WHY NOBODY LIKES THE GOLDBERG FRAUD SQUAD.

Jonah Goldberg has been leading a charge of his fellow creeps against the large numbers of disability beneficiaries in the United States. He's already had some answers, but I think this response of his deserves another:

The most intriguing complaints come from people who are in effect saying that, since they have serious disabilities, it’s outrageous for me to question anyone’s disability claim. I think most people can see the flaw in this thinking. In fact, I’m flummoxed as to why people with real disabilities wouldn’t be the ones clamoring the loudest to stamp out fraud. Maybe disability checks would be more generous if voters thought they were subsidizing fewer cheats?

It would be difficult for Goldberg to see it, considering who he hangs out with, but not everyone is like him. And, in rare good news for the Republic, there are even fewer people like him than there used to be.

Back in sunnier times, when there seemed to be some relationship between the good fortune of Wall Street and the average American's purchasing power, we had an easier time believing that there was something morally superior about making money, and therefore something wicked about being poor. Those old Reagan-era stories about welfare queens and strapping young bucks with T-bone steaks, idiotic as they were, got a lot of people who should have known better to think, yes, maybe we should reform welfare, because even though snatching back some of the scraps we've been throwing the paupers won't enrich us much, it would be better for America and our souls if we at least tried to be mean sons of bitches. For look at the Masters of the Universe! It's not charitable instincts powering their economic miracle, but enlightened self-interest.

Came the collapse, that hooey became harder to swallow. Since it's turned out that the worse we do the more Wall Street rallies, we can't even stand the smell of it.

Conservatives are still telling us about the queens and bucks, though, trying to get us back into pauper-bashing shape. Fox News reports the so-called poor have refrigerators so why are they complaining; well-fed rightbloggers are outraged that welfare recipients spend some of their money on fast food and movie rentals; Jonah Goldberg wants to know which of these cripples are faking it, and his asshole buddy is talking about this guy he knows who pulled himself up by his bootstraps so why can't they, etc.

It isn't going over like it used to because there's this funny thing about Americans: We tend to be nicer to each other when times are rough than when they're easy. We get more sympathetic to other people who are having it hard in life because we know we're only a few paychecks away from it ourselves and, being human, we react with sympathy, rather than like George Costanza to a fire at a children's party.

And this applies in ambiguous circumstances, too -- what Goldberg in his pretense of magnanimity calls the "grayer area." If someone's a bum who spends the change you give him on drugs, he's still a bum; if someone's living off the dole, it's still not much of a living, and it certainly affords far fewer options and rewards than a viable working life. And if some disability pensioners are less disabled than the law might allow, what a sad pass they've come to, that they would go through all that to claim some miserly stipend. That poverty is not pure -- "the poor," Jimmy Breslin has said more than once, "are a pain in the ass" -- doesn't mean it's not poverty.

But maybe you need to have some minimal capacity for empathy to see that. Someone who wonders why the disabled aren't as eager as he is to turn in frauds, and offers them fatter checks in hopes of motivating them, probably doesn't qualify.

UPDATE. Comments are more eloquent than I was; here's a prime cut from D. Johnston:

That, my lazy little friend, is why people with "real" disabilities hate what you're doing - they understand your true intent. There is no part of me that believes you are honestly interested in rooting out fraud. There are sectors of the government far more vulnerable to fraud - the military, for instance - that you don't seem to care about. They believe - as do I - that your objective is to make people think that people on disability are liars so you can spend the next twenty years using them as scapegoats.

MEGAN McARDLE, FIXED.

"...I think Susan Patton is basically right: people should be looking to get married as early as possible. I say this as someone who married late, and since I wouldn't want to have married anyone except my husband, I'm glad I waited. But" it's not like you losers have anything so great to look forward to.

YOUR MOMENT OF GOLDSTEIN.

How's the left oppressing patriots today? With video games!  Here's an NPR story:

Back in 2007, in the first installment of BioShock, Levine created a world based on Ayn Rand's individualist philosophy and let it play out. This time, Levine has turned a game into an Aristotelian tragedy and used the model of great tragic heroes.

I couldn't give a shit about video games, but apparently at some point the Bad Guys in this one are revealed to be racists, which prompts this arrgh-blaargh from The Virginian:

NPR broadcast an article today about a developer of a violent video game in which the bad guys were Christians who revered the Constitution and were blatant racists. Of course with a theme like that it's obviously comparable to one of the great tragedies of literature... 

To NPR this is just like Hamlet or Oedipus. This is an NPR employee's dream of all that's wrong with America; America's founders, the religious heritage, and,of course the racism of everyone who's not part of the NPR family.

Like I said, I don't care about gaming and the NPR story doesn't mention it, but are the Founding Fathers really in BioShock Infinite? Because that would great to use in history classes. It speaks to the kids!

But The Virginian's a piker -- the aargh ain't blaarghy till Jeff Goldstein gets at it:

It’s out in the open now. There’s no longer any real pretense of objectivity. Each time the progressive media “report” favorably on something they characterize like this (fairly or not) — and no switch comes down to sting their hands — they grow ever more emboldened... 

They are the ones they’ve been waiting for, they were told. And it invigorates them. It gives them a sense of purpose and momentum. Because through the heart of every leftist runs the blood of totalitarianism, of confirmation bias, of rank bigotry and a mob’s lust for violence, for punishment, for blood, for inflicting suffering on those who dare oppose their designs...

Gasp! Not confirmation bias!

I don’t care who rolls their fucking eyes at my saying this. Circumstances have taught me that in several years, when the political winds allow them to do so, those very same people on “my” side will be saying the very same things I’m writing on now, pretending there wasn’t a time they rolled their fucking eyes at the True Believers, the embarrassing Hobbits who were preventing them from wooing the moderates.

To paraphrase LBJ's analogy, he's outside the tent, pissing himself.

I eagerly await Bill Whittle's take.

UPDATE. This story seems to have been covered previously by Big Breitbart and by Mytheos Holt, whose culture war training has got him thinking correctly about how to cover a game stoners play when they're bored:

Naturally, the creators denied any intent to specifically attack Rand, arguing instead that their general intent was to criticize extremism of all stripes. And considering that the first game treats Andrew Ryan (who isn’t even the main villain of the original Bioshock) with far more sympathy than it treats the all-but-explicitly communist villain of Bioshock 2, Sofia Lamb, who willingly traumatizes her own daughter and leaves a trail of corpses behind her in her pursuit of a utopian society, one could argue that the series had been comparatively right-leaning up until Infinite.

After much study of the struggle of competing Tendencies in this video game series ("In other words, the Leftist mass movement could come off mildly more sympathetic, though not much"), Holt finally feels he can answer the question, "Was the game created by Marxists/atheists?"  The answer may surprise you!

Coming soon: Which pornographic Tumblrs are consonant with free enterprise? (Trick question! Only pay sites embody the robot Founders' vision.)

UPDATE 2. Commenter Gromet informs us that "Breakout was the last truly God-fearing and patriotic game" because "your job was to destroy a band of rainbow colors." Wait, what about the Hunger Games?

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the gay marriage cases at the Supreme Court and all the hysteria they have engendered among the brethren. The ones where they try to play it cagey are even better than the ones where they aargh-blaargh sanctity of marriage etc, I think -- but you'll all have your own favorites, I'm sure.

REPUBLICAN MINORITY OUTREACH CONTINUES.

What could go wrong?

For those of you who have blissfully forgotten, Herman Cain is the black Donald Trump whose ridiculous Presidential run briefly excited the brethren until he resigned in ignominy, which they tried to blame on liberals.

Next up: Allen West makes a buddy picture with Chris Christie.

PROBLEM SOLVED.

