AND THE HOMELAND OF THE SECURE. Bernie Kerik is out, and the usual suspects brush this off as a "Nannygate" kerfuffle. Of course, the swift turnaround from hero to zero indicates that the nanny issue was merely the softest blow Kerik's nomination might have absorbed, and so Kerik and the Bush Administration took it, leaving other complications (including a cigarettes-for-prisoners scam at the Department of Corrections while he presided there) and hard questions that might have been asked about his disastrous three-month tenure as sheriff of Baghdad unaddressed.

While there are all kinds of reasons to dislike Kerik, one has to applaud Giuliani's loyalty in pulling him back on board the former mayor's current money train. Loyalty is one of Giuliani's few admirable traits -- he devoted a chapter of his best-seller to it; he demands it of subordinates and, one must say, he has returned it in Kerik's case. Tony Soprano would be proud. Now the former mayor can lick his exceedingly superficial wounds and go back to planning dancing bans and rent hikes for the whole of America.

Word on the street is that Joe Lieberman may step up to the plate next. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

COMRADES! PARTY APPROVES NEW ADAM SANDLER MOVIE! At National Review Online, Comrade Mathewes-Green disappoves Spanglish. Is noting that "the point this movie is trying to make turns out to be a good one: Parents should make sacrifices for their children, noble self-discipline is good, impulsive self-indulgence is bad, and breaking up a marriage, even a desperately unhappy marriage, is very bad," but Comrade Mathewes-Green says film is spoiled by "sitcom-style yuks and inexplicable character behavior."

Comrade Lopez raises point of order! Approves Comrade Mathewes-Green's approval of "pro-marriage" The Incredibles, but sees great correctness in Spanglish:"great lines and a great general attitude.. about responsibility... Family. Responsibility. Parental love. The friendship between the Sandler and Vega characters was so real and, frankly (and now I get patronizing? Sorry.) useful I think for a NY artsy audience, which I happened to be mixed in with tonight. The blues can afford to be exposed to 90 minutes of those messages in a funny, breezy kinda way.
Some conversations coming out of the theater were 'That was, uh, different. Like a family movie.' You sensed a little air of not getting it. (But I figure they cracked up enough they won’t trash it.)"

Is secret weapon for leading evil bluestate viewers to approve pro-marriage views! Also, "George W. Bush would love this movie," because Sandler "would be exactly the model W. seems to exude, just by being a father to his daughters." Central Committee may say "nyet" to comparison of President with bumbler Sandler, but heart is in right place! Comrade Mathewes-Green, have a care! Unfailingly correct critics abound who may like job at NRO.

PEOPLE EVERYWHERE JUST GOT TO BE FREE. The ho-hum part is that yet another production of McNally's Corpus Christi has run afoul of area Christians.

The funny part is that the production is at St. Andrew's University in Scotland, and somebody is trying to get the playmakers busted for blasphemy, which is apparently still a crime in that jurisdiction.

The hilarious part is that the U.K. is still mulling the British Home Secretary's religious-hatred bill, which is so absurd that even wingnuts can't get behind it (they'll probably try to blame it all on us, of course, but a coalition is a coalition, welcome comrades!). The Telegraph describes this edifying recent spectacle: "During a Commons debate on the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill, [Blunkett] said it was not intended that telling jokes about a faith should be caught by the offence, which carries a seven-year jail term."

Ealier in this process, Blunkett had offered a fascinating tit-for-tat: accept the new law and we'll repeal the blasphemy ordinance.

But a new freedom to blaspheme seems to be moving off the table:

Some commentators had expected the repeal of the blasphemy law -- which applies only to Christianity -- to be announced in the Queen's Speech along with the new law, which protects all religions.

But Home Office minister Fiona Mactaggart made clear the Government was not intending to give all religions equal protection under the law by abolishing blasphemy.

"At the moment we have got no plans to deal with blasphemy," she told BBC Radio 4's Law in Action.

Let's not pick on them too much, though -- we Yanks have our own problems: "A Williamson County [IL} judge Thursday let stand the arrest of an exotic dancer from Stephanie's Cabaret charged with violating a county ordinance against dancing topless... Judge Phillip Palmer said dancer Amy Bullock's case is 'no noble cause' and that her freedom of speech, protected by the First Amendment, had not been violated." But you can still tell jokes!

What say we start a new country someplace?

