I MAY NOT KNOW MUCH ABOUT THE LAW BUT I KNOW WHAT'S RIGHT AND WRONG AND WHAT YOU'RE DOING IS WRONG. No sooner does the SCOTUS ban child executions than conservatives begin the drumbeat of accusations of judicial overreach:

Roper and Atkins tell capital defense litigators to delay their cases for as many years as possible. Drag out the appeals for a long, long time. During that period, have activists try to encourage legislators in a few select states to enact new legislative restrictions on the death penalty. It doesn't matter if those restrictions have any actual effect on how cases are charged; bans in states that do not actually bring any death penalty cases are fine, as the real audience is the Supreme Court.

As if what was decided were a judicial chess match, rather than the fate of adolescents on death row. And as if "cruel and unusual punishment" were a phrase without meaning.

Of course, the author is "not sure about the juvenile death penalty as a matter of policy." But, but, but.

Maybe I'm projecting, or penumbrating. I've always tried, with varying levels of success, to be a nice guy, and I imagine my politics grow out of that rather than vice-versa; that is to say, I want to see the greatest good for the greatest number because that's how I was raised, not because I've read Jeremy Bentham and find the felicific calculus a sound instrument.

As my upbringing has also instilled in me a large capacity for self-doubt, I am willing to entertain arguments that, in trying to do right I have miscalculated and advocated a path that will lead to more rather than less harm. This seems to me an indispensible prerequisite of adult decision-making.

Still, if my gut tells me that the electrocution of 12-year-olds*, however depraved the child, is not a good thing, then I start from that admittedly emotional reaction and put the honus of proving otherwise on those who contend that the indefinite incarceration of lads, as opposed to their elimination, is justice denied. This is an unavoidable prejudice, but one I believe my faith in the system (our Founders', not any other) and in reason may help me to overcome.

So I am not unsusceptible to counterintuitive Constitutional arguments -- which is why I give more slack to gun-rights enthusiasts than my gut tells me to give them. But over the years I've heard lots of people whose fair-mindedness is by no means a settled matter argue that Roe v. Wade was judicial overreach, that Lawrence v. Texas was judicial overreach, that prohibitions of school prayer are judicial overreach, etc., and thought: Why, in these arguments, are you guys always on the side of less personal freedom? Where did you get the idea that the Constitution is more about restrictions to liberty than it is about the maintenance of liberty's necessary conditions? And why do I get this feeling (again, in my gut) that you are not so incensed at a violation of our founding documents as you are incensed that the freedoms guaranteed therein have led to a social condition that offends your gut feelings?

When these guys finally wrench the Court far enough in their desired direction, then we will have their kind of state, with all the child excecutions, forced childbirth, madatory prayer, and other such horrors of which they dream. Till then let us enjoy the blessings of liberty, howsoever they are bestowed.

(UPDATED with a few modest stylistic changes to make it more rabid.)

*UPDATE II. As the Times and Bull point out, the execution of offenders who were under 16 at the time of their crimes was already precluded by Thompson v. Oklahoma in 1988. Was that as much an "overreach" as the current case? Tony Scalia seemed to think so: in his Thompson dissent, he cited many precedents for executing 15-year-old killers, and argued that the Court had failed to prove the punishment was cruel and unusual (accent on the "unusual"), or even reflected "evolving standards of decency," and thus the plurality was "hoist[ing] on to the deck of our Eighth Amendment jurisprudence the loose cannon of a brand new principle" with its decision. Further:

The concurrence's approach is a solomonic solution to the problem of how to prevent execution in the present case, while at the same time not holding that the execution of those under 16 when they commit murder is categorically unconstitutional. Solomon, however, was not subject to the constitutional constraints of the judicial department of a national government in a federal, democratic system.

Scalia's position might remind one of that of Starry Vere in Billy Budd. Vere also had a point -- nearly the same one. But Vere, of course, feared mutiny were he less than strict on the law. What was to be feared of the "loose cannon" in this case? Perhaps that someday someone would be emboldened by it to do... what was done yesterday. Which was not mutiny, I think, but mercy.

Take heart, those who decry this "assault on judicial restraint," as if it were to judicial restraint that you addressed your prayers at night and your thanks in moments of joy: after a few new appointments, you'll get a chance to show your devotion to judicial restraint by overturning a buttload of decisions and stripping us of a whole lot of freedoms.

FREE SPEECH FOR NEITHER ME NOR THEE. Andrew McCarthy reprises the no-free-speech-for-terrorists argument, in that dreary yet terrifying manner which is the right-wing Constitutional scholars' version of nuclear scientists' "megadeath" talk:

[Author Geoffrey R.] Stone buys wholly into Justice Hugo Black’s absolute conviction that Communists could safely be permitted to preach the need for violent overthrow of the government because (in Black’s words) “free speech will preserve, not destroy, the nation” (emphasis in the original).

