FIRST COMES THE BLOOD, THEN COME THE BOYS. Rod Dreher sets his evangelical sights on Amy Winehouse:

She's good. I mean, scary good. Man, I hope she beats her demons, because this woman has raw talent to burn. Gotta get that album. [Video]

Yet another fallen angel comes under Reverend Dreher's ministering gaze! I begin to see what puts the crunch in Crunchy Conservatism. One thing we have to say about pop culture: it keeps such types off the streets.

FOR THE TURNSTILES. David Freddoso at National Review Online:

I keep hearing about how Democratic contests are experiencing "record turnout." That's all well and good. There's no question that Democrats are more excited than Republicans, and that they are eager to select a president after being out of power for so long.

But the real reason for "record turnout" is that Democrats in Maine, Nebraska, Washington and other states voting now have never had a chance before to make a difference in nominating a candidate. Their previous primaries and caucuses were meaningless on the presidential level. So of course they're going to have "record turnout" this year — how could they not?

Ahem -- from way back on Super Tuesday:

For grand totals, vastly more Democrats than Republicans voted yesterday;

Democratic votes for Clinton and Obama: 14,622,822 (63.6%)
Republican votes for McCain, Romney and Huckabee: 8,370,022 (36.4%)

Put another way, the Clinton/Obama race drew 76% more voters than the McCain/Romney/Huckabee race.

I suppose Democrats could still lose ground in November, especially when faced with the galvanic, party-unifying phenomenon that is John McCain.

WHEN LAST WE LEFT OUR HERO... Life is full of disappointments for the white Jewish male of Liberal Fascism. Jonah Goldberg gets dissed by The Economist and Newsweek, declares they're not big college towns.

"I just think it's odd, to use their word," sniffs Goldberg, "that the book editors at a magazine like the Economist couldn't bring any more insight or brainpower to the 'biggest selling political book' in America beyond this dyspeptic belch." (Signs of Poorly-Masked Pain: playing off diss with the mild word "odd," repetition of phrase from review that may -- taken out of context -- sound positive and blurbworthy, and "dyspeptic belch," which sounds like something of which a bright 11-year-old trying to write his own Harry Potter book would be proud.)

Newsweek spurs him to greater heights of passive aggression:

Newsweek editor Jon Meacham is apparently exasperated by the fact that people don't take his magazine as seriously as he'd like. I'm sure he's got good reasons to think this is unfair. But I think the above is a good (though very, very small) example of why so many people don't look to Newsweek for anything surprising.

You can almost see the lump in Goldberg's throat; having been sternly told by his Mom that responses on the order of NEWSWEEK IS A BUNCH OF LIBERAL FASCIST POOPY will not do, especially against throwaway one-line burns such as Newsweek delivered, he must swallow hard and present a manful face to his detractors. So he calls Newsweek "unsurprising," which is a little like calling Chicken McNuggets "inexpensive." "Newsweek is so completely conventional that anyone can predict how it will interpret the news," he persists. "I would bet a bundle that not one of the co-authors of this story actually read the book..." Mama Goldberg must have been out of radio contact at this point. "...or even cracked it open because they already know what they think about it..." The lower lip quivers, the fists redly clench. "...because they already know what they think about it, just as they already know what they think about most everything else." And finally, the agonized wail: "even The New York Times and Slate's Tim Noah conceded it's not what they consider an 'Ann Coulter book.'"

Thankfully for Goldberg's ego, there are still plenty of "reader e-mails" coming in. I wonder what K-Lo tells the interns when they ask how they should list these on their resumes.

DOG WHISTLE GEOPOLITICS. "Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew, long known as the Kissinger of the orient", behind a veil of cigarette smoke and with eerie lighting, lays some Realpolitik on the Moonie News Bureau's Arnaud de Borchgrave:

The United States, said this key player in every major Asian event for almost half a century, "should realize Afghanistan cannot succeed as a democracy. You attempted too much. Let the warlords sort it out in such a way you don't try to build a new state. The British tried and failed. Just make clear if they commit aggression again and offer safe haven to Taliban, they will be punished"...

