THE NICE OLD MAN WHO LOOTED OUR TREASURY. In the late 1970s I lived in the East Village and worked as a busboy. I made less than ten thousand dollars a year, but that wasn't so bad because I was getting food stamps, and my rent was only $125 a month. When I had health problems, I went to the public clinics -- $5 got me in the door.

Envious? You should be. Not of my life, of course -- I wouldn't wish that nightmare on anyone. No, you should envy America as it was for a little while, after the Great War and before Reagan.

Because back then, we all got a little more slack. One did not have to work day and night to break even. There were lots of people who kept small families in modest homes on a single income, believe it or not. The idea that the Mom and Pop of a family would both be working and still have money trouble -- sometimes bad money trouble -- was absurd.

If you stumbled, the government would help you up -- after all, that's what we pay taxes for (as people used to say quite a lot, back when they were in fact getting something from their taxes besides foreign wars). Easy access to benefits meant not only that you didn't have to starve, but also that you didn't have to worry too much. Life was good.

That was the post-war West. Then Reagan came in, and the slack got considerably taken up.

Many of us got some tax relief -- though ordinary earners got less of this (and had some of it taken back by other means) than the more wealthy, who cleaned up. Entitlements petered out, and public service agencies were replaced by your dwindling savings account and the credit card companies -- just like welfare, except you have to pay it back at 26% interest! Our current leaders may not like the resulting, massive personal bankruptcy rate, but at least (I imagine them laughing to themselves), they don't have to pay for it.

In the Reagan era you were hooted off the carpet if you sought money for milk and bread -- but you had much better luck if you had a business plan. Entrepreneurs were lionized for their grit and determination, even if they bent the rules a little (this thinking seems since then to have developed into a full-fledged alterative culture, of which the Enron generation represents the highest stage of development). Entrepreneurs became the new avatars of American individualism, and people talked seriously of electing boardroom clowns like Lew Lehrman and Donald Trump to high office.

All this was sluiced and greased by an enormous hemorrhage of public funds. This now-chronic superdebt, which only abated under Clinton and is of course being run up again, necessitates drastic actions just to keep us out of the global poor house. So we sell an increasingly large chunk of our debt to foreign speculators. And we stress productivity -- the mantra of the age, the leading indicator of leading indicators for Reaganite economists. We work harder and harder every year to maintain this "economy" -- which word was once a plain descriptive term for a large abstraction, but is now apparently the name of some cruel bitch-goddess that must be served and offered sacrifice.

Reagan did that. With a smile and a shoeshine he turned off the spigots of slack. Today very few of us head home when we hear the five o'clock whistle; either overtime is semi-mandatory for us, or we don't have a job. DVD players are cheap, but milk costs $4 a gallon. We worship money and success, yet prate about values. All this is his legacy. You can thank him for it if you like.

A SUPPOSEDLY FUN THING THAT WAS ACTUALLY FUN. Awards shows are one of my weaknesses, but I often miss the Tonys. I go to the theatre so rarely that I don’t know what’s at stake, and I figure if I wanted to feel left out I’d go to a family reunion. This year I’ve been watching, though, and it’s been a pleasure. Hugh Jackman is an adroit and personable host -- he even high-kicked with the Rockettes, and made a comical show of being winded from it. The pace is brisk, even the winners (alternately weepy and hysterical) keep it up. The speeches are more articulate and often surprising, as when Bryan F. O’Byrne turned his into an ad for his show. But the whole thing was great advertising for theatre in general. The production numbers were fun. There was even a Roger Miller song! (And a few of the usual award-show howlers: LL Cool J brought out Carol Channing, and in the audience theatre newbie Sean Combs stared at her like he didn't know who she was.) What a pleasure to watch a special event that really was.

