OF COURSE YOU KNOW THIS MEANS CULTURE WAR! PART 4,388. While, like all thinking people, I am just about convinced that the Jesus freaks will soon rampage through our cities, torching libraries and forcibly installing v-chips, I have to admit that at this moment they just seem pretty silly.

Here, for example, is a Democrat preaching Culture War to whatever Democrats read rightwing nutmag OpinionJournal -- though as the author, Dan Gerstein, was Joe Lieberman's communications director, he must be used to small crowds.

Gerstein starts by attacking Frank Rich, whose "arrogance and narrow-mindedness... typifies the cultural thinking of our elites," etc. As this familiar rite is enacted, one's attention wavers, leaving time to wonder how many of those gosh-darned wonderful, salt of the earth moms and dads out there even know who the fuck Frank Rich is, and how folks like Gerstein would fare at an actual meeting of these folks if he seriously tried to convince them that their TV is full of swears because the former drama critic of the New York Times failed to criticize the coprolaliac excesses of Friends.

He may get away with it; his caution against "cynical Sister Souljah moments" suggests that he actually believes this tripe, and sincerity plays well in the heartland. Better, his model for winning over the values voter -- replicating the fight against Joe Camel by substituting a potty-mouthed David Schwimmer for the decommissioned cigarette spokescartoon -- further suggests that Gerstein is the sort of fellow who could do something that cynical without ever realizing how cynical he is being, and America has always cherished such types (high self-regard plus low self-awareness -- presidential timber!).

Hey, wait a minute. Why am I even accepting the possibility that anyone involved in this crap is in any way sincere? How could I let Small Precautions beat me to the obvious conclusion:

...the weakness of the argument aside, I couldn't help wonder, What is the WSJ doing giving space for "us" to talk about what the Democrats ought to be doing in the culture wars. The answer appears in the last two paragraphs: it turns out that the author of the article wants to promote Hillary as the proper moral face of the party.

And promoting Hillary is, of course, a highly desireable thing for the WSJ, since Hillary is exactly whom the Republicans would most like to see the Democrats nominate in 2008, since Hillary is unelectable nationally.

Am I losing my edge? I must go stare into the abyss for a while; watching Hewitt denounce comparisons of the Fundies with the Taliban as "anti-Christian rhetoric" and "hate speech" (we like Unitarians, Hugh -- do they count?) ought to sharpen me up.

AN OLD SHELL GAME MADE NEW. The usual suspects are flogging it, but the debut of Brian C. Anderson's South Park Conservatives book suffers from particularly bad timing: just as Anderson's trying to tell the world how wonderfully hip, fun, and politically incorrect the Right is, it seems all the top conservatives are either professing love for deceased anti-porn scold Andrea Dworkin, or screaming for Jesus, the Pope, and Terri Schiavo.

In fact, when the Schiavo became the subtext of an actual South Park show a few weeks back, the alleged party-boys and -girls of wingnut valhalla were strangely quiet -- not surprisingly, as the episode included the spectacle of Satan mind-controlling pro-lifers. (Swanky Conservative did gush, "I can’t wait to see where Trey & Matt take this," then never followed up.)

South Park conservatism attempts to play both ends against the middle -- like when Rupert Murdoch uses page-3 tits and tabloid sensationalism to finance political shills who denounce a decline in public morals. More than anything, perhaps, it reflects the pathos of political operatives -- or people in any line of work, for that matter -- who try to win advantage by announcing how very hip they are.

HIGH CHURCH, LOW CHURCH. The Crazy Jesus Lady tries her hand at dramaturgy, envisioning the Catholic Cardinals at dinner:

A Cardinal from South America says, "I had a thought. When the crowd kept applauding during the Mass--to me, looking out at them, it seemed as if they were saying: 'We're not just observers anymore, we're the Church, Hear us!' It seemed to me possibly quite significant."

Silence as they all considered this.

An old cardinal with what seemed a German accent cleared his throat.

"What they want, I believe, is a healthy church. For all John Paul's illness, they thought he was a healthy man. Emotionally and psychologically healthy in a way modern culture is not.

"It seems to me the meaning of the crowds, the meaning of the cries at the mass, is this: 'We loved this hero of truth, and we want a hero of truth.' They want someone who won't bow to the thinking of the world. They want someone who will clean the stables, too. The corruption and worldly values of the church, the sex scandals--these must be dealt with."

