10.0! In his review (that term being used here in its new, conservative sense -- that is, criticism of a movie he hasn't seen) of An Inconvenient Truth, Holman Jenkins goes about fatuity as if it were an Olympic event, fitting in all the high-degree-of-difficulty routines.

For example, he does a philosophical number, claiming our problem is not so much global warming as Al Gore's existential dread: "In a million years, the time it takes the earth to sneeze, the planet will likely be shorn of any conspicuous sign we were ever here, let alone careless with our CO2, dioxins, etc. Talk about an inconvenient truth."

He also scores high in my favorite conservative event, the equivalence of observable reality with rhetorical whims: "What if science showed conclusively that global warming is produced by natural forces, with all the same theorized ill effects for humanity, but that human action could forestall natural change? Or what if man-made warming were real, but offsetting the arrival of a natural ice age? Would Mr. Gore tell us meekly to submit to whatever nature metes out because it's 'natural'?" More to the point, what if this peanut butter were caviar? I would have gotten this sandwich at a substantial discount!

But Jenkins shows exceptional creativity and daring here:

A remarkable and improbable thing is that, despite presumably devoting decades of study to the subject of global warming, nothing Al Gore has learned leads him to say anything that would strike the least informed, most dogmatic "green" as politically incorrect. He doesn't discover virtues in nuclear power. He doesn't note the cost-benefit advantages of strategies that would remove CO2 from the atmosphere, rather than those that would stop its creation.

Anybody who deeply searches into any subject of popular debate inevitably comes back with views and judgments to shock the casual thinker. Mr. Gore utterly fails to vouchsafe this reliable telltale of seriousness.

You may have missed it, but Jenkins just said that Gore's conclusions cannot be right because they are not the same as Jenkins' presumptions.

I have to applaud. I would also like to take credit for appreciating Jenkins' craft despite our disagreements, but I don't really know that I disagree with him, because he hasn't asserted anything that rises to the level of argument. He just doesn't like Al Gore, and wants to say bad things about him.

Fair enough. A traditional film review wouldn't have been as interesting, probably. Previously I had put down this New Criticism to sloth and arrogrance, but maybe it's really an avant-garde movement. If so, Jenkins is a stylist to watch.

UPDATE. Those of us who are not so cutting-edge might want to settle down with the down-home, old-school fatuity of the Ole Perfesser, who refutes Gore with -- get this -- the new hand-dryer at his gym, which "makes the skin on your hands ripple like it does when you're skydiving, and within a few seconds your hands are dry." This is the end of MST (Main Stream Towels)! I can't wait to see what they have for the bidet.

NEVER GET OUT OF THE BOAT! People sometimes ask me, a semi-name in the world of electronic bile, why I take my sport with the larger, more popular jackasses of the conservative blogosphere (Reynolds, NRO, etc), seldom wandering into the deeper woods a la such intrepids as The Sadlynauts.

Those woods are very scary, my friends. For example, with just a simple click from the (unaccountably) well-regarded Dean Esmay, I became enmeshed in this:

A related subject (DEFINITELY off limits among the PC crowd) is the indication that cultural remnants of communal, tribal African culture persist in American Black culture today. American Blacks managed to survive slavery, Jim Crow and overt racial discrimination by de-emphasizing individual property rights (which were likely to be ephemeral in any case) and by depending on a sort of communal, tribal cooperation that was common to their heritage. Even today, in many black families, less prosperous family members feel entitled to a share of the wealth of those family members who are more successful.

And then there is the "bling" and "signifying" (not to mention the wanton slaughter) at the lower levels of contemporary Black ghetto culture -- hard not to notice how much this resembles the African pattern.

But to speak of such things immediately brands one as a bigot, despite the fact that CULTURE is the focus, not race.

The author's picture adds to the effect.

I can be lighthearted about this (like, if American blacks retain so much of their African heritage, how did the dashiki ever go out of fashion?), but it is astonishing, indeed dispiriting, how much outright crackpottery there is out there.

The big boys are nuts, too, but they disguise it much better, which makes uncovering their unreason something close to an intellectual exercise -- or as close as I like to get.

Also, I convinced a judge that this constitutes public service. Another 300 hours and I can take off this electronic bracelet.