So John Tracinski asks how do we get the youngs to vote GOP, but spends most of his column telling us that the college kids vote for liberals because the liberals brainwash them all with dependency and communism; after several rounds of these old Al Capp routines (only not funny) he cuts to an unexpected solution:

Yet the biggest failure of the right is that it has lost the economy’s technological elite.

Today’s John Galts and Hank Reardens are not in a valley in Colorado. They’re in a valley in California. The Hank Rearden of Silicon Valley, an innovator who started out in a garage and built a company which became the most valuable in the world, was Steve Jobs. But Jobs was—let’s be honest here—kind of a hippie. He had many of the virtues of an Ayn Rand hero, but a very different personal philosophy.

That brings us to what I think is the most important question to take away as the right examines how to reform itself. How does it win Silicon Valley? How does it get the best, most innovative segment of the youth, the ones who are actually plugged in to a vital and growing area of the economy, to see the value of free markets and to want to fight for them? I put it this way because I think that if the right learns how to win over the young innovators and entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley (and its many equivalents across the country), it will go a long way toward learning how to win over the youth vote.

Hmm, a Randian tech genius who believes the rest of the world is merely an appurtenance to his reality -- the answer is obvious: get John McAfee out of jail and back into the game! Hell, it worked with Tom DeLay.

SHORTER MICHAEL WALSH:

Fraud exists, so helping people is stupid.

(Actually, this could be the Shorter for the entire conservative movement.)

LITTLE MRS. CAN'T BE WRONG.

As she did with the Iraq War, Megan McArdle's got to come up with something contrarian to show that the dirty hippies with their annoying habit of being right about things aren't really right, not in the way that counts. So:

In some sense, it doesn't really matter how the Supreme Court rules on the gay marriage case it's hearing today. The culture war is over on this front, and gay marriage has won. Even if it loses at the Supreme Court this term, it will win in the legislatures . . . because it is already winning in popular opinion. Few people much under the age of sixty see a compelling reason that straights should marry and gays should not. For that matter, my Republican grandfather is rumored to have said, at the age of 86, "I think gays should marry! We'll see how much they like it, though."

At this point, it's just a matter of time. In some sense, the sexual revolution is over . . . and the forces of bourgeois repression have won.

The whole thing is so dizzying in its stupidity that it defies analysis, but basically: When gays can get married, then getting married will be so much the norm that you stupid bohemians with your free love will be ostracized like cigarette smokers. And leading the way will be those nice young Republican Presidential candidates:

The 1970s were an open revolt against the idea of the dutiful pair bond, in favor of a life of perpetual infatuation. The elites led the way--and now they're leading it back. Compare Newt Gingrich or John McCain to the new generation of Republican hopefuls. Jindal, Ryan, Christie, Rubio . . . all of them are married to their first wives. Jindal met his wife in high school, Christie in college. By their age, McCain was preparing for his first divorce, and Gingrich was just a few years from his second.

I'm surprised she didn't mention the irony that these GOP worthies whose shining monogamy will triumph in the new age of gay-marriage-enabled neo-Victorianism are all against gay marriage. 

McArdle also returns to that marriage-will-make-you-rich nonsense she was pimping last week, citing it among the forces that will make sexual hedonism de trop.  Of course she would think that -- she's one of those people who actually watch Ross Douthat measure marriage with a slide rule to determine the optimal connubial age in a healthy society, and not only finds it fascinating instead of ridiculous, but thinks it will change the way normal Americans behave. Yes, forget culture, forget the economy, forget the environment, forget the forces with which we interact every day -- once the big-brains emerge from their labs with their new, this-time-for-sure convincing evidence we should all get hitched and commence procreating at age 22.73, everyone will get with the program.

Try to imagine being so anxious, not just to be right, but to prove your enemies wrong. Think of what wonderful things McArdle could have achieved with her obviously bountiful imagination if she hadn't been compelled to waste it all on that.

UPDATE. Comments are as always a joy, but I must single out aimai for the term she has invented for McArdle's habit, when troubled by progressive advances, of weaving dark tales of unintended consequences yet-to-come: "weaponized sour grapes."

ANNALS OF THE CULTURE WARS, SPECIAL BREITBART EDITION.

The kulturkampfers at Breitbart.com just can't quit Lena Dunham, even when another of their hate-objects is in their line of fire:

Tina Fey, like other Hollywood-created stars including Lena Dunham, is showing herself to be a box office bust.

That's Ben Shapiro, who goes on to tell Fey that though she's "very talented... her pokes at Palin did her no good with mainstream America, and her cutesy 'too-smart-for-the-room' routine does her no favors with audiences." No, really: Ben Shapiro's giving Tina Fey career advice.

Dunham Alert also for this Maurice Black column:

Although Girls never fails to find humor in its characters’ haplessness, it also reflects the disturbing reality that more than half of college graduates under 25 are now unemployed or working jobs that don’t require a degree.

The title is "HBO'S 'GIRLS' OFFERS STARK FISCAL LESSONS IN AGE OF OBAMA." According to Black Dunham "unwittingly lends credence to moves by governors such as Pat McCrory in North Carolina or Rick Scott in Florida to shift higher education funding into fields that have better job placement rates." Maybe he's thinking of Laverne & Shirley.

(Black, BTW, is Vice President of the Moving Picture Institute, progenitor of that "youthful pop music video that alerts the hipster set to the perils of artificially low interest rates" we were talking about the other day; given his obvious commitment to agenda-driven entertainments, it must drive him nuts that Dunham isn't aware of what a conservative message she's sending; I imagine him yelling "You're one of us and you don't even know it, Lena!" at his TV while masturbating furiously.)

There are many other Dunham dumps at Breitbart.com, but let's close with one about an older favorite: The communist menace that is Law & Order. Wingnuts have had a hard-on for the show and its treasonously topical story lines for years, and now Warner Todd Huston brings the fist-shaking fury as L&O makes hay of Todd Akinism:

A character sitting in the witness box then says, "It's nearly impossible for a victim of legitimate rape to become pregnant." This is followed by looks of disgust by the two female lead detective characters sitting in the courtroom gallery.

Jesus Christ, people, do I have to spell it out for ya?

To subtly drive home an allusion to a politician like Todd Akin, on the lapel of the character testifying is a prominent U.S. flag pin, just like one a conservative politician might wear. How often do you think characters on Law & Order: SVU have worn flag pins?

Yeah, they may act regular, but that guy who played Lennie Brisco? He was in musicals!

UPDATE. Some extra culture-war nuggets for you: Our old friend Mark "Gavreau" Judge at Acculturated,  musing on gay marriage, gives us the line of the week:

It is important to celebrate tolerance, while keeping watch to make sure that the tolerance itself doesn’t become oppression.

The rest of the column never equals this, though it does tell us that Dan Savage is the real bully. Second place winner: Tevi Troi at Real Clear Politics, in his brow-squeezer "Can Republicans Close the Pop Culture Gap?" --

A move towards hipness must come from the party leaders themselves...

Comrades, the hipness of mere apparatchiks will not suffice -- the party leaders must themselves be hanging and banging. Draft a memo!

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP...

...on the Iraq War 10th Anniversary festivities. Which have been, um, muted. But there's always next time!

WEDDING BALLS.

Now that conservatives have resigned themselves to just talking to one another, I see a couple of the better-known ones pimping that old marriage-makes-you-rich buncombe -- which makes sense, since only a wingnut would buy it.  Ole Perfesser Glenn Reynolds' latest, for USA Today, is pro-marriage done particularly pro-forma:

This past summer, Jason DeParle noted in The New York Times that we are now seeing "two classes divided by 'I do.'" And while people are going on and on about Wall Street and income inequality, it turns out that marriage inequality is one of the biggest things making people less equal, accounting for as much as 40% of the difference in incomes: "It is the privileged Americans who are marrying, and marrying helps them stay privileged."

