MAGGIE, NOT A GIRL OF THE STREETS. Sometimes I wonder if my political writings are, like all my other writings, merely manifestations of a deep neurosis that might be better vitiated by therapy or antidepressant drugs. Then I read Maggie Gallagher and think, well, if they let this nutcake publish, surely there must be a place in the sun for me, too.

Gallagher is annoyed by boomers that don't act their age. You know, 50-year-olds with nose rings, grandparents who don't want to baby-sit, and the like. (That's really her point. This is how people get the impression that writing is easy!)

Well, some 50-year-olds look better with piercings than others -- I think Susan Sarandon with a nose ring would be cute, whereas some younger actresses, like Brooke Shields, would be an eyesore. But hey, no accounting for taste, and who the hell cares? Normally I might let Gallagher slide off into the bin of harmless crankage. But some of her deficiencies range beyond mere annoyance.

As previously noted here, Gallagher is a tireless agitator for social revanchism, who seeks to "defend marriage" by making divorce more difficult and gay marriage nearly impossible.

Outwardly her grumblings seem like the harmless, playful discharges of negative energy one gets from old people in folding chairs on many suburban lawns. Her whole rap on youthful behavior in unyouthful people is about decorum, not right and wrong, as even she admits ("this is not so much immoral as deeply depressing").

But you have to wonder why someone with her serious social agenda spends so much time criticizing behaviors that, however unseemly, hurt no one. One guess is, Gallagher seeks to shame her opponents into doubt, and thence to conversion. She perhaps figures that we libertine hordes are so simple-minded, having cut all our high-school and college classes in favor of weed and wild sex, that we can be easily teased into compliance -- that, shown as if by a mirror how awful nose rings look ornamenting our grizzled visages, we will retreat from all such youthful enthusiasms with such shock and revulsion that it will send us ass-over-tip into the land of beaming breeders, obscenity-free cable, and regnant heterosexuality in which Gallagher resides.

Or maybe she's just nuts. Yeah, let's go with that one.

DEFINING DEMOCRACY DOWN. A very strange post from Peter Robinson at NRO's The Corner. He admits he "goofed" on a political matter -- and that's weird in itself, because these guys will usually only cop to error on matters of much less significance.

But the rest is weirder. Robinson, it seems, originally thought McClintock had won last week's California gubernatorial candidates' debate. But, he now admits, that was because he had only heard it on the radio -- now he knows better, because people who saw it on TV have told him that Schwarzenegger looked "relaxed" and "in control."

He also said he was wrong about WIlliam Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying" being a better book than Stephen King's "It" -- he had originally read them both in page proofs, and had not then realized how much better the typography and cover design of the King book would be.

Kidding. Now, I am aware of the old Nixon-Kennedy anecdote -- the people who heard the debates on radio thought Nixon did better, but the TV watchers preferred Kennedy. This speaks to a long-lived but still rather childish idea that the thing "won" by Kennedy could be considered a debate in the old-fashioned sense, e.g. a contest of ideas and their articulation, when in fact that event, though rhetorically and intellectually still leagues ahead of our modern pifflefests, helped define debate down as a riskier sort of campaign stunt -- it might go badly, the other guy might interfere, but whatever happens you'll still get your talking points and image projections across to millions of likely voters.

You may think Bill Clinton looked better wandering around that Oprahless talk-show set than George Bush I in 1992, but that speaks to Clinton's campaign team's marketing skills, not the candidate's abilities as an advocate and public servant.

Still, Clinton did hire the team, and execute the strategy and that counts for something. And one could grant Robinson that point if he'd made it. But instead he gives us this:

Now, I still think very highly of McClintock. And every scrap of news I can glean from the Schwarzenegger camp confirms my suspicion that Arnold has exactly zero idea what he’ll do when he becomes governor of this great state next week. I remain convinced, in other words, that a candidate’s message counts. But a candidate’s temperament and personality count, too. As they watched the debate, voters seem to have been looking for someone with whom they’d feel comfortable, sensing, correctly, as far as I can tell, that the next governor will need both presence and good humor to deal with the mess he’ll find in Sacramento. By the time the debate ended, Californians had decided they like Arnold.

Despite my misgivings about the man’s program, I can’t say I blame them.

Two things here. First, who knows what Arnold's actual temperment and personality are? He's an actor, remember? In fact, all the other candidates on that stage are actors of a sort, too -- conceivably better than Schwarzenegger, at that.

