HOUSE NUDNIK. Do you wonder what distinguishes A-list, mainstream media wingnuts from the mob that howls beneath them? It's the little things. Message discipline requires that they all refer to people or causes abandoned (or imagined to be abandoned) by Obama as "under the bus." Indeed, it has become a verbal signifier by which conservatives identify one another, like "stuck on stupid" and "My wife thinks I'm at a Bible conference, let me suck your balls."

But David Brooks of the New York Times uses "under the truck" instead. See the difference? It shows style, and what an independent thinker he is. And his theme -- that Obama isn't the airy-fairy idealist McGovernite his rabid enemies daily portray him as, he's the ruthless hypocrite his enemies also daily portray him as -- is likewise stylish and contrarian. Next week he may tell us that he likes snail darters, personally, though he isn't sure he should let his own sentimentality destroy the livelihoods of ordinary Americans who eat at nonexistent salad bars and have the same kind of respect for their quaint little name brands that Brooks has for Chanel and Peugeot.

You're all smart folks, readers, but I fear most of you lack the certain something that might vault you into Brooks' league. But they're doing wonderful things with neurosurgery these days, and soon may be able to paralyze the parts of the brain that govern moral judgment.

EUREKA! It's like a magic formula: Sex And The City + gay marriage = rightwing meltdown.

Inspired by the recent Maggie Gallagher essay about how gay-married guys are all into orgies, National Review's Fred Schwartz performs Talmudic analysis on... Glamour magazine. "Judging from our popular press," murmurs Schwartz, "the idea of threesomes is no longer all that outré in the straight community either." Attend Schwartz as he peers through his magnifying glass at the tiny, smut-rich type; the receptionist at his dentist's office calls his name again, louder, but Schwartz is transfixed:

In the June issue of Glamour, under the heading "5 things to say no to," item 1 is: "Any threesome in which you're committed to one of the other two." If you're not committed to one of the other two, presumably, Glamour would say: "You go, girl!"

It's like the hormonally-induced, lurid storytimes of my extreme youth (The National Enquirer says she's a nymphomaniac! That means she'll fuck anyone! She'll fuck, like, two guys at once!) reenacted by a guy wearing a tweed jacket and chewing on a briar pipe.

But there's still an ingredient missing from our mind-poison, and Lisa Schiffren brings it: "The people responsible for making threesomes seem ubiquitous among young women," declares Schiffren, "are, among others, the writers and producers of Sex in the City."

Sooooo it's just a perceptual problem, then, of the sort from which Professor Schwartz suffers? Not quite: in similarly weaselly, insecure language, Schiffren explains:

The original HBO series was frequently, and I always thought correctly, said to be written by gay men, who projected a lot of the norms and behavior of gay culture onto the female characters.

And the homos, through the bridging device of cable television, introduced our dewy-fresh maidens to "particular, often distasteful sexual practices that may or may not have come into fashion" and "gay norms posing as practices heterosexual females might enjoy."

Oh, Lisa, honey, I was sucking assholes when you were still sucking your thumb, and neither my ladyfriends nor I learned it from any TV show. As for the general role of same-sexers in the development of our sexual menu, it's strictly a chicken-or-the-egg thing to me, but as it is Pride Month, I'd be happy to give the gay guys some credit. It would certainly liven up the P-Month middle-school educational pageants. Maybe they can even ID some specific gay guys to put on the poster: JACK WRANGLER: FIRST TO SPLOSH or something like that.

I think the Review should raise the bar for Schiffren and insist she do a little field research the next time she tries something like this. They could start her out slow -- with a butt-plug, perhaps. Or the removal of one.

UPDATE. Tbogg's alternative take is essential reading for fans of the genre.

THIS GIG DOES HAVE ITS LITTLE COMPENSATIONS. Obama figures: I'll just opt out of public financing, rely on the huge sacks of cash ordinary people keep sending me, and leave the Republicans to "game this broken system." Much screaming no fair! from people who never liked public financing (or public anything, except hangings) in the first place.

