WHO NEEDS CENSORS? WE'LL DO IT OURSELVES! The latest rightwing fashion trend is slurring liberals by saying they're just like conservatives -- dead conservatives, that is, whose other uses are past. As seen here previously, Miles Gloriosus compared "netroots" liberals to the John Birch Society, and today the Wall Street Journal compares Bill Keller to Colonel McCormack of the Chicago Tribune. How I look forward to a long National Review essay on the new Joe McCarthy, John Conyers.

The editorial, which targets the New York Times for treasonous reporting, is revealing in other ways:

According to Tony Fratto, Treasury's Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, he first contacted the Times some two months ago. He had heard Times reporters were asking questions about the highly classified program involving Swift, an international banking consortium that has cooperated with the U.S. to follow the money making its way to the likes of al Qaeda or Hezbollah. Mr. Fratto went on to ask the Times not to publish such a story on grounds that it would damage this useful terror-tracking method.

Sometime later, Secretary John Snow invited Times Executive Editor Bill Keller to his Treasury office to deliver the same message. Later still, Mr. Fratto says, Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, the leaders of the 9/11 Commission, made the same request of Mr. Keller. Democratic Congressman John Murtha and Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte also urged the newspaper not to publish the story.

The Times decided to publish anyway, letting Mr. Fratto know about its decision a week ago Wednesday. The Times agreed to delay publishing by a day to give Mr. Fratto a chance to bring the appropriate Treasury official home from overseas...

Seems like the Administration had a pretty good heads-up on the story. So if its publication was going to be so very dangerous to national interests, why didn't the Feds get a judge to issue a restaining order against the Times? It's not unprecedented.

Failing that, they could have firebombed the printing presses. This is war, people!

The editorial defends the Journal's own reporting of the story, not on the but-Mom-they-did-it-first basis already floated by other wingers, but on the grounds that WSJ's version of the story was fed to them by Bush's people as a way of getting, if not ahead, at least abreast of the Times' coverage. John Peter Zenger may not be proud, but Lee Atwater certainly must be.

Perhaps, contra Dr. Johnson, patriotism is actually the last refuge of a hack.

JOSH, YOU WERE SAYING ABOUT THE NEW BIRCHERS? "In fact, we may have just witnessed the SCOTUS overreach that loses us the war... after Kelo and Raich and McCain-Feingold, I’m not even sure the Constitution much matters anymore... I don’t wish to sound too conspiratorial here, but it seems to me that a case can be made that under Lederman’s reading of this decision, we’ve now effectively empowered an alliance between the intelligence community and the press to determine our national security posture by setting up the conditions where leaks will be even more effective and more coveted by partisans who disagree with a given administration." -- Jeff Goldstein on the Hamdan decision, or the boogey-man -- hard to tell which.

Of course I'm not being fair. Just because Goldstein is constantly praised to skies by the Perfesser and many other significant figures in the right-blogosphere doesn't mean he's a mainstream conservative. There are other explanations. But they're very unflattering to a large number of people.

SHORTER CRAZY JESUS LADY. The doctor says I'm not crazy after all -- (proudly) I'm a contrarian!

UPDATE. I can't leave mad enough alone. This rat's nest is full of choice pellets, but this one just has to be noted:

Voters know it's hard to do a risky thing like define marriage as a legal entity that can take place only between an adult human male and an adult human female. That actually would take some guts.

When I read that, I almost ran out into the street screaming "WHERE IS SHE? WHERE IS PEGGY NOONAN?" so powerful was my need for an explanation. I got over it by imagining her thought processes at this stage of the composition: Wait, what if someone brings up FMA? Why is that better than the flag-burning amendment? Well, because it's... it's... glug, glug, glug, glug. Because it's hard! It's not just between a man and a woman -- it's an adult man and an adult woman. And they have to be human!

Best Moment of Ngnyyyaah: "Bush the Younger would breastfeed the military if he could."

DAMNED IF THEY "I DO"... World Magazine:

One would think that homosexual or lesbian "marriage" would stop at just that: the union of a same-sex duo. Now, however, some gay Muslims are seeking lesbian wives in order to satisfy family pressure without "coming out of the closet." But is this 'heterosexual' union, devoid of any commitment beyond "friendship" and intramarital celibacy, really marriage?

