THE SLEEP OF REASON BREEDS BULLSHIT. It's fascinating to watch the birth of an idea, even a competely retarded one. In the American Spectator, Mark Gauvreau Judge posits such a thing as "metrocons," well-read conservatives who disdain rowdy entertainments such as muscle-car rallies.

Folks who share my unhealthy fascination with this sort of nonsense will recall that, in the 90s, Judge was pushing swing-dancing as a conservative credential, and when mass Lindy Hopping did not break out all across America, he retreated to the usual tired culture-war crap for his living, till this new, Gestaltifying idea came upon him.

His fellow derechos are not, so far, having it, to judge by these responses. But I give them no credit for that, because they argue against the metrocon idea for a variety of countervailing doctrinal and political reasons, rather than dismissing it outright as bullshit, or whatever word Father Neuhaus uses instead of "bullshit."

By bullshit I mean, in this instance, that the idea is produced, not by the logic of the true student of human nature, or even of the sociologist, but of the marketing consultant. Like the promoters of Crunchy and South Park variants of conservatism, Judge is just looking for an angle that will make his name in the psuedo-science of conservative taxonomy. It offers nothing to stimulate serious thinking or political action; it is the apotheosis of the old saw, "The personal is the political" -- an adage formulated years ago on the Left, but lately adopted whole-heartedly by the Right.

Judge's concept is not worth even such discussion as I have given it here, but it is genuinely interesting to see how far such useless ideas as his can get in the current environment; The New Criterion deigning to discuss metroconservatism is like the Pope issuing a Bull on the selection of American Idol winners.

We have all seen what happens to some people who enjoy great success without doing anything to merit it: very few of them can simply relax and enjoy their good fortune; they crack up their Ferraris, they descend into drug addiction, they take up Scientology or some other crackpot creed to explain to themselves that there is no giant foot trying to squash them. Conservatives got a big Lotto jackpot with the War on Terror, and have since been laying about the mansion, engaging in increasing dorm-like bull sessions, inventing ever more sophisticated sophistries -- shrinking government while their Congressmen and contributors plunder the Treasury, converting Arabs by blowing them up, and so forth.

Next I suppose they'll be inventing conservative haircuts and ways of wearing their breeches. And after that -- well, we all know how that goes.

SOTU WHAT? There's not much to say about tonight's State of the Union address. As President Bush sees it, there are no Constitutional concerns with the NSA, Gulf hurricane victims need school vouchers, and homosexuals shouldn't be allowed to get married. This we knew. As for the "addiction to foreign oil" bit, I am old enough to remember the promise of hydrogen cars in the 2003 SOTU, so I know it means nothing.

I might ask why the list of countries to which we will inevitably deliver democracy did not include Cuba, but what's the point? Apart from the grisly image of aged and infirm Coretta Scott King embracing MLK with his throat shot open, this speech had no literary substance whatever. Leave it for the dogs to pick over.

SITUATIONAL ETHICS PART 399,045. Hugh Hewitt finds a Democratic Congressional candidate who was mean to a Republican decorated veteran, and asks

Where are the Democrats who should be denouncing this? The ones who, rightly, slammed the comments directed at Congressman John Murtha's service?

Wow, I didn't know Hewitt was against those comments directed at John Murtha! And there's a good reason I didn't know it: because he said something entirely different at the time:

Every Democrat who attempted to charge the Republicans as attacking Congressman Murtha's patriotism was instantly revealed as a fraud...

The wolf is never so disgusting as when he's pretending to be Grandma.

SHORTER CULTURE-WAR NUTS: What! No nominations for Jesus? This is the most left-wing Oscars ever! Giving awards to small movies, rather than multi-million-dollar epics like Marty amd Chariots of Fire? Further proof of liberalism! Real people will boycott Oscars in favor of Justice Monday! Reese Witherspoon's inevitable Oscar is the exception that proves the movie-traitor rule! And that's the trouble with these artist-people -- they politicize everything!