Taking a proper historical view, however, one might state the proposition differently: doctrinaire civil libertarians can always be relied on, no matter what the crisis, to minimize the danger faced by the nation. In the real world, moreover, free speech can only produce its vaunted corrective effects if it has both the inclination and the time to work. The problem is that it often does not.

Today’s marketplace of ideas, for example, has been notably reluctant to engage even the subject of Islamofascism and the threat it poses to our institutions and our liberties. Nor does that marketplace strike one as a very effective weapon for bringing suicide murderers to heel, let alone for militating against electronically beamed fatwas capable of unleashing weapons of untold destructive power before other ideas have a meaningful opportunity to compete and persuade.

Clearly the First Amendment is not holding up its end in the War on Whatever. There are plenty of juicy soundbytes to go with -- "Without security, there is no liberty at all," "(Learned) Hand did not figure on militant Islam," etc. -- if you take pleasure in that sort of thing.

One may wonder why so many pages were needed to explicate what at first blush looks like a reiteration of the "provocation to unlawful action" of which Hand spoke as exempt from First Amendment protection. Maybe McCarthy was counting on an incantatory effect; his lengthy diatribe does not convince so much as lull. Conservatives of a certain stripe may introduce it to ennervate free-speech discussions, much as The Riddler used sleeping gas against Batman.

And the ideas will challenge even some conservatives. McCarthy offers several examples from American history of government limitations on free speech, and none of them trouble him much; he seems capable of accepting any number of extra restraints in the interest of national security. No First Amendment worship for him -- If the damn old thing gets in the way, kick it out.

I wonder how many conservatives will go along. We keep hearing about the alleged libertarian component of modern conservatism -- well, there sure ain't a place for that in McCarthy's vision. Cleverly, he lays some bait for the less hardcore but still red-blooded conservatives, including invocations of the Communist menace (and William O. Douglas and others' alleged underestimation of same, followed of course by the challenge, "One also wonders what Douglas would have made of militant Islam"), "moral clarity," and Michael Moore. Thus wavering types might be lured near enough to snatch: I hate Michael Moore! My heroes say "moral clarity" a lot! Maybe I've got this free-speech thing all wrong!

I cannot find anything McCarthy has written about the Second Amendment, but considering how easy it is for him to regulate mere words on security grounds, I would be very interested to know if he is more or less tolerant of instruments that can actually blow one's head off.

DUDE, THAT'S HARSH! I didn't like "The Gates" much, either, but check out Alan Bromley, heretofore best known as the right wing's preeminent dramatic fantasist:

But this day, I realized that Christo and his wife had hoodwinked us all and forced us into their monotone vision, one that is anti-American...

Anti-American! Will Christo and Jean-Claude be spirited to Gitmo? If he is as skilled at voices as he is at dialogue, perhaps Bromley can pass the Feds an incrimating tape.

I note also that Bromley objects to the color of the curtains: "...saffron, the color of the Hare Krishnas? New York is a city of Catholics, Jews, Protestants, Muslims, of people who are black, white, brown and yellow, and variations of all of the above, and we relish it, benefit from it, and, at our best, learn from it."

So not only are the artists anti-Americans, they're also anti-Catholic, -Jewish, etc. Or pro-Krishna. Same diff, I guess.

I stick with my original, scholarly judgement: "Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick."

SHORTER ROGER L. SIMON: Like my asshole fans, I say fooey to Hollyweird and their ridiculous Oscars. (several hours later) Well, here we are at the Oscars! (And I brought my asshole fans with me!) He's good, she's not, she's good, he's bad, etc. Why is Chris Rock going on about black stuff? Doesn't he know I wrote for Richard Pryor?

SHORTER JAMES LILEKS: Silly Oscars! Silly actors! I have films my little girl made of the toilet, and I play with U-boats in my bathtub. Who needs Hollyweird?

BETTER THAN TED WILLIAMS. At nine for twenty, I more than batted my weight, so I count my Oscar predictions a success. Of course I missed the big Million Dollar Baby surge. Prolly wun cuz a tha pro-death librul ending. Clint Eastwood is the new Michael Moore!

I was feeling prescient there for a while, thinking the Aviator craft awards were the first clanking hints of a steamroller, rather than gracious pats on the back for an also-ran. When Finding Neverland got the Best Score award, I was convinced I had cracked the code.

But I was surprised by Charlie Kaufman, whose film was one of the few I'd actually seen -- I liked it but figured it was too arty-farty for this lot -- and the Eastwood love-fest. In retrospect, it figures that they would heap garlands on him rather than Scorsese. Let's face it, Hollywood's love for New York -- which reached its fullest effulgence when they honored Woody Allen for making fun of L.A. in Annie Hall -- died when they started using Toronto as a stand-in for us. He'll never win now, and he can't go back -- the mean streets where he made his bones are all cleaned up. Maybe he'll devote the remainder of his life to looking for the director's cut of The Magnificent Ambersons. Well, he could do worse.