A THOUSAND PARDONS, DORKS! Due to popular demand among the perpetually-aggrieved, here is a belated Memorial Day graphic:


Now let us move on.

(But not before I memorialize my favorite Freeper comment: "I remember they had a dripping bucket logo to celebrate 'water day' right when Terri Schiavo was being dehydrated.")

MOVIE NIGHT. Finally saw Walk The Line. Back when Joaquin Phoenix was announced as the Johnny Cash avatar, I spent a long night explaining to an uninterested bartender why Phoenix was a poor choice. They should have scoured up a backwoods retard to play JC, I drooled. I admired Phoenix from Quills and Gladiator, but I didn't see anything in him that could sound Cash's simplicity.

I was awful wrong. Phoenix is wonderful. He obviously worked like hell on the voice, and did right by it: he not only got the lower register, but also the aching gulf it came out of. When he did "Folsom Prison Blues" for Sam Phillips (and that was a great little performance, there, by Dallas Roberts -- he made Phillips a pedant, a prophet, and a promoter all at once, which Phillips had to have been), Phoenix seemed to be singing in slow motion, digging open with effort a hole in himself to reveal his deepest sorrow. And, drunk as I was when I expressed it in that bar, the filmmakers seem to have shared my feeling about Cash being a retard. The movie Cash can't hardly help himself: he does everything out of blind need. From the start he comes on to June as if he has no social skills whatever, and even after his desire has been purified by abstinence and discipline, when he proposes -- "Muhrry me, June!" -- it's still a raging hard-on that can't brook convention, common sense, or anything else.

There's a lot more to Johnny Cash than a love story, but the love story is great, and who doesn't like a great love story? Much as I admire Reese Witherspoon, though, I don't see this as any kind of pinnacle for her, Oscar or no. Back in her Freeway-Election period, I would have imagined Witherspoon capable of anything. Then came those stupid Legally Blond movies, and I think she's still sort of stuck on that note. Her June Carter is solid but nothing out of the ordinary. I liked her best when she first softened toward Cash -- it may have just been a gap in the writers' characterization, but when she let him into her hotel room (here the framing of the scene helps a lot), it was a welcome glimpse of mystery -- how is it that someone so forcefully pulled together lets herself slip? By and large, though, Witherspoon's June is too formulaically conflicted, according to how bad or good Johnny's coming off at the time. The newspaper headline JUNE CARTER MARRIES STOCK CAR DRIVER is more interesting than most of her performance. Witherspoon needs a quantum casting leap. But who in Hollywood will give it to her?

As for the resolution, I like it fine. It may be a family-Bible resolution, but it's still a resolution. I especially like Cash's Christian handling of his asshole father -- I was annoyed by it, but on the film's terms it made perfect sense, and those, as Charles Foster Kane once observed, are the only terms anyone understands. I understand the charge that Walk the Line is just a form of "effective ventriloquism," and that Cash's life has more riches to yield, but to me the important thing is that it is effective, and its effectiveness is earned from the start to the finish of the film. Movies can do worse, and usually do.

BACK, SORT OF. For the long weekend I absented myself from all responsibilities, including this one. I didn't look at the internet. I went to Coney Island and ate a softshell crab sandwich and drank beer. I should have stayed there. Here is all work and care and arguments with italicized strawwimmyn.

Still, here is where we are, so I will get back to it. But slowly.

LOOK AWAY, LOOK AWAY. Because of my record as a culture war correspondent, some readers have goaded me to take on John Miller's "Top 50 Conservative Songs" nonsense at National Review. But my heart isn't much in it.

Not that Miller's list isn't a comedy goldmine. I would pay good money to see John Lydon onstage at a YAF Rally, leading a rousing chorus of "Bodies" (#7). And previously my readers and I have enjoyed our own alternate con-song suggestions (e.g., "Pray I Don't Kill You Faggot" by Run Westy Run) and alternate lyrics (here're some new ones: "While ol' Neil Young talks down the southland/As he goes in and out of key/Me and my roadies will get fucked up/And drive our plane into a tree -- aaah, fuck me").