THE POLITICIZATION OF EVERYTHING, PART 988,098: Michael Novak at The Corner:

GO STEELERS! So it's steeltown America on the rise, the rough and the ready, not a rich team but always fighting and always playing smash-mouth, and running hard, and slashing... and I love it that their opponents this year will be wearing the colors of --hard to comprehend this -- Hamas! Couldn't be a better opponent, who will probably be favored. .... Pittsburgh is the city of the Deerslayer, and the American flag, and always the highest casualty rates in American wars...

I guess it could be a joke, but at The Corner how does one tell? (I do smell bourbon, though. Oh wait, that's just me.)

I eagerly await responses from the objectively pro-Seahawks crowd.

UPDATE. Shortly thereafter: "K-Lo suggests that Kiefer Sutherland's win in the SAG awards might be a case of Hollywood finally catching up on the war on terror."

Anyone remember that old Peanuts strip where Violet bragged to Charlie Brown about her "new hi-fi bracelet," leaving CB to wonder, "How can a bracelet be hi-fi?" I think about that one a lot these days.

DONKEY LABOR. I blush to admit that tonight was the first time I had seen Au Hasard, Balthazar. I saw Bresson's L'Argent years ago, and never visited him again, but now I want to see all his movies. I understand this is a common reaction.

The story, such as it is, is probably familiar to you: a donkey's life, and the lives of the people around him, none of which go particularly well, but all of which are ennobled by the telling of the tale. I was amazed, after all these years, to recognize in Balthazar Bresson tropes from L'Argent: concentration on hands and legs, tears that appear without histrionic squeezing ("Don't mock my tears, Gerard"), and a benumbed performance style.

I had heard plenty about the Christian sensibility of the film, and it is unavoidable, but the donkey's role in the proceedings surely is not that of Christ, or at least not that of the exemplary Christ seen in most film treatments (to take the most noble example, Johannes in Ordet). Balthazar is beaten, persevering, and loyal, but his example neither teaches nor saves anyone. Even Anne, who loved him as a child, mostly ignores him after she has taken up with the silly moped gangsters. The drunkard is close in status to a mystic -- barefoot, misanthropic, prayerful, and given a second chance by a mysterious inheritance -- and at times he seems like the most natural companion to Balthazar, even in his superstitious cruelty toward him ("Satan! Jinx!"), but in the end merely falls, with a kind word, off Balthazar's back to his death.

What then makes Balthazar's presence so powerful in the film? Perhaps his necessity. Everyone needs Balthazar, to carry loads, to smuggle, to love (briefly), to perform in a circus, to draw well water. He is the ultimate supernumerary, suddenly and unexpectedly given his own storyline, and his prominence throws a new light on everyone around him. Everyone avails him, but only the audience sees Balthazar's importance, or cares about what happens to him, and only we (along with other beasts of the fields) are around to observe and mourn his passing. If Christ is in this picture, he is only in our reaction.

Balthazar reminds me in some ways of the subservient Schmurz in Vian's The Empire Builders -- but unlike the Schmurz, he does not come to collect his due at the end. (Maybe that would be Mel Gibson's Au Hasard, Balthazar.) He also reminds me, perhaps more appropriately, of Firs at the close of The Cherry Orchard. I think Chekhov wanted to create a moment there that would sharply and suddenly contrast the rich folks' struggle of vanities over the old and new orders, which comprises the rest of the play, with an earthier correlative: an old, enfeebled, abandoned retainer, lying down as if for a moment, but really for the last time, at the post. Maybe Bresson's insight was to build a whole work of art around that: the forgotten party, the "sound of a broken string," and the axes working in the background.

REPUBLICAN POPULISM AT WORK: "Though my sample size (about 30 people) and location (the small towns of Greensburg and Latrobe) were hardly scientific, I think my results were broadly representative of working-class Americans." -- Mark Stricherz

(In case you were wondering, Stricherz' working class thinks abortion is infanticide and has no truck whatsoever with "feminist terms about autonomy, privacy, and rights.")

You see a lot of this sort of thing nowadays: conservatives who, so far as I know, do not themselves labor as stevedores or bare-knuckle boxers, explaining that liberals know nothing about the real people. I am tempted to bring up my own long career in menial jobs, but who would believe me? No one who ever swept floors could believe the cuh-razy things I believe.

