A LIVE ONE. Among the pleasures of this gig from which I have been too long misdirected is the work of S.T. Karnick, a culture warrior without portfolio whose run at National Review seems to have ended long ago, leaving him to Big Hollywood and other such catch-alls. But he still keeps up a blog full of gems.

Take his review of the new Melrose Place, wherein he finds moral uplift:

Two-thirds of the way through the episode, things get quite interesting as a couple of the decent characters are presented with serious moral dilemmas involving financial and career temptations. A nurse is offered an urgently needed $5,000 to sleep with a man she has just met, and a young filmmaker is offered $100,000 to keep quiet about witnessing an extramarital affair.

The moral implications of these dilemmas are made so clear and taken so seriously that it doesn't really matter what the characters choose; the viewer will be nonetheless encouraged to think about how they would react in such a situation and thus contemplate their own moral probity. That's a good thing, and it's what popular fiction at its best always does.

You can see Dostoevsky looking down from the clouds, nodding solemnly, with an arm slung over Aaron Spelling's shoulder.

Take a stroll through Karnick's obsessive topiary mazes and you will find his denunciation of Rush Limbaugh's V/O on The Family Guy on moral grounds ("For Limbaugh to lend his support to MacFarlane's project in any way indicates which direction Limbaugh's moral compass is pointing. If Limbaugh sees no wrong in it, you have to wonder just how morally reliable his pronouncements on other topics may be"), and his hopeful prediction of a female chastity revival ("If a girl wants to listen to Liz Phair, let her legs get hairy, and go on pro-abortion marches, she's perfectly free to do so; she'll just have greater difficulty in getting the most sought-after guys to go out with her--but if she wants to keep her clothes on she'll have the same problem anyway").

I usually don't bookmark these people, but Karnick is a prime candidate for my prospective easy-layup file.

UPDATE. Readers point out that the Limbaugh item is actually written by somebody else, one Mike Gray. Forgive me, please -- the continued existence of the site was such a shock I just couldn't fathom that Karnick actually got other people to write for it. That's like bringing new passengers aboard the listing Andrea Doria ("Hey, for another twenty minutes, it's still a boat ride!")

Karnick also employs one Jim Lakely, who has a spectacular jeremiad about people who disprespect the suburbs -- which, in the petrie dish of his imagination, becomes the liberals who disrespect the suburbs, and then Obama who hates the suburbs (though he starts the piece with Obama, in apparent recognition that he is the ultimate rightwing money shot). Followers of conservative persecution mania will find familiar Lakely's claim that criticism of, and even jokes about, suburbia mean that "the left wants to impose their version of 'enlightened' urban life on the rest of us." Overnight the brownshirts will turn your beloved K-Mart into a trendy cafe, and force your children to eat panini and gelato.

These names are new to you now, but you'll see them soon at The Atlantic, either as authors, sources, or fiancees.

DRY HEAVES. If the Mackenzie Philips incest charges weren't enough to induce nausea, did you know there's a culture war angle as well? Mark Steyn:

But don't worry, the "free love" crowd stuck around long enough to leave a lot of sad damaged people in their wake.

George Roche III was unavailable for comment. But we may yet hear from Tony Marino.

Oddly enough, I'm reading Republican Gomorrah right now, which makes me wonder why these people didn't shut up years ago.

THE BIG CON GOES INTERNATIONAL. Sarah Palin gave in Hong Kong a speech to bankers and investors which, from the limited excerpts available to an excluded press, sounds pretty much like what she might have given at a Fritters, Alabama Rotary luncheon. The Wall Street Journal, perhaps under advisement, swapped out its earlier, risible excerpts for fuller risible excerpts. It is reported that some people walked out of the speech -- "Palin-haters," says Allahpundit; who knew the tentacles of American lieberal media reached all the way to Hong Kong? Regrettably, no quotes were captured from attendees regarding Palin's denunciation of the effects of cap-and-trade on American farming, nor on her remarks about death panels. Maybe the crowd was a little parochial that way.

The usual suspects boo-yah Palin ("Palin gives ‘em hell in Hong Kong"), which seems strange, given that she chose to sell the natives on human rights by telling them "it’s not just a U.S. idea. They’re very much more than that. They’re enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights" and other non-American documents. Maybe this is Palin's idea of internationalism, but she'll have to disown it when she gets back to Yahoo Central, lest the rednecks suspect she has gone Trilateral.

