SLAP MY HAND, BLACK SOUL MAN! James Lileks surveys Presidential field, likes Mayor 9/11, but sees a black cloud on the horizon:

I do not want a National Dad or even a Cool Brother (double-meaning unintended) for the President; I want someone with JFK’s optimism, Roosevelt’s steel, Truman’s irascibility, and so forth.

But it’s all for naught if the Obamaboom continues, because he has the zeitgeist at his back and a sail the size of an IMAX screen. People will vote for him because they want to be part of something larger, and that’s a rare and potent thing these days. Whether that’s a wise thing to do in perilous times depends on whether people think we’re living in perilous times, I suppose. We’ll see.

I don't see how the wisdom of voting for the Cool Brother is contingent on the feelings of the electorate, and I expect he doesn't see it either. But let's give him a break: he does write these things for free, and he's obviously depressed. If even Iowa favors the dark over the dork, it's no longer the Great Flyover he grew up in and ran back to.

I do find these early, baffled stirrings of Obama dread amusing, but if things go like they're going I expect they'll haul out the firehoses soon enough.

UPDATE. In comments ChrisV82 rejoins: "I want someone with Taft's girth, Van Buren's hairstyle and Taylor's acute gastroenteritis."

CONFRONTING THE NEW REALITIES. I guess Obama's the frontrunner now, because (though the dopes at National Review are still tearing at Hillary's carcass) the Wall Street Journal is giving him a hard time, on the grounds that "the division Mr. Obama promises to end has largely been put to rest":

A nation in which the poor are defined by an income level that in most countries would make them prosperous is a nation that has all but forgotten the true meaning of poverty. A nation in which obesity is largely a problem of the poor (and anorexia of the upper-middle class) does not understand the word "hunger." A nation in which the most celebrated recent cases of racism, at Duke University or in Jena, La., are wholly or mostly contrived is not a racist nation. A nation in which our "division" is defined by the vitriol of Ann Coulter or James Carville is not a truly divided one--at least while Mr. Carville is married to Republican operative Mary Matalin and Ms. Coulter is romantically linked with New York City Democrat Andrew Stein.

Well, Stein and Coulter have broken up, so maybe America's sorta divided after all. (And you thought Parade fucked up!) But I see their point: welfare queens are pretending to be lynched and stuffing themselves with Devil Dogs while supermodels vomit -- we're in great shape. Other signs of America's New Golden Age:

The problem with Iraq today is that it is a net importer of terrorism and instability. Yet when the U.S. invaded, it was a net exporter of both. An improvement? On balance, probably yes.

Because, to quote someone's grandpappy, terrorism's like manure: it ain't no good 'til you spread it around. Other encouraging developments: "Mr. Maliki... must run a government besieged by al Qaeda and Iranian-backed militias," and Ground Zero's still a festering hole.

OK, admits the Journal, that all sucks, but:

It is often said that the Bush administration's effort to bring democracy to the Middle East wasn't so much a case of American idealism as it was of hubris. That may yet prove true. But is it any less hubristic to think the enterprise was ever going to be brought off without blundering time and again? It's a thought that ought to weigh especially heavily on Mr. Obama, dream candidate of America's great expectations.

Now that I think of it, maybe this is, at least tangentially, actually a pro-Obama editorial: He can't possibly fuck things up any worse. And if he wins, let's see him do any better than the dumbass fratboy the Journal has been fluffing for eight years.

Yes. Let's.

DR. MACPHAIL GASPED. HE UNDERSTOOD. After long, long attention to the meltdown of Britney Spears, Rod Dreher lets slide a compassionate tear:

At long last, it has happened: I feel sorry for Britney Spears. Really, really sorry for her. Dr. Phil McGraw is a vampire. No doubt one of many in that pathetic young woman's life.

Well, we all know what happens next.

LIFE'S BEEN GOOD. John Scalzi objects in strong terms to an Indiana State professor's Privilege quiz, and is seconded by Megan McArdle. Both have sound complaints about the methodology, and both (McArdle especially) dislike the idea of the quiz. "This list reeks of academics confusing their petit-bourgeois disdain of ostentation with actual privilege," says McArdle.