HANG ONTO YOURSELF. I watched Boston Legal this week. Most weeks I catch at least a little of it. It's a horrible, horrible show, the apotheosis of David E. Kelley's lurid vision of professional life as an endless series of jacked-up and frequently absurd job crises, the tension of which is inevitably relieved by sexual intrigue (also in an endless series, and jacked-up, and frequently absurd). Most of the players are attractive young people who can barely get their chiseled jaws around the preposterous dialogue.

But Boston Legal stars James Spader and William Shatner, and they make a fascinating spectacle in this shabby little arena. From the beginning, they have seemed to inhabit a different universe from all the other characters. They float through their scenes like 19th-century royals after a good lunch at Maxim's, self-satisfied and serene. They are dimly aware of the other characters' needs and desires, and sometimes are inclined to indulge them for reasons of appetite similar to those that animate the other characters -- professional honor or glory, morality, and sex. But where the other performers sweat this stuff, granting it as much importance as I believe the audience is meant to, Spader and Shatner feel the pangs of motivation as one might feel an urge to scratch or stretch, and react to them with refreshing naturalness and self-possession.

This makes them stand out, and reveals a mystery of the performer's art. Acting is a cooperative venture; even monologuists must engage the camera or the audience, while most players also have to evidence relationships with other players. So the actor has to concentrate on people as well as lines, blocking, and the director's orchestration. Maintaining this divided consciousness is a key part of the job, and when an actor says "I really felt it tonight," he is (usually without noticing) celebrating the fact that he felt it while doing everything else he had to do. (Interestingly, Pauline Kael relates that Orson Welles had just this sort of epiphany, which seems to have been rare for him, during the solo in Citizen Kane in which he wordlessly smashes up a room.)

Good actors can handle all that, but great ones know that there is another focus of concentration that needs to be maintained: the concentration on oneself as a character. The famous hams, of course, concentrate on themselves, period, which is actually almost as good. I thought of this while watching John O'Hurley -- yes, Peterman! -- play Billy Flynn recently in Chicago. He wasn't quite what I had in mind, and his schtick usually tires me, but he seemed so perfectly comfortable with himself and his "That's right, Elaine, the white lady -- yam-yam!" readings that he made me comfortable, too, and pulled me over my general objections.

This is why stunt casting is seldom totally disastrous: assuming the player has not lost the nerve that made him or her a celebrity, that boldness in self-presentation will read from the cheap seats as well as a journeyman actor's conscientious characterization.

(This self-regard is not the same thing, of course, as self-consciousness; self-consciousness will make even a great spirit awkward; the self-regarding man could walk into a scene covered with shit and, after perhaps a brief word of explanation for the stench -- offered for your benefit, not his -- go on as if nothing untoward had happened.)

I think Spader and Shatner have a little more on the ball than O'Hurley, but while their characters have a few shades to them, it is their extreme comfort with themselves that makes them galvanic. The relative slightness of their interest in other people is perhaps a little hammy, but certainly not offensive -- if you were this fascinating person, wouldn't you be more interested in yourself, too?

That Spader and Shatner have one another to re-enforce this routine just exponentiates the effect; I especially enjoy the coda of each show, where they sit out on the balcony with drinks and cigars and stare out onto the skyline while talking out their days -- parallel egos taking a moment to take mutual pleasure in their singularities.

For further reference, see Jose Ferrer in Enter Laughing, or Errol Flynn in anything. But I'm sure you can think of other examples.

THE RIGHT ARE VERY DIFFERENT FROM YOU AND ME. "...my appetite for fisking has abated; it feels like angry break-up sex, and I don’t quite see the point much anymore." -- Jim Lileks. In the words of Curly: Nggggyaahhh. I wonder if the angry, fisky sex Lileks recalls was with this girl, and if that's what he meant by "end hard"? Time to check The Smoking Gun for old police reports.

WONKETTE HAS BEEN HACKED. Just a heads-up. Apparently someone's trying to show us just how unsexy and unfunny real nerds can be. As if we needed reminding!