Also, I agree that presence and good humor are appealing qualities. But if those are the trump criteria for a candidate -- and Robinson is strongly suggesting that they are -- then why not Senator Tim Robbins, or Congressman Johnny Depp?

Because it will come to that. The Republicans are at present better than the Democrats at fielding celebrity candidates -- I keep hearing that Dennis Miller will start riding the elephant soon. Eventually, the Dems will wise up and start running movie stars, too. Then I expect we'll hear less talk from Robinson about how, while ideas are important and all that, you can't blame citizens for choosing a telegenic cipher.

I only hope I can hang onto my righteous indignation when that happens, because as much fun as it would be to see Tom DeLay strain for spotlight as Congressperson Sarandon hogs the camera, it probably won't be so great for the Republic.

NO, "DUDE," IT'S WHAT YOU WOULD DO IF YOU HAD ANY GUTS. "As Jimmy Kimmel, a comedian on ABC-TV, put it: 'People throw the term "politically incorrect" around a lot, and normally it's a lot of bluster, but Vice truly is un-p.c. Their brand of humor is what I would do if there were no "standards and practices" on TV.'" -- New York Times September 28. (Thanks Margaret for the tip.)

IN LIEU OF THE BLOODY SHIRT... My nephew started college in New York this month, and stays with me on school days. He is a fine young man, and I hope college gives him not only a good education in forensic science, but also in the ways of the world.

Therefore I hope no such killjoys as this are lurking in our Statehouse:

[Virginia] Delegate Robert G. Marshall, who last spring denounced James Madison University's "SexFest 2003," is now demanding answers from another state school: Virginia Tech.
Mr. Marshall said Virginia Tech misused taxpayer funds last week when school officials allowed Virginia Tech TV to tape on campus a "Sex Talk Live" show during which students discussed sex.

Apparently the kids discussed and, to some extent, handled sex toys and contraceptives. That doesn't even sound like fun, let alone an outrage. Nonetheless, Marshall is mad:

"Virginia parents do not send their children to Virginia Tech to take part in [sexual] titillation," said Mr. Marshall, Manassas Republican.

Of course they don't, you stupid redneck -- but sexual experimentation has been part of the college experience since time immemorial anyway. Hell, my college dorms looked and smelled at all times like a cross between Animal House and The Harrad Experiment.

I am grateful for many reasons that I do not live in the Confederacy (though I do miss its barbecue and most of its people, whose generosity and excellent manners would, or should, shame us Yankees to blushes), and one of them is the stronger motivation and propensity their politicians have for waving, in lieu of the bloody shirt, the cum-drenched dildo. Of course, we have such jackasses up here, too, but we blow them off more easily -- when they tried a similar stunt at SUNY New Paltz, the Chancellor basically told them to fuck off.

I'm sure many of the Virginia kids' parents don't like the idea of a sex fair. I doubt they much cotton to that there evolution neither, but I assume the college will continue to teach it, because that is their responsibility.

I mean, if the schools don't teach our kids how to use ass-beads, who will?

THE GOVERNMENT WE DESERVE. Tech-tank director Sonia Arrison wonders whether Governor Schwarzenegger will be good for Silicon Valley. Well might she wonder. The sources in her article venture predictions no more trustworthy than the aching bones of a hillbilly weatherman:

"He is a pro-growth, pro-business, low-tax guy and this is what the Valley thrives on and needs," says Chris Alden, entrepreneur and founder of Red Herring magazine.

Red Herring? Say, didn't they go out of business? (Actually, the magazine was reanimated, albeit in web-only form, this month -- perhaps the Arnold election convinced its backers that a strong market for bullshit was in the offing.)

Michael Mahoney, a managing director at EGM Capital, a hedge fund that focuses on technology and telecommunications, agrees. The Valley appears convinced, he says, that Arnold "will get the state back on the right track with regard to finances and regulation."

But how? Arrison's sources caution against taking the fiscally prudent statements of Schwarzenegger advisor Warren Buffett too seriously. "Warren Buffett speaks for Warren Buffett," says "a Republican venture capitalist who recently hosted a huge Arnold fundraising dinner." Really? Then what's Arnold employing him for?

The true value of these prognostications is perhaps inadvertently revealed by another commentator:

James Hong, founder of the Internet dating site HOTorNOT.com, echoes a concern that many were willing to say only off the record: "I don't think he has exposed enough of his viewpoints on some of the issues that I think are important to us."

