THE GHOST DANCE CONTINUES. I have noted, time and again, here and elsewhere, the weird habit among American right-wingers of insisting that pop culture artifacts they enjoy are "conservative." Doesn't matter whether the movies, rock songs, TV shows etc. that they adopt are overtly political or not -- if a piece of pop dross pleases them, then they are sure that it stands for low taxes or war in Iraq or some damn thing.

So I was pleased that someone some folks besides myself and Brad noticed this breathtakingly insane Wall Street Journal article by Andrew Klavan, which seeks to demonstrate that the latest popular comic-book movie is not merely a series of explosions, CGI effects, and lurid performances, but first and foremost a ringing defense of the Bush Administration -- even though it was made by the sort of Hollyweird players Klavan normally can't stop denouncing as evil cultural polluters (perhaps, in this case, the forces of decency threatened their families).

The brighter bulbs have found plenty of ripe comedy in the situation, so I will only add this: I recall another time in this country when politically engaged dumbasses became convinced that cultural portents such as Bonnie & Clyde, songs with drug imagery, and nude Broadway musicals all proved that the revolution was at hand. Junk culture is not a very good predictive mechanism, particularly when applied by folks who know most of their fellow citizens are sick to death of them and turn to the posters on their bedroom walls for validation.

EVERYBODY'S GOT A DREAM. Jim Lileks, having recently given us what his fellow analists call a "fisking" to a Garrison Keillor column that was three times length of the column, does something similar with Obama's Berlin speech. Lileks informs us that "'World citizen' is used as a badge of empathy that carries no responsibilities... it dilutes actual national citizenship, which naturally takes second place to World Citizenship." Also, Obama said the 9/11 viictims were from all over the world, but "most weren’t from all over the world. Most were Americans. Which makes sense, since the attack was explicitly aimed at America, not The Globe." In the unedited version, Lileks tells us that the Hudson River isn't really a river but a tidal estuary, America is a republic rather than a democracy, and the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy nor Roman nor an Empire.

This is the sort of tendentious crap in which Lileks has become a specialist. Something about Obama really brings it out in him, though. When he gets to the global warming part he actually writes, "Obama may have heard of the Dust Bowl..." Heh, just maybe! I really expected him to reproduce some Dust Bowl matchbooks to demonstrate his superior authority.

It goes on like this forever, and the point, such as it is, is that Obama's appeal to idealism is laughable to hard-bitten cynics like Jim Lileks. Of course that's just me being tendentious, as Lileks and his comrades have their own Shining City of the Hill, but theirs is built on endless wars, tax breaks for the wealthy, and hatred of homosexuals: it's a vastly more butch kind of idealism, which they believe, with reason, makes it easier to sell.

So they compare Obama's speech to "We Are The World" as a pointed mockery, because that global event took place during the Age of Reagan, and takes them back to a happier time when the fruitier sort of idealism was a mere sideshow, an indulgence to distract feather-haired fools while the grown-ups shoveled money from the National Treasury to their friends in the private sector. They have another old guy running for office now, and if he doesn't sprinkle fairy dust as effectively as the original, this can be blamed on the media's refusal to cover him: voters must take on faith that McCain will restore the natural order of the 1980s. Outside the land of dreams, this doesn't look like such a hot idea, but as long as we stick to symbology, it might just work.

THE FIRST TIME AS TRAGEDY, THE SECOND TIME AS FARTS. Obama's talking about moving troops from Iraq to Afghanistan. Sensing an opening, General Ralph "Blood 'n' Guts" Peters storms the breach with a squad of Howlin' Paradoxes:

Now their presidential candidate has announced that he won't bring all those troops home, but will simply transfer combat forces from Iraq to Afghanistan -- expanding that war. (He's discussed possibly invading Pakistan, too.)

And the left's quiet as a graveyard at midnight.

Where are the outraged protests from MoveOn or the DailyKos? I thought the extreme left felt sorry for our service members in harm's way and wanted to reunite them with their families.