UPDATE. The unfun and unsexy continues. You can always judge a man by his 70's rant. If it's all breakdown-of-society stuff, with no appreciation for the rampant drug abuse and unprotected anal sex, then it's time to move on to the next party.

THESE THINGS JUST WRITE THEMSELVES. Jonah Goldberg:

Kayne West's Jesus schtick is intended to buy some controversy. He's posing as Jesus for Rolling Stone. I really hope the religious right doesn't take the bait...

Jonah Goldberg, who I guess is not religious, forty minutes later:

A reader makes a good suggestion. If a rock or rap star wants to make waves in an interesting and novel way rather than this clichéd Jesus rip-off, they could always dress up like Muhammed. I don't support it, but that at least would take some guts.

Hey, that's a funny idea. Maybe Goldberg should do it. Oh, wait, his family couldn't afford the lost income etc.

Three minutes later, Tim Graham:

There is a media-bias connection to the Kanye West outrage.

Linked story cites Matt Lauer's outrage in 1997 over a National Review cover showing Clintons as buck-toothed Mistah Magloo Asians. Lauer's outrage makes it hypocritical for Rolling Stone (of which Matt Lauer was once editor-in-chief, right before Howell Raines and Michael Moore) to show a black man wearing a crown of thorns, is the point I'm guessing Graham wants to make. Or maybe there's another explanation -- like psilocybin:

Rolling Stone’s theology is interesting: they’re tongue-in-cheek about Jesus and genuflect under the ashes of dope fiend Hunter S. Thompson.

Graham's also pissed that West says he gets turned on by porn instead of by Canadian elections like normal people.

Meanwhile the publicity for Kanye West spreads like cooties in a junior-high locker room. Advantage: blogosphere! Or hiphoposphere! Or bullshitosphere! Or something, anyway, other than common sense.

UPDATE. It hadda happen! The Ole Perfesser does his bit for the Kanye media blitz; takes time to "yawn," link to Goldberg. What's Roc-A-Fella paying these people?

I'M A STUPID MORON WITH AN UGLY FACE AND A BIG BUTT AND MY BUTT SMELLS AND I LIKE TO SMELL MY OWN BUTT. Jonah Goldberg offers a list of books from a liberal POV "that I personally found interesting or useful." What makes such books interesting or useful to him?

There are certain things you need to look for when measuring the honesty of liberals writing about certain periods. For the Progressive era, they need to admit that civil liberties often mattered very little to the champions of "reform." When it comes to the New Deal, they need to acknowledge that on the specific terms used to justify the New Deal — i.e. ending the Great Depression — the New Deal was a failure (the best recent conservative book on this point is Jim Powell's FDR's Folly). Moreover, they need to acknowledge FDR's numerous shortcomings in terms of personal honesty and intellectual heft. I'm not saying that you have to think FDR was a lying dullard, or that the New Deal was a bad thing, to be an honest historian of the period, but you have to deal with those allegations thoughtfully.

As for the 1960s, you have to admit that at least some of the rebellion was little better than a pose; that fear of Vietnam and not high-minded pacifism was a major motive for the protest movement; and that some of the participants in the 1960s were either damaged people or became damaged because of their participation.

Similarly, I find conservative books most honest when they acknowledge Reagan's numerous shortcomings in terms of personal honesty and intellectual heft, and his failure on the specific terms of the Reagan Revolution -- i.e., to get the government off our backs (though if you think Reagan's purpose was to allow corporations to raid the Treasury, you would be honest in calling Reagan a success).

Also, you would need to admit that at least some of the Gingrich Revolution was little better than a pose; that enthusiasm for a new scam for disentangling suckers from their loot, and not high-minded government reform, was a major motive for the Contract with America; and that some of the participants in the Revolution were either damaged people or became damaged because of their participation.

Such books exist, but the conservatives who write them are usually called liberals.

SHORTER BYRON YORK: The stories conservatives told about Clinton in the 90s were fake but accurate.

THE RIGHT TO GO TO A SCHOOL THAT LOOKS GOOD ON MY RESUME WITHOUT HAVING TO HEAR ANYTHING MY DAD THINKS IS RED. I see an UCLA alumni group is posting a hit list of leftist professors, and offering students money to monitor said professors' activities. Even the usual idiots are a little embarrassed by their co-religionists' project, though they still maintain that lefty bias among college professors is a very serious problem.