Iraq was a mistake, Lee said. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with al-Qaida or Sept. 11. It was a costly diversion from the war on al-Qaida. "I cannot see them winning, and by that I mean able to impose their extremist system ... even if we can't win, we mustn't lose or tire. We cannot allow them to believe they have a winning strategy and that more suicide bombers and WMD will advance their cause and give them a chance to take over"...

When asked this week about the advisability of the United States or Israel bombing Iran's nuclear facilities, Lee fell silent. He was about to express an opinion, then changed his mind. "I can express no views on that," he said lowering his voice.

If you think the Mask of Lee Kuan Yew will strike remorse for our national screw-ups in the conservative heart, you aren't focusing on the big issue: a foreign authoritarian tacitly approves bombing Iran! Hear John O'Sullivan at National Review Online:

Alas, Lee is not eligible for the U.S. presidency. But whoever is elected should listen to him.

At The American Scene, James Poulos catches the fever:

I’ve been watching the BBC production of “A Dance to the Music of Time,” and just yesterday — prior to having this morning three consecutive dreams about zombies, perhaps on which more later — I thought, yes, general war is probably going to happen in my generation’s lifetime. One way or the other.

So Afghanistan and Iraq didn't turn out so hot -- that was due to our foolish American obsession with democracy on the one hand, and winning so-called elections on the other. Third time's the charm! Just ask a guy from a place where you can get arrested for spitting on the sidewalk and couldn't legally buy gum for 12 years. (On the plus side, they're cool with trans-fats.)

Lee Kuan Yew probably could have gone on a full-throated rant against habeas corpus, trial by jury, and the fools who called him mad, mad, when he built his secret underwater lair, and these guys would still only hear the bit about Iran. I don't know why it's taking them so long to warm to John McCain. Maybe he should start telling the brethren where he got his campaign finance reform ideas.

SEAMLESS GARMENT WATCH. At National Review Online, Mark Steyn points his light-saber of outrage at a story about some Muslim women who won a French "family medal" for, I guess, having a lot of babies.

"So when Mark Steyn writes about changing demographics in Europe, apparently he wasn’t kidding," notes the linked correspondent, Andrea Mrozek. Oddly, her blog is called ProWomanProLife. Since I hear racism is a crime up there in Canada, I assume it's the religious affiliation and not the color of these French former fetuses that removes them from her approval.

I see that one of Mrozek's colleagues approves of Angelina Jolie's gigantic blended family; has she not considered that Jolie is unchurched and tattooed, and that her superbrood might pose as great a threat to Western Civilization as those of the Muslim ladies? Clearly they need to do some more thinking about unintended consequences.

LA RECONQUISTA. Though conservatives are trying to reconcile, or maybe just concile, with John McCain, some are not yet completely on board. Mark Steyn at National Review Online:

I'd say McCain definitely papered the house. I arrived at CPAC just before Mitt began to speak and was struck by the number of young student-ish types milling about in McCain T-shirts. While my minder went off to check her coat, I was loafing around the lobby, heard a conversation in Spanish, and noticed it was three of the McCain T-shirted students. Which struck me as odd: you don't hear a lot of Spanish at CPAC.

Wait -- Michelle Malkin was there, and she couldn't sense the Mexican presence? Either she's slipping or they're disguising their scent with an all-Arby's diet.

[Cue sound effect]

OUR TIME IS NO. Meanwhile some liberals take the opposite tack from Steyn's: trying to talk themselves out of supporting a candidate they support. Publius at Obsidian Wings:

Although I remain an Obama supporter, I do fear that I’m allowing myself to be enchanted in an intellectually juvenile way. Of course, like you I suspect, I think of myself as more sophisticated than the crowds that vacillated mindlessly from Brutus to Marc Antony. But the truth is that I’m not all that different. I too am all too human, and thus susceptible to the same types of appeals, even if they come dressed in different clothes.

Michael Dukakis isn't doing anything. Why don't we draft him and spare ourselves all this charisma?

[Cue sound effect]

MOPPING UP AT SHOW WORLD. But hold on folks -- there's another viable candidate in this race. I speak of course of Mike Huckabee. He picked up the all-important James Dobson endorsement ("Dobson emphasizes that when he endorses candidates, he is doing so as a private citizen and not as a representative of Focus on the Family, a tax-exempt organization"). This cements Huckabee's position as the heat-sink for such evangelicals as remain committed to the Party, and assures a grand spectacle at the Republican National Convention. Mark your calendars: September 3, Snake-Handler Night! First three rows may get bit.