COME BACK TO THE HUSTINGS, AL HONEY! It has been my pleasure, nay, my glee, to vote for the Reverend Al Sharpton every time he appears in a Democratic primary. But now (via Wonkette) I fear he may have gone Hollywood on us:

Reverend Al Sharpton will join CNBC's political team of contributors and commentators covering the upcoming Democratic and Republican National Conventions, it was announced today by Cheryl Gould, Vice President, CNBC and supervisor of CNBC's political coverage. In this role, Sharpton will share his insights and perspectives on "Capital Report" (T-F, 7-8 p.m. ET), "Dennis Miller" (M-F, 9-10 ET/PT) and "McEnroe" (debuting Wednesday, July 7 at 10 p.m. ET, airing M-F, 10-11 p.m. ET/PT) as well as other CNBC weekend programming.

"Having run for the Democratic nomination, Reverend Sharpton brings to our viewers an insider's perspective on Presidential politics," said Gould.

"McEnroe"?

When I first heard the news I'd hoped the Rev would be doing economic commentary along the lines of his magnificently muddled response to Peter Jennings' question about the Federal Reserve in a Democratic debate earlier this year. He will be engaging in his new role, I'm sure. But we really need him up there at the various lecterns of electoral pretense, speaking gibberish to power. The grim pleasures afforded by our less overtly buffoonish candidates make too thin a gruel without him.

Let us hope the Reverend imagines this a springboard from which to launch a Mayoral run. (I'm already pledged to Freddy Ferrer, but I could be persuaded.)

CONDITIONAL RESPONSE. Roger L. Simon (the "L" is for conservative) wonders why liberals who were so exercised about the murders committed by the Pinochet regime aren't complaining about the crimes committed by the Saddam Hussein regime.

As a credible spokesperson for the entire left, let me say that the crimes of Saddam Hussein were a very bad thing. Any disagreement, fellow traitors? Good.

The Nixon Adminstration, of course, assisted Pinochet in his bloody overthrow of the elected Allende Government and the Ford Administration was practically complicit in some of the ensuing Pinochet-era "disappearances". I don't recall anyone suggesting that we invade Chile, take over, and install a more democratic government. That would hardly make sense, since we had done so much to ensure the opposite result.

As for other points of comparison, I have a hard time keeping straight the various rationales for the Iraq invasion -- WMDs, stabilization of the region, freedom for the Iraqi people -- so I'll wait until they get that sorted out before treating it further. I will say that Simon's former comrades do show some consistency in objecting when the Government engages in foreign adventures that make no fucking sense.

A DOG FROM HELL. Saw the Bukowski doc, Born Into This. Rather a shambles, but worth an afficionado's while. It puts a little cement into the cracks of his life story.

Since he came into his own in middle age, Bukowski's younger days have been poorly documented, except by himself, and no one tells his own story quite straight. It was then a special pleasure to see one of his old post office colleagues, enjoying what appears to be a middle-class California retirement and sounding like a Brooklyn wiseguy out to pasture, tell how Bukowski's bad clothing, "heavy features" and thuglike bearing made him hard to get to know. He also says that the great author referred to his then-missus "in a derogatory way that men sometimes talk about women." (He notes that, when he finally met her, he had to agree that Bukowski's wife did have a fat ass. "I mean," he adds generously, "if you like 'em big...")

But the colleague agreed that Post Office, which describes events he must have witnessed, is "true to life." And another guy in the film talks about seeing an ordinary Joe, on an L.A. bus in the 60s, laughing his ass off at a Bukowski piece in Open City. (This is the hippie journal Bukowski calls "Open Pussy" in his stories about it, and it is a howl to see his byline on its mangey, off-the-pigs pages.) This made me wonder momentarily: why isn't Bukowski better known, better read? His descriptions of the struggles of men and women, and of men and men, and of the "gut-wringing machine" that endeavors to take hold of nearly everyone in this society, can't be too far out for ordinary Joes to appreciate.

But of course there are impediments: a lot of dirty words and dirty scenes, of course. And the bleakness, or what could be taken for bleakness if you don't or can't believe that happiness is mostly a fleeting, accidental, and poetic thing.

There's more archival footage of Bukowski in Born Into This than I'd ever seen before. In one of the clips he says that love is like the fog that gathers on the fields at dawn before the sun burns it off. Seen one way, this is a bleak, even morose, way to look at it. But to the poetic mind, the fog is no less beautiful for being evanescent. And, of course, it always comes back.