I have said it before, and before that, and before that even, but I will repeat it here: what prevents these aggrieved students from transferring to Liberty University, where Jerry Falwell will see to it that they never hear another leftwing prof again? Or to Hillsdale, or Wheaton, or the Claremont Colleges, or any of these schools? You don't even need vouchers! Let the free market rule!

If these people loved education as much as they loved to bitch and moan, this country would be in great shape.

NERD CENTRAL STATION. Oh Christ, the Perfesser turns a book review into a dating seminar for his buds. General consensus: Bitches won't give manly mens a break! Here's my favorite chump:

As a 48-year-old never married single man still in decent shape, successful and now retired, and having weathered the "feminist" cultural storm still raging since my teens, I can tell you that even your having read Norah Vincent's book, you STILL have no idea of the anger, the hatred, the vengeance and the pain so many otherwise attractive and available women are afflicted with. It is an epidemic of conflict and self-distortion that begins and ends with an impenetrable sense of entitlement, based on a false sense of victimhood, and for which not just any man but every man must pay forever for the restoration that's never good enough.

The "feminist" demand runs from fathers to brothers to sons and husbands, to their friends and acquaintances and chance encounters; it is endless. "I am woman, hear me roar" has produced a psychological wasteland that would put Sherman's march to shame and into which any man who travels does so at his peril....

That's why God made Astrolube, buddy.

Reynolds gets his missus in on it, leading to a discussion so stupefying that I found myself making a little Dada exercise out of scrolling down the page and reading lines at random, which vastly improved the experience. My favorite so far:

And if your 'drift' is that I'm greg kuperberg, I'm not. I already told you that I'm a female attorney.

Runners-up:

Rather than thinking like prostitutes, I believe these women you describe are thinking like anti-prostitutes.

and

Since her death, I've made it a point to look for another Filipina.

Perfesser Reynolds' last linkee sees that thread differently: "When we last checked, there were 108 venting males on her site. Don't women want men expressing their feelings? Could it be that women only want their men expressing some of their feelings, if so many had to wait so long for this one lone chance to let fly?" I wonder if he's single, or involved in a committed relationship with the mummified hitchhiker in his smokehouse?

Suddenly all those jokes about keyboard kommandos and Mom's basement have become horribly, horribly real.

MAD MAILBAG: EPISODE ONE. Busy again, so I invented a new category that allows me to recycle other people's work and make it look like I did something. Hehndeed!

As a break from the tedious forensic work of isolating the central fallacies in wingnut columns, we go straight for the cheap laffs with Mad Mailbag -- celebrating comment-box crackpots and their prose-poetic descriptions of the alternative universes in which they dwell.


Today's winner comes from Winds of Change, in a response to Armed Liberal's MLK day complaint that liberals don't get King right.

As a quick scan of sites like Roger L. Simon's and (pre-hejira) Michael Totten's shows, the usual fan base for pro-war sorta-usedtobe-whatever-liberal guys like AL consists of conservatives delighted to hear smack spoken by an insider against the hated liberals.

But some in the crowd are not convinced that the former fellow-traveller has truly repented; and when the audience has thinned out, they step to the podium and, as the speaker is packing up his papers, lean over and whisper in his ear:

Armed Liberal said in post #6: "While I think that the Left has foolishly abandoned both the moral center and style of discourse used by Dr. King, I'd bet that it would resonate still in the right voice. I'm looking for that voice..."

Armed Liberal, I hope that you never find it. Because three are some people who are responsive to that voice. They are Christian, conservative and the backbone of the pro-life cause.

The Left, which the voice that you are looking for would serve, is committed to "choice". When all the oily rhetoric about "choice", "quality of life" and so on comes to a practical point, it is the point of a hypodermic needle piercing the heart of a viable human foetus, to inject it with potassium chloride, to kill it. A voice for the Left is a voice that facilitates the slaughter of helpless human beings.