Oh yeah, Clinton. In the Wall Street Journal her candidacy receives the healing touch of that great conciliator, Peggy Noonan. She calls the former First Lady "lethal" and compares her to Rasputin. Then Noonan bats her eyes, adds, "That is how reporters see Hillary," and takes the high road:

And that is a grim and over-the-top analogy, which I must withdraw. What I really mean is they see her as the Glenn Close character in "Fatal Attraction": "I won't be ignored, Dan!"

Normally the withdrawals come after the slurs are done. But after many years of Bushmills and Old Ronnie, I am surprised that Noonan can face withdrawal at all.

[Cue sound effect]

GOING HOLLYWOOD. Randy Quaid has been banned for life (!) from Actor's Equity due to shenanigans he and his wife pulled on an ill-starred musical stage production. As reported by Film Drunk, the changes include physical and verbal assaults on fellow thespians, but this is probably the hanging offense:

The couple [Quaid and his wife, presumably - Ed.] tried to rewrite the script, to eliminate characters. Randy "felt free" to change blocking, lyrics and lines during performances, and repeatedly failed to show up for note sessions and rehearsals.

You have to be John Barrymore (or maybe Nicol Williamson playing John Barrymore) to get away with that shit onstage. Film Drunk is unsympathetic to Equity: "Why do we still have the theater? Don't they know you can go film shit on location and do special effects and stuff and then play it back without the actors having to be there? Theater nowadays is pretty much like when rich people go camping. 'Ooh, let's drive out to the woods and pretend we're poor!' Good idea, dad, you fucking yuppie."

I know he's kidding, but in a recent Newsweek roundtable of film actors, I was astonished to read this:

Did you rehearse at all for "Atonement"? [James] McAvoy: Yeah, for three weeks, which is kind of unusual. I usually dread rehearsal for film because I've found that film people will never know what to do except sit in a room together and make you say your lines 5,000 times...

Daniel, do you ever rehearse? [Daniel] Day-Lewis: I prefer not to. [George] Clooney: They'll do stuff like put tape on the floor and go, "OK, now you're walking in and three vampires are going to come out over here." And you're pretending that there's vampires across from you and everybody is laughing at you. I don't find it helpful in any way.

Millions of dollars at stake and they don't like to rehearse! No wonder Quaid thought this airy-fairy business of blocking and getting the lines right had gone the way of spats and the four-in-hand.

I wonder if this has anything to do with the large tonal difference between old movies and newer ones. About a year back I saw a clip from The Good German on Charlie Rose. The film's star, George Clooney, was Rose's guest. He told Rose that the filmmakers had gone to great lengths to recreate the feeling of old movies -- black and white, old-fashioned lighting and dialogue, etc. But in the clip Clooney and co-star Cate Blanchett, though properly costumed and made up, acted like they had just walked in from the commissary and started bullshitting. They couldn't even stand in a manner appropriate to the style. The whole retro effect was totally blown from the first entrance.

I think Clooney and Blanchett (and Daniel Day-Lewis, for that matter) are as good at what they do as Tyrone Power and Barbara Stanwyck were at what they did. But it occurs to me now that there's a larger difference between the old and new versions of the craft than, in my aesthetic ecumenicalism, I usually consider. Even Marlon Brando and James Dean put in stage time -- on Broadway yet! -- before they became film stars, and when they did people considered them revolutionary, or mumbling nonconformists. Today their performances from the 50s look almost mannered compared to what we get today.

I wonder how much the shift in acting style drove the shift in film style from that period forward. Elia Kazan, a man of the theatre (and a founder of the Group Theatre), related as easily to Method acting as did Nicholas Ray, who had barely touched the theatre before making movies. Thesp-wise, theatre was where the action was then. Now fewer directors and actors jump from theatre to film; film acting has gone sui generis. Most pre-Method movies look clipped and impatient compared to most later ones; might the longueurs and discursiveness of post-theatrical speech and behavior have informed the way directors filmed it?

