IN CASE OF POTENTIAL DEFEAT, BREAK OUT CULTURE WAR. As the end draws nigh, some conservatives who had heretofore been chest-bumping one another into a frenzy seem suddenly to have absorbed the message that Bush might lose. Alas, this results not in mind-blasts of Zen enlightenment, but in a more paranoid form of magical thinking -- the notion, as one commenter at Roger L. Simon's site put it, that "Kerry has about 30% true believers and should he win, the vote will have been delivered by the MSM."

Yes, the American people, whom conservatives credit with great wisdom whenever the tide is rolling rightward, become, once the tide turns, credulous dopes who cannot even be said to vote, as "the MSM" delivers their votes like so many Domino's pizzas.

I wonder if this idea that votes for Kerry are solely the result of media manipulation will become the countercharge du jour when Dems scream about the inevitable Republican vote fraud on Tuesday: "The votes of Times subscribers must be considered invalid due to media bias."

About the nuttiest such thing I've seen lately is, unsurprisingly, by Stanley Kurtz. In his commentary on the closely-divided state of our nation, he starts with a more-sorrow-than-anger tone: "But what does it say about the changes in this country that the battle is so close?" Yes, the sane reader of any persuasion might mutter sympathetically, yes, things sure have changed; though most of us will start tiptoeing gingerly away as Kurtz denounces "the fact that a candidate who called America’s soldiers war criminals and threw away his metals could get this close" to the Presidency.

What has caused this catastrophic change in the minds and politics of half our citizenry? You guessed it -- The Media! Kurtz tells a long anecdote about the treasonous Sulzbergers. Its relevance is not clear at first -- one guesses Kurtz just likes repeating such stories -- until he heaves this up: "The reason John Kerry and his 'global test' have even a ghost of a chance in this election is because Sulzberger and the folks who thought like him are now in charge of the media–and much of the rest of our culture... That what this election is all about."

One wonders what Kurtz expects from whatever narrow victory Bush might manage to achieve. Because, it would seem, the very fact that so many Americans disagree with the President is what makes it so desperately urgent to Kurtz that agreement -- on his terms -- be reached. So how will that treasonous 49+% be brought back into conformity with basic American values? Kurtz declines to say, but if it thinks it's so important, and that those who oppose the President are just brainwashing victims, one can imagine few methods he couldn't justify.

Winning big makes them insufferable, and winning small makes them paranoid. The only solution is to keep them from winning at all.

SHORTER JIM LILEKS. To all my new readers, a disheartening number of whom have sent abusive emails, I insist that I am a middle-of-the-road Joe who just wants you perverts to stop indoctrinating my widdle girl with your sex-talk, and who is obsessed with Star Trek and other nerd sh*t.

SHORTER JIM LILEKS.My little girl is cute. Now remember, I'm not to blame for the flabby condition of the following statement because I have to watch TV right afterwards: If you liberals had anything to say about it, we woulda lost WWII. Be grateful that I could even find the time for that, folks; 80% of my brain is devoted to deep contemplation of consumer goods. Besides, my heart's not really in it without Glenn around to link me.

Kerry speaks French! Bye!

DERBYSHIRE DOES DIALECT. Negro dialect, at that!

You goin' have nothin' to listen to but Pat Boone an' Merle Haggard, know wha' I'm sayin'? 'Cause they is down on the black man, they is down on the urban youth -- they an' them white record company executives...

This would qualify as a Most Embarrassing Moment, were anyone at National Review Online capable of embarrassment.

INSIDE CRICKET. Christopher Hitchens is a very smart man, but you don't see much of that intelligence turned toward the Bush cause in his ostensible endorsement -- it's really just a column-length nyah-nyah at his old comrades on the Left --

...I can't wait to see President Kerry discover which corporation, aside from Halliburton, should after all have got the contract to reconstruct Iraq's oil industry. I look forward to seeing him eat his Jesse Helms-like words, about the false antithesis between spending money abroad and "at home" (as if this war, sponsored from abroad, hadn't broken out "at home")... I assume that he has already discerned the difference between criticizing the absence of postwar planning and criticizing the presence of an anti-Saddam plan to begin with. I look forward, in other words, to the assumption of his responsibility...

It may at first seem odd that Hitchens has so meticulously envisioned the opposite result of his endorsement as -- very like the result he claims to prefer.

"Anybody But Bush"--and this from those who decry simple-mindedness--is now the only glue binding the radical left to the Democratic Party right. The amazing thing is the literalness with which the mantra is chanted. Anybody? Including Muqtada al-Sadr? The chilling answer is, quite often, yes. This is nihilism....