HO HO HORSESHIT. "'I hate Christmas.' Every year the chorus seems to grow louder, leaving a trail of sour feelings and ACLU lawsuits for ordinary folks to trip over on their way to celebrate a holiday born of love," writes one of the less talented OpinionJournal staffers in an attack on people who don't like Christmas, which demographic the author imagines to consist of spoiled children, celebrity offspring, and, of course, liberals.

This short-straw-drawing scrivener should get a load of "In Defense of Scrooge," written by Michael Levin of the Ludwig van Mises Institute:

So let's look without preconceptions at Scrooge's allegedly underpaid clerk, Bob Cratchit. The fact is, if Cratchit's skills were worth more to anyone than the fifteen shillings Scrooge pays him weekly, there would be someone glad to offer it to him. Since no one has, and since Cratchit's profit-maximizing boss is hardly a man to pay for nothing, Cratchit must be worth exactly his present wages.

I dusted the article for irony and it seems to be an authentic, market-driven tesimonial to Scrooge. (The Free Republic smell test was inconclusive, devolving mainly into fights between Protestants and Catholics, though I enjoyed this comment by nopardons: "Charles Dickens was a sentimentalist and the very worst kind of bleeding heart LIBERAL, and ALL of his books contain and promote what we would call socially LIBERAL monographs." But let us not tarry, that way madness lies.)

I happen to dislike the bad things about Christmas (like the insane consumerist expectations, which always put me in mind of Ben Gazzara in Convicts 4, sitting in his slum apartment on Christmas Eve, trying frantically to re-insert the stuffing of a broken rag doll that will serve as his daughter's only present; when the doll ruptures irrevocably, he buries his head in his heads, then runs out and kills a store clerk), and to like the good things, like time off from work. I guess that makes me a moderate! Now maybe Michael Totten will buy me a latte.

(Convicts 4 is always worth a look, by the way, especially for Sammy Davis Jr. as "Wino," who explains to Gazzara that the prison bedbugs won't bite him "because they find something repulsive in my sweat," and Ray Walston as "Iggy," who keeps asking the art teacher to tell him about focal points "because it sounds sexy.")

GIBBERISH. There is a much-remarked article in the Times this week lamenting the poor quality of writing among corporate employees. It's fine as far as it goes, but I have two cavils.

First, the article focuses on grammar and punctuation errors, which are mere symptoms of sloppy thinking, and not even determinative symptoms -- a piece of writing may be syntactically perfect, yet incoherent.

Second, it should be pointed out that corporate drones are not the only types with this problem.

To show you what I mean, here is the last paragraph of article by an American university professor, who, having endeavored to prove by use of anecdotes that the U.S. professariat is so nearly exclusively liberal as to have "a deleterious effect on the learning environment" (this last assertion bolstered by the ambiguous findings of a dicey poll), ends his meanderings thus:

What is to be done? Proponents of diversity, as measured by race, gender, sexual orientation, or what have you, long complained about the "old boys network" that dominated law school hiring. (Oddly enough, as the proponents of such diversity have achieved their own critical mass on most law school campuses, one tends to hear this complaint less often. Indeed, from what I see and hear, there seems to be something a "new boys and girls network" at work.) It's time for us conservatives and libertarians to take up that complaint. We shouldn't ask for affirmative action in favor of our fellow travelers, but we should insist that the pool of candidates not be artificially constricted by either the old or the new networks.

One can poke this from any angle and find mush. If the new boys and girls have replaced the old boys "by critical mass," and as there is nothing offered here to recommend the old boys over the new, shouldn't we just congratulate the current crop of cloth-ears on winning their power struggle? If cons & libs take up, as the professor suggests, the new kids' diversity complaint, what moral advantage over the current mob does that leave them? To whom would the professor and his confederates "insist that the pool of candidates not be artificially constricted by either the old or the new networks," and what would it accomplish, other than giving the professor something to bitch about to the like-minded readers of Tech Central Station?

Well, OK, that one sort of answers itself.

P.C. SCHMEESEE. Michael J. Totten sympathizes with a scriptwriter who thinks her screenplay, which contains Arab terrorists, is being suppressed by the evil Hollyweird liberals. Totten takes the opportunity to launch into a diatribe against "Political Correctness," clearly hoping to activate the balloons and claim the door prizes awaiting the ten millionth columnist to address the subject.