This ripe example at RedState is headlined Obama Breaks His Word, Again (Bumped.) It starts out slow, but the Citizen Journalist soon loses his composure:

I'm just not sure what to say about this. I shouldn't be shocked, but somehow it does shock me to see how a candidate for POTUS can be so vapid, and yet still lead in every major poll currently.

Does Barack think we are stupid, or are we just stupid? Time will tell, I guess.

I am very depressed about the future and am perilously close to full blown anxiety here. It just seems so simple. How can we even be considering letting this man have the keys to the WH? How? How? How? Why? Why? Why?

Now this is --

Wait. You know what? Let's forget the analysis and just enjoy the moment. Eat it, whitey!

AMERICA'S SECRET SHAME. Practically every fucking cracker asshole and the Indian guy at National Review are insisting that they've never heard anyone make fun of black people. But they all report widespread, indeed seemingly epidemic, anti-Semitism. You know, when people in the United States talked about ghettoes, I had no idea that's the kind they meant.

I used to think these guys and I lived in different worlds, but now I'm thinking in terms of universes.

Added flava: Obama campaign leaves a few Muslim folks out of a photo op, for reasons any sensible person could understand: winger honkies are outraged. "This incident once again shows he is part of anything other than a post-racial campaign," says Confederate [!] Yankee.

If Obama gets shot, I expect the Roberts Commission will rule that he was resisting arrest.

UPDATE. This excursion through the fever swamps has been clarifying for me. Before, I didn't understand why The Anchoress kept calling Obama's perfectly unremarkable behaviors "presumptuous." Now I realize she was just looking for a new way to say "uppity."

UPDATE II. erlking in comments: "Can we start talking about 'Obama Derangement Syndrome' now?"

KNEE JERK. At National Review, Maggie Gallagher pleads against gay marriage because she believes it will lead to government prosecutions of religious groups. Also because gay married people have orgies. She quotes "David Benkof, a gay columnist who gave up sex with men when he adopted a Torah-observant lifestyle":

I have never been at a soiree with multiple straight “committed” couples in which someone suggests we take off our clothes and see what happens, but I’m sad to say it’s happened with gay friends in long-term relationships. Of course, I know, many men cheat on their wives. But they almost never define their marriage as something that accommodates adultery.

I have to admit the whole Catholic Charities schtick is pretty brilliant, allowing conservatives who can't admit to themselves or others that they hate homosexuals to displace their anxieties upon a poor, defenseless major religion. But it might work a little better if they could write more than a few paragraphs without reflexively babbling about cartoon meathook buttseks.

Or, you know, maybe not. Maybe they just ought to go straight to the id, and march (or allow themselves to be pushed in giant vaudeville baby carriages) in their local Fourth of July parades wearing soiled pajamas, flapping their hands disgustedly and screaming PEE PEE! PEE PEE! It's not as if their argument would lose anything in dignity, and it would get us to the punchline faster.

THE WAY FORWARD. Well, that's it for Willie Randolph. I thank him for three seasons of joy and bitter disappointment, and a better mix thereof than we got with Art Howe. I wish Jerry Manuel luck, but the long-term course for the Mets is clear: Wally Backman. And, of course, drugs.

IN THE IMMORTAL WORDS OF MAX BIALYSTOCK: "DON'T HELP ME!" Earlier we mentioned conservatives who disingenuously complained they hadn't been given proper credit for debunking the Michelle Obama tape rumor. I didn't think they could top themselves, so hats off to National Review's Jim Geraghty:

The behavior of the mainstream media is sending a clear message to those of us on the right: do not ever help out the Obama campaign, even if you think the world would be well-served by debunking a ridiculous accusation, because no one will ever remember your efforts to get to the truth. Instead, you'll get blamed for spreading the malicious rumors.