Why, yes, I suppose it would be. What then might we call an essay calling for the election of a President based on personal pique?

Marketing, I think. Endorsements are supposed to be about moving votes -- especially if there is a pretense of independence (as is routinely made by newspaper editorial boards in October) on the part of the giver; Daschle endorsing Kerry is a bore, but Zell Miller's nod is worth a trip to Madison Square Garden. Yet Hitchens, a well-advertised Own Man, seems thoroughly disinterested in any electoral effect his endorsement might have -- and keenly interested in its effect on his reputation as a maverick. "Myself, I have made my own escape from your self-imposed quandary," Hitchens taunts his old pals in closing. "Believe me when I say that once you have done it, there's no going back... I shall be meeting some of you again, I promise, and the fraternal paw will still be extended."

The set-up is painfully obvious. If Kerry wins, nothing much will change. If Bush wins, ditto. In either case Hitchens will be saying he told us so. A better way to go than in the tow of Tweedledee or that of Tweedledum is out of the question -- "that deep-breath third-party vote... of the sort that has tortured some Nation readers ever since they just couldn't take Humphrey over Nixon" is a sucker's bet, at least in the game Hitchens is playing.

I will say that this should do more for Hitchens' prospects than Andrew Sullivan's version of the outrider schtick will do for his. But like I said, Hitchens is a very smart man.

THE NEW LIBERTARIANISM. "We should rejoice every time we see someone who is voting on ideology, rather than merely supporting the candidate who puts the most money in their pocket." -- Megan McArdle, aka "Jane Galt," at Instapundit.

WHAT I SAW AT THE CORNER. From the wishful thinking department:

RE: DISAPPEARANCE & BLAME: Just thinking out loud, but: If what the Times says is right, isn’t that implicitly an indictment of UNSCOM and further proof that the President was right to remove the monstrous Saddam regime?

See also:

If the American electorate were comprised entirely of teenagers watching Channel One, President Bush would cruise to four more years: In a mock election featuring 1.4 million votes, Bush just crushed Kerry, 55 percent to 40 percent.

Ramesh Ponnuru excerpts 616 words from a Bush speech in four posts and then threatens: "I'll probably do a longer piece for tomorrow's NRO." Ponnuru also thinks it's great that tax cuts have led to Americans working longer and harder than the French. Yeah, I'm sure glad I don't get seven weeks of vacation a year, aren't you? Jonah Goldberg adds, "It is very, very, very hard to fire people even for cause in France." Fuck, can I move there? John J. Miller adds, "...one of the comments I tend to hear from Europeans is that Americans work really hard--the subtext often being that we work too hard don't know how to stop and enjoy life. This is clearly a cultural difference between the United States and Europe..." Might it actually be a cultural difference between Corner writers and people who have to work for a living?

Tim Graham deconstructs the mise en scene of the "Today" Show. Coming soon: Graham on the use of deep focus in Stolen Honor.

And who let her in:

I’m looking for witty sayings to use at the opening of a park in our neighborhood, at which I am running the bake sale. I have styled it a "Bipartisan Bake Sale" and my daughter Molly and I will be baking a hundredweight each of Teresa Kerry's pumpkin spice cookies and Laura Bush's oatmeal chocolate-chunk cookies. Other people are contributing "Swing State Brownies" and suchlike. The bleg is for sayings I can put on the signage. Ones I've already made include: "A nation BITTERLY divided still loves SWEET treats!" and "No UNSIGHTLY chads, just BEAUTIFUL baked goods!" and "Vote EARLY…and OFTEN!" (meaning for the cookies we're making). My husband suggests "NO OIL FOR COOKIES... only butter." Billionairess Biscuits? Conservative Crumpets? Winning entries will make the eve-of-election "Fever Swamp."

I nominate "NRO nutcakes."

SHORTER JIM LILEKS. My Democratic neighbors are all stupid. They don't know about what Bill Maher said, or my computer problems. And you know who else is stupid? The English. Screw them. Sure, I once said that we should abstain from lampooning supercilious Brits because Everything Has Changed, but that's off, because Everything Has Changed Again since I got my 12th cold of the year.

BUT WHAT WAS UP WITH ALL THOSE VOTES FOR PAT BUCHANAN IN BALKH? Congratulations to Hamid Karzai on his recent election to the presidency of Afghanistan. It just goes to show that with some pluck, courage, and the backing of powerful friends, one can accomplish anything. And in nine days, we'll repeat the demonstration!