THE NEO-CATHOLICS. I've commented before on the Catholic fetish among some right-wing operatives. I note that many of these members of the Opus Duh are converts, like Lew Lehrman, who flipped after losing the New York governorship to Mario Cuomo in 1982 (I mean "flipped" in the sense of going over; Lehrman had clearly flipped in the other sense long before that.)

Another such is Duncan Maxwell Anderson, "president of High Tor Media, Inc., a book-packaging company based in New York." Why this functionary was awarded a key spot in a Friday New York Post editorial page is a mystery known only to Murdoch, but I for one am glad of it, else I would have missed some extraordinary morsels of religious mania, of which, as a connoisseur, I can never get enough.

First, this Catholic of 15 years berates Catholic Cardinals for exhibiting unmanly compassion for Saddam Hussein. Anyone aware of the teachings of one J. Christ, Esq., might think love for even the least of our brothers is part of the deal. But Anderson, as a new Catholic -- a neo-Catholic, one might say -- has a different vision of the so-called Prince of Peace:

I am a Catholic convert, baptized 15 years ago this Sunday. Growing up seeing the greeting-card Jesus — a hapless-looking, bearded man in pyjamas — I didn't "get" Christianity. What changed everything was the day I saw a 16th-century painting of Jesus after his resurrection. He had just blasted his way out of his own tomb. He extended his pierced hand to Abraham, to rescue him and the other patriarchs from Limbo and bring them home to heaven.

This Jesus was forceful, businesslike and respectful — like . . . well, like a Marine.

Brecht famously joked that if the government and the people disagreed, the government should throw out the people and get a new one. Clearly the neo-Catholics think what's needed is fundamental change right at the top! A little Gibson gore, a little WWE 'tude, and we've got a Jesus for the New World Order -- one that shoots first and heals lepers later.

A BREAK FROM THE POLITICAL CRAP TO TALK ABOUT SOMETHING REALLY IMPORTANT. From WMC-TV Memphis:

A new movie based on the life of Johnny Cash will be filmed in Arkansas, Memphis and Nashville.

It stars Joaquin Phoenix as Cash and Tennessee native Reese Witherspoon as his wife, June Carter Cash.

The movie will chronicle Cash's life from 1955 to 1968, a period that includes his Sun recordings in Memphis and his battles with drugs and alcohol.

All props to Joaquin, but I think they shoulda got this guy. Some years back he and D. J. Mendel, a genius with whom I used to play in Lancaster County Prison (the band, not the facility), put together this bizarre performance, in which Cucuzza alternated between unearthly cool and blazing-eyed mania, pausing between numbers to grab fistfulls of pills out of his pocket and throw them into his mouth. I think he caught some of Johnny there, in an expressionist way.

Good as Phoenix is, I don't know if he can pull it off. There's a great stillness in the middle of Cash even at his most manic, like a big stone at the bottom of a raging river. I think they maybe oughta find some half-starved retard out in the hills and have him lip-synch. And get Hans-Jurgen Syberberg to direct.

Cash was really terrible in his own film debut, "Five Minutes to Live." Anybody see his other movies?

OUT FOR A SMOKE. Crazy Jesus Lady is freeform today -- young people are stupid liberals, Europeans should bend the knee to Rome, etc. -- but at one point in her unmoored ravings, she lights on the topic of smoking:

...as we all know, the banners of cigarettes are on and of the left, and the resisters of the banners are on the right... Why did the left change its stance on what it calls personal freedom regarding cigarettes and cigars? What was the logic? And please, if you are on the left, would you answer this question for me?

Listen, Crazy Jesus Lady: I'm as Left as they come. I'm talking entrails-of-the-last-priest Left. And I smoke. I'm down from a pack to half a pack a day, with major regressions. One day I'll quit, either by ceasing to smoke or by dying. Meantime I smoke when I write, after meals, when I'm waiting for a bus, between takes -- oh, the list is endless.