I'm not a fan of touchy-feely exercises, especially in college (at least not this kind of touchy-feely), and I share many of their objections. But I do recall that when I was these students' age, I was a jacked-up little shit. I had minuses as well as pluses on the professor's privilege scale, but the fact that I was even able to attend college in the United States put me at an enormous advantage to many of my fellow countrymen, and I was too often oblivious to it. I didn't set bums on fire or require school employees to call me Sir or anything, but when I look back on my experience then, I am struck by how easily I took my privileges for granted. If I hadn't been required by the terms of my financial aid to work in the cafeteria, I might have been totally insufferable.

I imagine that many students would take offense at the hectoring nature of the quiz and the proposed discussion to follow. As many of the Scalzi and McArdle commenters demonstrate, this kind of exercise is bound provoke the objection that the school is trying to run some PC trip on the students, and an inevitable, counterproductive round of dueling resentments.

Fair enough; there'll be plenty of time after college for life to smack some sense into the kids. But I don't think it's a bad thing in and of itself to be reminded that one has a leg up. This is not to plead for morbid self-flagellation, but for ordinary awareness of a simple fact of life. Like many of the folks who post things on a blog, I've got a job, a place to live, and more than the clothes on my back, which means I'm filthy stinking rich in global terms, and I'm not doing too shabby in national terms either. That I have this time and these resources to do what I do instead of foraging in trash cans for food is pretty miraculous.

The thought does not obsess me; in fact, most of the time I'm as oblivious to it as I was in college. So an occasional, gentle reminder won't kill me. On the contrary, as I'm still a bit jacked-up and a bit of a shit, I think a reality check now and again does me some good. For one thing, it works against some unpleasant tendencies I've noticed in myself. You know, sometimes I can even get as self-righteous about my now-aged working-class credentials as the Scalzi and McArdle commenters. (Did I mention that I worked in the cafeteria?) It can be good for a laugh sometimes, but there is something to be said for a little healthy perspective.

STOP THE PRESSES. Here it is folks -- after days of controversy -- Billy Kristol in the New York Times!

After the last two elections, featuring the well-born George Bush and Al Gore and John Kerry, Americans — even Republicans! — are ready for a likable regular guy. Huckabee seems to be that.

Translation: Huckabee is the candidate America would like to have a beer with Jesus.

His campaigning in New Hampshire has been impressive. At a Friday night event at New England College in Henniker, he played bass with a local rock band, Mama Kicks. One secular New Hampshire Republican’s reaction: “Gee, he’s not some kind of crazy Christian. He’s an ordinary American.”

Translation: Huckabee is Bob Roberts.

Some Democrats are licking their chops at the prospect of a Huckabee nomination. They shouldn’t be. For one thing, Michael Bloomberg would be tempted to run in the event of an Obama-Huckabee race — and he would most likely take votes primarily from Obama.

Translation: The Kristol appointment is a New York Times plot to make Maureen Dowd look profound.

IT'S A HORRIBLE DAY FOR AMERICA -- LET'S PLAY TWO! I set out to watch last night's debates, but kept getting interrupted, so I got a look at part of them and went to the transcripts for the rest.

Behaviorally, the only candidate who left a bad impression was the slouched and somnolent Fred Thompson. Peter Robinson interprets his disengaged manner as "gravitas," but I thought he'd just missed a nap. In his muttering putdowns of Ron Paul and Romney on health care, he reminded me of old, slightly drunk uncle at a family event he didn't really want to attend. I can certainly relate, but I don't see how it helps his chances.

Outside of that, everyone appeared to be running for President, and some of them made interesting adjustments. Giuliani has replaced "9/11" with "Reagan" as his buzz word (for younger viewers who might not know about Reagan, Giuliani explained that he was the President who favored amnesty for illegal aliens). McCain took a swipe at Big Pharma, then, sensing himself out of balance, pandered his ass off on immigration. Romney fell in love with MassCare all over again. And Huckabee praised "the document that gave us birth" and didn't read from the Bible! In fact the Constitution got a lot of props from candidates who were not Ron Paul, which sent a clear signal: no more trying to out-torture one another -- this is indeed a change election.

On the other side, John Edwards supported Barack Obama, by which he meant himself. Hillary got mad and intellectuals went "meeow" and "reer". Obama limited his health-care mandate to children and reiterated his willingness to invade Pakistan, which I guess makes him the moderate candidate. Bill Richardson leaned heavily on his experience as Energy Secretary, U.N. Ambassador, Congressman, and Governor of New Mexico, causing us all to marvel at a country where such a lousy public speaker could score such high-level gigs.

Charlie Gibson pointed out that one of these people is going to be our President. If that doesn't give Dennis Kucinich a bounce, this isn't the America I grew up in.