Nice touch, that throat-clearing. Adds a bit of what Mike Hammer called "the old sincerity."

Funny, when I envision Red Hats at dinner in Rome, I see a different scene entirely:

CARDINAL MAZEPPA: More young boy, Cardinal Umlaut?

CARDINAL UMLAUT: Danke! We ought to get together more often, fellows. Not just for funerals!

CARDINAL SPAGHETTINI: Can't you get up here more often?

CARDINAL UMLAUT: Ach, they keep me chained to my desk in Bremen. Fortunately I have a Herman Miller chair. The only one in existence made of gold, they tell me!

CARDINAL M'TUMBE: Do what I do – offer to donate your frequent flyer miles to the poor!

(General laughter)

CARDINAL WENCES: So what do you think? Ratzinger is a lock, no?

CARDINAL M'TUMBE: Too creepy. Yesterday he told me his first act as Pope would be to have John XXIII exhumed and tried post mortem for the heresy of Vatican II. He said he looked forward to striking off Roncalli's blessing fingers himself. I suspect he would do it with his teeth.

CARDINAL SPAGHETTINI: What about Arinze?

CARDINAL M'TUMBE: Come now, Spaghettini! You do not think the punters will accept a black face on the throne of Peter?

CARDINAL WENCES: And why not? They accepted a Polack!

(General laughter)

CARDINAL WENCES: Hey, you know how Wojtyla first put on the shoes of the fisherman?

(Stands, puts one foot on his chair, bends to tie his other shoe. General laughter.)

CARDINAL UMLAUT: Sorry, I missed that. This boy is squirming overmuch.

CARDINAL WENCES: I fix.

(Cuffs boy, yells in Sponish)

CARDINAL M'TUMBE: We may see a wide-open conclave, with incense-filled back rooms and the like.

CARDINAL MAZEPPA: The deadlock will not last. Serious cash is changing hands. A little red bird offered me the Ark of the Covenant for my support.

CARDINAL WENCES: Ridiculous!

CARDINAL MAZEPPA: Why? I can deliver 20 votes on the strength of blackmail alone!

CARDINAL WENCES: Because I have the Ark of the Covenant! At least that's what that bastard Martini told me.

CARDINAL MAZEPPA: Ha ha! Played for a chump, you were! You know, I like this Martini's style. Maybe I will make a call to the IMF and see if he is acceptable to our global overlords.

CARDINAL UMLAUT: (Wiping his brow with a handkerchief) Ah, that was refreshing. You know what I could go for? Some consecrated wine.

CARDINAL M'TUMBE: (Pouring out a fresh round) Accepite, et bibite ex eo omnes.

ALL: Salute!

Well, it ain't Chronicles of Hell, but I've had a busy morning.

BIG BROTHER, BIG DADDY, AND BIG MOMMY. I guess most of you by now have seen arch-conservative David Frum's obit for Andrea Dworkin:

Politically she belonged to the far, far, far left, but she had little use for an antiwar movement that made excuses for Saddam Hussein or Islamic extremism. And in one respect at least, she shared a deep and true perception with the political and cultural right: She understood that the sexual revolution had inflicted serious harm on the interests of women and children – and (ultimately) of men as well. She understood that all-pervasive pornography is not a harmless amusement, but a powerful teaching device that changed the way men thought about women. She rejected the idea that sex is just another commodity to be exchanged in a marketplace, that strippers and prostitutes should be thought of as just another form of service worker: She recognized and dared to name the reality of brutality and exploitation where many liberals insist on perceiving personal liberation.

David Frum misperceives a lot of things, and Dworkin is better known (certainly in my case!) by reductive popular commentary than by her actual work -- for a corrective of her alleged straight-sex-is-rape trope, see here, and see also this gentle and informed abstention to the Dworkin version of feminism -- but his moment of solidarity with Dworkin is tellingly useful to his purposes.

It was Dworkin's idea that our society turns sex into a commodity -- which notion should be unobjectionable to anyone possessing a TV -- and that as our society is male-dominated, women will tend to be the object rather than the subject of the transaction.