And it has never occurred to me, nor to anyone I know for that matter, that the smoke-stopping Nannyism of, say, Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg had anything to do with the Rights of Man and the Third International. Some granola types might egregiously wince and fan their faces when I light up. I just assume they're crunchy conservatives.

Politicians make up a tiny percentage of the population. I don't know how many Democratic officeholders back smoking bans and I'm only interested enough to get the names of the ones I can help vote out of office. I do know that none of the Lefty friends with whom I spend the evenings aborting developed fetuses and drinking toasts to the Devil supports smoking bans. Not one.

Oh, and contrary to another deluded generalization popular in your tribe, we also don't believe in restricting ourselves or anyone else to "politically correct" language, either. You stupid fucking cunt.

MORNING JOG AROUND NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE. Andrew Leigh interviews Roger Simon, and uncovers this pause-giving news: "At present [Simon is] also co-writing a screenplay with Michael Ledeen, a foreign-policy expert and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who is also an NRO regular. Simon is keeping the project close to his vest, and will say only that it is a thriller related to the war on terror." I hear the Left is retaliating with a action picture co-scripted by John Kenneth Galbraith and Spike Jonez.

Cathy Siepp provides her own blog seminar with more coverage than these things usually get. Either no one said anything interesting, or she doesn't take very good notes (I'm guessing both). Quote of the day: Mickey Kaus says, "If I'm on the left, the left is in big trouble." Suddenly I'm full of hope for the 2004 elections.

Of course, wander into The Corner and it's the usual monkey-cage-at-underfunded-zoo scene. Stung by a report that Bush is losing the "country folk," Jonah Goldberg races in with fresh anonymous letters of support, one of which actually begins with "I reckon"! I wonder which of them sent it -- Jeb, Jethro, or Granny? (Actually I think it was concocted by a committee of hacks hired by Milburn Drysdale.)

Ah. A morning visit to these guys is as bracing as a tour of Bedlam.

WHITE MAN'S BURDEN #383,966. Recently the President said that "people whose skins are a different color than white can self-govern." A noble sentiment. Does General Ralph "Blood 'n' Guts" Peters disagree, I wonder, or does he just have a slightly different interpretation?

At great expense, we put an entire country into rehab. While the Kurds are already clean and sober, if Iraq's Arabs choose to backslide into the regional addiction to corrupt governance, it's a lick on them, not on us...

...the Iraqis don't yet know how they'll view our efforts in the end -- it will take them years to sort out their emotions and conclusions...

Iraqis have experienced revolutionary, disorienting change... Still confused and frightened, they don't quite know how they feel about themselves, our troops or their country's future...

Baghdad will soon have its own nascent government -- and it's not necessarily a bad thing that we didn't get our way in choosing its leaders. We're in danger of becoming an overly protective parent. We need to let the kid ride the damned bike and fall down a couple of times.

I guess it could be said that the General, like the President, does believe the Iraqis can govern themselves, since he speaks of their coming republic with hope. But what sort of a government may we expect from the disoriented, alcoholic children Peters portrays? Will it be like Lord of the Flies? Over the Edge? Animal House? Full House?

"The time will come for us to leave Iraq," says the General, "But it's not here yet." Well, maybe we can hire a sitter.

DEFINING RELEVANCY DOWN. Dean Esmay was pissed that some clown depicted U.S. soldiers as Nazis, so he showed an odd little cartoon depicting an anti-war protestor running away after stabbing a U.S. serviceman in the back. Some good people have found this a bit much. Esmay, being a reasonable, moderate fellows, responds with insults:

if you think our troops are Nazis, baby-killers, terrorists, etc. you're an anti-American jerk who's stabbing our troops in the back by emboldening our enemies and demoralizing our people.

Later, in comments, Esmay lowers his threshold of contempt:

I don't think we went to war based on lies, and I think you have to be a pretty hateful person to think we did.

I knew that "Bush=Hitler" people were considered beyond the pale by right-wing -- excuse me, moderate types. But now, it seems, doubting Bush's veracity in the Iraq run-up makes one "hateful" as well.