A LITTLE PERSPECTIVE. I see that Mike Reiss' "Hard Drinkin' Lincoln" is available on web pay-per-view. Trust me, if you need a respite from political October madness, this is the shit. All the episodes are good, but I most highly recommend "The Un-Civil War," in which Lincoln dances around Robert E. Lee chanting "Looooo-ser!" and delivers a stunning rendition of "Dixie" which ends, "You're in graves/with no slaves/Atlanta Braves/really suck!" For proponents of balance, each episode ends with Lincoln being shot by John Wilkes Booth.

THE SEPARATION OF BALLPARK AND STATE. From (where else?) The Corner, the voice of Satan channelled in this case by Den Mother KJL:

Nick Schulz says: "The 'Stros are going to win tonight, on the back of Roger Clemens, who never led the BoSox to glory but did help the Yanks win the World Series. That means Clemens pitches game 3 of their matchup with the Red Sox (winning, natch), and wins game 7 for the Astros -- a Texas team beating a Mass. team right before the election -- and Red Sox nation heads into winter seething at what Clemens did to them -- first with the Yanks, now with the Astros. It's much much sweeter this way!"

Of course, this was written before Clemens tried to prove what an hombre he is by throwing a fastball to Albert Pujols (though, to be fair, maybe Clemens was trying to bean him, and slipped), thus blowing the series for the 'Stros.

Now, I know The Corner is a secure facility with psychiatric nurses on 24-hour guard to see that the contagion does not spread, but it still disgusts me that any American would sully the National Pastime with political bullshit. What kind of example does this set for our children? Can there be no public space where we can collectively give this shit a rest?

Let us lay down the partisan cudgels for a moment and become, not Democrats and Republicans, but fans of the Fuckin' Awesome Hippie Warrior Hell Yeah Stomp Your Hayseed Butts Let's Get Drunk and Riot Red Sox versus Tougher Than You Fucking Long-Hair Sissies Our Reliever is Crazy and Will Beat You with Two Broken Hands and Then Eat Your Heart Cardinals. (Or vice-versa!)

It's bad enough I got right-wing snobs trying to convince me not to laugh at Jon Stewart because nihilism isn't funny. Jesus Christ. Is everything politics for these people? How sad.

SHORTER CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: A vote for Kerry is a vote for a new Holocaust.

(A slightly longer Shorter Krauthammer might read, "I'm totally out of my fucking mind, but I keep beating back the psychiatric inquiries of my editors by accusing other people of being totally out of their fucking minds, and because I'm a shrink they get scared and back off." But I could use that for just about any of Krauthammer's recent columns.)

SHORTER JIM LILEKS. When my wife got canned I howled like a stuck pig, but now I realize it is the destiny of mothers to stay home with their kid for the first six months of its life and whatever intervals of joblessness arise thereafter. This is God's plan; that's why He fires women. Why can't you hippies understand that? Now here's an anecdote about Nazis. You're just like them. Hey, look at this egg.

WHO'S YOUR DADDY? As a Mets fan, I always have a warm personal interest in the Yankees' defeat. The past few years have been rather enjoyable in that regard, but this year's added taste of humiliation ("Greatest Collapse in Baseball History" bawls the New York Post) makes a nice garnish.

Don't get me wrong. I respect the players, especially the most underrated catcher in the majors and the best Yankee shortstop of all time. And though George Steinbrenner is a major hate-object, old age (and perhaps the melancholy knowledge that soon the Devil will come to enforce his contract) has been keeping the bastard's previously insufferable profile mercifully low.

But the fans! Again, don't get me wrong. I know Yankee fans whose loyalty dates back to the Ralph Houk era, and they are noble and knowledgeable connoisseurs of the game and the team. But, especially in the post-season, mostly you get young and youngish chest-thumpers bellowing about destiny and 26 rings, then vomiting on Third Avenue.

Bomber fandom cuts across several demographic groups -- the bodega guys round my way are mostly Yankee fans, and so are many of the mousse-haired, suspender-and-pinstripes yuppie dipshits one sees at wood-panelled drinking establishments midtown, sipping $7 pints and hiding their bald spots under a Yankee cap. But they all have one ignoble thing in common; they can neither win nor lose with grace.

Earlier in this series, their cry was "Who's Your Daddy?" (I heard one local newsreader/hair model say it twice in one sports report.) It should be noted that this plays upon a rare self-deprecating remark made by Boston's Pedro Martinez after the Yankees beat him up earlier this year. Pedro in this instance showed a little class and even rueful honesty, and it is telling that the Yankee fans responded with a giant-foam-fingered froth of bad sportsmanship.