Having nothing to say against Obama's prescription ("Yes, we could use more combat forces in Afghanistan") -- nothing coherent anyway ("I'm not quite ready to invade Pakistan without weighing the consequences and costs") -- the General instead directs his fire against a squadron of straw pacifists. Like a true action hero, the General likes to wisecrack while he rips through the enemy:

If the next president yanks our troops out of Iraq, all the progress disintegrates, Iran moves in and we have to re-invade to clean up the mess, will you enlist and do your part?

I know, I know: Educated people like you are too smart and too important to serve in uniform. The military's for dummies, for losers. Serious players stay home and blog and bitch over double espressos.

Along with their effete choice of beverage (real men drink instant, boiled over a flaming skull), the imaginary peaceniks are also assailed for "sitting in your basement blogging in your underwear at 3 a.m." Speaking of which, Ace O'Spades gets the General's back, and also gets credit for additional dialogue:

I'm not a big fan of the chickenhawk argument, but the left has long made it. And I asked similar questions a hundred times in the past: Fine, you're against the Iraq War. But you claim to be in favor of the Afghanistan War and even, on occasion, in favor of the Great Overmountain Invasion of Pakistan. So, um, Chickenhawk? How's blogging from Kabul?

Then he pours his Pibb Xtra over the crotch of his Stupid Hippie doll, and laughs the laughter of the righteous over the Hippie's weak bladder.

Inside jokes like these are fun for us dorks, but McCain's mainstream operatives are not likely to pick them up, figuring that John Q. Citizen won't know what the hell they're talking about. So if they want to ride their meme to glory, the General, O'Spades, and their comrades might try a public education campaign, alerting America to the perfidious people who blog for war from basements. As examples, they can take some of their old posts and change the names; for strats and tacts, they can emulate the left in 2004. It probably won't even work as well as it did last time, but let us encourage them to try.

NEW FRONTIERS. I'll say it again: Obama is black and therefore can still lose against these idiots. But it's nonetheless fun to see them digging so deep into their worn-out bag of used-up tricks. For example: Someone reminds the Ole Perfesser of Obama's celebrated 3-point shot. The feat was cheered by soldiers, which must have extra-deranged the Perfesser and led him to emit this:

Anyway, that's not so cool as Kass makes it sound. My high-school friend Steve Proffitt once made a more than full-court shot -- from the opposite end of the Maryville College gym, as he walked out the door -- over his shoulder, all the way to the far goal, nothing but net. He was so cool, he didn't even see it as he continued out the door without looking back. Now that's cool. And if he were running for President, I'd vote for him...

...unless he were running as a Democrat, in which case the Perfesser would say that's wasn't such a big deal, he knew this one guy who sank a basket from an airplane, or some shit.

They're actually attacking Obama's basketball game. To me this suggests desperation verging on madness. But maybe I'm misreading it. Seen another way, they might just be expanding their media options. Obviously no subject is too stupid for them, and they are also forming crucial new alliances with other alternative press outlets, as suggested by this Rod Dreher outreach ("The [National] Enquirer is actually a more solid investigative outfit than many people think"). With both the Enquirer and Ed Anger behind them, how can they fail? And meanwhile their operatives are still hard at work on Obama-Hitler comparisons that should prove convincing, especially after the Party has disseminated copies of Black Gestapo in key districts.

I used to think we owed the Founding Fathers an apology, but I'm beginning to think they owe us one.

PRUDES VS. NUDES. James Poulos tackles the important subject of nude yoga. He seizes upon a practitioner's claim that nudists are "celebrating our bodies":

We can strip off -- what a victory! It's all so dreadfully banal. Nudism is the new checkers. Only checkers has a set of rules and a point to it more complex and well-developed than celebration. That's sort of what a game is for -- withholding celebration until some quantum of meaning has been obtained out of participation in an order. Celebration as we take it is like stipulating that we've all just already played a game and everyone won. Celebration as we take it hinges on the idea that celebration shouldn't result from meaning but should result in it. That's bizarre enough on its own terms, and much more 'harmful' culturally speaking than playing a game where the winners of a game of team checkers get to get naked.