No shit. Schwarzenegger has in this campaign been a near-perfect cipher, and his fans, accustomed to projecting their hopes and dreams onto his lumpish visage, continue to see in him just what they want to see. This goes double for the internet guys Arrison cites. Remember, it wasn't long ago that these schnooks were cheerfully ushering us into the "New Economy," without warning (or even awareness) of the trap door and steep drop at the other side of the threshold. Now I'm supposed to listen to them on politics?

THERE'LL ALWAYS BE A BILKO. Further proof that the Brits have better taste than we (at least in culture -- I won't vouch for their food): this new Radio Times U.K. poll, in which residents of the Scepter'd Isle voted "The Phil Silvers Show" the best TV comedy show of all time.

How dya like that! as Doberman might have said. Apparently the adventures of Sgt. Bilko were re-run in Britain for some years after the show disappeared from U.S. syndication (I recall seeing a few episodes as a boy). Still, it's noteworthy that the Brits' memories reach back even that far. We have a museum for stuff like Silvers' show over here, yet only TV scholars (and boy, there's a funny concept, huh?) even know who Silvers is anymore.

Maybe Bilko reminds Brits of Jonson's "Volpone." Or maybe they like him because he suits the traditional European view of Americans -- crass and avaricious to the point of insanity, but energetic and amusing in the throes of our greed. Maybe the show stirs half-vengeful, half-fond memories of the "overpaid, oversexed, and over here" Yank servicemen of WWII. Or maybe the bureaucracy of Bilko's Army still has resonance for the notoriously bureaucrat-bound British. After all, "Yes, Minister" also made the list.

The win-place-show was Bilko, "Seinfeld," and "Fawlty Towers" -- not bad! I blush to admit I haven't seen many of the UK offerings that placed (though I have fond memories of the hilariously sour "The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin"), but nearly everything I recognize is choice.

Now could you blokes send us a few decent rock bands, please? And take back your DJs.

DO I STUTTER? Brendan Miniter wants to infuse the dreary social studies cirricula of our schools with good old-fashioned American history. So do I. Of course, Miniter feels the best way to achieve this lofty goal is to repeat GOP fundraiser anecdotes about people who "warned against singing patriotic songs like 'God Bless America'" in the days following 9/11. "Heroes? Pooh!" Miniter imagines such unpatriots saying about traditional history instruction, "Nationalism? Bah! Western civilization? You've gotta be kidding!" So much for consensus-building.

Miniter's piece is rich in sneers at "liberal educators" and "Social-studies theorists," as is the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation-funded document toward which he steers his readers. This document's contributors all have impeccable educrat credentials (CV sample: "Jonathon Burack, a former secondary school history teacher, has for the past 20 years produced secondary school history curriculum materials... He demonstrates the pervasiveness of postmodern cultural relativist epistemology in our nation's schools..."), but I suppose if you're right-wing, you can be forgiven even an education degree.

While these folks favor the same confrontational approach as Miniter ("The keys to Rome are being turned over to the Goths and the Huns"), they are very solicitous of the Bush administration, even though the No Child Left Behind Act signed by our "education President" ignores social studies altogether. "This was not meant, heaven knows, as a hostile act," contributor Chester E. Finn assures us. "The authors of NCLB are patriots..."

The swipes at multiculturalism and "moral relativism" are familiar, ceaselessly repeated, and tiresome, more an incantation than an argument, but if you can make it to the passage by J. Martin Rochester, charmingly titled "The Training of Idiots," you're in for a treat. Rochester blames ahistoricism and its fallout, including our depressingly low voter turnout rates, on "America-Worsters," and prescribes that "we need to create fewer doubters and cynics."

Fewer doubters and cynics! How is this to be achieved -- extra sessions of the Breakfast Club? Sorry, Principal Vernon, but if you want less doubt and cynicism in schools, you shouldn't be yelling at teachers -- you should be yelling at our political class, which has done far more to inculcate our young with these characteristics than any diversity program.

FEEL-GOOD MOVIE OF THE YEAR. On the entertainment front, I finally caught "American Splendor" last night. A friend had complained to me that the movie doesn't give enough attention Harvey Pekar's real innovation -- the quotidian, working-class life stories in comic-strip form. Those are excellent, of course, and the most interesting of them aren't about Pekar at all -- they usually start with Harvey running into a buddy, and the buddy telling a long story. (My favorite, drawn by Gary Dumm, is about a guy who accompanies his pal to a job interview, decides to fill out an application himself because he's bored, sets the interviewer's trash basket on fire and still gets the job, and quits after one day -- "They wanted me to be a human screwdriver. Fuck that! The next day I went over the wall.")

