A MODERN ENCOUNTER.

THE PATRIOT GAME. The Tea Party organizers did a fine job this time, not least in tamping down the loony rhetoric of the first one I attended. The speakers at Wednesday night's New York event went instead for more ordinary conservative palaver with just an edge of hysteria, including patriotic symbolism, odes to the storied past, and tax populism of the old school -- not so much Boston 1773 as Orange County early 1960s.

As I mentioned in the Voice item, some in the crowd were a little on the edgy side. Contrary to the brief feints at bipartisanship on the dais, the sub rosa comments I heard were almost uniformly anti-Obama -- socialist, fascist, teleprompter, Michelle is ugly, etc. He was clearly their hate object, and they roared with anger on those occasions when his name was mentioned from the stage. But those occasions were more rare, this time: the duplicitous actor was less focused on than the duplicitous act -- that is, their betrayal.

Speaker after speaker talked about golden days of yore, whether the age of lower taxes or the age of muskets and tricorners, and how those glories had been taken away from them. They couldn't bring themselves to say that this had been done by a majority of American voters in the last election -- the election was not an election to them, but a supernatural disaster engineered by shadowy forces who did not have the country's best interests at heart. So they stressed, over and over again, that they were the People, they were America, and they were going to take their country back.

When I was growing up in Connecticut, we had a little shop called the Patriot Bookstore that sold books by Robert Welch and William Buckley, records by John Wayne and Walter Brennan, pamphlets, flag decals, etc. The motif was colonial, bunting and eagles and all that, but the thinking was pure Goldwater. I had some relatives who were Birchers, and they swung the same way. They too were America, not because they had attained an electoral majority -- in fact, you see much more of these people when they're in defeat -- but because they were able to imagine themselves at Bunker Hill, fighting Communists.

I'm sure the protesters also want to keep more of their paychecks; so, for that matter, do most of us. But the animating force of these events is not tax policy -- that's not how you get crowds going. The uniting force is grievance. For some the betrayal may have first come at Yalta, or in Dean Acheson's State Department, or by eggheads or outside agitators or limousine liberals or hippies or San Francisco Democrats, or some combination thereof. But the overarching theme on Wednesday was that somehow they (who were America) had been disenfranchised -- whether by greed or by the Comintern or by 192 Electoral Votes, it didn't matter. It's very like real patriotism, in that the motherland is within one's bosom. But it is not necessarily anywhere else.

THE BEST MEDICINE. I see the new rightwing rapid-response talking point is that their own unfortunate use of the teabagging nomenclature is the liberals' fault because they laughed at them.

American Conservative Daily says that when patriotic Americans hear "teabag," then "the images of Boston Harbor, taxes and American history immediately come to mind." Of course, they're only thinking of those things so they won't get a boner. "In the marble bosom of the socialist salon," scoffs The Next Right, "teaparties would seem to be the stuff of humor." Conservatives, on the other hand, laugh when bums are set on fire, and at "Home Improvement" reruns.

Don Surber is enraged that Anderson Cooper made such a joke -- and expresses it under the headline "Anderson Cooper Gags." He also says something about "report the news straight." Well, at least he knows what a joke is when it's not directed at him and his fellow yokels, and he does grasp that Cooper's jest "played on an oral sex reference in tea bagging," which shows he sometimes ventures outside of West Virginia, where the practice is known as the Family Reunion Dinner.

Infinite Monkeys denies all humorousness and insists that it's "tea party," not "teabagging," which is rather like Harvey Korman insisting "It's not Hedy, it's Hedley" in Blazing Saddles.

They remind me of a few other things, too: scolds who complain about "inappropriate laughter"; Frank Booth in Blue Velvet hissing "Don't you fucking look at me!"; and pretty much any other humorless dink who can't stand the disrespectful attention of others because he takes himself so damned seriously.

STUPID HIPPIES. Hey, man, I see the pigs are trying to co-opt our groovy revolution with some kinda study whatchamacallit. They're trying to make us look like the oppressors! But don't worry, man -- some of the brothers dodged the pigs long enough to get the word out.