Wait a minute. So homosexuals can't even marry members of the opposite sex? Maybe the author is convinced that gay citizens are rolling in "special rights," and should give up rights of the more mundane sort in compensation.

But what am I saying? It's liberals who are the real homo-haters. Zip, flop, slap!

UPDATE. Per Josh Trevino, liberals are becoming John Birchers, too. (Hilariously, JT's very first commenter, a RedState legacy pledge, argues that there were so Commies overrunning the State Department, and the New Deal was alien statism.) This argument assumes that Bill Buckley came out of the wilderness and cleaned all the Welchade off the movement, and American conservatives thereafter proceeded in powdered wigs and tricorners to let freedom ring. An alternative description of their methods is summarized here

LIBERALS QUOTING JEFFERSON! WHO'DA THUNK IT? Tim Graham:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but is there anything more oddly self-negating than generally statist liberals arguing for the New York Times by citing Jefferson saying he'd rather have newspapers without government than a government without newspapers? As if they'd ever pick newspapers and libertarian utopia?

First reaction: Huh?

Second reaction: Fancy Tim Graham, who wants the FCC to regulate according to Jesus, calling anyone else "statist."

Third reaction: Oh, I'll just stop being such an old fuddy-duddy, and play too! Isn't it oddly self-negating that people who are very stupid, such as Graham, should criticize anyone whose IQ runs to positive integers?

UPDATE. Changed the link to Graham's nonsense. Original was a secondhand source and not work-safe, which is a first for this site.

SHORTER BRIAN CARNEY: Compared to the gulags, slavery really wasn't so bad.

HE HAS SLIPPED THE SURLY BONDS OF REASON. More and more, the blogosphere strikes me as a high-tech care facility for nuts and retards. In today's Grand Rounds I consider the case of James Pinkerton, who turns from playing Culture War to playing Spaceman. He posits a "space-ark" to save some human specimens (presumably including James Pinkerton and a ratio of ten females to each male) from the inevitable destruction of the earth.

Space exploration is of course Nerdvana for rightwing poindexters, perhaps because they are aware that the environmental policies they are successfully promoting are dangerous to planetary life (of course this assumes that they are evil instead of stupid, which is in no way a settled issue). Pinkerton manages in this article to cite "global warming" as a credible threat to the planet -- though one month ago, when Al Gore was making that same point, Pinkerton was laughing it off. That's how serious he is about getting a seat on that rocket ship -- he's even willing to alter his usual line of bullshit for a ticket.

Bonus fun -- Pinkerton blames our abandonment of the space race on dirty hippies:

It's no coincidence that back in the 60s, as support for the space program was falling, the desire to get high was, well, rising. That is, as technological forms of tripping faded away, trips of the pharmaceutical kind took off. And in the wake of psychedelic drugs came the efflorescence of New Age religion and, yes, one must also say, the explosion of the Internet. To put it another way, stargazing gave way to acid-dropping, and then to navel-gazing, and then to web-surfing. What a long strange trip it's been, indeed.

To recover America from its drug/God/web addiction, Pinkerton volunteers to be shot into space. I say any excuse is a good excuse. He can leave tomorrow, and take his nutty buddies (including the Transhumanist robot laywer) with him.

AND IF THE FACTS AREN'T ON YOUR SIDE, POUND THE TABLE. Bill Keller is a bit of a blowhard, but even he deserves better than this:

A deeper error is Keller's characterization of freedom of the press as an institutional privilege, an error that is a manifestation of the hubris that has marked the NYT of late. Keller writes: "It's an unusual and powerful thing, this freedom that our founders gave to the press. . . . The power that has been given us is not something to be taken lightly."

The founders gave freedom of the press to the people, they didn't give freedom to the press. Keller positions himself as some sort of Constitutional High Priest, when in fact the "freedom of the press" the Framers described was also called "freedom in the use of the press." It's the freedom to publish, a freedom that belongs to everyone in equal portions, not a special privilege for the media industry. (A bit more on this topic can be found here.)

