SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO LET THE SUCKERS WIN.

Shorter Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal: After Walgreens, Best Buy, et alia learned some of their customers disapproved of their association with ALEC, they ended that association. What is this, Red China?

Attend the liberal hate crimes Henninger documents:

In December, articles appeared on progressive websites attacking Google, Facebook and Yelp for participating in ALEC's annual conference last year. The Web giants wanted to explore various Internet legal issues with the state legislators. 

And by "explore" he means "let them know how it's gonna go down." But they hadn't counted on someone else sticking their oar in:

A coalition that included the Sierra Club, RootsAction and the Center for Media and Democracy said it outputted 230,000 petition signatures in a "Don't Fund Evil" drive to separate Google from "right-wing extremists" at ALEC, whose sin is "climate denial."

This whole idea of so-called "right-wing extremists" pushing so-called "climate denial" is made up out of a whole cloth of facts.

The Sierra Club's site says Kraft, GE and McDonald's pulled away from ALEC in the past under pressure. To date, none of the Web companies have done so.

 Just like Mao Tse-Tung, these liberals.

...Here's the audio transcript of a radio ad created by ColorOfChange about CVS pharmacies, which supported ALEC: "CVS, when you hear that name, do you think of the law that protected Trayvon Martin's killer? Or laws that suppress the black vote." The ad never ran. But copies of the ad were mailed to CVS, John Deere, HP, Walgreens, Best Buy, BP and a dozen others. All disassociated from ALEC.

This is the Democratic left's modus operandi...

Yeah -- it's called democracy, speaking truth to power! But only of a kind: Since our Elected Representatives are useless, these liberal groups have decided to cut out the middleman and appeal directly to the corporations who own them. It's like serfs bringing their grievances directly to their overlords. Shout-out to the libertarians, this one's for you!

Henninger doesn't approve, though; he calls it "threatening companies that participate in politics with reputational destruction" -- that is, thinking badly of them, and saying so -- which is "the American left's version of Maoist shaming sessions." Why isn't he looking at the big picture, and applauding the fortuitous shift from representative democracy to feudalism? Maybe he's just making it look good; the house can't win every time.

MISS PARKER'S MAGICAL CONCOCTION.

Kathleen Parker, holder of the Roberto Begnini Pulitzer Prize for Commentary, hates feminism enough to engage in weird, lurid public fantasies about its invalidation ("The feminist woman of the left, who burned her bra and insisted that all hear her roar, is today a taupe-ish figure who wonders where things went wrong"), so it was inevitable that she would join the other dumbbells on the marriage-makes-you-rich bandwagon.

Here's my favorite part of her column, from near the end:

Obviously, marriage won’t cure all ills. A single mother could marry tomorrow and she still wouldn’t have a job. But in the War on Poverty, rebuilding a culture that encourages marriage should be part of the arsenal.

Hold on -- marriage won't get you a job? Then how, specifically, does it fight poverty? Does it make you better at picking lotto numbers?

Here is the closest thing to an explanation Parker offers:

...because marriage creates a tiny economy fueled by a magical concoction of love, selflessness and permanent commitment that holds spirits aloft during tough times.

In other words: Misery loves company. Why can't poor people just get a dog instead of a spouse? It would fulfill the "love, selflessness and permanent commitment" part, and cost less to feed.

Oh, right -- anything that might give paupers pleasure would be blocked by Republicans.

I guess all conservatives will get with this program soon enough, even though, in correlation-is-causation terms, marriage is as likely to make you white as it is to make you rich. Poor people who don't want to get married, here's your only hope: When the Republicans come for you, tell them you're gay.

UPDATE. Nancy Derringer, known around these parts as Nancy Nall, was on this last fall:

"That argument is that marriage causes the best outcomes for your children,” [University of Michigan professor Pamela Smock] said. “That if you get people who are poor to marry, it would solve a lot of problems. But things don’t work like that. People who have better economic prospects are more likely to get married. You couldn’t take two poor, unemployable people and marry them and lift them out of poverty."

I thought people knew this, but I guess common sense has gone further out of fashion than I thought.

In comments, JennOfArk: "Apparently Lifetime re-ran Pretty Woman for the umpteenth time this past weekend, and Parker watched it (again) for the umpteenth time...only THIS time, she realized that the movie's plot holds the key to helping every impoverished woman in America improve her lot."

SENEX IRATUS OTD.

Flatus Maximus Victor Davis Hanson saith the sooth on equality, which (you will be unsurprised to hear) he is against.

Millions of Americans have lost the liberty to select their own type of health insurance, purchased on their own volition to best match their own assessments of their particular needs. Obamacare — the federal government’s redistributive effort to equalize health care for all — sought to destroy the liberty of many millions in order to ensure a state-directed sameness in care for all.

Similarly, years before most of you were born, Americans were unilaterally stripped of their freedom to dispose of sewage in their own way. No more just throwing your shit into the river, or on your lawn; fascist protObamas enforced a wearying state-directed sameness of sewer pipes, and thus our liberty was flushed forever!

Also mentioned in the lengthy ululation: "mandated equality," "Sidwell Friends," Obama's "Malibu supporters," "the French Revolution’s grandees, the Soviet nomenklatura, and the EU elite." Plus Hanson compares California to "the Soviet Union and the captive nations of Eastern Europe."

I'm beginning to think the old gasbag is hipper than he looks, and composes these things from cut-up pieces a la Burroughs.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the Chris Christie GWB thing and its interesting side-effect: A Strange New Respect from rightbloggers who find that, RINO or no, he's still no Obama and that's good enough for them.

ANOTHER LIBERTARIAN MARKET FAILURE

Peter Suderman, talking about the GOP's Obamacare strategy, seems disappointed that Republicans have been reluctant to propose sweeping changes to the nation's health care scheme besides Repeal Because Freedom. His Republican sources also complain of it, with (considering the Party's historic obstructionist approach to all things Obama)  breathtakingly transparent insincerity: One of them -- "'We don't have a Republican majority that remembers how to govern and understands how to juggle trade­offs,' one health policy aide complains" -- actually made me laugh out loud.

As you would expect, Suderman gives a favorable hearing to the ideas of libertarian-conservative wonks:

In a 2009 paper, "Yes, Mr. President: A Free Market Can Fix Health Care"...

What'd I tell you?

...[Cato Institute Health Policy Director Michael] Cannon laid out a plan for converting Medicare into a voucher system (he now favors Social Security-style direct payments to enrollees), ending state-based monopolies on both insurance and clinician licensing, capping federal spending on Medicaid through block grants, and eliminating the tax preference for employer-sponsored health care. 

Eliminating that tax preference, which since World War II has allowed employers to purchase health coverage for employees on a tax advantaged basis, would actually result in a substantial tax cut, Cannon argues counter-intuitively.

I'll say it's counterintuitive. So is the rest of it, for those of us who've been trained by decades of experience to hear "ending state-based monopolies," "capping federal spending," etc. as the patter of privatization bunco artists.

If employers cashed out the amount they now pay for health insurance, workers with family coverage would see an average compensation increase of $11,000.

Question for my readers residing in workaday reality: If your boss got a $11,000 windfall, would you expect him to forward it to you?  (These are the same people who'll tell you that if your landlord is absolved of rent control and can charge any rent he likes, he'll lower yours.)

The trick would be to replace that tax preference with the creation of very large health savings accounts-tax-free savings that could be applied toward health purchases. Versions of these accounts exist today, but they are capped at $3,300 for individual coverage and $6,550 for families; Cannon's proposal would dramatically increase the cap, perhaps tripling it, and in the process free thousands in individual income both from taxation and from employer control. The result would be to simultaneously give individuals control of thousands of dollars in compensation now tied up in employer health benefits, while eliminating the government-granted financial advantage of employer-provided coverage. Individuals, and not their employment status, would then dictate health insurance coverage.

And if that worker bee, freed from the necessity of paying into a liberty-restricting group insurance program, finds his car needs a new transmission and his home needs a new boiler, and he doesn't put as much into that savings account as he'd planned, and suddenly gets cancer, it's sad trombone time (though libertarians won't feel sad themselves, because Moochers Have It Coming).

Suderman also talks about last year's government shutdown; he knows it was unpopular and counterproductive, but he doesn't appear to know why. It's simple: The nation may dislike Obamacare, but that doesn't mean they prefer Pay or Die.