Both theatre and film have seen some changes in the past half-century, but in the former they've been convulsive, and in the latter continuous. A big, hammy, gestural turn is not out of fashion onstage (I saw Brian Cox do one last month), but in movies it's a speciality pulled out for special stylistic occasions, like a Robin Williams vehicle. Some aspects of John Cassavettes' improvisational films still look almost as far out as they did when they came out, but the acting in those films will be familiar to anyone who has seen a dozen films made in the past ten years.

I wonder where it will all go next. Despite the way we perceive it, mainstream film acting still isn't totally naturalistic; as long as there's a story, the playing has to be somewhat pointed. But if the top actors have begun to find rehearsal beside the point, it may be that more layers of artifice will begin to fall away. It may be that prestige acting in 2020 will make the current stuff look stiff and ancient. Or maybe it'll go the opposite way, and we'll see the aged Clooney tackle the New Expressionism. I kind of look forward to finding out. If it's all too modern for me, I can always go see the latest equivalent of RV or Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

SHORTER JAMES LILEKS. You derisive sub-Menckens with your free iTunes and your Thai food! The Islamo-fetal-liberalfascist is at the gate! You -- you -- ah-choo!

ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF MEGAN McARDLE. 06 Feb 2008 12:22 am: Going vegan makes buttered popcorn smell weird.
06 Feb 2008 12:26 am: Silly pollsters!
06 Feb 2008 01:39 am: Matt and I are on the internet.
06 Feb 2008 08:30 am: Obama's behind, but InTrade thinks he's a winner. What's that about?
06 Feb 2008 10:39 am: Health Nazis fanny about going "Blah blah blah!" Well, if you reform all those fat smokers, they're going to wind up costing us money. Did you ever think of that? Huh?
06 Feb 2008 10:54 am: Bastiat sure pwned those trade protectionists. No but seriously, Bastiat framed the "Broken Windows Fallacy," right? And when I was at the Bastiat Awards, my window was broken! Weird, right?
06 Feb 2008 11:12 am: Tort lawyers all want to wealth-transfer doctors' money to their greedy sick clients, and doctors react by testing sick people to see if they're sick. Oh, bother, I don't know. You should go read someone who knows what they're talking about.
06 Feb 2008 11:30 am: Ha ha! Noah Millman's Mom-in-law fucked up her ballot! And some people think Bush stole the election! Honestly.
06 Feb 2008 11:34 am: Some people think Obama lost. But the Obama people think they won. You know what I think? Media bias affects elections.
06 Feb 2008 12:27 pm: Paul Krugman got BDS and went from a really good economics columnist to teh suck. Don't you find? Mark Kleiman does. Can't we just get rid of people like Krugman? Oh, I should talk.
06 Feb 2008 02:07 pm: Clinton paid Mark Penn $4.3 to lose or win or whatever she did! Consultants get paid lots but they avoid some of the unpleasant duties of Presidential candidates.
06 Feb 2008 03:16 pm: Heath Ledger had everything going for him, and he still took drugs.

We could fulfill much of the nation's energy needs by breaking into the graves of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., and James Russell Lowell, and using their spinning corpses as turbines.

...AND FINALLY, ACCEPTANCE. McCain-hatin' conservatives have given us some precious moments of laughter but, as expected, they are slowly beginning to get in line and, also as expected, it doesn't take much. Mona Charen at National Review Online:

John, I too just got the McCain robocall and it seemed particularly aimed at conservatives. McCain promises to be a small government conservative who will appoint conservative justices, respect life, do border enforcement before any other immigration reform, and win the war on terror. Nary a word about global warming or Guantanamo. He "humbly" asks for our votes. If this is a hint of what is coming at CPAC, it suggests that McCain's famous vanity is not getting the better of him this time. He seems to be willing to meet conservatives more than halfway.

Talk, even "Straight Talk," is cheap, and Charen's price ain't so high neither. At CPAC, expect McCain to go "Reagan Reagan Reagan 9/11," and hearts to flutter.

