LOVE POWER/ THE POWER OF A SWEET FLOWER/ IS GONNA RULE THE EARTH/ AND THERE'LL BE A GREAT REBIRTH.

Love. It’s the most powerful word in the English language. When it is flanked by two pronouns, it becomes the most powerful sentence in the English language: I love you... 

As a guy who remained unmarried through my early 40s, I used those three words more casually than I should have, not worried about the heart I might be wounding. Who knows why, but none of the reasons I can think of are good. Was I being careless or selfish? Was I doing it to make the women I was dating feel better? Or myself?

It sounds like something found by the police in a serial killer's room, but it's Lee Habeeb at National Review, debasing himself with bad confessional prose so the Republican Party can learn to love, yes, love as Lee Habeeb has learned to love!

It is love, regrettably, that is so utterly absent from anything we talk about as conservatives. I would bet that if you Googled every speech by every conservative candidate in 2012, you wouldn’t find the word “love” once.

Even though we believe deeply that love is the answer to so many of the world’s problems, we just can’t say the word.

"L-l-l-l-.... [wet, grinding breaths] l-l-l-.. l-l-l-l-...nigger!"

We believe that no government worker can love a child the way his parents can, and yet we still can’t say the word... 

We believe poverty is often a symptom of kids’ being born without fathers, and to mothers who are kids themselves, and yet we still can’t say the word...

Habebb goes on drawing pretty hearts and flowers on proposals to eliminate WIC and food stamps a good long while until, sensing he's losing his audience (they're milling toward the doors, muttering about "hippie shit"), he pulls his surprise move:

If we started talking about betrayal, we might win more hearts, too.

His poor, stammering target snaps to attention. Dolchstoßlegende! That they can say!

Because it wasn’t conservatives who betrayed the people of Detroit; it was that city’s liberal leaders, who made false promises to their own people; and the UAW, which drove auto plants south; and the public-employee unions, which treated that once great city as an ATM until there was no more cash left to withdraw. 

It isn’t just bad math, what liberals are guilty of; it’s bad faith. Liberals are betraying the people they purport to serve.

That's how you woo them, by God! He's only using you... what could you possibly see in him... can't you see that I'm the one.... Then out comes the knife.

Let’s talk about the kind of guy who tells the girls he loves them and then just takes what he wants from them and leaves. And the kind of guy who says the word “love” and then lives it. 

I know those guys. I’ve been both of them. 

The Legend of Two-Face: "Heads I bring America peace... tails I give them a sword." (William Kristol whispers in his ear.) "Tails it is!"

Americans know those guys, too.

And they voted for Obama. Maybe you guys should do something about your breath.

LIBERTARIAN POPULISM EXPLAINED.

National Review staffer Katrina Trinko has been given a USA Today column to show that she understands the plight of fast-food workers:

It's understandable that fast-food employees want to be paid more. Living off minimum wage can be a grim business, particularly if you're self-supporting or supporting a family... 

But mandating a new minimum wage would likely lead to fewer jobs being created in the future, and it would make for a tough job market for teenagers.

Because if there's anything worse than jobs people can't live on, it's not having enough of them. But don't worry, Trinko has found a workaround that doesn't violate the sanctity of the free market:

Instead of changing laws, fast-food workers should look to change corporate cultures. One idea would be to pressure fast-food companies to allow tip jars, so that people who wanted to pass on more to the workers had a way to do so. 

Given what these poor souls get paid, they might be better off just taking their tip jars out to the sidewalk. Maybe some passing Wealth Producer will notice and reward their entrepreneurial spirit! It worked in Trading Places.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the Pope's remarks on gay people and rightbloggers' anxiety that they might be taken as something other than anti-gay. I'm so old, I remember when it was the Democrats who had to constantly worry about keeping a fractious coalition together. Now elderly Catholics who hate change are apparently the other side's problem. Lotsa luck!

POPE-A-DOPE.

Shorter Michael Potemra: The new Pope is a better liar than the old one, and a much better liar than Jerry Falwell.

I particularly love this section:

Ratzinger gets it. For this reason, I suspect that, while it’s somewhat unfair that Bergoglio is being played off against Ratzinger, Ratzinger himself, in his retirement, is not resentful of his successor’s popularity. I rather picture him watching the TV reports on Bergoglio, and saying, “Yes! Zat is exactly vat I vas trying to say.”

And then he drank a goblet of human blood. I often wonder if these Christians, when they talk openly about how they're trying to put one over on the suckers, understand how weird they sound to normal people. Then I remember normal people don't read them.

SOMETIMES YOU JUST HAVE TO PLAY THE ODDS.

Michele Catalano was once upon a time a stalwart warblogger (the precursors to rightbloggers), sworn to the War on Whatchamacallit and denouncing those of us who weren't as keen on it as traitors. Sample:

I get more and more discouraged, more upset at the tone the AWC [anti-war crowd] has taken. I will not this time apologize for calling them traitors. I will not back down from those words. When you support an insurgency against your country's soldiers, when you declare that you are in bed in with the enemy, then you are a traitor. And you should be treated as such. I wish that every vet who has returned home from Iraq would see those signs and act upon them.

And there's plenty more where that came from.

Flash forward to 2013, and here's Catalano's new thing: The goddamn Gummint is after her because quinoa!

Most of it was innocent enough. I had researched pressure cookers. My husband was looking for a backpack. And maybe in another time those two things together would have seemed innocuous, but we are in “these times” now...

NSA is the new MSM! What Catalano described as "six agents from the joint terrorism task force" paid her husband a call: "three black SUVs in front of our house; two at the curb in front and one pulled up behind my husband’s Jeep in the driveway, as if to block him from leaving. Six gentleman in casual clothes emerged from the vehicles and spread out as they walked toward the house..." Panic in Suffolk County! "All I know is if I’m going to buy a pressure cooker in the near future, I’m not doing it online. I’m scared. And not of the right things."

She even got this tale of woe in the Guardian. The usual suspects cried havoc: "A woman on Long Island says that her family was visited by authorities yesterday because of their Internet search history!" flashed National Review; "Yes, the federal government knows what you search for on Google," hand-wrung Reason.

But I knew her work, and waited.

Eventually, from TechCrunch:

Catalano asserts that the visit was likely prompted by her husband searching for the term “backpacks” in close conjunction with her searching for the term “pressure cookers” and her son reading the news. Or something. 

Turns out the visit was prompted by the searches, but not in the way most speculation asserted – by a law enforcement-initiated, NSA-enabled dragnet of the couple’s web history. It turns out either Catalano or her husband were conducting these searches from a work computer. And that employer, “a Bay Shore based computer company,” called the police on their former employee...

Actually TechCrunch is being kind (or something) -- the Suffolk County Police bulletin they worked from described his search terms as "pressure cooker bombs" and "backpacks." Now, I don't approve employers flipping out over stuff like that, even if their subject is married to an obvious nutcake like Catalano. But it's a far cry from the Federales doing a Google-enabled home-invasion, and it's a bit rich to hear such accusations coming from someone who once wrote, "It makes me angry to see how many people react with glee when something goes wrong with Homeland Security. These people who are wishing and hoping for Bush to fail are, in essence, wishing and hoping for another terrorist attack. Sick."

This would be a useful thing to remember the next time you hear wingnuts working their new "libertarian populism" schtick and denouncing the national security state that 10 years ago they all huddled against for electoral warmth. Or whenever you read anything by Andrew Sullivan.

In other words: If you know they're full of shit, when you squeeze 'em don't expect rosewater.

UPDATE. I should point out that many of the outlets that credulously carried the story have since updated to reveal the con, except people like Mollie Hemingway, for obvious reasons. Oh, and Catalano updated too:

The piece I wrote was the story as we knew it with the information we were told. None of it was fabricated. If you know me, you know I would never do that.

I was tempted to ask, how many times does that work? But then I realized there'll always be a whole lot of people who never catch on.

UPDATE 2. At the Wall Street Journal, Daniel Henninger talks about "Obama's Creeping Authoritarianism." Please see above.