One imagines Geraghty in a Boy Scout uniform, trying to muscle an old lady across a four-lane highway. A token of his sincerity may be seen a few posts later, where Geraghty brings up the unfortunate comments of Democrat Fred Hobbs (later referred to as "the Tennessee Democrats"), and admits "Obama has no ties to terrorists... of the al-Qaeda variety." Then, Bill Ayers, the Woods Fund, Rashid Khalidi, etc.

They often try to be courteous like that, only to find their helping hands rudely batted away. Maybe it's time they did some work on their people skills.

TERMINATOR 3. We are often cautioned not to "misunderestimate" the President, and his recent suggestion that brother Jeb may try for the job ("We've got another one out there") may be some kind of ploy to energize McCain's base. Certainly Republicans now have a compelling reason to establish a new party leader (that is, McCain's Vice Presidential candidate).

Of course, like most such Rovian plots, it will probably just further demoralize the country.

MORE VOICE STUFF. This one's a grab-bag of rightwing plaints: Father's Day, gun to a knife-fight, and the loneliness of the long-suffering commuter.

If you missed the one on Michelle Obama, now might be a good time to have a look, as conservatives are complaining that the "Whitey" Tape story is being pinned on them unfairly. Of course Larry Johnson got that ball rolling, and the smarter conservatives refused to fall for it. So instead of telling us that the story was true, they told us it was believable, given the towering evil of Mrs. Obama. It's an old blogosphere trick, but not so well known that it doesn't bear pointing out.

UPDATE. It's the fake/debunked/we-never-believed-it story that won't die! Today at neo-neocon:

If there had been such a tape on which Michelle Obama (or her husband, for that matter) had raged at "whitey"... Such a tape would have indicated a victim mentality and an anger that has persisted despite all her advantages and successes in life -- and, far more importantly, an attitude that would have belied her (or her husband's, had he been the source of the quote) [!] claim to be beyond race... The reason the fake story had such legs is that Michelle Obama is on record as having said a number of things that indicate she may in fact harbor just those feelings...

When you can work it like that, who needs slander?

TOUCH NOT THE CORNER-OFFICE-DWELLER. Tigerhawk concurs with a colleague: when attacking Obama, let us carefully avoid collateral damage to Republican interest groups:

At a moment of ascendant leftism and rising contempt for productivity, Republicans really ought to avoid bashing people who produce wealth, even when they play for the other team. Yes, it is tempting -- Obama's deeply offensive anti-business rhetoric and his sanctimonious promises for change make it very tempting to attack him when he involves people from the world of business in his campaign, but it is a temptation conservatives really ought to resist. Instead, they should applaud him for noticing that effective executives make a disproportionate contribution to the national well-being regardless of their political views.

Please review the talking points, comrades: Che Guevara, Hussein, Muslim, elitist, bitch wife, hates Whitey, etc. Stick to the material and there'll be no need to offend our heroic paper-pushers.

SHE HAS A DREAM. Last issue, the Weekly Standard gave us Andrew Ferguson's attack on Obama's insufficiently red-blooded American neighborhood. This week Noemie Emery joins the Culture-War Club with "It's Not Race, It's Arugula," basically an easy-reading edition of Michael Barone's essay describing Obama's and Hillary Clinton's supporters as "Academicians" and "Jacksonians," respectively, to which Emery mainly adds some laughs, e.g.:

The academicians' theme songs are "Kumbaya" and "Imagine," while Jacksonians prefer Toby Keith...

She also says Obama is "running to be the first Academician elected as president," which would seem to make Bill Clinton a Jacksonian, though Emery also says that "The interesting counterexample of course would be to see a black Jacksonian run against a white Academician, and if Colin Powell had chosen to challenge Bill Clinton in 1996, we might have seen this take place." When you're writing alternative history, loose ends can be a real bitch.