Anyway Palin's training-wheels comeback proceeds apace. What they have to do now is find a way for her to give a Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Maybe it can be arranged for Alan Greenspan to win and send her to Oslo as a surrogate. Then she can tell the astonished Norwegians what Levi Johnston is really like.

ALSO: BRING BACK TURN-ON. I'm on one of my TV sabbaticals, but ABC's new comedy shows have been advertising in the subways, and on the internet too. And that's all the negative reenforcement I need.

In Hank, Kelsey Grammer stretches, plays a pompous ass. He was rich, now he's poor; he and his hate-filled family move to Virginia. ("He's out as CEO and over his head as DAD!") In Modern Family, there's a gay couple; a May-December couple (actually more of a Cinco de Mayo-Halloween couple) played by Al Bundy and a young, tranquilized Charo; and a non-descript couple. All have kids and hi-jinks. Speaking of non-descript, Patricia Heaton returns to the comedy rat-race in The Middle. I can't tell what it's supposed to be about except the humorous joylessness of parenthood. And Cougar Town is about how attractive actresses like Courteney Cox can't get dates because they're old and live on the set of Desperate Housewives.

I can solve these problems with a little re-imagineering. Heed me, ABC programming executives:

Frasier Crane, Country Psychiatrist. Weary of Seattle, Dr. Frasier Crane moves to the hinterlands, and though the simple folk of Oatmeal, Nebraska are wary at first, Crane establishes himself in the pilot by winning the trust of Soapy, a long-retired tinker with Gabby Hayes whiskers and an omnipresent jug with three x's on it. Soapy at first "don't rightly cotton to no head-shrinker," but starts hanging around Crane's "therapy barn" to snack on "them fancy crackers and cheeses" Crane keeps handy. ("Say, Doc, you're right -- thet Chatoo La Feet do go better with them fancy cheeses than mah corn!") Eventually Soapy tearfully confesses a dark secret ("An' then mah pappy, he commences to take mah draws down... I done was mo-lested!") He agrees to become Crane's first patient, paying for his sessions by whittling him some sconces.

Post-Modern Family. Two years in the future, the characters in Modern Family are all separated and living in a cheaper part of whatever town they were supposed to be living in. They are all hardcore alcoholics, including the children and except for the gay guys, one of whom has a meth lab and supplies the other, maintaining a self-hating post-relationship inspired by Shut Up, Little Man! The non-descript guy now runs a trailer park and trades rent for sex with the Latina chick. And Al Bundy is reunited with Peg, Bud, and Kelly.

Experimentville. This will be the easiest transition of the bunch and improve ratings dramatically as Courteney and the gals figure out that arcane dating rituals have no place in their lives and just start getting it on every which way, enabled by an alternative therapist who has sex with everybody. When the endless stream of implied adventuresome sex becomes numbing, we can liven it up with custody battles and jealous gas-station attendants.

I have no idea what to do with The Middle except maybe give it over to Heaton's anti-abortion politics, which should afford it some much-needed focus.

PREPARE FOR THE NEXT CULTURE WAR OUTRAGE! John Derbyshire's really feeling his oats today. Regarding the new Tosca at the Met:

I wasn't there myself, so I had to rely on the reviews . . . none of which told me the thing I most wanted to know: Did this trendy new production "play up" the torture scene? In the second act, the evil police chief, scheming to have his way with lovely Tosca, has her brought to his apartment. He arranges that Tosca's boyfriend, a political prisoner, is being tortured in an adjacent room, so that Tosca can hear his groans. Hard to see how a lefty producer could pass up the chance to highlight the "relevance" of that. None of the reviews made a point of it, though, so I don't know if the temptation was yielded to.

This is a set-up. It's impossible to believe that Derbyshire doesn't read the New York Post, which today reveals that "[director Luc] Bondy Bondy downplayed the glamour to evoke the horrors of torture as an interrogation technique." After a suitable pause Derbyshire will race back to the scene to demand an investigation of the National Endowment for the Arts' funding of the Met.

Jay Nordlinger must be on vacation.

QUAGMIRE. Michael Barone:

On the Sunday talk shows a day before Woodward's story appeared, Obama said he had not yet decided on a strategy in Afghanistan. "I'm certainly not one who believes in indefinite occupations of other countries," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press," as if the United States were occupying a country against the wishes of most of its inhabitants to the detriment of "the people." Shades of those early 1980s Marxist Latin America tracts.

To back up Barone's logic, here's noted National Review Marxist John Derbyshire on Afghanistan:

Am I missing something? Seems straightforward to me. (1) Go there in force. (2) Break their stuff and kill their leaders. (3) Tell them loud and clear: If you host our enemies again, we'll be back. (4) Go home. (5) Lather, rinse, repeat.