UPDATE 3. Commenter Donald G. points out that Catalano eventually came out against the war -- and so she did, in March of 2013. Here's a bit of her day-late-and-dollar-short:

There were others out there like me. I talked to them at work. I talked to them in the school parking lot while we waited for our kids. I talked to them over email or instant message, people from across the country who had that twinge of regret. What we all had in common was this: we felt used. We felt taken advantage of. We felt manipulated. And we were admitting we were wrong.

So let history record that starting in 2003 America went to war on Michele Catalano's self-esteem. Key bonus line:

Not that I would have voted for Kerry.

Maybe she can start a support group with Andrew Sullivan.

UPDATE 4. Ain't it the truth: "This story would have had entirely different vectors and volume of skree," says commenter mortimer, "had she written, 'My husband, Hakim, who was Googling "pressure cooker bombs"...' I miss Annie Jacobsen."

R.I.P. DOGHOUSE RILEY.

As Lance Mannion said today, "Weird this internet world we've built. Didn't know Doghouse but feel like we've lost a old colleague with an office just down the hall." After I got over the shock of hearing Doghouse Riley, aka Douglas Case of Indiana, was dead, I suffered an aftershock to realize that I'd not only never met him, but had only read his blog and corresponded with him a few times; his last email was an appeal to help some other blogger who was down on his luck. Yet I felt as if I knew him, because his presence as a writer was so vivid.

It helped that he wrote long. He could be quick and slashing, as he often was in the comments section here. But usually when he got into a subject, he'd stretch out comfortable and give, along with needed details and logical abutments, a sense that he was talking to you, rather than composing some polemic that would wow the wide world. And even if his talk led, as often, to some scorched earth, his was in the main a friendly voice, one you could listen to awhile.

Here's a bit of Doghouse from a few years ago, on a column by David Brooks, who in a just word would be scrawling his received wisdom onto sheets of cardboard in a subway station while Doghouse wrote for the Times. Brooks was as usual telling people how "American culture was built on the notion of bourgeois dignity" and how the lesson of Ben Franklin was that we should all tighten up our assholes and get religious about the Free Market. Doghouse wasn't having Brooks' argument, and he also wasn't having Brooks, nor the whole horrible tradition Brooks represents:

Today it's Ben Franklin: Champion of the Suburbite; we might note right off the bat that the case consists of Brooks declaring it, three-quarters of the way through the piece, and then steadfastly ignoring anything that might qualify as nuance, say, or biography, or evidence. I suppose it's possible Brooks at some point opened Franklin's autobiography, in which the great man comes across as a callow, money-grubbing young printer at a time when running a printing press was the equivalent of owning the rights to a wildly popular video game title today. That's not the Franklin we revere, or at least it's not the one we used to revere before Texas re-wrote the history books.

It's not important, because Brooks has about as much interest in Franklin--even the sort of Franklin who might be invoked the way another hack might put Don Quixote on Wall Street or Hamlet in the Republican caucus--as the Texas legislature has in History. No, we are gathered here today to hear the surprising tale of how Global Capitalism just keeps making the world better for everybody, especially the American Middle Class, which really needs to lighten up on the expectation of being paid more than Mexicans, but should stick with the Hard Work/Don't Ask Questions/Vote for your Betters program which got it this far... 

I know I may have said this before, but Th' fuck makes these guys go on about this shit interminably? And why are they so quick to chalk it up to the thoughtful generosity of 19th century English mill owners? The major improvement in the quality of life since 1810 is public health. Sewage disposal. Safe drinking water. Vaccinations. Food inspection. Y'know the entire litany of stuff the Brookses in this country oppose, obstruct, and applaud Ronald Reagan for gutting before turning the remnants over to industry groups to regulate for themselves. The sort of thing they spend half their allotted annual column inches trying to convince the lower classes to elect Republicans to prevent. The sort of thing they expect will be provided for themselves, gratis and regardless, of course.

Mine isn't a partisan argument--although the argument it opposes is--it's an epistemological one. Back in the perfect 50s we didn't teach children that All The Modern Advancements they enjoyed were due to a reasonable rate of return, free from confiscatory taxes. We taught them they were due to Louis Pasteur and Jane Addams, to Helen Keller and Joseph Lister and John Snow and Jonas Salk and Sara Josephine Baker. All of whom, nowadays, would apparently be running hedge funds or operating import/export businesses or social networking sites.

This is not only absolutely right, it's also a pleasure to read. And there never have been that many who could make the bitter truth go down so easy. At least, not so many that we can afford to lose one.

THE WHITE COWER MOVEMENT.

Racist asshole Rod Dreher continues to be a racist asshole:

Another item, this one from Andrew Sullivan’s blog. He talks about how for 20 years there had been violence on his block in DC, but he never let it scare him away from walking past young black men in groups. The other day, three black men jumped a white guy on the block, beat him up, and, say police, yelled at him, “This is for Trayvon Martin,” then robbed him. Andrew:

Will that change my attitude when I manage to return from NYC? No. Does it deeply depress and anger me? Yes.

Andrew is willing to let 20 years of experience continue to guide his behavior, versus a single incident. That seems reasonable, in one sense. In another sense, that victim could easily have lost his life, or been seriously wounded in this attack. The odds of being attacked by young black men on that block in DC are very small, based on Andrew’s experience, but not nearly as small as if you lived in a part of town farther from where young black inner-city men live. But if you are attacked, the price you might pay is your life. Is that a prudential gamble you are willing to take to avoid passing a racial-profiling judgment as a pedestrian?

The overwhelming evidence of two decades "seems reasonable" to Dreher, but nowhere near as compelling as his terror of black folks.

I lived in New York for 33 years. I remember specific periods of racial tension, like after the Howard Beach incident, when I was extra-on-guard; any time the atmosphere changes, one should take precautions till it blows over. But never did I think, I should just get away from these black people -- then I'll be safe! I can move to Bumfuck and see my chance of accidental death rise 20% -- but at least I'll die in a racially-pure environment!

Dreher likes to show us how worldly he is, but his arguments -- yes, you've been safe for 20 years, but why take a chance? Wouldn't you be better off in a white neighborhood? You're just doing this to prove a point, you know -- remind me of what my well-meaning suburban relatives would say to me back in the day. The main difference being, they were well-meaning.

A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND.

Victor Davis Maximus Super Hanson tells us there were men in those days, by God! Not like the lily-livers we have now! And the only way to pay them proper tribute is in third-rate press-agent prose:

The greatest generals are tragic heroes. Take again George S. Patton — the man who was needed to instill a 19th-century martial audacity in an untrained army of conscripts reliant on superior logistics and material supply. Yet Patton was singularly inept in adjusting to the necessary politics of an allied effort, and indeed to the cultural parameters of modernism itself — thus his crackpot talk of reincarnation and manly essence.

Driven mad, nobly mad, by the tempora and the mores -- victim of the modern age, poor poor General!

To cut as much of the bullshit as is possible while still addressing the subject, Maximus has learned a few things about John Ford (from the sound of it, almost certainly from David Brooks), and sees a link to antique heroes, and their need to be obliterated in their agon for the good of all -- something Maximus would certainly consider socialistic if cowboys and Romans weren't so dead butch. Maximus says we need such a man now to save America -- from itself!

Could there be a tragic hero in the 21st century? Might a candidate reform the tax code, balance the budget, recalibrate entitlements, return the U.S. to a meritocratic and self-reliant society, and understand that he had to be hated for doing what might save us? “I shall end agricultural subsidies entirely and cut Food Stamps back to 2009 levels,” a heroic president might thunder as he welcomes a single term as the price for that defiance.

Maximus is catching on, slightly; he knows we all hate him and his fellow wingnuts. And while at first glance it might seem as if he's forgetting that you have to be elected before you can become our hated leader, I give him the benefit of the doubt, and assume he knows his preferred candidate will either steal the election or lie his way in.

But what man is fit for the laurel?

Mitch Daniels has the standoffishness...

