DER FUHRER WAS KIND! DER FUHRER WAS GOOD! MANY TIMES HE WOULD SAY TO ME, "FRANZ -- OWWW!" Remember when conservatives argued that Saddam Hussein was so bad he had to be toppled by U.S. military invasion? Today another tyrant has passed, and the same people are blubbering over his coffin.

After overthrowing the elected government of Chile*, Augusto Pinochet spent years killing, torturing, and locking up thousands of his fellow citizens. And, oh yeah, he probably sponsored assassination on American soil.

But conservatives love that he was pro-capitalism, which excuses any number of dead, mangled bodies.

There is one, faint sign among their obsequies that, at some unconscious level, they may recognize the absurdity of their position: they're trying to offload it onto liberals. The boys at National Review says that when Castro dies, liberals will mourn just as we do, I bet I bet. This sort of equivalence is easier to get away with when the event used for comparison hasn't happened yet, though others like Terrestrial Musings, the Classical Values guy, Blogs for Bush etc. opt for a more general liberals-love-Castro slander.

I imagine the more religious among them expect to meet Pinochet in the afterlife. My, what a reunion that will be.

*UPDATE. I meant Chile, I just wrote Argentina.

THE GENERAL SORTS THE SUDAN. General Ralph "Blood 'n' Guts" Peters is mad -- quit nodding, I wasn't finished; I mean Peters is mad at the carnage in Darfur. Like all the General's rages, this is righteous anger, aimed at those most responsible: liberals and Europeans.

"One begins to suspect," Peters says, "that all too many on the left enjoy pitying Darfur as they wait in line for their lattes" -- not like the General, whose violent, blinding headaches of true empathy cannot be relieved by latte, but only by human gore, Jack Daniels, and the destabilization of the entire world:

The killing will never stop until we stop pretending that every dictator or junta seizing power is entitled to claim sovereignty over the millions who never had a voice in choosing their government. After the oppression of women, the sovereignty con is the world's greatest human-rights abuse. And for all of its damnable incompetence, the Bush administration understood that one great truth.

If this sounds familiar, it is not only because you once heard a bum screaming it in Tompkins Square Park, but because it was the lunacy du jour in the run-up to the Iraq War, when people like Lee Harris were talking about "the end of classical sovereignty," whereby nobody gets to call themselves a State unless we say they're a State.

Those were the days! We were going to finally realize that long-delayed Pax Americana, all without raising anyone's taxes -- that was the Romans' mistake, after all, and we certainly are smarter than the Romans.

This is why the General is blames libs and latte-sippers everywhere for the dead/raped/tortured Africans, rather than the Bush Administration, which has some actual military means but has chosen to blow it all on destabilizing nations such as Iraq. In fact, Peters wonders why lefties haven't "formed a new Lincoln Brigade to take on Sudan's Muslims fanatics." I would seriously consider joining such a Brigade if the General will consent to lead it. The training sessions alone -- sequestered in our offshore quonset huts, watching the general snap the neck of a Thai prostitute, endless showings of Zulu -- would be worth the price of the ticket, I imagine. And once we landed in-country, we could always sell our allegiance to the highest-paying warlords, and thus give Sudan a real taste of American democracy.

SEND ME NO FLOWERS. At The Corner, John J. Miller offers a rather unfortunate reminiscence of the late Jeanne Kirkpatrick:

The last time I saw her, however, was just a few months ago. I was writing a story the presidential election in Nicaragua—the one that Daniel Ortega recently won. We were at a D.C. event for Eduardo Montealegre, the guy who came in second (and who would have trounded Ortega in a run-off). From my article:

"It's ridiculous for Ortega to be on the ballot," says Kirkpatrick. "He hasn't changed. The Nicaraguan people shouldn't even permit him to hope that he'll be president."

She was really quite animated -- she fought the Commies to the very end.