The post is titled "Self-Parody Watch," which I suppose is what makes Poulos a Post-Modern Conservative, and provokes several thoughts:

• If ever a story cried out for investigative reporting, this one does. Is Poulos on firm ground when he says "At least naked yoga isn't an orgy"? You know how hippies are; they may start by innocently celebrating their bodies, but this inevitably degenerates into a Siobhan McKenna Group Grope. At least I hope so. Are there any photojournalists who can look into this?
• Maybe I only speak for myself, but I have "celebrated" birthdays, the only quantum of meaning for which was obtained by the earth, which did the hard work of circling the sun since my last birthday. All I did was get born and stick around. Should we rethink birthday parties? I know people enjoy cake and presents, but perhaps it's not worth the moral hazard.
• I appreciate Poulos' right to "amused contempt," which is also my stock in trade, but anything Isis Phoenix says that justifies getting her kit off automatically trumps anything Poulous or I could say about anything. I don't have the philosophical training to explain it well, but I think it has something to do with Natural Law.

SHORTER ANN ALTHOUSE. So you think McCain was scurrilous, eh? Well I think you're scurrilous! How do you like that! Now I'm going to take your nose and stick it in your butt, like in that Jim Carrey movie I saw. Ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Obama is a traitor.

UPDATE. Inspired by Althouse, commenters suggest new terms for fake moderates of the living concern troll type. "Cryangulators," "Sinn Feign," and "Right-Wing Assholes" are among the winning entries.

BUCKLEY WAKE UP -- THEY HAVE GONE MAD. Just lookin' around the internet, seein' what the wingnuts are up to...


In the immortal words of Curly, "Ngggnnyahh!" Seems the Obama European Tour has brought out the best in Dr. Melissa Clouthier, who defensively explains:

This is about artistic tone. The profile view. The serious expression. The shading. When I saw the Obama flier picture, my mind immediately called up this Hitler image and I was struck by how similar they are in feel the color choice differences aside. Unnerving really.

In comments Clouthier is compelled to explain even more:

I did not say Barack Obama and Hitler are anything alike, just that the imagery is startlingly alike. It would be one thing for a flier in America in English called to mind that imagery, but when Obama is going to the very place Hitler spoke at and chose as the capital of the world under German supremacy, it’s alarming.

The only possible conclusion: Obama is trying to make himself look like Hitler to win votes.

But don't worry, not all conservatives are obsessing over Barack Hussein Hitler -- or even angrily comparing him, as Victor Davis Hanson does, to those other famous Nazis, James Dean and the Beatles, in defense of the new rightwing talking point that Obama is too popular. Some are hard at work firming up that John Edwards sex scandal story ("This story seems extremely strong. Given that it was the National Enquirer... most media outlets wouldn't touch it, but it is good to learn what appears to be the real story"). Others are following the Pope and lamenting that his healing presence came too late to save Jamie Lynn Spears and her bastard.

Meanwhile, a local government gives tax breaks to a local group that's bringing a whole lot of out-of-town business to the city, and conservatives won't defend it! But how can that be? Haw, haw, haw. You caught on, didn't you? I'm not as hard to see through as I think.

Thus do they fill their days in between Ghost Dances.

UPDATE. Just in from the rightwing semiotic squad: The Anchoress finds the flag on Obama's plane too small, and the preponderance of his campaign logo cause for grave concern: "It's starting to really make me uncomfortable. Obama is clearly trying to send a signal that he is a 'citizen of the world' type before he is an American." What -- like Diogenes? Or, even more sinister, Arthur Ashe?

Do these people even know how crazy they look to folks who don't spend all day looking for signs, symbols and portents in every goddamned little thing?

SHORTER JIM LILEKS: I am the king of Minnesota writers and will spend thousands of words to prove it. And Obama is so not one of us. Why? Well, isn't it obvious? I'm a hard-working gas station attendant.

SOUTH CENTRAL PUT HIS SOUL IN THE DEEP FREEZE/SHE GAVE HIM HER KEYS. Forgot to mention that I saw Passing Strange just before it closed on Broadway. I understand that Spike Lee is preparing a film version, which pleases me, because the show demands far more attention than it got.