Not being an academic myself (except in some dark, steamy minds), I may just be missing whatever point the Perfesser's trying to make. Is he trying to say that reporters are not in fact "people"? Or maybe he thinks newsmen have fewer, or less inclusive, First Amendment rights than reg'lar folks.

Because, otherwise, it doesn't matter if Bill Keller and all the Times staff walk around in ermine capes and call each other Majesty. They and we either have the right or they/we don't. There are no shitty-attitude exemptions in the Bill of Rights.

This guy is a law professor. Think about that.

Bonus Laff: Austin Bay:

Some of us –- the majority of Keller’s critics -– are American soldiers and citizens who recognize dangerous, arrogant stupidity when we read it printed on his front page.

I'm no majoritarian, but that sounds like such an impossibly small group, I don't see why we should bother about them.

UPDATE. Perhaps attempting to make himself look smart by comparison, the Perfesser reproduces some comments on the subject that are even stupider than his own. Top prize goes to Andrew McCarthy: "The Times prattles on about what it claims is a dearth of checks and balances, but what are the checks and balances on Bill Keller?" Thank God the Founders in their wisdom foresaw the terrible danger represented by Bill Keller, leading, more or less directly, to the National Security Act of 1947.

For more fun, read McCarthy's whole second-person bilge noir -- "No, you have only one defense: Intelligence. Superpower power is useless..." -- then, the hot kiss at the end of a wet fist! McCarthy adds that "national-security secrets" are "the public treasure that keeps us alive." It is not surprising to learn that these people literally worship ignorance.

UPDATE II. More traitors call on the Bush Administration reveal its secrets!

MORE MEXICAN HIJINX WITH A TUPPENNY ASCHENBACH. At night on the byways of the resort where I serve as camera monkey, I see gaggles of drunk children. Well, they may be over 18. They may even be over 21. But they exude a mist of callowness and AXE Body Wash. They're well-behaved, not stumbling or vomiting. I puzzled over this and finally decided: any young people here will be from well-off families. It flashed me back to high school, when I had rich friends who would serve weed and booze in the east wing while the parents were dozing in the west. Flaming Youth -- same habits, worse clothes and music. (Or maybe these "teenagers" are all 30 years old -- like in the original Halloween! -- and I need new contact lenses.)

The Ugly Americans are less ugly than I expected. I had anticipated that the people who would come to such a place would look like old Ralph Steadman caricatures of vacationers at Disneyland -- fat, sullen, and stupefied. But the face of bourgeois privilege has undergone a makeover. Even folks from the fruited plain are going to health clubs now, and many of our new sybarites are toned, or at least can walk more a half-mile without getting winded. In fact, I notice that my own attitude has changed since childhood: once I thought fat, shambling Americans were a disgrace to our country and its Council on Physical Fitness; now I admire them for bucking a tide.

I got briefly to Playa de Carmen and witnessed its reduction of the Mexican national character to drunken frogs and their ancient Mayan sidekicks renting scuba equipment to white people. Hawkers, ugly t-shirts, McDonald's, Ben y Jerry's, and mercenary local characters/photo models: it reminded me St. Mark's Place with better set decoration.

More antes, I mean despues. Caramba.

WHERE I'M CALLING FROM. I declined to mention where the Company was sending me for a few reasons. First, I try not to make this thing too personal, aside from the medical reports, which I believe journalists would agree constitute "health & wellness reporting." Second, it's embarrassing: I'm taking pictures of sales representatives at a resort in Cancun. No, I'm not a photographer, but they were short a man and the field operations manager learned that I have opposable thumbs.

I have never been to a resort of any kind, and longtime readers will not be surprised to learn that the suburban-sybaritic experience has filled my head with an endless film loop of Death in Venice as interpreted by Aaron Spelling. Also The Gentleman from San Francisco: "...nor did any one who know what lay deep, deep, beneath them, on the very bottom of the hold, in the neighborhood of the gloomy and sultry maw of the ship, that heavily struggled with the ocean, the darkness, and the storm..."

If my mouth weren't full of overcooked food I would scream. As it is, I wait helplessly for the Mexicans to rise up and murder us all. I know they have machetes. I'm seen them used to trim bushes.