I have to say that Sidney Lumet's speech was my favorite bit. To devote his only moment in the Oscar sun to an encomium of movies as they were made in the days of giants was an act of admirable and rare humility. Chris Rock was a little too jazzed -- you could tell by the timbre of his throat-screeches that he had pumped himself out of his zone -- but didn't embarrass himself. And I liked that so many of the men in the audience wore long ties. I still haven't figured out the ankhs, but I expect I'll hear about them when the culture-warriors commence firing on Monday morning.

TIME TO REVIVE A HUMILIATING TRADITION. Since childhood I have been an Oscar fan. I actually have a book of past winners and nominees, and find the artistic and political calculi by which they are presumed to have been determined more interesting than the equivalent readings of political apointments. I was fascinated to learn, for example, that some dark-horse results of Academy voting in the late 30s and early 40s are attributed by some to the voting strength of the Screen Extras Guild, who were then empowered to cast ballots. (The affected outcomes include former stuntman Walter Brennan's three Oscars, and the triumph of "Sweet Leilani" over "They Can't Take That Away From Me" in the 1937 Best Song competition.)

It is a silly thing, but mine own and, I judge, a harmless late-winter indulgence. Many find the ceremonies an incredibly lurid waste of time, money, and attention, but so is my job; the Oscars are more fun, and certainly less aggravating than politics. I once received a very nice note from John Podhoretz, whose beliefs emanate from a different solar system than mine but to whose authority on the Awards I bow, correcting me on the number of Oscars won by Katharine Hepburn.

One of the appurtances of my insignificent obsession is a tendency to make predictions on the Awards even when I have seen but very few of the nominated films. These are based on gut feelings and usually incredibly wrong, but no one has been able to stop me from making them, and I am unable to stop myself from publishing them:

Best Picture: The Aviator
Best Actor: Jamie Foxx, Ray
Best Actress: Annette Bening, Being Julia
Best Supporting Actor: Morgan Freeman, Million Dollar Baby
Best Supporting Actress: Kate Blanchett, The Aviator
Best Director: Martin Scorsese, The Aviator
Best Original Screenplay: Keir Pearson and Terry George, Hotel Rwanda
Best Adapted Screenplay: Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, Sideways
Best Cinematography: Robert Richardson, The Aviator
Best Score: Jan Kaczmarek, Finding Neverland
Best Song: "Accidentally in Love," Shrek 2
Best Film Editing: Thelma Schoonmaker, The Aviator
Best Costume Design: Sandy Powell, The Aviator
Best Art Direction: Rick Heinrichs (Art Direction) and Cheryl A. Carasik (Set Decoration), Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
Best Makeup: Keith Vanderlaan and Christien Tinsley, The Passion of the Christ
Best Sound Editing: Paul N. J. Ottosson, Spider-Man 2
Best Sound Mixing: Randy Thom, Tom Johnson, Dennis Sands, and William B. Kaplan, The Polar Express
Best Visual Effects: John Nelson, Andrew R. Jones, Erik Nash, and Joe Letteri, I, Robot
Best Documentary Feature:Born Into Brothels
Best Animated Feature:The Incredibles

I am on record. Tomorrow I shall take my lumps like a man.

SAVE OUR CITY -- MUG A TOURIST! Again in the subway tunnels this morning, I had to practically tread on the heels of my fellow citizens to get them to move either at an acceptable clip or out of my way.

It seems that in the past few years New Yorkers have gotten slower. At a stage in life in which I could reasonably expect my neighbors to begin brushing impatiently past my decrepit ass, I find more often than not that I am actually ahead of the general pace.

I have no data on this, but I do know that our City recently rose several places in Men's Fitness magazine's study of the Fattest Cities in the U.S., from 21st to eighth.

One unfortunate side effect of the City's ballyhooed "revitalization" is that it has attracted people to New York who might otherwise have stayed away. For decades, only the mad, the inspired, and the professionally obligated came here. We were a jacked-up lot; we had to constantly watch out for muggers and dogshit, and to keep up with unreliable public transportation schedules. We grew accustomed to nervily grabbing whatever pedestrian advantages we could, and on our watch New York street life remained a rather bracing track and field event. In fact, we developed a sort of sixth sense about transportation. I remember one day in the 80s when the automatic turnstile at the Berry Street end of the Bedford Street L station broke, allowing people to enter and ride for free; within a half-hour, no one was using the (primary) Bedford entrance, while traffic on the Berry side was unusually heavy -- people, it appeared, were riding just because it was free.

It was tension-inducing, but it was sort of fun and it helped keep the weight off.

Outsiders gazed upon this behavior with that mixture of respect and disgust usually reserved for the inscrutable customs of the East, like the Hejira or eating live monkey brains. They maybe dug it, but not enough to join it.