ROCK 'N' ROLL REVISITED. I saw Tom Stoppard's new play in London last year (review here) and saw it on Broadway last night. The production, which keeps the principals from the Duke of York's run and has mostly excellent replacements for the other roles, held my attention throughout; it's really good enough to see more than once.

There have been some changes. I was puzzled when Michael Feingold wrote that the show, "as far as I can tell, is mainly a tribute to the ancient Czech folk custom of yelling," and concerned when I heard that Rufus Sewell was having vocal problems (at least one correspondent noticed this in London too, though I didn't). The Broadway version does indeed have more shouting and broader playing of the big confrontations, and Sewell was evincing more phlegm than before.

Part of this may be due to the inferior acoustics at the Jacobs, and the noble decision to use little or no electronic amplification for the voices. I think Trevor Nunn may have also encouraged the actors to hit the key points harder for us dumb Yanks. This hurts the performances at times, as in the scene in which Max tells the cancer-ravaged Eleanor that he loves her with his mind; it was almost grotesquely jacked-up and Brian Cox and Sinead Cusack didn't seem entirely comfortable with it.

But, maybe because I'm a dumb Yank myself, I didn't mind it for the most part. And some performances I liked better this time. Cusack's Eleanor was all right, but when she became the grown-up Esme in the second act, I saw her sadness and rootlessness more clearly, which made her decision [spoiler!] to go off with Jan both more understandable and funnier. And Sewell, phlegm and all, has done great things with Jan. He was very fine in London, but now I perceive more of a Chaplinesque quality -- an innocence (though not untainted) trying to work its way out of giant conundrums that other people don't see. And as the elder Jan he carries both the weight of years of repression (which has only been partly lifted by his social liberation) and his old sweetness and yearning. When people are chattering around or at him, you watch him to see what he thinks. The play's pretty good, but no play is so good that it can't be elevated by a great performance.

AN IOWA KIND OF SPECIAL CHIP-ON-THE-SHOULDER ATTITUDE. Iowa wasn't a big win for the two New Yorkers in the Presidential race. Each absorbed the blow characteristically.

The former mayor -- who famously began his charm offensive in Iowa by bailing on a May 2007 meet-up because the hosts didn't make enough money to highlight his estate tax message -- preemptively willed the result into irrelevance, spending the day in New Hampshire and Florida. The lead story at JoinRudy2008.com was "Rudy Giuliani Announces Maine Leadership Team." "Skipping Early States All Part of Giuliani's Plan," reported the Washington Post's blog The Trail. "We were not going to emphasize Iowa in the way two or three other candidates did," shrugged Giuliani. "We see this as a very different election." Huckabee's win (34% to Giuliani's 4%) drew a terse congratulation from Giuliani campaign manager Michael Duhaime, ending with "Rudy is the only Republican candidate who can not only win the primary and general elections, but will turn purple states red."

If Giuliani sought to ignore the import of the evening, Clinton sought to transform it to her benefit. She gave what we might call a victorious concession speech. She gloried in the "unprecedented turnout" and "clear message that we are going to have change." She grouped herself with Obama and Edwards and all the other candidates: "Together we have presented the case for change and have made it absolutely clear that America needs a new beginning." Then she gave the speech she probably would have given if she'd won. Translation: change is good, and the night's historic events were a victory for the Democratic Party and its eventual Presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton.

Iowa may not mean much for a while after the current crop of confetti is swept up, but it does contribute seven electoral votes in Presidential elections. If either candidate is back on the ballot in November, Iowa voters will probably recall the face each showed the state yesterday. Giuliani in particular may then be reminded of the old song from The Music Man: there's nothing halfway about the Iowa way to treat you.

UPDATE. Peggy Noonan, who was hard on "creepy" Huckabee a few weeks back, is now at least willing to suck up to his followers:

They believe that Mr. Huckabee, the minister who speaks their language, shares, down to the bone, their anxieties, concerns and beliefs. They fear that the other Republican candidates are caught up in a million smaller issues--taxing, spending, the global economy, Sunnis and Shia--and missing the central issue: again, our culture. They are populists who vote Republican, and as I have read their letters, I have felt nothing but respect.

Then she rips into Huckabee again. Sorta reminds me of Blazing Saddles: "You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons!"

She's kind to Obama, mainly for pwning Hitlery, but I detect another Blazing Saddles moment underneath.