Some good friends of mine have been raving to me about Stew's songwriting for years. I never got around to seeing him before I saw this show, which he narrated and wrote with his collaborator, Heidi Rodewald. Stew's a large, ovoid black man who has clearly learned patience from being a major talent in a market ill-equipped to reward anyone like him for it. His stolid, ironical manner communicates this, as does his play. This is especially surprising because Passing Strange is frankly autobiographical and even more frankly about the burdens of artistry, like many awful plays, movies, novels, albums etc by artsy people before him, memories of which even now cause my sphincter to clench. But Stew's story, like The Sorrow of Young Werther and Withnail and I and "I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight" and The Ginger Man and a precious few others, muscles over the hump of narcissism into revelation.

The through-line is simple and time-honored: a callow youth, full of the desire to make good, forsakes his family and goes on a journey. Young Stew -- in the play, The Young Man -- is a moody black kid in suburban Los Angeles, endlessly annoyed by his bourgie Mom's insistence that he go to church and get with the program. Tempted by a cute chorister, he joins the local church music program, and the music director's tales of Jimmy Baldwin and Josephine Baker and the treasures awaiting the young, gifted, and black in Europe convince the Young Man to break out and claim for himself.

This is a fine start, elevated by the director's heartbreaking revelation that he himself has been denied the pleasures of European exile by his "slavery" to the church. It's a slavery that, the play suggests, is really his own cowardice, and it sets a tone for The Young Man's journey: wherever he goes, he takes his internal shackles with him.

The free-and-easy culture of Amsterdam gives The Young Man's soul some much-needed air, and his libido a workout, but he only learns too late the cost of free love: once he crosses certain emotional frontiers, even in an open city, he can't go back. In Berlin his mind is humorously but genuinely stimulated by performance-art culture -- when the hardcore Berliners intimidate him, he defensively intimidates them back with "South Central L.A." bullshit, aggressively confronting them with complicated soul-shakes. And when he chants in Germanic performance, "My pain fucked my ego and I called the bastard art," it's joke but it's also a window into his state of mind. When his Berlin girlfriend calls him on his poses, he can't give them up -- not just because he's ashamed to admit them, but also because they're part of the self that he created to get himself this far in a frighteningly unfamiliar word.

The Narrator is onstage throughout, watching both his young Self and the characters he encounters. In the Broadway production, Stew's performance mode was mildly engaged but mostly removed. I couldn't tell at first whether that was because Stew isn't really an actor -- Oscar Levant and Dexter Gordon were also impenetrable in similar circumstances -- or because the style called for the Narrator to bear witness stoically and leave the feeling to us. I began to lean toward the latter interpretation when it became clear that The Young Man's mother was dying, and that he would not make it home before she went. When Stew explained, blandly, that The Young Man "could not accept love without understanding," and his dying mother suddenly turned from The Young Man and cried directly to Stew, "How do you feel about it now?" I burst into tears. Was it because I had played Berlin and Amsterdam, too, and left behind a mother who never understood? Or was it because I was feeling what anyone with a heart would feel -- that when you dare to reach beyond expectations you must also expect to leave a trail of hurt? Busted up as I was, Stew didn't flinch, and I think it was better that he didn't. Nabokov told his Cornell students, when he read aloud to them the death of Jo from Bleak House, "This is a lesson in style, not in participative emotion." But he must have known some of them would weep, even as they took the lesson.

Stew was very much front and center at the end, tying up the loose ends. I'm not sure how successful he was at it. Certainly he didn't possess the certainty with which the Chimney Man redeemed Jelly Roll Morton at the end of Jelly's Last Jam. But Stew's story was less mythic than specific, and to the extent that it clicked -- not as a Broadway hit; it only lasted five months -- it was mostly in its resonance for any auditor that knew what it was to break through a barrier and still feel he had left something behind. One late line collapsed the house: "You know it's weird when you wake up one morning and realize that your entire adult life was based on the decision of a teenager." I think that line is practically Shakespearean, and reflects what's wonderful in the play: the deep understanding that we can't know what we've done, or who we've become, until it's way too late to do anything about it.