I think that what you want is a Saruman the White, using the finest words to get people to agree to the worst actions.

I hope you never find him.

With friends like these, who needs glassy-eyed stalkers?

P.S. I also propose a codicil to Godwin's Law: any political argument availing wizards, wookies, elves, necromancers, or persons named Something The Something is prima facie bullshit.

LATRINE DUTY. It's not all major essays and heavy thinking here at alicublog. Sometimes basic maintenance has to be performed. I am here to tell you, first --

First [Hillary Clinton's] husband decides somehow that he is an African-American by claiming to be the "first black President" because he comes from a broken family.

-- that Captain Ed is full of shit: Clinton never seriously portrayed himself thus; it came from Toni Morrison.

Second, they haven't begun to dismount that Brokeback Mountain hobby-horse yet -- but they have moved from the anger stage to bargaining, experimenting with a manly, non-gay way to appreciate the film --

To come down from the mountain, and settle down into gay domesticity is not an option for them, because it would rob them of their dignity as men... and it would transform them into gay men -- a queer kind of quasi-male our society is willing to tolerate, and even to chuckle over and smile at, the way people chuckle over and smile at the funny sissies on Will and Grace. But neither of the cowboys could allow such an insult to their pride and dignity, and thus their only escape was to return to the isolation of the mountain, where, by themselves, they could achieve what even the most gay tolerant society could not give them -- a sense of manliness...

Butch it up as much as you like, girlfriend -- it's still hot man-on-man action to me!

UPDATE. Clinton joked, people choked! See comments.

THESE "LIBERAL FRIENDS" OF MINE! I keep asking but no one can tell me...

Most of my friends are liberals. This series is the conversation I wish that I could have with them. I wish they would let me finish my train of thought before interrupting. I wish that they would consider my arguments, rather than try to bury them in rhetorical put-downs.

...how do guys like Arnold Kling acquire, let alone keep, these "liberal friends" when they express such obvious contempt for them?

I mean, what would the conversations be like?

KLING: See the Colts game?
LIB FRIEND: Damn, I knew they'd fuck it up. They've been riding for a fall.
KLING: Oh, well, you would say that.
LIB FRIEND: Whattaya mean?
KLING: (pulling out charts) As this graph indicates, you have a tendency to claim prescience after the fact.
LIB FRIEND: After the fact? I wrote you an e-mail two days before the game that said the same thing.
KLING: I wish you'd stop interrupting me.
LIB FRIEND: I'm sorry. What were you going to say?
KLING: That your childish behavior is attributable to a deep-rooted psychological malady.
LIB FRIEND: Yuh don't say. (knocks him down)
KLING: You also have a propensity for violence.
(Cue theme for the "The Odd Couple," blackout)

I don't see how anyone with any self-respect would put up with that kind of treatment. Many there's an escort service in D.C. that handles it. Didn't I read about it at Wonkette?

Or maybe it's just bullshit. Yeah, let's go with that.

I'LL NEVER FORGET WHATSHISNAME. If you though "Bring Back Birdie" was a bomb, wait 'til you get a load of "Bring Back Reagan," now playing at OpinionJournal:

When Rep. John Shadegg jumped into the race for House majority leader last week, he called himself a "Reaganite" who would bring back the Gipper's vision of limited government...

It's telling that now, five years into the second Bush presidency, conservatives are still looking for the next Ronald Reagan to champion their ideas in Washington. Even as Reagan and the current President Bush have similar presidential records--fighting wars of ideas around the globe and running federal deficits at home--Reaganism is the party's philosophy, with its belief in small government, low taxes, forceful conservatism, a strong military and the view that this country is a shining example for all the world.

Several of this article's ideas are humorous -- for example, the notion that "wars of ideas" has been redefined since St. Ronnie's time to include carpet bombing, prolonged and unwanted occupation, and the secret detention of American citizens -- but only one is interesting: that conservative apparatchiks still count on invocations of Reagan to sanctify their latest predations.

Does that shit work anymore? Reagan is widely admired, true -- but so is Bill Clinton. This poll has the Glimmer Twins at one and two -- ahead of Lincoln! -- with younger voters prefering Bubba.