This analysis is of course Marxist to the core, whereas Frum is a gleeful capitalist. But Frum is a Republican functionary -- though one now plying his trade at National Review rather than as a Bush speechwriter, thanks to a spectacular PR fuck-up -- and he knows that religion is a big part of the Republican future. And he surely also knows that sexual shame is a big part of the power of religion the Republican Party relies upon for votes. As Paris was worth a Mass to Henry IV, so for Frum the GOP cause is worth a kind word for some feminist.

He's not alone in grasping hands across the funky chasm. Ross Douthat love-taps an alleged "centrist" who " dislikes," as he does, "few things more than the smug mix of cultural permissiveness and see-no-evil economic centrism that defines upper-middle-class, Emerging-Democratic-Majority liberalism." Douthat's hero, like Dworkin (but in a much, much lower key), blames capitalism (personalized here by the gap and Tommy Hilfiger) for all that offensive "ass-cleavage" and "visible midriffs" out there, and invites the Democratic Party to abandon its "injudicious defense of Hollywood violence, mainstream pornography, and bad art," and stand strong against ass-cleavage and visible midriffs for the good of... well, what he does not say; values, one imagines.

As mentioned before, it is no shock that, in our berserk marketplace, sexual titillation is used to sell products. So are patriotism, love of family, fear of abandonment, and as many other natural emotional equities as Madison Avenue can identify. That in itself does not make these things wretched -- not to me, nor, I am willing to bet, to Frum and Douthat. But you will wait a very long time before either of those gentlemen complain so strenuously about any other form of commodification on God's green earth other than that of sex. Because no Bible-beater is going to fill a church, or sway an electoral constituency, by denouncing Clydesdales who kneel before the fallen Twin Towers in the service of beer sales, but a million Elmer Gantrys have made a comfortable living by making their flocks feel bad that their pussies juiced or cocks engorged at the sight of a pair of underdressed models on their Magnavox.

Frum says that, when he met her, Dworkin was "grimly entertained by the opportunism of Bill Clinton’s feminist supporters." If there is a Hereafter, and she can see his column, how much more grim her entertainent must be now!

UPDATE. Marriage scold Maggie Gallagher has also penned a loving farewell to Dworkin. It has to be read to be believed, but the money shot, so to speak, is Gallagher's bizarre read of Dworkin's relationship with John Stoltenberg:

Andrea lived with a man whom she introduced as John. "Every day I wake up and realize that tomorrow John may not be there," she told me.

She was describing a kind of unmarital bond, endorsing the special kind of relationship produced when two people know they can leave and yet each morning still choose to be together. Once again, Andrea put her finger on my truth. For as she spoke, it occurred to me that everything I had written about (as everything I've done since) was a deliberate and desperate attempt not to live in her kind of world. I longed to find marriage ties as binding as the ties between mother and child...

When "two people know they can leave and yet each morning still choose to be together," that's love. "Ties as binding as the ties between mother and child," when applied to two adults, is something verrrrry different.

That Gallagher prefers the latter sort of relationship is no shock if you've read her before. And God go with her; just keep your bondage/infantilization trip safe, sane, and consensual, Maggie! What pisses me off is that she wants this sort of relationship not just for herself and whatever male she might ensnare in her own binding ties, but for you, me, and everybody (excepting homosexuals of course). And she just doesn't care whether we swing that way or not.

No means no, Maggie.

THE BLOGOSPHERE FURTHER ELEVATES THE TONE OF OUR DISCOURSE. There used to be a bumper-sticker gag to the effect that Jesus is alright but the people who work for him are assholes. This distinguishes the Prince of Peace from wrestler-turned-wingnut-speaker Ultimate Warrior whose emotionally stunted approach to human relations is apparently emulated by at least one member of his staff, a "Director of Communications" who, after threatening to sue Something Awful for making fun of UW (and receiving appropriately unserious replies), went to work on his Lifetime movie villain act:

Did you know that for only $1 someone can go to the post office, fill out a simple form, and find out the street address of the individual who rented the box?

I also know that your wife's name is Megan, and that you two were married on February 13, 2005. I've also tracked down a street address and telephone number for "another" Richard Kyanka. I actually called this telephone number. This was either you or your father. A terrible shame that you don't have the balls to claim your own name, little man. Speaking of little man, I've also managed to track down a couple of pictures of you, which I've attached to this email....