Whence then my reticence? Partly from contempt. Miller's logic is so extraordinarily sheer that it is almost beneath my dignity to poke holes in it (and I'm wearing a cardboard belt!), and it is certainly beneath yours to watch me do it. Take his statement to the New York Times --

"Any claim that rock is fundamentally revolutionary is just kind of silly," he said. "It's so mainstream that it puts them" — liberals — "in the position of saying that at no time has there ever been a rock song that expressed a sentiment that conservatives can appreciate..."

I can't be bothered to touch this "argument," anymore than I can be bothered to explain to an annoying child why he can't live on the moon or shoot rockets from his fingers.

Part of it, though, is from pure fellow-feeling. I was a lonely little boy once, and spent many sad hours on my own. The world seemed cruel, savage, and stacked against me. Being small, I had no way to fight it head-on, so in my imagination I created an alternative universe, where all the Hobbesian brutalities I suffered or witnessed obtained an explanation favorable to myself.

I'm obviously not the only person who ever experienced something like that. Neither am I the only person to have outgrown it. It marked me, sure. My naive faith in the power of reason may be part of its legacy. But I did in time come to accept something very important for all adults to accept: that the explanation that was most comforting to my vanity was not necessarily the right one.

Most of our culture-warriors have a Joe Goebbels idea of art. Some don't even know what it is at all. And some special few of them aren't even aware that they are talking about art, because they see everything for which they have any feeling as an extension of themselves. Thus they spend pages explaining why their favorite dance tunes, or comic strips, or choc-o-mut ice creams are evidence of the superiority of their world view.

They excite our pity more than our contempt, because they have obviously missed a crucial step in their development. They are, as Harry Truman once said about Joe McCarthy, not mentally complete. Were it not for the largesse of Bill Buckley, Richard Scaife, and such like, they would probably be living in institutions.

So let's leave Miller be. alicublog is a straight-up joint; we don't beat up cripples here.

I KNOW I AM, BUT WHAT ARE YOU? Lloyd Bentsen died recently, and newspaper writers naturally recalled the old Texan's most famous moment: his "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy" response to Dan Quayle in the 1988 Vice-Presidential debates. To normal, literate people, this is understandable. Conversely, to Tim Graham, it is an outrage.

Graham, the NRO kulture kop who thinks Hollywood is trying to destroy Christianity, seems also to think that witty putdowns are a liberal plot:

Copeland tried to make this [article] more balanced by noting Ronald Reagan's debate quips against Carter and Mondale, but "there you go again" and joking about not exploiting his opponent's "youth and inexperience" were much mellower in tone than Bentsen's "babyface" slam. Soon, she returned to the "beauty" of Bentsen's quip: "We don't feel bad for victims of verbal violence if we feel in some way they deserve it." Spoken like a true Democrat.

He also thinks that, because there are few Bentsen references in the JFK library, a "liberal media 'truth squad'" should have been dispatched to fact-check Bentsen's joke. (That always works. "Well, you know, rabbis rarely go into bars, and it is even more rare for them to go in accompanied by a priest.")

My very favorite segment of Graham's hissy-fit is this:

Left unexplored: how recent Republican candidates have resisted the urge to slam liberal opponents in presidential debates in front of liberal media. It wouldn't receive the same glorious treatment.

Is that why? Maybe it's because, with or without a transmitting device in his jacket, George W. Bush isn't anyone's idea of George Sanders. "Need some wood?" is more his sort of humor: frat-house in origin, aphasic in delivery.

I can see why Graham makes up the excuse that, if ol' George chose to uncork his zingers, the Em Ess Em would wave their hands in front of the camera and yell "not funny!" It's what he would do -- in fact, it's what he just did.

Still, it's good to know that, like the Muhammed cartoon guys, members of our local chapter of the Villains, Thieves and Scoundrels Union cannot abide mockery.

IF I'M NOT MISSING SOMETHING HERE, if there is not some hidden meaning or level of irony that I have somehow overlooked, then I may just have to quit because, jaded as I am, I would never have imagined such a thing possible.

The next Orwell will have to be an absurdist.

(Thanks Atrios for the tip.)

UPDATE. Upon further review (thanks Felix) it doesn't seem so much crazy as malign. The DefendDelay folks seem to think the maker of Outfoxed and WalMart: The High Price of Low Cost let slip in the Colbert interview that his documentary has a political purpose (stop the presses). They portray this revelation as a result of Colbert's interrogratory skills ("Colbert Cracks the Story"). So it's a misrepresentation, but one that requires only selective reading and wishful thinking to believe -- not a wholesale denial of reality.