Sore losers are obnoxious, but a sore winner is worse, so I am glad that it falls to the Yankee fans to play the former rather than the latter role.

OCTOBER CLASSICISM. Well, I just saw the Astros use a pitcher to pinch-hit, and the second consecutive walk-off homer of the series. And I only caught the last two (extra) innings. I don't have time to watch the Sox-Yankees game and that's just as well, because I don't think my heart could stand it.

Much else is malformed in modern American life, but post-season baseball is a blessing.

DON'T BE SELF-HATIN'. If you like to read political tea leaves, you can check these out: back in March the irrepressible Pejman was bragging that Jews were leaving the Democrats in droves, and "needless to say, the prospect that Bush may get one-third or more of the Jewish vote in the election must terrify John Kerry in particular."

A lot of that sort of thing has been popping up over the years: how traditional constituencies are being totally demolished, usually to the Republicans' advantage. I think it all has something to do with the internet. (Did you know that in the future there will be no stores?)

Nonetheless there are always those who feel that even the Wave of the Future needs a fluffer, and such like have made much of Kerry's failure to mention Israel in his Convention address, seeing in it a stark reversal not just of electioneering protocol, but also of the Democratic Party's historic commitment to our only (non-occupied-by-us) ally in the Middle East. Some of these folks even claim that Israel needs Bush to be reelected, that in fact "Israel is believed to be the only nation in the world wanting Bush to win." (If we will not be for Bush, who will be for us?)

Well, this watershed, like so many others, seems to have been overestimated at best ("Kerry... is gaining support among Jewish voters as growing numbers disapprove of President Bush's handling of the war in Iraq" -- Washington Post).

What happens to a dream deferred? In the past week Volokh's David Bernstein had not one but two posts wondering why Jews have forsaken Republicans in their hour of need. (His conclusion, taken from a colleague, is that "most Jews are and have actually rationally ignorant about politics and related social issues [sic].")

Well, it's been fun, but after the election, I suspect Republican race-based commentary will go back to its traditional tone and manner.

HEADLINE OF THE MONTH. FOX News has the goods on Kerry: "Kerry Shows Fondness for Quotations." Coming soon: "Kerry Reads Books, Uses Words of More than One Syllable Correctly."

TWO WEEKS NOTICE. Well, we're in the home stretch, boys and girls, and while the blogospheric pressure is predictably intense, for the most part it's pressing on old, long-dead nerves. At redstate they're fretting about the traditional Democratic push for black votes ("race-baiting"), cheering endorsements (in this case that of proven vote-getter Pat Buchanan), and sifting poll results obsessively. At Atrios they're fretting about October Surprises, cheering non-endorsements, and sifting boycott results obsessively.

Meanwhile Bush and Kerry are rampaging through the swing states and trying not to lose their voices or what I'm sure each perceives to be his lead.

Who knows what's in store, but this stage of the endgame seems familiar enough to me that I can hardly get riled by it. That may change, but I hope it doesn't. Operatives are operating feverishly, and God go with ours; somewhere out there voters are being recruited by the barrelful and warned to watch for dirty tricks. But I wouldn't be surprised or displeased if the campaign news remained as content-free as it is feverish (Candidate A ratchets up the rhetoric! Candidate B comes back swinging!) all the way up till election night, at which point all hell, I am sure, will break loose. Till then there is plenty else to do, and plenty of late post-season baseball to lull me to sleep.

INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MISERY. Having told us last week about his command of the Queen's English, James Lileks now tells us he could find Patience and Prudence and the whole damn NYPL under ten feet -- no! ten stories -- of arctic ice.

Next week he shall tell us how, armed only with a Swiss Army Knife and a jar of Marmite, he can craft a rationale for war with Iran.

FUCK YEAH. Enjoyed Team America tonight. It's a little long on puppet blood for my taste -- though you can never have enough puppet vomit, and in this regard Team America does not disappoint. I also liked Kim Il Jong's "giant pandas," and the song about how missing your true love sucks almost as much as Jerry Bruckheimer's Pearl Harbor. Favorite line: "We're guarrrrds." "Guarrrrds." "Guarrrrrds."

Sorry, nothing here about how the film inaccurately portrays Michael Moore and Alec Baldwin, or how its very existence will weaken America, or how some guy has a movie that answers Team America point by point, using some of the same puppets, which I found quite striking. That would just be stupid.