And democracy, too, when it didn't suit her. You don't suppose Ortega's victory killed her? Or Pelosi's? Maybe it was the fall from grace of her old friend Jonas Savimbi. Or the defenestration of John Bolton...

This is rather like a eulogy of Salieri that recalls him vowing to outshine Mozart. Brrr. I'm glad I don't have friends like that.

IF YOU DON'T LIKE THIS COUNTRY, GO BACK TO RUSSIA WHERE YOU DIDN'T COME FROM! For years, the Ole Perfesser has been telling us complainers, oh yeah, you think America is bad -- well Saddam ran a guy through a shredder! And such like.

Old habits die hard -- and usually just get worse. Today, after another typical, lazy-ass, lifted rundown of Putin's assassinations, the Perfesser drops this Value-Add: "[It's] Safer to attack Bush -- which is why more people do that."

If your impulse is to counter, "Really? I thought we attacked Bush because he's our actual fucking President and allegedly responsive to the will of the People," your common sense is commendable, but you are missing the more amusing psychological justifications that may be offered in the Perfesser's defense.

The simplest would be that the Perfesser first learned the pleasures of lawyerly argument as a lad, on playgrounds where, confronted with his own malfeasances, he would distract inquisitors with more serious allegations against other children; child is father to the man.

I favor a more forward-looking approach. As we know the Perfesser yearns for godlike immortality; it may be that he expects to outlive the United States, and sometimes forgets that some of us plebes yet identify ourselves as its citizens.

ALSO, ISG IS SON OF A PIG-DOG! I haven't read the ISG report yet, but while I imagine it consists largely of bipartisan mush, I am favorably disposed toward it on sentimental grounds, because it has incurred the wrath of the world's leading nitwits. They've even managed to make the New York Post more idiotic than usual, and I thought only a nerve-gas attack on the newsroom could accomplish that.

Ralph "Blood 'n' Guts" Peters' column-length retch ends with this chunk of comedy gold:

The difference is that Pilate just wanted to wash his hands of an annoyance, while [James] Baker would wash his hands in the blood of our troops.

That's almost as good as Peters' previous comparison of Howard Dean to Adolf Hitler. May the men in the little white suits never catch up with ol' Blood 'n' Guts!

The Post has pulled out all the stops , even reverting to the Der Sturmer trick -- unused at Rupert's Rag since the "Axis of Weasels" days -- of visually portraying their opponents as animals. Also, they allow John Podhoretz yet another, awful column about the ISG.

Last time out, Podhoretz criticized the Group because they were, like, rilly old ("Baker, Hamilton and their crew of old Washington hands [and I mean old, like Metheuselah-level old]... Its members also reached a consensus view that Depends is a really fine brand of adult diaper, and that they love reruns of 'Murder, She Wrote'"). Now he compares them to Paris Hilton -- not because the Group is in any way Paris Hiltonian (and, to my great disappointment, Podhoretz doesn't attempt even a throwaway simile, e.g. "Like Paris Hilton, the ISG has a little dog and is known for promiscuity"), but because Paris Hilton is supposed to be No Good, and though no actual reader -- indeed, no one who knows how to read -- will laugh at tropes like, "As Paris would say, that analysis is hot," Post editors/informants will see that Podhoretz stuck to the formula -- belittle the ISG in terms that even mentally-retarded readers can comprehend -- and permit him to remain at his sinecure.

Again, it's all probably mush, but isn't it grand that now even mush can drive these people crazy?

MORE BOLD THINKING FROM THE RIGHT. David Bernstein advances a new foreign policy idea:

State Department folk are undoubtedly scratching their heads over what to do about the looney anti-American leader of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. Here's a suggestion, only partly tongue-in-cheek: Chavez claims that his brand of populist socialism is superior to Yankee capitalism. Well, let the people vote with their feet. Venezuela has a population of approximately 25 million. How about letting any Venezuelan who can pass a basic English test and get ahold of, say, twenty thousand dollars, emigrate to the U.S.? As more and more productive Venezuelans move to the U.S., and Chavez ceases to benefit from the spike in oil prices (which can only work in the long term so long as oil prices climb), Venezuela will inevitably sink into economic straits of Chavez's model, Cuba, and become about as much of a strategic threat to the U.S. as Cuba currently is. And the U.S. will gain a few million productive and grateful citizens, happy to escape Venezuela before it becomes another Cuba. And wouldn't it be fun to watch Venezuelans line up for English classes for the chance to emigrate to The Great Imperalist Enemy?