THURSDAY MISCELLANY.

How're conservatives reacting to Chris Christie Is An Asshole-gate? James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal:

Worse, the Christie administration's evident abuse of the Port Authority is reminiscent of the Obama administration's abuse of the Internal Revenue Service...

I already checked, guys -- no mention of Benghazi. For that you have to go a few rungs down the ladder to Greta Van Susteren, or to the sub-basement that is Michelle Malkin's alternate-universe Twitter.

Or maybe Breitbart.com -- hang on, this article by Joel B. Pollack is from November. Yet it may be relevant!:

Chris Christie Really Needs Benghazi
Benghazi is Hillary Clinton's most important weakness, no matter whom she faces in the 2016 presidential election. Among Republican contenders, only Chris Christie can claim it as a strength. That's because of his performance during Superstorm Sandy. Whatever his mistakes--i.e. heaping praise on Obama and backing a pork-laden relief bill--his performance was a sharp contrast to Clinton's dereliction of duty during Benghazi.

Has this bullet become any less magic? Then Christie should save himself by demanding a Benghazi investigation at once. It's not like he doesn't have the nerve.*

If you have 11 minutes to spare, this is what Christie's bit about being "misled by a member of my staff" reminds me of:



I guess National Review sent Kevin D. Williamson to Appalachia just so he'd have white welfare cases to harsh on, and thus escape charges of racism. Charges of stupidity will be harder to evade. Williamson admits there are few opportunities for the unfortunate residents of Owsley County, and can't even make the usual specious case that marriage would make the hillbillies rich. So his anti-government-assistance case boils down to 1.) some people have defrauded the system, something you never see investment bankers and other such higher-order beings doing, therefore the system has failed; and 2.) whatever this is supposed to mean:

In effect, welfare has made Appalachia into a big and sparsely populated housing project — too backward to thrive, but just comfortable enough to keep the underclass in place. There is no cure for poverty, because there is no cause of poverty — poverty is the natural condition of the human animal. 

Which Kevin D. Williamson evaded by luck, pluck, and virtue. The rest of you can go fuck yourselves. Liberty!

...The lesson of the Big White Ghetto is the same as the lessons we learned about the urban housing projects in the late 20th century: The best public-policy treatment we have for poverty is dilution. But like the old project towers, the Appalachian draw culture produces concentration, a socio­economic Salton Sea that becomes more toxic every year.

Maybe he means we should evacuate and demolish these poor hill towns, as if they were urban projects, and "dilute" their populations. Maybe send them to Mexico? They better hurry, the authorities may start to get strict about who they let in.

*UPDATE. I should add that I don't think this will negatively affect Christie's Presidential push. That he's an asshole is a large part of his appeal, and there's a whole country full of suckers who, like the folks who hire a hitman, are inclined to believe he'll restrict his viciousness to people they don't like.

UPDATE 2. Ah, here's the libertarian-branded response to Christie from Ed Krayewski at Reason:

The petty, retaliatory nature of the lane closure reminded me of something the Obama White House might do, something like closing down open-air spaces or websites because of a partial government shutdown or even getting Tea Party groups audited.

Refresh my memory: I seem to recall that libertarians were once perceived to be something different from conservatives. Anyone remember how that got started?

UPDATE 3. I'm even more convinced now that Christie will skate, notwithstanding his refusal to accept my Benghazi advice.

Meanwhile we have this from the Daily Caller:

As liberals support Christie during scandal, conservatives abandon him

The evidence: Guys like Erick Erickson who consider Christie a RINO continue to bay for his blood, "Democratic mayors in New Jersey who endorsed Christie’s re-election are also defending Christie," and David Axelrod thinks Christie will skate -- like me, so I guess I'm also part of Christie's liberal love-wave. I assure you it's inadvertent!

UPDATE 4. Meanwhile from the other side of the bullshit rainbow, The Washington Free Beacon:

U.S. Attorney Probing Christie Has Donated Thousands to Democrats

I tell ya, guys, we gotta get our story (as told by rightwing operatives) straight.

FORCED TO DRAW BENEFITS: A CONSERVATIVE'S HEARTBREAKING CONFESSION!

Remember the lady who was mortified Obama gave her free Medicaid, because stigma? We can now top that.

At National Review Jillian Kay Melchior describes how her own experience of unemployment benefits proved to her that "extending [unemployment benefits] contributes to the underlying economic problem." Now I have to say, I was hoping at the start that she'd try to excite her audience by telling us how she used your taxpayers dollars to buy Cadillacs and T-bone steaks. But alas, Melchior had a miserable time on UI. And it's easy to see why -- she doesn't seem cut out for the vagaries of everyday life:

I lost my job in January 2011. It was my first permanent job out of college, and losing it was mentally and financially traumatic. I spent the cab ride home, box in hands, fighting tears, and then worrying that I should have taken the subway instead because taxis are expensive and my income source had just vanished.

I think my first "permanent" job in New York was as a messenger, and while losing it was financially disadvantageous, I wasn't "traumatized" so much as momentarily hassled, then stoked that I didn't have to get up early the next day. And I wasn't even getting unemployment! That would have made it an awesome day. (I haven't collected UI since the early 90s. That's how deep my devotion to the free market goes!)

Anyway, Uncle Sam offered Melchior the dole and she accepted it as Fantine in Les Miz accepted a life of prostitution: "The Internet consensus is that unemployment isn’t welfare," she chokes, "but it felt like it to me." So different from this hell I'm living/So different now from what it seemed!

Melchior found out that the lousy benefits weren't enough to live on -- and yet insists they were "a disincentive to work." How? Because when she got freelance assignments, UI would cut back on her benefits! In other words, if someone else paid her money, the government gave her less money, instead of letting her accept fixed benefits and keep whatever she earned on top of it. Here I sympathize with Melchior and look forward to her next essay, which I expect will endorse Martin Luther King's national minimum income plan. It's only fair!

Plus, humiliating as that was, Melchior was also forced to observe the law when she claimed benefits, which she counts a further humiliation -- "figuring all this out felt shamefully like working the system," much like when employers force her to take sexual harassment seminars and it makes her feel like a rapist.

As you might imagine, it all worked out for Melchior: "In the end, I took the risk and did as much freelance writing as I could manage. It paid off — in fact, it led to a job" -- Yay wingnut welfare! But the experience scarred her, and she wants to spare other broke people the same ordeal: "A safety net can fast become a trap," she tells the folks to whom she would deny money for food and shelter, "and I wonder how many unemployed people who could be somehow engaged in the economy are waiting things out, taking their benefits and avoiding the risk of effort while they wait for something to open up."

Let her wonder; such are the mysteries of the human heart. What I wonder is why Melchior didn't show the courage of her convictions, refuse to take the benefits, and proudly starve in the street.

THE MARRIAGE-MAKES-YOU-RICH ARGUMENT AGAINST THE MINIMUM WAGE.

In yet another anti-minimum-wage* article at National Review, Andrew Biggs:

I don’t believe I’m overstating things much in saying that when the progressive man-on-the-street sees something bad happen to one person – say, low wages – he believes it’s very likely someone else’s fault.

Biggs gets points for admitting liberals can be men-on-the-street, and  not exclusively pointed-headed college professors, union thugs, and homosexual activists, as they are normally portrayed at National Review. But as to that "someone else's fault"... wait for it:

Progressives’ job, in this mindset, is to find that person-at-fault and make him pay. In this case, progressives blame the employers of low-wage workers, who they assume could easily afford to pay more but choose not to. 

Now, progressives could make their emotional impulses consistent with economic reality by placing the blame on, say, liberal social policies that encourage single-parent families...

Turns out it is someone else's fault, but the culprit isn't McDonalds or Wal-Mart -- it's Hugh Hefner! Also "teachers' unions."

The marriage-makes-you-rich argument explained here, here, here, and especially here.

*UPDATE. It should be noted that Biggs doesn't mention abolishing the minimum wage, but that's what the Greg Mankiw article on which he based his own is about ("a good case can be made for eliminating Plan B entirely by repealing the minimum wage"). For the moment they're playing it cagey, lest the "progressive" "man on the street" catch on. There must be more of us than I thought.

ANNALS OF THE CULTURE WARS, PART 432,239.