Jonah Goldberg is like playing it cool ("I'm taking a nap or launching cocktail hour"). He's gotta take it easy, you know -- if they catch on that he's not really disabled, they might take away his wingnut welfare. So we got brothers and sisters from off-campus backing him up in solidarity.

But Andy McCarthy is totally heavy, man! Check him out: "The only conceivable surprise is that it is so blatant and has happened so soon." Yeah, man -- it's going down right fucking now! Helter Skelter! Then he quotes himself from an earlier thing called "Obama's Assault on the First Amendment" -- y'see, this fascist Obama pig was like assaulting the First Amendment before he was even inaugurated -- that's how big a fucking fascist pig he is!

I know the squares aren't digging us right now, man, but just wait till they check out our demonstrations on Wednesday -- when they see us taking it to the streets, they'll be down for the whole thing! Remember: They got the numbers, but we got the gun nuts! But, psst... just make sure to bring the "tea" tomorrow, okay? Because I wanna get my head straight for when the shit goes down.

(Aaaaaannnd.... scene. Really, I envy them their mental youth, and if I thought any of them were actually going to get stoned and laid, I'd say they should go for it. Since that's unlikely -- though I'd be happy to hear otherwise -- I just have to ask: you guys do know how this story turns out, right? And don't tell me this time you have the internet -- all that does is make the music worse.)

EITHER MARY MAGDALENE GOES OR I DO, JESUS! Marilyn Chambers has passed, and Jesus fan Rod Dreher rushes to denounce her. Some of the brethren mention that this is less than Christian of Crunchy Rod, and he esplodes:

There is nothing wrong with judging the lives any one of us have lived. I cannot know Marilyn Chambers' soul, but from the evidence of her life, it was wasted. Anybody who spends his or her life as a porn star has wasted it... If you hate Christians like me, I wear your cheap scorn like a badge of honor. Funny, though, how you keep coming back to this blog.

He's right -- I do keep coming back; but only because, when it comes time to release the lions on these people, I want to remember why I needn't be sentimental about it.

SHIP OF FOOLS. How has the Right adjusted to the post-pirate reality? Can Democrats get a little respect from the bloodthirsty brethren for blowing some pirate heads open? Let's check in with one of their preeminent crackers:

The pirates are teenagers. Yes, and we all know that when you are killed by a teenager you are not as dead. Lefties will now begin caterwauling over how there are no job opportunities for them and they are “forced” to sell drugs, er, hijack ships...

If Obama took to dragging the corpses of the pirates behind his limo, Surber would declare that he wanted them close by because he likes to hug and kiss pirates. Then Surber would cry, "I'm goin' back to the wagon, boys, these shoes are killin' me," and exit to traveling music.

Oh, I'm not missing the whole black thing, either, but with these gomers it's so customary as to be hardly worth mentioning.

We should have gone with my plan, which was to have Obama announce, without their foreknowledge, that he was giving an expeditionary force of rightbloggers a letter of marque and one of the old ships from South Street Seaport to sail over to Somalia for some privateering.

THESE ARE PEOPLE OF THE LAND. THE COMMON CLAY OF THE NEW WEST. YOU KNOW... MORONS. As someone who's actually been to a Tea Party, I can tell you that they're fascinating events and you should try to attend one in your area on April 15. You've probably heard that these parties are dependent on often shameless shilling of major rightwing organizations. They are, in part -- but not entirely.

That's easy to forget, because of the appalling bad faith of the phenomenon's promoters. High-traffic political operatives like Glenn Reynolds and Michelle Malkin have for months been selling the Tea Parties like telemarketers in heat, and at the same time declaring them "grassroots" events. (Reynolds placed a particularly ballsy example of this in Monday's New York Post, claiming tea partiers "aren't the usual semiprofessional protesters who attend antiwar and pro-union marches. These are people with real jobs" -- as if union people don't have jobs [that's why they call them labor unions, Perfesser], or the millions who protested the Iraq War in 2003 are still out there with placards, semi-professionally protesting or waiting at the shape-up for a gig.)

But it's not a total con. People come to these things, sometimes in great numbers. They're not zombies summoned by Glenn Beck, but real people with whom the tea party idea resonates.