Link followed from Jonah Goldberg, always a good source for lunacy, though not usually second-hand as in this case. Goldberg declines to choose sides between the funny website and the dangerous lunatic, perhaps sensing that the Ultimate Warrior represents the future of conservative commentary.

GUARD ASLEEP AT BULLSHIT QC. Jonah Goldberg tells us, through the medium of a "reader," that Republicans are unworldly types pushed around by tuff Democrats:

Mr. Goldberg - Something I have noticed, regrettably, for the last thirty years or so, is that Republicans are almost always too slow to react to attacks, appear to be on the defensive most of the time, and lack something I call the "Atwater gene".

Lee Atwater was, of course, the Republican master of dirty politics. Atwater worked for Reagan and Bush I -- well within the 30-year timeframe posited by Mr. X.

Sometimes I suffer an existential crisis over this blog. I mean, if they're not even paying attention, why should I?

IT'S THOSE LITTLE TOUCHES THAT MAKE A CHARACTER LIVE. Hugh Hewitt:

Apologies to Sodakmonk, the spelling of which I got wrong yesterday. That is the very first time that's ever happened on this blog.

Further down in the same post, Hewitt refers to Arizona's "Snator McCain."

The great comic characters rarely disappoint, because they just can't help themselves.

UPDATE. Hmm, maybe he was kidding; people tell me he has a sense of humor. Who knew? Usually selling them short is a can't-lose proposition.

THE GREAT DIVIDE. From USA Today:

The middle of the country squared off against the coasts this weekend at theaters, and the heartland pushed Sahara to No. 1 at the box office...

The film exceeded most analysts' expectations by about $2 million and topped the romantic comedy Fever Pitch...

Pitch, the story of a man torn between his love for his girlfriend and his devotion to the Boston Red Sox, was hoping to lure women with the romance and men with the sports angle.

Sahara, meanwhile, geared itself toward action-hungry audiences, particularly in the middle of the country...

Though Pitch was the top film in several big-city markets, including Boston and New York, Sahara took the No. 1 spot in cities like Oklahoma City and Kansas City, Mo.

You see the significance of this. The red states gave a clear mandate to a dopey movie starring Matthew McConaughey, while the blue cities endorsed a dopey movie starring Jimmy Fallon.

I could go on, but I have decided to leave analysis of this major cultural indicator to experts. Maybe after Jonah Goldberg has finished reproducing correspondence claiming that engineers are turning liberal because they have been brainwashed by English professors, he can make a column of it.

DOING MY DUTY. Julia got me into this ridiculous thing and I suppose there's only one honorable way out:

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be [saved]?

This is tough because you have to imagine that a whole culture might have to be founded on it and you don't want to wind up like the poor saps in A Canticle for Liebowitz. I think Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy fits the bill, and it has lots of thin pages that you could use to roll cigarettes when you finally figured the hell with it.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Nerdcheck! Well, I've always liked the girl in Crime and Punishment because she seems like she would put up with a lot, which is always a plus. Ditto Phoebe Zeitgeist.

The last book you bought is?

Degas in New Orleans.

What are you currently reading?

A play by an impressive new kid named Adam Klasfeld: Good Fences Make Good Neighbors. And Carlyle's History of the French Revolution. I don't get out much.

Five books you would take to a deserted island?

1. A book on how to make fire.
2. A big fat book I could use for kindling.
3. Porno.
4. Porno.
5. Porno.

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

The Mighty Mighty Reason Man, because it might wake him up. dmfinny and Jeremy, because they might appreciate it, and how often does that happen?

UPDATE. Jeremy apparently already got the memo, so I'll be passing his torch to Steve Dillard at Southern Appeal.

NOTES FROM LOUIE'S SODA SHOP. Logically Leapin' Lileks (gave up permalinks, it seems, until Terri Schiavo and the Pope rise from the dead; update labeled April 8) finds a professor mad as hell about a Brit Muslim chick who won the legal right to wear the body-covering jilbab to school. Lileks notes: "Odd how 'women’s rights' are now defined to mean 'covering up every possible indication one might be a woman,'" which is so wrong that I hardly need explain why to such super-genii as my readers. (Oh, ok, briefly: Brit judge ≠ all feminists everywhere; dress code relaxation ≠ endorsed subjugation of women; etc.)

From Lileks' inspirator:

No expressed desire by a child or young woman to wear traditional clothing such as the jilbab can be taken as arising from free choice -- even if, in any given instance, it is the result of such a choice -- because of the oppressive nature of the subculture.

