beside them and us? -- Doherty has some juicy come-ons:

Yes, Rand fans, “looters” and “moochers,” both delivered seriously in mainstream movie dialogue... 

... Rearden’s office set, complete with Randian modernist metal sculptures: shining, swirling ribbons and abstract geometries made solid. In fact, there's lots of great metal work everywhere.

If that doesn't have them breaking down the theater doors, I don't know what will. The makers also coyly deny that their intended October release date is a "deliberate attempt to have the movie’s pop culture impact influence the November election." This reminds me of a bit Paul Lynde and Alice Ghostley did on some variety show back in the 60s: the unprepossessing Ghostley, playing an aspiring actress, says she doesn't approve of nudity, but would perform unclothed if it were essential to the script, and Lynde replies, "Who asked ya?"

As I am increasingly wont to ask: Do these guys even know any real people?

RAISING THE TENOR OF DEBATE. At Commentary, Jonathan S. Toobin:

This evening, Jews in Israel and around the world will mark Yom HaShoah, the day of remembrance of the Holocaust. For most, it will be a moment of mourning as well as an occasion to ponder the lessons of history and to ask whether humanity has learned anything in the 67 years since the end of the Second World War. But for some on the left, the Holocaust has become a political liability that must be drained of all relevance to the contemporary world.

What, did someone make fun of Liberal Fascism again?

That’s the gist of today’s editorial in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper that demands that “Netanyahu stop hiding behind Holocaust warnings.” Haaretz, which articulates the opinion of the minority of Israelis who espouse the views of the hard left about the conflict with the Palestinians as well as the potential confrontation with Iran, has come to negatively view any attempt to ground the country’s security policies in the historical experience of the Jewish people. Thus, for them it’s not merely enough to chide the prime minister for what they wrongly believe is the promiscuous use of Holocaust analogies. Instead, their goal, as well as that of others who pay lip service to the idea of proper commemoration of the Six Million who died at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators, is to strand the event in history. Doing so serves their immediate political purpose but, in fact, confounds the entire concept of remembrance of the Holocaust.

In other words, the real proper commemoration of the Six Million is to involve them in present-day retail politics and cast your (Israeli) opponents as post facto Hitler apologists.

Funny, the Commentariat were pissed when Newt Gingrich claimed Romney was making the alte kakers eat trayf. "Politicizing the Holocaust," sniffed Seth Mandel, "especially when it’s this transparent and forced, is not traditionally the way to Jewish voters’ hearts." But on you it looks good.

If Godwin's Law were really a law, Toobin would be on his way to the chair.

UPDATE. In comments, satch: "IIRC, the first thing Likud did when they came to power was ram a provision through the Knesset exempting themselves from Godwin's Law." Smart move!

WHISTLING IN THE DARK. At the Wall Street Journal, Holman W. Jenkins rags on all the silly people who are concerned about income inequality:

Income inequality is a strange obsession, at least to the extent the obsessives focus their policy responses on trying to adjust the condition of the top 1% rather than improving the opportunities of everyone else...

One factor is a certain human soul-sickness that's impossible to put a constructive gloss on. Why is the New York Times disproportionately given over to cataloging the consumption of the rich in a tone even more cringing for its pretending to be snarky? Why do some of our dreariest journalists spend all their time writing about Goldman Sachs, except to associate themselves with the status object they attack in order to raise their own status?

Instead of the Times and the other elitists who talk smack about those poor fellows at Goldman Sachs, Jenkins might have directed his disdain at the overwhelming majority of Americans who now want to soak the rich.

That he didn't shows that even dim toffs such as he know the jig is up. Though the awful legacy of the Reagan years still plagues us in many respects, at least people seem to be getting over the bizarre delusion, widespread in that era, that the hyper-wealthy view them any differently than the kings of yore viewed peasants or livestock. Where once, for example, a lot of normal folks who should have known better were genuinely interested in the views and amours of Donald Trump, his recent Presidential campaign only excited the sympathy of the sort of rightwing buffoons who think Holman W. Jenkins is really giving the redistributionists what-for. Jenkins' column is not meant to convince anyone, but to comfort rich-bastard apologists in a lonely time.

Accordingly, the upcoming election will be about socialism, the unfair advantages enjoyed by African-Americans, and Obama eating dog meat as a boy.

A LITTLE PERSPECTIVE. Ted Nugent is an asshole, as he has recently made extra clear, yet I find myself in sympathy with him. Not because of his wretched politics, but because I value artistic freedom.