I hadn't looked at Ben Shapiro's Truth Revolt (which Breitbart.com told us in October would "WILL MAKE MSM 'PAY' FOR LIES, CHANGE 'NATURE OF MEDIA'") before now. Right out of the gate:

Also, there's an item devoted to telling us what Shapiro said on Fox News. Sample:

...[Megyn] Kelly moved on to a another quote from the piece that posits a society where people were paid for doing only what they were passionate about, like painting murals. When Kelly asked who would pay the millennials for painting their murals, Shapiro turned the conversation to the inherently destructive philosophy of Keynes.

Shapiro: This is the whole thing, passing the buck to the next generation that doesn’t exist yet. And John Maynard Keynes was fond of saying that in the long run we’re all dead. This is that philosophy taken to the extreme: In the short run we’re all dead, so we might as well all paint murals. Who’s going to clean the toilets? Who’s going to do the actual work that needs to be done in this country? Maybe this is why some of these folks want open borders.

The Mexicans clean toilets, millenials paint murals, and Shapiro yammers on Fox News. Maybe Shapiro will explain how he would redistribute these responsibilities in Part 2. I'm guessing Shapiro won't wind up wielding a brush of any kind.

Rule of three demands:

Vogue Mag Lowers Standards
‘Girls’ star Lena Dunham to feature on cover despite untraditional body type

No clue whether, before he wrote this, the author saw the recent Acculturated essay called "Why Conservatives Should Cheer On HBO’s Girls" (short vs.: The characters are dissatisfied with their lives and since they're liberals the reason must be liberalism). Despite her untraditional body type, I would bet that since the 2012 election Dunham has gotten enough hate-wanks out of conservative men to float a National Review cruise out of drydock.

UPDATE. In comments, Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard:

Leaving aside the fact that one's body type is a matter of biology, not tradition, a perusal of the large "History of Art" textbook on the shelf reveals more depictions of women who are built like Lena Dunham than like Kate Moss. A quick stroll through the neighborhood finds me encountering more women who are built like Lena Dunham than like Stephanie Seymour. If I didn't know any better, I'd swear that Mr Shapiro has never seen a female body up close.

IDENTITY POLITICS.

John J. Miller, the genius who gave us The 50 Greatest Conservative Rock Songs, today informs us,

Google honors a conservative today: Zora Neale Hurston.

Well, Hurston was against Brown v. Board of Education, so I guess they have something in common at that.

It's nice to see them celebrating a black person who isn't insane. But it's sad that politics is all that can animate them to do so. In one of the supporting documents for Miller's case, John McWhorter writes:

Hurston’s modern fan base doesn’t know quite what to do with all this. “I think we are better off if we think of Zora Neale Hurston as an artist, period—rather than as the artist/politician most black writers have been required to be,” [Alice] Walker writes... Sure -- but if Hurston had been more inclined to sing about what happens to a raisin in the sun, one suspects that Walker would have had no trouble celebrating her as an “artist/politician.”

Really? I guess McWhorter so judges because he figures everyone else must be like him, counting artists like captured checkers for their cause. But we haven't all been made into Zhdanovites yet.

UPDATE. Commenter D. Johnston dipped into the support docs and found "in a nutshell, McWhorter's case is based around the fact that Hurston didn't believe that black people should take credit for things other, unrelated black people did. See? She rejected identity politics!" Supporting a policy is a political decision, emotions and behavior are not. I don't think being self-sufficient is any guarantee of how you'll vote. I've spent my whole life working in the private sector, yet I'm far more liberal than anyone on wingnut welfare.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...Part 2 of my 10 Dumbest Rightblogger Ideas listicle. I know, but it had to be done and I was out of cat pictures.

UPDATE. I was running long, and so much could have been added, particularly from National Review, which seems to have gone in big-time for insane gender-based gibberish lately. There's the outraged report that "[Rachel] Maddow is part of the new matriarchy running NBC News behind the scenes," for example;  Victor Davis Maximus Super Hanson's extremely weird paen to reality-show stars ("A big gut can add gravitas to the moonshiner’s biceps in a way impossible to achieve at the gym"); and David French telling his no doubt receptive readers that liberal males are all pussies "walking on eggshells, dating women and living in cultures that are constantly calling out any kind of behavior subjectively perceived as 'male' or oppressive... liberal men often lack a distinctively masculine purpose." If National Review gets any more butch it'll turn into the Ramrod.

UPDATE 2. In comments, JennOfArk: "Nah. I've seen those guys. If anything, National Review is the Mine Shaft, not the Ramrod."

AND THE WOLF THAT SHALL KEEP IT MAY PROSPER.

(Spoilers throughout.)

By now you've heard about and perhaps experienced the "hyperkinetic" The Wolf of Wall Street. There's plenty of energy there, sure, and plenty of the traditional Scorsese sweeps, swoops, and spins, giving the film a delirious momentum that social critics believe will turn impressionable children or morons into white-collar criminals.

They have a point. The movie doesn't have a crime-doesn't-pay message at all. The crime does pay. What it has to say is much more chilling than that.

The movie at first seems to follow a familiar Scorsese pattern: There's a central character who's tightly bonded to family figures (blood kin or not), and he's doing something extraordinary (usually at least somewhat illegal) that can't go on forever. The formula isn't strict -- in The Departed, for example, the hero is an undercover quasi-cop acting as a mobster, and his "family" ties are mainly professional -- but there's always a sense that the hero is obligated by something bigger than business interests, and that those ties have something to do with his fate.

In The Wolf of Wall Street, the members of Jordan Belfort's crew aren't relatives, but they're family. When Belfort has to pick himself up off Wall Street after the crash of 1987, and decides to build an empire from penny stocks in Long Island, he chooses these guys because they have what, in his vision, it takes to build it: They're basically street hustlers who know that the answer to "sell me this pen" is to make the mark need the pen. He doesn't mention it (though Scorsese underlines it), but they're also stupid, and that's important too.

The money starts to roll in and the family gels. The guys become fiercely loyal to Belfort and to one another -- except when they get too pissed off or fucked up; boys will be boys and, like I said, they're stupid, though increasingly rich. They enact affectionate rituals to strengthen and affirm their bonds, including nicknames, hugs, ass-pats, and declarations of bro, brah, and brother, as well as photogenic orgies.

This kind of behavior is familiar from the goombahs of previous Scorsese movies, but there's a difference in the way the bond is formed here. It isn't brought over from Sicily. It's not a bond of work or shared duty, either, exactly. It's all based on a sales pitch. Belfort builds the bond out of nothing -- a magic nothing, a line of bullshit.

Now, all the guys know about the bullshit; it's part of what makes them giddy about their success. There's an amazing early scene in which the crew, still in their garage days, watch Belfort reel in a sucker via speakerphone while pantomiming a sex act that spells out every stage of what he's doing to the mark. The guys are ecstatic, they can't stay still or shut up, they're like little kids who just learned to swear. They might be excited about making money, but they're bananas for making it like this.

And they'll go to the wall to keep it up. Which is important, because if any of them felt he could do better and went to another firm to try this shit, that'd break the spell real fast. Stratton Oakmont is as insular as the Cosa Nostra -- though occasionally they mob up with folks from the straight world, who will enter their world and even endure some shit to make some money.

As a reward for their loyalty, Belfort offers his family a very, very nice living: money, drugs, glamour, laughs. But --

You know, I was just about to say it's about more than money. But that isn't true. These guys just think it is.

DiCaprio is great in the title role, but great in a specific and deliberately limited way. His opening pitch is pure candy, a promise of excitement to come. He says "I love drugs" as if he's talking about rock-climbing -- he's proud of it and invites you to share this awesome high. In fact all his pitches are as good. They might not be as fresh after a while, but you still feel his excitement.

But you never learn anything about him. You don't learn about his character. What eventually becomes inescapable is that there is no character. And if there were, Belfort wouldn't show it to you because he's pitching all the way. Every second.

I wouldn't have thought this even halfway through the movie, and it didn't completely hit me until after it was over. Because the logic of the narrative, enforced by hundreds of movies that look something like this one, put my focus on the forming of the bonds, which made me think of Belfort as a human being, a leader -- leaders are restrained, opaque, but they have to be, right? Leaders may be distant and square-jawed and steely-eyed, but that doesn't mean they're not human, right? Belfort's guys are like his platoon, his posse, his team. They come up together, I thought, and they by God go down together.

