JAY NORDLINGER SENILITY WATCH, JUNE 18. Since his Bloomberg post yesterday:

Thursday, 3:25 pm: Public high schools teach nothing but enviro-communist propaganda these days!

Thursday, 11:06 pm: Remember my earlier post mocking some guy who said "staid and formal hockey mom"? No? Here, let me tell it again.

Thursday, 11:18 pm: Unions are still angry at Thatcher. Good!

Friday, 2:21 pm: Classical musicians are a bunch of communists! You remember when I complained about this before, right? Well, now that Obama has sent back Churchill's bust, I wonder if these communists, the British ones, I mean... Classical musicians are a bunch of communists!

Friday, 3:22 pm: I hate that "serial" music they've been making us listen to. Give me Brahms, I say! The other day, I thought someone was making a joke about it. Turned out they weren't. But if they had, how I would have laughed.

GREAT MOMENTS IN VOLUNTEER PUBLIC RELATIONS. Rightwing reactions to Joe Barton's BP apology are just getting funnier. Though everyone in the Republican Party (including Barton himself) has run away from his comments, several conservatives yet endeavor to keep hope alive.

Jazz Shaw at Pajamas Media insists that while Barton's characterization of the Obama-BP agreement as a "shakedown" was "politically tone deaf," it was also correct. The escrow funds are "President Obama's demand," a "pound of flesh demanded by an elected official," "simply order[ed]... by fiat," "lawless, creepy, and dictatorial," etc. It makes Shaw think of Cuba, Venezuela, the Godfather, etc.

And then the punchline:

True, BP may have been under no legal constraint to follow Obama’s dictate.

This is akin to ending a prosecutorial peroration with, "While the accused's crime was not, strictly speaking, against the law..."

Thereafter it's all Shaw running around with a bucket on his foot. One evasive maneuver: By using legal action to get restitution from BP, Obama will only enrich the lawyers! Plus, the undeserving poor will show up to dip their beaks, as well:

If a blind, 84-year-old grandmother with a leaky rowboat showed up next month claiming that the spill may have prevented her from taking up shrimping next month as a retirement career, BP might very well fork over the requested cash.

Fuck that blind 84-year-old gangster bitch! BP is the injured party here, and Jazz Shaw is here to tell the truth to all the rightwing nuts who go to rightwing nut sites. And he doesn't care how politically tone deaf he is. In fact, judging from the evidence, maybe politically tone-deaf is what he's going for.

PLEA BARGAINING. The rightwing defense of Joe Barton's and other Republicans' solicitousness of BP is that Obama is criminally assaulting the oil company. Cf. the American Spectator's Ross Kaminsky:

I am rarely at a loss for words, but I was briefly stunned into silence by Barack Obama's words during his Tuesday night speech that he would "inform" BP's CEO that he "is to" create an escrow account. The president has no authority to do such a thing -- but neither did he have authority to cram down Chrysler and GM bond holders for the benefit of the UAW. Law is irrelevant, probably not even considered as an afterthought, by this president.

One would think Obama had his goons frog-march Hayward to the Capitol and, when the police attempted to intervene, he blew them away with his tommy gun.

Any of these aggrieved parties might have said no to the President's plans, and accepted the consequences. They chose not to, almost certainly because they didn't want to take their chances with other authorities.

This is one of the few cases I've seen where a suspected malefactor cut a deal with the forces of justice and conservatives complained those forces were too hard on the skels. Aren't they supposed to be law-and-order types?

SHOTER DAVID BERNSTEIN. Rand Paul was right the first time, but he didn't use enough words to say so. Still not convinced? South Park!

UPDATE. Commenters show a reluctance to get out of the boat. Who could blame them? Some choice bits:

But antidiscrimination laws are unlikely to provide much protection to a minority group when the majority of the voting population is hostile to that group. America’s landmark civil rights legislation was enacted and implemented in the 1960s, when racial attitudes of whites had already liberalized substantially...

Even the 1964 Civil Rights Act did not noticeably accelerate the pace of liberalization of whites’ racial attitudes...

If that doesn't mean anything to you, forget it and we'll make it this:

Even a generally sober commentator like George Will...

SHORTER JAY NORDLINGER. I have forgotten, in my dotage, that conservatives are supposed to hate Nanny Bloomberg for hating guns, and judge him a superman who can and must immediately apprehend those beastly thieves who mugged an ABT ballerina. In Manhattan! I mean, it's not like it happened in one of those neighborhoods to one of those people.

UPDATED SHORTER: You folks still go for the cab driver bullshit, right? (The Anchoress: Yes!)

IDIOCRACY. This is the most depressing thing I've read today (but then, I got up late):

President Obama's speech on the gulf oil disaster may have gone over the heads of many in his audience, according to an analysis of the 18-minute talk released Wednesday.

Tuesday night's speech from the Oval Office of the White House was written to a 9.8 grade level, said Paul J.J. Payack, president of Global Language Monitor...

Though the president used slightly less than four sentences per paragraph, his 19.8 words per sentence "added some difficulty for his target audience," Payack said...

It's depressing on several levels. It's like a parfait of suck.

First, that someone at CNN gathered this opinion, and someone else at CNN said, "Let's use it, but find a way not to say out loud that people are idiots."