You might just as well say that marriage turns you white. The Perfesser's not even trying to make that correlation look like a causality. He's not putting anything like the elbow grease into it that nuts like Bradford Wilcox and Charles Murray regularly apply. He's not so much running his con as jogging it, as if it doesn't have to convince anybody who isn't already convinced.

But even worse, as always, is Megan McArdle:

College improves your earning prospects. So does marriage. Education makes you more likely to live longer. So does marriage.

It's like she's reading it off flash cards.

Yet while many economist vocally support initiatives to move more people into college, very few of them vocally favor initiatives to get more people married. Why is that, asks Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry?

I would have said "because they're not con artists like you," but Gobry thinks it's "cosmopolitan perspective" and "bias." McArdle adds to this her own special blend of inappropriate personalization and passive-aggressiveness:

We might not want to make people who fail to marry feel bad, since many of them probably feel pretty bad about it already.

And:

...all economists are, definitionally, very good at college. Not all economists are good at marriage. Saying that more people should go to college will make 0% of your colleagues feel bad. Saying that more people should get married and stay married will make a significant fraction of your colleagues feel bad.

In the Age of Obama II, more of these folks may rush to the consolation of "You're just jealous," but in retrospect it was always a dead cinch McArdle would get there first.

NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT.

Rightwing pennysaver the Washington Examiner will no longer be handed out at Metro stations to all comers every day, but instead become a wingnut weekly in which the street-level reporting and 87 employees are replaced by double portions of "commentary" on why Obama is Hitler.

The product will offer news, analysis and commentary on national politics and policy, and its targeted readership will be roughly 45,000 professionals in government, public affairs, advocacy and academia, Clarity said.

Yeah, the same 45,000 people who ask each other every week if they've read the new Cal Thomas column.

This seems to be the new reality for the conservative world of makework in the Age of Obama II; like the factota at The Umlaut and other feeder streams for thinktank babies, they have begun to abandon the idea that their work might make a difference.

It used to be easier to believe that it did. For decades now, the allegedly liberal media has actually been thick with right-wing voices, from the lofty George Will to the humblest rightblogger. Every newspaper, even the communist flagship New York Times, has its Douthats and/or Brookses, albeit in lower-rent versions. The papers are scared not to have them; otherwise who would they point to when someone screams bias? (Not that it stops the screaming -- conservatives will be screaming about bias until the last newspaper lines the last birdcage, and for years after -- but having them aboard allows the papers' management to feel they've done something reasonable, though I wonder if a few of them don't actually feel bullied.)

It never mattered how brutal or crazy these guys' ideas were, either; they were the serious opposition, and had to be granted perches from which they might be heeded. This enabled and emboldened them. They also seemed to understand that what had gained them their perches was no better credential than that they were different from the "politically correct" milquetoasts the public was used to. So they leaned on that. If liberals maintained, for example, that the least among us deserved protection from want, conservatives cried for them to be given less, ever less, lest the welfare queens and strapping young bucks destroy America. Not only did they get away with it -- they had an effect on the discourse and then on policy.

Things got even worse during the early days of the Iraq War -- happy anniversary, baby! -- when conservatives became so comfortable with their own increasingly loud and bellicose voices that they got a lot of non-conservatives to howl along with them. And this too had an effect on policy.

But since the economy collapsed, things have changed a bit. There's not much market for market worship these days. And when you run a presidential campaign based on how the producers know better than the moochers -- well, you saw how that worked out.

Conservatives aren't going away -- their long spate of affirmative action has firmly ensconced them in the public discourse. But the Examiner, at least, seems to have lost faith.  For a while they could at least tell themselves that by running a by-God newspaper with lots of that local stuff local folk love, they were getting into the hands and winning the hearts and minds of the common people. But now they're going to stop covering school board meetings and city council hearings, and just regurgitate propaganda for like-minded souls. This will achieve nothing in the way of political outreach, but it will achieve what I expect remains important to them: It will keep their jobs. Because someone is still paying them to do it -- just like someone is still paying for The Umlaut and Liberty Island and Bill Whittle videos and Acculturated  and PJ Lifestyle and many such otherwise pointless exercises.

If the Examinoids really believed what they affect to believe, they'd recognize themselves as the moochers they are, apologize to old man Anschutz for wasting his money, and seek honest employment. But they're what we might call cafeteria capitalists; they don't want the hard stuff; they won't sacrifice anything real on the altar of the Dollar. But they'll step right up when the celebrant hands around the bread.

SHITSVILLE U.S.A.

Hey look, another rightwing culture-war magazine. Andrea Castillo at The Umlaut:

In the world of popular culture, the motives of capitalists are routinely portrayed as suspicious if not openly antagonistic to the public good, culminating in the cliché of the evil billionaire or businessman.

Like have you ever seen Citizen Kane? Total Alinskyite smear job. But --

At long last, the free marketeers are fighting back and attempting to reclaim an equal part of the moral high ground, but the challenges that they face are not insignificant.

Sounds promising! So whattaya got?

Fred Smith, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, hopes to help salvage the reputations of businesspeople by disputing the bad rap with which they’ve been unfairly saddled and proudly pointing to the wealth that they create as a moral good in itself.

If he's not proudly pointing while coated in silver paint, standing on a milk crate in Times Square, and doing the robot, I don't see this catching on with a large audience.

But give Fred a break, look what he's up against:

...the arts have a profound effect on influencing people’s moral dispositions and ultimately their worldviews. The “nefarious executive” trope is so established within the arts that it is doubtful that it will quickly fade silently into the past. If we are to adequately challenge this prevailing “commerce as a questionably-necessary evil” narrative, it makes sense to take stock of how our cultural narratives became so skewed in the first place. 

Ludwig von Mises, similarly assessing the cultural situation of his time, was intrigued by the overwhelming tendency for members of the “creative class” to adopt anti-capitalistic worldviews in their lives and crafts. In The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, Mises offers one explanation for this trend: artists, especially good ones, face constant frustration in a market that is notoriously fraught with that destructive combination of conspicuous consumption and poor taste.

I began to nod off at "Ludwig von Mises," too, but I must say, as a simple observation of human behavior, this, while incomplete, is not totally divorced from reality -- which may be why Castillo rushes to dispute it:

Despite the handful of type II errors in artistic appreciation that have occurred, in most cases, great artists have found success within their lifetimes, and mass culture expands both the quantity and diversity of commercially-viable forms of expression.

Then, one is tempted to ask, why you crying? If it ain't broke, why fix it? Why not just enjoy the expansive quantity and diversity of all this mass culture which the market has delivered unto you?

Longtime readers will have figured it out already: With culture warriors the "culture" is never as important as the "war." If the market produces wrongthink popular entertainment, the market, otherwise infallible, is wrong, and its protectors must set things right.

And Castillo's got some acts that'll do the job: The Moving Pictures Institute, for example, with "a youthful pop music video that alerts the hipster set to the perils of artificially low interest rates," and Emergent Order, which "made quite a splash with their humorous rap battles starring the modern doppelgängers of larger-than-life economists John Maynard Keynes and F.A. Hayek."

But even when you have steak, you need sizzle to sell it, and here's the promo copy Castillo has filed for this package tour:

The videos that have been produced thus far have been captivating precisely because of the sincerity and accuracy of their messages, a quality that is generally difficult to produce when one is merely clocking in. Contra Mises, it could be that not all artists fall prey to the short-sighted despair that follows a disappointing opening night or release. For some of them, the uncontrolled but orderly beauty of free exchange and association is their muse.

"The sincerity and accuracy of their message," "the uncontrolled but orderly beauty of free exchange and association" -- you think maybe these people are new to show business? Or to the planet?