But during the reign of Giuliani, New York was made less intimidating to the timorous. Now that the dark-'n'-scary has been policed, gentrified, and strip-malled out of much of our territory, the placid and the bovine flock to us. They waddle our streets in a happy daze, untroubled by anxiety of any sort.

They do not have to adapt to New York's singular ways, because we have lost many of them. Even in poor neighborhoods, you don't really have to have eyes in the back of your head anymore. We have more chain stores and outlets now, too -- Home Depots and Targets and K-Marts -- so you don't have to claw feverishly through racks for bargains. There's a Red Lobster midtown -- a Bennigan's too, so even your palate can remain unchallenged. Public spaces are increasingly organized to resemble, not the plazas of old Europe, but the malls of America. And soon, if Mayor Richie Rich and his dog Dollar have their way, there will be a big, hideously ugly stadium on the West Side, the sort of thing that is the pride and joy of municipalities like Foxboro, MA, as well as the cash cow of their vested interests.

Once upon a time it was less easy to put a giant boondoggle like this stadium over on our citizens than on those of the sticks. But New Yorkers are changing; in addition to getting slower on the street, they seem to be getting slower in the head. One follows the other, perhaps. Perhaps Australian New Yorker Rupert Murdoch believes this, too, and so bids his Postie flacks plump for more malls as well as for the stadium, because the more our citizens come to resemble suburban sheep -- stuffed full of cheap grain and herded, with the occasional aid of electronic stimulation, through pens -- the more easily we can be shorn for profit.

So our new citizens trudge the streets, capitivated by orange curtains and $10.99 chicken wings on Times Square, while the Mayor bullies and bosses his way to a big payday for somebody.

I had hoped that it would not come to this, but I expect it will take a fresh crime wave to weed the unfit from our ranks. And as we have not quite arrived at the End of History, I expect it will come sooner than later, hopefully before I am really too old to outrun both the crooks and the children of the corn who are fucking up the City.

DA, DA, WE LAUGH! Comrade Simon informs that Chris Rock is making Bush joke, which is nyet funny. Suggests Comrade Rock reform, hire Tim Blair for jokesmith. Gives example of Blair correct comedy ("Listen, legs, this plan wouldn’t fool a Kennedy!").

Is rolling in the aisles, Comrade! Perhaps Comrade Rock to be joined by Dennis Miller for Oscar laff-fest.

(removing black hat, mustache, and ridiculous dialect) Maybe they can send Simon around to the late-night shows to explain to Leno et alia that all the jokes have to be about Michael Moore, Ted Kennedy, and maybe Ward Chruchill if they can get the explanatory pamphlets distributed in time.

SHORTER...

...JAMES LILEKS: Corporations can indoctrinate my little girl all they like, but I'll be damned if I'll let her be bussed to one of those schools that are "bilingual," if you know what I mean.

...CRAZY JESUS LADY: Al Gore didn't invent the internet -- Jesus did. (He also inspires me to show "compassion" by heaping abuse on the recently deceased.)

...RIDICULOUS ECCLESIASTICAL PSEUDONYM*: My people are worshipping a graven image of Mitt Romney. And they lied to me about what they'd do with the money, too. When all this starts to get me down, I just remind myself: that Michael Moore, he shore is fat! Haw haw haw!

* Thanks to Tom for his help.

A SPOONFUL OF SUCRALOSE. Some days my vision takes on a hallucinogenic cast, and familiar things turn into their objective correlatives. In my hands on the subway this morning, the New York Post turned into Pravda. I don't mean it was transliterated into Russian, I mean I could see -- or felt I could see -- behind each story into its news hole, and see to the back of the holes (which, in my imagining, are lined with old wood, and have slots for insertion of the back end of the news peg, by which the stories hang), where masking-tape labels are fixed that read SUBMIT TO STADIUM PROJECT HYPE, THE LEADER IS STRONG, TRAITORS AMONG US, and GLAM CRAP/BRAIN SOFTENER, as each case might be.

Of course one need not suffer from visions to see such agenda in the Post's editorial page. It is always a little festival of bad faith and special pleading. Today we had an attack on the sugar industry's attack on Splenda by the head of something called the American Council on Science and Health. This, from the Council's own website, should tell you what you need to know about them (though if you want more start here): "Sometimes, if reporters complain about our corporate funding, I remind them that they are funded by corporations and advertisers as well." Uh huh.

Such people are not total hacks -- that is to say, while they may be Satan's emissaries on earth, they do take professional pride in their own work, and add filigrees and flourishes partly to increase effectiveness but also, I believe, out of pure love of craft. For example, there is some obvious merit to the author's accusations against the sugar barons -- among others, that they had hooked up with pure-food types not out of altruism but as a way to fight Splenda's increasing share of the sweetener market. This is the spoonful of sucralose, so to speak, that helps work down the public's gullet a larger message: that people who oppose synthetic foods on whatever grounds are anti-technology "chemicalphobes."