This reminds me of Lenny Bruce's Comic at the Palladium, who, when his material provokes a frosty reception from the toney London crowd, snarls, "Lotta squares here tonight!" I wish I had a nickel for every artist who lamented that his work was too real, too honest to get play. Hell, I wish I had a nickel for every time I've lamented that!

You have to wonder why the scriptwriter hasn't contacted Rupert Murdoch for funding. We all know what his political orientation is. Yet his film arm produces stuff like Kinsey, which has the fundies in an uproar. "'Fox has a schizophrenic personality,' [Director of the conservative Culture and Family Institute in Washington Robert] Knight told the newspaper. 'Conservatives appreciate Fox News Channel for bringing balance, but the Fox entertainment network, on the other hand, has clearly been the leader in driving TV into the sewer with its non-stop sexual emphasis.'" Maybe Murdoch doesn't discuss the lively arts with Brit Hume and Tony Snow, and so doesn't know any winger filmmakers. Or maybe, just maybe, it all has something to do with money.

Well, she can always try Sun Myung Moon. It's been a while since Inchon and maybe he's ready to get back up on the horse.

UPDATE. Totten's commenters on this topic are, true to form, mostly addled, but a real doozy can be found among the responses to Stefan Kanfer's relatively innocuous Hollywood article at OpinionJournal. Kudos to Harry Mathis of Round Rock, Texas for a unique solution to the "Why Do They Hate Us?" problem.

IF THROWING CUPS OF BEERS IS OUTLAWED, ONLY OUTLAWS WILL THROW CUPS OF BEER. I suppose it's hard enough to keep order at an NBA game, but all I can say is I wish this standard was in effect when I was fronting rock and roll bands. I got the beer bath many a time. One time a guy threw a bag of garbage at us. Well, like Lou Reed said, those were different times, not to mention pay scales.

I suppose the charges against the lager louts will lead to all sorts of similarly elevated discourse, and I look forward to it. Too bad we can't get a follow-up from National Review's Geoffrey "Gangstaball" Norman, who boldly predicted, "Fans who were punched -- even though they may have provoked it -- will sue." Considering that the prosecutor has already given Artest a pass for clocking the guy who famously wandered into Artest's waiting fist on grounds of "self-defense," we shan't be seeing much of that, methinks.

The players' case has been already been an occasion for much hilarious analysis. My favorite is from the Revolutionary Worker Online:

The talk about Artest’s problems or his previous run-ins with basketball’s authorities is a lot of crap. Bush took the U.S. to war in Iraq based on lies about weapons of mass destruction and Saddam’s ties to al-Qaida. Before that as Texas governor he presided over a record number of executions, including some where the person put to death was innocent. But news reporters don’t link this to his past problems with alcohol or to his current addiction to Pat Robertson-style Christian Fascism.

Now who, as David Huddleston observed in Blazing Saddles, can argue with that? Though we owe the RWO a debt for pointing this out: "The Washington Wizards (formerly the Bullets) had a designated heckler who was seated behind the visiting team’s bench. This guy would do research to determine the best way to get inside the heads of visiting players and coaches. He’d recite rewritten versions of Shaq’s rap lyrics, read sections of Phil Jackson’s autobiography and run down any run-ins players had with the law among other things." Now there's a dream job!

GRAMMY SMELLS FUNNY. This year's Grammy nominees list has some piquant entries. First of all, for Best Pop Instrumental Album et alia, Mason Williams -- the guy who did "Classical Gas" and wrote for the Smothers Brothers in the 60s. I know nothing about Cradle of Filth, but that they are called Cradle of Filth and they have a nominated tune called "Nymphetamine," and that is all I need to know. Love also to the composers of "Can't Nobody Do Me Like Jesus." And congratulations to Jay-Z for "99 Problems" -- I can't wait to see the number performed on network TV.

But my favorite is Best Spoken Word Album for Children nominee Elaine Stritch! "Alright, yuh little bastards, sit tight! Aunt Lainey's gonna take a little more 'throat medicine' and then we'll continue. Alright, where was I? Oh, yeah, so The Merm was chasing me up the fire escape..."

Well, it beats actually listening to the stuff.

UPDATE. Now that I've learned that CoF has tunes called "Absinthe with Faust" and "Satyriasis," I am officially a fan. No, I haven't actually heard any of these songs, but I'm pretty sure I already know what they sound like.