Except they don't. "I ratted them all out," Belfort tells us near the end. In Scorsese terms it's an amazingly tossed-off betrayal. It's not like Henry Hill, down to "$3200 for a lifetime... not even enough to pay for the coffin" and throwing in the towel in Goodfellas. This is an afterthought.

Belfort was ready to rat them from day one. *

Belfort doesn't have a character, but he does have appetites. He likes all kinds of drugs, all kinds of good times, all kinds of sex; explaining his interest in the Duchess of Bay Ridge who becomes his second wife, which is intense enough that he throws his first marriage over for it, he says they share "interests," and this is illustrated by Belfort snorting coke off her tits in a limo. In another scene he acts as if he's literally abject before the Duchess' pussy. Maybe at that moment he is. But he's always got someone else. He's never without options.

One could spin one's wheels wondering why he's like this, what's missing in the guy's life that he's so limited. But who's going to care about that when there's all this sex and wealth and fun going on? Belfort's marks inside and outside Stratton Oakmont sure didn't. And neither did I while I was watching.

That's what the movie's about.

These scenes of excess dazzle, whether you find the behavior cheering or nauseating. But so do some slower scenes, in a queasier way. For example, there's the sitdown Belfort arranges with two FBI agents on his yacht -- shot simple as pie -- that shows how absolutely, self-assuredly devoted to the con he is; it's excruciating, not because you expect him to lose, but because you can't imagine the balls it would take to do this.

And there's one that does get energetic after a while, but the run-up is very patient. Belfort's gotten the word; cut a deal with the SEC, abandon the company, and everything will go easy for him. Halfway through an uncharacteristically mournful speech to a depressed staff, he suddenly tells them he'd be a hypocrite if he left, and that he's decided not to do it; he's going to stay with the company.

Now, throughout the whole trouble part of Belfort's story, you may wonder: Does he miscalculate? Maybe baiting the FBI was a bad idea. Maybe his feelings are running away with him. Maybe he isn't as much in control as he thinks. This decision to stay with Stratton -- isn't that pride taking the hero down, like in all the old stories?

That misses the point. For Belfort there may be reversals, but there's no fall. Why does he do what he does? Does Belfort have the same weakness for power that he has for pussy? As we saw with pussy, there's always an alternative. Though it seems at the time an absolutely insane idea, it turns out the (pretty soft) prison time Belfort gets for his outrageous decision isn't much more than what he could have expected if he'd played ball -- due to the trim to his sentence for ratting out his friends. A winner never quits.

When he reverses field in that meeting, no one knows this. And he does something remarkable before he reverses. (In that pantomime, this would be where he massages the clit.) He tells the room, in a heartbreaking voice, about the firm's first female broker, Kimmie Belzer, about how at the dawn of Stratton she came to him as a single mother and was desperate enough to request an advance on salary, which Belfort of course gave her with extra "because I believed in you." He tears up, she tears up, everyone tears up. And when Belfort announces his turnaround the crowd goes wild, crying, screaming, and, for an unnervingly long time, wordlessly chanting as they beat their chests like tribesmen.

For everyone in the room, this is more than the truth -- it's what they believe in. It's the heroism of daring greatly, reaching for the stars, shooting for the moon. It's about believing in oneself and believing in each other. It's personal achievement and it's leaving no one behind. It's loyalty. It's family. It's, we all like to think, America.

It's bullshit.

When Belfort finishes his prison time, he's on the road as a sales trainer, in Auckland. He's introduced to an audience by a sleazy MC as a "motherfucker," which is supposed to be a compliment. We only see the start of Belfort's pitch. His face is a mask; lighting emphasizes DiCaprio's slit-like eyes and mouth. He comes into the audience and confronts individual members with the "sell me this pen" trick we saw him use on his original crew. The audience, it appears, is largely comprised of South Asian immigrants who watch Belfort anxiously. The dream he's selling has made it all the way to the other side of the world.

This is where we came in.

Every craft aspect is first-rate, including Scorsese's taste in music, especially "Cast My Fate to the Wind." Jonah Hill does the Scorsese motormouth as well as anyone. Margot Robbie is perfectly vacuous as the Duchess, and thus a perfect foil for Belfort. Kudos to Bob Shaw, Chris Shriver, and Ellen Christiansen who give us bad taste without taking easy shots at the era because 1.) that's harder and 2.) taste this bad is timeless. And Thelma Schoonmaker should be on Mount Rushmore.

*(If you've seen the movie, you may be wondering: What about the note he passes Donnie in the sushi restaurant? I think it just wasn't time for Belfort to pull the trigger yet. Early in the movie Belfort tells the crew: first one to talk loses. Short cons are good but long cons keep your options open.)

ONE'S GOOD; TWO'LL GET YOU OFF.

I guess I don't have to tell you about David Brooks' stay-in-school-don't-do-drugs column, and assume most of you are of the same mind about it. However, let us spare a moment for an outlier or two -- like former National Review drone David Freddoso, writing at Conservative Intelligence Briefing. which seems to be some kind of Young Fogey clubroom reeking of chrism and nocturnal emissions. So what'll it be, young gents -- Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, or --

What would Aquinas say about legalizing weed?

No, come back -- well, actually, we can't blame you for running. Freddoso's okay with legal weed, unlike stupid Big Gummint liberals:

You wouldn’t know it from the way some of our politicians talk and legislate, but government doesn’t exist for the sake of making us all the best possible competition for China, or to press us single-mindedly toward whatever it deems to be the moral pinnacle at any particular moment (ahem).

Anyone who's totalitarian enough to want universal health care will be a drag about weed, amiright? Oh, and if any wingnuts out there think this Freddoso fellow is pushing the wrong kind of libertarianism, don't worry:

Brooks’ smaller error, I believe, is his assertion that the states legalizing pot are “encouraging” its use. I’m not necessarily saying they made the right choice, but I don’t think this follows. This isn’t like gay marriage...

Both Brooks and Freddoso to be "encouraged" into lockers immediately.

UPDATE. Oh Jesus, I forgot Kathryn J. Lopez:

I’d probably be less dismayed by the Colorado move if we were falling over modern-day Rembrandts.

Not unrelatedly, I just got done reading Instapundit Glenn Reynolds’ new book, The New School...

Don't bother, guys, the link doesn't make it any clearer. Nice try, K-Lo, but Buñuel remains my favorite Catholic surrealist.

WELL-BEGUN IS HALF DONE.

Bill de Blasio is inaugurated. Watchman, what of the right?

Some sheeple thought the French Revolution got out of hand when they started beheading people, but Goldberg knows the prevention of perceived cruelty to animals is how all these holocausts begin. Now if the MTA goes on strike and he can't find a cab, how's he going to pick up five pounds of pastrami for his midnight snack?

Turns out this tweet is actually from the day before de Blasio basically told the richies the picnic's over. But don't worry, some of the brethren covered the actual installation, like Crazy Dave Horowitz's FrontPageMag:

De Blasio Inaguration Featured Prayer by Pro-Farrakhan Muslim Imam

And The Daily Caller:

New York City is a ‘plantation,’ says de Blasio inauguration preacher

So far this new year is going great.

UPDATE. Kudos also to Ed Krayewski, whose inauguration post at Reason is mainly a ploy to remind people that de Blasio's daughter used to take drugs. I predict the absorption of libertarianism into the wingnut mother ship will be one of the big stories of 2014.

UPDATE 2. Oh how did I miss Our Lady of Kathryn J. Lopez's take on the horsey-carriage story:

No Horse-Drawn Carriages in a City Missing Baby Carriages

...If we’re going to care so much about horses, how about confronting the abysmally high abortion rates in the Empire State...

Nice try, but if you really want to tug heartstrings I'd suggest a "Stop Everything and Watch These Embryos Beg For Life" slideshow at BuzzFeed.

UPDATE 3. Samuel Gonzalez, whose raging hard-on for de Blasio has been noted here before, rips the lid off the real scandal: "Comrade De Blasio tightly restricts reporters at inauguration... This is just the tip of the iceberg of how secretive the de Blasio regime will be." At first I thought Gonzalez meant de Blasio was keeping reporters from physically seeing the inauguration, possibly using mind-rays, and that all the news reports I'd read had been smuggled out of  City Hall as samizdat; but it turns out de Blasio's staff told a bunch of reporters to fuck off, which is what Hitler Stalin did. Can't wait for the first major crime of the year to be reported as de Blasio's legacy.