My first reaction to this was: Does this mean that now you guys will throw that anti-evolution crap out of school? Because I'm pretty sure no child comes to school really wanting to become even more of a dumbass, despite the oppressive nature of his subculture.

Of course, the endocrine storm soon passed and I recognized that this was merely, to borrow the Bowery Boys nomenclature, Routine 12: The Dusky Hordes Advance (see Footballs, Little Green for backgrounder), with a Bullshit Feminist Angle added -- not because the practitioners subscribe to any recognizable feminist priciples, but because the Angle can be used to give (for those crucial seconds before the thinking apparatus can be engaged) the impression that Western feminists don't care about women.

One day I have to classify all these Routines, and publish my taxonomy under the title Leave Us Regurgitate.

TIME "BLOGGERS OF THE YEAR" BACKWARDS PEDALED UNTIL REELED THE MIND! The disputed Republican Schiavo memo is legit, but that doesn't stop the guys from Powerline from maintaining stern expressions, finding typos and inappropriate adjectives, and using ridiculous pseudonyms! "Hindrocket" writes:

We have no idea who the unidentified Martinez staffer is, but he apparently was not authorized to speak for his boss, and most certainly was not empowered to speak for the leadership of the Republican party. We'll try to track him down and get his story, but in the meantime, this story serves as an object lesson in how the mainstream media can take a dopey, one-page memo by an unknown staffer and use it to discredit the entire Republican party...

Later, "The Big Trunk" continues flogging the story, and tries to give the impression that Powerline has the dastardly Washington Post on the ropes. Of course, when you consider that just a few days ago Powerline's crack team of fist-shakers were calling the Schiavo memo an outright forgery, and are now reduced to picking nits, their tone of outraged decency sounds kind of tinny.

Journalism Powerline-style, folks! No wonder they hate the Pulitzers.

SERVICE ADVISORY. In case anyone cares -- and ill as it becomes me to admit that possibility -- I apologize for the light posting. I made some last-minute commitments to bore local audiences instead of you, and these have clogged and will clog my schedule over the next few days. The geniuses on the sidebar have always been interesting than me and I encourage you to give them a look.

I would also like to take this opportunity to note the passing of Saul Bellow. He wrote damn well. I read Mr. Sammler's Planet when I was too young to appreciate it, but fortunately I waited a bit to take up Seize the Day and Herzog and they have stuck to my ribs. Perfect as is the former, I am put in mind of Herzog near the novel's end:

...The life you gave me has been curious, he wanted to say to his mother, and perhaps the death I must inherit will turn out to be even more profoundly curious. I have sometimes wished it would hurry up, longed for it to come soon. But I am still on the same side of eternity as ever. It's just as well, for I have certain things still to do. And without noise, I hope. Some of my oldest aims seem to have slid away. But I have others. Life on this earth can't be simply a picture. And terrible forces in me, including the force of admiration and praise, powers, including loving powers, very damaging, making me almost an idiot because I lacked the capacity to manage them. I may turn out to be not so terribly hopeless a fool as everyone, as you, as I myself suspected. Meanwhile, to lay off certain persistent torments. To surrender the hyperactivity of this hyperactive face, But just to put it out instead to the radiance of the sun. I want to send you, and others, the most loving wish I have in my heart. This is the only way I have to reach out -- out where it is incomprehensible. I can only pray toward it. So... Peace!

A kind thought also for Richard Brookhiser, who didn't like Bellow so much, but had enough respect for him and for literature to make thoughtful, literary comment on his passing, in contrast to the hee-haws of his fellow travellers.

THE LAND OF MAKE-BELIEVE. At the Washington Times, David Limbaugh sees, against all evidence, imminent victory for the forces of Life:

It is just possible, contrary to my original thoughts, the tragic Schiavo case will not usher in a slippery slope toward euthanasia but trigger a double-barreled backlash against both the 'Culture of Death' and judicial activism...

I sense in this nation a growing outrage at the arrogance and unaccountability of our judiciary, and at the cavalier attitude many exhibit toward life.

Evidence of this groundswell? Don't look for it. Limbaugh doesn't even cite the usual boilerplate on how the Schiavo poll numbers were fixed. He just reads minds across the years and the country, from the "Significant numbers of people" who "were outraged in 1973, when the Supreme Court placed its 'holy' imprimatur on the murder of babies in the womb..." to the present day.