Braver brethren are even suggesting that Super Tuesday was a crippling blow to the Democrats. Dave Price at Dean Esmay's site:

Two, Obama didn't win a clear victory. Now the Dems are in the worst-case scenario that the candidate with all the momentum is slightly behind, meaning the next few months will see a bitter struggle for the nomination that will consume vast amounts of money, drive up the eventual nominee's negatives, split the party, and force their candidates to pander to their base while McCain is campaigning to the middle as a general election candidate.

I'm always willing to expect the worst, and this doesn't even convince me. This pre-Tuesday poll graph, and Tuesday's high turnout, suggest continuing, healthy enthusiasm for both Democratic candidates. This is the opposite of a Party tearing itself apart. Obama has raised over two million dollars in less than 24 hours and there's plenty more where that came from. If Clinton is indeed running out of money, she will probably recede, and contrary to Republican mythology, she is not likely to sabotage Obama's chances, harpy-like, on her way down. Without money, how would she be able to?

Finally, at The Razor, a real post-End-Times right-wing fantasy:

If she loses and Obama wins, don’t expect her to fade away. She’ll be sidelined for awhile, a long while if Obama is successful, but will no doubt play havoc with an Obama Agenda. I would expect her to be as cooperative with an Obama legislative agenda as Chuck Hagel has been to the Bush one.

Dream big, Citizen Journalist. It beats your waking reality cold.

MY OSCAR SLOG CONTINUES. The biopic is of necessity a limited genre. To succeed, it must stay tightly focused on the pains and triumphs of a subject sufficiently famous to command our attention. In most cases, this keeps the filmmaker from connecting the story to a broader vision, which is why so few of them are works of art. The rare exceptions usually involve a historical figure who has obtained the status of myth, which leaves the filmmaker free to project his own story onto the audience's received impressions of the hero. (See Rossellini's The Rise of Louis XIV or Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln or Stone's JFK. Among the rare exceptions to the formula I would include Preston Sturges' The Great Moment.)

Still, lower-order biopics, from The Story of Louis Pasteur on forward, can be entertaining, and La Vie En Rose is a fine example. Edith Piaf's art and suffering are legendary, and the film mainly amplifies them, from her pathetic beginnings as a whore's child shunted through brothels, to her apotheosis as a great singer whose songs fulsomely reflect her pain, to her wretched, broken end.

The second-best feature of La Vie En Rose is a time-jumping narrative that links all the stages of Piaf's suffering, so that her spirit and attainments are never viewed far from their context. History is always closely linked to destiny, which is not a brilliant philosophical idea but which provides a lifeline that is easy to follow.

Its best feature is Marion Cotillard as Piaf. She picks up seamlessly from the equally fine child actors who play her younger self, brilliantly imagining what their terrors and enforced self-possesion would become in adulthood: a sad monster you'd want to protect if you could get close enough to do it. Her mood swings visibly recall her earlier dramas, which are glowingly evident in her spindly, uncomfortable body and her open, ever-sorrowing face. Her childishness is by turns ugly or appealing, and never leaves her, even in decay and at the threshold of death. If Piaf had not already been a legend, Cotillard's performance would have created one for her, which is to say she achieves the rare gift of great mimicry that is also great acting.

UPDATE. Much astute criticism in comments, and some proposed higher-grade biopics. I don't think The Madness of King George is about G3 so much as it's about what a great thing hereditary monarchy was, at least compared to what replaced it. The hallucinatory Ken Russell biographies are closer to the mark. I should mention Fellini's Casanova, which is about a lot of other things too, including hilarious summations of the French, Spanish, Italian, and German national characters. The central character, seen at one point expounding on one of his own books in front of a page from it stuck with excrement to a prison wall, certainly embodies something larger than himself. Western Civilization, maybe.

BIG NIGHT: AS OF 12 A.M... With Missouri and California still up for grabs, it looks like a decent night for Obama, who didn't get the big prizes but is splitting delegates almost even with Clinton. McCain is cleaning up but forgotten man Huckabee, with record-setting evangelical support, is putting up some numbers. Romney is hanging on by the phrenic nerves.

Super Tuesday turns out to be a magnifying glass for the race at large. Obama is stripping off ever-larger pieces of the Clinton victory march, but she's still marching and he's still stripping. McCain has broad support, but the fringes (with the establishmentarians roughly represented by Romney and the snake-handlers by Huckabee) are holding out.