And if past events and present promotion are any indication, on April 15 what they'll be hearing is that the President of the United States is a socialist and/or a communist who ignores the Constitution and must be resisted as a usurper with revolution. There'll be complaints about high taxes, of course, but everyone complains about that. The main message is that Obama is an illegitimate leader, and that the folks holding the signs, notwithstanding the electoral results, are the true voice of America.

I'm not cherry-picking, folks. This is how they talk. You won't read about it in the promo pieces, but if you go among tea partiers, that's what you'll hear.

You can see why the high-level operatives spend most of their times talking about grass-rootsy authenticity of the tea parties -- how they's all jes' folks, includin' the perfessers, newspaper columnists, and former members of Congress -- rather than about the message. They want people who don't attend these events -- that is, most Americans -- to know that they draw crowds, because that suggests power and gets respect. But if Malkin, Reynolds, or the rest of them went up front and said, "We represent a national movement that believes the Muslim pretender Barry Soweto to be a fake President, believes the rich should hole up in a gulch with a perpetual motion machine until the poor cry for them to rule (unless the rich want to rule socialistically, in which case never mind), and wants paupers taxed the same as billionaires," they might receive a different kind of publicity than they've been getting.

In other words, the reason to oppose them is not because they are somehow not real or summoned under false pretenses; the reason to oppose them is that they're nuts.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP about the Somali pirate story and its uses by the rightwing blog community. While we are always impressed with the brethren's ability to bellow catch-phrases and do other political goon-squad business, they are also capable of more scholarly approaches, even rabbinical attentiveness to philosophical details.

Thus, where the ordinary reader would be mainly pleased for the captain and proud of the Navy, with Obama very far down the list of people of whom they would even think, rightbloggers sought painstakingly to establish Obama's lack of a role in the victory (or his many malfeasances within that victory) and to build little twisting logic-bridges to lead readers to the conclusion that the success of this mission proved the feebleness of the President's piracy policy, which just this week became one of the nation's many pressing concerns.

One of my favorite bits, for which the column had no room, was Michelle Malkin's terse dispatch, in which she quoted a Vice Admiral to the effect that "Washington had rejected negotiations with the pirates" and followed up, "Would have been nice to hear those words directly from the commander-in-chief." Maybe he says patriotic things his tongue catches fire or something. Of course, if the President went on TV and performed such chest-pounding as Malkin prescribes, we would have heard that he was trying to hog the limelight. It's a deep game and may convince dozens.

PROJECTION ROOM. Crunchy Rod Dreher catches Top Movies That Are Really About ME fever. A correspondent writes,

This weekend the Frau and I watched the Jack Black/Mos Def oeuvre called "Be Kind, Please Rewind"... After the credits rolled, we looked at each other and said "Hey this is a Crunchy Con movie!" Question: has anyone compiled a definitive list of Crunchy films?

Dreher calls for readers to nominate such films, starting himself with Babette's Feast and Big Night ("great stories that explore the sacramental nature of food") and the Dork of the Rings trilogy. The suggestions are simultaneously full of self-flattery and absolutely devoid of self-awareness ("Gone With the Wind is another cautionary tale for the Crunchy Con constituency. How do you avoid becoming that kind of unjust, some might say evil agrarian society and still stay true to your Crunchy Con principles?" Since when is that a problem for them?).

One guy names a few dozen great directors (including John Ford and Stanley Kubrick) and says their "work can be profitably viewed through a Crunchy Con lens." Crunchyism, like Jesus, goes with everything.

Once again conservatives make a bad thing worse, taking the loathsome AFI list-making mania and using it to amplify their already massive self-regard. For religious people they're certainly insecure.

Amazingly, no one mentions what I thought were the obvious choices: The Mosquito Coast, The Rapture, Land Without Bread, and especially Lost in America -- I can easily imagine Dreher screaming at his family about the Core of the Easter Nest Egg. Did I miss any?

UPDATE. Oh, you guys are funny. "Salo -- the part with the shit eating," says Froley. I think Synykyl is onto something with There Will Be Blood. And how'd I miss this?