Of course, Limbaugh says, "The conflict and turmoil among conservatives alone is enough reason for remedial action." I see how he would think that. We are no longer talking about silly political issues, but Life, a subject so transcendantly important that there is no need to heed input from anyone outside the believing community, howsoever many they may be.

Hugh Hewitt is feelin' the spirit too. After warning, accurately, that "this post is guaranteed to make zero sense to the non-believers. In fact, it will amuse them," Hewitt lays out his, pardon the expression, reasons why an American Pope might be, despite conventional wisdom, elected to replace JPII. "The cruel death of Terri Schiavo" coincided with the Pope's death agonies for a reason, says Hewitt:

...the anti-Christians will scoff at the idea of God's timing, but not the Cardinals, for whom God's timing is a given...

Is the idea of a "Schiavo effect" on the conclave just another American's preoccupation with American issues projected onto the much broader and much more indifferent world? Perhaps, but I don't think so precisely because on matters of science and ethics, on morals and sharp breaks with the past, the United States sets the tempo for much of the world...

The election of an American as pope is quite rightly ranked as the most improbable of outcomes of the conclave, but not so improbable is the selection of a new pope uniquely equipped to speak to this culture. God knows we need it. Terri Schiavo's death underscored that need in a way that cannot be understated.

There is plausible deniability of a prediction here -- but that's how the mystics work: signs and portents are lined up; a vague but suggestive prediction is made; and the mystic draws back into silence, leaving the doubts to percolate.

Boy, that whole "Reality-Based Community" thing is looking more timely than ever, isn't it? Limbaugh's and Hewitt's talking points are so very faith-based that they don't even take account what we non-Elect would call reality -- facts, figures, statistical probabilities. Bold assertions will do, as long as they are blessed by the Lord. So it is blogged -- so shall it be done!

BRIAN: YOU'RE ALL INDIVIDUALS! FOLLOWERS: YES, WE'RE ALL INDIVIDUALS! BRIAN: YOU'RE ALL DIFFERENT! FOLLOWERS: YES, WE'RE ALL DIFFERENT! David Brooks today laughs off (with the annoying, airy laugh of his) the idea that Republicans are beating the Dems with message discipline:

The theory is that liberals must create their own version of the conservative pyramid... [but] Conservatives have not triumphed because they have built a disciplined and efficient message machine. Conservatives have thrived because they are split into feuding factions that squabble incessantly...

Huh wha? I thought that was what we did ("no organized party" and all that). No no no, says Brooks (waving his hand in that highly irritating way of his), while you libs grimly enforce orthodoxy, conservatives do intellectual calesthenics -- "Liberals are good at talking about rights, but not as good at talking about a universal order" as conservatives:

Conservatives fell into the habit of being acutely conscious of their intellectual forebears and had big debates about public philosophy. That turned out to be important: nobody joins a movement because of admiration for its entitlement reform plan. People join up because they think that movement's views about human nature and society are true.

Liberals have not had a comparable public philosophy debate. A year ago I called the head of a prominent liberal think tank to ask him who his favorite philosopher was. If I'd asked about health care, he could have given me four hours of brilliant conversation, but on this subject he stumbled and said he'd call me back. He never did.

Fancy that -- someone not returning David Brooks' calls!

But you get the message: conservatives are superior because they go for philosophy, whereas liberals go for yucky policy prescriptions. You might have gotten the message, actually, several months earlier, in National Review Online, when Jonah Goldberg was bouncing it around:

Without knowledge of its own past, liberalism cannot have a serious political philosophy, it can only have feelings. I was amazed last summer at a political conference for college kids at the way the professional Democrats and liberals on a panel -- with the exception of Peter Beinart -- all began their presentations with "I believe" this or "I feel passionately" that...

And:

Just look at the conservative blogosphere. There's all sorts of stuff about Burke, Hayek, von Mises, Oakeshott, Kirk, Buckley, Strauss, Meyer, the Southern Agrarians, et al. I can't think of a single editor or contributing editor of National Review who can't speak intelligently about the intellectual titans of conservatism going back generations... I just don't get the sense that's true of most liberal journalists. When was the last time you saw more than a passing reference to Herbert Croly?