Look, kids, I'll do this pro bono: Full page ad in Variety: "SUCK ON THIS, MOOCHERS!" Then tell your boys at Emergent Whatever that we need some chicks in thongs and a profane rapping granny. Thereafter, one word: Payola. I know your backers got it -- they just have to start spending it where it counts. By the way: Have you ever thought about why they don't?

UPDATE. Commenters are bearish on Castillo et alia. "Deal: you capitalists get rid of the nefarious executives, we'll get rid of the trope," says whetstone. mortimer informs us that "Emergent Order is a project of the Mercatus Center at (but not supported by) George Mason University, which gets most of its funding from those bankrolling gadflies of right-wing über-libertarianism, the Koch Family, with a little help from the likes of Exxon Mobil. Mercatus is also directed by Kevin Drum's favorite libertarian, Tyler Cowen..." Inbreeding will tell!

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP....

...about this year's sad CPAC.

An outtake I didn't have time to explain to Voice readers, but which you late-show hipsters will understand: Betsy Woodruff at National Review:

Here’s a weird CPAC moment: I’m sitting in a hallway in the Gaylord Convention Center with Cynthia Yockey...

Holy shit, I thought, Cynthia Yockey -- the second craziest lesbian in conservatism next to Robin of Berkeley! I remember Yockey telling readers ""Why Newt’s lesbian sister is a good reason for gays to vote for him." But now listen to her:

“People are courteous,” says Yockey, “but there is no courteous way to say, ‘You don’t deserve to be equal because you’re gay.’ That is intrinsically offensive.”

When you've lost Cynthia Yockey, the time is near when all you'll have left is Bruce Carroll.

HOW YOU KNOW YOU'RE WINNING.

Back in December, James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal had an article headlined, "The Sure Thing? Reconsidering a prediction about same-sex marriage." Though a few years earlier he had predicted gay marriage would win the day when the Supreme Court got hold of it, Taranto said, "now we're not so sure." (As he also described a pro-gay-marriage decision not as one that would enfranchise millions of his fellow citizens, but as one that would "declare the traditional definition of marriage unconstitutional," you know where his rooting interest lies.)

In a new column, Taranto returns to the subject and pulls what he probably considers a clever trick play:

The administration does not go so far as to urge the court to strike down all state bans on same-sex marriage. Instead it urges a novel solution that would have the effect of abolishing nonmarital civil unions, until now the compromise of choice between supporters and opponents of same-sex marriage.

You can hear the chortles in CPAC back rooms: Heh indeed, by pushing "gay" "marriage" Obama's killing civil unions! How do you like that, gay people? You should join us at CPAC -- er, on the downlow.

This schtick comes with rhetorical appurtenances. One: You're Denying Our Right to Self-Expression:

As a legal matter, the administration's position seems odd. The effect of banning same-sex marriage in civil-union states is purely expressive: The states are in effect declaring that homosexual relationships are inferior to marriages. That is a value judgment with which many people disagree, but why should the state not be free to express it--especially when the expression has no material effect?

Two: Obama is Applying the "Chicago Way" to His Fellow Travelers and They Will Fall In Line:

The likeliest answer is political: that the administration has concluded (or anticipates that the court, which is to say Justice Kennedy, will conclude) that imposing same-sex marriages nationwide would be disruptive in the way Roe v. Wade was--but the civil-union states are socially liberal enough that they would accept such a ruling.

Three: You're Only Hurting Yourself:

For supporters of same-sex marriage, however, there's a danger that adopting this legal compromise would shut down an avenue of political compromise.

These are not the kind of arguments you hear when you're losing. The struggle will continue, as it still does over the civil rights of black Americans. But the losing side will become increasingly legalistic, hair-splitting, and petty. That's how you know you're winning.

UPDATE. Speaking of which, here's Rick Moran reacting to the news that GOP macher Rob Portman, inspired by his gay son, has turned over on marriage equality:

As more and more Americans realize that they are related to, or work with, or live next to someone who is gay, it is inevitable that acceptance follows. This doesn't mean that opposing gay marriage is bigoted. People of good conscience can disagree (something the left refuses to acknowledge while trying to ram gay marriage down the throats of people by co-opting the legisalture and using the courts to gain their objective).

Translation: Yes, we're getting tolerant, but what about all these homosexuals trying to ram their big, hard gay marriage down my throat? Where's their tolerance?

I expect the brighter bulbs among the rightbloggers will keep quiet or roll more gently with it. Maybe we'll see a pro-equality, anti-drone Republican Party in 2016. Baby steps!

SHORTER PEGGY NOONAN:

When I think of you godless media criticizing my Church, I think of a severed head -- yours!

UPDATE. Our commenters are carrying the freight to a greater extent than usual. "I normally ascribe Peggy Noonan's incoherence to the fact that she's plastered," says sharculese, "but I'm pretty drunk right now and I'm still not getting this." smut clyde noticed something in the Longer:

words like “gender” and “celibacy” and “pedophile” and phrases like “irrelevant to the modern world.” But when they just prattle on with their indignant words—gender, celibacy, irrelevant—

One of those words in the first list has disappeared from the second! How can this be?

A couple of folks also notice Noonan's surly reference to the Mohammedans, in which she complains of the media-that-is-not-Peggy-Noonan:

They think they’re brave, or outspoken, or something. They don’t have enough insight into themselves to notice they’d never presume to instruct other great faiths. It doesn’t cross their minds that if they were as dismissive about some of those faiths they’d have to hire private security guards.

I thought the whole you-don't-have-the-guts-to-make-fun-of-Mohammed thing had long since passed into wingnut oblivion, along with "Democracy Whiskey Sexy" and "That Andrew Sullivan is one of the good ones," but I guess under stress these guys tend to revert.

LOOKING IN ON OLD FRIENDS.

We've had a lot of fun with Mark "Gavreau" Judge here in recent weeks, so on a whim I dropped by the rightwing culture mag that employs him to see how he was passing his days. Behold:

Can the Hollywood reboot of The Fantastic Four, now in the works, succeed where the original movies failed? It all depends on whether producer Matthew Vaughn and director Josh Trank have the guts to do one thing: To make The Fantastic Four about the family versus communism.

Don't ever change, fella.

FAMILY VALUES.

I rarely go read Sarah Hoyt's stuff; she's a yeller (that is, she uses ALL CAPS for emphasis quite a lot) and seems a little crazy. But I happened upon her latest about how teachers are horrible and we must homeschool to fight the power, and noticed this:

I’ll just say that I once screamed at [her son] Robert for three hours for writing something about half as bad as what I see from college students. He was in third grade. I told him unless he improved he would be an illiterate peasant at the mercy of people who could express themselves better. (More on that later.) He took it to heart and improved.

I'll bet he did. Later:

However, as I’ve learned over the years, my knowledge is often far from complete, and what happens OFFICIALLY is also not what happens in truth. (For instance, if I’d known both the kids were sent to the school psychologist once a week through elementary, to fish for stuff that might be considered “abuse” – probably because Dan and I were troublesome – they would have been out of there so fast that the school’s head would spin. Unfortunately both kids assumed this was “normal” and didn’t tell me till high school. On paper, it never happened.)

They were asking the kids (including the subject of the three-hour tirade) about abuse every week? I don't know whether this is a genuine reminiscence or the script of a Lars von Trier movie. (I also think the hotel maid Hoyt says short-sheeted their beds every night just wanted them to leave.) Oh also:

While they were sending him to Title One, one of the books confiscated for reading in class was one of our signed Pratchetts (can’t remember which now, but might have been The Color of Magic. I remember because instead of telling me – he wasn’t supposed to take those to school – he broke into the teacher’s closet and stole it back. He was never caught.)