How is this difficult? What need is there for an eight-year occupation? Eight years? This is nuts.

Derbyshire has the advantage of insanity. Barone has been remarkably placid about the conduct of the Afghan adventure from the beginning:

The collapse of the Taliban in Afghanistan is not yet complete as this is written, and it may take months to track down Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders in their caves. But it seems likely -- not certain, but likely -- that America and its allies will not need large amounts of manpower and materiel in Afghanistan. They can be deployed elsewhere.

In subsequent years what Barone has mainly noticed about Afghanistan is the presumed effectiveness of informal diplomacy ("There are lessons aplenty in this story for us today. One is that the kindness of American soldiers -- the candy bombers -- can be a national asset"), and the perfidy of Democrats ("It is true that many Democratic primary voters and caucusgoers are slavering at the prospect of American defeat") and the press ("Why haven't there been more Espionage Act prosecutions?"). Now he's worried by an allegedly Marxist prejudice against indefinite occupation. Come to think of it, Derbyshire may not have all that much of an advantage,

Whether they believe President Obama's eight-month chunk of the eight-year occupation is a failure because he's a Marxist or because he is insufficiently willing to emulate General Zod, it is refreshing to see these folks exercised about the fate of Afghanistan again, at least till the next ACORN scandal. But as there is little hope of meaningful action in the graveyard of empires, Barone will be back eventually to tell us why the Bush occupation was much more successful than the Obama one.

THE SCANDAL WIDENS, DEEPENS, LOCOMOTES, ETC. How's it going with NationalEndowmentfortheArtsGate? Andrew Klavan:

Let’s not even concern ourselves with the fact that White House official Buffy Wicks directed the artists to channel their efforts through Serve.gov, a White House website with ties to the corrupt Acorn.

No problem.

It doesn’t matter that it didn’t actually offer these artists money in exchange for propaganda; its very presence on the line constituted an implied offer of access. It doesn’t matter that the artists on the call were already Obama supporters.

I have to say, the man makes a powerful argument. I smell Congressional investigation.

And whether or not these artists will bite into the apple of governmental corruption -- whether or not they’ll allow their creativity to be guided by the blandishments of the state -- the phone call is proof of the depths of this administration’s intentions to corrupt.

What adds force to these blockbuster revelations is Klavan's status as an author of books, which adds credibility to his claim that "in seeking to enlist the arts, [the Administration] has taken this overbearing and ultimately corrupting practice to the deepest and most spiritual level we know." Conservatives who have spent their entire adult lives condemning all American artists (excepting Chuck Norris and Gary Sinise) as toadies of the Democratic Party will affect outrage until the next big exposé, which we have on good authority will involve the Bureau of International Information Programs and its corrupt plan to have Shepard Fairey design the flyers America drops on Afghan villages.

MEDIA CRITICISM FOR THOSE IN A HURRY.

Miracles Are Real — For Buddhists [Jonah Goldberg]

That's all the warning most of you need. Follow! Goldberg was listening to NPR and heard an amazing story:

When the Dalai Lama was just two years old, some travelling monks found him. The tyke greeted them in the monks' own language even though he had no reason to know it and recognized the old men as long lost friends. He — at the age of two — "knew all about" his previous life.

Now, it seems to me that from any objective viewpoint this is, quite simply, a miracle.

Or bullshit. Either way.

As to whether this actually happened I see no reason why I shouldn't be agnostic as I like the idea of miracles quite a bit and poo-pooing it would be distraction from the point I want to make.

Uh oh, Goldberg's already trying to create a diversion; his weak-minded adversaries will still be parsing that sentence when he has vanished in a cloud of Cheetos dust.

But...

Non-traditional use of conjunctions also helps.

...I thought it was really interesting that no skepticism was brought to bear. I listen to discussions of Christianity from time to time on NPR and it seems that it's simply required in such conversations to take the "magic" out of the Judeo-Christian narratives. But when the religion in question is Buddhism it's apparently fine to suspend ones rationalist mind. Again, I'm not a regular listener of this show, so maybe my surprise is a little misplaced and all such talk is greeted with such open-mindedness. But that's certainly not my impression of NPR in general.

Goldberg's "impression of NPR in general" is probably similar to Homer's attempt to think like Flanders. To the extent that we can extract a point from this, it seems Goldberg finds NPR guests generally suspicious of Christian miracles, and one of them perhaps credulous of those attributed to an Eastern mystic. This invites all kinds of questions, foremost among them: Might the Church revive itself among the intellectual classes by encouraging its priests to talk like Mr. Moto and do card tricks?