But the movie's about Pekar. His biographical details are old news to many of us, though it is fun to see them fleshed out on screen. (The scenes of Pekar and Crumb giving birth to the "American Splendor" books are catnip to aging bohemians like me.) The small, private agonies and ecstacies of the old crank, though, are the real meat and drink. Paul Giamatti plays Pekar gnarled -- his default facial expression is a sneer. To me, this seemed like an act at first -- like Pekar's hollering prole routine seemed on Letterman. But when I got used to it, it was perfectly charming. His sneer, it turns out, isn't contempt, but disappointment, with himself and the world (a disappointment made understandable by the wonderfully cruddy Cleveland locales). But sometimes he's not disappointed. Things go well with the books; he finds love; he beats cancer; he takes pleasure from his peculiar friends and from the little stories they give him.

I think it's a good thing to be reminded that you don't have to be a grinning, positive-thinking idiot to get something out of life. The movie's being marketed as an offbeat thing ("Weird, different, fascinating!" says Moviechicks), and some of the unusual real Harvey/movie Harvey film tricks point that way, but at bottom it's about a real guy who manages to do alright without being like Rocky or Rudy or any of those fist-pumping clowns. You could call it a "feel-good" movie, in the old usage favored by Hollywood blurb writers. I don't see that one in movie ads anymore, come to think of it; they're more likely to advertise their entertainments as a "thrill ride" -- great synergy for the afilliated theme-park attractions, I guess. I don't like rides, but I don't mind feeling good.

DEM TWO. I only know yesterday's Democratic debate from its transcript, and so cannot offer commentary on John Kerry's haircut or Wesley Clark's podium manner or any other such details of importance in accredited commentators. But the text is not embarrassing, nor even too dispiriting.

Not that the candidates aren't a little silly. With so many participants, these debates currently resemble open auditions for a junior college production of All the King's Men, aspirants for which have been mischievously told that Willie Stark was modeled on John F. Kennedy. Even relying on the transcript, I can see each player strutting and fretting his or her sixty seconds upon the stage, and hear the grinding of gears as the moderators, more spineful than most such I've experienced, redirect a candidate's attention back to the question at hand.

One has to love the evasive answering techniques on display. No one, but no one, directly addressed the "Free Trader or Made in America" question. And rightly so, because it's a very unfair question. But still, since when do politicians need a good reason to wriggle, and since when do I need a good reason to enjoy their wriggling?

WILLIAMS: Beginning with Congressman Gephardt, it's the subject of trade. Do you wear the label "free trader" or "Made in America"?

GEPHARDT: I'm for a progressive trade policy and I will be a president who will lead not only America but the entire world toward a trade policy that will help every business and every worker in the world. That's what we need.

That doesn't just fail to answer Williams' question -- it fails to answer any question.

Lieberman got a few more jokes in, even one playing on the word "fucked." What would Tipper Gore think? More importantly, what Lieberman's really about? A lot of that culture-scold thing he works so assiduously on the hustings falls away at these debates. It's refreshing, and his relaxation shows a keen awareness that nothing at this stage of the campaign means much of anything, a trait which must be admired. It may be that Judgmental Joe dons and doffs the hairshirt as easily as an actor dons and doffs a costume. That would be a relief. Well, his old man did run a package store.

Dean seems a little rattled ("These days I feel my need to restate practically every position I have based on all the things these guys have said about me in the last three or four weeks"). But who wouldn't be? When you're the frontrunner and you've got nine challengers, one of them a late entry with military props, you have a right to some prickliness. Frankly I'd like to see him punch through that hoarse, Jerry-Brown-vintage faux-outrage and show some real anger. You're supposed to be Jed Bartlett, for Chrissakes! Smoke a cigarette or something.

I do find it remarkable that, regarding global trade issues, most of the candidates have staked out an ideological corridor that one might call "mend NAFTA, don't end NAFTA": renegotiate existing treaties so that the global little guy gets a fairer shake. That sounds pretty middle of the road, which is to say, possibly acceptable to a majority of voters. And that's weird, because we tend to think of these issues in apocalyptic terms -- global enslavement vs. anarchy. It's downright soothing to imagine that we might find our global trade routes smoothed by legislation, not littered with molotov cocktail debris. Probably a false hope, but hey, a guy can dream.

I still think the old dogs have the pole position, and if a time-traveller zipped in here now and told me it was all Kerry, I wouldn't be at all surprised. But it's September 2003. Who knows? Moreover, who cares?