SHORTER EDITORS OF NATIONAL REVIEW: Everyone hates fags and the decisions of democratically elected fag-lovers only proves that everyone hates fags. While free from the taint of lawlessness fag fag fag fag faggotty fag. Parenthood is a popular book title and also a reason to hate fags. Fag. Soon fags will faggotize faggoty fag fag faggotism. Culture, marriage, parenthood. Fag! We rest our case, fag-lovers. P.S. fags.

UPDATE. Why fag is fag Andrew Sullivan fag engaging fag our arguments fag? Does he fag not fag realize we have fag disproven fag science on fag penguins? We fag have fag pretended to fag countenance his fag arguments for ten years and even fag more fag during which fag years we fag pretended that fag we respected him fag and he has gone along with the fag gag (see here and scroll to his May 31, 2003 "Instacomment," or to "Not So Fatuous" here, or go to any Sullivan page on the Wayback Machine -- it's hilariously instructive). The fag time has come to fag abandon the fags we fag have already fag abandoned. Why fag don't they fag understand fag this fag despite fag our fag earlier fag pretenses fag? Maybe because they didn't know we were kidding. Fags.

DREAM BIG. At AOL, Matt Lewis posits the "Top 3 Conservatives Who Deserve a Biopic." After an expected intro about Juno, Knocked Up, Team America: World Police, The Passion of the Christ and The Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis imagineers biopics of Whittaker Chambers, Bill Buckley, and the Duke lacrosse scandal. Gotta give him credit: along with the usual dreams of glory ("Kelsey Grammar, whose portrayal of corrupt D.A. Mike Nifong earns him the award for Best Supporting Actor"), Lewis credibly scenarios flicks that would make the Tea Party crowd swoon ("a harrowing tale of political intrigue, chronicling Chambers descent into communism, his recruitment as a Soviet spy, his change of heart, and finally key role in exposing Alger Hiss").

But I see both the promise and the problem here: Lewis is describing Lifetime wingnut movies -- small-scale stories that might work if Rupert Murdoch greenlighted original productions on Fox News, but unlikely to garner the bucks and buzz necessary to launch a big-budget rightwing moving picture. Dream big or not at all, Matt! The Passion of the Christ was about the biggest conservative hero of all -- a Jesus beaten and flayed by Philistines, Jews, transsexuals and other liberal stand-ins, who summoned the second-life strength to dish out post-mortem payback. That's a story that sells tickets and popcorn! Let's re-imagineer on his behalf:

Joe. Nobody gives young Joe McCarthy (Paul Dano) much of a chance: he isn't very bright, isn't much of a speaker, and tends to lie about his service record. Even when he beats Bob LaFollette's boy (Richard Lewis) in a Senate race, he gets no respect. But when he discovers a nest of traitors in the State Department, led by the master criminal Alger Hiss (John Malkovich), the now-mature McCarthy (Gary Sinise) finds a new eloquence, and ordinary Americans, symbolized by the parents of John Birch (Chris Cooper and Allison Janney), rise and affirm his accusations against the denunciations of the corrupt attorney Joseph Welch (Patrick Stewart). Joe's ascent is ultimately arrested by the closet Communist Senator Ralph Flanders (Robert DeNiro) and his Democrat enablers; Joe takes to drink and in a photogenic D.C. bar gives many prescient speeches about a future Negro President and his Alinskyite subversion. He is felled by a heart attack while laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, who takes his spirit's hand and leads him into the Congress of the future, where he stands behind Michelle Bachmann and nods sagely as she calls for an "armed and dangerous" uprising against the traitor Obama.