Quit laughing! Let him finish!

...and a sense that what has to be done would be near politically intolerable for the most of the public. But does he have the spirit, over familial objections, to turn the buckboard around back to Hadleyville before High Noon?

Well, considering how quickly he crapped out back in 2012, when with the support of Maximus Super he could have saved us from the blackamoor tyrant Obama, I'd say Daniels prefers a heavily air-conditioned McMansion to any buckboard, especially one headed into battle.

Chris Christie is the antithesis of the current metrosexual president, as unconcerned with his appearance as Obama is prissy and compulsive in his manners and grooming. 

What's Latin for "faggot"?

But while Christie’s bluster shows signs of tragic unconcern, is it matched by a spiritual unconcern for what the presidency might do to him if he were to try to save the country?

Depends. Might the presidency try to make him eat a salad?

Perhaps things must become even worse to cause a tragic hero to emerge — for someone to speak the truth, offend the majority, and, when the successful effort is over, to lose.

Two thoughts: 1.) Sarah Palin isn't going to run, Maximus. When the Republic goes down in flames, she'll be running a theme park called Triggworld or some shit, and counting every penny from the moose-ear cap concession. 2.) I hate to call anyone else a drama queen, but this dream of non-consensually forcing Liberty onto America and then dying nobly downstage may be something you should share with your shrink, not yell out the windows. Some of your comrades might want to win an election someday.

SEEMS LIKE EVERY TIME YOU TURN AROUND/ THERE'S ANOTHER HARD-LUCK STORY THAT YOU'RE GONNA HEAR.

Conservatives are crazy over something they call "the narrative" -- that is, a storyline with which evil media liberals are bamboozling America -- and every so often they send a howling culture-warrior over the hill to seize control of the radio station. A distant sputter of gunfire and it's over, usually, but they always send a medal back home to his think-tank. Here's the latest offering at TownHall by Kurt Schlichter:

The Royal Baby Is a Rejection of the Family Chaos Liberalism Feeds Upon

Ain't even kidding.

The birth of Prince George creates a problem for liberals. They love the idea of royalty because it validates their vision of an anointed elite with a divine right to the obedience of their subjects.

[Citation needed.]

However, this wonderful couple has created a traditional nuclear family that provides a powerful counterpoint to the kind of freak show dysfunction that liberalism requires to survive.

The obvious solution is to give this nation's welfare recipients £202.4 million a year per household and see if they straighten up and fly right.

Meanwhile Ole Perfesser Glenn Reynolds does his bit for narrative reclamation by telling USA Today readers the real "war on women" is being waged by liberals via horndogs Anthony Weiner (dropping in the polls), San Diego Mayor Bob Filner (ditto), and Eliot Spitzer (well, he's running against Scott Springer). Reynolds takes the opportunity to repeat the old tale of Bill Clinton, Rapist, and to heap second-hand insults on Weiner's wife ("leaving some to say that she's even worse than he is") because when you're a men's-rights nut pretending to give a shit about women, you can't get through 800 words without some bitch-slapping.

Anyway the upshot is that Democrats have "a contempt for people in general, and especially for voters," but as usual the real villain is the media, because for them "an isolated remark by a Republican candidate or radio host is treated as representative of the entire party." These narrative-spielers are just twisting Republicans' words! Speaking of which, here are some words that are missing from Reynolds' essay: vaginal wand, abortion restrictions, war on contraception coverage, and criminalized sodomy. These were left out, I suppose, because they're connected to actual Republican policies.

For the easy rule-of-three layup, let's see what the nuts at Acculturated are up to -- ah, here's one: "How Hollywood Has Ruined Sex." It's not just about how tits and grinding ruined author Bruce S. Thornton's moviegoing experience. He's got specifics! For example:

Consider some of those banal conventions that lazy directors and writers throw into sex scenes. There’s what I call the “trail of clothes.” The camera starts with some article of clothing on the floor, and then follows more bits and pieces of attire until it reaches the fornicating couple.

I thought this signifier went the way of two cigarettes in the ashtray, but Thornton says he saw it as recently as Bugsy, which came out in 1991. Also:

Then there are the ubiquitous 20-30 candles illuminating every sex-scene. When do those candles get lit?

Was there a sex scene in Lincoln? I don't know what the guy's talking about. Maybe he actually wrote this thing twenty years ago, and left it in a bin at the Moral Majority offices that was later bequeathed to Acculturated. I mean, it's a more flattering explanation than assuming someone is still writing shit like this.

UPDATE. In comments, hellslittlestangel: "Mistreat half a dozen women and it's an outrage against humanity; mistreat tens of millions of women and it's a statistic."

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the "libertarian populism" thing that's sweeping the Republican Party. Or not. Whatever, if you don't like that we have other paternosters. How about National Greatness Conservatism? What, too soon?

UPDATE. hellslittlestangel asks in comments why Ross Douthat didn't make the cut. It was a near thing, but we were running long. I'll reproduce it here, though:

As it sadly must any time conservatives talk about their future, Ross Douthat stuck in his oar. While admitting "it's true that the G.O.P.'s identity as the party of the wealthy has been quite resilient," he nonetheless believed "a little exit poll data can shed light on why would-be conservative populists, libertarian and otherwise, aren't just dealing in an ahistorical fantasy."

What Douthat noticed was that in Presidential elections between 1988 and 2008, the Democrats gained votes from the rich, and the Republicans lost them. (Douthat discovers inflation only in 2008, which makes his figures especially dramatic.) So Douthat saw where the votes were, and even acknowledged the "substantial question of how a G.O.P. that embraced economic populism would raise enough money to compete with the new Democratic money machine," an insight we thought was beyond him. 

But in a follow-up column Douthat brought up the "court party"/"country party" distinction in 18th Century Great Britain, and declared, "there really is a kind of 'court party' in American politics, whose shared interests and assumptions -- interventionist, corporatist, globalist -- have stamped the last two presidencies and shaped just about every major piece of Obama-era legislation... the ruling class -- in Washington, especially -- has grown fat at the expense of the nation it governs." (Douthat was referring here to his previous insight that D.C. was a poor country town until the money started spreading into the black neighborhoods, whereupon it became a nightmare out of Hunger Games.) 

Douthat left libertarian populists with this encouragement: "The original 'country party' critique of Robert Walpole's government was powerful, resonant and intellectually influential. But it still wasn't politically successful. Instead, the era as a whole belonged to Walpole and his court -- as this one, to date, belongs to Barack Obama." The message is clear: Find another country to take over and try your new ideas there. We propose Somalia.

FIXED IT FOR YOU.

Victor Davis Hanson explains that he is not as racist as John Derbyshire. This is his very first proof-point:

1) [The New Yorker's Kelefa] Sanneh writes, “Evidently this [Hanson’s] advice, the wisdom of generations, can be summarized in a single sentence: ‘When you go to San Francisco, be careful if a group of black youths approaches you.’” 

I should add that the sentence is not Sanneh's invention, but exactly what Hanson reported his father said to him ("I think that experience [a mugging] — and others — is why [my father] once advised me, 'When you go to San Francisco, be careful if a group of black youths approaches you'").  Still, Hanson protests that this was taken out of context:

That is entirely untrue, and the disingenuous Sanneh knows it. His phrase “summarized in a single sentence” does not characterize what I wrote, which was as follows: “In my case, the sermon — aside from constant reminders to judge a man on his merits, not on his class or race — was very precise. . . . Note what he did not say to me. He did not employ language like ‘typical black person.’ He did not advise extra caution about black women, the elderly, or the very young — or about young Asian, Punjabi, or Native American males. In other words, the advice was not about race per se, but instead about the tendency of males of one particular age and race to commit an inordinate amount of violent crime.” 

All that is a single sentence?

To be fair, maybe Sanneh should have added to his summary sentence, "...and make sure when you tell this story years later you add a bunch of not-all-of-them-are-that-way boilerplate; it doesn't change anything, but some people will be fooled."