Maybe Goldberg fled because wanted to keep his powder dry for a column on this. I certainly hope so. He's dynamite on the subject of NPR. (Search to "Strategic Humor Initiative.")

GRAPESHOT. Andrew Breitbart's follow-up to his child prostitution stings on ACORN -- the revelation that the Obama Administration talked to artists about its social programs -- is not shaking the earth, despite the inclusion of a Hitler dog whistle ("Riefenstahl-esque"). Patterico has even taken to explaining to readers that "it would be a mistake to dismiss this story as unimportant."

The reason is simple: While ACORN is sufficiently mysterious that they can paint all kinds of pictures on it, the NEA has long been one of the right's most popular betes noires. They've have been telling the world that artists are liberal homosexual operatives, and that the NEA is their front group, for years. The notion that it is being used to promote a leftist agenda will strike most of their intended audience as dog bites man.

The primary usefulness of this story will be as another slug in the grapeshot with which they stuff their cannons. They'll be using "NEA" the way they used "Whitewater" for several electoral cycles to come, as a signifier for half-remembered scandal.

MORE EVIDENCE THAT THERE'S NO RACISM IN AMERICA. John Derbyshire:

It's time someone took a 12-gauge to the phrase "affordable housing," which crops up all over the place in the ACORN-related commentary. It belongs with "undocumented immigrant" (he stole your Social Security number) and "vibrant neighborhood" (carry a gun) in the Liar's Dictionary.

In a way it's a disappointment; Derbyshire is often eager to explicate his racism right at the point of sale. But here, as with his Rivers of Blood item last year, he just throws out that "vibrant neighborhood" thing and continues on with something else equally stupid but less overt. If I didn't know him better I'd say he was trying to be sneaky.

We're left to assume Derbyshire is talking about urban neighborhoods thus described, such as Fort Greene, where a large percentage of the population is "sooty," as they say in Derbyshire's native land, thus making it a place no Derbyshire would wish to live, though many, many white race-traitors pay a great deal of money to do so (perhaps out of missionary zeal, since from the Derbyshire POV no caucasian would actually enjoy such dark surroundings).

I'm sure there are far fewer people even on Lawn Guyland than there used to be who actually believe they'd need a gun in such a place. With any luck Derbyshire will be the last.

STAYCATION. I am off from the Voice this week, and though I have promised myself removal from stressors, you and I both know I cannot long stay away from million-man rugby scrum that is our political discourse. So you'll probably see me around here more often than you have in recent weeks, when I had been tearing my hair out trying to find celebrity nudes and other sticky gibberish for my employers, and thus insufficiently attentive to the real people here at the midnight show. Maybe I'll take the opportunity to get back to things that really matter. (Oh hey, Georgia O'Keeffe celebrity nude at the Whitney!)

IT'S A WHITE THING, YOU WOULDN'T UNDERSTAND. Whoops, there it is:

"(Video) Steele: why isn’t Obama trying to get Corzine to drop? Which is a question that has teeth in it, doesn’t it? Big, sharp, possibly racially-motivated teeth -- given that the major difference between Governors Corzine and Paterson is more or less their respective skin colors. Hey, the Democrats ask this sort of question all the time: since skin color’s so important to them generally, it seems only fair to check if it was important to them this time, too." -- Moe Lane.

"I say we start rubbing the racial-demagoguery in the left's face" -- Weasel Zippers.

"Well, that is the way it works, isn’t it? Do anything to oppose a black man in office, and that is proof of racism, right?" -- Blogs for Victory.

To recap, Obama asked Paterson not to run because he's black, proving the Democrats' racism. Irregular readers may be confused. The explanation is that conservatives deny racism is a factor in any area of American life, and that if there is any racism, it is created from whole cloth by Democrats. Thus, if the black President has some misgivings about a highly unpopular black and unelected Democratic governor standing for election, it may be tied to Democratic racism which, given the heritage of the current President, is both a joke (formally, anyway, with no need for a punchline nor any actual humorous content) and a deadly serious charge.

In related news: "Watch [Obama] call a black man a 'jackass', and consider what would have happened had that word come out of Bush's mouth." -- GOP Thinker.