ABC only gave me pieces of the candidates' speeches. McCain sounded like he was speaking at his own retirement dinner. Clinton sang the old songs in the traditional, plangent manner. Huckabee was an easy-listening version of Huey Long. Obama had by far the best words, as usual, and slung them loose and low-key -- under the circumstances, the most appropriate form of optimism. Romney's traditional impenetrability stood him well on a bad night.

Cali has 441 delegates -- according to this report, proportionally distributed except for 81 at-large delegates who go to the winner, not to speak of the super-delegates, PLEOs, and unpledged. ABC has called it for Clinton but I'm not going to touch it, partly because it's way too early and partly because, as of my pulling of the lever at P.S. 100 on Monitor Street at 8 a.m. Tuesday, I am an Obama supporter, as if you couldn't tell.

UPDATE. Romney factotum Hugh Hewitt reports on the night: "A Divided GOP... McCain has strength across the country and a lead in delegates, but nowhere near 50% of the GOP's votes." Keep hope alive, Snowman!

UPDATE II. Or keep hate alive, as Classical Values blogger Eric does: "Hillary is speaking and according to someone in the know, 'she looks like she's had some major makeovers'... But she still has that same shrill, grating voice... She brays..." If Hitlery takes the nomination, at least I'll have copious bile-streams from true believers to report to you folks.

UPDATE III. As usual, the best reason for even a modish, mawkish, wigger Obamist such as myself to yet tender some affection to Clinton is Whitewater dead-ender Andrew Sullivan, who in the wee small hours quotes Ari Fleischer on the ease with which Der Alte will defeat Hillary. Much as I dislike her, I do believe Clinton could appear in the General Election debates wearing a Nazi uniform and with two pencils sticking out of her nose and still give McCain a run for his money. However much trouble she's having at present with her opponent, she is very, very fortunate in her enemies.

MO' FAMILY, MO' PROBLEMS. I can recommend, for good old-fashioned theatrical pleasure, Steppenwolf's production of Tracy Letts' August: Osage County, now on Broadway. The acting is top-notch (two understudies were in when I saw it, but the cast showed little strain), Anna Shapiro's direction keeps it rattling along wonderfully, and the sharp dialogue and plot twists would hold even a restless child's attention (though I don't recommend that you take children to it).

It's a big-cast family comedy-drama, sort of a cross-breeding of Clifford Odets and Kaufman and Hart with modern swears and peccadilloes thrown in for roughage. The basic idea is three sisters from an Oklahoma academic/literary family -- which long ago graduated from corn liquor to scotch, but still shows its coarse roots -- are brought together, along with various friends and relations, by the disappearance and presumed suicide of the Old Man. Grudges and secrets are aired, and disappointments luxuriated in.

The signal achievement of the script, besides keeping us interested over three hours plus, is a great feeling for the bonds and burdens of family. The girls all want to have their own lives, including the one who has seemingly been shanghaied into the caretaker role, but none has been very successful at it, and Letts is great at showing how strong the gravitational pull of even (maybe especially) a dysfunctional family can be. The crossing orbits and collisions are fun to watch, and with 13 (!) characters you get a wide range of dynamic shifts for your money.

The only problem is the usual one with most sprawling entertainments like this: long on mood, short on payoff. The third act wobbles as the characters line up to get their hash settled. Then the richness and size becomes a thicket the author has to hack his way out of. Letts may be doing more complex writing than, say, William Inge, but when Inge worked on this scale his dramaturgy creaked less. (Lett's modish touches don't oil the joints any better, either -- Inge had a pedophilia subplot in Bus Stop, too, and though it was less clinically detailed I think it has a large edge in sadness and desperation.) Eldest girl Barbara turns out to be our protagonist, and interesting as her story is -- her alpha passive-aggression gets transplanted from the family she's tried to make to the one she was born into -- it is not so much illuminated by the other human wrecks onstage as it is in competition with them.

It seems churlish to complain when Steppenwolf has given us a intelligent script and a scale of production we don't usually get from pinchpenny straight-play Broadway budgets. I only note it for the record, and hope Letts keeps going big and gets further. As it is there's an awful lot of good theatre going on at the Imperial, and they aren't charging any extra for it.