ONE WESTERN-STYLE DEMOCRACY, COMING UP! "A U.S. lawmaker who visited Afghanistan says Osama bin Laden uses cash from heroin sales to pay bodyguards and buy off Pakistani war lords." -- Washington Times, December 6.

Wait. They've been conquered for a couple years already, and they're still funneling poppy-money to Bin Laden?

I can see how the poppy fields would be busy. The UN and the U.S. coalition together have about 24,000 troops in Afghanistan. That's about one soldier for every ten square miles. Doubtless they've been too busy with other things to do DEA-style drug interdiction -- so far, anyway.

(Still, I wonder how the Afghanis get their drug money to Bin Laden? "Meet me at the corner of Allah Street and Main at midnight. I will be wearing a pink carnation.")

Understandably, the new Afghan leadership decrees that an end to the heroin trade there is essential to the growth of Western-style democracy, because that trade is connected to terrorism. The people of Afghanistan might feel differently about it -- especially since they have little else to live on -- but who cares what they think? Anything that aids the war on terror and the war on drugs is a twofer.

At least they're not getting rid of the heroin on the grounds that it's bad for people. That would make them "health nazis."

SHORTER JIM LILEKS. God (and yes, I mean "God") save us early-middle-agers from the depravities of the latter-middle-aged, and the bright young things. And Desperate Housewives. And Clarence Darrow. And &tc. But you, you probably would like Closer. Two words for you, pal: Perry Mason. If that doesn't shake your foundations, I have some old matchbooks.

BUT SERIOUSLY, FOLKS... I repent and reform. For too long I have been one of
those liberals who know only how to complain. When the Administration has invaded non-combatant countries, bombing the shit out of thousands of civilians and leaving them in chaos, and run up huge deficits that led to no evident improvements in American life, and when its cheerleaders have accused all dissent to this approach as treasonous and atheistic, I have been less than serious in my response.

But I have seen the light, and offer an adult, positive, and above all serious suggestion regarding the future of our politics.

Many people have asked, in all seriousness, "Whither the Democratic Party?" Many fine, moderate, and serious people have agreed that, though they despise all DemoRats, it is a shame that the Party only won a marginal, insignificant, damning-to-utter-irrelevance 48 percent of the national vote this year, as it is important that we have a "viable and sensible competitor to the Republicans" because -- well, I'm not sure why, but I'm sure the reason is serious... oh, here's an explanation at Enter Stage Right, which proposes that Democrats be maintained as a sort of consultative body: "As a serious minority party, Democrats could challenge the ethical behavior of Republicans when Republicans grew jaded at having power for too long." You know, like a constitutional monarch, or a fellow you bring in from time to time to give your Integrity a good workout.

While actual Democrats might be tempted to offer an unserious and obscene counter-proposal, my serious suggestion is that these Republicans stop trying to get the Democrats to render service as a Loyal Opposition. Being traitors, they would probably start asking for universal health care and such like, defeating the whole purpose of Loyal Oppositionism.

Therefore I suggest the Republicans take a page from Delta Airlines. A few years ago, wanting to get in on the small-airline craze, Delta created its own "niche" airline, Song. Though it has a very indie look and feel, Song remains a subsidiary of the aviation giant. (See also Matador Records.)

In a similar spirit, rather than wrangling the Democrats into serving as their conscience/tackling dummy Other, the Republicans can just create their own niche political party.

The Party could be called, at least in beta, the Perublicans. The Perublicans could recruit political talent from within its own ranks, from the more cooperative precincts of the Democratic Party, and, of course, from the blogosphere. To each Republican proposal, the Perublicans could offer a serious "Yes, but..." that would probe, test, invite debate on, and ultimately validate that proposal.

The President's proposal to borrow massively to pay for Social Security reform, for example, would be seriously challenged by Perublicans, probably after the manner of Concord Coalition Executive Director Robert Bixby on the subject: "Ideally, Social Security reform should be done without any borrowing. That would require hard choices that politicians aren't inclined to make... If they do have to do some borrowing, I hope they keep it to a minimum." The Perublicans would keep this line of argument up until Republicans were ready to vote on a bill; being Loyal, the Perublicans would attempt no filibusters or parliamentary hanky-panky as the measure was being passed; and they would unite with their Republican brothers behind the new program, with several of their number appearing for photographs with the President as he signed it into law.

When quizzed by disappointed constituents or the press, Perublicans would point out that each disastrous proposal got a full hearing before it was approved, and that this full and fair exchange of ideas was a stern rebuke to Michael Moore.