Later Hanson tries the Old Reliable about how liberals think people who get mugged had it coming, and yells about Obama. This should save him from Derbyshire treatment by the National Review editorial board; Derbyshire's racism is pure and apparently heartfelt, whereas it's easy to believe Hanson is as full of shit on this subject as he is on everything else, and merely uses it as a signaling device to let National Review's core readership know he's on their side.

HOW YA GONNA KEEP 'EM DOWN ON THE FARM...

Apparently our urban hellholes are safer than God's Country:

Large cities in the U.S. are significantly safer than their rural counterparts, with the risk of injury death more than 20 percent higher in the country. A study to be published online tomorrow in Annals of Emergency Medicine upends a common perception that urban areas are more dangerous than small towns ("Safety in Numbers: Are Major Cities the Safest Places in the U.S.?")... 

Analyzing 1,295,919 injury deaths that occurred between 1999 and 2006, researchers determined that the risk of injury death was 22 percent higher in the most rural counties than in the most urban. The most common causes of injury death were motor vehicle crashes, leading to 27.61 deaths per 100,000 people in most rural areas and 10.58 per 100,000 in most urban areas.

Now it's time for Victor Davis Hanson, Rod Dreher, and their pals to tell us the blacks are driving their welfare Cadillacs out to the sticks to run over white people.

UPDATE. Hee hee -- Whet Moser at Chicago Magazine: "Welcome to Cook, One of America’s Safest Counties."

COME ALONG, WE'RE GOING TO THE TRANS-LUX TO HISS WILLIAM BUCKLEY.

Jay Nordlinger, who practices what at National Review passes for whimsy, tells us (as he has apparently done before) that hissing is for commies:

Speaking of longstanding complaints: I have always objected to hissing. And, all of my life, the Left has hissed. They’ve hissed movies, plays, music, me — anything they don’t like. I’m sure that conservatives have hissed, along the way. Frankly, I have never been present for this.

Liberals also loudly unwrap candy at the opera, I'm told.

Believe it or don't, this is not the craziest thing that went out under Nordlinger's name today. Here's a letter he says he received:

My girlfriend works at a retail clothing store in Chicago. She has recently had some issues with her manager (long stories, details don’t matter). 

Today, she was told by the manager, “Because you do such a good job selling, the other employees are intimidated. They are intimidated by your success. We want to move you to a fitting room [outta sight, outta mind], so other employees have a chance on the floor. I just want to have an environment where all people are equal and everybody does the same.” 

She has already found another job, and is leaving. By the way, the store called her into a meeting a few months ago and told her, “Employees said that, in the breakroom, you mentioned having a Bush-Cheney shirt. Some of them thought that was offensive, so we would like you not to speak of it at work.”

Astonishingly, Nordlinger seems to buy this ridiculous story of a retail business where the manager doesn't want a super-salesman on the selling floor because liberal fascism: "We can accept this kind of country — just accept defeat, or a kind of dhimmitude," he sighs. "Or we can push back. Push back in myriad ways, at myriad turns." He doesn't name the letter's author; Heywood Jablome, I'm guessing; sounds like his work.

And then someone sends him another Penthouse Letter, which he also buys:

Here’s some pushback for you. Someone on my team once complained to my boss that I had weighty books on my desk, which intimidated her. It made her reluctant to ask me questions. (She was reluctant, all right, but for different reasons.) The boss asked me to keep my books in a drawer, rather than on the desk itself. I adamantly refused, and challenged my boss to fire me for my refusal.

I've half a mind to send him a letter about how my liberal boss was intimidated because I have such a big dick.

THE STUPIDEST THING EVER WRITTEN UNTIL JONAH GOLDBERG WRITES SOMETHING ELSE.

British PM David Cameron's anti-porn proposals are so stupid he's already begun to back off them, and even Charles C.W. Cooke, an asshole, has come out against them. The best you can say for the program is that is has stirred Jonah Goldberg to one of his classic foot-in-bucket fartfests:

I understand that we are in a very libertarian moment. I myself have become far more sympathetic to libertarianism over the years.

Wait for it...

But I just can’t get as worked up about David Cameron’s porn crackdown as Charlie can.

I think libertarianism is bullshit and even I'm offended by this.

The “who’s to judge?” refrain very often strikes me as camouflage for the more radical claim that judgment is either impossible or simply illegitimate.

This is really about standards. If you depict women having orgasms, soon every woman will want one! What then? Fart.

In other words, hand-waving about, say, the peril to free speech of banning Lady Chatterley’s Lover says little about how to view some dimly lit bukkake compilation (don’t look it up if you think you might not want to know).

Goldberg moves as easily from a right to say "yuk, bukkake, amirite?" to a right to stop other people from watching it as, I expect, he moves from eating leftover meatloaf with his fingers to drinking salsa out of the jar in his midnight (and 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. and 11 p.m.) raids on the fridge.

It’s a bit like the death penalty. Opponents always want to argue that the death penalty is 100 percent wrong when the person about to be executed is a somewhat sympathetic figure, or when there is some real or alleged ambiguity about his guilt. But sometimes the evidence of guilt is overwhelming and the convict is a child rapist, mass-murdering demon. Then, suddenly, death-penalty opponents grow quiet as they await a more convenient poster child.

That's why they picked rape-murderer Robert Lee Willie as the model for Dead Man Walking. So mediagenic!

Unless you believe that there should be no legal impediment whatsoever to hardcore porn on, say, Saturday-morning broadcast television, you too believe in censorship. Similarly, if you believe there is some information — any information! — the government should be allowed to keep the press from reporting, you also believe in censorship. Now that we’ve established that in principle...

...Jonah Goldberg gets to be yukmaster general. I wonder if this junior-high debate bullshit works with anyone.

I am not for banning porn (if you could ban it at the local level, I would be more sympathetic to that).

I have followed Goldberg for over a decade and this is as classically Goldbergian a "veer in one direction, then another, then disappear into a cloud of farts" as I have seen.

But I find the desire to help parents shield their kids from it entirely reasonable, humane, and laudable — and, yes, difficult.

Two separate cheats -- "for the children" blubbering, and "no easy choices" chin-stroking -- in the same sentence. This shit is prime.

Then Goldberg says he's "confused" by Cooke's analogy with King Canute -- no surprise there; he probably thought it was something like "Linus the Lion Hearted" that came on TV after he stopped watching cartoons -- and, feebly grasping that it has something to do with fighting the forces of nature, persists:

Regardless, it seems to me that virtually every major challenge of the human condition is ultimately “unstoppable”: Disease, crime, natural disasters, cosmic entropy, karaoke, etc. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to smooth out the rough edges, go for the small improvements where we can, and muddle through from one generation to the next.

No one can prove that oceans of internet porn have done anything worse to humanity than give Goldberg another opportunity to embarrass himself, yet he compares it to disease and crime as something we should do something about, rather than as something normal people just shrug off and learn to live with, like, say, universal health care.

Cooke basically tells him where to get off (politely, though -- a man's gotta eat) and Goldberg actually comes back, this time with buckets on both feet:

...as Charlie is far more knowledgeable about his exotic homeland than I, I’m willing to defer to him when it comes to distrusting the British government.

Translation: I didn't know what the fuck I was just talking about but it doesn't matter, I'm a legacy pledge.

Fortunately, Charlie has elevated the discussion from the particulars to the general, and on that ground I’m less deferential. He alludes to what “the story of government in the West” is but I’m not sure what he’s saying. If he’s saying it’s always preferable to keep the government from making mistakes in the first place, rather than trying to fix them later, I suppose that’s fine (though some things, like gas station burritos, only emerge as mistakes after you try them). If he’s saying that once we acknowledge a principle for Orwellian/Statist/Censorial expansion we start riding the slippery slope to ever greater oppression, I’m afraid I disagree.

This is literally gibberish. But the next line is killer:

The best one can say about this kind of argument is that it is sometimes true and it’s sometimes false.

To match this with our traditional Goldberg signifiers is difficult, but a close equivalent might be Goldberg farting from every pore.