Nugent's death threats were, like everything the guy does, a performance. I can approve his being investigated for them, just as I approve of the occasional necessary legal interventions against Daniel Johnston and other deranged creatives, but what I can't take is all these people talking as if it's some kind of outrage that the author of "Wango Tango" is saying crazy shit. If the Nuge can't be psycho, who can?

UPDATE. "Well, I'm an 'alleged comedian' too. Kill Nixon!"

SHORTER ROBERT VERBRUGGEN. How dare Alex Pareene lump me in with the racists? I'm not saying science has proven that black people are inferior -- just that, if we keep working diligently, we may attain this goal in my lifetime.

(The comments to VerBruggen's post are pretty much what you would expect, too.)

UPDATE. In comments, Margarita: "Henry Louis Gates, Jr., 'himself is famous for using genetics to trace people’s ancestry.' Surely this is an amulet, if you will, against any accusations of prejudice. I mean, Henry Louis Gates, Jr.... He's black."

Like I said some days back, they'd be so much better off if they just stopped trying to talk their way out of it. John Derbyshire is probably happy as a clam now, working on his next piece for American Renaissance or VDare, where they won't be giving him any funny looks.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the Ann Romney thing, discussed here previously.

Not included because it's so weird that it doesn't really line up with anything is Ann Althouse's conversation-starter about -- well, let her tell it:

What I want to concentrate on in this first post, initiating my "single-earner household" tag, is the way it's not just for traditionalists. I want to challenge liberals, left-wingers, feminists, progressives — all those folks — to see why they should want to actively promote the single-earner household.

I thought we were all supposed to be in favor of unwed mothers with no man about the house. Doesn't workfare qualify as earning?

Single-earner households benefit the environment. You believe in global warming? Prove it! A 2-earner household has a much larger carbon footprint. 2 adults travel to work each day, they buy extra consumer goods (such as work clothes), they rely on fast-food, they take their children to day care.

You think Althouse hasn't anticipated the objection that many couples don't have tenure, and both parties have to work to pay the bills? You forget she's a law professor!

Here's "The Tightwad Gazette." It's all about using ingenuity to make it possible for a family to live on a single income. Why should we all have to join what they used to call the "rat race"? Is life about having a job? Some people need jobs, but why have we come to believe that every adult must have a job?

I liked it better when they were offering us bootstraps instead of old newsletters; at least you could sell bootstraps.

GENDER WARS. While the nation's idiots have been promoting Ann Romney as the voice of the downtrodden, Dr. Mrs. Ole Perfesser spares a thought for those other the-real-victims, America's menfolk:

I have spent part of the day doing research for my book including reading a fairly biased book by the name of Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men by Michael Kimmel. In it, like so many other supposedly “pro-male” development books, he makes guys out to be a bunch of commitment phobic, extended adolescent types who are a pack of homophobic losers who prey on women.

So, it's like most 20th Century American fiction, then? I might buy it, then; I kinda miss John Updike.

Good grief, it’s no wonder no men buy these types of books. I’m already feeling disgustingly denigrated by this Uncle Tim author and I’m not even male.

American men are so oppressed, they even have their own slave narrative: Uncle Tim's Man-Cave, in which the gentle, good-hearted males of Obamatown are persecuted by Hillary Legree. Features Tipsy, a charming drunk who, as an icebreaker at parties, likes to point to his penis and say "I 'spect I growed."

I have spent the week talking with experts and others about how men can fight back against the backlash and misandry that is so rampant in our culture and many have given me good suggestions for my book.

I envision these "experts and others" as one 5'7" guy who spends long days at the gym working on his frighteningly articulated abs, and has written a book called Grr! Power: Unleash Your Inner Rapist and Grow Rich; and two of Dr. Mrs.' patients who can't afford their therapy bills and are working them off as walkers.

However, one way of fighting back is “going Galt,” that is–going on strike–against the system and individuals who are causing the problem.

Not that again! Dr. Mrs. flogs the Going Galt thing like she had the patent. Maybe somebody at the Atlas Society gave her a fake one as a practical joke.

Some men don’t marry, others don’t go to college, some work low-paying jobs and enjoy hobbies to keep from paying into a system that transfers men’s taxes to women through federal and state programs.

Is that why people are skipping college and working low-paying jobs? I thought it was the recession. Is Going Galt also the reason we're eating more beets?

I was directed to the DMOP's nonsense by the OP himself, whose page is otherwise nearly entirely devoted to the Hilary Rosen case, which he and his fellow propagandists portray as their come-from-behind victory  in the War on Women. It strikes me that Dr. Mrs. and the Ole Perfesser are working two sides of the same street. Like everyone else, they're aware that men and women can be approached as political interest groups, and that to sway people politically it helps to use symbols. But for DM, the OP, and all their kind, the symbols are all there is. Liberals point to a wave of restrictive conservative legislation that targets women; conservatives counter with a woman who noticed Ann Romney is rich enough to pay someone to wipe her ass. Your Argument Is Invalid, boo ya, we win.