Oh, what fun. But why didn't we do that with Iraq? In fact, as long as we're being generous with visas, let's do it now. Half the terrified populace can earn their twenty Gs by selling out the other half to the militias, or by selling some leftover statuary from the Iraq National Museum on eBay, or by selling the oil rights under their hovels.

The cringing skills these new Iraqi-American citizens will have developed should serve them well in corporate life.

A LOSS OF FAITH. Claudia Rossett says, "...the upside of John Bolton resigning as ambassador to the UN is that the UN does not deserve to be dignified by ambassadors of the stature of John Bolton." Some of the brethren at National Review Online seem to agree, and are agitating for Rick Santorum to take the gig. But Rossett wants to take it a step further:

I’m reminded here of an episode from the historical novels of Robert Graves about the life of the Roman Emperor, Claudius, who tried to reform the empire. Toward the end, as Graves interprets it, Claudius concludes that despite his best efforts, Rome cannot be redeemed. Is too far gone in autocratic decay. Claudius figures that before things have any chance of getting better, they must get even worse. So, he lets the throne pass to Nero. Rome burns.

Maybe that was also their secret plan for Iraq. When you look at it that way, the "Mission Accomplished" banner makes sense.

Another alternative of US-Out-Of-The-UN types might be to make a case to the American People for getting the US out of the UN. I wonder why these guys never suggest such an approach? It's a hard sell, sure, but I thought people like Rossett specialized in hard truths. Rather than prescribing a sneaky program of wreckage, why not insist on principles?

It may be that, on the eve of the Democratic Congressional takeover, a Victor Davis Hansonian despair has taken hold of them. For years their default argument was that the citizens understood reality better than any pointy-head could, and that's why they kept electing Republicans. But their recent losses appear to have shaken their faith in the voters and, more surprisingly, in the political process itself.

For example, Stanley Kurtz, in trying to work his way out from under Josh Marshall's understandable impression that Kurtz was blaming the failures in Iraq on a feckless American People, talks about the Iraqi project as if it were doomed from the start by the very existence of an opposition, however weak:

Marshall says the Democrats in congress were a minority, and politically powerless. Yet in a country divided by razor-thin political margins, a party in power has to weigh its actions in light of the opposition’s political plans. We’re always just an election away from a transfer of power, as we’ve seen.

So they couldn't get their way despite control of the White House and both houses of Congress and a self-proclaimed mandate. Makes you wonder why they bother trying to elect candidates in the first place. Sport, perhaps, or maybe just the graft.

Entertaining as their malaise may be, be prepared, because it can't last forever. Some champion will eventually ride out of the wilderness and reinvigorate them. I understand Sam Brownback has formed an exploratory committee.

SERVICE ADVISORY. Posting will be light for a few days. I'm burning off a few vacation days and have become responsibility averse.

SHORTER "CRUNCHY" ROD DREHER: God healed my lust for Betty Blue, proving fags are damned.

And if you really want to choke on Jesus-infused psychopathology, check this out: Dreher now not only believes that the Iraq war is wrong because we Americans are too sexed up to preach to the infidel, he agrees with another nut that we are also wrong to approve of the "postwar project... to end discrimination" -- and yeah, that means what you think it means:

I am haunted -- the word isn't too strong -- by what I saw among the Arab Muslims, as they grappled with the new media world that was going to wipe out, or at least dramatically alter, their traditional culture... those of us here who lament how corrosive the nihilistic American popular culture is should consider how it must look to Muslim men and women overseas, who quite rightly see us as a threat to the things they hold dearest.