By such clear-eyed, sober, constructive, and serious contributions, we may yet achieve for this great nation a situation that is very serious indeed.

SO THAT'S WHAT ALL THE FUSS WAS ABOUT! I'd been intrigued by the growing number of references in wingnut blogs to The Belmont Club, and went to investigate. There I found a long essay by the well-regarded Wretchard, explaining that Al Franken caused the death of several American servicemen by calling David Horowitz a racist ("Marines have paid Franken's piper with their lives"). In support of this interesting thesis, Wretchard quotes liberally from Robert Kaplan, who says that "If what used to be known as the Communist International has any rough contemporary equivalent, it is the global media," and chides liberals for not writing books like The One-Minute Manager instead of saying mean things about conservatives. (God, wouldn't we like to! There's big money in that particular sort of fraud!)

I guess that, on the Right, batshit-crazy is the new polyester. It was bound to happen. They run everything, yet their world still isn't perfect, and the shortfalls couldn't possibly be their fault. Having no powerful adversaries left to scourge, they turn on small fish like the comedian Franken, impute to them strange powers, and start spooling out the outrage. Gives them something to do until a spot opens up in the Ministry of Truth, one imagines.

WILD IN THE STREETS. Mary Eberstadt uses the f-word frequently (albeit with expurgating dashes) in Policy Review, but only in the context of hip-hop lyrics. The popularity of expletives spat by Tupac and Eminem, Eberstadt claims, is attributable to America's high divorce rate: "Many bands and singers explicitly link the most deplored themes in music today -- suicide, misogyny, and drugs -- with that lack of a quasi-normal, intact-home personal past."

And the cause of divorce, Eberstadt implies, is liberal sociology:

Representative sociologist Stephanie Coontz greeted the year 2004 with one more op-ed piece aimed at burying poor metaphorical Ozzie and Harriet for good. She reminded America again that “changes in marriage and family life” are here to stay and aren’t “necessarily a problem”... Meanwhile, a small number of emotionally damaged former children, embraced and adored by millions of teenagers like them, rage on in every commercial medium available about the multiple damages of the disappearance of loving, protective, attentive adults.

Considering Policy Review is a scholarly journal, it is strange that Eberstadt does not attempt to demonstrate this causality with examples of families that were doing just fine till Stephanie Coontz told them to split up. Can't she find one formerly intact family, now scattered amongst the trailer parks of America, that could point to their chance encounter with The Way We Never Were as the catalyst for their catastrophic choices? Surely the producers of "Cops" could put her in touch.

I fear Eberstadt is just doing like they do: mining pop culture for political affirmations. She even refers to the "crypto-traditional" content of Eminem's lyrics. But couldn't she at least pretend to like the music? I guess that's a bridge too far, because she makes sure to distance herself from any imputation of pleasure ("Much of today’s metal and hip-hop, like certain music of yesterday, romanticizes illicit drug use and alcohol abuse, and much of current hip-hop sounds certain radical political themes, such as racial separationism and violence against the police... Allan Bloom blah blah blah"). But -- and I offer this in a spirit of collegiality, with respect for her professionalism -- this joint would be more likely to transcend the little frog-pond of wingnut pubs in which it is currently mired if she referred to the new crypto-traditionalists more friendly-like. Like she want to wrinkle their linens, sprinkle them with gin and then begin sinnin'. Know'm sayin'?

FRIENDLY ADVICE FROM YOUR MORTAL ENEMIES, #345,446. Michael Totten explains, "So here's my advice to American liberals: If you want to win elections against the Republicans, strike the Islamists."

Here are a couple of quotes from John Kerry, Democratic nominee for the Presidency of the United States in 2004: "I believe in being strong and resolute and determined. And I will hunt down and kill the terrorists, wherever they are." "Yes, we have to be steadfast and resolved, and I am. And I will succeed for those troops, now that we're there. We have to succeed. We can't leave a failed Iraq."

Shortly before the election, Kerry also said of Osama Bin Laden, "He's a barbarian, killer, assassin and terrorist. And what he'd better understand is, and what everybody had better understand is, we are united as Americans in our determination to hunt him down and capture and kill him. And that's what we're going to do."

It didn't seem to do him much good with the values voters. Maybe they forgot who Osama Bin Laden is, or were more focused on homosexuals who wish to marry.