Meanwhile Dr. Mrs. works on the fellas, telling them that the bitches are keeping them down. It's like a police interrogation scene where they've got the suspects in different rooms and are telling each that the other one ratted them out.

Willing as I usually am to suspect the worst about my fellow creatures, I'm not sure this will go over. I suspect this works on the poor, confused souls who fall under Dr. Mrs.' sway. But in my experience women are smarter than that.

UPDATE. "Yes, it's stupid to have to walk on eggshells because of stupid people," says Jennifer in comments, "but [Rosen] really garbled the message by not making clear that Ann Romney's experience as a mother has been nothing like the experience of 95% of other mothers in the US because of her wealth, not because she was a stay at home mom." All this is true, but the first 13 words are especially relevant to my interests. In any battle of propagandists such as that in which Rosen et alia are engaged, there's no point in choosing any side but truth. Then you can say what you mean, rather than what you think will get over. Also: Fuck the RIAA.

zencomix provides a suitable gloss on DMOP's sad-sack following: "There's a reason one of the kids in The He-Man Woman Haters Club was named 'Spanky.'"

HOMAGE TO REVEREND AL. Victor Davis Hanson, deep breath now:

There were several reasons why it was unwise for the attorney general of the United States to praise Al Sharpton at a convention of Sharpton’s organization, “for your partnership, your friendship, and your tireless efforts to speak out for the voiceless, to stand up for the powerless, and to shine a light on the problems we must solve, and the promises we must fulfill,” in the midst of the Trayvon Martin case (“I know that many of you are greatly — and rightly — concerned about the recent shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, a young man whose future has been lost to the ages”), even as Sharpton has been quite actively inflaming an already tense situation...

...but the main one is, the bigots who aren't going to vote for this Administration anyway will be mad at you.

I once voted for Sharpton for the Democratic nomination for Senator from New York. It is one of my most cherished electoral memories. Sharpton has made mistakes, God knows, but he does indeed speak out for the voiceless and stand up for the powerless, something you'd never catch Hanson doing on a bet. Based on his long-term record, if I see Sharpton is on a case, I don't assume it means another Freddy's Fashion Mart; I assume it means that someone the powerful don't give a shit about is in trouble. Life experience and my Christian upbringing dispose me kindly toward such people.

Anyway, if he's good enough to train NYPD recruits, he's good enough for me.

As for Sharpton "actively inflaming an already tense situation," I suppose Hanson means this:

Al Sharpton urges Trayvon Martin supporters not to "tarnish" his name with violence 

..."We are not in the business of revenge. We are in the business of justice," said Sharpton, speaking at a convention for the National Action Network, his civil rights group. "We must make the justice system work. Otherwise the movement is for nothing. To go outside the justice system is to achieve nothing."

These people are such lying assholes that if they said something bad about Satan, I'd give Satan the benefit of the doubt.

A DREAM DEFERRED. There was never any chance of Santorum getting the nomination, and even the dead-enders have known it for some time. But it was fun to dream. Like their now-despised, once-worshipped George W. Bush, a President Romney will give them what they really require -- unkind words for the people they hate, kind words for the people they love, and the plunder of the Treasury that they associate with free enterprise and self-reliance. To get all that and a religious maniac in the Oval Office was more than they could really expect. Still, enabled by mainsteam media dopes, they may yet look forward to a Golden future time when Santorum, or some other lunatic like him, will return with the seven seals and regulate for reals.

Meanwhile let us enjoy the lamentations of the wingnuts. Left Coast Rebel:

Newt Gingrich has said he will remain in the race. But his chances of winning are virtually non-existent. This is no longer Romney's race to lose - it's his. That's truly unfortunate. A brokered convention may have been bloody, it may have been expensive and unproductive, but that was not a guarantee. It may have been healthy. None of these candidates were ideal, but a brokered convention may have caused someone to rise to the occasion. It might have resulted in some great speeches and it might have ended in a unifying rally cry. But it's not to be.

If only sorrow could make them eloquent.

DERP DE DERB. Over the past day or so, several of John Derbyshire's former colleagues at National Review have posted on his dismissal. As you might expect, whether they approve or disapprove of his defenestration, they all agree that  political correctness is the real crime here.