And oh, yeah, the production was brilliant, with good use of the stage and gestural Paul Sills acting. And the songs are beautiful. If you didn't like Rent, don't worry, neither did I, and this is much, much better. That Stew has a future, as of course he always had.

GAWD, THE CLUB IS FULL OF POSERS TONIGHT. Pressing the back of her hand to her forehead, fluttering her eyelids wearily, and striking a despondent pose, National Review scold-in-residence Lisa Schiffren denounces "The Media's Anti-Substance Bias" as regards our current Presidential campaign. "If the standard [for success] is 'sizzle,' or sex appeal," says Schiffren, "then any rational, substantive argument is doomed to lose..." She decries the "dog and pony shows" that "dazzle our media," and compares the situation to "American Idol." The voters are also to blame: they don't dig McCain's "irony" like Schiffren does, and his "straight-forward, informational presentation only works with people who want real information. (Sigh.)"

Of course, it is the popularity of that cursed blackamoor Obama that has Schiffren talking this way. She was much, much more into sizzle, dogs, and ponies during the late, lamented heyday of Fred Thompson, when she wrote:

The former Senator’s most salient attribute is his persona. He has a large, comforting, commanding presence that Hollywood directors have seen fit to cast as an admiral, the director of the CIA, and even the President. His slow drawl, big eyes, and wrinkles make him the very image of the respected Southern lawyer. He is an excellent communicator, sympathetic, easy to watch, and never grating...

Neither did Hollywood Fred's extremely thin qualifications ("Thompson frequently fills in for ABC radio host Paul Harvey, and gives short 'position paper' talks on issues") bother Schiffren, so long as he kept working his presentational skills ("He is diplomatic, uses language better than any of the others, and has that wonderful deep voice... he could get away with attacking the fragile Hillary or the sainted Obama better than any of the others...").

Now that the Democratic candidate is a media phenom and his opponent a puffy dotard, Schiffren is all Dogme 95, disgusted by cheap appeals to emotion. Let us have substance, she demands! Presumably, when the press starts giving more coverage to McCain's multiple senior moments in discussion thereof, she'll wonder whatever happened to the good old days when all anyone ever asked of a President was that he'd been tortured by the Viet Cong.

UPDATE. In the course of her hilarious advice to der Alte ("A speech coach should be on the campaign plane... thoughtful, specifically empathetic and directed approach might also work with those mid-western blue collar voters who flocked to Hillary..."), Schiffren actually says, "as E.M. Forster said, memorably, 'Only connect.'" I refuse to believe that anyone could be this much of a fraud out of a mere desire to deceive. Schiffren is clearly trying to impress her peers, and attain super-villain status among them. I mean, that's the only explanation I can think of -- they can't be paying her for this shit.

BREAKING THE SANE BARRIER. National Review "editor" Kathryn J. Lopez has been pretty crazy lately, but I think she's officially outdone herself:

I have MSNBC on and I'm not listening to Barack Obama's Jordan press conference. Which is the point of this post.

I'm not proud, but the truth is, he is so not-impressive off-script that you easily forget that this is SOMETHING BIG you're watching. He's umming and throat-clearing and looking and sounding out of his league. Which is what he is, of course. But we don't always see the reality for what it is, because he can deliver a good speech and work a crowd. I may not be listening, but I'm appreciating the clarifying moment.

I'm used to hearing them say that Obama's not a good speaker, but Lopez's suggestion that we are distracted from the reality of Obama's bad speech-making by Obama's good speechmaking -- to which Lopez is immune because she's not paying attention -- is, I think, an artful paraphrase of the riddle that made the robot blow up in "I, Mudd."

As for K-Lo's conclusion:

McCain may not rally a trial, but there's there there that could plausible be commander-in-chief of a nation at war (really, we are, remember? It's not just over there.)