UPDATE 4. At National Review John Fund closes his inauguration report by yammering about the now-defunct ACORN, whose dead hand he portrays shoving de Blasio into office. But he blames the communist New York voters, too, for having the temerity to show more affection toward their new mayor than toward the old one:

Bill Clinton then rose and tried to strike a little balance. But the crowd was having none of it. When he praised retiring mayor Bloomberg for leaving New York “stronger and healthier” after twelve years in office, there was dead silence. The cheers were saved for de Blasio...

Gasp! They assaulted Bloomberg with silence, rather than showing him the proper deference by calling him "Nanny" as National Review customarily does. I suppose if they'd booed him, it would have been an assault on free speech.

UPDATE 5. Comments are as ever a joy, and don't worry, several of our readers have already made that joke about the baby carriages and Park Slope.

YEAR-END TOP TEN THINGS NO ONE GIVES A SHIT ABOUT.

Who doesn't love year-end listicles? If you're done with mine, you can take in Roger L. Simon on PJ Media's "The Most Underreported Domestic News Stories of 2013":

As in the title of Bernie Slade’s 1978 Broadway hit Same Time, Next Year, the great underreported, or really unreported, story from 2013 is the same one it was in 2012 and for three years or more before that. But unlike in Slade’s sexy comedy, nobody’s having any fun, at least not now.

OK, take two: This time speak for yourself and get to the point. Try it again -- Roger L. Simon on "The Most Underreported Domestic News Stories of 2013":

...In a world where every phone call, email, text message, Tweet, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook post, YouTube, Vimeo, LinkedIn link, Google + post, blog post, semaphore, morse code, Braille, and probably burp has been recorded digitally for posterity and beyond, nobody knows what Barack Obama even got in freshman English.

Blink. Blink.

...Obama’s unseen college and graduate school records (Occidental, Columbia, Harvard Law) are only one part of the Mystery of the Shrouded POTUS – another is the Khalidi tape, its possibly anti-Israel contents locked in a vault at the L.A. Times – but those academic records are certainly a significant part.

Paragraph after paragraph of this, including "Yes, I realize a few pols have done well in school. Clinton and Jindal were Rhodes scholars, so we can assume good grades (although one wonders if Bill, ahem, cheated)." The very best part:

Does this matter? I don’t know – and that’s the point.

We'll assume this moment of apparent clarity was an accident.

Oh, there's more: Here's Roger Kimball's entry in "The Most Underreported Domestic News Stories of 2013":

One of the most underreported domestic stories of 2013 was the eclipse of tolerance as a prime liberal virtue and its enrollment in the index of unpermissible reactionary vices.

And the rest is about Duck Dynasty.

Now, it might seem odd to say this story was “underreported"...

Snnrk. Hundreds of words later:

This is a story that is underreported because we are a long way from facing up to its implications. There are several reasons for this. For one thing, our society oscillates between a breathtaking latitudinarianism about...

Get the hook! The next act is Ed Driscoll -- "MSM LIES" kinda covers it. Then J. Christian Adams tells us "the most significant underreported story of 2013 is the left’s launch of the Democracy Initiative," which Mother Jones, exempt for the moment from MSM LIES, describes as a bunch of unions and non-profits working together to "build a national, coordinated campaign" to pimp causes they support, something that has never happened before and certainly not on the right with the Koch Brothers in the Library with a candlestick. The next...

You know what? Let's go look at BuzzFeed. It's still holiday season, and who needs the aggravation? (h/t Jesse Taylor)

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

... Part One of my year-end Top Ten. (I'm stringing it out over two weeks in case nothing happens next week, or I feel like a nap.)

"WE ARE NEVER EVER GETTING BACK TOGETHER" IS ABOUT OBAMA, ISN'T IT? YOU CAN TELL ME!

Thanks to ol' scribe jones for pointing me to what may be the cuh-raziest Pajama Boy post of the week. Apparently Taylor Swift instagramed herself and her brother dressed similarly to the much-maligned advertising model, adding, "Matching Christmas onesies is a thing that's happening right now."

Maybe you think it's cute; more likely you think, who cares? But John Hinderaker of Power Line is deeply interested:

The guy in the photo is Taylor’s brother; I know because one of my daughters told me so. But here’s the question: can the red plaid onesies possibly be a coincidence? I see three alternatives: 1) Miss Swift really is the only person in the USA who doesn’t know that plaid onesies, paired with hot chocolate and nerd glasses, have been mercilessly mocked by millions for the past week. Argument for this interpretation: She has written many songs, not one of which contains even a hint as to any political leanings, suggesting she has none. She is immensely rich and does indeed live in a bubble.

Or maybe she's just part of the great majority of Americans who aren't refreshing National Review Online every ten minutes looking for a new Pajama Boy post.

 2) Miss Swift is slyly joining in the mockery. Argument for this interpretation: How can she not know? Everyone knows. 3) On the contrary, she is subtly sticking up for Obamacare by assuring her legions of fans that plaid onesies are cool after all. Argument for this interpretation: Swift reportedly looked pained and disapproving when hosts Carrie Underwood and Brad Paisley mocked Obamacare at the Country Music Awards.

If Hinderaker didn't know who Taylor Swift's brother was before, you can bet he has a dossier on her whole family now, and has been performing close physiognomical analysis of her performances for political content.

Again I must ask: Do these guys even know any normal people?

MAN OF CONSTANT SORROW.

As I was watching the Coen Brothers 60s-folk-scene movie Inside Llewyn Davis I thought: Boy, sometimes the Coens just dump shit on a guy.

It's a trait I never liked in them. In Barton Fink, the hero is treated contemptuously as a poetaster, and in A Serious Man Larry Gopnik is such a schlimazel that we are invited to think, in the uncharitable way humans do when someone chronically can't get out of his own way, that failure is simply his fate.

But Davis has something neither Fink nor Gopnick have: obvious talent. While the Coens make Fink absurdly callow -- Hollywood at first seems to misunderstand him, and then to understand him all too well -- and Gopnick's tenure track doesn't look like much of an achievement, they make Davis a prodigy with a real gift.

Davis also has something else I don't see in those other guys: a glimmer of hope, if not for deliverance at least of recognition.

We meet Davis in 1961 Greenwich Village, singing the hell out of a song about a rambler who's bound to die, and then find out that his own life is almost that bad: his singing partner is dead and his career is stalled; he's broke, without even a decent coat to protect him from a god-awful New York winter; his record label isn't paying him. He's been couch-surfing seemingly forever.

But when a friend's girlfriend -- Jean of "Jim & Jean," a drippy duo -- tells Davis she's pregnant and, though she's not totally sure it's his kid, demands he pay for the abortion, Davis readily accepts. That surprised me because I'd been hearing everywhere that the character is "unlikable" (e.g., "a jerk of a hero"). But I liked him. Maybe because, in some ways, I've been him. But also, Davis behaves pretty honorably for the most part: he cadges flops, rides, and cigarettes, but he doesn't cheat anyone -- that is, he tries to fulfill his obligations, even down to taking care of a cat he has accidentally let out of a friend's apartment. (Other people think nothing of cheating him, though.) He only lets people (and animals) down when his extremely bleak circumstances make it too hard for him to do better.

And [spoilers henceforth] when he's drunk and/or morose he lashes out verbally, without regard for targets, which is what gets him beaten up -- a misfortune which, though it's not bigger than the ones he's already borne, in the context of the film seems huge, in part because the Coens play it out twice, bookending the film; and in part because, by the time we see the second version, we've seen Davis scramble to at last make something of his career, then scramble to fall back on a merchant-seaman gig, failing at both; if we had the impression when we first heard him sing that Davis had to make it somehow, the film's end makes it look impossible.

The question that usually comes up when a hero fails is: What has he done to deserve it? I thought for a while maybe Davis' talent is an illusion -- that what we see when he sings and plays is just what's in his mind, not the actual performance. When he plays at the Gaslight, his normal hang, the audience is little better than polite; when he plays for his infirm father, the old man shits himself.