They seem cheerful, and less acute minds than mine might imagine they prefer wearing clean linens and fetching margaritas to subsistence farming or starving in dusty hidalgos. But like all bright minds, I have been dreaming of apocalypse for the past several decades, and my luck's got to change sometime.

Excuse me now, I have to get on a tour bus and read name tags.

ANOTHER DAMN INTERRUPTION. The tedious demands of work (cannot these philistine employers realize I better serve the commonwealth as a synapse in the giant processing brain of the blogosphere?) cause me to travel for a few days. I'll try to get to the "business center" to post when I can. Meantime patronize the lovely people who populate my blogroll. Or read idiots yourself, and have your own special processing fun in comments!

UPDATE. Christ, comments are smarter than me! I would give up, but the doctor says I gots a obsession com-pul-si-ble synthdrum, real bad.

THIS SORT OF EXPLAINS EVERYTHING. In their lengthy, imbecilic "debate" about the importance of fathers (coming up next: was "The Flintstones" a total rip-off of "The Honeymooners"?), John Derbyshire says:

To take your last point first: Are you suggesting that if I hold a certain opinion about politics and society, and if I then read a sheaf of research studies that seem to me to be sound, but that contradict my opinion, then I should hold on to my opinion and ignore the science? Sorry, no sale.

Jonah Goldberg replies:

Yes, to a certain extent I am asking you to have your politics shape your opinions and frankly, I am at a loss to see how you should think otherwise, let alone why you should be so boastful about it.

As always, Goldberg's weak verbal skills leave his gist less than clear, so it's hard to tell whether he has totally missed Derbyshire's clear reference to fact-based information, or has acknowledged but refused to address it.

But his dudgeon speaks volumes. The idea that politics is the measure of everything on God's green earth is the central fallacy of National Review conservatism. As we never tire of pointing out here at alicublog, in their universe, movies, music, TV shows, football teams, and even sex are judged by their conservative correctness. So of course Goldberg is outraged. How could one of the comrades allow himself to deviate on so crucial an issue as the Meaning of Fatherhood? That's almost as ungood as failing to enjoy The Passion of the Christ.

Remember Godard's famous question, "How can I hate John Wayne for upholding Goldwater and yet love him tenderly when abruptly he takes Natalie Wood into his arms in the last reel of The Searchers?" That such an idea would never, ever occur to any of this lot -- indeed, it might cause their synapses to fuse like overheated electronic circuits -- really explains, more than their various political idiocies, why they are wrong.

UPDATE. Jay Brida in comments thinks we might be onto something: "Dare I say it might be the string theory of wingnuttia? It explains their culture, their beliefs and their oddly discordant strategy of appealing to fat libertarians and dominionists at the same time." Actually, I always thought that what brought these factions together was the all-you-can-eat shrimp bar. But that was an ignorant superstition. Science will bring us to the truth!

UPDATE. My wider point to one side, the Goldberg/Derbyshire mental-pygmy wrestling match has devolved to the hilarious. Derb here argues that sometimes abused children have it coming:

Rich would say (I mean, on the basis of his column, I suppose he would say) that THEREFORE parental abuse causes adult aggressiveness.

But that needs proving, and the mere correlation doesn't prove it. Two alternative explanations come to mind at once. (1) We have an aggressive adult from an aggressive parent (he beat the kid, didn't he?) Maybe aggression runs in this family. It doesn't even have to be genetic. It could be dietary, or religious. (2) The kid was obnoxious and difficult from the start. (Some are. Believe me.) The parent, who was perfectly average in aggressiveness, was driven to distraction (read: abnormally aggressive reactions) by the kid's intransigent naughtiness. So we're not looking at a parent-to-child effect at all; we're actually looking at a child-to-parent effect! Yet I am pretty sure I have never read a headline saying "Difficult Kids Provoke Parents to Abuse, Study Shows." Why not? Because our popular culture, and even big swathes of our academic culture, are Freud-soaked...

I imagine Joel Steinberg reading The Corner, and exclaiming, "That's what I've been trying to tell you people! The little cunt was staring at me!"