Thereafter Goldberg does his own version of Peter Boyle's "One guy lives in Brooklyn, one guy lives in Sutton Place" speech from Taxi Driver, demonstrates that he can't understand why child pornography is about child exploitation rather than free speech, and actually says this:

Right now, thanks to censorship, it is illegal to put up a giant electronic billboard in front of a school depicting fictional scenes of gang rape or child sex. Given his embrace of free speech absolutism, is that a bad thing?

And (I hope this is graven on his monument):

The internet is no billboard, but I think the principle can make the leap.

Then he brings up "Plato’s Republic... the Jacobins, the Nazis, the Communists" to show that he is too an intellectual, see?

I give it four farts.

DENNIS FARINA, 1944-2013.

Farina had authority as an actor -- which is to say, when he told you he was Ray Barboni from Miami, you believed him:



Not the guy you want for King Lear, maybe, but very good at what he did. R.I.P.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the second week of Zimmerman-Martin follies. Among the outtakes, a special challenge from Ace of Spades:

On Twitter, I challenged Buzz Feed's Ben Smith, who had claimed Obama always spoke 'incredibly' about race, to apprise me as to what specific insights and memorable sentences he recalls from any Obama utterance, whether on race or any other subject. As of this 6 o'clock deadline, he has yet to respond to me.

3-D chess match won!

UPDATE. On the sub-theme of rightblogger sorrow at the scarcity of violent Trayvon rally incidents they could attribute to race war, Breitbart.com is reduced to the level of Lestat in the swamp, feasting on sub-optimal nutrition sources:

PROTESTERS NONE TOO PLEASED TO SEE BREITBART'S BRANDON DARBY COVERING TRAYVON RALLY 

Brandon Darby gets verbally attacked at a July 21,2013 Trayvon rally organized by the New Black Panther Party and Quanell X. The Occupy contingent recognized Darby while he was on assignment for Breitbart News.

The best from the comments: "What I find hilarious is that the white 'protesters' have to explain who the Breitbart reporter is to blacks..." That is hilarious, but not how he thinks.

LIBERTARIANS, THEY'RE LOVIN' IT!

Ah, Megan McArdle is at Bloomberg now. Let's see what she's up to -- oh yeah, that McDonald's how-to-survive-on-our-shitty-pay thing. Guess what, McArdle sides with McDonald's! (Her husband's right, these scripts are getting awfully predictable.)

Moreover, a number of people are claiming that this budget is not merely unkind, but downright Draconian -- “the amounts specified in this budget just aren’t enough to get by, at least not safely,” Irregular Times says. 

This seems overdramatic; $24,000 in after-tax dollars is not princely. But it doesn't put you at significant risk of death or dismemberment. While $800 a month is not a lot to have for clothes, entertainment, groceries and sundries, even taking inflation into account, that was a lot more than the disposable income I had when I first started at The Economist. After student loans, rent and taxes, I had about $300 for everything else, including utilities and MetroCards.

Young career-tracker with a starter job at The Economist, McDonald's employee = pretty much the same thing.

If you are a middle-class professional, and you attempt to imagine replicating your own lifestyle on McDonald's wages, you are bound to feel panic and outrage. But that’s not actually the task facing people who work at McDonald's, or people with a household after-tax income of about $24,000 a year.

Yeah, they're never going to need just the right shoes for a gala reception, so their needs are different.

The McDonald's workforce skews young. The average age of a fast-food worker is almost 30 right now, but that’s because of the recession; in 2000, it was 22. The average McDonald's line worker is not planning to put two kids through college on their salary. Only a minority are trying to support just themselves exclusively on their minimum-wage paycheck; they are living with a spouse or partner who makes at least as much as they do, or with parents or other relatives who make more than minimum wage. Moreover, very few people stay in entry-level minimum-wage jobs for very long (though again, the Great Recession has made this happen more than it used to); those workers eventually get promoted or leave for a more promising job.

Sorry, had to go to the "emphasis added" there; I didn't want you to miss the use of McArdle's  trademarked "the facts support me except for the parts that don't, which I dismiss by naming them" process. Also, funny as I find the idea that shit wages are okay for these people because they can always get their uncle in North Dakota to send them money orders, it's nothing compared to this:

Those who don’t [advance] -- who actually try to support a family on minimum-wage paychecks -- will end up with substantial government support. They’ll get the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the Earned Income Tax Credit and, in many places, they will now be eligible for Medicaid.

For one thing, these are programs McArdle's fellow conservatarians are working hard to get rid of. For another and more to the point, this sort of employer exploitation of public assistance is famously what's keeping the whole crap-job paradigm alive. It like defending a con game by saying, "but if you shut it down, how's the con man going to make any money?"

McArdle can't resist adding that you silly elitists can't understand: "There are millions of people in this country doing it," she says. "Keep in mind that most McDonald's workers don’t live close to New York City or Washington... Survival on such a lean budget is possible because people who do it are not trying to live the atomized life of an upper-middle-class college graduate." Woo, that's telling those of us who have our own bathrooms! We get something similar at the Washington Post from McArdle's fellow conservatarian Timothy B. Lee -- but first let me quote my favorite part:

The budget allocates $0 for heat. This could be realistic in some Southern states...

Okay, thanks. Lee has a pot o' sneers for those decadent coastals who insult our fast food slaves by suggesting they could live any differently:

With a couple of exceptions, these are typical figures for the spending of millions of low-income Americans... Gawker’s Neil Casey calls $600 per month for rent a “laughably small” figure, but Casey should spend more time outside the Northeast Corridor... while working two jobs is tough, it’s not that uncommon. About 7 million Americans, or about 5 percent of the workforce, do it... And the reality is that these low-income Americans have to make the kind of hard choices that critics are deriding as ridiculous... Gawker calls the budget “just-shy-of-condescending,” but budgeting is an important skill that isn’t obvious to every young adult in America. Offering practical advice on how to live on a modest income is more constructive than ridiculing the choices required to do so.

In other words, low-end jobs like these are increasingly long-term propositions, and you're just being insulting by suggesting it's anything but the way things ought to be -- why, it's like asking a harelip for a kiss, or teaching a slave to read!

¡AYYY, NO ES BUENO!

At National Review, Rachel Campos-Duffy is blowing the lid off... Eva Longoria, producer of Devious Maids, which sounds like typically prime-time crap to us, but to Campos-Duffy it's racist. Well, not racist exactly, just hypocritical-liberal-racist because Longoria's tight with those radical Latino groups and shouldn't be getting away with such stuff.

Much has been said about the controversy swirling around Eva Longoria’s decision to be the executive producer of Lifetime Television’s Devious Maids, a prime-time soap about sexy Latina domestic workers who occasionally sleep with their bosses. Less has been reported about Ms. Longoria’s key relationships with her biggest defenders and America’s most powerful Hispanic NGOs, as well as her relationship with the finance chair of the Democratic National Committee, Henry Muñoz. 

The hypocrisy is difficult to swallow. After all, these are the same organizations that battled with Disney over an animated princess’s being insufficiently “Latina” (read, too white) and found sexism and gender insensitivity in their political opponents at every turn, accusing them of launching an all-out “war on women.” Does anyone doubt that the National Council of La Raza and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) would have crucified Devious Maids creator Marc Cherry if a powerful Democratic Latina donor had not been attached to the project?

Shit, I don't know. But tell me this: Have those sinister Latino groups come out against Iris Chacón for racial recidivism? Because when you're runnin' down La Bomba, hombre, you'll walkin' on the fighting side of me.


Also, has La Raza tried to shut down Telemundo comedy sketches for their undignified portrayals of the gente? I'm guessing not. And The Simpsons' Bumblebee Man is still on TV. Maybe they're all pals of Longoria and the Democrats, and equally in on the hypocri-conspiracy!