I must add that I am pleased at the figure Revered Al is cutting these days. The most cheerful, if not the proudest, vote I ever cast was for Sharpton when he ran for Senate in the 1994 Democratic primary. What a wonderful thing it was to answer "Sharpton!" when my friends asked how I voted, and what entertaining responses I got! If you're a little further down my list this year, Rev, it is not due to lack of affection, but to the nagging fact that in the national crisis we now face, we need the sturdiest beam possible to hold off collapse.

THE SONG IS OVER. The great Tom Lehrer -- author of The Vatican Rag, MLF Lullaby, and Poisoning Pigeons in the Park -- went back to academe a long time ago, but I was still unnerved to hear (via an especially good Altercation this a.m.) that Lehrer is too pissed off to write any of his masterful satirical ditties about our current condition: "'I'm not tempted to write a song about George W.Bush," quoth the master. "I couldn't figure out what sort of song I would write. That's the problem: I don't want to satirise George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporise them."

Lehrer is of course of the old school, with attitudes formed in a time (perhaps really just a brief historical respite) when America didn't start wars, we finished them (and opposed to the current vice-versa), and people were still inclined to laugh bullshit off the national stage.

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it isn't just anger that prevents Lehrer's Bush song cycle. In the aforementioned interview he has a lot of smack to say about modern comedy ("The people who go to comedy shows are kids that don't know anything, I think, and so you have to make jokes about your girlfriend or your family or that kind of thing -- only make them as vulgar as possible"). Well, yes. There's no point in satirizing something if no one knows what you're talking about, or even, perhaps, what satire is.

I may be mistaken but I detect a bit of sadness in Lehrer's responses. Not maudlin sadness, but the world-weary sort ("I have become, you might call it mature -- I would call it senile -- and I can see both sides..."). This may be the natural state of aged satirists, as the late careers of Twain, Swift, et alia also demonstrate. You watch the Big Show long enough and certain patterns of behavior, mostly brutal and self-defeating, emerge; sooner or later, you get tired of pointing them out to people who came in late. Or decide that it would really be a shame to reveal these plot twists to them, and thus spoil a brash and diverting (if somewhat tawdry) entertainment.

Maybe I'm just projecting here.

ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL. I'm not one of those phony populists who go on about trial (I mean trahhhl) lawyers and tort reform and such like. (I didn't say I wasn't a phony populist, mind -- just that I'm not one of those phony populists.) But this is bullshit: the lawyer for Maurice Clarett, the Ohio State sophomore whose super-early entry to the pros is prevented by NFL rules, seems to claim some sort of bias against his client:

"I see Maurice's case as a league trying to make certain players, young players, who are often poor, wait on earning a living, while the N.F.L. and colleges, either directly or indirectly, make millions off of them," Milstein said. "To me, his situation is about another huge entity trying to take advantage of a smaller group of people who don't necessarily have powerful voices themselves.''

Clarett is entitled to the best defense, of course, and that sometimes means working such specious angles as this. I am not outraged at shady legal tactics per se (not like Sam Waterston seems to be in every single episode of Law & Order). It's all in the game.

Two things do bug me. One is the idea that Clarett has a God-given right to play in the NFL. The NFL is, basically, a club. For those who enter this club as players, a certain amount of rough-housing may be expected. If the proprietors decide that applicants must reach a certain age or level of experience before smashing into their other members, why is that our business at all? Shall we next haul into court those carnival ride operators who display YOU MUST BE THIS TALL TO RIDE signs, on the grounds that their inflexible standards deprive precociously thrill-seeking seven-years-olds of their God-given right to a place on the Tilt-a-Whirl?

The other thing is more under the surface. Clarett is going to Ohio State University. Now, maybe he isn't the best student; maybe he is in fact of that species of jock who disdains all book-learning as "weak." Maybe OSU is wasted on him.

Or maybe he does value the opportunity, but because a man is dangling million-dollar bills to draw him out of it, thinks he should do the "right" thing and earn major scrill instead.

All other things being equal (and they are not, if the NFL still objects), Clarett should have the opportunity to chuck his OSU diploma for a few more years of bigtime money. Isn't it sad, though, that such a choice is increasingly, and for so many people, a settled question -- fuck school, take the cash?

If I get Milstein right, he believes (on behalf of his client) that education is some kind of condition of servitude to be thrown off as soon as a money-earning opportunity turns up. I suppose a libertarian case can be made for this, just as it could be made for child labor, which is one of seven hundred reasons why I'm not a libertarian.

But this really goes beyond policy issues, because laws cannot touch what is rotten about this. Do we really think so little of our minds that we can't even consider their upkeep a nobler thing than a quick buck?