"Unfortunately the entire vocabulary of racist slurs has been cheapened, and few anymore insist that no one of any race should use any racial slurs," says Victor Buster Poindexter David JoHanson. By this Hanson means black people saying "nigger," which always enrages conservatives, who consider it yet another unfair advantage enjoyed by African-Americans. "There was a time not too far in the past," Hanson reminiscences, "when the black community attempted to stop the use of the N-word in rap music, on radio, and in movies..." It's interesting that Hanson interprets the politicians and public figures who made a stink about this once upon a time as "the black community" -- when such people speak up instead about, say, a black kid getting murdered, Hanson considers it "demagoguery."

Mark Steyn, among others, seems to believe Derbyshire being fired by a rightwing publication is P.C. censorship by liberals.

The Left is pretty clear about its objectives on everything from climate change to immigration to gay marriage: Rather than win the debate, they’d just as soon shut it down. They’ve had great success in shrinking the bounds of public discourse, and rendering whole areas of public policy all but undiscussable. In such a climate, my default position is that I’d rather put up with whatever racist/sexist/homophobic/Islamophobic/whateverphobic excess everybody’s got the vapors about this week than accept ever tighter constraints on “acceptable” opinion.

Out of his devotion to free speech, Steyn is volunteering to listen the one about the coon in the woodpile. What a hero. He also spreads that bullshit about the liberals trying to silence David Weigel, based on something he read at some guy's blog. As I reminded readers at the Voice, Weigel has indeed been fired from a major publication for his opinions -- that is, for making fun of conservatives.

Similarly confused about cause and effect, Jason Lee Steorts, who approves the separation, nonetheless laments that "there is something thuggish, not to mention insecure, in the mob’s expectation that a head be thrown to it without any discussion of the nature of the offense, and in its refusal to entertain any possibility of forgiveness." Rich Lowry, the new Robespierre, throwing Derb's head to the leftist rabble! Someone should paint that.

The best thing about all this is, I can offer these idiots valuable advice and there's no chance in hell that they'll take it. So I will:

Let's say there was some truth to the idea that liberals are mau-mauing you -- using their Svengali influence over black people to make you look like racists. What would the smart reaction to that be? It would be to act like a normal human being; that is, to blow it off, to make nothing of it, and to rely on your impeccably non-racist example to show the world what these awful people say about you is untrue. If it feels tough at times, you could always pray for strength from that God you're always yapping about.

In other words, the smart thing is to actually be, and behave like, the person you are always loudly insisting you are -- unconcerned with race, not even recognizing it, a good friend to all humankind, etc. But the "loudly insisting" part seems more important to you than anything else. It's like you can't help yourself -- anytime you come within range of a racial issue, you have to start talking about it. And you talk rubbish.

Had you been paying attention to, oh, anything when you were growing up, you would have observed that whenever you go on and on about what a [insert positive model here] you are, one result is almost inevitable -- you make a fucking idiot of yourself. You start explaining why, though you buy everything in The Bell Curve about black people being inferior to white people, that doesn't mean you can't treat them as equals, and isn't that what really matters? At which point everyone in the room is giving you the "Springtime for Hitler" stare, and you find yourself wondering yet again why you're always so persecuted by the Thought Police.

I mean this sincerely: You would gain a lot more at this point by giving up than by fighting. You could concentrate on the core strengths of conservatism -- tax breaks for the wealthy and hatred of homosexuals -- and hope for that to win you enough rubes to carry the day.

This might help: Try and forget that Obama is black. Try to suppress that swelling feeling in your gut when you see people cheering for him, or hear the band playing "Hail to the Chief"... oh, but I can see that just my mentioning it has got you drafting another explanatory essay. Well, I did what I could.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the John Derbyshire thing. I'm sorry they fired the old bastard -- his was a clarifying, overtly racist presence among the more milquetoast race-baiters of National Review. I liked to imagine him at their parties, drunk and going "nigger" this and "faggot" that, with all the Lowrys and Yorks and Lopezes giggling about how wonderfully incorrigible and English he is while Mark Steyn bellows GOOD SHOW DERB! and vomits up a flagon of Rhenish.

We could pore over my collection of Derb reminiscences, but let us not be too valedictory; Derbyshire will certainly re-emerge, perhaps on This Week With George Stephanopoulos.

UPDATE. Look who's been inspired to do his bit for racial discord: Mark Judge -- nee Mark Gauvreau Judge, culture-warring, trend-setting swing-dancer for Christ. He had his bike stolen in a DC neighborhood from which all the black residents have not yet been chased by gentry-waves. Judge must be over 30 by now, but apparently he's never been robbed before, because this has caused him to turn against all black people, and to relinquish the "white guilt" that once made him watch Norman Jewison movies.