GHOST OF A CHANCE. Rod Dreher has found something to like about Dennis Kucinich: he believes in UFOs. "I have no idea what to think about UFOs, and truth to tell, I rarely do," says Dreher. "But I don't believe they're a hallucination."

Dreher also believes in voodoo and ghosts, thinks God gives him job advice, and is uncomfortable with Halloween in part because "my friend, the Louisiana exorcist, strongly warned against it (and told pretty scary personal stories to explain his point)..."

I believe we have identified Mike Huckabee's base. In future videos, Huckabee should trumpet his endorsement by the shades of Washington, Lincoln, and Reagan. They can even appear on-screen with him. The technology has long been with us.

DON'T THINK, FEEL; AIN'T NO BIG DEAL. At TCS Daily, Lee Harris argues in favor of stupidity. No, really:

In a world that absurdly overrates the advantage of sheer brain power, no one wants to be seen as a member in good standing of the stupid party. Yet stupidity has been and will always remain the best defense mechanism against the ordinary conman and the intellectual dreamer, just as Odysseus found that stuffing cotton in his ears was his best defense against beguiling but fatal song of the sirens.

That's the close; the rest doesn't illuminate it much. Smart people will attempt to "pull the wool over the eyes of the rest of us," and though "the intellectual conservative of our day excels in good arguments," he must not use them to defend propositions such as (to use Harris' own example) resistance to gay marriage, because he might get out-argued by the smart alecks.

I suppose this is one of those just-among-us-wingnuts articles, like meditations on the fatness of Michael Moore, that are not meant to be engaged in any serious way. But it's interesting that it comes up just as conservatives fret about the dissolution of their once-winning national coalition.

Conservatives normally like to brag on their "good arguments" -- "Conservatives, rightly, have a greater ownership of their intellectual history than liberals have of theirs," says Jonah Goldberg. "We're proud of our heritage of ideas." But at present, their policy wonks seem paralyzed and reactive: While Democratic candidates compete over their health care plans, for example, conservatives denounce health-care recipients. Their response to Iraq is Iran, and their response to human rights issues is Double Gitmo.

Whither Goldberg's "heritage of ideas"? The voters aren't going for it. Historically-minded conservatives may shrug this off, remembering the Goldwater days of exile, but political operators, who have to try and win elections, may be unnerved by it. With a contentious pre-season fraying the Republican coalition, the idea men may be worrying that yet another version of "No Pale Pastels" might not do the job this time. They need magic; they need dynamite. But all they have, besides the discredited old standards, are diddly-shit demi-ideas.

So Harris' prescription could be helpful to them, at least as a calmative. If their arguments aren't working, it isn't the arguments that are to blame, but argument in general. Once this message is internalized, the heavy thinkers of conservatism may feel as if a great weight had been lifted from their shoulders. They may enter a sort of right-wing Zen state, in which all things disintegrate into red, white, and blue pieces. Then, perhaps, the magic dynamite will come.

And if it doesn't, well, they'll all get jobs at think tanks anyway.

AULD LANG SYNE. The year in review:

"From murder and intimidation, to the crass and the blasphemous, 2007 was a horrendous year of Christian bashing," said Dr. Gary L. Cass, Chairman and CEO of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, the counter force to the liberal Jewish Anti-Defamation League.

"Anti-Christian sentiments are being fomented in the culture and are becoming more deadly and cynical," said Cass. "Impressionable young people are being swept up in anti-Christian hysteria, aided and abetted by a greedy, amoral entertainment industry. Mocking Christians, blaspheming their faith and ridiculing their values has become the easy way for 'entertainers' to shock their way to the top."

Thanks to all my readers and commenters for a magical 2007. And see you in hell, by which I mean 2008.

UPDATE. For a more comprehensive year-end review, go here and scroll down.

CORRUPTION I CAN LIVE WITH. Apparently Pat Leahy and Arlen Specter (with an assist from John Kerry) leaned on the NFL to put tonight's Pats-Giants game on local TV.

National Review culture scold S.T. Karnick is outraged: "This is just the latest example of overweening, overpowering, stifling government regulation of the economy, the society and the culture."

So is Townhall: "Talk about a misuse of political power. Ahhh, wait, that's typical Democrats in action. They always misuse their power and make gains by making threats. Typical."