And I thought Lileks' family stories were creepy.

DRAMA QUEEN.

Those of you familiar with (or who read our consideration of) Mark Steyn's flair for the dramatic will appreciate this Daily Caller headline:

Steyn declares America ‘doomed’ in wake of Pop Tart gun suspension

The transcript (they have audio but Jesus, who'd submit himself to that? Unless Steyn accompanied himself with some lovely Richard Rodgers melodies) has lots about the boys who stormed Normandy and such like, but this is my favorite bit:

"You’re doomed, America,” Steyn said. “You’re done for. No society can survive this level of stupidity..."

To paraphrase Groundhog Day, this is America he's talking about, right?

A HANDUP NOT A HANDOUT.

John Williams, the hardworking graphic artist... ok, stop right there, graphic artists do work hard; maybe not in the big agencies where they play beer pong for a hour and a half and then make a squiggle, but in John's world the dollars are hard. Anyway, the hardworking graphic artist who did the cover of my lurid novel hasn't been having the best time of it economically, and losing a bread-and-butter freelance gig to the caprices of corporate scumbaggery hasn't made it any better. What say you click this link and send him some scratch?

Thanks in advance for being such angels.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP...

... about the Rand Paul filibuster and the new outbreak of bullshit libertarianism it has engendered among rightbloggers. Among the outtakes was the claim by Bookworm Room that "the mainstream, drive-by media did what it does best: it pretended Paul’s epic filibuster never happened." In evidence BR showed front pages of major newspaper editions with no mention of Paul on them. Yet if you put site:nytimes.com "rand paul" "filibuster" into Google, at this writing you get 70,400 results. And I thought the internet was supposed to change everything.

UPDATE. Ace of Spades features prominently in this column, but did you know that Spades is also a culture critic for Breitbart.com? His latest is about how you only ever hear about shows that middle-aged women like because Obama or something. This'll give you a good idea of his method:

I don't know the politics of Mad Men (though I have heard-tell that it largely about delivering a frisson of satisfaction for liberal women about the dastardly men of the late 50s), but I'm going to guess here that Middle Aged Liberal Women Who Work in the Media are Huge Fans, because dang, if I have not absorbed whole plotlines of the show just by reading Maureen Dowd's column. (Tell a lie, I don't read her column. No one does. But you know what I mean.)

Also:

Men like some TV shows too -- Archer, Justified, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. But no one talks about them in the media. You're not surrounded by constant references. Middle Aged Liberal Women Who Work in the Media don't like them, I guess.

"Justified FX" in Google = 3,300,000 results. I'm guessing "Media" is an imaginary magazine put out by a G.I. Joe doll Spades genitally mutiliated in 12th Grade.

THE OTHER MAN BOOB.

John Hawkins, who delighted us last week with his butchitude, is at it again with another essay. This one's about how bitches get away with everything .

Among the prime sniglets:

Moreover, from a common sense perspective, if you could actually get by with paying women 76 cents on the dollar to do the same work that men do, wouldn’t all women firms dominate every field because of the reduced overhead?

And:

But, here’s a question: Has anyone ever considered passing a “violence against men” act?

At the very end:

Playing the blame game ultimately serves no one but the people who make their living as professional grievance mongers and so, it would be counterproductive for guys to claim that they’re victims of the “matriarchy.”

Come on come on you'resoclose come on...

But...

ACK

...it is time to recognize that men today have gender-related complaints that are every bit as serious and legitimate as women do, if not more so.

Science has debunked a lot of the myths about men, but Hawkins proves at least one of them: We sure do whine when we're sick.

#StandWithThatAssholeRandPaul.

I'm glad someone's standing on the floor of the Senate against domestic droning even if it is Rand Paul.

It's true that many of Paul's supporters are full of shit. When such esteemed civil liberties advocates as Michele Bachmann ("[Obama] is allowing the ACLU to run the CIA") start pretending to give a shit about drones, you know what a put-up job it is.

And Rand Paul is a nut -- not only wrong on the Civil Rights Act but sneaky about it, a Benghazi conspiracy theorist, etc. And he's only a civil libertarian in the uncivil libertarian sense, by which I mean highly selective:

....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.

The new Tom Paine ovah heah. If he ever gets close to high office you can expect him to talk more like this than like Glenn Greenwald, guaranteed.

Still, like I said in an earlier consideration of this phenomenon, wrong is wrong and there's no reason for me to pretend it isn't for partisan advantage. I understand Obama has to -- he's got to deal with the traditional vulnerability of Democrats to charges of being, in the hoary old phrase, weak on defense. And hoary as it is, the charge still has power -- that's what Benghazi-mania is all about: wingnuts holding desperately onto an ancient equity.

But Obama's a politician; that's his lookout, not mine. And while I think he's better than the regular run of postwar U.S. Presidents, "having his back" does not for me extend to countenancing the assassination of U.S. citizens. So I endorse the current news-cycle-grabbing story, and look forward to hauling out the scrapbook when Presidential candidate Paul endorses the invasion of Iran.

A DUNCIAD OF CONFEDERATES.

Found via a link on the Ole Perfesser's page -- looks like Reynolds is getting even deeper in with the survivalist/prepper/posse comitatus crowd -- is Herschel Smith:

In this article I have three objectives. First I want to discuss what would happen to a lone wolf fighter if he tried to be effective without aid and assistance. Next, I want to distinguish between thinking tactically and strategically concerning survival. Finally, I want to describe things that might catalyze the need to invoke such plans, from rogue, illegitimate groups to patriots who will not relinquish their their second amendment rights, regardless of the consequences.

This cowboy makes Reynolds' other rebel buddy Bob Owens look like David Frum.  Here's his poetic description of what renegades who don't play by society's rules will go through during the fraternity-hazing "Lone Wolf" phase:

Within a couple of days of being in the wilderness, your personal stench is merely disgusting. By the end of the first week, the putrid, toxic paste that develops around the groins of men becomes a risk to health and safety and can cause serious diseases. Within another week your feet develop a cocktail of fungal infections, and within another week the skin begins to fall off of them.

Around this time sores develop across your entire body...

Sounds like little boys trying to gross each other out, doesn't it? If you can handle that, citizen, Smith may just let you carry a AR-15 in his beloved corps!  But then you'll have to consider some tough questions:

Should I go buy a relatively inexpensive polymer frame semi-auto handgun and some ammunition in order to be able to assist friends and loved ones in their time of need? We need to think through these issues. Are you a diabetic? Do you have the insulin you need for a protracted period of time? Are there other medications you need?

I'll take out these jackbooted ATF bastards as soon I get my inhaler!

Plus, gibberish about Obamacare, patriots taking out the power grid, etc... Gun nuts are the Manson Family of the 21st Century. They're all "helter-skelter" on the internet, but will probably just end up killing some innocent bystanders and raving away the rest of their lives in prison.

WHEN SLAVE GIRL PRINCESS LEIA ISN'T ENOUGH.

Mark "Gavreau" Judge apparently felt the need to be humiliated, and went about it the way conservatives often do these days, by writing about Lena Dunham and Girls:

Girls creator Lena Dunham is very talented, and she’s only twenty-six, but it has to be said: like so many liberal Hollywood and New York artists, she has a powerful streak of cowardice... The girls in Girls are frustrated because the guys they date are either passive, psychotic, pretentious, degrading, or plain old losers. But what if Dunham had written in a male character who is strong, caring, attractive, highly intelligent, sexually unambiguous, great in bed, and a conservative?... 

How about this: a handsome grad student from Fordham who is Catholic, articulate, a college football star, compassionate, manly, and can debate any liberal to a standstill. Maybe his flaw is that he drinks too much, or that he once bullied a gay kid.