Perhaps sensing that even ordinary racists would be disgusted with his whining, Judge invents wimpy liberal friends beside whom he can look butchly Politically Incorrect. Unfortunately, this is how the gentleman essays to roll:

Hearing the kumbaya song from my liberal friend, I immediately thought of a phrase Piers Morgan had recently used...

I think Jesus just carried his Smirnoff Ice into the next room.

I'll leave the last word to an especially astute Daily Caller commenter:

I stole your bike. I only did it because you're a wanker. I didn't actually want it, or want to sell it for drugs or beer or anything. I just wanted to throw it in the river. So I threw it in the river.

Respect.

SHORTER JOHN DERBYSHIRE: I hate niggers. (h/t @jbposnanski)

LUDICHRIST. Reading and writing about all these horrible things said by all these horrible people takes a great psychic toll on yours truly. But sometimes Fate (represented in this case by reader Ed Lederer) is kind and sends me something so delightfully absurd that I can only be absurdly delighted by it. Ladies and gentlemen, get a load of this: A theological discussion between Rod Dreher and Andrew Sullivan. Is it my birthday?

It may help to start by reading the endless Sullivan Newsweek essay on (retch) faith and politics that kicked this off. That may be asking too much. It does have its howlers --

Whether or not you believe, as I do, in Jesus’ divinity and resurrection—and in the importance of celebrating both on Easter Sunday—[Thomas] Jefferson’s point is crucially important.

Also:

I’ve pondered the Incarnation my whole life. I’ve read theology and history. I think I grasp what it means to be both God and human—but I don’t think my understanding is any richer than my Irish grandmother’s. Barely literate, she would lose herself in the rosary at mass...

Grant me grandmama's simple faith! cries Sully on the jitney to P-town. But life is far too short. Let's go straight to Dreher's objection and I bet you can guess what it's about (hint: it ain't transubstantiation):

Holy Week reading from Sully’s blog this morning: a reader’s letter about his magical experience hiring his favorite male porn star to have sex with him as a birthday present to himself.

The faggity-fag-fags are having sexity-ex-sex!

To be sure, I don’t know to what extent Sullivan endorses his correspondent’s actions, but I’m a regular reader of his blog, and given the things he does endorse, and write, I think it’s reasonable to assume he approves of his correspondent’s point of view. How is that letter-writer’s actions remotely compatible with Christianity?

If the porn star were the correspondent's cousin, and they did their coupling in the corn-crib, and the correspondent felt so sick about it afterwards that he made a big donation to a megachurch and embarked on a contrite, loveless, and quiverfull heterosexual marriage, all would be hunky-dory. But the gays just have sex for fun, which makes Jesus stabby, as do Sullivan's other infidel friends:

Sullivan praises in his Newsweek essay the selective Christianity of Thomas Jefferson, who famously edited the New Testament to take out the parts he didn’t agree with.

On the other hand, Jefferson did have sex with his slaves, which you have to admit is pretty Biblical.

But for Dreher it's mainly about the gaysex, though he can't supply any direct quotes from the Top Guy to justify his opprobrium. "Jesus’s teachings weren’t as explicit as St. Paul’s," Dreher admits, "but then again, if you cut Paul off, you don’t have Christianity," just as you don't have George Orwell without the glosses of the neocon propagandists who appropriated him.

Dreher continues to yell at Sullivan for his lack of chastity, inevitably inserting the Bullshit Christian Moment of Self-Abnegation:

Look, I don’t exempt myself from this. Every day I resist the radical call of Jesus to detach ourselves from our desires for His sake.

Sadly, he doesn't go into details; I imagine him jerking off with his Wii console.

In his response, Sullivan seems at first to panic and admit everything; while insisting that "sex is an extremely minor theme" in Christ's work, he accepts that "the notion that Jesus was a free love kinda guy is also preposterous, and I never wrote otherwise." So he is guilty, guilty, guilty of lust -- and since that includes lust in one's heart, then so is everyone else -- "Any man who has ever had a chubby for someone not his wife is an adulterer," he writes. "Every celibate priest is an adulterer. The Pope is an adulterer..." One begins to suspect Sullivan experiences guilt not as a psychic or mystical transmission, but as a kink. In desperation he brings up The Woman Taken in Adultery and Let He Who Is Without Sin Etc. Translation: Don't hurt me/Or you're a Pharisee.