Totten also counsels, "as long as the Terror War rages, if you keep lashing out at Republicans they will continue to beat you." There's a novel approach! Can't wait to see how the "Who are we to argue?" approach to political debate works out next election.

Elsewhere in War-on-Whatever Liberal Land, Jeremy Brown makes common cause with "Righties who bitterly reject social Darwinism and the fostering of fascist client states." Unfortunately, but understandably, he provides no names.

For comic relief we have a correspondent quoted by the Ole Perfesser, of the I-didn't-leave-the-Demmycrats-they-left-me stripe (he even invokes Scoop Jackson!), who lays out a Hillary scenario for '08: "If she tells the coastal cultural elites that they are the ones who are out of step with the country, then tones down her socialistic one payer health insurance scheme from 1993-4 and repeats her husband's line about abortion (safe, legal and rare) she could win in 2008."

Of course, the fella adds, "I would not be happy with that outcome, because I wouldn't believe her if she said those things..."

Democrats: remember the scene in Animal House where Otter goes, "Greg, look at my thumb... gee, you're dumb"? Good.

TODAY'S CONSERVATIVE ART SEMINAR. The science of determining what artworks go with what ideology has reached, via esteemed critic Lawrence Kudlow (on George W. Bush Economy I: "Aggressive new growth package! Dynamic new officials!"), a new low:

Judith [Pond Kudlow] and her associates, especially Andrea Smith from the Florence Academy, are leading lights in the return to classical painting. Sometimes it’s called natural realism. I just call it conservative art. Let me tell you what it’s not — it’s not modernistic, abstract, self-centered expressionism. It’s not just throwing paint at a canvas. It doesn’t tear down art, or the rest of the world, for that matter. It’s not the negative pessimistic crap that too often passes for art in blue states like New York and, well, you know where else. These are just beautiful, calm, pleasant pictures. Stuff you can enjoy looking at, which is what I think art should be.

That Kudlow is revewing the work of his own wife ("Yes, I am biased. For heaven’s sakes, Judy’s my wife. And I love her") is not so strange -- where would the art world be without nepotism? I do marvel at the scope of his analysis. The "crap that too often passes for art in blue states" could be Tracey Emin, or it could be Van Gogh, given that Kudlow's model for the production of "unbelievably good literature and art" is "the post-Civil War period [in America], when we became the premiere global economic power. There was no income tax, and money policy was based on the gold standard. Our navy began to rule the world. Industrial production was unparalleled. Religious virtues governed our culture..." Fancy poor Vincent slogging away in hovels, unaware that he lacked the economic and moral foundations for unbelievably good art!

One would like to introduce Kudlow to Austin Bay, who has a keen appreciation of the sort of modern art that doubtless occupies a spot on Kudlow's slag-heap. In February Bay found in a painting by Jackson Pollock inspiration for a deconstruction of America's pre-9/11 intelligence:

There's a Jackson Pollock painting titled "Lucifer." When I worked one summer for the now-defunct Houston Post, I used to walk past a poster of Pollock's Satan, an "abstract" of slashes, swirls, black scratches of color, each stroke individually perplexing. Over the summer, passing the poster on a daily basis, I saw Pollock's vision of evil emerge. The splatter became coherent, a unified vision organized by a gifted talent...

New eyes may see nothing but wild paint, though Pollock's title is a clue that something emotionally cold and dangerous lurks in the arrangement of color.

But if you don't detect it, no big sweat. It's merely framed canvas.

However, in the art of intelligence analysis, the world is the canvas -- a canvas inevitably frustrating the most astute frame of reference. What you don't see on that complex globe, and sometimes what you do see but don't understand, may get millions of human beings slaughtered...

In the aftermath of that unacceptable tragedy, both morticians and art critics will curse the leaders who dithered and didn't attack.

Bay knows that art can be more than "stuff you enjoy looking at." It can also be a metaphor for government operations. It unites the human race -- those who employ oils and pastels as well as those who employ embalming fluids -- in rage against the Clinton Administration. It serves a higher purpose!

Kudlow and Bay are both outstripped, though, by John Derbyshire. He reviews Tom Wolfe's latest very creatively, taking the role of an anxious parent. Having delectated all the "coed bathrooms, affectless recreational coupling, and heroic drinking" in Wolfe's bildungsroman, he turns inward:

One thing I very particularly wanted to know, as father of a bright, pretty, almost-12-year-old girl, is: How true is Wolfe's portrait of elite-campus life? Are modern college campuses really such riots of drunkenness and affectless sexual "hooking up"? Is potty-mouth slang really this universal? Is class snobbery really this rampant? I had trouble believing things were quite as bad as Wolfe paints them.