As we get closer to the election I expect this threshold will drop even more. Get ready for it: "If you think Jesus doesn't speak through George W. Bush, you are beneath contempt." "It is morally objectionable to propose a national health-care policy." "How dare you come here to this little citadel of freedom, this polling booth, and stab our troops in the back by attempting to vote for John Kerry!"

Actually I think we're there already.

JESUS FREAK. Julia/Sisyphus Shrugged directs our attention to Andrew Sullivan's NYT review of the new Tony Hendra book. She has already called bullshit on Sullivan's bizarre notion of sexual guilt (a 14-year-old boy is seduced by a grown woman, and Sullivan blames the lad), but being a partisan hack I was more entranced by this bit:

How did a man known for left-wing screeds and biting satire come to write a book that -- I'm not exaggerating -- belongs in the first tier of spiritual memoirs ever written?

Yeah, how the hell did a liberal (with a sense of humor, no less) come within waving distance of the One True God? I mean, it's tough enough for us who are without sin and perpetually casting the first stone.

COYOTE INSURANCE. Says Lileks: "Yesterday marked the third Memorial Day since 9/11 to pass without a terrorist attack on America. Spin the war however you like; that has to count for something."

You know that old gag, right? This sharper comes in and demands money. "What for?" asks the mark. "Protection against coyotes," says the sharper. "Are you crazy? There's not a coyote for miles around here!" says the mark. "See what a good job I'm doing?" says the sharper, holding his hands out, aaaannnd... scene.

Maybe the Iraq War has kept Tony Danza from doing another TV series. That alone might swing me toward Bush.

I mean that in an unserious, Michael Totten way, of course. As you all know, I hate this fucking country and want to see it defeated by militant Islam, which totally rocks. That's why I'm voting for John Kerry: I look forward to the moment at the Inauguration when he says, "So help me God," and suddenly a plane smashes into the Washington Monument and the Democratic members of Congress whip off their false heads and reveal themselves as hairy, dark-skinned, turbaned terrorists, gibbering "Allah Akbar" and throwing anthrax around like Rip Taylor.

If the war in Iraq has, by some mysterious mechanism, protected us from terrorist attack, maybe a war against Syria will save us from high gas prices, outsourcing jobs, global warming, Mr. Tooth Decay, etc. What the hell, it's worth a shot, right?

Also, Lileks is delighted that store clerks in a Minneapolis Gap recognized him as a writer. They "had been whispering about something there being a writer upstairs," he heard. Don't sweat it, Jimbo -- you should hear them when there's a black man in the store.

IMAGINARY FRIENDS. You have to give credit to alleged centrist Michael Totten. He is a much cannier Bush operative than those full-throated ravers who have no need or desire for protective coloration. Take his recent attack on Pat Buchanan, who decries the allegedly feminist ideas he thinks the Bushies are trying to impose on devoutly Muslim Middle Easterners.

Pitchfork Pat is clearly nuts, railing against the promulgation of the "60s revolution that devout Christians, Jews, and Muslims have been resisting for years." But he happens to use the word "imperial" in his anti-sex rant. Totten grabs this and uses it as a stick to beat the Left:

Take out the word "godly" and Pat Buchanan sounds like a tin-foil hat leftist… He actually used the language of the left to say people like me are possessed by the devil… No one does better than Pat Buchanan in fusing the worst of both into a unifying and idiotic morass.

I think there are a few liberals in my audience. Who here supports Pat Buchanan? Who here has ever supported Pat Buchanan? I didn’t think so. So how are we mobbed up with him? The use of the word "imperial"? Here’s Totten in a previous incarnation: "Syria should be a member of the Axis of Evil. It is, after all, an imperial Arab Nazi terrorist state."

What? You say Totten was using the term in a very different sense? What are you, some kind of moral relativist?

When you get tired of this, you can go see Tacitus (scroll to May 30) pretending he was open to a Kerry Presidency until he learned that the Senator from Taxachusetts didn’t think a preemptive Israeli strike on Iran was a good idea.