I'm pretty sure this is a paraphrase, too, but I haven't read enough Guillaume Apollinaire to be sure.

UPDATE. Fixed bad link.

AN END TO TOKENISM. The Ole Perfesser and Co. say the New York Times is liberal, dying, will be sorry come November etc.

Let's get the decks cleared once and for all: have the Times stop sending Zev Chafets to do magazine cover stories on Rush Limbaugh and Mike Huckabee; fire David Brooks and William Kristol; and stop giving op-eds to Max Boot, Ross Douthat, James Dobson, Edward Luttwak, Fred Kagan, Paul Bremer, Tunku Varadarajan, Doug Feith, Bruce Barlett, Ann Althouse, The Ole Perfesser, et alia.

In return, the Wall Street Journal can lose Thomas Frank.

If that doesn't seem like a fair trade to you, please be informed that fairness has nothing to do with it.

UPDATE. In a hyperventilation worthy of L. Kudlow in his frosted nose era, The Anchoress says when the Times politely suggested that John McCain's op-ed writers try another draft, they denied McCain's right to "free speech." Requiring a periodical to publish something it doesn't want to publish sounds more like the Canadian way than ours, but if The Anchoress really believes this, I have a couple thousand words on what a dunce she is that, I'm sure she'll agree, the First Amendment requires she post at her blog.

UPDATE II. Tbogg points out the bitter tears of Roger L. Simon. Apparently the Times published a few of Simon's items once upon a time. Then -- without warning -- they rejected one! Simon's conclusion: "The Times is no more 'fair and balanced' than Fox News... Bias is as American as apple pie."

One little reversal, and the whole (media) world is against them. What keeps them from ever growing up, do you suppose? My guess is that wingnuts give off a kind of reverse ethylene, and when they become clustered (as in thinkthanks, National Review cruises, etc), the concentration inhibits ripening.

UPDATE III. Fixed gas. Thanks, Marc!

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP. This one's about the New Yorker cover that flipped people out last week. I'm really doing this stuff for future generations, who without documentary evidence might be tempted to disbelieve the stories old men will tell them about the Dark Times. But maybe it's as hard to believe and readable right now, too.

YOUR OWN LYIN' EYES, AND OTHERS'. The longer Americans believe their country's going to shit, the more conservatives insist it's all in their minds. Shortly after concurring with Phil Gramm that his fellow-countrymen are a bunch of whiners, the Ole Perfesser and likeminded operatives leap on a Rassmussen poll that shows half of Americans believing that the press paints a bleak picture of the economy and a rosy picture of Barack Obama.

Astonishingly, the same poll shows that "Only 34% of Americans believe the United States has the world’s best economy." Since it has been scientifically proven that evil reporters have been playing Jedi mind-tricks on us, shouldn't citizens be snorting up fat lines of irrational exuberance and launching into Larry-Kudlow-style "America is back" monologues?

The force of habit, not to say brainwashing, is powerful, so if the Republicans pull these gimp-strings hard enough, they'll win some votes even if Bush goes door-to-door molesting children and the National Debt gets so high we have to sell Hawaii to Saudi billionaires to make the vig. But there's a big difference between rounding up a few weak-minded stragglers and the mass psychosis to which these people are clearly accustomed, and for which they are clearly nostalgic.

Could this be the year in which Mencken's Law is broken, and somebody goes broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people?

THE ANCHORESS ADVISES ON COMEDY. No, really. Under the ridiculous pseudonym she uses when she's not pretending to live in a hutch, Thee Anch tells us how the Obama New Yorker cover could have been amended for maximum godly yucks:

In fairness, the reason some thought the cartoon would be misconstrued was that it was unfinished satire. The artist, Barry Blitt, simply did not go far enough; he should have included a "Honk if you love jihad" bumper sticker on the back of Obama's caftan, had Fidel Castro sitting nearby, and displayed a thermostat set to either "very cold in winter" or "sweaty in summer."