(Pause to wonder whether Derbyshire ever saw Jonah Goldberg's cultural touchstone, Animal House.)

Thus agitated, Derbyshire consults a "young friend" who informs him of the undergrad life he experienced, not to say enjoyed: "The probability of a hookup getting all the way to full-on intercourse the first time is a function of the status disparity between male & female." (The young man also says "Leftism, or at least apolitical attitudes, are required to get action... don't be openly rightist about anything or you're set for years of social & sexual ostracism." I guess we can assume he got away clean.)

In his anguish Derb haunts the NRO break room. There he had previously confessed some trepidation when his bright, pretty 12-year-old had come home from a class trip to a Holocaust Museum and pronounced it "Very boring... Oh, you know. Racism is bad. Respect for people who are different. All that." One might imagine from this politically-incorrect rejoinder that the Derbyshire daughter would make a fine National Review columnist someday, but her father is unassuaged: "I can't help thinking that there's something wrong here."

Now that he has read I Am Charlotte Simmons, and noted the collegiate characters' "cruel, oppressive cult of coolness, [whereby] all point and purpose drains out of life, and a dull, solipsistic hedonism takes over," Derbyshire's state is imaginable as he sifts through responses to his column, offering conflicting reports on his daughter's prospects at college, including such hair-raisers as this: "College is an expensive hiatus during which young men and women experience depravity, drunkenness and depression out of sight of their parents -- who benefit from not seeing the suicides, abortions, rapes and baseness." Bluto himself couldn't have put it better!

Ah, well, Derb consoles himself at last, at least Jesus is still at Radio City.

From all this, what may we conclude? That for a certain sort, art is a cautionary tale, or it is something pretty to look at. Such types have been with us through the ages, of course, and some have even written criticism, but it is rare to see any so proud of their own philistinism.

SCHADENFRAUD. In classic form, the Crazy Jesus Lady tells some warm, fuzzy stories about her old boss Dan Rather, then concludes that he is a rube who got bought off in Saville Row suits and pseudo-sophistication by evil liberals of the Edward R. Murrow school, and cheers his departure. This really brings to mind the old Gore Vidal line: "All the attributes of a dog, except loyalty."

Bonus mendacity: Noonan fondly recalls Richard Nixon, who in her imagining was harried by smug reporters "because Watergate seemed to illustrate what reporters knew, just knew, was the secret truth residing in Richard Nixon's dark heart: a desire for enemies lists and break-ins and IRS reviews." It does sound awful of them, till one recalls that the reporters were absolutely right. Which, it would seem, is the real reason Noonan is cheered that one of them went down.

RACE TO THE BOTTOM. There's a full-court-press on by Joemomentum! types to get the Democratic Party to more closely resemble the Republican Party, and thereby squeeze out a few extra votes.

Peter Beinart seems to believe that the Democrats are led not by Nancy Pelosi or John Kerry, but by Michael Moore and MoveOn, and claims that when Moore sat in Jimmy Carter's box at the Democratic Convention, America "watched and wondered." (Boy, I'd like to see the polling data behind that finding.) Beinart suggests that Democrats embrace the War Against Whatever and use it as "a powerful rationale for a more just society at home." Because, you know, people won't go for a just society unless you attach a war to it.

Kristin Day of Democrats for Life avails that traditional platform for Democratic Party reform, National Review, to tell her alleged comrades that they must also jettison their support for abortion rights, or eternal defeat is certain ("some pro-choice forces in the Democratic party would rather lose than run a pro-life candidate").

For those who with reason wonder how Day intersects with Democratic Party principles, she defines those as "protect[ing] life at all stages by ensuring freedom from violence, a livable wage, affordable health care, an opportunity to live and raise a family, and social security for retirees."

Social security for retirees! The dream still lives!

Who knows what would work for the Democrats? If the mess the Republicans have made of our country was not sufficiently harrowing to voters to drive them Democratic in 2004, what would? Probably not "Same as the other guys, but with social security for retirees." Especially since big-S Social Security will probably be a gutted shell by the time they get another crack at it. Then some thoughtful neoliberal will tell the Democrats that they must embrace work-till-death as a means of preserving electabilty, so that a more just society (with a mismanaged war, work-till-death, etc.) might one day be reached.