CITY OF SAPS. I hear they had some kind of concert in the Park last night. Dave something. Had a nice crowd, they say.

Unlike any concert in the Park I remember, though, this one required tickets for entry. Now, I don't have any interest in the watery Mr. Matthews, but even if I did, the idea of having to present a ticket stub to get onto the Great Lawn would have turned me right the fuck off. (And at the end of the day, when you get in, it's Dave Matthews. What a rook.)

I also understand that some people paid for their tickets. I assume these guys got preferential seating. If not, they're saps.

But it appears we are increasingly a city of saps. Things that were once ours by right of citizenship are regulated. Next thing you know, there'll be a dress code in Sheep Meadow. Or a red-yellow-green code for Fifth Avenue.

And what do the punters do about it? Nothing. From what I hear, they didn't even boo fucking Bloomberg, the most hated man in the City. I remember going years ago to a Mozart concert in the Park -- not even a rock concert! -- and when some coporate schlub came out and read the name of the corporate sponsor (Citibank or something equally repulsive), the air rang with loud, prolonged howls of outrage. "They're doing this for you," said the corporate schlub, "even if you don't know it." The booing redoubled.

The City has gotten too much into the habit of accomodating transients -- the college punks, the foreign investors, the career burnishers stopping off for a few resume enhancements before fucking off to Vail or St. Paul or where-the -fuck-ever. Once upon a time, you came to town and got kicked in the ass, and either you learned a little something from that or you left. New York was a problem you had to solve. The conflict between you and the Demos was what we used to call an educational experience -- you know, like boot camp. Asking New York to accomodate your own suburban reality would be like asking your drill sergeant to chill out. Not only was it not going to happen, it wasn't supposed to happen -- not if each new citizen were to learn the valuable New York lessons of life among different kinds of people with competing interests.

Now new people come to New York and the Mayor and everyone else try to make it as much like the gated communities whence they came as possible. Look at our lovely Park! You have your pass, of course?

Well, maybe next year we can have a riot or something.

AND HOW COULD I EVER REFUSE/I FEEL LIKE I WIN WHEN I LOSE. I had not realized that Bush's sole purpose in addressing the U.N. yesterday was the humiliation of our allies. Yet it would seem so, from the fulsome coverage on the Right.

John Podhoretz boo-yahs, "Bush did not say the United Nations was irrelevant. He also didn't say that the ground gets wet when it rains. Some things are irrefutable matters of fact even if they aren't discussed openly." "A diplomatic spanking," crows Clifford D. May.

David Frum likens the Europeans to a sheriff who is "too cowardly – or too corrupt – to do the job," and Bush to... oh, fuck it, you know how that meme goes.

Zev Chafets observes that when Bush got around to what many of us thought was his real business at the General Assembly -- asking for troops and money to clean up the mess he'd made in Iraq -- he "sounded like a bored teacher doling out busywork. Why not help Iraq write a new constitution? (You diplomats are good with fancy words and, anyway, we'll check everything over.)" Chafets even implies that Bush's references to the world sex trade was "slightly malicious" toward the delegates, in that many of them are "famously social." (Of course, Chafets has had other crazy notions in his time.)

The most fiery froth comes from General Ralph "Lock and Loathe" Peters. "Democrats will whine for weeks... Chirac -- a moral pygmy... The only myth greater than that of the French resistance is the myth of French charm," etc. (The General seems to back up Chafets: "The Germans, Belgians and French -- are the most notorious sexual predators in the developing world." Love to see that research report!)

Why does their savagery spike so? Well, it can't have been pleasant for these guys to admit that we wanted the Axis of Weasels' help in the first place. From "Bush signals he may skip U.N." (March) to "U.S. considers UN-backed force for Iraq" (September) is quite a distance to come down in six months. The Washington Times was palpably broken-hearted to report earlier this month that "European commentators reacted to the Bush administration's decision to enlist U.N. help in Iraq with somewhat smug satisfaction." Whut we doin' askin' them frogs fer he'p now?

Since politics is, to many these days, naught but a game of signals and shadow-puppetry, it matters less to these commentators what trade-offs and backstage deals are leading to the lukewarm resolution likely to come out of Turtle Bay this week, and more that it be seen as a smashing victory for President Flight Suit. The best way to wipe away the taint of Bush's reversal is to play up those aspects of his pitch that might be interpretted, however tendentiously, as in-your-face, WWF mockery.