So is Wizbang, albeit with a bit more shirt-retucking and harrumphs:

Those stations had negotiated with the NFL in good faith, paid good money, and stood to reap the rewards of their foresight and good fortune by having exclusive rights to air what promised to be the most-watched game of the year -- possibly even dwarfing the Super Bowl.

Sometimes, though, there's such a thing as too much good luck. Envy reared its ugly head.

A lot of people hadn't signed up for the NFL network, and didn't live near enough to New York or Boston to pick up the game. They didn't like that one bit. And when they expressed their displeasure loudly enough, Congress heard -- and started making threatening noises...

So, what happens to WWOR and WCVB? The phrase "tough shit" comes to mind. They made deals in good faith, bet a hell of a lot on their agreement with the NFL to pay off in ad revenues and exclusivity, and are now being punished for making too good a deal...

Oh please oh please oh please let this get around.

Because as petty as the whole thing is, it does show Democratic politicians doing something that won them glory and power in days gone by: working the system to bring goodies to constituents.

Being something of a libertarian (i.e., kind of a dork) I understand the conservative good-government argument against the Congresscritters' finnagling. But being something of a human being as well, I think most normal people will not focus on the goo-goo free-market angle, and will instead notice that these Democrats muscled some large and powerful interests to get their peeps access to the Big Game. And I imagine their sympathies will be more on the side of the fans than on those of the media and sports empires that took the hit.

If as the political arm of the conservative movement the GOP is smarter and better organized than I think they are at present, they would flood the zone, claiming this malfeasance hurts all football fans, and producing videos with sinister music showing good Republicans forced to watch government-mandated, Soviet-style sporting events because the liberal fascist traitor Kerry loves Big Gummint. They might even claim that as a young sportscaster, Ronald Reagan once refused to go on the air because a similarly corrupt deal had been made. (He surely must have had a sick day that they can thus portray.) But at present they're too fragmented and busy attacking some crappy Presidential candidate on behalf of another crappy Presidential candidate.

This leaves it to bloggers and other operatives to tell America how awful it is that politicians violated the sacred rights of corporations so that people could watch a mere football game, and to their commenters to announce how they boycotted the game rather than enable statism. Which will earn them all the respect such a stand is likely to generate.

I don't give the Democrats much credit for brains, either, so it's a slim hope that this is a stalking horse for further government interference. They let us get away with changing the broadcast rights to a football game? Cool! Now let's pass a Net Neutrality Act!

But at the very least they've produced a political event that recalls the grand traditions of James Michael Curley and George Washington Plunkitt and the days when the Democratic Party was strongly associated with the common man.

WHAT DOES THE WANKING MAN WANT? MORE. That's the way it always is with these affirmative action programs. You give them the moon and they want the stars. Andrew Sullivan on Billy Kristol's new New York Times column:

He's obviously an extremely talented writer and editor, and I guess some naked partisanship on the right is necessary to balance out Krugman. But ideologically, having both David Brooks and Bill Kristol as the sole representatives of the right-of-center is to focus on a very small neocon niche in a conservative world that is currently exploding with intellectual diversity and new currents of thought. There are about five "national greatness" conservatives out there. Four of them now have columns in the WaPo or NYT: Kristol, Brooks, Krauthammer and Gerson. Thank God, I guess, for the blogosphere. We have no restrictions here, do we?

The Times adds another winger, but it's the wrong kind of winger. Eventually they'll need a fold-out section to accomodate all the different conservative gradations (closed-borders, anti-gay, bullshit libertarian, etc) the committee requires, and that isn't even taking into account all the free dispatches Michael Yon will demand the Times run when the eschaton is immanentized.

I don't understand how these guys sustain this level of cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, they're constantly announcing the irrelevance of the MSM. On the other, they lobby the Times to staff up with their buddies, as if the paper were some kind of government public works project that isn't keeping up with mandated rightwing hiring quotas.

In Sullivan's case, it may be a form of schizophrenia that comes from being a longtime credentialed magazine writer -- an establishment figure, in other words -- who is also a prominent member of the blogosphere, which is like indie cred for poli-sci nerds and, like all indie cred among the successful, must be maintained by occasional professions that one is Still Down for the Struggle ("There go my cable invites"). As for the rest of them, I reckon they're just full of shit.

Meantime, for added giggles, check out New York Times Op Ed columnist Glenn Reynolds professing surprise that the Times gave Jonah Goldberg a kind review.