This is clearly mean to set, as David Frum once claimed to have witnessed when a Mark Steyn column was mysteriously disseminated throughout an airplane he was in, "the laughs exploding from the seat in front of me like artillery shells out of a howitzer" (which tells you everything you need to know about how conservatives experience humor). I am reminded of Groucho's comments (as rendered in Joe Adamson's bio) after the Marx Brothers screened roughs of one of their films. "Will they laugh?" asked Groucho. "Laugh? Look, they'll piss," said Chico. "I know," said Groucho, "but will they laugh?" Maybe The Anchoress should warm up with a few submissions to Reader's Digest.

Nothing stokes the hilarity like analysis, so The Anchoress takes it to the next level:

Satire is meant to be broad but -- for whatever reason, perhaps precisely because we cannot gauge Obama’s sense of humor [??? - ed.] -- the artist pulled his punch. In so doing, he ended up confusing and infuriating the Left and amusing the Right, who not only got the insult but found it particularly funny that, in their tortured explanations, the Left gave more and more exposure to those extreme ideas. Oh, irony!

Yeah, Castro, a bumper sticker, and a thermostat would have turned that around like a priest, a rabbi, and a minister. But seriously, folks: The Anchoress pleads for more laffs on Obama and, to raise the comedy stakes, sez she's doing it for Obama's own good:

Obama — if he is smart — will heed history and lighten up, before he falls from a glorious height and lands with a very cartoon-like thud. No one wants to watch him walk away with his head between his feet.

Except The Anchoress, whose blog has been an unrelenting hymn of hate toward Obama for months, and plenty of others like her. Obama has gotten off some good cracks -- like this one on Tyra Banks -- but lately he's had to focus on beating back all kinds of crazy shit about himself and his wife, promulgated by people like The Anchoress. That would harsh anyone's sense of humor. Now she's complaining that Obama doesn't make enough jokes. Truly the Lord works in mysterious ways.

But in case you've been taking her seriously, here's some material she's written for Obama:

If he truly believed that the satirical edge was missing -- and thus misleading -- he should have himself made the content plain with a genial laugh and a concurrence: "Wait," Obama could have said, "where's my fake birth certificate hanging on the wall? Why doesn't my wife have a Jackie Kennedy pillbox hat on her head? He left out my hammer and sickle!"

Can't you just hear the laughs exploding like howitzer shells? I just don't understand why Democrats don't take more seriously the advice offered to them by their mortal enemies.

RAISING THE LEVEL OF DISCOURSE. "I'm pretty sure this is photoshopped, but either way it says volumes about Obama's vapid sloganeering..." -- Mark Hemingway, The Corner.

I just drew a picture of McCain dropping a load in his pants. (puts thumbs under lapels) I await our worthy opponents' rejoinder.

SHORTER DAVID BROOKS. When Americans want change, they choose Republican leadership, which is why in the depths of the Great Depression they returned Herbert Hoover to power.

NATIONAL REVIEW: OBAMA IS A FAG. Former TV critic lists top 10 reasons why "Real Men Vote For McCain" which, in addition to being one of the very few NR articles to support McCain without evident embarrassment, portrays the Democratic candidate as anathema to the butch: "Obama supports higher taxes for a government-run nanny state that will coddle all Americans like babies," "Obama gets support from Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks, and every weenie in Hollywood," "Obama is married to a bitter, angry lawyer," etc.

In case some of the brethren have lost their decoder rings, Peter Kirsanow spells it out at The Corner: Obama "projects weakness," and not just "the vacillating, flip flopping weakness of your garden variety politician," but a "screaming, flashing, neon light on the forehead weakness." Not only is Obama a screamer, like all liberals; he's also a flasher. One wonders why Kirsanow didn't try to work "flaming" into the formulation. Maybe they do have editors at National Review after all.

Kirsanow also finds weakness in Obama's "attitude and demeanor." He doesn't really explain, though he does mention famous bachelor Adlai Stevenson, claim (without supporting examples) that "when Obama tries to talk tough it sounds either silly or plaintive," and make a jerking motion with his fist near his mouth while poking his cheek with his tongue.