MORE ON THE NEW FASCISM. Yesterday I posted on The American Spectator's John Tabin, who compared a popular Obama music video to "Triumph of the Will." Today Tabin responds:

Maybe I wasn't clear. No, I don't mean that I smell liberal fascism in "everything inspiring" or "any show of enthusiasm by fifty or more liberals for anything or anyone whatsoever." I mean that a bunch of people beatifying a politician by reciting, in unison, a speech of his that climaxes with the words

We are one people, we are one nation, and together we will begin the next great chapther in the American story with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea: Yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can

is a message devoid of any content beyond a call to unity of the collective as an end unto itself, complete with a very deliberate aesthetic embodiment of that message. If that doesn't strike you as even a little bit fascistic, I guess I can't help you.

From Ronald Reagan's address to the 1984 Republic Convention:

The President. Is there any doubt that they will raise our taxes?

Audience. No!

The President. That they will send inflation into orbit again?

Audience. No!

The President. That they will make government bigger then ever?

Audience. No!

The President. And deficits even worse?

Audience. No!

The President. Raise unemployment?

Audience. No!

The President. Cut back our defense preparedness?

Audience. No!

The President. Raise interest rates?

Audience. No!

The President. Make unilateral and unwise concessions to the Soviet Union?

Audience. No!

The President. And they'll do all that in the name of compassion.

Audience. Boo-o-o!

The President. It's what they've done to America in the past. But if we do our job right, they won't be able to do it again.

Audience. Reagan! Reagan! Reagan!

The President. It's getting late.

Audience. Reagan! Reagan! Reagan!

To be fair, I could have picked another example of political convention call-and-response from either side of the aisle. "A message devoid of any content beyond a call to unity of the collective as an end unto itself, complete with a very deliberate aesthetic embodiment of that message" would properly describe any one of them. So would "classic American political oratory." The fact that Obama's supporters also have cool music and the ability to sing something other than "No!" "Boo-o-o!" and "Reagan!" doesn't make them fascists. It just makes them better at it than the people Tabin supports.

And I suspect that -- rather than any genuine fear that Obama is the new Hitler, Jesse Dylan the new Goebbels, and Yes We Can the new Horst Wessel Lied -- is really what's bothering him. In the Jonah Goldberg era, allusions to the Third Reich are the new "no fair."

SUPER BOWL HIGHLIGHTS. Doritos told me they were giving a young performer a "break" and then showed me a singer with an Interscope Records contract.

Someone at LifeWater thought, "After this game all America will be talking about the Dancing Lizards!" but what they'll probably be saying is, "That was a pretty good Gatorade ad."

That was the least annoying "anti-drug" ad I've ever seen, which just makes me want to kill the ONDC without pain and spare their families.

Sisyphus! I went to college, I get it! Optimism! I'm American, I get it! The Yukon Hybrid! I -- What?

Dell = Mac for the change-averse.

I may actually see a super-hero movie in a theatre instead of an airplane.

Tide Stick wins, using the ancient advertising arts of shame and fear.

The game was pretty good and the Heartbreakers sounded fine. Tom Petty looked like a villain in a Quentin Tarantino movie.

BATTLE OF THE BANDS. Ericka Andersen of RedState grudgingly admits that the awesome will.i.am Obama music video is indeed awesome. She asks:

WOW. ANYONE GOING TO MAKE ONE OF THESE FOR MITT?

Here's an entrant:



And let's not count out Mike Huckabee:



Too bad the CIA wiped those interrogation videos: they could have run those with Ted Nugent shredding in the background and gotten their message across quite clearly.

UPDATE. American Spectator's John Tabin calls the Obama vid "A Real Triumph of the Will" and adds "Jonah Goldberg's book becomes more relevant by the minute." So not only is every social welfare program liberal-fascist; everything inspiring is, too. I've got to tip my hat -- that outstrips even my cynicism.

UPDATE II. "It's All Over: Liberals Take Over '24.'" "It is over. Conservatives will no longer have even a single show on network television anymore." I hate to give them good advice, but if they put more effort into electing their candidates and less into symbolic analysis, they might be better off.