Emery's main point is that Obama's race isn't the problem that has him running so poorly against John McCain, it's his unJacksonian persona -- "nuance," "fairness," arugula, and so forth. In defense of this proposition, she posits a different version of Obama that her Jacksonians would go for -- still black, but more butch, and not in a Fred Williamson way either:

Now let us imagine a different candidate, one who looks like Barack Obama, with the same mixed-race, international background, even the same middle name. But this time, he is Colonel Obama, a veteran of the war in Iraq, a kick-ass Marine with a "take no prisoners" attitude, who vows to follow Osama bin Laden to the outskirts of Hell. He comes from the culture of the military (the most color blind and merit-based in the country), and not the rarefied air of Hyde Park. He goes to a church with a mixed-race congregation and a rational preacher. He has never met Bill Ayers, and if he did he would flatten him. He thinks arugula is a town near Bogota and has Toby Keith on his favorites list.

I don't know why she didn't give him a green lantern while she was at it. Or draw up an alternate (Bizarro?) McCain who can reinvigorate the Republican Party with his stirring rhetoric. As long as we're fantasizing, why not?

SHOT BY BOTH SIDES. I am a citizen of two Americas. No, not John Edwards' -- Peggy Noonan's. And to hear Noonan tell it in the Wall Street Journal, these Americas are not separated by anything so tiresome as income or class, but by the lingua franca of the commentariat, attitude and political affiliation ("Mr. McCain is the Old America, of course; Mr. Obama the New").

Noonan implies we must cleave to one America or the other, but I am torn:

In the Old America, love of country was natural. You breathed it in. You either loved it or knew you should.

In the New America, love of country is a decision. It's one you make after weighing the pros and cons. What you breathe in is skepticism and a heightened appreciation of the global view.

Like all citizens who have sung the National Anthem, attended a 4th of July picnic, taken an American History class in America, or just noticed what an amazing place this is -- that is to say, nearly everyone who lives here -- I grew up an America-lover. But eventually I also learned skepticism, which is apparently the opposite of patriotism, and awareness that there are other countries on the planet with their own interests, which forbidden knowledge, Noonan seems to think, makes it impossible for me to place my own country's interests first.

Old America: Tradition is a guide in human affairs. New America: Tradition is a challenge, a barrier, or a lovely antique.

The guidance of tradition, even as interpreted by such presumably patriotic persons as Supreme Court Justices, may take us in directions unexpected by Wall Street Journal writers. But by Noonan's lights, New Americans consider such generous readings of civil rights to be a refutation of the Old America. Where might they have gotten that idea?

The Old America had big families. You married and had children. Life happened to you. You didn't decide, it decided. Now it's all on you. Old America, when life didn't work out: "Luck of the draw!" New America when life doesn't work: "I made bad choices!" Old America: "I had faith, and trust." New America: "You had limited autonomy!"

After decades of sunny Reaganism -- promulgated in large part by Noonan herself -- that told us bad choices led to poverty and that each atomized citizen was the master of his entrepreneurial fate, this is rich to the point of vomitousness.

She goes on, and on, and on ("The Old: Smoke 'em if you got 'em. The New: I'll sue"), even dropping in the ridiculous but not unprecedented notion that Obama followed community organizing as a path to riches. What it all comes down to is something I've noticed before: that the old leftist slogan "the personal is the political" has been appropriated wholesale by conservatives. And in the last ditch, where they have reason to believe they currently reside, they will lean on the personal as never before. Because, really, it's all they have left.

UPDATE. There is some discussion in comments as to whether patriotism, even the wiseguy-leaks-furtive-tear kind cynically practiced here, is invariably toxic. Well, any kind of loyalty can be dangerous, but it's pretty hard to imagine life without it. Even personal loyalties can lead to ruin, and we can see that loyalty to something as large as a nation leaves that much more room for untoward consequences. But it also grants (in the ideal case, to which America-love is closer than most) room for dissent. That I can sometimes assert, as I have, that I hate this fucking country and wish to see it defeated by militant Islam (which totally rocks) without being torn to pieces by an angry mob shows that membership in America isn't quite the same thing as allegiance to a death cult.

Of course, membership has its privileges, and we can argue that it is what the United States does to other people, in all our names, that is the real moral problem. I hope we can address that in the election, but I don't deceive myself that the Democrats will wipe all traces of blood from our honor.

