WHEN BLOWHARDS ATTACK! I thought for sure this Thomas Hibbs thing would be the stupidest piece of written on the subject of Kill Bill:

Now, Tarantino is to be credited with forcing on his viewers a cognitive awareness of his film's liturgy of blood. The question is whether the surface irony is sufficient to justify the willing suspension of moral judgment, not moral judgments about the film's hypothetical causal effects on the behavior of already deranged adolescents but the indispensably moral element we bring to any work of art.

Makes Immanuel Kant sound like the Yellow Kid! But then this monstrosity emerged from the swamp, spewing hyperbole, and topped it:

Set aside what it says about contemporary Hollywood culture that the supposed liberal progressives of this city now ceaselessly mass-market presentations of butchering the helpless as a form of entertainment, even, as rewarding self-expression. Why do we suppose that, with Hollywood's violence-glorifying films now shown all around the world to billions of people... young terrorists around the globe now seem to view killing the innocent as a positive thing, even, a norm?

Me, I had already planned to give Kill Bill a miss, not because it causes terrorism, but because Tarantino sort of sucks.

YANKEES GO HOME. Jonah Goldberg has a long thing decrying the New York Times for backing a Sox-Cubs series. That the Good Grey Lady has money tied up in the Boston franchise does surprise me, but hey, that's capitalism, comrade. (Cut to Grady Little, wearing a Soviet uniform and leering: "The Yankees will buy us the horsehide with which Pedro Martinez will bean them!")

But Goldberg is mostly annoyed because the unexpected stance shows a lack of loyalty, which is "Cosmopolitan" -- not the good kind of Cosmopolitanism one sees in New York takeout menus, he explains, but the bad kind that makes you not care about nothin', and vote Democratic. Plus which, it's arrogant. "The Times is deciding what is best for the world," he says.

Two things. First of all, didn't Peggy Noonan tell us years ago that the "Democrats, God bless them, are Yankees"? Maybe the Times is just trying to show some editorial balance. First they hire David Brooks, now they turn against the Democratic Yankees.

Second, I think there's a simpler explanation. There are many New Yorkers who don't care for the Yankees. Some of us are Mets fans who, in our suffering, do not appreciate -- are in fact damned annoyed by -- the giant-foam-finger triumphalism of the Bombers. Frankly, any pretext for a Yankee pratfall would be okay by us, but how much better if it leads to a Series between two venerable clubs who have waited long decades for this moment?

I mean, Mike Bloomberg is in New York, too, and I don't particularly like him.

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE. I must thank Tim Graham for directing my attention to a hilarious Jimmy Breslin column, in which a junkie freshly released from Rikers seeks to replace Rush Limbaugh on WABC. (Of course, Graham does not approve of the column, but he does show us where it is, and that's good enough for me. Thanks, pal!)

Among Breslin's comments: "Until I found out Limbaugh was an addict on Hillbilly Heroin, which means you can call him a junkie, I couldn't understand how he could keep repeating the same lies day after day. Suddenly, we find that it wasn't Rush the right-wing radical talking. This was just a junkie's babble..."

Now, we're not supposed to laugh at poor Limbaugh. All kinds of former red-meat conservatives who bared their fangs when, say, Jesse Jackson was brought low have rallied 'round Rush, bemoaning his harsh treatment by the SCLM. "His enemies in the mainstream media have greeted his statement with nothing short of outright glee," blubbers John Podhoretz, who then, with astonishing chutzpah, lectures Rush's enemies on tolerance: "Present-day conservatives have our own brand of tolerance and compassion -- and we think they run deeper and are far less condescending than the liberal variety," he ungrammatically but passionately argues. "[Limbaugh] reserved his compassion for those whose tragic life experiences have been formed by the culture of welfare dependency... liberal racists who believe minorities cannot possibly succeed in America without special privileges and special help." (Indeed. Who can forget such vintage Rush bootstrap-philosophical perorations as "Take the bone out of your nose and call me back"?)

Taking pleasure in the fall of moral blowhards has been a lively pastime since before the days of Moliere. It was once even enjoyed by conservatives. And I imagine they'll get back to it after this little, um, interval.

I AM A CLICHE. "Roy Edroso is a really truly New York snarkster of the old school which I also like in a person." This assessment by Sisyphus Shrugged is depressingly accurate, especially when I'm drinking, even among the sunny lefty bloggers who gathered in New York on Friday to exponentiate their lofty thoughts. They were all very smart, sociable people, and I was struck by their similarity in this regard to the conservative bloggers I met at Sasha Castel's New York do last November. Of course, conservatives tend to dress up a little more and to order more expensive entrees. And they're wrong. But these are not crucial distinctions. It might be fun to see them all at a party together. Well, I'm not about to organize that, having been the linch-pin of too many debacles already, but maybe someone else has got sufficient mischief in his soul, and connections, to make it happen.