A PUKE AND HIS SHIT, OR VICE VERSA. Rod Dreher, refreshed after leading an orgy of recrimination over a porn clip (covered here), is up and at 'em again, leaving the foreplay to venerable scold Jim Sleeper before getting to the money shot:

Sleeper goes on to say that not only should conservatives stand up to corporate interests that pornify the public square, but that liberals ought to quit defending the degradation of the public square by asserting free speech rights...

I hope this fuckfest keeps rolling and winds up on Capitol Hill. Imagine the hearings: Dreher, in a choked voice, explaining that he can't submit his evidence because it is too disgusting for even adults to contemplate, let alone the children who might have innocently tuned to C-SPAN. Maybe we can even get Tipper Gore back into the act. She's still got it. Put her up there with Mary Landrieu and I'll testify.

FIGHT THE REAL ENEMY. Terrorists kill over 70 people in Baghdad using mentally challenged "suicide bombers."

Stop for a moment. Note your first instinct. Upon whom does your disapproval tend? The people who sent the bombers to kill?

Boy, are you way off.

The Ole Perfesser:

And Austin Bay emails that this may be the start of the "Terrorist Tet" he's been predicting. As Bob Owens notes, some people here at home are all-too-eager to help. Just like last time.

Dan Collins:

So it interests me that today, in the wake of two bombings in the pet markets in Baghdad in which mentally disabled people–Down’s Syndrome sufferers, apparently–were used as mules to carry the explosives and remotely detonated, killing dozens, brings, not condemnation and outrage from the media and from lefty bloggers, but satisfied derision toward those who say we are winning in Iraq.

Confederate Yankee:

The ever-objective, ever-unbiased New York Times saw fit to exclude the horrific detail of their alleged mental disabilities from their reporting of the day's massacre. It might upset their readers, and cause some confusion over who the real enemy in Iraq is (George Bush).

I'm beginning to think we don't even have troops in Iraq. Maybe it's all some kind of Capricorn One bullshit. Because why would we bother fighting over there when the people our greatest patriots really hate are right here in the United States?

PWNED. I like to think I get around, at least on the internet, but Beliefnet's Rod Dreher did me the favor of calling attention to the "2 Girls 1 Cup" video. Rawwr! Two hot chicks eating shit and puke. I mean, does it get any sexier? (I'm not linking to it now -- I'll save it for a fundraiser or something.)

Almost as good is the way Dreher sells it:

...don't worry, I'm not about to link to it from here... suffice it to say that it's really too disgusting even to describe here. There is no way I'm going to watch it, because I don't want those images lodged in my brain. If you watch the reaction videos Slate has compiled, as part of a discussion of how in the Internet age we process taboos, you'll get an idea of how unutterably grotesque this video must be.

...something so horrible it beggars the imagination... I know that the way I'm writing about it will make lots of readers want to see the clip. I'm sorry about that, but there's really no other way to write about it. If you are bound and determined to let your curiosity win here... images you are going to have burned into your brain forever...

What kind of society do we have when that kind of information is easily available to people, especially to children? What kind of society...

If the newspaper gig doesn't work out, Dreher can always get work as a copywriter or a carnival barker.

This reminds me of something an old friend told me once. He was doing a computer gig at a corporation and one of his colleagues, assuming from my friend's free-and-easy attitude toward sexuality that he was in a position to hook him up, asked for URLs that would bring him to "exotic" porn. My friend demurred but the guy kept bugging him. Finally my friend pointed him to some hot pukkake action. "He never bothered me again," he told me.

Some people aren't so easy to dissuade, apparently. Maybe the End Times commentary (and the calls for censorship and Jesus in the comments) makes the experience more exciting for some people. Well, different strokes and all that.

Oh, Dreher adds that "defanging [the video's] horror with ironic distance... I find that the scariest reaction of all." I have mixed feelings about adding to Dreher's excitement with this post -- I barely know the guy. The internet is indeed a scary place.

UPDATE. Oh, alright, here's the video:

FRIDAY VIDEO FEST.


The Poet Laureate.


The Queen.


The King.


Jack.


The Gods.