"It may say something unflattering about human nature," says Kirsanow, "but everybody gets it." Indeed we do. The question is, what's the point publishing this in a wonky online magazine, when its intended audience barely knows how to read? Kirsanow would have had better luck reaching them by scrawling a seriously simplified version of his post on an outhouse door, printing it on a gimme cap, or painting it on Carl Edwards' Ford Fusion. (I would suggest they forward the top 10 to Larry The Cable Guy, but it's really not up to his standards.)

QUICK TAKES. Charles Krauthammer is mad that Obama will appear at the Brandenburg Gate. Reagan "earned the right to speak there because his relentless pressure had brought the Soviet empire to its knees," says Krauthammer; Kennedy "was representing a country that was prepared to go to the brink of nuclear war to defend West Berlin." What has that punk Obama done? I am in some sympathy -- I felt the same way when The Knack played Carnegie Hall, and when people were comparing George W. Bush to Winston Churchill.

But in my old age I have accepted the realities of modern marketing, and things being what they are I'm glad this year's Democratic candidate has some understanding of them too. The Republicans certainly have acknowledged them. Their new thing is to create videos critical of Michelle Obama which they hope will go viral, as the kids say, and contribute to their big Scary Negro campaign. When their festival opens in Minneapolis, they will have plenty of dry ice, strobe lights, and jungle drums in place to amplify their message.

So I can't blame Obama for his audacious photo, film, and possible music video op. You can't beat Big Bullshit with flexi-discs.

THE LAST REFUGE OF A WINGNUT. Rod Dreher points to a French academic's book which contradicts long-accepted ideas about the Islamic role in spreading Greek thought in the West. Edward Said et alia said it was big; the new guy says it barely existed. As usual when someone says something bad about Islam and not everyone in the universe applauds, Dreher yells thought police:

...many in the academic establishment have set out to ruin its author, Sylvain Gouguenheim, by tarring his as a racist and a tool of the right wing. Some medievalists have come to his aid, saying that it's a perfectly legitimate question and area of inquiry. But the politically correct academic police de la pensee are out for his head.

First, I checked Dreher's link, which is to Le Figaro and unhelpfully in French. Babelfish gave me a suspect but hilarious translation ("D' other researchers choose Libération to express their 'stupor' in a signed letter... The guards of the doxa leave their hinges"), which nonetheless shows the article to be highly prejudiced against the unhinged doxa guards -- that is, the petitioners against Gouguenheim.

But not everyone in Dreherland sides with the chief. One commenter points out another story about the controversy from the International Herald Tribune, which is in English and makes clear (as Dreher does not) that Gouguenheim has plenty of mainstream support. And several commenters point out that it's not thought-policing to point out that the guy's theory is full of shit.

Dreher updates:

Just to clarify, it's beside the point whether or not the historian Gouguenheim is correct in his theory. The point is, he should be able to raise the question, and to be able to be wrong in his theory, without being professionally ruined by the academic thought police.

Ruined? I notice his book is still selling. And, with the support of Le Figaro, Le Monde, and every Muslim-hater in the Western World, we expect Gouguenheim will become an international "contrarian" superstar, like Oriana Falacci or Camille Paglia. For people like that, the outcry from colleagues is the best possible advertising.

Dreher is a professional schismatic who owes his entire Crunchy Con following to the massive persecution complexes of like-minded vegetarian Jesus freaks who consider themselves the one true church of conservatism, as proven by the contempt in which all other conservatives hold them. That such a person would fail to recognize the selling power of apostasy is nearly unbelievable.

So unless he's faking -- never a longshot with this bunch -- the best explanation for Dreher's thickness is this: conservatives, even the fringier conservatives like him, have reached a point in their degeneracy where they must believe other people are trying to silence them. It doesn't matter that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, they are not being silenced at all, but merely called out on their bullshit -- to their fragile psyches, it's the same thing: an intolerable assault on their egos that, if not repelled, will result into the obliteration of their carefully-constructed personalities. So of course any opposition loud enough to reach their ears is Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini all rolled into one.

A pity that Dreher and Jonah Goldberg fell out; they have so much in common.