Still, Campos-Duffy thinks her idea of what Latino groups might have done is a bombshell, because this non-event is obviously tied to Longoria's activities with Democratic groups -- "the support she is receiving amid this controversy from the DNC and Hispanic NGOs recalls the kind of cronyism, amiguismo, and back scratching of the countries so many Latinos left behind." I understand Ricky Ricardo pulled the same shit, forgetting his roots to hang out with Fred and Ethel Mertz.

Portraying this absence of action as "the campaign to save Eva," Campos-Duffy claims it's "having some unintended consequences. It’s pulling back the curtain and exposing the nexus between money and Democratic politics. Powerful Hispanic community organizations are putting one Latina over the best interests, empowerment, and advancement of all Latinos."

I guess I have to be the one to tell them: Conservatives are so freaking bad at ethnic pandering, they ought to break down and take lessons. They're always screaming about race hustlers and race pimps -- couldn't they just sidle up to one sometime and offer him a wad of cash to teach them how to do it?

RACIST WITH AN EXPLANATION.

"Is Racial Profiling Ever Okay?" Of course it is, says Rod Dreher. When he lived in DC, Rod used to cross the street if he saw "young black men dressed like street thugs" coming at him, but not if they were clothed in "office wear." He bets you would too! Did you know a couple black guys beat up Matt Yglesias? Yet he still defends those people!

If you think it's not about playing the odds in a late-night street encounter, but about day-to-day life where black people get treated like shit on a regular basis even in daylight, Dreher knows all about that -- he too has suffered from racial prejudice:

The time that stands out to me was years ago, when I was applying for a newspaper job that I really wanted, and was told that I was perfect for it. Then the paper stopped returning my calls. Finally, an executive there told me that either the editor-in-chief or the publisher, can’t remember which, decreed that a minority or a woman must be hired for that job. It was humiliating and infuriating to me. All I was to that newsroom executive was a white male.

Also, can you believe it, in the little Louisiana town where he moved to, some of the black people have negative feelings about white people. But they're not all like that: Dreher knows this black lady whose mother "prefers to hire white repairmen because based on experience, she trusts them to do better work. Who am I to argue with this woman’s experience? Who are you? If it was your money at stake, would you profile in this way?"

Dreher is the upscale Internet world equivalent of the sort of Reasonable Racists you're bound to run into if your scope of acquaintances is wide enough. Mention the difficulties of black life in America, and you'll get the exact same routines: I was mugged by black guy so I know. Oh, you were mugged by one too? If you still don't see how dangerous they are, you're blinded by political correctness. Listen, black people racial-profile me all the time, I went to this bar one time and they wouldn't serve me...

They always have an argument, and they always say they want a "dialogue." (So does Dreher, here: "Why is it right in college admissions and hiring to reduce individuals to their race or gender? I’m not asking rhetorically. I really would like to hear what you have to say...") But you, my readers, are pretty well-travelled, and you know what they really want: They want you to tell them they're not bad people for feeling the way they do.

If you won't give it to them they way they prefer, right away, as something they're owed as a fellow white person, then they'll get argumentative. If you say, as Yglesias said about his assault, "that was a single incident on one day out of thousands. The overwhelming preponderance of black men I walk past on the street on a day-to-day basis... aren’t committing any violent crimes," the racist will say something like what Dreher says: "But it is reasonable to assume that if you are going to be a violent crime victim in DC — as most people in Washington are not, and never will be — then your assailant will almost certainly be a young black male." See? You have statistics, he has statistics. Now why don't you be reasonable and admit he's not a bad person?

The one thing that never occurs to these guys is that racism is not like monetarism or socialism or academicism or henotheism or anarcho-syndicalism; it's not a thought system we can sit up arguing about all night and be, other than the hangover, none the worse for wear after; it's cancer. Centuries of experience documented by historians and artists show it, if you need guidance, but a few years living in America ought to wise you up to it pretty quick all by itself.

I like to contend about everything, but you know what? On this subject, there really isn't anything to discuss.

GIVIN' 'EM WHAT THEY WANT.

My column this week mentioned some of the many conservatives who blithely assumed the ghettos would be aflame after the Zimmerman verdict because, well, you know [pushes in nose]. At Mother Jones, Lauren Williams noted some of the pre-eminent racial dead-enders on the case:

Bill O'Reilly recently asked guests on his show whether a not-guilty verdict would cause people to "run out and cause trouble," or worse, "damage the fabric of the nation." The Washington Times ran an online poll Wednesday asking readers, "Will there be riots in Florida if George Zimmerman receives a not-guilty verdict by a jury of his peers?" Seventy-four percent said yes. Sean Hannity had Mark Fuhrman (of O.J. Simpson trial fame) on his show this week and asked him the same question. His response, according to Newshounds, a Fox News watchdog site: "I just think it's kind of pathetic that a court of law cannot be in a vacuum of the legal system without the influence of the public threatening to do great bodily harm to people and property. It's really a pathetic statement for our country." Last October, speculation that African Americans would riot from coast to coast if President Barack Obama lost to Mitt Romney swept conservative news sites.

David Weigel did a few columns on this, the more recent of which features a Drudge front page pretending "America gripped by second night of fury," and links to similar gibberish from the Daily Mail and Jim fucking Hoft. Weigel's column is called "Who's Disappointed About the Lack of Mass Zimmerman Verdict Riots?" and the answer is pretty clear: Conservative specialists in the old Ooga Booga.

At the Wall Street Journal, James Taranto takes off from Weigel's column -- but goes in a, let us say, counterintuitive direction. His over-reactors are nameless "British newspaper" and "conspiracy website," as well as "the Broward County sheriff and the Sanford police" who "put out a public-service ad in which cops, teenagers and James Jones of basketball's Miami Heat urged viewers: 'Raise Your Voice, Not Your Hands.'" See, the local cops tried to preemptively chill people out  -- that's pretty close to Michelle Malkin crying, "Zimmerman verdict: NOT guilty -- Calls for race riots in 3, 2, 1..." Robert Stacy McCain predicting "If #Zimmerman is acquitted, black people will riot," etc.

Also, Taranto finds one of those real-racists on which conservative commentary thrives: "Today New York's Daily News does its best to inflame the situation, front-paging an editorial that likens Zimmerman's killing of Trayvon Martin to half a dozen decades-old cases," which is, yes you guessed it, "an outrageously racist bit of yellow journalism, imputing guilt to Zimmerman because the color of his skin is similar to that of men who committed horrific crimes decades ago. The News editorial reflects the perverse nostalgia for pervasive racism--and for the moral clarity and righteousness that accompanied it--that is common among liberals today..."

Meanwhile elsewhere in Wingnut World: National Review's alleged cop Jack Dunphy tells us about the Fire This Time in L.A.: "...as I write this Monday night there is a group causing a ruckus on Crenshaw Boulevard, disrupting traffic, vandalizing cars, and briefly storming a Walmart... Except for a few torched trash cans, there were no fires and no widespread looting in L.A. Monday night. But that could change if this keeps up.." Briefly storming a Walmart! Helter skelter! By tomorrow Dunphy will report himself pinned down by price-gun fire, but determined to get word out to civilization about the Trayvon Riots.

And after Jamelle Bouie explains to him that "black-on-black crime" -- the traditional means by which conservatives pretend to care more about black lives than black people, when such a distraction is needed --  just means that black people who commit crimes tend to live near other black people, whom they victimize, Dunphy's colleague Patrick Brennan just keeps repeating his mantras: "it’s disproportionately being committed by blacks... African Americans commit dramatically more crime, especially violent crimes and murders, than whites do... still committing crimes at shockingly disproportionate rates... blacks are much more likely to commit more murders than whites... it becomes apparent that black-on-black crime is a special problem... lots of blacks are committing crimes..."

Brennan and the rest of him know their audience and what keeps 'em coming back.

UPDATE. In comments, synykyl: "Given that young black males are by far the most likely victims of gun violence, shouldn't conservatives be calling for a national campaign to arm them? Conservatives aren't racists, and they believe an armed society is a polite society, so why haven't they jumped on this idea?" Well, you see...