Meanwhile Goldberg just keeps bringin' the breathtaking:

I will simply say up front: I do not believe the science Derb is referring to or purporting to refer to. Perhaps I'll end up with apple cider in my ear, but if it means what Derb suggests it to mean then I just don't believe it.

If brains were dynamite, these guys couldn't blow a fart.

A WASTE OF TIME. Redstate emits one of those "Republicans must reclaim environmentalism" discussions.

In the wake of Al Gore's movie/political call to arms, I think that it is crucial for the Right to adopt the issue of environmentalism for its own. Politically speaking, stealing a popular, headline-generating issue from the other side is generally a very good idea. Policywise, it is an important step on the way towards imprinting one's own stamp on the substance of a particular issue...

...It seems to me, therefore, that a much bigger megaphone ought to be given to the free market environmentalist movement by Republicans, both as a means of shaping and preserving a victorious governing coalition, and as a means of having an important and prominent seat at the policymaking table...

As you may imagine, hilarity ensues in comments. Here is a nice prècis:

Environmentalism IS a conservative issue
By: Ed54
I never understood why we cede care of the environment to the Left. What could be more conservative than preserving and wisely using our public lands? What could be more evangelical than being good stewards of the world God made for us? What NRA member doesn't love to hunt in pristine woods or fields? What student of national security doesn't recognize that our gas money finances islamic extremism?
The Dems simply have built more credibility on environmental issues over the last 30 years, so they are taken more seriously when they argue the case for global warming. If we were to start seriously fighting to preserve the world we have, instead of mocking environmentalists as loony green lefties, our counter-arguments on Global Warming and Kyoto would gain more traction...

(sniff) (sniff) Anyone else smell Troll?
By: DAHmich
There seems to be an infestation tonight!

Also, much talk about how great it will be when global warming destroys New York and San Francisco, etc.

The biggest laugh, for followers of this particular scam, is the reversion to "free-market environmentalism." "Environmentalism is practiced by hunters, fishers, and the military," says a typical advocate. "Environmentalism was taught to me by the army. Environmentalism is not about hemp-wearing hippies chaining themselves to trees."

Hippies would seem here to stand for government intervention, which is so disgusting to Redstaters that they can barely bring themselves to even mention it, let alone endorse it. And this allows them to ignore the plain fact that the important environmental improvements of the past half-century -- and badly needed they were, too -- came from government intervention.

These fellows like to think themselves tough-minded, yet they cling to the childish fiction that corporations with no financial incentive to do so will, once freed of the government yoke, magically turn into "stewards of the environment," and that the free market will heal the earth, sky, and water. ("If enough people were bothered enough by the air quality in these cities," writes one such, "the problem would take care of itself as people moved away" -- another subscriber to the Perfesser's notion of America as one giant urbless Suburb.)

In fairness I should note that Redstate is all about getting Republicans elected, and that there is no real reason for them to concern themselves with environmentalism, as all that is needed to return their champions to power is a big pre-election ballyhoo about fags getting married and Democrats being traitors. But I guess that leaves them a lot of time to kill, and a large online diary for those who have a bad conscience (or a conscience at all) to fill.

FEEL THE LOVE. The Perfesser mentions "OUTMIGRATION FROM NEW YORK," and my ears perked: At last! How soon can we return to those days of high crime, low rents, basement performance art and open containers I miss so much?

Then I read the actual Times article and realized it was about OUTMIGRATION from upstate New York, not the City. What a disappointment.

Many commenters on the same story at Vodkapundit are less careful readers and, after some very interesting reflections from past and present upstaters, they get down to the business of slagging the City. One, after admitting that "New Yorkers are smart, tough, hard working, and a lot of fun" (he neglects to mention our hip, black clothing, and our habit of lapsing into an Italian accent in times of stress), tells us that down South "Unemployment for educated professionals with a good work ethic is essentially zero" ("good work ethic" presumably means "white face and no desire for health care") and invites us to "Move to Texas. Have a baby. Shop at Costco. Vote for Bush." This sort of invitation to reform never ceases to charm us. In return, I invite the commenter to move to New York and start using hard drugs.