Then it's Sullivan's turn to have the Bullshit Christian Moment of Self-Abnegation, which he performs splendidly:

I have had good moments in this struggle and terrible, lasting failures. This Lent has forced me to consider my constant failures more than my intermittent moments of grace. That I confess. As a practical matter, I have not had the strength to live as Saint Francis, without possessions, without a home, without sex, without anything but a subsistence diet, reliant entirely on physical labor and begging on the streets as a last resort.

Oh well, maybe next year, Sully.

Dreher comes back to patiently explain to Sullivan the real meaning of the WTIA story: Apparently the cast-the-first-stone thing is a minor part of it, perhaps added by script doctors on the road, and the real message is that woman was a whore and she better not do it again. And that reminds him: Homosexuals! By which he means, why do you liberals keep bringing it up?

It’s interesting how so many liberal Christians accuse conservatives of being obsessed with sex, yet so much of their own writing and activism focuses on sex and sexuality, especially homosexuality. In my old, lily-white Philly neighborhood, there was a mainline Protestant church that posted a banner out front with the rainbow flag, announcing that it was a “welcoming and affirming” congregation. Which is fine, if that’s their thing. I passed that church every day, though, and it finally occurred to me that they never put a banner up announcing that they welcomed black people, or Hispanics.

Somebody make this man a BUTTSEKS=RACISM bumper sticker, stat. Also Dreher returns to Thomas Jefferson, "a brilliant and noble man who, in his intellectual pride, only accepted as much of Jesus as made sense to him. This won’t work, and it won’t work because it can’t work." Thomas Jefferson burns in hell! But Dreher won't, because in his early 20s he let Christ all the way in, if you know what he means, and has been fighting for his chastity ever since. He even has his own version of an "It Gets Better" message for the kids:

It is not true, by the way, that marriage is any kind of “cure” for unchaste thoughts. You have to keep at it, repenting, repenting, repenting, and allowing the grace of God to work on you. I am not the man I was at 25, when I had my conversion. I am not tempted as I once was, but that’s only because I was able to receive God’s healing grace.

Translation: Yes, there is enough good French wine in the world to get you through the long nights of bootless bundling Jesus requires. Get thee a nice wingnut welfare sinecure to pay for it, and sin no more!

IN PASSING. I see the Trayvon Martin case has gotten under their skin -- at National Review they're pretending to give a shit about whether black people live or die.

Won't do any good -- they'll have to stop before the next election anyway.

UPDATE. In comments, whetstone: "Reframing the ooga-booga so that its deployment is a sign not that the Republican party is veering towards George Wallace-level race-baiting, but that we only talk about the ooga-booga because we care... The Willie Horton ad as racial outreach."

Fats Durston goes for parody: "His name was Muhammad ibn Abd'allah. He was by all accounts a very good kid living in a very tough neighborhood. He was attending a party for young Baghdad teens, there to enjoy some fun, free from the fear of violence that too often inhabited the streets outside. But violence found a way in. At about 10:30 pm, an errant shot from a Marine manning a roadblock went through two walls and Muhammad was fatally struck in the head...." I remember when conservatives pretended to care about Iraqis, too. Hard to believe now, huh?

EVERY TIME YOU TURN AROUND, THERE'S ANOTHER HARD LUCK STORY THAT YOU'RE GONNA HEAR. The alicublog commenter known as Provider_UNE (you may know him better by his Cletus avatar) has a blog, it turns out, and quite a story to tell:

I was hoping that I could return to a semblence of normal (minus the eye that would never again focus light on the retina) as quickly as possible. Another manifestation of my illness has resulted in my right index finger has a permanent 30 degree bend at the middle knuckle, which can be a nuisance, but can also be worked around.

I had hoped that within six months I would be able to trust my right knee enough to run again. Six months later I was hit by a truck while riding to work...

We've all had days like that, haven't we? You haven't? Whether you have or not, Provider_UNE, aka Kent, has some trouble making ends meet and a PayPal Donate button. I will just leave those suggestive facts out there for you to do with what you will.

LA VIDA ES SUEÑO. Victor Davis Herodotus Maximus Super Hanson:

Since 1980, I can recall five or six illegal-alien drivers who ended up in my vineyard, after veering off the road at high speeds, ploughing through the vineyard, and ripping out lots of mature vines, before ending up several rows from the road. In only two cases did the police find the somnolent, intoxicated (uninjured) drivers still in the cars (both with no license, no valid ID, and no car insurance)...

In addition, I was broadsided on one occasion by an illegal-alien driver, who after running the stop sign and hitting the driver side of my truck, abandoned his car (no insurance, no registration) and fled on foot (I caught him). He had no license, but the arriving officer told me that he had charged him only with running the stop sign (not a hit and run) and would release him. I had to pay the deductible for the damage to my truck by the uninsured driver, and my insurance company later quietly informed me that the local police had filed no report of the accident...