Organizations such as this are not about arguing a case, but adding strands to a narrative. Facts may be used as part of the grapeshot, but they are by no means the only or even most important part of the armamature. Painting an investigation of questionable scientific assertions as an inquisition on the order of Galileo's, for example, lifts the issue out of the debating chamber and into the realm of dreams. You certainly don't want to side with inquisitors or chemicalphobes. Now eat this chlorinated sugar.

But perhaps I'm overthinking it. Michelle Malkin may very well think that young women who cut themselves are engaging in a "fad" (and doing it to a "new genre of music -- 'emo'") for which Christina Ricci is more to blame than their home and family lives. She isn't necessarily consciously trying to shift blame for our damaged youth onto Hollywood so that it will continue to serve as a distraction from the crimes of our government and corporate rulers. Say this for my paranoia: it offers a more charitable (if more sinister) interpretation of their efforts than simple idiocy.

THE LATE GREAT HUNTER S. James Lileks, Esq., the MacLeish of the Mall of America, thinks the late Hunter S. Thompson didn't do anything worthwhile after Hell's Angels: "It was all bile and spittle at the end, and it was hard to read the work without smelling the dank sweat of someone consumed by confusion, anger, sudden drunken certainties" etc. etc.

Here is something the Good Doctor wrote rather recently, while Mr. Lileks was shaking all Minneapolis with the thunder of his mediocrity:

There is an ever-growing appetite for Violence as Entertainment in this country -- especially among those in the 18-35 demographic that TV is targeting -- that something Dark & Disastrous is going to come of it. There is a good commercial reason why Fox just paid for TV rights to NASCAR, and it is exactly the same reason why every recently built racetrack from California to Maine is designed about 20 feet Wider than tracks were built in the old days, when it was physically impossible for more than three (3) cars to run side by side at 180 mph in the straightaway -- the new & Wider tracks have created the blood-curdling spectacle of four cars running fender-to-fender at top speed.

"It makes the racing vastly more Exciting," say the auto-sport czars. "It dramatically raises the Potential-Disaster factor & whips the fans into a frenzy."

Right. Blood & guts, bread & Circuses, human brains all over the asphalt. The people of Rome demanded more & more Death & Cruelty on their Sunday afternoons at the Coliseum -- until Nobody was left to Sacrifice. They ran out of Victims.

And so will the NFL, the NBA and NASCAR. That is what makes people nervous about the meaning of Dale Earnhardt's death. It is the American Dream run amok. Watch it & weep.

This was the allegedly enfeebled Thompson writing for ESPN in his declining years. The Fear and Loathing books, and the great essays for Rolling Stone, were also part of Thompson's journalistic work. Till he decided that it was all too much to bear he kept on producing, which is what journalists do. Purportedly as a man, and observably as a writer, he was one true, tough son of a bitch, and I will remember with gratitude his work long after I have forgotten my current anger at the mewling pipsqueaks who seek through their flimsy prattle to minimize him.

UPDATE. It's a sad reversal when the New York Post's farewell to HST turns out classier than that of Richard Brookhiser, whose normal function is to wrangle NRO's shit-ass punks when they stray too far from objective reality. "The druggie Jerry Lewis" doesn't even make sense. Tommy Chong -- now there's your druggie Jerry Lewis! Maybe Brookhiser has got into the blotter again.

RETURNING FROM A LONG WEEKEND TO FIND NO ONE HAS CLEANED UP THAT CORNER. "While the networks wasted no time publicizing sexual-harassment charges against Bill Cosby (and don't think that boomlet of coverage had nothing to do with Cosby's tough words about black parenting, no doubt seen as "right wing moralizing")..." -- Tim Graham, National Review Online. Those whose heads do not swim with conspiracy theories may recall very lavish MSM coverage of the Autumn Jackson-Bill Cosby case in 1997. What were the liberal conspirators punishing The Cos for then? Perhaps it was a preemptive strike against "Kids Say The Darndest Things." If so, they should all get medals.

Meanwhile John Derbyshire yells at a bunch of foreign students for not behaving properly in an Amtrak "quiet car" that does not in fact exist. When his error is explained to him, he thunders that "Young Europeans have no manners and no clue how to behave in public." Derbyshire once told an interviewer, "I am not very careful about what I say, having grown up in the era before Political Correctness, and never having internalized the necessary restraints." He seems to mistake being a horse's ass for rhetorical bravery.

TRAGEDY WRIT PLAIN AND SMALL. Saw the Theatre for a New Audience's production of Corilolanus this weekend. The Times calls this "postmodern" but it looked like straight-up Brechtian theatre to me, with actors announcing scenes with apposite phrases from the text scrawled on the grey walls of the box in which it is played, and changing roles more or less in full view of the audience. Most importantly, a good deal of the romanticism has been wrung out of the playing and the concept, the better to expose the play itself to our scrutiny.