UPDATE. Commenter psuedonymous in nc points out that the Times Book Review editor, Sam Tanenhaus, is a self-proclaimed "Man of the Right." Tanenhaus was recently appointed to edit the paper's Week in Review, too. Clearly such tokenism cuts little ice with conservatives. But I caution them: when the last Sulzberger is strangled with the entrails of Bob Herbert, they'll have to find some other publication at which to shake their fists. Maybe they can redirect their followers' Bookmark of Perpetual Outrage to the Huffington Post. But conservatives are famously lovers of tradition and may find the transition difficult. Well, they'll always have Walter Duranty.

PAKISTAN: THE LESS-SHORT VIEW. The Bhutto assassination has already led to unfortunate side-effects, including riots, U.S. Presidential candidate reactions, and what the Pakistani dictator Musharraf, in a piquant bit of Western political usage, calls "the blame game." Al Qaeda has expectedly taken credit; Bhutto herself left a note fingering Musharraf; reporters work their sources, and pundits their traditional decoder rings, for leads.

The flames in Karachi indicate that many Pakistanis will not have patience for this sort of inside-baseball analysis. I note this recent poll showing the unpopularity of Musharraf's regime, and also the poll's interesting provenance. I suspect similar results might have been obtained without the support of John McCain and neocon apparatchiks, but the International Republican Institute's efforts to publicize the discontent in Pakistan suggest that the current (and just about any possible future) Administration would have been much happier dealing with Bhutto.

What do you suppose they think about Nawaz Sharif, who is currently playing it extremely cagey? He's been linked to Al Qaeda, but even Bhutto played footsie with the Taliban once upon a time. And the New York Times reports that our government is now reaching out to Sharif. ("The very fact that officials are even talking to backers of Mr. Sharif, who they believe has too many ties to Islamists, suggests how hard it will be to find a partner the United States fully trusts.") This certainly wouldn't be the first time the U.S. has suddenly rehabilitated a suspect foreign leader, and it's not as if we don't know how to deal with him.

Armageddon may come tomorrow, in which case you may put me down as a fool. But one of the fortunate aspects of global political corruption -- contra Dr. Paul -- is that it presents opportunities for self-correction, at least until the next, inevitable crisis. It's not the best way of doing things, of course. In fact it's pretty sad. But who among our next generation of leaders will handle it any better?

UPDATE. I should have known ol' Ralph "Blood 'n' Guts" Peters wouldn't let me down! In October he wrote a full-throated paean to the Musharraf dictatorship and denounced the infusion of Bhutto's "charisma" into the race. Today he supplies us with the Good Riddance to Bhutto post we've been waiting for:

Her country's better off without her. She may serve Pakistan better after her death than she did in life.

What good can come from even a dead Bhutto? "Her murder may galvanize Pakistanis against the Islamist extremists who've never gained great support among voters, but who nonetheless threaten the state's ability to govern." That'll be some trick, even with the Pakistan government's hilarious accidental death verdict there to help.

But Peters is not all Blood 'n' Guts today; he spares a tear for the poor, misunderstood dictator Musharraf:

But [Bhutto] always knew how to work Westerners - unlike the hapless Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who sought the best for his tormented country but never knew how to package himself.

Better get the pointy-heads on that one, General! Maybe they can engineer a fun-loving, Idi Amin persona for Musharraf. Laugh and the world laughs with you!

YOUR CHRISTMAS PRESENT. Blogging will be infrequent to nonexistent here for several days in observance of Kwanzaa. Umoja, y'all!

THE REASON FOR THE SEASON. Ross Douthat and Rod Dreher celebrate the birth of their Lord by bitching about a black lady on welfare with a big TV. Douthat's item is headlined, "The 'Myth' of Welfare Queens"; Dreher's, "Of Welfare Queens and Wilbur."

Tuesday's birthday boy is alleged to have said, "Give to every man that asketh of thee." I'm not a Bible scholar, though, so maybe I don't know about some later passage where he took it back.

I'm not sure our tax dollars should be paying for the lady's big TV, but I'm not that worked up about it either. Maybe if I believed passionately in Jesus Christ I'd be mad at her too.

THE COME-TO-MOLOCH MOMENT. A few years back, Peggy Noonan was saying "God is Back," seeing "the face of the Evil One" in the falling World Trade Center, and calling for the Democratic Party to join her in festooning America with creches and the Ten Commandments ("Confound them, Terry [McAuliffe]! Come forward with a stand. It is the stand that is the salvation, not mysterious words or codes or magic messages").