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the George Zimmerman decision and the strange jubilation of the rightbloggers. No, it's not strange they'd be pleased -- someone got away with killing an unarmed black kid, what's not for them to like? What's strange is that they don't seem genuinely relieved and happy -- it's like they're still nervous about something. Maybe Judgment Day?

UPDATE. Wow, I knew Daniel Foster of National Review was awful, but not that he was this big of an asshole till now.

AND DAMNED IF HE DOESN'T.

This week Obama met with members of the 1963 Loyola Ramblers basketball team:

Aside from toppling two-time defending champion Cincinnati to win the title, the Ramblers are noted in the annals of sports for having four African-American starters at a time when colleges in the South refused to take the court against a team with even one minority player.

Nice feel-good civil-rights story -- but not for Andrew Malcolm of IBD! Title:

The celebration of racial progress that Obama will hide today

Whatever could that mean?

President Obama is addicted to photo ops, especially sports ones with happy collegiate and pro champions giving him his own monogrammed team jersey of the sort he never got to wear in actual competition. 

The smiling audience and the president basking in the reflected winning glory of athletic champions is a sure-fire, feel-good TV story, especially in summer. Poker aside, there's hardly a national title that Obama hasn't celebrated for photographers at the White House.

Oh, so Malcolm's upset that Obama's hogging the spotlight? Actually, just the opposite:

The man who once promised the most transparent administration in history has decided to celebrate with the aging national champions in the Oval Office by himself. Just him. In private. "Closed press," as they call it, like his CIA intelligence briefings. No public sharing of this good news story with fellow Americans. 

Add that to the lengthy list of Obama disappointments.

The great thing about a column like this (half of which, BTW, is just random insults) is that, if Obama chose last-minute to hold the event in a stadium instead, Malcolm could have just flipped the two sections: Obama secrecy CIA "most transparent" har, but when reflected winning glory addicted to monogrammed jersey ops! Lengthy list of disappointments! It would work just as well.

Conservative column writing has been a version of Mad Libs for a while now, but they seem to have almost eliminated the need to make it look coherent. Soon they'll just ship the punters a bunch of refrigerator magnets (UNDER THE BUS, MOST TRANSPARENT ADMINISTRATION IN HISTORY, BENGHAZI, etc.) and let them mix and match themselves.

STILL NOT GETTING IT.

Rod Dreher does another one of those "we must take the Kultur!" posts.

Still, it’s a dead end—creatively, philosophically, and politically—for conservatives to mimic left-wing storytellers. 

For one thing, conservatives today lack the artistic skill to tell stories as well as the left does. More philosophically, the business of a conservatism with integrity is not to impose an idealistic ideological narrative on reality but rather to try to see the world as it is and respond to its challenges within the limits of what we know about human nature.

It would seem from this that Dreher still thinks liberals have some kind of mysterious formula, transmitted to them by Satan, for turning their nefarious ideas into a magic weapon called Art that moves the masses.

Conservatism has within it the capacity to answer these challenges, but not if conservatives cling to stories that have lost their salience. We don’t need stories that offer prepackaged ideological answers to questions few people are asking.

Okay, now we're getting somewhere...

We need stories like the one told in the comments section of my blog on the American Conservative website by a Texas reader.

Oh shit. I'll spare you, but it's about how the guy's town was ruined by Big Gummint. But some of the policies that doomed the place were "authored by the New Dealers, others by Reaganites" -- so see, ambiguity! That's artistic, right? Throw in some jokes and we have a hit.

Another guy "hopes to start a literary movement dedicated to telling the stories of working-class people of the Rust Belt":

“Someone who is teaching can be the Allen Tate or John Crowe Ransom of this movement. Someone who’s working a factory floor can be the Wendell Berry. I’m not comparing myself to these guys, but someone needs to write about these things in a sustained way.”

Maybe he can place an ad in the New York Review of Books to hire someone to actually write the stuff.

This reminds me of Liberty Island, the Ben Shapiro conservative arts site that has a manifesto but no content anyone would want to read. These people want culture as a means; the end is to effect the horrible political ideas they spend 99 percent of their time talking about. And as to stories, what Dreher won't admit is that they've had those all along: The Welfare Queen, The Dirty Hippie, The Child-Corrupting Homo, The Tax-and-Spend Liberal, et alia. But these stories were not created to reveal the human condition -- they were created to gull rubes into hate-voting for their candidates.

If conservatives don't have the kind of stories that move people the way a great song or play does, it's not because liberals took over the arts; it's because they don't really want them.

FETAL PAINS.

Kathryn J. Lopez:

In the new version, with about 40,000 views, we are told that the Texas Infant Pain Capable Protection Act will take us all “one step closer to theocracy,” marking a “war on women” and a ”a battle for vaginas.” “Owning your uteruses gives them a thrill.” The bill is a “a pain in the uterus.” Never mind the pain of the child. Never mind the pain of pretending there aren’t lives abortion hurts, beyond the dead child. Because apparently we’re comfortable not hearing the cries that should rock our consciences.

She talking about a Schoolhouse Rock parody, the very existence of which she considers "confirmation that absolutely nothing is, in fact, sacred." Someone should make a pro-choice Little Lulu cartoon and really blow her mind.

Meanwhile Megan McArdle does what I have come to recognize as the the typical libertarian abortion thing of acting as straight man to foam-mouthed pro-life conservatives:

Make no mistake: I’m pro-choice... But that doesn’t mean I view abortion as having the same moral weight as a haircut or a nose-piercing -- just another personal choice about what you do with your body.

I'm all for women's lib, but these bra-burning kooks, etc. Enter stage right National Review's Witchfinder General David French, who reads this absolutely the way it was intended:

I think McArdle is largely right. Americans tend to be reluctant to “force” women into diffcult circumstances...

Love those quote marks.

...but are broadly unsympathetic to abortions for convenience — thus the backlash you often see even from pro-choice advocates when people admit, for example, to killing their child to preserve a short-lived pro volleyball career.

Bet you didn't know that most abortions are enjoyed by the Undeserving Pregnant -- sluts who deserve what happened to them and just want their unborns sucked out so they they can get back to hot yoga.

McArdle states that it is “impossible to completely separate the good [abortions] from the bad,” and — legally — she is largely right. Government can’t possibly construct a screening mechanism that separates ”good” (i.e., publicly supported because of the mother’s acknowledged difficulties) abortions from the “bad,” nor would the pro-life movement ever support such a regime. The pro-life answer is to match our honesty about abortion with charity towards mothers in crisis, to ameliorate as best we can the pressures and difficulties that lead to the “bad” abortions.

By "charity towards mothers in crisis" he means steering them into fake "pregnancy centers" of the sort French and his buddies are trying to turn every women's health clinic into, and by "ameliorate as best we can the pressures and difficulties that lead to the 'bad' abortions," he means make all abortions illegal.

Oh, and he complains liberals are defaming him and his Operation Rescue buddies as "absurd caricatures of intolerant fundamentalists." He doesn't think he's got this image problem because of the crazy shit he says; he thinks it's because "America’s pro-abortion radicals are disproportionately clustered in the mainstream media and popular culture." Buddy, people were onto you in the days of the Pharisees.

FREE MINDS, FREE MARKETS, BUT AS TO YOUR WOMB...

One of the things I've noticed about the famously libertarian Ole Perfesser Glenn Reynolds is that, while he claims to be pro-choice,  he seems annoyed that anyone would defend abortion rights and delighted whenever someone tries to restrict them. Among recent examples: "AS I KEEP SAYING, THE GOP NEEDS TO CAMPAIGN TO MAKE AMERICAN ABORTION LAWS 'MORE EUROPEAN'"; a strategy to embarrass male anti-abortion legislators characterized as "#WARONMEN: Female lawmaker seeks to regulate men’s reproductive health"; coy suggestions that Congress tax abortions; durr-hurrs about uncivil pro-abortion signs; and approving citations of attacks on Wendy Davis, including "UPDATE: Reader Robert Crawford writes: “Wendy Davis is the new Cindy Sheehan." The guy's some advocate.