BUSH (AND BUTT) LIES. Another playful little entry at Instapundit about that fabled "Bush hatred":

UPDATE: Jim Treacher demolishes another alleged example of the same phenomenon, in this case an article blaming George Bush for low-hanging pants on women... Note to fashion writers: If you want to see Bush cement his hold on the male vote, just keep "blaming" him for skimpy women's fashions.

Idle curiosity led me to the link to Jim Treacher, whose money quote from the Slate thumbsucker in question is "Our economy is bad; we're entrenched in an occupation abroad; we mistrust our government at home." That article also mentions Chinese foot-binding, meralgia paresthetica, and Natural Born Killers.

All very silly and a typical example of overdetermined culture-watching and the need to fill pages at regular intervals. But who takes this stuff seriously? I sure don't, and I'm willing to believe nearly anything bad about Bush. I doubt even the author gave it much thought. (I hope not, for her sake.)

Treacher, though, goes ballistic: "It's George W. Bush's fault, just like everything else! WMD = Wow, Mamalicious Dimples! I mean, check it out, his name is BUSH. That's why chicks want to walk around with their BUSH sticking out. Get it?"

All told, Treacher's direct mentions of Bush (and bush) outnumber Slate's, five to zero. IP is reacting to Treacher, so by the time this bagatelle gets the major-blogger spotlight, it's perceived as another bleat of Bush hatred from the wimpified masses of liberal sheeple.

The blogosphere increasingly resembles the old gossip game "Telephone." I lament my own part in it, but I can't seem to stop myself either. Maybe it's time, in the words of the late lamented Donald O'Connor, to start suffering and write that symphony. Or, alternately, to stop suffering and write that symphony. Or anything else.

NEGRO PROBLEM. At NRO's The Corner this morning, Jonah Goldberg addresses a black person. Is this a first? Here is some of JG's response to a TAPPED post by Melanie Alston-Akers (the subject is a Hillsdale College ad about which no sane person gives a shit):

I'm sure it's possible that other blacks of different political persuasions, including conservatives, would draw the same conclusion as her about the ad. I am also sure that many blacks would not (I know this because I heard from some). I do not think those blacks are any less authentically black.

If you haven't read Alston-Akers' original post, you might assume from Goldberg's bit about the "authentically black" that she had accused Af-Ams who disagreed with her of Tomming or Oreohood. If you have read it, you know that she made no such claim -- unless you are of the sort who believes he knows the Angry Negro script backwards, and so just substitutes bits of it for the actual words of the darker person speaking.

What is it with this guy and black people?

THE POLITICIZATION OF EVERYTHING. George F. Will is pissed. "California's recall," he correctly notes, "[was] a riot of millionaires masquerading as a 'revolt of the people.'" (Quick, NROers! Send someone to The Corner to accuse Will of making class war!) Plenty more vinegar further down: "Schwarzenegger conservatives -- now, there is an oxymoron for these times..." "voters full of self-pity and indignation," etc.

I don't much like Will, but I have to admire his stay, as they used to call it. He's one of the few conservatives who does not undergo a sudden philosophical transformation whenever he thinks of Rainier Wolfcastle. He believes today what he believed last month, and so is appalled to see many former scourges of Clinton and preachers of governmental responsibility sucking up to a tit-grabbing power freak who has so far resisted any explanation of his gubernatorial action plan (unless you count waving that broom).

This is just another symptom of the growing politicization of everything. The sane response to the election would be, from Democrats, "too bad we lost," and from Republicans, "too good we won." But victory and loss are too binary for the electoral tea-leaf-readers, who have grown so numerous as to necessitate the creation of endless niche ideologies to accomodate their careers: would you like a gay post-Reagan English conservative, or a deranged Jewish former Black Panther? Or would Madame care to see something in a bullshit liberal?

So the recall is crushed and sifted and some conservatives decide it points the way to their future. Tireless GOP cheerleader Deborah Orin speaks in the New York Post of a "Terminator wing of the Republican Party " that will succeed by aping the examples of Wolfcastle and Giuliani. So, I guess if Bush gets in trouble next year, he can just feel up Condi Rice and divorce his wife for a quick electoral boost.

Most of the time I'm disgusted by what these people believe in, but increasingly I find that I am disgusted at nothing.