He could be called Gark "Javreau" Mudge! And the dark secret that drives him is that a black kid may have stolen his bicycle.

I understand the celebrity fantasy but, guy, this thing about trying to dare Lena Dunham into fucking your avatar (or at least wearing its promise ring) is just creepy. Also, did it never occur to you to make Gark Javreau Mudge's hamartia two wetsuits and a dildo?

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP...

...on the alleged assault on Bob Woodward, a hilarious concept. If this is how things worked, Ross Douthat, George Will, Jennifer Rubin, and dozens of other such like would be occupying deep landfill right now.

At least this story introduced me to the wonderful #StandWithWoodward Twitter tag, which has given me such gems as "Woodward goes after another #liberal President, the 1st being Nixon. Unlike Nixon, #Obama tries threats & intimidation." History education ain't what it used to be.

MAN BOOB.

John Hawkins breaks it down: Men enjoyed recreational fistfights and gunplay for centuries but, around the time Raiders of the Lost Ark came out, for some unspecified reason they stopped and, no longer being able to relate to action movies, became emasculated.

A few generations before that, women started getting educations and jobs, which was either a retroactive secondary cause of this emasculation or just made it worse. In any case you'll all be sorry.

Conclusion: Civilization is for pussies.

(We have ought to rewrite the old saw for this crew: First time as farce, second and every subsequent time as farce.)

UPDATE. Guess we'll have to quote some Hawkins, because commenters have referred to it. Brace yourselves:

Some of us take martial arts classes or go to the firing range, which is fine as far as it goes, but it’s often like practicing for a game you’ll never play. Chances are, you’ll probably go your whole life without shooting anyone or having to defend yourself from a thug trying to beat you to death on the street.

Substance McGravitas: "OMG I have gone my whole life without shooting anyone! I need a hug. WAIT NO, I need to shoot someone." Michael Søndberg Olson: "Yeah, Hawkins really enjoyed gouging my eye out, and then I made a drive-by of his shack and killed his daughter-wife. And now we're tit-deep in spraying cocks!"

WHOA, NELLIE.

Mark Steyn has something out about how much he hates homosexuals. Oh, wait, sorry, there's a MacGuffin -- gay people are oppressing him, or somebody. For instance:

By contrast, Canada’s GSA is the Gay-Straight Alliance. The GSA is all over the GTA (the Gayer Toronto Area), but in a few remote upcountry redoubts north of Timmins intolerant knuckle-dragging fundamentalist school boards declined to get with the beat. So the Ontario Government has determined to afflict them with the “Accepting Schools Act.” 

“Accepting?” One would regard the very name of this bill as an exquisite parody of the way statist strong-arming masquerades as limp-wristed passivity were it not for the fact that the province’s Catholic schools, reluctant to accept government-mandated GSAs, are proposing instead that they should be called “Respecting Differences” groups. Good grief, this is the best a bigoted theocrat can come up with?

While he's frothing, let's look at the bill. It's long-winded and bureaucratic, but the net effect seems to be to keep kids from being bullied in school, and to require that if someone's getting bullied in school, the school has to talk to the bully's parents, which hardly seems like the thin end of any wedge to me.  The bill does mention gayness as a casus bully, which is what seems to have set Steyn off.

Also the frostbacks apparently have both a Pink Shirt Day in February and a Day of Pink in April for the kids, both about not bullying gay kids. This doesn't seem any more or less objectionable than the 100th Day of School shirt thing, and who knows, the little thugs might learn something from it; doubtless if any of them feel put upon, they will bear with it as we did back in my day, and develop Bad Attitudes. Maybe Steyn is eager to regain his youth, and is doing so vicariously by writing this:

That’s great news! Nothing says “celebrate diversity” like forcing everyone to dress exactly the same, like a bunch of Maoists who threw their workers’ garb in the washer but forgot to take the red flag out... 

What about if you’re the last non-sexualized tween schoolgirl in Ontario? You’re still into ponies and unicorns and have no great interest in the opposite sex except when nice Prince William visits to cut the ribbon at the new Transgendered Studies Department. What if the other girls are beginning to mock you for wanting to see Anne Of Green Gables instead of Anne Does Avonlea? Is there any room for the sexual-developmentally challenged in the GSAs?

In and among these paranoid delusions there's a lot of yap about "soft totalitarian, collectivized, state-enforced, glassy-eyed homogeneity" and such like. But I get the sense Steyn's not serious about that. (Who could be, apart from religious maniacs ululating about Sodom and Steve? And for all his faults Steyn doesn't seem to swing that way.) I'm told he wrote a whole book about how the West is doomed because Mooslems, and another about how America is doomed because debt, but if this is the order of evidence he offers, I'd say he's just looking for some high school drama. Has no one told him about Glee?

THEY EAT THEIR OWN.

Twitchy:

It’s also liberals who would encourage the sort of creepy messaging coordination that [S.E.] Cupp is proposing. Get Republicans to denounce Limbaugh on different networks? What would that accomplish, other than making George Soros proud?... Her remarks have left a bad taste in the mouths of many conservatives, who feel that in issuing a sweeping indictment of Limbaugh as “dangerous,” Cupp is only hurting the conservative cause...

Warren Todd Huston:

S.E. Cupp's unhelpful apostasy... S.E. Cupp is wrong, wrong, wrong.

RedState:

And that’s the point that Cupp misses even as she explains herself. She can disagree with Limbaugh all day. Hell, she can make a career out of it she wants (she may have unintentionally done so already). But if you’re going to rage against the machine, expect some return fire, and don’t be surprised that when you go to the New York Times, they may apply motives to you that don’t exist.

Jeffrey Lord, The American Spectator:

The fact that Ms. Cupp doesn’t get this — even now, almost a full year after this controversy — startles. It means, apparently, one of two things. Either Cupp herself is a moderate on the issue (can a “conservative columnist,” as conservatives mock of elected officials, “grow in office” — i.e., become moderate?), or she is simply unaware of the history.

Either way Cupp vividly illustrates that she — and presumably her Proximus compadres — are advocating nothing newer than yesterday’s moderate Republicanism.

J. Robert Smith, American Thinker:

Picking a fight with Limbaugh, the dean of conservative talkers, particularly in a New York Times interview, is a nice little publicity gambit for a reputed young conservative. The liberal media eats up apostasy on the right... Cupp's elevation to talking head and opinion shaper couldn't have possibly occurred but for contemporary America's obsession with youth -- youth and looks... One suspects that Cupp cares more what's said about her, at least among Manhattan's liberal set.

Hm? Oh, I don't have a point here; I'm just enjoying myself. It's almost as good as the Sparticists vs. the ISO, or the People's Front of Judea vs. The Judean People's Front. It's getting so I hope they lose worse in 2014 -- not for political reasons, but because if they're this much fun now, imagine how much fun they'll be when they're even more aware of their unpopularity.

QUI TRANTULIT SUSTINET.

For years now, Joel Kotkin's been telling us that the Blue States are through, because demographics. Things haven't worked out for him, but he's still at it. In the Wall Street Journal:

In the wake of the 2012 presidential election, some political commentators have written political obituaries of the "red" or conservative-leaning states, envisioning a brave new world dominated by fashionably blue bastions in the Northeast or California. But political fortunes are notoriously fickle, while economic trends tend to be more enduring. 

These trends point to a U.S. economic future dominated by four growth corridors that are generally less dense, more affordable, and markedly more conservative and pro-business: the Great Plains, the Intermountain West, the Third Coast (spanning the Gulf states from Texas to Florida), and the Southeastern industrial belt...