Read it and weep, but don't hold your breath waiting for the Perfesser and all the other right-wingers to declare Dreher "Not anti-war, just on the other side." That kind of treatment is reserved for dirty hippies and Democrats. Jesus freaks who basically say. well, Islamic fundamentalists are right, our culture is totally corrupt, and they have a right to hate us -- they get a pass because they walk with the Lord, and because if the GOP can come up a more effective line of religious bullshit they might vote Republican next time.

Keep this in mind next time someone tells you that liberals -- meaning, it would seem, people who believe in a full reading of the Bill of Rights -- should suck up to Fundamentalists.

PROPS. Sometimes Jacob Sullum strikes me as John Stossel for people who can read and write, but his quick analysis today of the Baker-Hamilton Report is too good to ignore:

Here's an Iraq update for those of us (including me) who stopped paying close attention because the whole thing was too damned depressing:

1. Most Americans, including some prominent supporters of the war, now agree it was a mistake to invade.

2. We can't just leave, because (even more) chaos would ensue.

3. We have to leave, because otherwise the Iraqis will never take responsibility for their own security and make the difficult political compromises necessary for stability.

In light of these facts, the wise elder statesmen in the Iraq Study Group have come up with the perfect solution: pretend to leave...

Way to cut to the chase, guy. Even better is the tag: "Update: It looks like Bush is not falling for it. Who told?"

ATTABOY, ATATURK. When I saw the title on this Crunchy Con post -- "Jape on Christians and Turkey" -- I thought, ooh, I love japes, -- japes, quips, and bagatelles! And the subject was promising.

Alas, it was just Rod Dreher quoting with approval some guy named Jape. And what he said, regarding Christians in Turkey, was less than cheering:

Moll ends with an American missionary in Turkey who comments breezily that “we are relatively free and we are tolerated now.”

If this is the sum and substance of western missionary zeal these days -- to be free and tolerated -- (and I fear that all to often it is), then Christians have good reason to question the compromises with Liberalism they are wont to make.

My nostrils twitched especially at that last part, so I went back to the source and found that, yes, Jape is indeed one of those guys who says "the structures of secular politics and economics tend to have a corrosive and colonizing effect on what passes these days for 'strong faith'" like it's a bad thing.

Also, he complains that, when Turkey tried to pass a law against adultery, the godless EU pressured them not to.

I am sympathetic to persecuted Christians -- which in my admittedly old-fashioned lexicon means Christians harrassed and assaulted for their faith -- but I notice that, like all other conservative types these days, conservative Christians have broadened their definition of persecution to include being disagreed with, and not being allowed to practice their own variants of sharia in host countries that, were they less "liberal," even in Jape's perjorative sense, would have marched them into the sea.

The whole Benedict Turkey trip, for all the feel-good man-of-peace rhetoric, is really just one powerful mobster cooking up a big takeover with another. I hope the ghost of Ataturk is knocking over their water glasses at least.

WORDS WITH "K" IN THEM ARE FUNNY. I lack ambition, I guess. I tend to hide my light under a bushel. I don't ask to be put on blogrolls, or for links. Certainly not like the pros do:

UPDATE: Sullivan responds to this post without linking to it. Great. I guess you want to make it hard for your readers to see what I actually said. He prefers to link to the Instapundit post that links to this. What's that all about? How many times is he going to print my name over there and talk about me without linking to me? It's really unfair! It flaunts unfairness!...

And you, Andrew Sullivan, refuse to engage with the serious argument I am making here. If you linked to the posts you talk about and cut way down, your readers would have a fair chance to see what I am saying. I have obviously agreed with your basic definition but called you on your overuse of it and the air of hostility toward religious people you're giving off. Why don't you deal with my argument fairly, including links to me, and why don't you treat me as an individual instead of lamely and inaccurately merging me with Glenn Reynolds? Glenn and I have taken different positions on this, and I'm the main blogger writing about the subject, so why are you linking to him linking to me?

and

Why does Andrew Sullivan keep talking about me without linking to me?