Most devastating of all is the reaction of the Chicago impresario Mel Grossman (F. Murray Abraham, properly sepulchral). Davis plays him a gorgeous version of "The Death of Queen Jane," and the Coens take care to show us Grossman's stony face as he listens. Might it be a dramatic fake-out? No; when Davis is done, Grossman says, "I'm not seeing money here," and offers him a shot as a backup player, possibly in what will become Peter, Paul & Mary (his suggestion that Davis stay out of the sun to achieve a proper folky look comports with the story of what the real Grossman, Albert, told Mary Travers). Davis refuses, and Grossman suggests in a friendly manner that he go back to playing with his old partner. (Grossman says he never heard of the duo, but I wouldn't be surprised if he had, and knew the partner was a suicide.) Davis says it's a good suggestion.

That's where my own experience of the club world kicked in, and I realized: No, Davis is good -- and it doesn't matter. It turns out Grossman, who knows his business, is more interested in signing Troy Nelson, a young soldier/folksinger we saw play earlier (Stark Sands, disturbingly earnest), because he has a positive effect on people. Davis' effect on people, of course, is the opposite, and that's what hangs him -- angels could be flying out of his throat and people still wouldn't like him. That's show biz.

Why can't Davis see that? His snide remarks about other acts suggest that he thinks he has hold of something real in a world full of bullshit; all the other folks singing sorrowful songs are doing pretty okay and even going places, but Davis is actually suffering, sloshing through frozen puddles and losing breaks left and right, and his songs really reflect his experience. Oscar Isaac's wonderful performance, stunned and wary, gives the impression that what's eating Llewyn Davis has been eating him a long time, and he's made friends with it, as one does. And his singing makes his dilemma easier to understand. His songs are beautiful; if he changes, what happens to them?

So he's stuck in a feedback loop; his outbursts, his insistence on his own way of doing things, might be a reason for his failures, but they're also an understandable reaction to them. Opportunities keep coming, then going. Only one thing comes back to stay, and gives him some solace, some hint that things don't have to always fall apart, and that's the cat, revealed in a moment of grace ("you're forgiving me?").

And that's where some of the new information in the repeated sequence starts to make sense. By then we've seen Davis' triggering outburst, in which naturally he's lashing out at the wrong person, but at the climax of which he cries, "I hate folk music." It's as if he's calling something down on himself.

Among the other revelations is that back on the Gaslight stage, as Davis goes down, Bob Dylan is starting the career that will suck all the air out of American folk music and leave Davis and 99 percent of his comrades to find new careers. In a way, he's giving Davis his real break, delivering the coup de grace to a dream that's been killing him. Also: In a movie where everyone's always singing some variation of farewell, Davis looks after his assailant and says "au revoir" -- till we meet again.

He's beginning to see the light.

Oh, and he learns to keep the cat from getting out.

All the craft elements are excellent, as you'd expect; John Goodman's acerbic jazzman livens up the dead calm in the middle of the movie (and that whole scene where Johnny Five gets pulled out by the cops is some virtuoso filmmaking); Carey Mulligan and Justin Timberlake make credible folk twerps, and Ethan Phillips and Robin Bartlett lead a lovely troupe of Upper West Side bien pensants. Bruno Delbonnel's cinematography is justly celebrated already for making a cold, blue-and-brown misery out of 60's New York, as is T-Bone Burnett for making sure the tunes are in keeping not only with the era, but also with Davis' melancholy. Kudos also to the production design crew for the African masks and sad lamps.

MERRY CHRISTMAS.

WASSAIL BEATS WHINING EVERY TIME.

On this the eve of the anniversary of the birth of Whatshisname, I hope y'all are in good spirits. I would wish the same for our conservative brethren -- in fact I do! -- but many of them, I fear, are unreachable; their self-inflicted War on Christmas seems to have led them, like a lost patrol, into a deep fog of fear. While the Jerrys and the Tommys famously were able to share a Stille Nacht on Christmas at the front, I fear any outreach to today's brethren would result in uncontrolled burp-gun blasts of awful prose.

Here's a fine Christmas goose for us -- Aaron Goldstein at The American Spectator, whose holiday special is not a celebration of all that Christmas means and brings, but "WHY I PREFER TO SAY MERRY CHRISTMAS," which from its title would seem to be one of those "Why We Fight" essays about the way of life one seeks to preserve by combat, but is actually about Goldstein's sense of duty in the face of subtle but (to him) obvious persecution:

Now I have nothing against anyone saying Happy Holidays if they mean it from the bottom of their hearts... 

Nevertheless, I do find that when people do say Merry Christmas they are far more circumspect about it. The greeting is accompanied by a qualifying statement. For instance, there is “Merry Christmas and whatever else you might celebrate,” or “Merry Christmas. I hope I didn’t offend you.” Something is terribly amiss when one feels self-conscious or is afraid of angering someone about conveying good wishes to a fellow human being.

Maybe it's because I'm such a festive person that I light up everything around me, but I haven't had this trouble myself. I wonder where such an atmosphere of suspicion foments ... "Aaron Goldstein writes from Boston, Massachusetts." Well, haven't been there in a while, maybe it's greatly changed.

Also Goldstein went to a Unitarian Winter Solstice service and no one mentioned Jesus Seasonreason. Who knows what Goldstein was expecting from Unitarians anyway, but he gives his hosts a negative review:

What was also absent from this service was any kind of joy or warmth. I could not wait for the service to end. 

Now I’m sure there were people who genuinely enjoyed that Winter Solstice service. That’s fine with me. Yet I cannot help but think that such a service is a by-product of an American and Western culture that has been increasingly critical of Christianity and consequently has been made to feel guilty about celebrating Christmas.

Finally Goldstein found, in lieu of the traditional cab driver who agrees with conservative columnists, a UPS driver who not only wished Goldstein Merry Christmas, but even gave a little speech about it ("I know some people aren’t comfortable saying Merry Christmas. But it’s Christmas. I always say Merry Christmas. This is America. If I can’t say it here then where I can I say it?"). Eat your heart out, Tom Friedman!

And this is apparently what makes Christmas for him: Beachheads and bulwarks against imaginary hordes seeking to deprive him of something or other. Dear readers, of all my wishes for you, the dearest is that you never allow yourselves to become as miserable and paranoid as that. Gud jul!

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about Duck Dynasty and Pajama Boy, and how these phenomena have spurred the brethren to assert their manhoods in the traditional manner: denigrating the manhoods of others.

In the course of my research I discovered that the Wall Street Journal Speakeasy section has cartoonists, and there's a strip about Phil Robertson's comments. I hope if you have some extra time you'll take a look and tell me what the fuck is going on.

UPDATE. After derision and rage, it appears the next stage in wingnut Pajama Boy fixation is deepthink essay-writing: Linda Chavez complains that, though he has only been pictured indoors, PJB is related to some epidemic of public pajama-wearing ("the latest entry into the fashion craze is Pajama Boy, the now infamous, plaid-clad twerp") that I've apparently missed, living as I do in something approximating civilization.

Under the maladriot ministrations of Chavez, however, deepthink becomes derpthink:

Granted, it is only convention that says we wear one type of clothing for one purpose — sleeping, lounging around before we go to bed — and another for a different purpose — shopping, traveling across country, going to the office. But convention matters. 

Humans make rules that govern behavior. (Actually, all species do; ours are simply more numerous and elaborate.) Without those rules, we’d have not only anarchy, but shorter, less pleasant, more dangerous lives.

Maybe wearing pajamas outdoors caused gay marriage! Or the other way around! Anyway it all adds up, and soon we'll be dying at 40 on slag-heaps in our negligees and union suits. Well, maybe it'll sound more plausible when Charles Murray has a whack at it.

UPDATE 2. Jesus, what a shitshow at The Corner today. Jason Lee Steorts objects in the gentlest way possible to the pansy jokes with which Mark Steyn enlivened his pro-Robertson column, and Steyn responds belligerently in a post entitled "Re-education Camp" -- "do excuse me if I skip to the men’s room during his patronizing disquisition on the distinction between 'state coercion' and 'cultural coercion'... if he truly finds my 'derogatory language' offensive, I’d rather he just indefinitely suspend me than twist himself into a soggy pretzel of ambivalent inertia trying to avoid the central point..." Sheesh, what a drama queen! Other NROniks rush to Steyn's defense, including Peter Kirsanow, who proclaims Steyn the new Solzhenitsyn. Speaking of re-education, I think a spell in the private sector might refocus these guys' priorities -- but maybe that's just my liberal fascism talking!