I have enough fake friends in real life without the internet variety.

MEMORIAL. I know you all think of me as a hardened New York wise guy, and I love you for it, but I have my sentimental side, and so attended a Memorial Day parade, not in the big city, but in a small Connecticut town. A large segment of the populace turned out for the event. They lined the streets seated on lawn-chairs, curbs, and the grassy knoll of the town square, at the crest of which an old monument to the victory at Gettysburg -- brass statue, stone pillar -- was adorned with wreathes on thin wire stands, left by local VFW posts and dotted with paper poppies.

Some held small, stiff muslin flags mounted on thin sticks. Others held styrofoam coffee cups (the parade started about 10 am). Nearly everyone seemed to meet someone he or she knew coming down the sidewalk. The town is small enough that this is a genuine social event. Here and there teenagers clotted together, but they would be approached by adults that they kmew -- parents, friends of parents, teachers -- and would receive them warmly. That done, the boys in Slipknot and Method Man t-shirts and gigantic blue jeans would go on making time with the cheerleaders who were taking a break from their march duties. The cheerleaders, like most of the young girls, wore plenty of makeup and seemed energized by the prospect of their public display. I observed a couple of these chatting with a lad who cheerfully threw fun-snaps at them, which assault they protested unconvincingly.

Every local civic group seemed to have a place in the parade. Primacy went to the veterans, especially the WWII vets, walking majestically if sometimes with halting step in their ill-fitting uniforms and smart, peaked garrison caps. There were police and fire battalions, the latter sometimes represented by antique fire trucks (including a Ford F-800 "Big Job," and a Seagrave with a wooden grille). There were marching bands of varying ages and levels of expertise, one of which played "Stars and Stripes Forever" so poorly it came out as a forlorn dirge, but we clapped because it was the best they could do. The cheerleaders and drum majorettes ran their paces with great concentration. Then came soccer teams, youth groups, local beauty queens, and various random gaggles of citizens, waving and scanning the crowd for friends. At last a few police cars with lights slowly and silently strobing signalled the finish, and the audience dispersed to their homes and barbecues.

It was delightful. No one had to underline the themes of sacrifice and service. The parade passed, as it had for years, as it will certainly pass next year, observed in the same manner, with trucks and tunes and flags and coffee. This is memorial enough. What the blood of the fallen has purchased is well known, and it is left to us to celebrate, without portent or pomposity, their wonderful gift.

ONE OF THE GIANTS OF MODERN CONSERVATIVE THOUGHT. Jonah Goldberg:

I've been very impressed with the fluency a lot of these [liberal] folks do have with their intellectual traditions... That said, all of this kind of reminds of when Nixon declared that it was obvious to him the world is overpopulated because wherever he went he saw huge crowds.

Moments earlier, Jonah Goldberg:

... for reasons I can only assume are coincidental I saw more people with broken arms around London over a few days than I have in the preceding couple years. Is there a reason so many Brits are busting their wings?

Why do I pay attention to what Goldberg writes when he can't seem to do it himself?

YOU'S A EDUCATED FOOL. Culture scold James Bowman writes yet another long sneer at pop-culture studies, treating dismissively a host of comically-named tomes treating the deeper meanings of The Sopranos, Sex & The City, etc. Though Bowman does express some admiration for one such work that suggests The Simpsons is pro-family, on the rest he employs eye-rolling phrases ("purports to give a philosophical analysis," "unadulterated jargon of real-life scholars," "the more feminist the analysis, the less lighthearted -- and readable") to communicate his customary message: that professors, like artists, are fools to look for deeper meaning in absurdities.

Meanwhile over at NRO, we get not one but two articles about how the Kate Hudson vehicle Raising Hell represents an overdue reinterpretation of eccleasiastics in modern society. They don't use that kind of language, of course (consider their audience) -- theirs goes more like this: "...audiences will fall for Pastor Dan specifically because he is just like a typical pastor -- likeable. Likeable, and strong, and funny, and, yes, sexy."