MORE BULLSHIT about how Tom Brokaw et alia are fighting for Saddam from General Ralph Peters. A sample:

Far too many journalists refuse to acknowledge the truth about their role in this age of endless news cycles and global access to reportage. Even when reporters don't make up the news, they make the news by selecting what they report.

Stop the presses -- Stories Revealed to Have "Angles"! Nuttier still is the notion of a "role" for the press, which Peters later expands with "the media must face up to the responsibility that goes with their influence." Dig below the permafrost of the General's hauteur and you'll see a fairly old-fashioned view of those who express views contrary to that of the state. Perhaps the General thinks the New York Times is run like Stars & Stripes. (Of course, not even George Patton could get Bill Mauldin kicked off S&S back in the day, so maybe the General has a different journalistic model in mind -- one that predates John Peter Zenger.)

BALLOT INITIATIVES FOR ME, BUT NOT FOR THEE. Few political boundaries can withstand star appeal. Already conservative backers of Governor Wolfcastle are making pre-emptive excuses for his upcoming term.

Mickey Kaus:

You want a tax increase if cutting the budget isn't enough to close the deficit? Schwarzenegger's the man for that too. As a nominal Republican, he is in a position to attract at least some Republican votes for a budget package that includes both taxes and cuts.

Quick, class -- what is the single issue that Wolfcastle ran on? Tax cuts! Very good! Well, in the immortal words of the Alleycats, nothing means nothing anymore.

More interesting is Kaus' suggestion that Wolfcastle move to "amend the state Constitution to get rid of the paralyzing requirement that two-thirds of the legislature approve any budget." If the two-thirds rule has any logic at all, it is that it makes it harder for larcenous political coalitions to hijack a budget. If Wolfcastle were to muscle this provision out of the state Constitution, it would not be for the benefit of the state's economy, but for the benefit of Two-Term Arnold.

A more breathtaking scam is proposed by David Frum. "Schwarzenegger won’t be able to change California," he deadpans, "unless he changes the way in which California is governed." Frum then proposes the death of Cali's easy ballot initiatives. "These constitutionally protected programs take priority over everything else the state does, including things that are less glamorous but more important... Schwarzenegger knows this well: after all, he entered politics with his own poll-tested budget proposal..." [emphasis mine].

If Arnold makes a terrible botch of things -- not an unimaginable event -- look for Frum to endorse an end to California's terribly unhelpful recall provisions.

MEME-ORIES LIGHT THE CORNER OF MY MIND. The golden days of the Fifth Column seemed to have passed. Things had been quiet along the traitor-baiting front, and conservatives had been content to portray liberals as, say, sex-fiends or as sissies, rather than as enemies of the state.

Now Bob Bartley comes running out of the woods hollering Hoo-ah! Let's do it again!:

...having won overwhelming public support, [Bush]now faces home-front guerrilla assaults as well.

The latter problem is the serious one. With press coverage starting to balance the good news and the bad, we're coming to understand that on the ground in Iraq the guerrillas are isolated. The Baathist remnants and Arab militants have nothing like the external sanctuary and superpower support that sustained the North Vietnamese and anti-Soviet Afghans. For the moment terrorists can still ambush Americans and assassinate pro-peace Iraqi leaders, but exhausting them is only a matter of time and patience.

Which of course is where the home-front guerrillas come in.

I think I may have heard a couple of other guys saying that liberals were giving aid and comfort to the enemy by saying mean things about Bush, but at the time I thought it was flashbacks. Can the eminence gris of Opinion Journal guide wingers back onto this particular warpath? I'll be watching with interest, and my passport handy.

NEO NUDNIKS. I must quickly fling some scorn on the New York Times Magazine's "Neo-70s" issue, which promotes the harebrained idea that because some 21-year-olds are wearing bro caps and bellbottoms, we are "doing" the 1970s again -- except without the sex, the drugs, the fun, or the talent.

Leading this badly misguided clue hunt is a stupefyingly bad essay by James Traub (registration required, dammit). This dweeb moved to New York the same year I did, but remembers the old days only as a series of muggings and murders, and says of our current, homogenized era, "If that was Yuppified, I'd take it" (in response to the only dissenting voice in his story, described only as "an aging hippie"). 70s New York, theorizes Traub, was Martin Scorcese; 90s New York is Neil LaBute. Yet still he defends that great lattefication! "The bourgeois bohemians, in David Brooks's pungent phrase," gushes Traub, "have turned areas that were no-go zones when I first came to New York into outposts of boutiquedom."