THE STUPIDEST THING EVER WRITTEN UNTIL GOLDBERG WRITES SOMETHING ELSE, PART INFINITY.

I actually subscribe to "The Goldberg File," through which Jonah Goldberg sends special email columns to the late-night real people, and this is how today's transmission begins:

By the time this "news'' letter reaches your e-mail box, pretty much every joke imaginable about "Pajama Boy" will have been made. But I reject such a dour Malthusian view of Pajama Boy humor! 

When the brouhaha started, I was tempted to make the following joke on Twitter: 

Q: What's the hardest part of being picked as the poster boy for the pajama-boy ad campaign?
A: Telling your parents you're gay.

Blink. Blink.

Now, quick, before you call A&E and have my reality show canceled, the first problem with this joke is that you're not supposed to make any derogatory jokes about being gay anymore. And that's okay by me so long as people avoid being complete tools about enforcing that rule.

Even though he was almost certainly all by himself when he was writing this, Goldberg reacts as if he's feeling the Springtime for Hitler stares that naturally come with this kind of  "but seriously, gay people, amirite, hey don't be a tool, brah, I'm just joking" monologue -- Behold his recovery:

But there's a deeper problem with the joke. It's insulting to gays. And I don't mean that merely in the sense that it's wrong to make gays the butts of jokes anymore (You know what I mean!). I mean that there are plenty of gay dudes -- and women! -- who are vastly more masculine than Pajama Boy. Pajama Boy doesn't exude homosexuality; he gives off the anodyne scent of emasculation. Seriously, the construction worker from the Village People would kick his ass. Besides, this is the gay enrollment ad for Obamacare (there's also this). All of these dudes are manlier than Pajama Boy.

Goldberg's second link leads to a National Review post on the Obamacare LGBT outreach, to which NR's readers respond with humorous comments such as,  "SEND THEM TO THE WINTER OLYMPICS IN RUSSIA WITH THE OTHER 2 LESBOS THAT OBUMA CHOSE," "Gyno exams up their A---s.... or how to ask the doctor to remove Duct Tape from their nuts after taping them up for that smooth bikini look," "And how do you pap smear a f--g--ot... damn... that's nothing but a fancy stool sample...Ewww yuk and a half," and other such gay-friendly jokes you shouldn't be such a tool as to get offended by.

If you try to play out the life of Pajama Boy in your mind, he probably has a girlfriend. It's just that she's wearing the pants in the relationship, as they used to say. I picture her like Sarah Silverman in School of Rock or the girlfriend at the beginning of Office Space who everyone knows is cheating on Peter.

Good to see Goldberg's still working his research chops.

Pajama Boy is a Low-T liberal who wears a "this is what a feminist looks like" T-shirt and flinches whenever his girlfriend makes a sudden movement...

The whole thing goes on like that, not excluding the now-traditional, we-found-out-who-this-Obamaqueer-really-is-and-boy-is-he-a-Obamaqueer routine ("For all I know he bow-hunts alligators and rides a Harley. Though, come on, it's doubtful"). The passage even ends with the kind of customary comeback employed by douchebros who have expended all their intellectual resources on denigrating someone's masculinity and still haven't gotten the universal high-fives they were expecting:

Last, I love the rearguard effort from liberals trying to turn the mockery of Pajama Boy into proof of right-wing sexual insecurity. It seems to me this is a pretty desperate attempt by the MSNBC fanboy set to compensate for the fact that so many people find Pajama Boy pathetic.

I'm not the freak, you're the freak! FARRRRRRT. There -- would a faggot do such manly farts? Only I didn't mean faggot, you know what I mean, don't be a tool...

The whole thing is so vile I'm tempted to republish it so you can see I'm not kidding, but I'm sure one of his fans will have done so in admiration before the day is over.

IT'S LONESOME RHODESES ALL THE WAY DOWN.

As I have observed a few times, Duck Dynasty holds a special place in the American conservative pantheon, and they're going to get a few more votive candles now that one of the Dynasty's rich sporting goods salesmen has told GQ that homosexuality is a sin and been disciplined by the corporation that holds the contract on his TV show. Let PJ Media's Bryan Preston translate that into moron for you:

Robertson gave an interview to GQ, in which he is reported to have expressed opinions that run afoul of the current political correctness, which places gay rights and sensitivities above the rights of others to their opinions. Expressing such opinions often leads to conflicts with the thought police, proving once again that a liberal doesn’t really care what you think, as long as you agree with them entirely.

Let's not pretend there's a principle involved here -- these guys aren't known for defending workers' rights, outside of those rare occasions where some millionaire has gotten into trouble for saying something bigoted that they agree with. (Though to be fair this isn't a hard and fast rule -- I don't recall them rushing  to Alec Baldwin's defense, for example.) If you got fired for organizing a union, I wouldn't expect Sarah Palin to stick up for you.

As for Papa Duck or whatever he's called, I imagine he can afford good lawyers, and wouldn't have given A&E room to suspend him if he could have gotten away with it. Maybe he wanted to be on TV that badly. That's capitalism, comrade.

But I think the Dynasts are actually playing it cagey here. They warmed up the wingnuts with their fundamentalist Christianity, but eventually they had to take things up a notch or their fans might come to realize they were watching just another shitty reality show. Gay-baiting would be a brilliant way to get that crowd to feel the magic all over again.

Maybe conservatives will have a new version of "Chick-fil-A Day" in Duck Dynasty's honor. That should be a huge success -- hell, the brethren don't even have to haul their asses out to a fast-food joint; they can just vote with their clickers: a perfect simulacrum of democracy for angry shut-ins.

UPDATE. In comments, Spaghetti Lee explains the confusion: For these people, "'capitalism' is not so much an economic system as a talisman that they use to destroy the liberals." In the abstract, they'd agree that a contract is a contract -- in fact, they'd probably be very strong on honoring commitments to one's employer, since worker protections are according to their theology mooching  -- but in the particular they consider Martin Bashir getting canned to be common decency because Palin, and Duck Daddy getting canned to be Hitler because Obamafag. Economics had a place in the conservative landscape -- say Hayek and frack! -- but, as we saw in the previous post, symbology trumps all.

UPDATE 2. Also from comments, I must thank Xecky Gilchrist for the apposite quote from William Gibson (boy, never thought I'd say those words!): "[Slitscan's audience] is best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed..."

WRECKERS.

IFrom his previous ridiculous columns I reckoned Charles C.W. Cooke of National Review was wrapped a little too tight, but holy Jesus, I'm still stunned by his ragegasm over an OFA tweet promoting Obamacare because it contained a picture of a guy in pajamas who wasn't Don Draperly enough to suit him.

First, Cooke tells us this is part of a pattern of inappropriate stereotypes (that is, stereotypes not calculated to appeal to Charles C.W. Cooke) foisted on him by the Obama studios:

First, we had Julia, the creepy, eyeless, vision-of-horror from Brave New World whose life was run from cradle to grave by the federal government. Then, we had Adriana, the painfully neutral and carefully ambi-racial stock-model-from-everywhere whose face became so synonymous with HealthCare.gov’s hilarious launch that she had to be replaced with a graphic plugging an 800 number.

"Julia" was a series of silhouettes used as a graphic element, and only creepy if you come from a primitive culture which has no experience of representational art. As for Adriana -- I never knew her name before, but am not surprised Cooke did; apparently enough wingnuts had Special Feelings for her that the poor model had to flee for her life -- I can see why Cooke was pained by her "carefully ambi-racial" features; he probably hears the tyrant Obama crying THIS IS YOUR FUTURE every time her pulls her picture out from under his pillow.

And now, courtesy of Organizing for Action, we have Pajama Boy, a metrosexual hipster in a plaid onesie who wants you to spend your precious Christmas days talking to him about the president’s vision for health insurance. 

Unlike your average Jehovah’s Witness, Pajama Boy has evidently managed not only to get into the warmth of your house to do his proselytizing, but to make himself a cup of hot chocolate and to get into his bedtime clothes to boot. That is to say, Pajama Boy is staying over — priggish facial expression and all — and he won’t leave until you’ve relented.