Which is not so reassuring when you think about it.

ANOTHER SAD SACK IN THE CULTURE WAR. Ol' Perfesser Reynolds writes about how society done made child-rearin' too tuff. The article clearly takes the POV that we whi -- uh, I mean Americans should get populatin' post haste. But while Dr. and Dr. Mrs. "Maw" Reynolds bravely do their part by raising a single young'un, despite the demands of tenure and podcasts, they insist that not enough clucks are having bushels o' brats "because parenting isn't prestigious in our society," as demonstrated by... the prevalence of SUVs:

People in the suburbs buy SUVs instead of minivans not because they need the four-wheel-drive capabilities, but because the SUVs lack the minivan's close association with low-prestige activities like parenting, and instead provide the aura of high-prestige activities like whitewater kayaking. Why should kayaking be more prestigious than parenting? Because parenting isn't prestigious in our society. If it were, childless people would drive minivans just to partake of the aura.

Alas, childrearing -- undone by an unfortunate aura! Like just about every scoundrel these days, the Perfesser says we must look to "culture" for solutions, then runs out the door before anyone can ask what the hell that means.

It amazes me that a person can attain adulthood in this century and civilization and continue to think that a "culture" more in keeping with his fantasies can be ordered up like National Guard troops or government cheese. Yet the Perfesser is obviously not alone in this. For further evidence -- well, just read my archives.

(The Perf's commenters are even funnier. For example, one W.B. Allen complains that when he and his wife had a third child, his fellow academics [!] treated him with "barely revealed contempt." W.B. takes heart that "the future Republicans and Libertarians out number the future liberal Democrats by a healthy margin." The populationist doom-cry can't be so urgent, I guess, if one can rejoice that in its death-throes American society will be, at least toward the end, liberal-free.)

ARTS AND LETTERS REPORT. Ross Douthat stands up for Ramesh Ponnuru's constitutional right to be reviewed by magazines that don't want to review him. This is in regard to Ponnuru's latest Regnery entry, All You Democrats Are Baby-Killing Monsters.

I challenge Douthat to read and review my buddy Howard Djeleikakik's latest, Ross Douthat Smells Like Fucked Ass. Refusal to do so means Douthat is intellectually dishonest. And no fair skimming it in Barnes & Noble.

UPDATE. Other like-livered conservatives whine like little bitches when their constitutional right to be on Google News is abridged. You don't see me complaining when Pajamas Media snubs alicublog. And they're the news aggregators of the future!

UPDATE II. Dan Riehl has been disaggregated by Google News. Worse, they responded to his repeated letters of complaint ("after my nth email with Glenn's post included") with what Riehl considers a "non-answer." (It looks like a form letter to me.) Standing on a storm-buffeted promontory and shaking his gloved fist, Riehl declares that "Google as a company will ultimately stumble, or at least need adult management one day," as the music swells. If self-delusion is the soul of comedy, this guy should have a series on NBC.

HISTORY'S GREATEST MONSTER!

"Let's play on this big piano -- Mr. Hanks sez it's okay!" Moments later the boy was sucked into a world of polygamy and free-thinking, where his only friend was a free-thinking polygamous volleyball named Wilson.

Mistah Kurtz, he nuts:

The battle is radicalizing. Big Love and The Da Vinci Code are far more direct and brazen attacks on tradition than we might have anticipated just a few years ago. Conservatives are the targets, and Hollywood is aiming and shooting repeatedly. Give credit to Tom Hanks, by the way. As producer of Big Love and star of The Da Vinci Code, he is clearly one of the captains of the not-so-secret conspiracy.

The Da Vinci Code is bullshit, but a not-so-secret conspiracy against conservatives led by Tom Hanks is the God's honest truth.

Somebody explain to Kurtz that movie stars are not appointed by the Illuminati (well, except for Steve Guttenberg), that "control of our critical cultural institutions" is won by talent and ambition, not by whining, and that the pills he keeps spitting up are for his own good.