It's an ancient grudge, which goes back to the transference of electoral allegiance of black voters from the Republican Party, which held it after the Civil War, to the Democratic Party, which wisely angled for it during the Civil Rights movement* and holds it to this day. Many of the current conservative combatants are not very aware of this history, and are responding instead to some inchoate feeling that black people have done them wrong. This reaction is tolerated and even encouraged by the movement to which they belong for reasons you probably don't need my help to discern.

*UPDATE. Mssrs. Harrington and Riley point out in comments that the turnaround in black political loyalties started much earlier, though LBJ delivered the coup de grace. They cite the New Deal, which is news to me, but most of us remember that Truman's civil rights policies drove Strom Thurmond out of the party, from which racist exile he was retrieved by the Republicans, whose agents now tell us that race is not an issue.

THEIR NEGRO PROBLEM -- AND OURS. I'll be honest with you. I don't think racism is the biggest problem in the country. Of course I'm inclined to feel that way, since I'm white, but I've also made the judgment that it's the manipulation of racism that makes much of the trouble that we attribute to the thing itself.

The provenance of the outrage applied to the Belleville West High School incident is obvious if you've been alive for more than a couple of years. Normal people know that in different situations, black kids will victimize white kids and white kids will victimize black kids, and it's part of the sad but slowly improving situation of the United States. I knew it when I was younger and things were much worse. (I saw a little of both sides, too -- I don't mean figuratively, but with my eyes.)

Normal people work through such resentments as these incidents bestir in them as best they can. A certain type of person tries instead to work them.

To a certain extent, playing with that particular kind of fire doesn't have to come out badly. New York City is a pretty good example. There are lines, albeit thin ones, between solidarity and isolation and between righteous indignation and rage. When it goes wrong, you get the Draft Riots, "Irish confetti," the 60s riots, Crown Heights, etc. When it goes right, you get political clubs and affinity groups, which do business with other clubs and groups and get deals done to their mutual benefit.

One of the reasons conservatives classically hate New York is because we have mostly worked out our ethnic tensions this way, in informal power sharing arrangements. That angers them because it reveals something they don't like to face about racism -- that it has to do with power, and that cooling its tensions may require that grievances be addressed and redressed. Maybe some jobs have to be shoveled toward ethnically distinct neighborhoods that don't have many of them, and maybe the mayor won't always line up with the cops when a member of a minority group is killed under suspicious circumstances.

It ain't always pretty but it more or less works. You may prefer that men be angels and rise above this sort of thing, but that sort of liberal utopianism is beyond me. I do notice that people of different races seem to get along here pretty well -- certainly better than they did 30 years ago -- so maybe the incremental approach, assisted by liberal applications of grease, will get us to Valhalla anyway, albeit slowly.

Members of white majority parties resist this thinking because it suggests that they may have to give something up. So they concentrate on ways in which they can portray white people as victims of some sort of black hegemony, and adopt the prerogatives of grievance themselves. You'll remember that conservatives originally tried to get at ACORN by suggesting that it was redirecting wealth unfairly to black people. (It was only when that failed to inflame the public imagination that they turned to child prostitution stings.) The clear message of the Belleville uproar is that people of color are getting away with something, and simple justice demands that white people hold the line.

Robert Crumb explained this better than I have. I will add that I am in some sympathy with Jimmy Carter's remarks -- is it really so controversial to observe that a lot of people can't accept the idea of a black president? -- but I think he may be missing the angle shot. I wouldn't be shocked to learn that the people who are stirring the shit up at present aren't casual racists at all. (Some of them certainly go out of their way to give the impression that they're cool with black people.) But they know what racism can accomplish with a little help.

UPDATE. I found part two of the Crumb thing, which is also worth your while.

THERE IS, TOO, A CONSERVATIVE INTELLECTUAL TRADITION. National Review's great thinker:

But when I say, "Hey, look, Robespierre and the Jacobins were even closer students of Rousseau's and they found something in there that sanctioned the Terror. Did they all misread Rousseau?" And their basic answer is "yes." To which I say, okay, but does that really let Rousseau completely off the hook? If there's something in there that led very smart people to believe there was a philosophical and moral writ to slaughter thousands and erase society surely that should count against Rousseau on some level, even if it's only an indictment against his clarity of thought and writing. No?

I don't know whether to send Goldberg a reading primer or a Bible.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP -- an extended look at the Joe the Yeller story. To the extent that their hive-mind is capable of judgement, conservatives may have figured that having a humanoid representative for their cause -- even if it's a humanoid of such limited appeal as this pig-ignorant Dixie congressman with a once-safe seat -- makes it easier to advertise. Since no one has been murdered by Obamacare yet, and the traditional horror stories out of Britain's National Health do not move their target audience (because they find all furriners and their ways hopelessly exotic, even if they do sort of talk American, and assume their health care shortfalls are a natural consequence of warm beer), they work with Joe Wilson, casting him in the usual passive-aggressive way as both hero and martyr. Sometimes I think they moon over Reagan so much because it's been a long time since they had anyone with actual charisma to shove in front of the cameras.