Or maybe they could groom a few action-movie stars to run for high office. That might work.

THE NEW CRITICISM. Now Roger L. Simon is doubling as National Review theatre critic. He begins his maiden review (of Frayn's Democracy) with a few character observations that evince some knowledge of dramaturgy, but, anxious to please his Soviet masters, gets soon enough to the political money shot:

Like many successful playwrights in today’s iffy theatrical market, Frayn has formed an entente cordiale with his audience. Two of the plays more pointed laugh lines are "What does Communism have to do with the Left?" and "Never mind football! Try parliamentary democracy!" The audience is encouraged to chortle at a kind of soft cultural relativism of low expectations, their conventional liberal values reinforced and almost willfully unexamined. These views also fit a majority of that tiny segment of the American community still going to serious drama on Broadway. It’s not quite a "status/business deal" in the way the purchase of modern art was described by Tom Wolfe years ago, but it’s not all that far off.

With a few names changed, this wouldn't have been out of place in the New Masses.

I would recommend that Simon examine the work Terry Teachout, a conservative whose theatre criticism is about the plays rather than the goddamn audiences, but I fear the lesson would be wasted.

TO BE CHISELED INTO THE BASE OF THE WARBLOGGERS' MONUMENT. "I detest those who make the political into the psychological. But somehow I find myself unavoidably drawn to [the Left's] rejection of our heritage as a political version of the adolescent's rejection of their parents." -- Armed Liberal.

HICKORY & IVORY.

Most of my Christian friends have no clue what goes on in faculty clubs. And my colleagues in faculty offices cannot imagine what happens in those evangelical churches on Sunday morning. In both cases, the truth is surprisingly attractive. And surprisingly similar... And each side of this divide has something to teach the other. -- William J. Stuntz, Tech Central Station

PROFESSOR FRENZNERL: So... what's on network television these days?

REV. JAMES EARL BONAFIDE (pronounced "bona-feeday"): Well there's that show where the Amish children go to Los Angeles, and they're exposed to every kind of temptation: strippers, mud wrestling, sushi bars. But they emerge with their righteousness intact, praise God.

PROFESSOR FRENZNERL: Fascinating. What do you think of the cheese?

REV. JAMES EARL BONAFIDE: Kinda runny, but it's got a lot of flavor.

PROFESSOR FRENZNERL: It really seems to add something to these hush puppies. Almost like a kase brooje. Have you been to the Netherlands?

REV. JAMES EARL BONAFIDE: My boy Clem witnessed there last year. He was fine once he got out of detox. (Produces bottle) Like a snort?

PROFESSOR FRENZNERL: Let me just finish the Chardonnay. (Does so.) Fill 'er up, hoss. Is that white lightning?

REV. JAMES EARL BONAFIDE: None other. So, are you all homosexuals, or just the women?

PROFESSOR FRENZNERL: That seems rather a tactless thing to say. Fortunately my kind believes that violence never solved anything.

REV. JAMES EARL BONAFIDE: Now that's just Satanic. Our Lord Jesus Christ used to get into fistfights all the time, just to show the disciples who was boss. And when he drove the moneychangers from the temple, he actually broke a man's neck and killed him. They tried to hush it up, but you'll find a full account of it in the Gnostic Gospels.

PROFESSOR FRENZNERL: Here's something I've been meaning to ask you. When you people speak in tongues, are you actually saying something or are you just making a bunch of noises?

REV. JAMES EARL BONAFIDE: You want to swap trade secrets? What's that de-construction stuff all about anyways?

PROFESSOR FRENZNERL: Touche. So... how does one win a stock-car race?

MRS. FRENZNERL-HYPHEN: Excuse me, we have been asked to leave, because we are embarrassingly drunk and the Palestinian/Israeli dinner dance is coming in.

REV. JAMES EARL BONAFIDE: That might mean Armageddon right here in the Rainbow Room! I hate to miss that.

MRS. FRENZNERL-DOUCHE: I rather doubt it will be. They have put down quite a large deposit. Would you care to join my husband and me for an orgy?

REV. JAMES EARL BONAFIDE: That's against my religion.

PROFESSOR FRENZNERL: How quaint! Then let us go to a place where they don't care how drunk we are. I suggest the Yale Club.

(Exeunt omnes, singing "The Whiffenpoof Song")