Partly, I suppose, this comes out of his whole men's-rights schtick about how women are oppressing men, which he recently took to such lengths ("When people talk about 'reproductive freedom,' they generally mean women’s reproductive freedom") that he ticked off his usual fellow traveller Ann Althouse, leading to a spat and resulting in a rare long Perfesser post full of paranoid gas ("we give women a pass on sexual behavior that would be considered predatory if it were done by males"), whining ("noting the unfairnesses involved, is not 'victimology' — though given how successful women have been in obtaining power via victimology, no one should be surprised if men start to give it a try"),  and just plain bullshit ("When Rush Limbaugh suggested that Sandra Fluke should at least pay for her own birth control..."). Someone who actually thinks this way is bound to consider abortion some kind of illegitimate special right because men can't have one.

Mainly, though, it's a reminder that for libertarians abortion is an agree-to-disagree thing you shouldn't concern yourself over too much, despite the unprecedented current attacks on it, while you should fight to the death for the non-negotiable right of companies to hire workers for five cents an hour if they can get away with it, and to fill the air and water with pollutants pretty much at will. In other words, it's a maximum-liberty movement for adherents who are overwhelmingly male and don't believe they'll ever be in any financial difficulty, and who think empathy is a river on Gor.

UPDATE. Speaking of bullshit libertarians, here's David French, whom we saw last year raving against gay marriage and, I swear to God, Griswold v. Connecticut ("Think for a moment of the awesome power of the sexual revolution over law and logic. Is there a single legal doctrine that can stand against the quest for personal sexual fulfillment?"). Now he's arguing for a "libertarian military." Whereas maximum sexual freedom is an outrage, military-style libertarianism is dead butch -- liberty means more killing and less building, and isn't that was Hayek and Rand were all about?

In my (admittedly anecdotal) experience, thoughtful military libertarians tend to advocate something we haven’t really tried in our more than decade-long fight against Islamic jihad — the relatively brief application of truly overwhelming destructive force against identified enemies. 

That’s why I wonder if a libertarian military might be more lethal, even on smaller budgets. A trimmed-down bureaucracy, an increased emphasis on the destructive rather than nation-building capabilities of the force under arms, and doctrines designed to inflict maximum (non-nuclear) destruction on enemy forces rather than transforming and democratizing communities — all of this could add up to a more lethal (yet smaller) military.

Normally you have to tell one of these guys about someone buying a Big Mac with food stamps to get his bloodlust roaring like this. I know there are a lot of guys out there who are like, "oh yeah, libertarians, Drew Carey right, free the weed," and God bless them, but when it comes to the professional-grade stuff libertarianism still just a niche brand of conservatism.

French also makes an avatar for the free-markets-free-fire military of Rand Paul, whose idea of a proper army probably involves grey uniforms.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the miserable time rightbloggers had on the Fourth of July. With Obama destroying freedom and all, their hot dogs tasted of wormwood. Well, there's always the next Chick-fil-A event.

Among the outtakes was an "In-De-Pants Day" special offered by some guy on his cartoon book OBAMA SUTRA - An Illustrated Guide to 57 States of Ecstasy! which he says is "perfect for leaving out on your coffee table, or slipping into the bookcase of your least favorite liberal." You've missed the special, alas, but the book's cheap and the author has samples at his website. This is our favorite:

It's a little young for the Alan Scherstuhl treatment but I hope he'll put it in his to-do file.

CARTOON CRITICS.

At Inside Higher Ed, Kevin Kiley says this about a new film:

...a film about diversity, the innate differences between individuals, and the institutions and situations that help foster connections and understanding between those individuals. 

The movie is about the challenge of limited talent and the realization that hard work can only take one so far – and sometimes not even as far as people who are just “born with it.” But it's also about what students in the social and intellectual crucible of college can learn from each other and how those interactions shape worldviews and change lives.

 At National Review, Nancy French complains that Kiley "portrayed the movie as leftwing propaganda," but it can't be, she says, because she liked it, and liked that the main characters advanced without a college education because they were thus "avoiding the rampant liberal indoctrination prevalent in colleges today."

But Jennifer Kabbany at The College Fix says the movie is indeed leftwing propaganda:

We have a problem with the fact that the priorities of the modern college experience have morphed from teaching relevant facts and skills to instead constantly force-feeding notions of diversity and tolerance in the quad, in the classroom, in homework assignments, like something akin to a religious cult. 

Decades ago, college used to prioritize getting a good education and marketable skills. Now it’s about indoctrinating students, telling them they’re ignorant, racist homophobes – all the while refusing to allow intellectual diversity to thrive on campus.

If you haven't figured it out yet, these geniuses are talking about Monsters University, a fucking cartoon.

I'm not even gonna get into the shitstorm over The Lone Ranger, except to say 1.) it has inspired a particularly wonderful Debbie Schlussel column, containing this line: "Lone Ranger Armie Hammer is the great-grandson of legendary anti-American oilman Armand Hammer, who went out of his way to enable Communists and Marxists around the world in his oil trade with our enemies, especially the Soviet Union.. I’m sure he’s smiling from his grave now that his great-grandson carries on his disgusting legacy..."; and 2.) Sonny Bunch of the Free Beacon is so-near-yet-so-far when he says the movie is "Designed in a Lab to Troll Conservatives"; I'll go out on a limb and say The Lone Ranger was designed in a lab to make money, though it certainly can't hurt that imbeciles across the internet are Spelling the Name Right in the name of Freedom and White People.

Oh, one more, from Breitbart:

ALLEN WEST RIPS LADY GAGA OVER NATIONAL ANTHEM CHANGE

She sang "home of the gays." Personally I prefer the version that begins, "While we stand here waiting for the ballgame to start," but whatever. Wait'll West finds out what these homosexuals have been doing with America's beloved show tunes!

UPDATE. Sonny Bunch contends fairly that people who are not conservatives, including good old Glenn Kenny, find The Lone Ranger ridiculous. To the extent Kenny "noticed The Lone Ranger's political sensibilities," though, he portrayed it as part the general incoherence, not as a significant political gesture. I can't judge the film because I haven't seen it, so I admit the possibility that it's really Le Gai Savoir with horses and explosions. But a lifetime of experience teaches me that summer blockbusters are not usually built as means to refute the audience's false consciousness.

OPERATION RESCUE THEIR IMAGE.

There's a lot of boo-hoo today about how the folks protesting the new anti-abortion laws in Texas and North Carolina use bad language and mean jokes. National Review's Kathryn J. Lopez demonstrates how seriously you should take this with her unusual description of the mashed-fetus photos customarily waved at abortion clinic patients:

I’ve had some interesting run-ins over the years with graphic anti-abortion displays, which I don’t think are always the best opening to conversations, in part because so many women have had abortions that you really have to lead with a great reserve of love. But even the graphic-image displays do not tend to be motivated by anger or hatred but love for lives lost and an appropriate zeal to end this atrocity.

I wonder how their targets appreciated these waves of love and appropriate zeal.

I'm not sure whether these people genuinely think their viciousness isn't really vicious because Jesus, or whether they've made a calculation that, with their opponents gaining traction, they have to quickly rehab their image with the public so they can claim the victim card for themselves. Any minute now Betsy Woodruff will interview Randall Terry on the protesters' outrageous behavior.

SHORTER JONAH GOLDBERG:

Though I pride myself on my fratboy sense of humor I have never heard a joke about fetuses before and I think everyone will agree with me they're disgusting farrrrt.

BONUS: Those other networks only show the Zimmerman trial because they hate white people but Fox News is doing it for capitalism alright besides I am a con-no-sewer and I only watch Fox News for the bracing intellectual  FÄÄÄRRRR R R R RRT.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the many opportunities the brethren were given last week to talk about gays (Prop 8, DOMA decisions), blacks (the VRA decision, the Zimmerman trial), and women (Wendy Davis' filibuster) and what they made of them (a massive cock-up). Those new Benghazi hearings can't come a moment too soon!