UPDATE. Kurtz may be mollified to learn that, according to Michael Long, there is such a thing as "conservative rock songs," from which scraps and shards of culture a new civilization may be built.

Long's primary example is "Wouldn't It Be Nice" by the Beach Boys, because

...Brian Wilson and Tony Asher do not say: “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could have sex? These cultural mores have got to go!”... No, these are kids who accept that there is a place and time for everything, and that some urges are best delayed—even if we don’t see any good reason past faith to do so. They are looking forward—something rarely done anymore—to a time when what they want comports with the rules they trust, rules more important than an impulse or a wish, rules that preserve civility and order and life.

Long probably hasn't heard the latest re-issue of Pet Sounds, featuring the alternative lyrics: "Wouldn't it be nice to be on mushrooms/With lots of rum and fresh fruit juice to drink/And sit inside a sandbox, play piano/And talk about the martians with my shrink?/You know I'm scared a giant bug will eat me/I still have bruises where my old man beat me..."

UPDATE II. This is turning into one of The Corner's crazier days. Goldberg tries to conciliate the agitated Kurtz ("And, more simply, the book is by most accounts a lot of fun to read. Surely that explains some of this too"), but Kurtz won't have it: "I also think the popularity of the book says something about where we are as a culture," he insists -- which is something you could say about just any book, including The Gospel According to Peanuts, Interview with a Vampire, and The South Beach Diet. Saner minds would append to the observation the old Latin phrase, so what? Kurtz, though, ruminates darkly on "the number of folks who see themselves as unconnected to any organized religion... especially in blue cities and counties." Time perhaps for Kurtz' Destroy America to Save It plan.

The crown goes to K-Lo, though, with this (warning: if you are not aware of current trends in conservative arts criticism, this may blow your mind):

I haven't seen [Oliver Stone's] World Trade Center... I had at least one problem with the trailer... Nicolas Cage has a moustache, for instance, in the movie, to establish "working-class bona fides." But John McLoughlin, the Port Authority police sergeant who Nicolas Page plays in the movie actually has a moustache. So it doesn't strike me as too odd...

I can't believe I'm defending an Oliver Stone trailer...

And I can't believe these people are walking around loose.

HOW THEY DO. A Republican gets booed at a graduation ceremony. Gateway Pundit calls him a victim of "typical liberal rudeness," and the event evidence of "the intolerant Left today."

A Democrat gets booed at a graduation ceremony. Gateway Pundit praises the hecklers, denounces the speaker.

The posts come just a few days apart. Maybe Gateway Pundit had a really wild weekend, or a brain injury, and forgot today what he wrote on Saturday. Or maybe he doesn't give a rat's ass about logical consistency. There's a lot of that going around.

UPDATE. Gateway Pundit responds that the Democrat deserved heckling because his party "does not respect religion or the 10 Commandments." He also thinks Reason's Dave Weigel is a "Leftist," and that I am "young."

WELCOME (BACK) TO THE MACHINE. The Perfesser is displeased by news of New Orleans Mayor Nagin's reelection:

I predict substantially less support for New Orleans reconstruction. Betweeen the Louisiana delegation's absurd overreaching in demanding a huge amount of pork-laden funding, and this, they've managed to squander a lot of the sympathy that was present in in September. Louisiana's political class isn't just greedy -- it's greedy and stupid. Louisiana will pay the price. And probably complain of unfairness when it does.

It is interesting that the Perfesser portrays the voters of New Orleans as part of the "political class." Given the general American non-involvement in political decision-making, maybe they do qualify. From that point of view, voters who pull the wrong lever are as blameworthy as their politicians, and as deserving of retribution. In fact, from the Perfesser's formulation, we may further infer that the minority that did not vote to reelect Nagin -- and the rest of the state's residents, I guess -- deserve what they get, too.

Vote right or lose your Federal aid -- an intriguing new vision of political reform. It puts the Perfesser's Porkbusters enthusiasm in a whole new light.

UPDATE. The Perfesser directs us to the ravings of Vodkapundit:

Here's the deal, Louisiana. We're going to help you. We really are. You are our neighbors and our countrymen and our friends, and we love you today as much as we ever did, in spite of and in no small part thanks to all the weirdness and flaws down your way. It's hard to see it from where you are, but we're helping you now, in our slow and ponderous way. We're not going to let it end like this.