Pastor Dan is played by the guy who did the radio show on Northern Exposure, and here's Megan Basham, the author quoted above, describing his courtship of the Kate Hudson character:

In one scene, shortly after they meet, Dan asks Helen if she'd like to go out sometime. When she shakes her head no, he starts to leave. But then, realizing how blind she is, he turns back and glowers, "It's because I'm not one of those model, club-hoppin' guys right? So you don't think I'm sexy?" Embarrassed and not knowing how to respond, Helen stands frozen until Dan marches back toward her, leans in, and growls, "Let me tell you something little lady, I am sexy. I'm a sexy man of God, and I know it."

If you think that's sexy, you'll cream your jeans over Tony Perkins in Crimes of Passion.

This sort of thing happens anytime something pops up in a book or movie or trend that could be interpreted, by minds obsessed with such things, as an endorsement of conservative politics or mores. (See Mark Gauvreau Judge on Swing Dancing for a particularly lurid example.) I don't see how this is any sillier than monographs about TV shows. Maybe James Bowman can explain it sometime.

STRANGE INTERLUDES.This is how the Crazy Jesus Lady portrays to the world the inner monologue of New Yorkers:

I should get a new dress for the graduation at the Saks sale. They could blow up the Lincoln Tunnel. Meg would love one of those little Chanel knockoffs from the street vender. If New York is bombed while we're in Boston, where will we stay? If Boston is bombed while we're at the graduation, how will we get home? Bring cousin Holly's number in northern Connecticut. Pick up mascara.

Allow me to offer an alternate version:

Ugh, I should have stopped with the third bourbon last night. Looks like it's gonna be cloudy. Should I splurge for a bacon and egg sandwich? Oh, go ahead, live large. What's in the paper? That dead Julliard girl, the Mets blew a big lead, and the usual terrorism bullshit. Maybe grab some OJ too. Alright, let's see what's on the web. OpinionJournal's always good for a laugh. Wow, another column by that brain-damaged hag? Lot of nervous energy this week. Must have stopped taking her pills. That reminds me -- where'd I put the Advil?

OH, THOSE KRAZY KULTURE KOPS! "Without passing judgment on the movie as such, it's clearly based on the usual false assumptions..." Well, you know you're in Culture-War No-Man's-Land when you hear crap like that. This one comes from The Corner, where Mark Krikorian explains that though he hasn't seen A Day Without a Mexican ("it's not being shown anywhere I can get to" -- the tunnels radiating from his bunker don't extend to the local cineplex, I guess), he still has lots to say about it, including this: "The very premise of the movie is thus blood-and-soil nationalism of das Volk (or rather, La Raza), which is only socially permissable when advocated by approved ethnic groups." Wow! Maybe he saw the trailer.

But equally blind are they who will not see. An alicublog reader tipped me to World Magazine, a journal that pre-digests current events for squeamish Christians. Their arts coverage comes in slabs stamped "Cultural," and one imagines editors screaming across the newsroom, "Support for gay marriage is going up -- we need three more slabs of Cultural, stat!" Their reviewers have seen the movies they discuss, but with a sharp eye for non-evangelical content and a blind one for everything else. Of Troy, Marvin Olasky writes that "Bradd Pitts" is "too likable" as Achilles, and that the film should have focused on Hector -- presumably because Olasky finds Hector more clean-cut. (Olasky also cautions that in Troy's bed scenes "illicit sex is made to look good.")

Music also comes under review by my new favorite pop critic, Arsenio Orteza. He chides Prince for his "low" content, which features "many sexual allusions, both explicit (e.g., 'Gett Off') and implicit (e.g., 'Little Red Corvette')." ("Little Red Corvette" is implicit? Not the way Amatullo sang it in "The Kids from Fame in Israel"!) Orteza concludes that "For people who speak no English, Prince remains a legitimate thriller" -- judging from his prose style, Orteza is indeed qualified to make this judgement -- "For many English speakers, however, Prince's obsession with sex will connect him to Messrs. [Michael] Jackson and [Kobe] Bryant in ways that no amount of sales or pleasure can eclipse." I think I disagree -- what specific amount of sales or pleasure are we talking about here?