If you're a fan of damned-Mescan stuff, there's plenty more of it in the post.

It seems a suspiciously common occurrence for Mescans to be plowing drunk into Hanson's crops, or into him, or stealing his tools, etc. I hate to give the impression that I disbelieve his stories (or his colleague Michael Austin's claim that he was accustomed to bribe Chicago poll-watchers to let him vote multiple times -- I'm sure it's true on some level), but it really does seem as if Hanson has a vastly greater amount of trouble with Mescans than any white man I've ever heard of.

Not to mention the cops.

Maybe he just doesn't make friends easily?

UPDATE. In comments, Spaghetti Lee asks, "Is Hanson trying to make a political point here or is he just crabbily reminiscing about his life?... liberals and conservatives alike can share stories of life's random indignities, but it seems to be the conservatives who see it all as a giant conspiracy against them personally." aimai answers, "It's not personal--it's in propria persona as a white person. That's what has him so upset. It's not just happening to him -- It's happening to all the middle aged chain saw using vinyard owning classics professors and pundits."

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the rightwing Bizarro-World Earth Hour, Human Achievement Hour. Yeah, I've done one about this before, but the fact that they haven't given up in shame makes the subject worth a revisit. Also, we've got a Randroid addressing the question, "Does laissez-faire capitalism harm the environment?" The answer may surprise you!

WHITHER BREITBARTISM? A clue may be found in a piece at Big Somethingorother by Jeffrey Scott Shapiro. It's over a month old, but Breitbart Lieutenant Lee Stranahan is pimping it, so it's apparently central to their worldview.

It’s hard for people to pinpoint exactly what it is they don’t like about President Barack Obama, but I think I can easily sum it up: his thinly veiled contempt for America, and his transparent resentment for the country he was elected to lead.

This is like a glimpse into a magical, private world -- a world where you can just assume that people don't bother to judge how the President is running the country, but instead instinctually dislike him because he hates America. (It's also, I'm guessing, a world festooned with Confederate flags and spittoons.)

You’ll often hear people say, “He just hates America.”

Not only in Shapiro's own survivalist compound, but also among the patriots he picks up on ham radio.

But try this on for size: Barack Obama may just be our first “oppositional identity” president. What’s that mean?

I’d never heard the phrase oppositional identity before because I don’t subscribe to collectivist identity theories.

Another hallmark of this psychology is the need to distance yourself from the very theory on which you're about to instruct the troops -- very much like the popular shtick whereby they insist they're only using Saul Alinsky as a model because it's the only way they can defeat Alinskyite liberals.

I believe--much like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.--that people should be recognized by their own individual actions, not those of their ancestors.

Also he's no racist, and after he and his buddies crush Obama, Shirley Sherrod, et ooga-booga alia, he's going to dance to a Temptations record.

But when I recently met a special education graduate student from Antioch University in Los Angeles and she told me about oppositional identity...

Hm -- maybe this started out as a Penthouse letter.

...I wondered whether it could help explain why President Obama harbors such apparent animosity toward his own country--and why he’s said some of the things he has in the past. So, she loaned me her textbook to write this article.

And that's where the thirst for knowledge comes from -- opposition research!

There follows a bunch of schoolly talk, which I'll spare you; you can get some idea of how seriously Shapiro takes it by this section:

Oppositional identity is a theory that is applied to classroom situations, but let’s replace the words “school,” and “education,” with “country,” and “America.”

Got that square peg hammered in nice and tight? Good. On to the double reverse Alinsky!

The question I’m getting at is this: does Barack Obama believe that adopting the fundamental values of America would be seen as surrendering to the "enemy"?

Barack Obama is the President of the United States, but identifies a member of an involuntarily minority that was forced to come to this country as slaves.

It's like Gingrich's Kenyan anti-colonialism bullshit, but even better because it's homegrown -- Obama's not pissed about some people stuck over in Africa; no, he's pissed at us honkeys just 'cause we gave his ancestors the free ride to America that allowed him to be President! What an ingrate!

Oh, but wait, there's more. Shapiro's not just a lunatic, but also a soldier in the cause, and he's willing to put his own Second Life identity on the line to prove his (newly adapted from collectivist identity theories) thesis. Ladies and gents, behold his magnificent swan-dive of reason:

To test this theory, I tried to put myself in Obama’s position the best way that I could. I am Jewish. I love America with all my heart, and to me the United States is a heroic, liberating force that saved my people from extermination during the Holocaust in WWII. 