A STAR IS BORN. Joe Wilson yells at the President. Thousands of posts ensue, in which we learn that he took No-Doz, likes the Rebel Flag, and reacted protectively toward Senator Strom Thurmond when his illegitimate daughter came forward. His views on health care are suddenly of interest, and he has worked the outrage against him into a fundraising pitch. He is now the darling of the right and a national figure who will be considered in upcoming discussions of candidates for high office.

Ah gits weary/An' sick o' tryin'/Ah'm tired o' living'/An' skeered o' dyin'...

Caligula had to appoint that horse. Here they are nominated by acclamation.

ROD DREHER ON THE GAY MENACE, WHICH MUST BE MET WITH ARMS. Oh, go ahead. You'll never guess why Rod Dreher keeps a gun in his house. Gay people! Someone wrote in the Washington Post about anti-gay-marriage people who were not chaw-drooling Cletuses; some readers strongly objected. Maggie Gallagher, as usual, says gays are the real bigots. Dreher says:

She's right about that. Trust me on that one. It's one reason I have a gun in the house. I've let a couple of you trusted readers -- same-sex marriage supporters who believe I'm very wrong on this issue, but who are civil about it -- know what I'm talking about.

I was hoping he'd tell us about the roving bands of sodomites who rattle a stick on his picket fence at night, but apparently he restricts this info to the Righteous Homos in his congregation. But he's an equal opportunity armorer:

It's why I support fully the intention of Celtic Dragon Critter, a transgender reader who believes people like me are badly mistaken on same-sex marriage, to maintain the means and the will to shoot anyone who crosses her threshold to harm her or her family. There are people on both sides of this issue so crazy with rage that they will stop at nothing to punish those they hate.

The spirit of madness and hatred now rising in this culture is prominently on the right of late, but not exclusively on the right.

Dreher's idea of gay violence is presumably this:

Mark Shea points to this video of a small group of peaceable Christians who had to be protected by a phalanx of San Francisco police as they walked through the gay Castro District in San Francisco. Otherwise, it's clear they would have been assaulted even worse than they were before the riot police arrived.

This is terrifying. This ought to be on the national news. If this were a Christian mob surrounding gay-rights campaigners, it certainly would be -- and should be, as no peaceful protester in this country should be subject to this threat. (And no, this wasn't a made- up thing: here's how a local SFO TV station covered it).

Watch this, and tell me these people [Update: by which I mean the enraged activist core, not all gays -- RD.] aren't going to come against churches full force once they have the civil rights laws on their side:

I don't advocate meeting mere offense with violence. But one of the ways we ordinary people get along is this: I don't take a group of people to a church picnic and make a show of telling the folks there, one way or another, that their lifestyle disgusts me. The Christians in question have a certain right to behave provocatively, as a drunk in a bar has a right to tell you your mama is ugly, but they dissemble when they say it's not a provocation.

To compare this to the constant threat some people face just by being perceived as gay is somewhere south of offensive.

THE VIEW FROM THE CREEP SEATS. What's more fun than a Presidential address on health care? The Corner covering a Presidential address on health care!

They started well before the speech. Tevi Troy precogs that "President Obama would tell sad tales of Americans who lack access to health insurance" and announces himself proven right because he's seen "a list of the guests in the First Lady's box." Obama spent about 60 seconds on sad takes of Americans who lack access to health care. Time for a Tevi Troy victory lap!

Jonah Goldberg also has a memorable warmup: "Maybe I'm just beholden to my own predictions, but the pre-coverage of Obama's address sure makes it sound like the White House thinks the moment requires more cowbell." This refers to his previous analogy that compared Obama's public speaking, which largely got him elected, to irrelevant noise, based on the fact that Goldberg remembered a funny bit from Saturday Night Live. I assume he didn't use "Yeah, that's the ticket!" because the cowbell thing implies familiarity with Blue Öyster Cult, which will do wonders for his street cred.