And on and on. Goldberg said he was writing a book about it -- maybe they're waiting till they can line up Frank Miller for the illos.

So to sum up:

• David Brooks laughs at liberal claims of conservative message discipline.
• He says conservatism is actually ascendant because conservatives are into philosophy, while the Democrats are merely into policy.
• This message originated with Jonah Goldberg (or, who knows? With some other labtech from the Frankenstein laboratories of the Right) and has been carried, in a very disciplined manner, by Brooks to the pages of the New York Times.

As the Amazing Maleeni knew, magic is all about misdirection.

LITERARY LIFE. Here's a picture of author Alicia Erian from 2004, before her novel Towelhead came out. Here's a picture of her at Salon today.

Two possible explanations: either success really agrees with her, or Bookland is starting to catch up with Hollywood in terms of image consultancy.

If and when I get my book out there, they'll probably make me use a stand-in.

UPDATE. Judging from comments, no one knows what I'm talking about, and I don't either. Nevermind.

RAY DURGNAT, MANNY FARBER, ANDRE BAZIN: NO NEED TO GET UP. Hey guys, when I do film reviews, does it sound like this?:

I forgot to mention this in the chaos of the past few days. I picked up Closer the other day, mainly because I like Clive Owen (he should be the next Bond, and I loved I'll Sleep When I'm Dead) and because I was thrilled about seeing Natalie Portman prancing around in a thong on my widescreen. Sue me- progressive scan DVD players and HDtv's rule.

I watched the movie, and I have this to say -- I am no prude, but Closer was the filthiest movie I have ever watched in my entire life. That title had been reserved for The Postman Always Rings Twice for a certain scene that still mortifies my mother, but they were pikers compared to the directors of Closer.

And all the damned cheating. Just infuriates me. Overall -- color me unimpressed.

'Cause if it does, then I'm really, really embarrassed. Reviews like this are the reason they put DO NOT EAT labels on rat poison.

A MATTER OF URGENT CONCERN. The Texas legislature is fixing to punish cheerleaders who shake their asses too much. I know it sounds like the topline for a porno script, but it is actually news.

I hope all the folks who have been talking about the "slippery slope" lately will take note, because this is a terrible precedent. If the Texans can regulate our cheerleaders, it's only a matter of time before they start regulating our cheerleader fantasies. Then they'll take women's floor exercises away from us, and what will we have left? Disney teen movies, that's what! And I say it's not enough!

To all seven of my readers in Texas: resist this thin end of the wedge up to and including the point of death! (It was only a matter of time before your fellow Texans killed you, anyway.) The rest of you, you know the drill: keep "pushing the envelope," as our dread Lord Satan commands, and keep the Christians so busy fighting at the fringes that it will never occur to them to shut down the WB!

SHORTER JAMES LILEKS: Wojtyla! Is it the shoes?

PUSSY. Yeeee-haw! He-man woman-hater Dallas Claymore, whose sad case was treated here before, is back, this time at the GOP Nation site. The Freepers are in love with him, so let us treat him as seriously as that endorsement demands:

Independently, and regardless of one’s religious persuasion, I have always found it comical that anyone who believes in a Creator would ever regard our Creator as being afflicted with a lack of foresight whereby he made half of the world’s most dominant creatures fiends and the other half saints.

Can we assume from this that Claymore accepts each "half of the world's most dominant creatures" equal to the other? Let's see:

It seems that being a man puts you at a moral disadvantage when dealing with others.  Indeed, maleness is the height of social unacceptability.  We are the target of endless quips, digs, and are even lampooned in greeting cards...

Even with these forces of propaganda aligned against us...

...why are men so routinely the target of such vicious stereotyping and lying?  Well, it could have to do with radical feminists defaming us about as often as water cascades over Niagara Falls...

...Maybe it is a woman’s world, but when they f-ck it up and it will be ours again...

In my own working-class upbringing -- admittedly phallocentric, but by Claymore's standards that should be a good thing -- we had a word for men who felt themselves so victimized by women that they could neither deal with normal dating rituals nor accept an alternative lifestyle whereby idiotic gender roles were moot. The word is "pussy."

How many times have you been in some overpriced trendy chic restaurant and looked at the menu and groaned, “Why me?” Yet, it always is you and it’s always you who gets stuck with the bill, but it is rarely you who finds any value in 25 dollar entrees.