See the update on this post. It's getting ridiculous. I consider it a gross breach of blogging ethics.

Emphasis added 'cause I think it's funny.

Maybe I'm misreading this. Maybe it's all actually some sort of elaborate joke. Her whole blog, I mean.

UPDATE. Why did I bother? A commenter mentions that Altmouse is back! What a hoot!

COME, LET US TREASON TOGETHER. I seem to remember days when The West Wing was derided as a liberal fantasy. At least that fantasy was relatively benign; apparently some conservatives are dreaming of something a little more rough.

Behold Orson Scott Card's new novel, Empire, summarized thus by Publisher's Weekly:

When the president and vice-president are killed by domestic terrorists (of unknown political identity), a radical leftist army calling itself the Progressive Restoration takes over New York City and declares itself the rightful government of the United States. Other blue states officially recognize the legitimacy of the group, thus starting a second civil war. Card's heroic red-state protagonists, Maj. Reuben "Rube" Malek and Capt. Bartholomew "Cole" Coleman, draw on their Special Ops training to take down the extremist leftists and restore peace to the nation...

You can read the first five chapters here. I did, with great, great pleasure. The heroic Army Man action figures speak a dialect that's half Ralph Peters and half Sgt. Rock:

"You look pissed off," said Malich.

"Yeah," said Cole. "The terrorists are crazy and scary, but what really pisses me off is knowing that this will make a whole bunch of European intellectuals very happy."

"They won't be so happy when they see where it leads. They've already forgotten Sarajevo and the killing fields of Flanders."

"I bet they're already 'advising' Americans that this is where our military 'aggression' inevitably leads, so we should take this as a sign that we need to change our policies and retreat from the world."

"And maybe we will," said Malich. "A lot of Americans would love to slam the doors shut and let the rest of the world go hang."

"And if we did," said Cole, "who would save Europe then? How long before they find out that negotiations only work if the other guy is scared of the consequences of not negotiating? Everybody hates America till they need us to liberate them."

"You're forgetting that nobody cares what Europeans think except a handful of American intellectuals who are every bit as anti-American as the French," said Malich.

Sound kind of like bloggers, don't they? Also worth mentioning: Army Man #1's wife is a brilliant liberal, but "unlike the ersatz Left of the university, Cessy was a genuine old-fashioned liberal, a Democrat of the tradition that reached its peak with Truman and blew its last trumpet with Moynihan." We are let to know that she bakes cookies.

Pretense of Moral Superiority Disclosure: I would never judge a book by its cover story, five chapters is not enough for summary judgement, Card may have something up his sleeve, and I was not kidding when I said reading the excerpt gave me great pleasure. Hell, this could be my Novel of the Year. I mean, what's the competition?

But we can legitimately have fun with Mr. Card, who, again according to Publisher's Weekly, ends the novel with "an afterword decrying his own politically-motivated exclusion from various conventions and campuses, the 'national media elite' and the divisive excesses of both the right and the left." Like Cessy, Card considers himself a political moderate, though (as we have shown here) he is the sort of moderate who believes that Democrats are evil wimps and that homosexuality should be punished with jail time. Again reserving judgement, it would seem Card's fantasy of treacherously-used liberals finally brought to heel by Red State wolverines reflects this highly unusual definition of political moderation.

Even better, Card has been taken up by the Ole Perfesser, who perfesses to share the author's moderate views and hopes "that both the people and the press will make some conscious efforts to moderate the tone, and make that approach less effective." That's pretty funny coming from Mr. "Not Anti-War -- Just On The Other Side." But my favorite part is this:

I've noted before that one of the great American accomplishments was to get over the Civil War without the kind of lingering bitterness that often marks -- and reignites -- such conflicts elsewhere.