The Beatles are alright, per Orteza, but only if that line about Christ in "The Ballad of John and Yoko" is a spoof on Lennon's "Bigger than Jesus" crack, not if he's "taking Christ's name in vain." In which case the Beatles are objectionable, just like everything else, it would seem, except bluegrass, which Orteza likes because it's "colorblind, sex-blind, [and] age-blind" (the unfortunate result of all that moonshine, one imagines). And you have to love how Orteza describes Bob Marley & The Wailers' "world view":

Explicitly: that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are worth getting up, standing up, and fighting for; Implicitly: that smoking marijuana is a sacrament and that slain Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie is the Messiah.

Suddenly it all makes sense!

At World even baseball must be reduced to Cultural: "Baseball fosters the right mentality for sustaining a war on terrorism," explains Gene Edward Veith. It also embodies "the trials and disciplines of free enterprise." And another thing: "We lose wars when we on the home front lose our will or our heart or our courage—even while our troops win on the battlefield. That is how we lost the Vietnam War..." What's that got to do with baseball? Don't ask Veith, who seems to have entered some sort of trance: "The news cycle is an up-and-down, good news/bad news roller coaster... When the Bears are doing badly, Soldier Field is deserted. But Cubs fans still pack Wrigley Field, even in the bad years, and they persevere." It takes a lot for me to say this, but I'd rather read George Will's baseball shit.

UPDATE. Tbogg amplifies admirably on Krikorian's willful cluelessness.

MONEY, HONEY. Rightwing "It" Girl Michelle Malkin is enraged by Wonkette and her recent find, a low-paid Washington functionary named Jessica Cutler who let Republicans fuck her up the ass for money. Among Malkin's plaintive cries against both: "Skanks," "promiscuous," "raunchy," "female Beavis and Butthead," "sex-drenched infamy," and "members of the media elite."

And then there's this:

Cutler, who aspired to be a journalist, spouted: "I'm sure I am not the only one who makes money on the side this way: How can anybody live on $25K/year??" When I was 24 and making less than that, I did it by eating Spaghetti-O's, Ramen noodles and Swanson pot pies for dinner; driving a Toyota Tercel with no air conditioning; and sleeping on a $30 futon. I did it the way most parents teach their daughters to succeed: through hard work, thrift, faith and perseverance.

Malkin's parents are a doctor and a schoolteacher. When Malkin was 24 she was married to a Rhodes Scholar who apparently works for the Rand Corporation. According to her bio, in '94 Malkin was working as an editorial writer and weekly columnist for the Los Angeles Daily News.

Them Spaghetti-O's musta tasted alright with a nice Chablis.

At that very same time I was living in New York City (surely as expensive a jurisdiction as LA) and working as a freelance writer, and made maybe six grand more than what Malkin claims to have made. (The following year, Malkin was named Warren Brookes Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., so her prospects were obviously infinitely better than mine). I wasn't hooking, either (not for lack of opportunities!), nor did I consume a more exalted diet than Ms. Malkin did. And though I sure did work hard, and had to be thrifty, I had no faith or perseverance to speak of.

But I'll say this: I sure as shit couldn't afford a car with or without A/C -- I'd have had to take major dick up the ass for that! Almost certainly Republican dick.

But I didn't, and till now I never had cause to feel morally superior about it. In fact, given the severe mark-up in rents and other cost of living indicators since then, I marvel that Malkin does. That whole "poor but pure" argument makes much more sense if one is actually poor.

POST UPDATED because I can't handle numbers too good. Malkin was 24 in '94, not '84, as I previously wrote. By that time I had left the dispatching business and had entered the humiliating world of freelance writing. Not surprisingly (though depressingly from my perspective) I wasn't making much more in '94 than I was in '84, but I suppose the extra six large could have been what kept me from working the entrance to the Holland Tunnel.

When I was 24, I was working as a busboy and would have considered $24K a princely sum.