They perhaps hope by this method to arrest the erosion of poll numbers currently suffered by their Leader. But if a speech and some spin could distract our attention from Wesley Clark, how little will it take to distract our attention from the speech and spin as well?

Probable answer: very little and less every time. By the time the election rolls around, expect to see operatives waving bright, shiny objects at voters right outside the polling booths. The only question is, will we go for it?

WORD. If you're a cultural reporter who wants to sell a story to National Review Online, Dan LeRoy ("a freelance writer who has contributed to Vibe, the Hartford Courant and Alternative Press") has the formula worked:

Step one: Pick a topic that no one at the magazine understands -- like hip-hop.

Step two: Focus on an easily-researched group within that category -- like the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network.

Step three: Use lots of proper names, but do no primary reporting.

Step four: Leave the editors in a cheerful mood by imagining the hip-hop community as a potential Republican voting bloc:

..it's hard not to imagine the shockwaves that could ensue if the music was used to fight a different, more destructive, power. Just imagine a Jay-Z or a P. Diddy joining forces with protesters for school choice. Or what might happen if such artists told the world that affirmative action (which didn't help them sell a single album, after all) has gone on long enough.

It looks easy and fun. Maybe I'll try it with, um, let's see, Idlewild. "Could 'You Hold the World in your Arms' be about UN Resolution 1441 after all? 'When you’re secure, do you feel much safer?/When days never change and it’s three years later...' Imagine dreamy frontman Roddy Woomble crooning that to Kofi Annan!" But hell, who wants to listen to that much Idlewild? Maybe I'll just write about my cats. "As Bella stalked the mosquito, her face took on the unflappable, can-do calm of George W. Bush on the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln. I think I'll buy her a little flight suit, and take her to visit Peggy Noonan."

I THINK God put our organs of reproduction in our laps because it looks funny when we spill stuff there.

CRAPTACULAR! Today my copy of the New York Post (filthy habit, I know, but I can't give it up) came free, thanks to AOL, which bought the edition out, nominally to publicize its Dave Matthews concert in the Park for some educratic boondoggle or other, but obviously, really, to give us mouth-breathers who constitute the Post's core audience a shiny new AOL 9.0 disk that may dazzle and extract money from us.

Then I got into work and turned on my computer, which turned on AOL's Instant Messenger, a nuisance our IT overlords foisted on us as a troubleshooting tool (which is more trouble than it is worth, and whose little running blob mascot I would dearly love to shoot). A little screen popped up, as it always does, showing the AIM homepage. Its "What's Hot!" news feature for the morning was called, "'Hey Mom, Want a Happy Meal?' McDonald's New Menu Item." This linked to a Netscape affiliated page, which linked to a CNN Health page (!!), all trumpeting this non-news event (re McDonald's latest diet swill, concocted with the aid of "Oprah Winfrey's personal trainer") in the guise of a lifestyle "story" or a health "story," though it is in fact nothing more than PR writ large.

Meanwhile one of the many AOL ads in today's Post tells me that AOL 9.0's spam filter makes this latest version of the McDonald's of softwares "about as ad-free as New York gets."

Which is setting the bar abysmally low.

Don't sell me, tell me! In fact, don't even tell me.

KURTZ' CASE. Stanley Kurtz, normally found in a damp bed in NRO's fever ward, sweatily tracking his many homosexual enemies with play-armies on his pillow, has apparently been wheeled to a nearby window, the autumn light from which seems to have dissipated his dark mania, albeit briefly.

Today he talks about how polarized we are as a nation. I like this game and I know how to play. I even take Kurtz' point that there seem to be many more full-throated political tracts, liberal and conservative, on the bestseller lists than ever before, and that this may imply a more politicized general public. I don't agree with him, of course -- by his logic, that recent era in which only rightwing tomes like The Way Things Ought To Be and Bias clogged the charts implied that we all of us went solidly right-wing for a couple of years -- but at least I can take him seriously...

...and then, alas! He devotes the last half his post to the Dixie Chicks. "The gulf between country fans who see the Chicks’ remarks as dishonorable," he writes, "and the Chicks themselves... shows that we are dealing with a cultural chasm." This isn't the first time he's dealt with the Chicks -- he previously questioned whether Natalie Maines was of Dixie at all, as a true DC would not impugn her President ("I would like her to try to make things right," he also whispered urgently). But it is the first time he has credited the popular singing group with world-historical importance.

Well, it's progress, anyway.