Pussy.

It is clear that men and women have equal means of intelligence, but all analysis of psychometric results showcases men having considerably more overall scatter within their profiles than women...

Pussy.

Status means everything when attracting a woman so who you are and what you’ve done is key to your reproductive success.  With men, the most popular females merely “are.”  They can be queens simply by leaving their homes with the curves and face they have been given.

Fucking pussy! Jesus Christ. If this unlayable little wuss is the face of modern conservatism, I can stop worrying about our country's future right now.

COLLOQUY. One Peter Robinson, "A speechwriter in the Reagan White House," has given OpinionJournal an interview with the deceased Ronald Reagan, without the traditional pretense of authenticity. Sample "quote":

George W. Bush? When he took office young George was expecting an easy time of it, not the first attack on our territory since Pearl Harbor. Yet here we are, just four years later, and George W. Bush has rallied the country for the struggle against terrorists, won a war in Afghanistan, won a war in Iraq, and developed a strategy for promoting democracy that has already transformed the Middle East and fostered democratic advances as far away as Kyrgyzstan.

Pretty good, though I'd love to know how the Gipper pronounced Kyrgyzstan! Turnabout being fair play, I'd like to offer my own interview with all the other dead Presidents:

Q: What do you fellas think of George W. Bush?

Abraham Lincoln: I thought one Civil War was enough.

John Quincy Adams: I for one am happy to have lost my reputation as the worst hereditary succesor to the Presidency.

John Adams: Judge not, my Son; For it may be that this Imbecile will yet confound expectations, owing to his devotion to the one True God; Who is a powerful Molder of Characters, notwithstanding their prior debaucheries and lack of proper schooling.

Thomas Jefferson: I fear my Dear Friend is over-optimistic; for the mold of young Bush's character was flaw'd from the outset, and his reason is crack'd.

Richard Nixon: Hey, lay off his old man! He did a good job when he was working for me.

Harry S Truman: You god-damned idiot, who asked you?

Richard Nixon: I have as much right to speak as anyone, and I will say --

Harry S Truman: Like hell! It's a wonder they let you in here with decent people! Why, I oughta --

Franlin D. Roosevelt: Now, you boys quit squabbling.

Theodore Roosevelt: Let 'em fight! The only path to judgment is open combat in the arena! Dick, Harry, you two strip to the waist and have at it.

Andrew Jackson: Hell, yeah! I got two dollars on the boy from Missoura!

James Buchanan: I thought I had got away from this sort of thing when I crossed into the great Beyond.

Theodore Roosevelt: Perhaps you'd like to take a round with me, you great compromiser!

Franklin Pierce: Jesus, what a bunch of idiots.

Theodore Roosevelt: Don't swear in my presence!

Franklin Pierce: Fuck you! I was friends with Herman Melville, who would have thought you an ass and a parvenu.

James Madison: Interviewer, I have heard that one of your contemporaries was recently deprived of existence by removal of the conduit that provided her nourishment; is there not some way in which I may be similarly removed from the company of these morons?

George Washington: Me too!

James Monroe: Ditto!

(General tumult.)

Q: Gentlemen! Gentlemen! For Jesu's sake forebear! I am only here to ask after the current President.

Calvin Coolidge: Fucking idiot.

Herbert Hoover: Ha ha, Cal! We bet you wouldn't say three words!

Calvin Coolidge: You lo--

(General laughter)

Calvin Coolidge: Fuck me.

Zachary Taylor: I endorse young Bush.

Abraham Lincoln: You would, you old fraud, as one ginned-up warrior to another.

Ulyesses S. Grant: I resemble that remark!

(General laughter)

Warren Harding: If I may be allowed to speak, I should like to argue in favor of the gentleman from Texas...

Lyndon B. Johnson: Thank you, Mr. Speakah! Now that I have the flooah, let me say to you naaw, on behalf of mah colleagues in this Congress of Pres'dents, that we will not rest until ouah agony has been pe'manently stilled bah the Almighty, foah ouah sufferin' is great, an' every tahm you jackasses presumes to speak foah us, ouah anguish increases to a unfathomable extent; an', by Gawd, we shall ovahcome!

Whirling shades chase the reporter from the room, not before Nixon has placed Henry Kissinger's business-card in his pocket.