From my perspective this seems like an attempt to give the play a fair reading against the difficulties it presents for modern audiences, not the least of which is Shakespeare’s dim view of democracy, at least the Roman variant, which was the only one he knew. (Blog knows I don’t generally approve political interpretations of art, but this is a famously political text.) The Bard uses the phrase "the People" frequently and with obvious contempt: the proles, politically empowered for the sake of temporary peace and stirred maliciously against Coriolanus by their slippery Tribunes, are here even more foolish and dangerous than the "blocks… stones… worse than senseless things" in Julius Caesar, and their unsuitability to power is more crucial to the plot. The parable of the human body with which Menenius defends the Roman system – "The Senators of Rome are this good belly, and you the mutinous members" -- will be familiar to readers of William Camden and Thomas Hobbes. For all its philosophical interest, this isn’t the sort of thing with which most moderns, whatever their politics, can be easily made comfortable.

Very sensibly, the director takes it at face value: she gives one of the key proles a comical hillbilly accent (which he reprises when playing a Volscian of similar station), and the dialects of the Tribunes suggest working-class roots which, however smoothed by political experience, yet feed their resentment of entrenched power ("Doubt not the commoners, for whom we stand, but they upon their ancient malice will forget with the least cause these new honors").

This tidily accomplished, we can concentrate on the noble Romans, and they too are taken at face value: Volumnia talks about her son’s blood-drenched attainments as if they were spelling bee championships, and Menenius the "humorous patrician" is a political fixer whose pusillanimous manner gently cloaks a great heart.

Coriolanus himself is a fascinating case, dramatically. That he lacks the fan base of Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear, or even Anthony, despite his sometimes excellent poetry, may owe to the impenetrability that defines him. One friend who saw this production decided she liked him because "he doesn’t kiss ass," but Coriolanus’ obsessive self-determination does not strike me as particularly attractive. His suicidal/homicidal course admits no counter-argument until the rather base hectoring of his mother finally turns him against his own will, and he seems only fleetingly aware that he might be wrong; there are no deliberative soliloquies on the order of "How all occasions do inform against me" or "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" to draw us into his turmoil – in fact, of turmoil he has but little: his best speech ("O world, thy slippery turns!") is purely self-justifying.

Christian Camargo’s performance appears to admit this. When not raging or fighting, he takes in each situation as if it were a dish brought before him that he could relish or sweep off the table as his mood struck him. If he is noble, it is in his inability to be moved by things smaller than himself, and when his fall comes (from his mother’s stronger will), he is not ennobled by it, but unmanned; his performance of the well-known stage direction, "Holds [Volumnia] by the hand silent," is a wrenching grasp of her wrist, and even the other characters react as if he might break her arm.

This is a clear and highly theatrical reading of the play. Whether it is correct is another matter. The only other production I have seen was at the Public, years ago, and I have forgotten who did it. It was fairly traditional, and not as interesting as this one, but it was warmer and wooed us into sympathy with Coriolanus. At the moment, I don’t know really whether the new production has disabused me of a misapprehension of the play or not. I do know that it seems smaller to me now than when I went into the theatre.

IT ALL DEPENDS ON WHAT YOUR DEFINITION OF "IS AN ASSHOLE" IS.
Is everyone in this blogosphere on drugs?

A highly-regarded web operative says former U.S. President Jimmy Carter "isn't just misguided or ill-informed. He's on the other side," and suddenly we're debating the meaning of simple words and phrases, as with this Matt Yglesias commenter:

i must've missed the part where the powerline guy said carter's a jihadist or whatever. i thought the other side was the anti-everything democrats. shows you what I know.

In the context of world politics in a time of war, when you say someone's "on the other side," how the hell is it something other than an accusation of treason?

Meanwhile the aforementioned operative returns to accuse Carter of "aligning himself with America's enemies" and "conspiring with our chief enemy to try to influence an American Presidential election" -- then adding, astonishingly, "We could have called that treason, but we didn't."

This is how the racket appears to work: tar your opponents with terms that unambiguously mean "traitor" -- like "objectively on [Saddam's] side" or "not anti-war, just on the other side" -- and then play dumb ("Barlow proceeds to suggest that I'm calling American liberals terrorists... I'm used to having my posts mischaracterized...").

Heretofore I had blamed poor reading skills, but I'm beginning to wonder if those anti-depressant pills so many people are taking these days are in fact powerful hallucinogens, leading to a massive reality shift I am pharmacologically incapable of understanding.

UPDATE. So many people are on this thing it's getting crowded, so you should probably shove me off and snuggle with The Poor Man's coverage.

DA CAPPO. There was some discussion of Al Capp in comments to a previous post -- and in the context of David Horowitz, no less! Allow me to say that Capp's was one transit from liberal darling (William Faulkner wrote the intro to one of his compilations!) to raving wingnut that I can appreciate and respect. I will explain.