But like every deal, this one has two parts, and I'm going to state yours very bluntly: You people are going to have to get your act together...

Get it? They're like drunks! And Vodkapundit's dishing out the toughlove. Not knowing how much vodka was involved in this punditry, I can't say if VP intends to go down there with a bullhorn and a whip and implement this plan himself, or whether he expects someone else to do it, like the Federal Government, or Superman.

CODE RED. Tour the right-wing websites this morning and you will see that their minions are out in full force to denounce The Da Vinci Code. Some of them have actually seen the movie they discuss, which shows how seriously they are taking it.

Were this a sign that these normally antiaesthetic characters have suddenly taken a lively interest in the arts, it would be charming. Unfortunately it is just the same old Culture War crap that constantly provides a subtheme for alicublog. Some writers overtly accuse the film of "Catholic-bashing," but most just pretend to be real movie reviewers, cheerfully pointing out the inevitable plot holes while throwing gang signs for the One True Church.

Their endlessly-proven bad faith aside, I have no god in this fight. I haven't read the best-seller nor do I expect to see this nor any more Ron Howard movies than it has already been my misfortune to see. (I do respect the Night Shift advocates among my readership, but that's as far as I go.) So I will leave the thing alone.

But I want to run an idea by you: The Kiwanis Code. A strangely-arranged corpse found in a suburban Illinois union hall sends a world-famous corporate philanthropy consultant and the dead man's daughter to Hagerstown, MD, where a marker on Kemp Hall contains the key to the true identity of the Six Permanent Objects. I will say no more, except that our heroes will be rescued by an equally shadowy order, riding to the rescue in little cars.

UPDATE. "Recently, the Nation Film Preservation Association voted to use Howard’s films to wrap around and protect other better films."

THEN SHE PRAISED CALCIUM SUPPLEMENTS FOR WOMEN -- AND NO ONE QUESTIONED IT! Tim Graham at The Corner:

On the occasion of the final episode of NBC's Will & Grace, Katie Couric insisted, "on a serious note," that it's one of her daughter's favorite shows, and it's so important to teach tolerance of "people who are different" at a "very early age." Anyone who expected a fair and balanced anchorwoman at CBS on the hot-button social issues, shred your illusions now.

I am in some sympathy with Graham. I would have gotten up early to see him attack the proposition that it is "important to teach tolerance of 'people who are different' at a 'very early age'" on national television. I would have happily written his talking points for him, e.g., "When a child smacks around feebs and wimps, that builds competitive spirit. Hell, every week I give Jonah Goldberg a wedgie just to keep my edge."

And I'm sure Focus on the Family has a study somewhere showing that kids who call other kids fags and pummel them are happier than kids who get called fags and pummelled. Further proof of the self-destructive homosexual lifestyle!

A REFRESHING NEW P.O.V. One of the many humorous side effects of the current conservative malaise is that it spurs even the dimmer National Review writers to reach for more adventuresome ideas. Mark Krikorian, heretofore known mainly as just another argumentum ad ignorantiam type, offers an interesting take on Bush's immigration policy, of which Krikorian disapproves:

President Bush is a conviction politician and sincerely believes this, which is why he sticks to his anti-enforcement guns despite potentially catastrophic political damage. This is unlike President Clinton, who was actually better on immigration in many ways precisely because he was (is) completely amoral and willing to embrace almost any position.

Read it and weep -- with laughter! For Comrade Krikorian has proposed that Bush is just too nice a guy to do his job well. And this isn't your usual nice=wimp formulation -- it is Bush's inner goodness that makes him a miserable failure; whereas sociopaths such as Bill Clinton do better at policy because their souls are black with unrepented sin.

I hope this gets around. As our Republic tumbles into chaos and ruin, I should like to see Denny Hastert wandering the wreckage, crying "I am too childish-foolish for this world." When the next hurricane/tsunami/ice age hits, I look forward to the President's address: "Americans have a choice. We can respond quickly and efficiently to this crisis, like depraved criminals; or, we can listen to that small, still voice of conscience, and fuck this up like we fucked up everything else." And during the next Presidential campaign, Giuliani can complete his expected conversion on gays, abortion etc. by announcing that he only ran New York City with some competence because he was having marital problems, but "since coming to Jesus I couldn't run an ice cream stand in hell, so filled am I with grace."