Then, after some obligatory Rudy-kissing ("New York got its swagger back: Giuliani rode high in the saddle..."), Traub begins to notice a problem -- businesses are leaving. (It would seem that, in the Traubian vision, all that is New York hinges on the migration patterns of banks and brokerage firms.) And without the big, big money, where will we get latte consumers? "The question," Traub says, in a sentence the hopefulness of which degenerates in an almost beautiful way, "really comes down to whether the city can not only attract but also keep all those bright, eager, ambitious people who flock here, despite the high taxes, the restrictive regulations, the sky-high real-estate prices, the poor schools, the deteriorating services."

I thank Traub for a good laugh there, but my gorge rises again at his suggestion (delivered quickly, as if the author had suddenly noticed the near-fulfillment of his word count) that our city's solution may be "more theater, more cafes, more bookshops." (Hey, kids, let's put on some Neil LaBute!) "Let the bankers leave for Stamford; we'll make do with the radio-car drivers, the bartenders and the graphic designers."

You fucking Yuppie dipshit. You and your asshole friends drove our rents through the roof -- now who can afford to open a theatre? And even if we had access to a theatre (or a dance studio, or a film collective, etc), how could we afford to do anything other than the most explicitly commercial work, the cost of living here being what it is? You made this nightmare for us, and now you're willing to wave it off and decree that a cultural renaissance is in order. Tell me, when you came here (maybe on the same train as me), did you begin immediately to brown-nose the Times' management? Then you probably have a nice financial package to insulate you against the worsening economic times. So you'll forgive the rest of us -- "the radio-car drivers, the bartenders and the graphic designers," not to mention the actors, writers, musicians, etc., for not sharing your sangfroid. I'll say this, though: if the murderers, junkies, squeegee men, et alia do come back, I'll kiss the motherfuckers if they manage to drive you and everyone like you out of my city.

GUN NUTTINESS. Instapundit suggests that an alleged drop in the American murder rate (I say "alleged" because his source is the Washington Times) shows that "liberalized handgun-carry laws" aren't a bad thing. An arguable point, but instead of developing it, the Ole Perfesser decides to gild his lily by gloating over an increase in gun crimes in Britain "despite a near-complete handgun ban."

I'll say this for the Second Amendment folks -- they aren't selfish: they want gun rights not only for themselves but for everyone, including those who don't want them at all.

If the idea here is to assert that the more guns you have, the less crime you have, I have to ask if the Perfesser has ever heard of a small community called New York City. Here we have experienced huge drops in the murder rate several years running. It may surprise the Perfesser to note that this was not achieved by handing out service revolvers to the citizenry. Quite the contrary:

The NYPD gun strategy uses felony arrests and summonses to target gun trafficking and gun-related crime in the city. NYPD pursues all perpetrators and accomplices in gun crimes cases and interrogates them about how their guns were acquired. In a proactive effort to get guns off the streets, the NYPD's Street Crime Units aggressively enforce all gun laws.

Also, "New York City has some of the most restrictive local licensing requirements for Federal firearm dealers in the country."

By the Perfesser's logic, we should be drowning in our own blood, and our few surviving citizens begging him and his hayseed brethren to throw us a cache of weapons to stop the violence.

I am willing to accept that, as a citizen of a great metropolis, I'm not always sensitive to the ways and means of folks living in the vast Central Suburbs. I just wish they'd show us the same consideration sometimes.

ADDENDUM. Somebody has responded to this bit with mild, Vermont-style demurrers on gun rights in general. I had imagined that my earlier essay on the subject was so widely known that it didn't need mentioning, but I see now that I was deluded. I'm pretty cool with the Second Amendment. I don't think gun laws are necessarily good or bad -- I think the good ones are good and the bad ones are bad. What's a good gun law? Roughly, one that doesn't interfere with your right to bear arms or the legitimate government function of keeping the commons safe (i.e., free of crime sprees and casual violence). I swear this Venn diagram shows a lot more overlap if you look at it from a disinterested POV.

MOVIE NIGHTS. I've been called a crank, and can't deny it, but I'm a crank like Dennis Hopper was an asshole in Out of the Blue. "You think I'm an asshole!" he roared as he poured his own beer over his head. "Alright! I'm an asshole!" Then he showed that he hadn't poured the entire beer over his head. "But," said Hopper, "I'm not a fucking asshole!"

I am not a fucking crank, and so enjoyed School of Rock this weekend. It has no characters to speak of, and nothing is at stake; all the plot complications are laughable, as are the Lessons in Life. (Fancy Jack Black telling anyone that rock isn't at least partly about sex and drugs.)