So what's my alternative? Japan stubbornly refuses to appoint me as a Living Treasure, though they may just be having trouble reading my application. I guess I'm stuck with the land in which I was born and the culture in which I am steeped, and will have to make the most of it.

PLUS, THEY SMELL. Katherine Mangu-Ward, the Reason author most likely to obsessively check her email for an offer from National Review, bravely takes on those socialist bastards at PETA for running a stunt that caused their interns some discomfort.

Rothbardian colloquy ensues:

I want to practice vagitarianism on the chick standing and holding the sign.

She may look hot from a distance, Guy, but I doubt she has a Brazilian down there.
More likely you're going to get a patchouli hair sandwich.

Plus, she'll probably claim you're trying to oppress her... somehow.

No, she'd be all for oral, just as long as she was on her period.

I've said before that libertarianism is conservatism for guys who are trying to get laid, but what is its appeal for guys who have obviously stopped trying?

MORAL FAILING. Ross Douthat:

Here's another way of looking at the issue of how social conservatives ought to view McCain's 1970s marital misconduct in the year 2008. Last July, I argued that Louisiana's David Vitter ought to resign his office after he more or less admitted to having frequented prostitutes. I stand by that position. However, if David Vitter - having conspicuously failed to resign - were to face off in a Presidential race against Barack Obama, I would be inclined to hold my nose and vote for Vitter...

Douthat is a Christian, so we can't be surprised by the moral relativism. And he's an Atlantic Monthly writer, so we can't be surprised that he wandered so clumsily into this rhetorical thicket (to follow Douthat's progress from "an America in which politicians had a more difficult time recovering from flagrant private misbehavior would be a better place to live and vote and marry in" to "The point is to deter misbehavior, not to protect the country from the perils of being governed by a rake" to "Regretting the passing of a particular moral standard does not require one to always vote as if that standard were still in place," see his two priors).

What we may wonder is: why does he bother? I guess half-baked theology is Douthat's hook. And it's a good one. In the rarefied high-end opinion market, wingers will approve any reliably rightish lad with a major media gig, and the God stuff is always welcome, even if it is not explicitly connected to the persecution of homosexuals. And gullible liberals will regard Douthat's tedious paradoxes and think, oh, this reminds me of that religious studies class I didn't like, I'm unqualified to judge, he must go around in a thick, uncomfortable brown robe muttering profundities; touch not the cloud-dweller.

The joke's on them, but not many of them will ever get it. Though they may spare a snort for the rubes attending Big Daddy in the megachurch -- while chastising themselves for their elitism in thinking so -- the Chestertonian ruse still confuses them. Some of us, of course, long ago learned to look quick whenever we hear morality mentioned, even in plummy tones, for the marketing angle. But that takes years of training, and requires the loss of that nagging yet oddly hopeful suspicion that one of the godly men who keep raiding one's pantry is really just so Christian that he's taking the fall for the others.

TOUCH OF WHITE. It's been a while since I gave Roger L. Simon much attention. My interest was rekindled by Tbogg, who noted that the Bo Derek of the War on Terror had been reminiscing passive-aggressively about the 60s, telling a whippersnapper that nothing comes close to the pot of '69 and "I can attest that 1968 and 2008 aren't remotely similar. And the enemy we are facing isn't remotely the same."

That's an odd thing for him to say, as in his fist-shaking mode Simon often makes nostalgic comparisons. For example, Spike Lee reminds him of Jesse Jackson, because Lee, who "for more than a decade... has barely made a film any of us can remember" (unlike ahem), now "plays the old identity/race card" with Clint Eastwood in order to summon back the limelight. And this makes him like Jackson, because Jackson also angles for a race-card comeback, for example... well, Simon gives no example, but we all know... why, just the other day he... well, neither one of these guys is white, okay? And that goes for O.J. Simpson and noisy Mexicans and other darker types with whom Simon traditionally associates historical calamity.