I mean, any explanation at all would be nice, but Krikorian's has the added benefit of being hilarious.

SHORTER PEGGY NOONAN: George Bush is an elitist. Also, God's will is expressed through film critics.

UPDATE. The Crazy Jesus Lady's commenters are in fine form. One Lindsay White of Tampa, FL promises vengeance against "18 Senate Republican turn-coats" who "need to enjoy D.C. while they still can" -- I imagine Linsday stumbling around outside the Washington Convention Center, screaming "I bring not peace but a SWORD!" while fishing around in his pants -- and Ken Zwick of Ocala states that "the DaVinci Code producers are misreading America's receptiveness to blasphemy," which receptiveness presumably peaked with Oh, God! You Devil during the corrupt reign of the divorcee Reagan.

SUNRISE SERMONETTE. Lot of talk recently at The Corner about how atheists=leftists=spiritualists. (Here is the inevitable, anchoring "I know I'm full of shit but I know a guy says I'm right but anyway it's late and oh look, a cold burrito" post from Jonah Goldberg.)

The discussion, such as it is, is highly personalized: "atheism=leftism=spiritualism" would not encompass it better. It's mainly about silly people, real or imagined, doing/believing silly things, rather than a debate on the merits of any particular creeds. I don't see why they restrain themselves. Why not assert the objective superiority of eating communion wafers to putting rocks on one's back? Think what heights the dialogue might reach. It could be like the Diet of Worms, only with Buffy references, and of course snickering over "Diet of Worms."

This nonsense provides an opportunity for me to express my own religious-spirtual-spiritous belief:

There is a God, and He is not doing His job properly.

I am compiling a bill of particulars to send Him. The list is very long and not nearly finished, but I will share some of my complaints with you now.

• Negative side-effects to all the best things in life, e.g. money (inflated self-worth, false friends), sex (diseases, marriage), food (a large and ever-changing array of attributable health conditions). While we’re at it, thorns on roses and blow-cards in magazines.
  
  
• Evolution. Contentious, messy way of going about things. Will take forever to figure out, thanks to that stupid Adam & Eve red herring. I suppose You thought it was funny.
  
  
• Uncertainty. For example, I can’t tell if You’re even going to get this. Or whether it will please or displease You. Or how You will react if it displeases You. Or if you’re a retarded child like on "St. Elsewhere." If You’d let me know I could have dumbed this down, or commissioned an illustrator.

I'll let you know if I hear anything.

(NB: Capitalized masculine pronouns used for clarity of expression.)

MORE KUDOS. His archiving is shit, so before they escape living memory I must link here and here to Harry Hutton's extremely great posts on Britain's John Prescott scandal. Excerpt:

I would go further: I would say that screwing his secretary is his main achievement since taking office, and one of the things that sets him apart from monomaniacs and cyborgs like Blair, Brown and Straw. Blair would no more fuck his secretary than he would read a novel. Why? Because he’s a lunatic and a freak, with no more sense of proportion than a Saudi cleric. Brute that he is, Prescott is one of the few members of the establishment who is still recognisably earthling.

High style and good sense -- that's all I ask, and more than I deserve.

GOOD CATCH. Though it pains me to admit it, I am not alone, nor even foremost, in mapping the twists and turns of the warblogger spirochette. For example, Belle Waring has found her a doozy of a specimen:

I think all three [conservatives who have broken ranks with Bush over runanway deficit spending or his immigration policy] may be suffering some variant of PTSD, worn down by defending difficult positions at the forefront of the battle against irredentist Democrats in Congress and their fifth-column in the media.

Even making an allowance for poeticism (though further reading at the Democracy Project shows we are not dealing here with poets, to say the least), this is rich. We are accustomed to hearing Fightin' Keyboarders compare themselves to combatants, but to suggest that they suffer actual casualties in the line of duty is a new one on me. Will they be getting Purple Nurples in lieu of Purple Hearts? Should we buy PayPal poppies to ensure their care?

I also see we're back to the fifth column stuff. Just in time for the new wave of blogger civility!