The commenters also notice that we live in small apartments. One compares New York City unfavorably to Miami. Weather seems to be a big factor. "I'm sorry," says one, "but the weather in NYC isn't that good.... better than upstate, but that is like saying a broken toe is better than a broken tooth.... I don't want either." Those of us who came here for the balmy breezes off the Gowanus must be feeling pretty silly.

Personally I'm glad they're back to hating us again. Even Jim Lileks, who enjoys taking pictures of our old buildings, now thinks of New York as a place ripe for riot and rebellion -- ah, would that it were so!And I expect the recent report of a pre-empted poison gas attack on our subways will not excite their former protestations of love and support.

Of course, the 40 percent cut in our Homeland Security funding was a pretty big hint, too.

FIRST RULE IS/THE LAWS OF GERMANY. My reaction to "Hadji Girl" is: fine, go ahead. I'm a free speech absolutist, and I recognize the Sweater Kittenz tune as a worthy companion to "Nigger Loves His Possum," "Pray I Don't Kill You, Faggot," and the oeuvre of The Mentors, Rapeman, and The Goldwaters. (Not to mention the old shanty "New York Girls," which it thematically most closely resembles.)

In return, I don't want to hear any more shit from these people about Michael Moore, the Dixie Chicks, Checkpoint, "All Things Considered," or anything else relating to their long-standing, phony Culture War. Fair's fair.

I don't expect them to take the deal, or even acknowledge that there is a deal. Culture warring requires a constant state of amnesia. In their way of looking at things, newspaper reporting is stark troop-killing treason, but a Marine prosecuted by Marines for his cheerful song about killing Arabs is proof that some imaginary entity called The Left is out to censor them.

What a failure of imagination that shows. In their younger days, no doubt, they emulated schoolyard bullies, and sucked up to the strong as they pummelled the weak; their adult politics certainly reflect this. But let them put a foot outside their customary arenas of power, into places where words are taken more seriously than fists, and they fumble for recourse into the dimmest recesses of their rucksacks for a tattered copy of the First Amendment, which they blunderingly misinterpret in their own defense; and, once the challenge is forgotten, they stuff the scrap forcefully back, and deride all further mention of it, until they again feel the chill breath of disapproval upon their necks.

The White House, two houses of Congress, most Governorships and a healthy chunk of the zeitgeist in their control, and still they bitch and moan that they are misunderstood. What a bunch of pussies.

SHORTER PEGGY NOONAN: The Democratic Party's excellent chances in Virginia prove that the Democrats are finished.

(Extra contempt added for her closing gush over neo-Duce Rudolph Giuliani.)

WHEN TOMORROW IS TODAY, THE BELL MAY TOLL FOR SOME. In the most recent of their many puzzling habits, NRO's Cornerites have started cheerfully citing people who mention John Miller's "Top 50 Conservative Songs" as evidence of the article's influence, even when those sources consider Miller to be utterly full of shit. Just so long as they spell the name right, one supposes.

The latest such link points us to the Financial Times, and for this I am grateful, as FT makes a few interesting points:

But it’s not such an anomaly to speak of rock and conservatism in the same breath, for as a musical form it is deeply conservative. Male-dominated, resistant to change, endlessly reproducing a narrow range of guitar chords, it lost whatever radical creative edge it had ages ago. One of the greatest rock bands, The Ramones, led by the ardent Republican supporter Johnny Ramone, understood its narrow parameters perfectly. Do the same thing again and again. Wear the same clothes. Rock may advertise itself as rebellion but in fact it values tradition and convention as much as any conservative.

That is why it has become a battleground for politicians. Witness a recent Westminster tussle: no sooner did Gordon Brown reveal in a magazine interview that The Arctic Monkeys “really wake you up in the morning” than David Cameron popped up on the radio programme Desert Island Discs to wax lyrical about The Smiths, Radiohead and REM.

Just so we know that he likes rock but not other, more delinquent forms of pop, Cameron later launched a savvy broadside against gangsta rap as glorifying violent crime. This is the to-and-fro of politics in the iPod age, with rock as the favoured musical shuttlecock. Pete Townshend had better get used to it.