Speaking of which, Simon manages to drag Obama into it, too:

We don’t know which way we are going - toward a post-racial future or back to a racist past.

I have been rooting very hard for the former so it was with some wistfulness I read that Barack and Michelle Obama’s first date was to see Lee’s Do the Right Thing. I very much liked the film at the time (1989), but somehow I wish the Obamas had gotten together over, say, a college production of Aeschylus or perhaps a reading of Pushkin. I don’t want to think of their marriage emanating from the stew pot of American racial despair.

Of course if the Obamas' first date had in any way involved Pushkin or the Ancient Greeks, Simon would be using that as evidence for his previous claim that Obama's an elitist. That avenue blocked, Simon goes where his heart leads him: imputations of racism against black people.

Fans of rightwing Zdhanovism will enjoy the "liked the film at the time, but..." which suggests a new opinion adopted to suit new realities. Maybe that's the real difference between 1968 and 2008 to which Simon referred: back when Simon was wearing love-beads, only Birchers and hardhats talked like this.

SERVICE ADVISORY. Blogging will be infrequent through the weekend as I recover from a vitrectomy. Here's what a vitrectomy is. I'm not looking forward to it, or to the three or four post-operative days of keeping my head down. It will probably be like The Diving Bell and the Butterfly but with more screaming and beer.

UPDATE. Thanks to all concerned neighbors and friends. The operation appears to have gone well, and though I was at first disturbed to learn that I would experience it under "conscious sedation," I can't say as I remember much more than some weird tugging and prodding about the left orbital. The face-down thing is no picnic, particularly when I am trying to write, but writing is always some kind of agony, so I'm already sort of broken-in there.

THE SIN OF MAUDLIN CLODHOPPER. In case you're wondering how shitty a film critic Crunchy Rod Dreher was at the New York Post, get a load of his aesthetics:

I remember riding back to midtown in a cab from the Manhattan screening of some movie, can't remember which, and listening to the two well-known film critics sharing the cab with me talk about what we had seen. It was a very violent film of some sort, as I recall, and the thought occurred to me as we rounded Columbus Circle -- I do remember that part vividly -- these people don't have children. They could analyze the film more coolly than I -- who was not a father yet, but who would be in a few months -- in part because they didn't imagine, or didn't seem to imagine, what it would be like to raise kids in a society where lots of people had their moral imaginations informed by eviscerations and the like.

I think Dreher is only pretending not to remember the name of that film. And that's because he suffers from a guilty conscience. If he told it, we'd know when the incident took place, and we'd know how much longer Dreher took Uncle Rupert's money for a job he was clearly incompetent to perform.

Maybe, on or about this date, he went to his editor and admitted that he couldn't review movies as art, but only as moral medicine for the masses, or as things that did or did not hurt babies. But either the editor entered into a corrupt pact with Dreher to mask this revelation from the public, or he told Dreher to stop being such a fucking dink and do the job he was paid to do.

(Of course, it was the Post, so maybe the editor was too drunk to comprehend him.)

Either way, assuming the cab ride did not take place on his last day on the job, by commission or omission Dreher practiced prevarication. Being a stickler for moral perfection and shame for others, he should make a great public show of contrition for this, perhaps a barefoot march to the tomb of Manny Farber.

But he doesn't even seem to think he did something wrong. That's the problem with Christians. They can commit any kind of sin without blanching, so long as they can think up a moral-sounding excuse for it.

NEW VOICE POST UP. In this one, I complain of media bias: Obama is getting far more coverage than John McCain -- on rightwing blogs.

One obvious reason is that McCain's a hard sell and, unlike Fox News commentators, most bloggers aren't getting paid for this shit. But there's more to it than that, and if you'll help sustain my illusion of popularity by clicking through to the Voice, I'll tell you about it.