Kathryn J. Lopez obsesses on the laminated "talking points" given by Obama to GOP Congressmembers. "Don't Worry Your Pretty Little Eyes with Legislation," says K-Lo. "Trust the White House. Serve the President, If You Will." Later she repeats the outrage of Pete Hoekstra: "Handing out laminated talking points produced by the White House is tacky. This is serious business. I will not twit during speech." Sending a message by not sending a message -- surely the people will rise when they don't hear of it. To amplify, K-Lo posts a picture of the laminated document. Maybe their acolytes will bring replicas to Town Halls, and interrupt the proceedings by noisily scraping them on their unshaven faces.

The speech starts. Obama: "I am not the first President to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last." Goldberg: "Obama will, for all time, settle the issue of healthcare in America? He'll be the last president tackle healthcare? Ever?" Goldberg missed a similar chance when Obama said, "Credit was frozen" -- he could have rejoined, "Frozen? Like in a freezer? So all you need is a microwave to thaw it out?" But that would have sent him straight to the Hot Pockets and we would have missed his further reactions. Stephen Spruiell is similarly miffed: "Makes Obama sound foolish. Medicare and Medicaid are the subjects of constant legislative meddling. Obamacare wouldn't require frequent tune-ups/refinements/bailouts?" They must have loved these guys on Debate Team.

K-Lo: "A veteran politico" -- by which she means the dolly on her pillows with the long, grey coat -- "asks me: 'Why is he yelling so much? If Bush had done that, the press would have had a field day. How many headlines will say "an angry obama"? None.'" Obama's poor speaking skills masked by liberal media again! A pity more citizens don't have television sets.

"No matter how much the president insists otherwise, preventative care doesn't really save any money," says Mark Hemingway, quoting a Washington Post story on a study that questions the anticipated preventative care savings on... patients with Type 2 diabetes. Still, I take his point. I've thought of giving up smoking and drinking, but who's to say that this preventative program will reduce my need for medical attention? Mom wound up on an oxygen tank, but I think she was just looking for attention.

John Hood tries a Goldbergian approach: "Not to be disrespectful or anything, but I’m multitasking at the moment — watching the president on the small screen while spooling a recorded Scooby Doo movie from DVR to tape on the big screen." He and Pete Hoekstra are really showing Obama.

K-Lo doesn't believe Obama's promise that federal dollars won't be used to fund abortion because "It's open to negotiation... Who knows what those committeemen do with one bill or another. Who knows what happens in conference." This is where Jesus is supposed to walk through the wall and chide her for her lack of faith. Mark Hemingway calls Obama's promises on this and health care for illegal immigrants "foolish" because "aside from being disingenous, it's the opposite of consensus building." Better Obama should just admit he wants more abortions and wetback medicine till the cows come home, as that might build the sort of consensus Hemingway seeks.

Andy McCarthy praises the contributions of Sarah Palin, especially on the alleged death panels, in which he retains touching faith. "I can't tell you how much I love Roman's cover on the latest edition of NR," he adds, which shows Death wearing a lab coat.

John Hood doesn't like Obama's point that public care will no more kill private care than public universities have killed private universities: "Government colleges and universities have, indeed, come to dominate the higher education market not because they are better or more efficient but because of massive taxpayer subsidy." Graduates of Texas A&M will be interested to hear that their alma mater is kept alive only by the mindless largesse of Big Gummint, as will students of schools like Yale and Harvard, where I understand they burn books to keep warm in the winter thanks to declining revenues.

Goldberg lets fall the cowbell. "I don't know if this will win over the public (though I'm skeptical). But if he's actually trying to woo the Republicans in the room, I don't think this is working at all. Too many digs to placate his base and indulge hs own vanity." It doesn't surprise me that Goldberg has trouble grasping the distinction between "woo" and "embarrass." (He picks the cowbell up again, though, when he learns that Obama will follow up on this speech tomorrow. Obama just can't stop embarrassing himself by talking! Didn't he learn anything from his disastrous Presidential campaign?)

If you want more, there's always their Twitter feeds. K-Lo chirps:

delayed reax: was that an ashley madison commercial i just caught -- the MARRIAGE DATING SERVICE? Oremus. so much flipping not sure where.

Shortly thereafter:

now im screaming. back to normal, a cialis commercial. par for the course, often at 2 pm when i'm on a conference call in the office.

Maybe she's afraid Obamacare will force her into psychotherapy.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, despite the holiday. Just a quick spin around the Obama school speech issue. Among other things, I notice that accusations of fascism, "Obama Youth," etc. are getting more common. Maybe they're all secret LaRouche supporters. In earlier, simpler times, they might have just called Obama's actions inappropriate or questionable, and explained why. Hitler=Obama removes the necessity of the second step and, better than that, leaves it up to the fevered imagination.