It is amazing that the Perfesser made it through Yale without hearing anything about Reconstruction, the Ku Klux Klan, the Civil Rights Movement, etc. Or maybe he sent nanobots into his brain to scrub this knowledge away. This blind spot gains an added layer of piquancy when you realize that Card's fantasy reeks a bit of Afro-6, Trespass, and other speculations of black power ascendant from the 60s and 70s. Once they feared Panthers, now they fear Donkeys. You may adjust your hilarity meters accordingly.

UPDATE. Didn't know but should have that Bradrocket got there firstest with the mostest.

UPDATE II. Nitpicker has some more recent-vintage OSC that helps clarify his moderate views.

NOW THAT YOU MENTION IT... Back in March, Professor Althouse said of South Park, "Thank God somebody's willing to mock religion!"

Now she's pissed because Andrew Sullivan showed pictures of Mormon underwear.

This weekend I saw For Your Consideration, which has many beauties, though it should have been trimmed of more of its improvisational excesses, which dissipate its satiric force. A pleasure as always was Jennifer Coolidge, who as usual plays dumb with great brio ("Someone's killed their children and made them into cookies, and I want to see that!" and, especially, "What is the theme?").

Hey... wait a minute...

DISPLACIA. The right-wing world feasts -- or, rather, eats crumbs and calls it a feast -- on the idea that the MSM gives all the credit for good economic news to the newly-elected Democrats. If it were so, of course, it would only be fair, as Democrats (and their closely-aligned subspecies, liberals) also get the blame for everything.

Victor Davis Beauregard Methusaleh Hanson has one thing to say about the Litvinenko assassination:

So don’t expect the world’s liberal conscious to weigh in much on the latest poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko... it is much easier for a European or Middle East journalist to concentrate on the purported misdemeanors of a Donald Rumsfeld than the known felonies of a Vladimir Putin.

Yeah, most of the MSM coverage has been pretty pro-assassination (and pro-abortion, if you use your secret decoder ring) -- and such key European anti-war figures as Tony Blair have been slow to follow Hanson over the ridge.

Hanson describes a World Gone Mad, and mutters things like "Or is it a deeper malaise that modern liberal internationalism is neither liberal nor international" (maybe it has something to do with the liberal "conscious"). It would appear from the Hansonian point of view that the American government of the past six years has had no effect on world affairs. The world has been guided to its current, terrible state by an international liberal cabal.

They're never to blame for anything, are they?

EXTRA HELPING OF GRATITUDE. In my end is my beginning. After my Lileks pre-Thanksgiving throwaway, I find myself returning to the subject as the Mailer of the Mall of America lets fly a stinging denunciation of... Happy Feet. You know, that cartoon with the dancing penguins.

To be fair, the Art Police at Redstate got there first, and it appears Fox News has attacked the cartoon as well (leading to an interesting meditation of "the conservative crusade against cartoon characters" at The Carpetbagger Report).

But there is a categorical difference between the right-wing Zhdanovite squads and Lileks. The first group are mere sentinels of wrongthink; the stiffness of their reports shows that they don't have any real interest in or enthusiasm for the lively arts -- they are here on a political mission from which aesthetics can only distract, so they shoot first and have epiphanies later.

Lileks, on the other hand, loves all kinds of artsy-fartsy stuff and even allows himself to show off his erudition in matters of form and content. Jimbo knows architecture ("...I sat in the grass and consulted a small cigar, reading an interesting piece about a local architect who’s come up with a new paradigm for pre-fab housing. Is this the future of architecture? The article asked. Short answer, from me: nope"). Jimbo knows aesthetics ("Because they’ll all be white. Because they’ll all have an Apple logo, which already has that high-tech cool aura. Because they will look like they were designed to work together. In other words, aesthetics count"). Jimbo knows not so much about theatre, which he keeps mispronouncing, but he can see eternity in a matchbook. He has some kind of feeling for the arrangements of sounds and shapes that beguile him; he knows, albeit dimly, that art is not just audio-visual medicine for the restoration of his ichor, nor a series of propaganda opportunities which can be wrenched in the right direction if we can sneak our people into some high-level appointments in the artsifartsy industry.