I'm so old I remember when all those Californians who were escaping from high taxes to Southwestern states like Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado were going to become Republicans, but hey look what happened. When places get more developed they tend to get more liberal.  (Kotkin's got a better bet in those areas where growth will come from gas and fracking jobs. The ensuing poisoned air and water ought to keep Louisiana from going Democratic for generations.)

I don't know how long they can keep telling themselves stories like this before they try to win votes by changing their policies instead of trying to grow new Republicans in shale oil.

UPDATE. vista, in comments: "If this is the case then our future is the growth of the undereducated, working low wage jobs with zero benefits, living in polluted areas with crumbling infrastructure." I believe that's the plan.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP...

... about the "Day of Resistance" for gun nuts. Now please excuse me, I'm watching the Oscars (and doing okay with predix, and live-tweeting).

UPDATE. Oh speaking of Oscars, attend this especially Zhdanovite horseshit from Mark Joseph at National Review called "Lincoln’s Lost Opportunities":

First, there was the team that brought forth this film about the president who founded the Republican party, a team led by the blue-state heroes Steven Spielberg, screenwriter Tony Kushner, author Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Daniel Day-Lewis....

Oh wait, it gets better:

There is another surefire way to keep traditionalist audiences away from a movie, and the makers of Lincoln played that card as well: bad language...
“Sadly, the movie also contains about 40 obscenities and profanities, including four ‘f’ words and more than 10 GDs,” noted MovieGuide, a site that a good number of traditionalists consult before attending movies...

And another thing: What was all that anti-businessman talk in Citizen Kane? No wonder America hates Hollywood!

UPDATE 2. Jesus, Nate Silver knows everything.

UPDATE 3. Post-Oscar whining commences; I assume tomorrow there'll be plenty of rightwing argh-blargh about Michelle Obama's appearance. (Here's an early return from Todd Starnes on Twitter: "Tonight was supposed to be about Hollywood - but Mrs. Obama made it about herself." The concern of a Fox News shouter for the noble traditions of Hollywood is touching.) Meanwhile at National Review, somebody named Gina R. Dalfonzo:

Whatever one thinks of the movies being honored, and however fervently one roots for one’s favorites, there’s a depressing sameness to the annual Oscar ritual these days.

"These days"?

Chris Loesch was tweeting about how conservatives need to quit “belittling” pop culture, and start recognizing “the importance of engaging in and making good art.” He made a very good point. But the engaging would be so much easier if, on occasions like these, Hollywood’s best and brightest would give us something to work with.

The Oscars gets a billion viewers worldwide every year. Why would they give a fuck what conservatives think? See "market, free."

Still -- do read my Voice thing. They beat us if we don't deliver traffic.

UPDATE 4. Also at National Review, Wesley "Make Sure to Include My Middle Initial, I'm a Pompous Ass" Smith:

Can you imagine the Oscars allowing anyone to host the big show who had mocked defenseless minorities? No? Well, think again. This year’s host, Seth McFarlane, created Family Guy, a show which castigated the late Terri Schiavo as a “vegetable”...

I await Smith's denunciations of those who wring humor from the tragedy of people slipping on banana peels.

I CAN'T GO ON OSCAR PREDICTING; I'LL GO ON OSCAR PREDICTING.

This is one of those years where I saw practically nothing up for an Academy Award -- which judging from my past performance as a predictor can either be good or bad for my chances. So attend my belly-flop below.

I will add here, as I have been meaning to since I saw it, that Django Unchained is terrific -- by far Tarantino's best movie. (Mild spoilers.) In Inglourious Basterds I detected a great advance in his filmmaking, but also a lot of his usual annoying tics, such as the use of photogenic violence to resolve situations he couldn't think his characters out of. And that was strange, because if anything offers a good foundation for germane but over-the-top violent scenes, it's Nah-zis. But Tarantino doesn't make the same mistake with slavery: the eruptions of bloodshed make perfect sense, as illustrations of either the oppressive situation or of the hero's wrath. And Django Unchained is much more efficient than Tarantino's other scripts -- the hero's goal is always before us, and each ratchet of the building tension keenly felt; the digressions, such as the lovely snowy romp to "I Got a Name," are pleasurable interludes instead of oh-God-what-now-do-I-have-to-listen-to-David-Carradine. It's a cartoon, sure, but sometimes cartoons are pretty great; when the horrible Stephen bawls over his horrible, fallen master it's lurid, pathetic, and amazing. The only Tarantino thing still around to bug me is characters allowed to live for no discernible reason except to keep the movie going. But who knows; maybe he'll get to that next.

Okay, let's wrap this turkey before I puke:

BEST PICTURE: Lincoln. Nate Silver's method says Argo, but that method (largely based on other awards' histories) doesn't take Academy history sufficiently into account. What other movies have won Best Picture without a Best Director nomination? Driving Miss Daisy, Grand Hotel, and Wings. Even Michael Anderson was nominated for Around the World in 80 Days. The best chance for Argo is suggested by the weak field in which Daisy won; the enlarged Best Picture field would amplify the effect of a lack of consensus. But there's a big, popular, about-our-beloved-President movie in the running that voters can feel good about electing.

BEST DIRECTOR: Steven Spielberg, Lincoln. Him again? Well, the voters seem to let him have it when he does something big and noble and (unlike Munich) uncomplicated.

BEST ACTOR: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln. Is there anyone in there they love as much as him? Denzel Washington by all accounts tore it up in Flight; his is the best outside chance.

BEST ACTRESS: Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook. If the movie is popular enough, this goes to the new girl everyone loves. Plus, bonus, mental illness! And Away from Her taught me that old people in dire straits just make everyone sad.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR. Robert De Niro, Silver Linings Playbook. Here's my sucker bet! (Carpetbagger's too.) They're all previous winners, so the give-him-one-already impulse is moot. Doing this by ESP, I surmise that there is a deep enough well of affection for the movie that voters would like to honor it beyond the Best Actress category. And I am told that in this one, De Niro finally figured out how to do comedy.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables. I'm not a total idiot.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Zero Dark Thirty. Shrouded in controversy, is it? Tough titty. This is the movies and movies are magic.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Argo. There was something they loved about it and it apparently wasn't the acting or directing.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: Claudio Miranda, Life of Pi. I went down swinging with Roger Deakins and True Grit a few years back. No more! (Also, look at the Bond films' record at the Oscars.)  Life of Pi got a lot of nominations; there must be something they liked about it, and my uneducated guess is they liked the way it looks...

BEST SCORE: Mychael Danna, Life of Pi. ...and the way it sounds. I was going to pick Thomas Newman for Skyfall, on account of his long unrewarded nomination streak, but as the cinematography category shows, outside the top categories these people aren't sentimental.

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN: Lincoln. As Bluto told Flounder, I've given this a lot of thought, and I just don't think the members will vote for Life of Pi three times.  

BEST SONG: "Skyfall," Skyfall.

BEST COSTUME DESIGN: Anna Karenina. Brutally Honest Oscar Voter is right: They love them puffy dresses.

BEST FILM EDITING. Zero Dark Thirty. It's got action, it's got suspense, Argo already got an award.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE: Brave. A lot of these voters have little girls. Also, daughters. (Steve Martin did this joke better.)

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: Searching for Sugar Man.
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT: Mondays at Racine.
BEST ANIMATED SHORT: Paperman.
BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT: Curfew.
BEST FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILM: Amour.
BEST MAKEUP: Les Miserables.
BEST SOUND MIXING: Les Miserables.
BEST SOUND EDITING: Zero Dark Thirty.
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: Prometheus.

Good luck to us all.

UPDATE. The links are a bit wonky, but here's a fun Oscar quiz.