But the movie is a crisp bit of product with a great idea in the middle. Actually I think you have to have a bit of crank in you to fully appreciate it. (I'm not talking about meth, but I suppose that would help too if you could sit still long enough to watch the thing.) Because the idea that kids today need to be schooled in the art of rock is very cranky. It's epiphanic for greybeards such as myself when Black asks what the kids like and they uniformly cite unspeakably lame contemporary radio staples -- and Black cries, "What are they teaching you in this school?" and draws up a flow-chart of rock history. Robert Christgau couldn't have cranked it up better.

The movie panders L.A.M.F., but surprise, it's me and mine that are being pandered to. About time! So I raise my goblet of rock to it.

Also saw Lost in Translation, aka Antonioni for Dummies. Murray and Johansson are cute, but I wonder how the movie would have worked if everyone they loved or came in contact with hadn't been such morons.

JONAH GOLDBERG'S ANALYTIC METHOD REVEALED. "Surely, spending a billion dollars to turn around one criminal is too much, even if it would work. No one's proposing spending a billion dollars per prisoner, but the point remains the same. "

THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT NEEDS NO SNAPPY HEADLINE. "A White House official I spoke to was particularly pleased by the increased hiring of temporary workers, which he sees as a good sign about robust economic growth to come." -- Ramesh Ponnuru, NRO.

CAL GOP SCRAMBLES FOR COUNTERSCANDALS! Via the Right's most reliable apparatchik, this story about Carl Reiner (!) on Chris Matthews (!?) is headed down the media stream:

What Reiner said, with a kind of comfortable, humorous familiarity, was "Shfartze-negger"...

Reiner returned to a modified, less-offensive version of the pronounciation later in the conversation, but what remains recorded for all to hear is kind of ugly. The first half of "Shfartze-negger" is the Yiddish version of the N-word. The second, appended to the first half with humorous irony, was apparently intended to mean what it sounded like.

So, if I understand this correctly, the guy thinks Reiner called Schwarzenegger a nigger.

Sorry, try again.

A CULTURAL DISADVANTAGE. Speaking on Rush Limbaugh's idiotic comments about the Philly QB, Jay Nordlinger makes this interesting statement:

I’m reminded of something that I’ve discovered in recent years. I work in Conservativeland, and I’m used to speaking freely. I’m used to not having to abide by a speech code or any other restriction of political correctness. And then sometimes I leave Conservativeland, and continue to speak freely--and sincerely--and then find that I startle people. They’re not used to hearing it.

Well, that's right, we're not. The Mother of All Dittoheads goes out in front of millions of sports fans and says -- freely, certainly; sincerely, who knows -- that McNab hasn't been "that good from the get-go. I think what we've had here is a little social concern in the NFL. I think the media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well." And those of us who are not convinced that a pro-Negro conspiracy, aided and abetted by the liberal media, has foisted an unskilled quarterback on the unwilling Eagles, are startled.

Meanwhile another Limbaugh, David, tells the world that liberals are "waging an undeclared war on Christianity." The book's cover is graced by a lion, apparently comparing the plight of American Christians to that of the biblical Daniel. Piquant as I find the thought that Ted Kennedy, the ACLU, and a handful of others have got the Prince of Peace and his millions of adherents on the ropes, I cannot take it seriously for a second -- even after no less keen an observer than Ann Coulter has told me that Limbaugh's book "makes you cry for your country" and "wonder how much longer America can survive liberalism." In fact, I cry with laughter, and wonder how anyone, in a land bejewelled with churches, and led by a President who talks about Jesus all the time, could believe such hooey.

I am equally mystified by the invitation by Ned Flanders (aka Rod Dreher) of the Dallas Morning News (registration required) to weep for conservative journalists. In the "overwhelmingly secular" atmosphere of newsrooms, Flanders tells the huddled, shivering conservative scribes, "you will have to distinguish yourself by the strength of your writing and reporting." Not like those liberal journalists, who merely have to commit sacrileges for their paychecks. (Flanders, by the way, preceded his Dallas stint with plum gigs at the New York Post and the National Review, so I'd say he's wearing his persecution remarkably well.)

You'd think that after all the time I've spent in Conservativeland, merrily mining such profound observations as the abovementioned for this site, that their free-thinking ways have not rubbed off on me. Yet, when I see an underperforming black professional athlete, I don't assume he is employed merely as a token; I remain unconvinced that Christians are about to be holocausted by the Democratic Party; and I marvel that an industry dominated by Fox News can be called unwelcoming of right-wing reporters.

Must be a cultural thing.

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.)