So though he sometimes puts on the rusty armor of the culture warrior (which fits him so badly even he must recognize it), usually when a work of artsifartsiness conflicts with his own notion of the Way Things Ought to Be, he does not pretend to be talking about art: He goes straight to sub-urbane dad mode:

So now we have to apologize for serving fargin’ fish sticks, eh. Hell with it. Veal daily from now on. Veal for breakfast. Veal-O-Bits swimming in whale blubber.

I remember when animals were used as stand-ins for humans, to shed light on human behaviors and foibles; now animals are stand-ins for creatures more ethically advanced than humans. (See also, The Ant Bully. Or rather don’t; that movie said it was okay to be an individual as long as you were part of a collective, and no one ever had competing goals or ideas. Muddle-headed twaddle...)

When someone as proud of his verbal skills as Lileks starts spitting rank foam like this, a charitable interpretation is possible. In this case, I think he is trying to protect art from himself. When directly discussing even so modest a specimen as Happy Feet, he will not betray any signs of cultural authority, which might deceive some innocent souls into a misunderstanding about art; he will rave and shake his fist and instantaneously sprout elbow patches and a big blue vein on his big pink forehead, so that only fellow fist-shakers will be caught up in his spell, and the innocent will walk away, little realizing how close they came to corruption! It's kind of noble in a way, like Cagney at the end of Angels with Dirty Faces, Bill Hurt at the end of Altered States, Jeff Goldblum at the end of The Fly...

Hell, I don't know. Maybe he's just nuts. But coming back from Thanksgiving, it struck me that some of the folks I consider and treat as nuisances are actually something to be grateful for. Could I have, by myself, come up with a character like The Ole Perfesser, or the Crazy Jesus Lady, or Ann Althouse, or Lileks? It doesn't matter -- to me they are characters now. I realize, for example, there is a real person named Glenn Harlan Reynolds somewhere out there in the sticks, but though I know his writings, I don't know him: his words suggest the shape of a character, upon whose motivations and behaviors I am privileged to speculate. Maybe, with a little luck and ambition, I can detach these characters from their humble real-life avatars, and find for them some small measure of immortality. They certainly deserve it, after all the pleasure they've given me.

HOLIDAY UPDATE. I hope your Thanksgiving went well. I find it curious that I, a godless lie-beral moonbat, had my turkey at my sister's table, while Lileks, a member of the blessed Elect, had his at a Holiday Inn. Shouldn't he be in a Norman Rockwell tableau? Conversely, aren't wretches like me supposed to spend major holidays in saloons, whorehouses, or John Reed's Greenwich Village apartment, fruitlessly seeked to soothe our withered souls with tinkling pianos, chromosome-splitting drugs, and Tofurkey sploshing? Well, maybe next year.

I will try to add content this weekend, though I am spending it with editor Martin and his family in New Hampshire, and we will spend most of our time trying to amuse the toddler and empty the liquor cabinet simultaneously. To add political roughage, I note this Pajamas Media story, "Pierre Gemayel's funeral turns into anti-Syrian rally." Given their previous sanctimony over the Paul Wellstone memorial, does that mean they condemn it?

THINGS TO BE GRATEFUL FOR. Crunchy Rod Dreher says people refuse to believe in his God because "it might mean that they can't conduct their sex lives exactly as they wish."

Like I need a better reason? Well, my lack of faith also allows me to sleep in on Sundays, and to avoid people like Rod Dreher. It's win-win-win, so far as I can see.

This really is a great country. Y'all enjoy your turkey and, if you are so blessed, your atheism and extramarital sex!