AuH2O. Young Barry Goldwater (Drew Carey) is a goofy kid working in his daddy's Arizona store, always giving a hard time to his boss Mr. Wick (Drew Ferguson) and his secretary Mimi (Kathy Kinney). But when he goes to the Senate, he finds that his nemeses Jack Kennedy (George Clooney) and Lyndon Johnson (Geoffrey Rush) are "a bunch of statist jerks," and resolves to run for President with the help of his buddies Karl Hess (Diedrich Bader), Joseph Welch (Ryan Stiles), and Phyllis Schlafly (Christa Miller). He tells the delirious crowd that "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice," and they all join him in a dance number to Ian Hunter's "Phoenix Rocks." After he is beaten by the evil liberals in 1964, he spends his days wisecracking and playing pool in his backyard till Ronald Reagan (James Brolin) pulls him out of retirement to support his successful Presidential campaign. He then hangs out at the White House, where Mr. Wick and Mimi are engaged as servants and serve as comic foils. Late in life, drunk on his buddies' homemade beer, he says crazy things about evangelical Christians and homosexuals, which he corrects in a "Hey, just kidding" monologue delivered from Heaven, where he, Douglas MacArthur, and Richard Nixon make a series of humorous videos for Reason magazine.

MLKKK. This contrarian epic stars Tea Party singer Lloyd Marcus as ambitious Baptist preacher-traitor Martin Luther King Jr. who gives comically Communistic speeches ("I may not get there with you -- ya knows I sleeps late 'cause of tha niggeritis!") while true patriots try to achieve racial harmony via the free market. There's a hilarious reversal on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, in which King and his minions ("Whoa-a-a-a-aah! Go back! Go back!") are driven to retreat by Major John Cloud (Leslie Nielsen), and comical scenes of King and Lyndon Johnson (Dennis Miller) -- "You da man!" "No, you da man!" -- before the farcical assassination in Memphis facilitated by a fame-hungry Jesse Jackson (Alfonzo Rachel). At the end, the chastened ghost of King tells moviegoers to support the Tea Parties ("A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard"), and leads the cast, all armed with semi-automatic weapons, in a new version of "Movin' On Up" ("Stim-ul-us crushes all of us/Everyone rich and poor/Long about time/We shot Obama/And shoved his corpse out the door").

There -- fixed it for them. But will they have the courage to follow my lead? Blargh! That's the problem with these Obama-age wingnuts -- they think they have to accommodate the littlebrains. But give them time; they'll catch up yet.

NOTHING BUT A MAN. When Erick Erickson tells you "the left was right," you know there's got to be something funny going on.

The left, when it decided Bristol Palin was fair game, went after Levi Johnson for being a thug and redneck. He was not interested in college -- only in scoring with the Governor’s daughter. The classic tale of the high school jock who is, in essence, a low life loser in it for a good time. The left and media regaled the rest of us with tales of what a loser the Palin kid slept with.

The left was right. Now, though, they can’t be bothered by it.

Actually, the people who were "bothered with it" -- that is, Levi Johnson as a subject, or object -- during the late campaign were the folks who spent some days spinning Johnson and his knocked-up girlfriend into a holy family for political purposes. That bloom faded pretty quick and they abandoned him. Now he's out there taking care of himself as best he can.

Erickson imagines Johnson "will be greeted as a hero by the left because boosting him hurts Sarah Palin." Like David Brock, I guess, or Mother Kusters. But I'm not -- nor, I guess, are most of us -- interested in Johnson as a political football, to be intercepted and carried toward the goal line. The poor guy has been used enough by his so-called friends.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the trend toward calling Obama a fascist. Some late entries since the column went up this morning: "Obongo the Muslim Socialist Fascist" (The State of the Mind); "Obama Fascism Spurs Demand For Atlas Shrugged" (U.S. Constitution); "Notre Dame Sells Out To Fascist Obama" (Conservative America); "The core of Obama's goal is to turn the United States into a subordinate cog in an international fascist socialist regime. Of course, he avoids using the honest terms fascism and socialism like the plague, which is exactly what they are" (Objectivist Individualist).

The MacGuffin varies; sometimes it's the bailouts, sometimes it's environmentalism; Chebama suggests that the fact that people are polarized on the subject of Obama is further proof that he's a fascist. Mainly they just seem to like using the word, regardless of the damage it does to its meaning. Or maybe that's the point.

UPDATE. The big polling split between Republicans and Democrats on Obama is noted elsewhere, and though Commentary asks if this is "really the change we were told we could believe in," they refrain from calling him a fascist. But Sacred Monkeys calls him a socialist, perhaps just for old times' sake.