THE PERSONAL (INSULT) IS THE POLITICAL. NRO's Tim Graham on the Emmy Awards: "...funnier jokes. Especially asking the makers of Fox's 'Paradise Hotel' if they send each episode to the Smithsonian for its cultural excellence, or just shoot it into space to tell alien worlds about Earth's values. Nice conservative tinge to that."

Nice conservative tinge...? Did I miss the meeting? When did we treasonous, America-hating Democrats vote to support idiot reality shows?

Also, please advise: are Chris Rock and Jimmy Durante conservative or liberal humor? I want to make sure I'm not laughing at anything that might get me in trouble with the Central Committee.

Then we have that Lileks guy, who notes the very sweet story of the Honor Guard that stands watch on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington -- they were given the opportunity to leave their posts during the hurricane, and declined to do so -- and then reflexively feels the need to turn it into a smear upon his fellow citizens: "You can break down the entire country into two camps, two reactions to the story: 1. Bemusement. 2. Gratitude." Meaning, one supposes (all one can do in this case is suppose, the statement is so slovenly), that those of us who live in them there Big Cities are confused by this simple tale of honor or duty, as it has no references to deviant sex or Foucault-- while simple sod-bustin' souls such as hisself are moved to hum "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" in time to them clackin' keystrokes.

I despair for my country frequently, and one reliable source of such despair is this kind of bullshit, whereby folks identify themselves and their enemies by lifestyle and mistake this for political analysis. Don't these guys hang out with anyone who doesn't agree with them? If so, how do they explain to them the insulting and reductive portraits they scrawl of them every day?

That's why, though filled with poison myself, I try to confine my commentary to actual perpetrators and spare their peeps. When I go over the cliff, I want to take only the guilty with me. We belong dead!

FREE TO BE YOU AND ME, BUT NOT ON THE DIME OF THE BEE. The cool-kid bloggers ("the thing today is to care passionately, and be right-wing") are honking like geese about the Sacramento Bee blogger who, because of a "contentious statement" (sez the Bee ombudsman), is now subject to the horrible indignity of editorial oversight.

Imagine! A bylined writer for a major daily has to report to an editor! B. Franklin spins in his grave! Why, the whole idea is "inimical to sound and well-established blogging practices," sez Kaus (for an example of these practices in action, see here).

Like I could give a good rat's ass. As a longtime pro writer, I am aware that taking a publisher's shilling is not that different from taking the king's shilling -- it automatically puts one's deathless contributions to the journalistic arts at the mercy of others and their diverse agendas.

This sometimes leads to hair-raising abuses, such as this reported insertion of an uncalled-for and abusive editorial POV to a news story. But look -- you're reading about that abuse right now. Because ultimately the only meaningful oversight of overzealous or ignominious editorial practice is other papers (or magazines or weblogs or whatever). They're the only entities with a strong motivation to uncover this kind of stuff. I thought that, as free-market enthusiasts, the cool kids would understand that.

I wouldn't be shocked if more people have read about blogger Weintraub's problems than read his original post.

BTW, in case you were wondering, here's what got Weintraub in trouble (per the ombudsman's report):

Weintraub wrote that Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante "certainly owed his elevation to the job of Assembly speaker to his ethnic background and to the support he received from fellow Latinos. If his name had been Charles Bustmont rather than Cruz Bustamante, he would have finished his legislative career as an anonymous back-bencher."

Further, he alleged, "it's indisputably true that the Legislature's Latino Caucus advocates policies that are destructive to their own people and to greater California, in the name of ethnic unity." The caucus protested in a letter to Bee Publisher Janis Besler Heaphy.

I defend to the death, and all that, Weintraub's right to tell us that Bustamante got everything handed to him because he's Mexifornian, but that doesn't really imply a God-given right to paychecks from the Bee. If he chafes at his treatment, Weintraub can always go work for his defender, Matt Welch. A cut in pay may result, but isn't that what integrity is all about?

OLD SCHOOL TIES. Andrew Sullivan on Rhodes Scholars: "Almost to a man and woman, they are mega-losers, curriculum-vitae fetishists, with huge ambition and no concept of what to do with it."

Sullivan, according to his booking agents, "came to the U.S. on a Harkness Fellowship, the British equivalent of the Rhodes Scholarship."

Who knows what personal demons drive Sullivan? We are aware of his longstanding animus against Bill Clinton, a Rhodes Scholar who, having won the U.S. Presidency twice, hardly qualifies by any rational standard as a "mega-loser." Maybe he's talking about Kris Kristofferson, an entertainer whose audience is not limited to a small number of well-off conservatives.

Maybe he doesn't know what he's talking about, either.