Let’s assume however, that I was born in Germany, and somehow I became Chancellor of that country. Would I identify more with my country, which at one time systematically murdered six million of my own people--or my group--which in post-Holocaust Europe could (by Finn’s definition) be considered an “involuntary minority?”] 

That’s a difficult question to answer, but another way of asking this question is: would I still harbor suspicion about the country I now led despite the majority electing me? 

Yes--I would.

Tried and proven in the court of roleplay! If some little boy or girl out there hopes to be Germany's first Jewish Chancellor, watch out -- Jeffrey Scott Shapiro's already written Die Freiheit's campaign strategy.

UPDATE. Ah, I see the meme walks:

Something's happening to President Obama's relationship with those who are inclined not to like his policies. They are now inclined not to like him. His supporters would say, "Nothing new there," but actually I think there is...

It's Peggy Crazy Jesus Lady Noonan, in full omniscient mode. She even does dialogue!

The shift started on Jan. 20, with the mandate that agencies of the Catholic Church would have to provide services the church finds morally repugnant. The public reaction? "You're kidding me. That's not just bad judgment and a lack of civic tact, it's not even constitutional!"

And, after the Trayvon Martin story broke,

At the end of the day, the public reaction seemed to be: "Hey buddy, we don't need you to personalize what is already too dramatic, it's not about you."

Surely you, dear reader, heard such talk down at Joe's Diner, over at Mike's Bar, among the parishioners at Father Flotsky's Church Social, and in other corners of the Noonan soundstage. She makes Whit Stillman sound like Stan Mack.

Elsewhere, in the tiny radical enclave known as America, Obama's approval rating is moving up -- probably not because of anything he's done, I'm guessing, but because people are noticing that the people who oppose him are fucking nuts.

UPDATE 2. Har, Good Roger Ailes in comments: "Nooners also seems to have written Trayvon Martin's dialogue for George Zimmerman's father and brother."

THEY LEARNED NOTHING AND FORGOT NOTHING. I don't know if you've noticed, but Megan McArdle has taken off to work on some project (my understanding is it will be called The Koch Kookbook; each dish features the meat of an animal capriciously declared "endangered" by some ecofascist regime, and will be road-tested in McArdle's culinary lab). To hold the fort she has enlisted a new crew of Kids from McArdle. What sort of kids are they? True Blue Libertarian! And what do they believe in?

If you're driving through certain West African countries, you'll be stopped every few miles by armed men--often in police uniforms--who will demand payment in exchange for letting you pass.

I have a somewhat similar experience every time I drive from my home in Philadelphia to Washington, DC. As I'm driving up Interstate 95, I'll periodically be stopped by people in uniforms (thankfully not armed) who will demand money in exchange for letting me through.

Oh Jesus. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Tim B. Leeve in the Free Market 4Ever.

Obviously, there are important differences between these cases.

Whoa, big mainstream move.

In Africa, the roadblocks are mostly illegal and the payments are generally described as "bribes." In the United States, the practice is known as "collecting tolls" and is government-sanctioned

Just as so-called humans call health care a "right," and engage in a form of emotional commerce which they are pleased to call "love." Gawd, they're so immature.

Lee eventually tells us that "while I'm generally sympathetic to the idea of privately-managed roads, I've become convinced that the broader vision of 'free-market roads' is a conceptual confusion... the more I think about it, the less sense it makes." Good for him! But despite what could have been a life-changing insight, he can't let go of the dream -- he pores over the evidence, dazed, stricken even at what it might suggest:

A 2004 GAO survey found that four of the five privately-funded toll road projects started or completed in the preceding 15 years included non-compete clauses that restricted the creation of competing freeways nearby.

Capitalists exploiting a privatization scheme to dick the public! Who could have seen that coming? So, what have we learned?

To be clear, this isn't to say libertarians should oppose road privatization.

As I suspected.

The public has a right to freedom of movement along public roads, and this right can't be extinguished by transferring physical control of the road to a private firm. And libertarians should demand that private operators of public roads follow the same basic principles--non-discrimination, tolls not greatly exceeding the cost of building an operating the roads--that we'd apply if the government were operating those roads itself.

Demand! Preferably in a strongly-worded letter to the Chamber of Commerce, or to Reason magazine.

I remember when Mike Royko, disgusted by Roger Ebert's defense of Rupert Murdoch as a Citizen Kane type of mogul, said, "Roger's a nice guy but he thinks everything's a goddamn movie." These kids are even more misguided -- they think everything's an essay by Hayek. Movies at least are fun.