GAMING THE SYSTEM. Jules Crittenden learns about the proposed Cybersecurity Act of 2009 (still at the work draft stage) from the impeccably liberal Mother Jones. Then he wonders when liberals will notice ("Awaiting widespread lefty outrage, denunciations of Biden-Obamamchitlerburton regime").

This tiresome schtick aside, I notice the bill is mostly about study groups, funding and boondoggles, and the relevant passage partly quoted by MoJo ("gives the president the ability to 'declare a cybersecurity emergency' and shut down or limit Internet traffic in any 'critical' information network 'in the interest of national security'") is possibly not as obnoxious as portrayed:

may declare a cybersecurity emergency and order the limitation or shutdown of Internet traffic to and from any compromised Federal government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network

But, as usual, there is a lot of complicated language in the bill that may stretch the definition of "Federal government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network" sufficiently to impinge on ordinary citizens' civil liberties, which I would of course oppose. After reading the slightly (but not entirely) more reasonable Slashdot discussion, I'm more concerned with the section that seems to grant Commerce "access to all relevant data concerning such networks" -- that is, "Federal government and private sector owned critical infrastructure information systems and networks" (emphasis mine) -- "without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access." That I can say sounds very bad.

I am grateful to be kept informed on these issues, and would be more grateful to Crittenden (and imagine his contribution would be less easily ignored by readers who might be sympathetic) if he dropped the tiresome insistence that liberals are against civil liberties.

EVERYBODY HATES AMERICA. Reuters reports that some Taliban guy claims responsibility for the Binghamton massacre. Even if you hadn't heard that before, readers, I bet you pretty much immediately know what to think about it.

RedState, however, thinks you're too dumb to figure it out, and likely to fall under the sway of the traitorous Reuters mind-shapers.

So, why did Reuters think it a story worthy of reporting? There can only be one reason.

You see by telling us the lie of Baitubooolah Meshaweazel Muhammad something-or-another who is claiming he was responsible for the rampage Reuters can also promulgate anger toward our Predator drone program that has been so successful in killing these Taliban and al Qaeda scum-bags.

Reuters knows full well the story is bunk. But if it helps turn more people against the U.S. efforts to stop Islamofascist terror, well, that is a tale worth telling.

The problem is even worse that RedState portrays it: Fox News has also picked up the story, meaning that Rupert Murdoch has come to hate America, too. Given the enormous influence of an MSM-Fox treason alliance, the U.S. should be thoroughly demoralized in a couple of months. Maybe RedState can tell us what step two of the Big Takeover is supposed to be, because I don't know how news organizations can expect to profit from the death of America.

Oh Jesus, I found myself taking them seriously for a couple of seconds there. I need a vacation.

YOU REALLY OUGHT TO GIVE IOWA A TRY. You think someone at the Wall Street Journal was rattled?



These things go back and forth, but I took a moment to celebrate.

KICKED THEIR ASS IN '76 TOO. Jonah Goldberg thinks Britain is a PC hellhole. So does Gateway Pundit. So does Stop the ACLU.

But they all think it's simply frightful that Obama gave the Queen presents of which they cannot approve.

Best of all is Stop the ACLU which, upon hearing that in addition to the iPod Obama gave the Queen a rare songbook signed by American musical comedy great Richard Rodgers, responds, "perhaps the songbook gift might have been nice (I’ve never heard of the guy)..." Yeah, this is someone you want dishing out protocol.

The old bitch had probably never seen an iPod and thought it might be a new kind of IUD or something. Fuck her and fuck these people. Guy Fawkes and Harry Perkins had the right idea. The President needn't truckle.

SCIPIO SAYETH THE SOOTH! I don't know whether it's good or bad but I seem to have developed this knack: I go over to the Perfesser's place and I see a short item like this --

HOW WE FELL.

--and somehow I know the link is a gateway to madness.

The Great Gerard Vanderleun*, now traveling under the name The Return of Scipio (clouds of dry ice! Laurence Olivier and Ray Harryhausen!) telleth a tale in which an archaeologist, "rummaging among the ruins of our fallen civilization," encounters a ghost who shows him a blog post, presumably on his iPhone, detailing the dead glories of our once-proud world. The archaeologist makes the mistake of asking what happened.