As a political philosopher, Capp was a moron. (Read the 60s-vintage Capp quote here -- it's such damned-hippies boilerplate as would make Michael Totten blush.) I assume Capp didn't get dumber as he went along. But he had a strong feeling about the relationship of the powerful to the powerless, and when he perceived the power flowing from the rock-ribbed Republicans of earlier days to the Great Society crowd, he flipped to the other side.

That doesn't make him right -- merely understandable, if you know how artists sometimes work. When he stopped making fun of General Bullmoose ("What's good for General Bullmoose is good for the USA!") and started making fun of Joan Baez (aka "Joanie Phonie," who upon regarding Dogpatch cries, "Those poor wretches! I'm giving them $1,000,000... in protest songs!"), Capp was no better or worse an analyst of social conditions than he had been. He was simply addicted to irreverence, and took the most obnoxious position he could find. And he was a sport about it; he did a photo shoot with Joan Baez for Time magazine. (The published photo shows Baez singing and Capp wincing theatrically, with his fingers in his ears.)

In the 1960s Capp used to give talks on college campuses -- this while he was mercilessly parodying the whole student movement with SWINE (Students Wildly Indignant About Everything). The kids hated him -- the man who invented the Sadie Hawkins Day their older brothers and sisters had made flesh! -- but Capp kept a-comin', perhaps as much for the collegiate pussy (he pleaded no contest to allegations of sexual misconduct, including an attempted rape) as for the chance to piss off hippies and get paid for it.

In any event Capp didn't indulge in the whiney woe-is-me-I'm-being-persecuted crap Horowitz and his acolytes specialize in. He seemed to like being an outsider; not for him the dogged insistence upon respect that distinguish his far-less-talented progeny. And he kept making funnies, not all of them informed by 60s politics. He kept up the "Fearless Fosdick" strip-within-a-strip, in which the impossibly upright and sexless Fosdick finds his only release in absurd cartoon violence. I personally recall a strip in which Abner's son, brainwashed by TV advertising, begs for a "Junior G.I." war-game kit. "Alright, son," declares Abner. "I'll give yuh the week's food money!" Abe walks into a toy store with a dollar bill but is laughed off -- "You can't even buy a toy dollar with that!" -- and so wanders into an army surplus store, where his dollar buys him a real flame-thrower, with which he causes havoc.

This has more to do with Happy Hooligan and The Katzenjammer Kids than with (God help us) Mallard Fillmore. Capp's 60s comics weren't his best -- go to his 40s and 50s stuff, much of it beautifully collected, for primo Li'l Abner -- but they were comics of the old school. And mourn the days when Li'l Abner and Pogo lived together on the funny pages, and cartoonists understood that if you want to grind an axe in public you'd better make some pretty awesome sparks doing it.

DIDN'T I WRITE ABOUT THIS ALREADY? OR IS IT ALL JUST STARTING TO MELT TOGETHER? Wonkette gave me pleasure (boy, you just read that site and suddenly everything's a double entendre) with a link to Discover The Network, a roundup of "activists for leftwing agendas and causes, radical egalitarians, and opponents of American 'imperialism'" spearheaded by David "Soul Brother #1" Horowitz. They've been at it for months, these guys, and have uncovered the sinister plans of all our top people, from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to Roger Ebert. Way to dig, fellas! They even spotted Susan V. Berresford, who is head of the Ford Foundation, which "was instrumental in funding NGOs responsible for the anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist literature that appeared at the UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa." Berresford may have thought she was covering her tracks by giving money to Jews, too, but Horowitz sees all!

Bonus points for listing Rachel Corrie, who is famously dead ("revered as a martyr by the anti-Israel left"). Maybe in the future we'll get listings for Joe Hill and Victoria Woodhull.

UPDATE. Oh yeah, I did write about this. Back then it was called "FOLLOW the Network." They musta focus-grouped it.

F*!@*%G NUTS. When it comes to stretching, Dorinda Bordlee makes Plastic Man look like Bruno S.:

It's time for all of us in the pro-life movement to learn to appreciate the power of political satire. Comedian Chris Rock, slated to host the Oscars this month, is being accused of promoting abortion.

"Abortion, it's beautiful, it's beautiful abortion is legal. I love going to an abortion rally to pick up women, cause you know they are f*!@*%g," Rock said during his club routine.

Whether Rock is pro-life or pro-choice, whether he intended to use satire or really believes what he said, is beside the point. What's "beautiful" is that Chris Rock has exposed a profound side effect of legalized abortion -- the sexual mistreatment of women.

Going through the text as closely as its overpowering smell would allow, I am forced to conclude that the "senior legislative counsel with Americans United for Life" does in fact mean to say that f*!@*%g women is akin to abusing them ("legalized abortion allows men to sexually prey on women"). To paraphrase Gilbert Gottfried, if this is a crime then I should be on Death Row.