I have only one real problem with this. The bit about "creative edge," obviously meant as a slur, is to me an irrelevance: "edge" is only what fans and critics ascribe to artistry, not a central fact of it. Your basic rock clod might think his favorite young idiot doing a recycled 70's riff and/or pose is edgy, because it amplifies his prior, TV-nurtured ideas of same, whereas said clod would think the genuinely adventuresome Charles Ives not edgy, because he's, like, old and in black and white.

The author is correct that rock as a form is conservative (though not nearly so much so as, say, the sonnet). We must stipulate that we use the term "conservative" here as sane people do (e.g., "At a conservative estimate I'd say you owe me ten bucks"), not in the indiscriminate and incoherent manner of culture warriors. And that sublime changes can be wrought within the most restrictive forms.

But the bit about British politicos throwing around rock names the way monkeys fling feces is best of all. I'm sure all these guys are basically spiritual heirs to the minister spoon-feeding Alex at the end of A Clockwork Orange. If rock signifiers are what the punters want, then signifiers they shall have! The strangeness, to our American ears, of hearing The Smiths used in such a way helps us to see more easily that the hipster imprimatur can be applied by anyone to anything regardless of relevance or consequence. Thus these pudgy, pasty pols apply bands like henna tattoos to their personas, in hopes of seeming more natural when strolling through the rougher electoral precincts.

That's the human comedy, folks, all the way down down to Cameron's impersonation of Mrs. Scum. Of course over time, or if overindulged, this sort of thing has a deleterious effect on the brain, which is why those of us who have grown out of it civic-mindedly try to encourage young folk to do likewise. Regrettably, an increasing number of adults refuse to abandon this childish affectation (indeed, they seem to be indulged in it by think-tanks, editors, and vanity presses). If the proportion of such retards exponentiates much further, we will find ourselves trapped in a large-scale environmental production of Wild in the Streets, only with more torture and worse music.

You may do your part by refusing to become a rhinoceros (or, if your perspective is less literary, a dumbass).

IN WHICH GEORGE CLOONEY FRAMES UP KEN LAY. James Pinkerton tries another liberal-Hollywood essay. It is not so offensive as some such. It is silly, for sure, basically twanging the old saw about social commentary closing on Saturday night, and blistered with bizarre cracks (on Tom Cruise: "And conservatives, for their part, needn't complain: Aren't gays supposed to stay in the closet?").

But Pinkerton acknowledges, first, that Hollywood is observably not turning Americans into Bolsheviks, and second, that Hollywood filmmakers try to make money. For these guys, that's an impressive acknowledgement of objective reality.

Naturally conservative critics think Pinkerton has failed to grasp the seriousness of the cultural situation. Larry Ribstein complains:

Of course Hollywood artists like business – after all, they’re in business.  But they like their own particular type of business. What they don’t like is capitalists – the folks who lord it over the artists, and force them to constrain their vision. 

And so what we get in Hollywood films is an unrelentingly dismal view of money, stock markets, and impersonal market forces...

I should think Americans might find impersonal market forces pretty dismal without any help. But no: because filmmakers "have been trained their whole professional lives to manipulate emotions," they can march sozzle-headed citizens into the jury box to "send capitalists to jail" and "levy huge punitive damages against big capitalist firms." And all because some tycoons tried to constrain their visions!

You will be relieved to hear that, despite these depradations, Ribstein is against "regulation of film content," preferring "more business education, and more awareness of filmmakers' perverse take on business." You can get a bellyful of such education at Ribstein's other blog, where he lists anti- and pro-business films: "Although Citizen Kane and the Godfather movies might be seen as the rare films that show what it takes to build a business," he sighs, "they don’t paint a pretty picture." Among his pro-capitalism picks: Do The Right Thing ("Sal’s Pizzeria feeds everybody and is an important binding force for the neighborhood").

Ribstein at least is clear on his own terms. I'm still puzzling over Professor Bainbridge's conclusion:

The problem with Pinkerton's argument is that he conflates how Hollywood portrays class and how it portrays business. Even if we enter an era of cheap high-quality film making through digital technology, the desire to strike it big evident even among the most left-leaning Hollywood types likely will continue to constrain the way films portray class issues. The same may not hold true for how Hollywood portrays capitalism and business. Filmmakers freed by technology from the need for vast amounts of startup capital may well end up making even more anti-business films than they do now.