We traded beauty for ugliness, truth for lies, liberty for comfort, love for indifference, responsibility for frivolity, duty for entertainment, history for sound bites, and children for pleasure.

He left out the mess of pottage, but perhaps in the future copyright will stretch back to the Scriptures.

Also, "We turned men into women and women into men and marveled at our new creative power." The archeologist could have thrown up his hands and gone, "Whoa! TMI, dude!" and they could have high-fived each other and let it go at that. But the archaeologist is not too quick on his feet, and is suffered to hear how we traded God for "hip, cool and slick new" gods, with whom we "made all sorts of merry."

At this stage you may be thinking the shade is talking about "Soul Train" or "Hullabaloo," but then we learn the gods "required that we all get special marks on our bodies" -- tats? chips? Mark of the Beast? To cut to the chase, everybody started going on all fours and it was just a mess. You can go see for yourself -- there's a special surprise ending that I won't spoil for you.

The story is beginning to get around in such circles as are susceptible to this sort of thing. Oh please, please, new gods, let it become the new Going Galt!

Oh, you may enjoy the commenters, too. One has a lovely story of his own:

I feel Cassandra like, and have for 30 years. I’ve been cajolling, extolling, encouraging, speaking out when it was not convenient, and almost totally ignored about honesty in governance, honest in weights and measures (i.e. money), adherence to law and standards… in other words, I was a Libertarian from 1980, then once that group went off the rails re: legalized drug use, I found the US Taxpayer Party which later became the Constitution Party.

Some 1% of Americans belong to 3rd parties, and it simply is not enough to keep our culture alive from the powers that be...

This conjures charming images of Chuck Baldwin and a bunch of wingers holed up in a cave, teaching their boy-children Rhetoric.

*UPDATE. A fan helpfully informs me that it's not Vanderleun who said the sooth, but some other nut; Vanderleun was just an accessory. It's hard to keep the names straight while you're in the middle of a laughing fit.

AT PLAY IN THE FIELDS OF THE STRAW. Jonah Goldberg does a nyah-nyah about censorship: you stupid liberals like your porn but what do you think about Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission? I can tell him I think it stinks, and I think campaign finance reform, in general and including McCain-Feingold, stinks. I am highly suspicious of anything that trammels the speech rights even of millionaire wingnuts. And I don't see how we're much better off with the current limitations, given that every election shows the system routinely gamed by pressure and interest groups.

I'm well aware that challenges like Goldberg's are meant to confuse the issue, but I'm not confused, except by the longevity of his whole oh-yeah-what-about schtick with unnamed correspondents. I'm guessing that if he addressed it directly to, say, Lisa Derrick, he knows he'd get his ass handed to him -- I disagree with her on this but she clearly could argue for the merits of genocide or the Divine Right of Midgets and still reduce Goldberg to spasms of shirt-tucking and snot bubbles.

I have some unorthodox opinions; for example, I will oppose with my last, hacking breath anti-smoking laws. Yet I never seen to get banned or menaced by those fascist liberal hordes Goldberg often talks about. Maybe I should do it in all caps next time.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP. This is a miscellany of some of the week's greatest hits, including the White House Easter Egg Hunt, the Republican alterna-budget, and "Human Achievement Hour," the right's sad and sour we'll-show-those-treehuggers Earth Day counter-demonstration. Nothing says Modern Conservatism like wingnuts running up their electric bills as a protest. I don't recall them rebranding their SUVs as "Freedom Guzzlers," but I can't be everywhere.

I got so carried away that a missed a few things, including the Rush Limbaugh Mud Wrestling Challenge "You're a lowdown, yellow-bellied, lily-livered intellectual coward," writes discourse-raiser Andrew Klavan. "You're terrified of finding out he makes more sense than you do." All of us have heard a little Rush -- how can you help it? -- and I am reminded of what Hemingway said about James Jones and not needing to eat a whole bowl of scabs to know that they are scabs.

I'm also sorry to have missed Andrew Breitbart's declaration that all internet trolls are liberal, particularly after finding my first Voice commenter of the morning: "KISS MY RIGHT-WING ASS EDROSO..." Or is he one of our double agents?