For some the default accusation will always be Communism and Russia (where you came from), of course. Andy McCarthy at National Review:

Van Jones isn't Alger Hiss. There's nothing covert about him. He didn't snooker Obama into bringing him aboard. He is who he is, and that's why Obama wanted him. Having a communist in that job was perfect since the "green jobs" initiative is an important part of the hard Left's agenda to use environmentalism as an additional justification for usurping command of the economy.

In fact, the death of the Soviet Union has actually been a boon for neocommunists. Now, Obama and his fellow travelers like Jones, Ayers, Wright, Klonsky, and ACORN, can spout all the same totalitarian, anti-American, central-planning ideas the hard Left has always pushed, but in the abstract -- under such mushy labels as "social justice" and "green jobs." That is, they are liberated from having to defend the Soviet Empire, which, until 1991, was a living, breathing, concrete example of how horrific these ideas are when put in practice.

Thus we have a new Evil Empire -- the United States of America under its current, duly-elected leadership. With the folks at National Review talking like this, it's no shock the smaller fry are so free with their use of Mao, Hitler, Stalin etc. They've come a long way from the days when William F. Buckley was arguing for national service.

RAGGED GLOURY. [spoilers.] For the first hour or so of Inglourious Basterds I thought: well, it's finally happened. Either Tarantino has become totally brilliant, or I've watched enough Tarantino that I can't tell the difference anymore. The two first scenes -- the drawn-out agony of Colonel Landa's visit to a farmhouse where Jews have been hidden, and Aldo Raine's ludicrously inspiring speech to his recruits -- are among the best things he's ever done, from Landa's cheerful gabble to the close-ups of Brad Pitt's crinkled eyes, and it looked as if Tarantino was going to finally resist his impulse to undercut himself, and just turn his considerable gifts toward the end of making a damn genre picture without willfully jacking the whole thing up with random crazy ideas until the whole thing flips over. Maybe, I thought, he was catching on to what Sam Fuller knew -- if you're already nuts, you don't have to force it: your war movie, no matter how tightly plotted, will bear your gloriously (or glouriously) insane hallmark. (The Steel Helmet would not have been improved by song numbers.)

The first sign of trouble was the payoff on the "Bear Jew" idea (introduced by a suitably Vaudevillian Hitler). You mean that's it, I thought, -- he beats Nah-zis to death with a baseball bat? And ominously thumps the bat in the dark woods before he does it? Whoops, that was it, and the character recedes, to be supplanted by a lot of other show-stealing but debilitating schtick. The Theme from Cat People; non-Italian-speaking Basterds as Italians at a Third Reich shindig (maybe a hommage to All Through The Night); most disappointingly, a really interesting tension between the Jewish massacre survivor and Goebbels' new "It" boy, which climaxes in a projection-room scene that shows Tarantino still relying on childish, film-geeky blood-love as a resolution for difficult relationships.

I shouldn't complain. There's enough jam here to get you through the long running time, and it's fun. But Tarantino's technique has gotten so good that I wish he'd goof around a little less, and I grow tired of wishing for it. One of the great scenes introduces our British Forces hero -- a film critic (!) chosen for Operation Kino based on his knowledge of UFA and German language-fighting skills. The scene is as mad as you could wish, with Churchill incomprehensibly present and Mike Myers in highly successful make-up briefing the critic, with stiff upper lips all 'round. The absurdity is baked into the concept, and played and filmed beautifully. The tension between the barely-possible reality of the scene and Tarantino's rendition of it makes you giddy but keeps you in the story.

But it all leads to a Nazi Gotterdammerung so muddled and overblown that it blew my connection to the movie. I could accept an alternate WWII ending -- sure, why not; it was fine when Chaplin iron-masked Adenoid Hynkel in favor of a Jewish barber -- but by then the little tweaked realities had turned into a pile-up of absurdities, and my faith in the film was broken. It should be much more satisfying than this to see Hitler machine-gunned to pieces -- and for that matter, to see Landa get what's coming to him. But the movie has gotten so out of control by the end, all that's left are violent bits. Good bits, mind you, but without the benefit of the gathered force that a more disciplined film might have afforded.

Tarantino's too good to leave it at that, but no one's going to make him take the next step. At times like this I miss Louis B. Mayer. Or David O. Selznick.

Every craft aspect of the film is wonderful; the music is lovely, especially the theme from The Alamo, and Christoph Waltz deserves some kind of prize for bringing some badly needed joie de vivre to the Nazi villain role.