THE DREAM THEATRE. This obituary of Robert Altman, who has just passed, talks about the string of "flops" that preceded his "biggest box office success since M*A*S*H, Gosford Park." "He would go for years at a time directing obscure movies before roaring back with a hit," it also says. That's the way the world sees it, I guess: filmmaking as a hunt for boffo b.o., to only be counted a success when the big cat has been bagged.

But Altman made movies in a way, and at a pace, that proved he wasn't a big game hunter, but a poacher in the preserves of King Hollywood. Now, he was no duffer at the coup de cinema that moves a whole roomful of people to react simultaneously -- as in Nashville, when Haven passes the mike to a random bystander and commands her to sing, and, as she slowly turns, we realize everything now depends on that fragile, demented girl who was raving about the flyswatters, and who knows what she'll do...

But for the most part Altman made private movies that seemed to block off the periphery and live like dreams inside our heads. That kind of movie may get to be a hit by accident, or by accretion (even the much-maligned Popeye made its money back in foreign receipts and parents' rentals), but it is very far from a sure thing.

If you're going to work that way, you have to work hard, and Altman was tireless and prolific. When there was no money, he would do T.V. on film -- or, if the project were interesting enough, T.V. on T.V. (Altman also co-wrote this libretto!)

Not everything was great, but even the minor films have their charms. I am very fond, for example, of The Gingerbread Man -- where the cheap novel mystery is conveyed, not as usual by thudding soundtrack cues, shadows, and jittery editing, but by constant rain, regnant foliage, and the muzzy atmosphere of lives gone to seed. But I was a film nerd in the '70s, when Altman was one of the gods; any piece of his movies is to me like a few notes from the voice of an old friend. Now these images float through my dream-theatre: Elliot Gould trying to name all seven dwarves, then dancing drunk with George Segal ("Rufus Rastus Rawlston Brown..."). The community passing buckets to save its church while McCabe dies in a snowdrift. Legions of Depression rustics, armed with Coca-Colas, ascending a staircase in slow motion. Sterling Hayden and Nina Van Pallandt fighting the Malibu waves in darkness and long shot. The shock of the scars on Sally Kellerman's back. Copters descending like locusts on Los Angeles. Fade out, the voice of the auctioneer calling the astonishing numbers and the gasps of the crowd; fade in, Vincent van Gogh on a bed of straw...

The dream theatre is always open.

UPDATE. Altman's death gives the loathsome Roger L. Simon an opportunity to demonstrate an all-embracing lack of class. Althouse is kind of sweet about it, but her commenters confuse Altman's M*A*S*H with the TV show, which figures.

UPDATE II. Been scanning the blogs, and it reminds me of one of the many things I don't like about this 'sphere: just about every blogger whom I already know to be a jackass has, when mentioning Altman, been similarly ignorant and dismissive. In real life, jackasses are more well-rounded than this; they will have a few admirable qualities, which we will sometimes be forced to notice and thus be reacquainted with the wonderful mystery that is life. It is just not common for every asshole you know to share the same asshole opinion about the same subject. People aren't that dull. Maybe the problem is that the worst popular bloggers are very bad writers, and their comprehension and portrayal of themselves is as weak as their comprehension and portrayal of everything else.

HOW COME THEY CAN CALL EACH OTHER NIGGER AND WE CAN'T? PART 82,363. Michael Richards' weird racial crackup at the Laugh Factory got picked up right fast by the right wing. And if you've been playing along with us at home, you know what kind of comments that leads to -- for example, from Althouse:

Not to be justifying or anything, but has anyone noticed how all the black comedians (and comediennes) almost always do a segment belittling white people? You know, where the comedians enunciate words and talk about how ineffectual white people are...

...But it's a question that bears mentioning: why has it become hip for blacks to call each other nigger? I've never understood that. I suppose it's like gays calling themselves fags. But I don't understand that either...

...I'm puzzled as to why almost every black comedian, rapper, and actor seems to use the word on a regular basis, then...

Etc. Interestingly, at this moment the commenters at Ace of Spades are less clueless than Althouse's.