Clearly these findings have little to do with historical reality, and much to do with aspiration and self-identification. People who grew up in the 1980s tend to overvalue Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark; likewise, those who grew up with Reagan, when approached by the opinion collector, think not of the evil GE shill sticking a hose into the Treasury and throwing the other end to his corporate buddies, but of their carefree youth. Same with Bubba Blowjob.

So as they prepare the Republican makeover, professional bullshit artists will naturally avail heavy quantities of Spirit of Reagan. They may be right. Not to get too deep into it, but our country is sunk into a peculiar, new state that we might call psuedo-romanticism, best symbolized by the gestural, yellow-sticker support our citizens reflexively give to a war in which few of them believe. We are awash in bunting, but bankrupt of ideals. Ask your neighbor which American value he prizes above all others, and he'll probably hesitate (or name the dollar menu at McDonald's). What do we stand for? Greater earning power than you get in Kenya? All-you-can-eat shrimp? Supposedly preserving freedom for others at the expense of our own?

St. Ronnie may be a great icon for such a time. Or it may be that he's outworn his welcome. Seeing for the millionth time his wizened, hard-smiling visage in OpinionJournal, I was reminded of the Joker in Batman. As our values become more formless and free-floating, the shock of the new must be constantly applied to keep this rumbling corpse of a Republic tottering forward.

If Reagan turns out to be as welcome at the Republican relaunch as any other senile grandfather, things will get weird. What other corpses and near-corpses are available? Nixon? Ford? Bush I?

In that case, prediction: the lighting rise to power of Kurt Busch!

PLUS ÇA CHANGE.

Should the United Nations be reformed? Or dissolved altogether?

That became the question of the evening at the first night of the Liberty Film Festival as the audience was treated to the LA premiere of "Broken Promises: The United Nations at 60"...

However, while the documentary dismantles the UN's credibility, it calls not for abolishment, but reform. And as you can probably guess, that's not what most of the audience at a conservative film festival have in mind -- and they didn't even wait until the end of the film to make that clear.

When one of the film's interviewees declared that "we can't fight these problems [terrorism, etc.] on our own," one audience member piped in with "The Marines can!" which was met with applause.

After the film, in a rather unusual move, radio talk show host Tammy Bruce was given the podium before the filmmakers. While praising the film as a good first step, Bruce challenged the idea of reform, declaring the UN to be part of the problem.

Not one to shy away from verbal excess (what radio host ever is?), she compared reforming the U.N. to trying to reform the Nazis, declared that un-reformable "Jew-hatred" is at the heart of the U.N., and said the U.N. "keeps righteous nations like Israel and the U.S. from being able to do what they need to do."

-- "Dateline Hollywood: Compromising Art or the Art of Compromise?" Ryan Zempel, Townhall

In the early 1960s, when Judelevicius wrote Gyvasis Sekspyras, Soviet critical views of Shakespeare were still officially regulated by the strain of ideology proclaimed at the First Soviet Writers' Congress of 1934 and synthesized in 1936 by A. Smirnov, whose Shakespeare: A Marxist Interpretation had neatly bound up the dramatist's entire oeuvre within the confines of socialist realism in a way that both limited the range of permissible readings and outlined an austere program for Soviet literary criticism in general. In a 1965 article entitled "Literature and the Arts in Captive Lithuania, " Jonas Grinius outlined this "totalitarian encirclement" as it affected Lithuanian writers. Foremost among the requirements of works of both academic and imaginative works produced in the Soviet era, Grinius explained, was that of historical optimism. Other prerequisites included the demand that all literary material be interpreted according to the dialectical and historical materialism preached by the Communist Party, always concerning itself with some aspect of the class struggle and depicting evil characters with the supposed traits of the bourgeoisie. Rimvydas Silbajoris has specified an even more basic limitation on the Soviet Lithuanian literary critic: he must not interpret using aesthetic criteria, but exclusively through the lens of sociology; and he must assert "the supremacy of a single ideology over the multifaceted and ideologically self-determined inner world of the artist."

--Patrick Chura, "Hamlet" and the Failure of Soviet Authority in Lithuania