Assuming that this article is not something the merry editors of National Review Online obtained with a secret tape recorder and some Rophynol, we may take her at her word and infer many interesting corollaries:

- When Bordlee's "Roe has ruined romance" replaces You are murdering babies, you baby-murderers as the brand statement of the anti-abortion movement, we will see a stark change in their advertising. Expect fewer helpless fetuses on highway billboards, and more commercials showing a woman weeping bitterly in the night because Roe v. Wade made Jim-Bob forget their anniversary.

- As Bordlee's "abortion on demand makes women into sex objects with the full consent of the highest court in the land" meme disseminates, expect a whole new school of NC BDSM stories in which leering Supreme Court Justices preside over gang-rapes. Also, oral, anal, and other copulative variants will disappear from such fiction, as jaded porn consumers turn against depictions of sexual acts that do not lead to abortion.

- Bordlee will become a media critic for BET, and in her first segment will explain that Jay-Z is telling us the uncomfortable truth that men demand abortion so that bitches will not be among the 99 problems from which they suffer.

UPDATE. For more insight into Bordlee's method, check her quotes from this excellent story about the real change in antiabortion strats. Culture war ain't the half of it.

THE "COARSELY COMPULSIVE" VS. THE MERELY COARSE. Now the culture warriors are feasting on the corpse of Arthur Miller and, as carrion birds will, making a sloppy job of it. My Stupid Dog gets the neo-Hegelian Award for denouncing The Crucible not only for its bulging anti-HUAC subtext, but for being crypto-anti-gay. "People who tittered over the sexual proclivities of Chambers, Roy Cohn and G. David Schine," writes the Dogman, "would have instantly recognized Miller's 'Abigail Williams' as a homosexual man in woman's drag."

When conservatives resorts to Queer Studies charlatanism to attack a dead playwright, you know Culture War High Command has thrown up more flags.

Having the most obvious (not to say egregious) political content of all Miller's plays, The Crucible has been the flashpoint for many wingers' funerary wrath. The New York Post even caps its Miller editorial by declaring that "To ignore [Miller's] contributions would be as wrong as to suggest that communism never posed a danger." Some people can't even recognize the word "class" unless it's printed on their airline tickets.

I give a little more slack to Terry Teachout, as he writes very astutely on cultural issues outside the padded walls of OpinionJournal. While I will say that it is odd to find him denouncing the newly-dead in such harsh terms, I will assume based on his record that his distaste for Miller's petentiousness is the clinical judgement of a critic, rather than the groping after available brickbats seen among the goon squad.

I do think he's missing something about the kind words spoken for Miller after his death -- quite apart for, um, a simple regard for decorum, I see in the remarks denounced by Teachout something other than "more stringently politicized critics and playwrights... willing to overlook Miller's limitations because he thought as they do."

Even Teachout acknowledges the "coarsely compulsive power" of Death of a Salesman, at least. Teachout says that power "manages to mask its aesthetic deficiencies" -- as if it were an air freshener or something. But how often nowadays do we get anything "coarsely complusive" in our theatre -- or film, or music, or etc.? I like coarsely compulsive powerful stuff like the Ramones, Celine, etc. And I can easily imagine theatre artists -- who tend to be romantic souls --wishing their work could have the sort of crude impact that "The Crucible," "Waiting for Lefty," and other plays of that sort had in their time, not because they're Commies but because it seems as if it would be exciting.

We can argue over whether, in Miller's case, the gestures were anything more than outsized; contrary to some of my critics, I approve agitprop only as I approve fruit-based sauces for meat: when they are extremely well done. But I think it's a little wide of the mark to assume that the younger playwrights are only speaking well of their fallen comrade because they're liberals. That seems to me more than a misjudgement, indeed a misreading of basic human nature. And once we start doing that, we're onto something that's much worse that bad theatre.

LOVE IS STRANGE. People keep sending white feathers to Jonah "Do These Fatigues Make My Ass Look Sorry?" Goldberg, and he has begun to yelp.

As often happens when a Cornerite is in peril or discomfort, anonymous and cryptonymous emails of support have materialized. Here is my most favorite passage from my most favorite anonymous email:

I can tell you that reading NRO on my laptop in Iraq even as the mortars impacted on our camp or after taking care of wounded soldiers was enough to buck up my morale. Your support and those of other Americans was just as valuable to me as the body armor I wore and the kevlar plating on my ambulance.

For some it was letter from home -- for others, a picture of the girl they left behind. For "Mike," it was Jonah Goldberg and his merry band of timewasters. It was their sorry asses Mike was fighting to cover -- and cover them he did!

To each his own. As the great Thurber said, "Chacun a son gout/is very, very true/but why should we despise/The apples of others' eyes?" Mike, Jonah, and everyone: Happy Valentine's Day!