Today she calls Mike Huckabee's cross-enhanced Christmas message "creepy," chides Republican evangelicals for over-sensitivity, and even manages to simultaneously compare Huckabee with evil Bill Clinton ("Like Mr. Clinton, he is a natural, charming, bright and friendly. Yet one senses something unsavory there, something not so nice") and denigrate Huckabee's religious certainties ("...it is not a philosophy that allows debate. Because it comes down to 'This is what God wants.' This is not an opener of discussion but a squelcher of it. It doesn't expand the process, it frustrates it").

A few weeks back, she discoursed on the Christers' "problem" with Romney's Mormonism, spoke up for atheists (!), and announced that "we've bowed too far to the idiots."

She's come a long way from the days when I called her the Crazy Jesus Lady. I never entirely trusted her religious effusions, but I have to admit I didn't think she'd go this far. But I never expected Huckabee to get this far. Neither did she, I guess, and that's why she has suddenly snapped to secular statism. Jesus Boy is off the reservation, apparently. Who knows what Republican funding streams would suffer from his possible nomination? Maybe Noonan's new boss had a talk with her.

I'm certainly not against any efforts enlisted against the dangerous buffoon Huckabee. And I take some pleasure in seeing the GOP's business interests openly at war with the Jesus folk. But I mourn this large loss of seemingly principled insanity among the chattering class. I worry that next The Anchoress will escape her metaphorical cell and become just plain old Daffy Suburban Rightwing Lady, and Rod Dreher will hang up the End-of-Days talk and become just another aging hippie who loves granola and hates homosexuals. The salt of blogging will then have lost much of its savor, and who shall savor it again?

THE PERSISTENCE OF MEMEORY. At Minding the Campus, U.S. News & World Reports columnist John Leo addresses a recent Princeton incident in which a rightwing student apparently beat himself up and blamed gay-rights activists. Leo talks a lot about hate crimes faked by leftwing students, and gives the impression that conservative correspondents acquitted themselves well in this case.

If he means that they backed off their earlier credulity when word got out about the hoax, he's right. And that's a good thing.

You have to wonder, though, whether that's because conservatives are more sensible about this sort of thing, or because more people are paying closer attention. In 2004 I looked at the Foster Barton case, in which a returned Iraq serviceman was beaten up in a parking lot and numerous citizen journalists rushed to blame the John Kerry campaign. It turned out Barton was beaten up by another former serviceman after the two had "exchanged insults about the other's military unit."

It looked fishy to me from the start, considering that the event outside which Barton had been jumped was a Toby Keith concert. But if you look at what persists on the internet about Barton, you'll find very little about the post-election upshot. No doubt there are plenty of conservatives out there who remain convinced that back in '04 a soldier was beat down by Kerry peace creeps, and recall the incident as another example of "Liberal Violence on the Rise."

That feverish election season is over, of course. But another is hard upon us. I wouldn't be surprised if some other poor souls then find themselves prepared to pay any price and bear any burden to put their opponents in an unflattering light. The question is, will the famously "self-correcting blogosphere" be on duty?

UPDATE. Maybe this answers my question: "I'm not saying it's true, Jill. I'm pointing out that the blogosphere is going wild over a rumor and noting that the Enquirer pulled down its story. These are events." Keep digging, citizen journalists!

UPDATE II. You do realize that, months from now, they'll be saying "Remember that guy in Oklahoma who totally banned Christmas?" as if it were really real. This really is a magical season!

LIE HARDER. Rudolph Giuliani's pals at the National Review are worrying about him. After a June GOP debate, Rich Lowry said, "If any pro-choicer can win the Republican presidential nomination, it's Rudy Giuliani. His abortion answer was bad, but what people will remember is his joking around about getting struck down by lightening during it." Apparently Lowry now thinks the lightning is getting closer:

Over the weekend, Giuliani went to Florida to try to relaunch his campaign with a speech focused on his forward-looking “12 commitments” as president. He didn’t mention the one about reducing abortions... Huckabee’s rise shows that social conservatives are still animated by their traditional issues, and Giuliani has little to say to them.

Meanwhile Giuliani spoke in Durham, New Hampshire, apparently hoping to pick up a little ground in an early-primary state he'd taken for granted (he's only now opening an office there). The result was predictable. "At Durham Event, Former Mayor's Swagger Is Gone," reported the New York Sun. Giuliani told local reporters, while pledging fealty to the Second Amendment, that he "used the gun laws aggressively in New York" because "I had to" and "it worked well." A gun-owners' group official sniffed, "If Giuliani's gun control agenda was really limited 'only' to big cities, that would be disturbing enough..."