WARNING: TRUST THE SHORTER, JAMES TARANTO EDITION

Shorter James Taranto: James Fallows was punked by an internet joke about Fox News being dumb, and admitted it. Ben Shapiro was punked by an internet joke about Chuck Hagel belonging to a fictional pro-Hamas group, and refuses to admit he was punked or even that it was a joke. If you've ever read my bullshit before, you can guess which one I'm siding with here.

UPDATE. Taranato thinks I have a reading comprehension problem. I guess I'm supposed to pay closer attention to his more-in-sorrow-than-anger, both-sides-do-it tone than to his argument, such as it is:

The difference is that whereas the Fox joke [Fallows fell for] could easily be confirmed as a joke merely by checking out the Zombie Rainbow page that was its source, the "Friends of Hamas" joke [Shapiro fell for] came from a reporter for a major newspaper--that is, somebody whose job involves trading on his own reputation for credibility.

Except Shapiro himself disputes this in his bizarre, belligerent response to being caught out, in which he claims his real source says he has other sources for the story besides the reporter ("Our Senate source denies that Friedman is the source of this information. 'I have received this information from three separate sources, none of whom was Friedman,' the source said"). Talk about an uncooperative client!

Taranto spends the rest of his item explaining that, while Mistakes Were Made, Shapiro made a harmless slip that merely led to the uncorrected smearing of Hagel, whereas Fallows thought a joke about Fox News was real, which is why such errors will henceforth be known by people who talk rightwing code to one another as "the Fallows Principle." What am I missing?

THERE'S RICH, AND THEN THERE'S HANSON RICH.

Victor Davis Hanson's crying "Vanitas!" again. Since Obama was elected, you can't deport Mexicans anymore, they're letting women serve in combat, and worst of all, some people of whom Hanson does not approve might not die broke in a rooming-house:

Does it really make all that much difference whether you are a doctor at 70 who religiously put away $1,000 a month for thirty years, compounded at the old interest, and planned to retire on the interest income, or a cashless state employee with a defined benefit pension plan? The one might have over $1 million in his savings account, but the other a bigger and less risky monthly payout. Suddenly the old adult advice to our children — “Save and put your money in the bank to receive interest” — is what? “Spend it now or borrow as much as you can at cheap interest”?

That guy got off easy, idling away his days as a highway patrolman or a garbageman, then being rewarded with a comfortable old age. What kind of message is this sending our youth? (The bit about cheap interest is what the classicists call a non sequitur.)

Also, some of the people Hanson doesn't like have even gotten rich:

There are not just the rich and poor any more, but now the “good rich” (e.g., athletes, rappers, Hollywood stars, Silicon Valley grandees, Democratic senators, liberal philanthropists, etc.) and the “bad rich” (e.g., oil companies, CEOs, doctors, the Koch brothers, etc.). The correct-thinking nomenklatura and the dutiful apparat versus the kulaks and enemies of the people.

Both the "apparat" and the "kulaks" seem pretty flush to me. But the former get their asses kissed by fancy magazines, and the latter by Victor Davis Hanson, so I can see why they'd feel hard done by.

After decades of philosophizing, Hanson has suddenly discovered class warfare. And he wants in -- but he knows the priests at the temple of Mammon frown on that. So he's devised a dispensation for himself: He'll only rag on the undeserving rich. And while others would draw a distinction between those whose wealth is earned and those whose wealth is unearned, Hanson knows what really makes a man worthy of Fortune's smile: the right politics. These days, this is what passes for conservative populism.

CULTURE CLUBBED.

William A. Jacobson of Legal Insurrection:

I previously wrote about how BuzzFeed Politics has combined “the culture” and savvy crafting into a highly effective tool for undermining Republicans with subtle and not-so-subtle mockery. “Look at the goofy cat, look at the goofy celeb, look at the goofy Republican” is more dangerous to us than a 5000-word article in The New York Times Sunday Magazine.

Figures he'd put "the culture" in quotes; culture is clearly something that mystifies and terrifies him so much that he's compelled to describe in it police-blotter what-the-kids-call-it language, like "wilding" or "whirlpooling."

Jacobson's screed is about some Upworthy thing that shows Senator Elizabeth Warren kicking banker ass. You may recall from the recent election that Jacobson had a raging hard-on for Warren, and it appears to have persisted. The idea that something positive about Warren has been published and is drawing good traffic appears to have driven Jacobson around the bend:

Upworthy is the fastest growing website and already receives millions of visits a month despite being less than one year old, and has over 55 thousand Twitter followers. It recently received $4 million in venture capital funding. 

Upworthy is not interested in deep thinking, or you... 

The first thing to note is that when you click on the homepage link to the post, an anti-NRA poll pops up. It’s the equivalent of a push poll, delivering a political message in the form of a poll... How long before Upworthy runs a post about the overwhelming demand that Congress “stand up to the NRA”?...

There is nothing like Upworthy or BuzzFeed on the right. The closest we have come is Twitchy, Michelle Malkin’s brilliant website...

We are losing the fight to the lowest of low information voters, who are pushed toward a liberal agenda by very smart and talented people who understand the power of social media in a way we don’t...

What a way to try and motivate people -- telling them there's a popular website out there that doesn't care about them! That's meant for people who are not them! It's like me getting pissed at a Justin Bieber fan site.

Jacobson and guys like him have been running their schtick for years without evincing any of the kind of skills that normally give writers pleasure -- they don't produce interesting wordplay, fresh insights, journalistic discoveries, or even good jokes. The only time you can feel something like excitement coming from their work is when they're attacking someone and have hope of defeating them.

In short, they're propagandists. They took up the tools of culture to further their cause, probably as a last resort -- not everyone has what it takes to be a ward heeler -- but while some people who do that sort of thing eventually learn some interest in, and even affection for, the act of creating, these guys seem impervious to it. Day after day they take political messages out of the appropriate briefing documents, move the parts around a little so it doesn't look suspicious, and hit "post." They don't do inspiration. If you gave them a block of marble and a chisel and all the time in the world, they'd be looking around for a liberal to kill with the chisel.

The Upworthy guys aren't doing anything amazing, but because it involves the effective use of words and video and some social media widgets, it makes guys like Jacobson crazy. They feel they should have that power, and try to whip it up by telling their fans: Look, someone is doing a "culture" thing! We must do something about that! And they wait, crouched in their holes, for the answer -- without any idea that they might find it in themselves, if only they weren't such miserable, joyless little turds.

POE'S LAW WINS AGAIN.

I have been following online kulturkampf mag Acculturated a while now, but I may have to stop. First there's this new Downton Abbey essay by Ashley E. McGuire -- a servant was sent away for having been knocked up, apparently, and McGuire reacts:

On the one hand, Grantham’s hypocrisy makes me glad for progressive laws that ensure that sexual assault gets prosecuted and that men have to pay, at least financially, when they sire a child. 

On the other hand, it makes me wonder, are things that much better today?

Wut.

Men are expected to sleep around to be manly. But whereas women were once expected to be pure, now women are expected to sleep around (thanks Hanna Rosin!) to be feminists but still somehow be pure to be desirable.

They do?

Like it or not, virginity in a woman is still very much valued.

It is? Oh hold on, McGuire has evidence:

Nothing exemplifies this better than recent examples of women auctioning off their virginity for absurd sums.

Then I looked at the Acculturated TOC and found an essay called, "One Way to Resurrect Manliness: Everyone, Dress Better!"

I'm genuinely flummoxed. I want to keep making fun of them, but I begin to suspect Acculturated is really an epic internet fraud like Christwire. I'm afraid I'll look silly when they rip the mask off and turn out to be a bunch of Vassar students having a laugh. Come to think of it, I've seen few besides the very dumbest conservatives ever linking to them...

Another bad sign: They do podcasts at Ricochet, an obvious parody site.

Does anyone have the inside story?  Thanks in advance.