BOOK YOUR OWN FUCKING LIFE. At National Review, Mary Eberstadt does a riff on the Screwtape Letters, in which the atheist-demonic correspondent A.F. Christian (get it?) admits that godly "Dulls" made all the great art, no matter what Christopher Hitchens says:

Again with all due respect, it doesn’t help with this aesthetic problem to have Mr. Hitchens diss it by saying that “we [atheists] have music and art and literature, and find that the serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Schiller and Dostoyevsky and George Eliot than in the mythical morality tales of the holy books.” Never mind the first problem here, i.e. how many of those names on his greatest-hits list were Dulls themselves. And never mind, or try to anyway, the question of what explicitly atheist music and art and literature actually look like — I mean, it’s not as if Futurism and Constructivism and Abstract Expressionism and Performance Art never existed!! BTW, we’d be much better off if they hadn’t.

It's very cute, unless you consider that Eberstadt is the author of Home-Alone America: Why Today's Kids Are Overmedicated, Overweight, and More Troubled Than Ever Before and editor of Why I Turned Right: Leading Baby Boom Conservatives Chronicle Their Political Journeys. I haven't read them, but on the evidence of this piece, I'm guessing they're no Middlemarch or Henry V.

I love the old books and cathedrals too, but I'd give more credence to Eberstadt and scolds like her if they were producing something like those. Or could even point to anyone else who was. Good Charlotte doesn't count.

MORE LIFESTYLE CONSERVATISM. To better prepare us for the nightmare of Obamaism, Andrew Ferguson of The Weekly Standard warns that Hyde Park, Obama's Chicago neighborhood, is "different from anywhere in America."

First, William Ayers lives there.

"He's a guy who lives in my neighborhood," Obama said with a shrug... Obama's casual dismissal led people all across America, people who live in all kinds of communities without bombers, to look at each other and say: "Wow, what kind of neighborhood does Barack live in?"

Clearly the world has been waiting for this article. (Next week: an expose on Albuquerque, New Mexico, where Mark Rudd lives.) After beating up Brookline, Massachusetts as a warm-up, Ferguson tells us more:

[Hyde Park] is the most racially integrated neighborhood in the nation's most racially segregated city.

Now we're getting to the real dirt.

On three sides it is closed in by some of the most hellish slums in the country, miles of littered streets, acres of abandoned lots, block after block of shuttered storefronts and empty apartment buildings left over from the 19th century. These terminate abruptly at the edge of Hyde Park and give way to shade trees and lawns and stately brick mansions and huge, tidied-up apartment houses.

Ferguson tells us that long ago the University of Chicago effected the isolation of the neighborhood, building a "moat" to separate it from the downcast South Side. As a result, "Hyde Park lacks the freewheeling energy of a college town, and it lacks the surprises and variety of a healthy city neighborhood." It has no theatres, and not many good restaurants.

It sounds, in short, like a typical American suburb. I'm at least as suspicious of gentrification as Ferguson seems to be, but one would think this would endear Obama to millions of Americans who live in similar circumstances, even if their separation from the feared Other was the result of white flight, not a university real estate scam.

But, as with much else in this election season, the hook is really that Obama is black. Ferguson informs us that the black people who live in Hyde Park are rich, and that Hyde Parker Obama is viewed by some locals as "the white man in blackface in our community." After services at Trinity, which is in a much less palmy neighborhood than his own, Obama "would get the family in the car and go home" rather than hang out on a stoop for some ribs and a Mickey's Big Mouth.

As for Obama's neighbors, they too suffer from an authenticity shortfall. There is an "alarmingly high number of men wandering about looking like NPR announcers--the wispy beards and wire rims, the pressed jeans and unscuffed sneakers, the backpacks and the bikes." I guess if they weren't living in this hothouse environment, they'd be wearing Confederate flag t-shirts and driving pick-ups.

The idea that Obama, unlike Chris Rock in Head of State, has done alright for himself and lives accordingly is old news to most of us. But for the highly specific readership of The Weekly Standard, his nice house in a nice neighborhood summons ancient enmities: If black people and white people live together harmoniously, it is only because "paternalism" has shifted the natural order, and the strange clothing and high education level of such people are just further proof of their unnaturalness.