This soft-invasion fantasy is no more than you'd expect from the folks who gave you "shoving it down our throats." Indeed, the queerfear is palpable -- Cooke says this advertising model, or something he represents, brings to mind a "Queer Students Assocation," and would go for "a 'dialogue' about the evils of 'heteronormativity.'" Cooke also marks the model as a "vaguely androgynous, student-glasses-wearing, Williamsburg hipster," which means maybe he only looks gay, which is still bad enough. Also, "part Chris Hayes, part Rachel Maddow, part Lena Dunham," etc.

Cooke does not threaten to beat the model's homo ass, for he is an internet, rather than a real, tough guy, so instead he expresses satisfaction that "Twitter rather predictably exploded with derision," and that others information workers of his political persuasion endorse his sentiments (Cooke's work is one of the few places where you will read "of 'Iowahawk' fame" and know it is meant seriously). His final movement is essentially a luxuriation in the difficulties of Obamacare -- you know the style from countless wingnut thesaurus-reading contests exulting over the "train wreck," "debacle," "smoldering ruin," etc.-- except Cooke's signifiers tend toward this: "All the women were sluts; all the men were idiots; all the girls were playing extremely violent sports."

He does stick in stuff about Oscar Wilde and Evelyn Waugh and his preference for "adults' clothes," though, so you'll know he, unlike his various real and imaginary nemeses, is a serious adult.

This is where the Obamacare argument is right now. No one really expects it to go away; it will either get better or it won't. Cooke and his crew hope for the latter, indeed are actively working on preventing it from getting better, which is why most of their essays on the subject are just concatenations of slurs -- they don't have anything else, certainly not a health care solution other than the traditional Pay or Die. They don't have anything to explain or defend, and so can expend such creativity as they have on polishing their act. Which wouldn't be so bad if they had a better one.

MORE CAPITALIST THAN THE POPE, AS THE OLD SAYING GOES.

I haven't said much about conservative reactions to Pope Francis' talk about capitalism for a couple of reasons. Mainly it's because I know the Church, and while they might let Francis reap some PR hosannas for the talk-talking, they'll never stand for any walk-walking -- too much money at stake. So while it's pleasing to see wingnuts forced to either denounce or explain away the teachings of Jesus Christ, it's ultimately meaningless. You know it's Moses, I know it's Moses, but business is business

Still, it's nice to see a handmaiden of capitalism like Ramesh Ponnuru try and explain why the Pope doesn't understand it:

One can favor a much stronger safety net than the U.S. has and still disagree with some of what Francis has to say.

I'd like to see him explain that last sentence. Is there a Democrat somewhere outraged by Francis' anticapitalism? I mean besides Joe Lieberman.

Most of the arguments in Ponnuru's essay are on the order of "is not" or "is too," but overall "so what" is his favorite recourse ("the pope appears to blame businessmen for sometimes downsizing their companies... Even in a well-functioning economy with low unemployment, that’s exactly what businessmen will and should sometimes do"). As you might expect, he is especially wounded by the Pope's denunciation of trickle-down economics, which he first minimizes as due to "some issues that have been raised about how these words were translated from Spanish," and then dismisses because "self-interest can yield unintended benefits for others." And isn't that was Christianity's all about -- unintended benefits?

Ponnuru saves the best for last:

Much of Francis’s economic thought, though, seems to rest on the identification of free markets with extreme individualism. A generation ago, the writer Michael Novak and others were instrumental in persuading many American Catholics that markets could instead enable a creative form of community. The pope’s remarks suggest that this type of evangelizing still needs to be done.

If only some real Christians could talk sense to the Pope about how capitalism helps the poor! Maybe he'll listen to a Harvard professor who accuses the Pope of spreading "envy" and preaches Bible stories at him ("The Ten Commandments conclude with: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house...'"). Well, he's got a point -- there are lots of ungrateful peasants in the Bible, but not one story about a rapacious corporation destroying a community for its own profit.

This excites Ann Althouse, who thinks the Professor "may win over even the Pope fans." Then will come the inevitable backlash, with cries of "THANKS FRANCIS" and Ratzinger on "Miss me yet?" billboards, culminating in a new Pope who's a Calvinist.

UPDATE. In comments, Spaghetti Lee: "Maybe I'm projecting onto the Pope here, but I'd like to note that he spent his adult life in 60's and 70's South America, which saw a series of right-wing, authoritarian and explicitly corporatist dictatorships seize power, the most infamous of which, in Chile, was at the behest of the sort of people who write Ramesh Ponnuru's checks. Needless to say, I think he's seen plenty of the glories of unrestrained capitalism for himself"

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about this year's War on Christmas festivities. Hard to believe it's been a year since the last one, eh?

First-tier wingnuts have to stay ahead of the curve, and I regret there was no room at the inn for David French's piece at National Review, in which he beseeched the brethren join him in taking Christmas purism a step further:

This Christmas Season, Consider Becoming a ‘Santa Truther’ 

In her weekly column at Rare, my wife outed our family as “Santa Truthers,” those killjoys who don’t teach their kids that Santa is real, leaving Christmas to the story of Christ’s birth and the gift-giving to Mom, Dad, and legions of over-generous family members... 

The story of God’s grace is at the very heart of the Gospel. Why muck that up with fake stories of magical works-based theology?

As French rises in the organization I expect National Review will offer a Roundhead Christmas Cruise on which passengers will swab the deck and eat gruel on December 25th. Then conservatism can be truly said to have triumphed.

RICHARD PRYOR, ON THE OTHER HAND, WAS ALWAYS VERY POLITE.

I know, another day, another Victor Davis Hanson you-helots-get-off-my-lawn essay. But sometimes he rises from senescence to insanity, as in this one's skein about how Obama brought racism back.

Once, soothsays Hanson, you could criticize Colin Powell, Condi Rice and Alberto Gonzalez without being accused of racism. You might think this was because they were self-evident monsters and buffoons, but Hanson thinks it was because of the Bush golden age of racial tolerance.

But "Obama changed that calculus and equated his own popularity with a referendum on racial harmony," says Hanson, by noticing Trayvon Martin and Henry Louis Gates. "The result is a creeping racial polarization that we have not seen in fifty years."

Even more horrible -- Obama spurred black celebrities to race war on his own behalf, thereby costing them their popularity with unnamed, uncounted white people:

Before Obama, the billionaire Oprah Winfrey was a national icon. Morgan Freeman had transcended race and resented identity politics. A Kanye West or Chris Rock made millions of dollars by appealing to suburbanites. All have lost their broad appeal, largely due to some of the most polarizing racial rhetoric in memory...

If only there were some way to back up this assertion. Maybe a time-based analysis of magazine covers at the supermarket check-out?

A Jamie Foxx or Chris Rock casually derogates “white people”; does that mean either wishes them not to go to their movies or shows?...

The net result of the new racialism is an impossible situation of establishing one’s racial fides only by permanent support for Barack Obama — and because it is impossible, more are resenting those who imposed it.

Neither is this "more" identified or quantified, but maybe they're the real reason Yeezus sales dropped in the second week; it took the downtrodden whites several days to figure out Kanye was one of those black racists. If African American showfolk don't start mending their ways, Victor Davis Hanson and his cousins won't let them have any more People's Choice Awards.

WATER FINDS ITS OWN LEVEL.

I have no objections to Jonah Goldberg's latest column. No, that doesn't mean it's good, or right. It just means the column is a "decency" rant about all the swears on the TV, and this is a form which, unlike all the other the forms he attempts, suits his stupidity down to the ground.

Still, a couple of notes:

But my complaint isn’t really with singers, shock-jocks, comedians, or whatever category [Miley] Cyrus falls under. They’re not merely immune to finger-wagging on this score, they actually think such criticism is proof they’re rebels. The wiser course is to simply yawn and move on.

I like the idea of Goldberg willing himself to yawn  -- though I'm unclear as whether this is meant to convince the Miley Cyruses of the world that he doesn't care, or his own limbic system, and also wonder if it isn't just a ruse to make room in his mouth for an extra Hostess Fruit Pie.

Finally, anyone who writes the world's least funny comedy sketch about buttsecks one day and gurgles about "vulgarians" this next should be declared brain dead and taken off life support.