Is he saying that, the easier it becomes to make a movie, the more poisonous anti-business films we will have? That doesn't speak well of the free market.

None of these commentators seem aware that films are anything more than propaganda for one gang of nerds or another, but what else is new?

"JESUS CHRIST!" QUIPPED THE LIEUTENANT. "WHAT IS THIS, RUSSIA?" CNN:

Three prisoners at the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have hanged themselves in what is being called a "planned event," the U.S. military has said.

They are the first confirmed deaths at the compound. Prisoners have attempted suicide in the past.

"Two Saudis and one Yemeni, each located in Camp 1, were found unresponsive and not breathing in their cells by guards," said a statement issued by Joint Task Force-Guantanamo on Saturday...

The suicides should surprise no one because the detainees believe they will be held indefinitely with no chance for justice, said Josh Colangelo-Bryan with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents about 200 of the detainees.

"They've been told that while at Guantanamo they have no rights as human beings," he told reporters during a conference call Saturday.

Colangelo-Bryan said one of his clients told him during a visit to the facility in October 2005 that he "would simply rather die than live here with no rights."

Wait for it... wait for it...

"They are smart. They are creative. They are committed. They have no regard for human life, neither ours nor their own," [Commander of Joint Task Force-Guantanamo, Rear Admiral Harry] Harris said. "I believe this was not an act of desperation, but rather an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us"...

Asymmetrical warfare is when one side uses unorthodox or surprise tactics to attack the weak points of its stronger opponent.

Fox News announced it would refer henceforth to such suicides as "homicide suicides," to let viewers know that they were actually attacks on American self-esteem.

UPDATE. If the self-slaughterers "plannned and coordinated" their own deaths, asks Ann Althouse, "doesn't this support the government's theory that these were warriors maneuvering and not individuals despairing?"

Interesting choice of words, Counsellor! One imagines Althouse grilling the corpses about their so-called despair, and explaining to the judge that the defendants' pre-posthumous state of mind "goes to motive."

Thought balloon over a corpse's head: Well, at least now I'm getting a trial.

THEY'LL KNOW WE ARE CHRISTIANS BY OUR LOVE. Michael Berg, father of Nick Berg (whose head Zarqawi cut off), does an Imitation of Christ:

Well, my reaction is I'm sorry whenever any human being dies. Zarqawi is a human being. He has a family who are reacting just as my family reacted when Nick was killed, and I feel bad for that.

In response, the Ace of Spades does an imitation of Sgt. Slaughter:

The moral vanity of these people is disgusting. Attempting to remake themselves into Holy Angels, they instead make themselves into monsters. Does this asshole really think it's an enlightened human response to feel as bad for the death of your son's butcher as for your son's?

He thinks that attitude makes him better than other people?

I think it makes him less than human, personally.

When he dies (which he will, of course, as we all will; no death threat intended), I hope his son slaps this stupid fuck right in the face.

I don't believe in that "love your enemy as yourself" bullshit, either, but I don't get all bent out of shape when other people go for it. For one thing, unlike the shellfish provisions in the Old Testament, it has zero chance of ever catching on.

UPDATE. Comments at the Ace Theological Seminary enhance the hilarity. The money shot:

Christians are explicitly commanded to defend those who cannot defend themselves, and Christ stated quite flatly, numerous times, that on His return He would lead the armies of Heaven and slay the wicked. Berg's disgusting attitude is fundamentally un-Christian. "Not directly comparable?" It's not even in the same ballpark. Not even close.

Pick up a Bible someday, Michael. It's not the pacifist hippie screed you seem to think it is.

Boy howdy, is he right! Who can forget:

They shall beat their swords into plowshares, then hitch them plowshares to 100,000 oxen and rampage through the enemy like crap through a goose!

And:

Suffer the little children come unto me. I'll teach the little punks to kill with the edge of a rolled-up newspaper!

And:

If someone strikes you on the right cheek, smash the fucker good in the other cheek! Then, the heart punch! Do the eye gouge! Do the hammerlock! Do the hammerlock, you turkeynecks!

Though perhaps the commenter and I are mixing up our sacred texts.