Clearly his big-city rightwing friends had earlier advised him well to finesse these issues while on the hustings. In the lovely Live Free or Die town of Durham, pop. 12,664 -- the lead news item of its website currently states that "The chiller tube replacement" at Churchill Rink "is complete, there is a good foundation of ice, and the rink is now OPEN" -- Giuliani might have done better to explain that as Mayor he ruled over eight million snarling degenerates much like the ones his auditors saw on TV cop shows, and had he not disarmed them, they might have murdered him and his ex-family. Self-defense is an argument they would have understood.

Likewise, when Giuliani talked to the L.A. Daily News about his bizarre Pat Robertson endorsement, he shouldn't have just said Robertson believed "I would be the best in appointing judges" and left the abortion angle hanging. He should have brought and fingered a scapular, or perhaps a rosary, and denounced the slaughter of millions in the womb. Had the News reporter tried to pin him to policy specifics, he could have talked about his close personal relationship with Jesus Christ. That usually shuts them up.

Given that he competes against world-class fraud artists for the nomination, and isn't such a stickler for truth himself, I don't know why Giuliani hasn't dropped this "what you see is what you get" routine yet. Maybe he's waiting for Easter, or Super Tuesday week.

WAIT, RUN THAT PART BY ME AGAIN... Our old friend Michael Totten is doing the Iraq citizen-journalism thing for Commentary. His latest dispatch starts with rich promise of the sort of MSM smackdown wingers love, targeting in this instance one Ali al-Fadhily of the Inter Press Services. But I wonder how their smiles of anticipation fared through this section:

Some of what al-Fadhily writes is correct. The economy and infrastructure really are shattered. Unemployment is greater than 50 percent, as he says. It’s true that most Iraqis – in Fallujah as well as everywhere else – don’t have access to safe drinking water.

After this breathtaking admission that, even after four years of US peacekeeping, most citizens of Iraq -- including Fallujah, one of our great "successes" -- can't get fucking clean water, who cares what Totten's charges are against the IPS journo?

But for shits and giggles: al-Fadhily says Fallujah is under "siege," Totten says nonsense, there's actually just a "hard perimeter around the city manned by Iraqi Police who prevent non-residents from bringing their cars in." I agree that's not a siege: in fact, it's a pretty normal situation -- for walled cities of the Middle Ages.

The rest of it's pretty much like that. al-Fadhily says "seventy percent of the city was destroyed during Operation Phantom Fury." Totten counters: "I saw much more destruction in nearby Ramadi than I saw in Fallujah." If you're beginning to wonder if Totten is a liberal plant, he eventually does stick in the sort of good-news nuggets his audience goes for: the old standard Marines-distributing-food-and-schoolbooks, of course, as well as more fashionable, cutting-edge leading indicators, e.g. "Solar-powered street lights" and "Low-interest microloans."

We've reached the point with this war where what ordinary people would regard with horror and revulsion is perceived by its fans as great news. Of course, as ever, they're not nuts, we're nuts. "If peace arrives even in Baghdad," sighs Totten, "...somebody, somewhere, will complain that Iraq has been taken over by the imperial powers of Kentucky Fried Chicken and Starbucks." I say, send Starbucks now: their product tastes like foul water, too, but at least it's been boiled.

UPDATE. As is apparently dictated by our latest style guide, comments are brutal. I don't understand it, since I'm such a goddamned ray of sunshine myself.

For added humorous effect, Totten sends his readers to alicublog, urging them to "please be nice to those who live there even though they do not deserve it." A nod's as good as a wink: "What you're missing math_mage," writes one, "is that we should've just left Iraq in the hands of an atheistic murderer who kills simply because they pray to Allah. That's the kind of leader these leftists can get behind." Boy, Godwin didn't know the half of it.

UPDATE II. math_mage says he's thinking of starting his own blog, practices by posting more epic comments here. I keep threatening to ban people, but I haven't yet brought myself to do it. Well, Bill Buckley let Joan Didion write for him, after all. I wonder if she was this surly about it, though.

I welcome Michael Totten back to the fray. Apparently he has changed his mind about unmoderated comments, so long as they're mine. In the immortal words of Black Bart, I'm getting to be a big underground hit in this town.