Next, the widespread reports that nobody likes the speech because it proposed long-term solutions to our oil dependency when everyone just wanted Obama to announce he had developed a giant oil tampon in his secret laboratory.

There's also the diligent repetition of the "Rahm Emanuel said never let a crisis go to waste which means Democrat treehuggers supertax skree" mantra. (And that's just in the trad rightwing news sources -- as usual, their blog operatives are better at mindlessly repeating it.) Thus you get guys like Lamar Alexander telling constituents about "the advice of the White House Chief of Staff which has been so often quoted," which 99 percent of them, not being poli-sci nerds, never heard of before he told them -- but will probably go away remembering that it's supposed to be a famous saying, having something to do with Obama and skree.

Worst of all is the presumption that even in the face of vivid, horrible consequences of our oil culture, these people continue to insist there's no point in even trying to change it. Erick Erickson makes this "argument" about as well as anyone:

Most oil goes to fueling our cars. Windmills, nuclear reactors, and solar panels will not fuel our cars. If we don’t extract the oil, we will grow more and more dependent on Hugo Chavez and Iranian President I’manutjob. I realize he doesn’t want a crisis to go to waste, but his priorities are clearly not those of the rest of the nation.

Well, no one will accuse him of writing to the 9.8 grade level.

Did I say that was the worst of all? Actually the worst of all is that this horseshit might actually go over.

UPDATE. Aw Jeez, Joe Barton:



(My homeboy! Well, Texas ain't all Willie Nelson and chicken fried bacon.)

Astonishingly, this is the GOP talking point on the issue. At first I was surprised their schtick wasn't to investigate the corrupt deal between Obama and BP -- but then I realized that would require them to say something bad about an oil company. Not fucking likely. So they have to apologize to BP on behalf of the real America (i.e., lobbyists and nuts).

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS AT McARDLE KIDS. Courtney Knapp says hey, what's the deal with tipping? She's not talking about the traditional libertarian practice of undertipping or stiffing waiters as a way of showing one's displeasure with the election of Obama, but about one of those thought-experiments that make libertarians such a drag at parties ("No seriously, if she were poor, would you have still married your wife? I rest my case! Hey, why did you bring me my coat? It's still early!").

As you might expect, the commenters love talking about this, not because it advances any knowledge (though it does confirm my suspicion that very, very few McArdle commenters have ever waited tables), but because it allows them to tell the world what and whom they think is and isn't worthy of their rewards ("I would certainly advocate dialing back on the number and types of people you should tip [no, holding a paper cup under a tureen spigot does not earn you my change]").

Next she and the kids will discuss why Cali has plenty of peeled-orange vendors at freeway entrances but Connecticut has none, and whether statist policies are to blame.

Later Julian Sanchez writes something thoughtful and lucid about one of Jay Rosen's "What Is Media Bias" stories. The only bad thing I can say about it is: So what? Maybe some monks will uncover these discussions one day, but at present they're completely drowned out by hollers of MSM LIES! And McArdle's page is about the last place on earth they may expect traction; it's like reading The Consolation of Philosophy to howler monkeys.

Tim Lee talks about interchange rates and the prospect of new regulation of same (unsurprisingly, he's against it), observes that picking a side between merchants and banks is a mug's game. A fair point, though a public that has been serially ass-raped by banks and still ain't shitting right may feel that banks have become a public menace and should be regarded and regulated appropriately.

Lee is not sensitive to this, though; he offers in defense of the banks the fact that his bank gives him 1 percent cash back on purchases and interest free loans. I wonder if he knows that his own failure (so far) to be caught by con men doesn't mean they don't exist.

THE LAND OF MAKE-BELIEVE. Looking at the Left's coverage of the June 6th rally against the downtown mosque in New York ends with LatL's train trip back to wherever:

Immediately to my right on the train, I did see something extremely unusual. A number of passengers were staring, as was I, in utter disbelief of what appeared to be a man dressed as a moslem woman carrying a large bag over the shoulder. The more I looked the more I was convinced it was a man. To this day, I do not know if that was a man or a woman. I don’t know if anyone reported this to authorities and I will always wonder about this bizarre figure.

Not only is even a mannish Muslim woman with a large bag just about the opposite of "extremely unusual" in New York, take a look at LatL's photo -- which doesn't show "passengers staring... in utter disbelief" at all, but engaged in the usual middle-distance staring.

Well, even several weeks after hearing Atlas Pam yell for an hour, I'd probably still be a little disoriented too. But I get the feeling that this is how the guy sees everything all the time.

JONAH GOLDBERG, HARD ON THE JOB, LATEST IN A SERIES*. Monday, 10:25 a.m.: Precious minerals in Afghanistan? Awesome.

Monday, 10:54 a.m.: Here's that video everyone's looking at.

Monday, 11:42 a.m.: Top Chef was cool before it went all P.C. by giving Top Chef to Africa. But I mean he was great and it was a close call but it was also P.C. Fart.

Monday, 12:26 p.m.: You should read this thing at Commentary.

Monday, 1:27 p.m.: Pakistanis don't understand free speech. Plus they're all anti-Semites. Or was that those other guys?

Monday, 1:31 p.m.: You should read this thing at AEI.

Monday, 3:33 p.m.: These liberal dudes at The Nation think conservatives hate soccer 'cause we're racists. Dudes misspelled a word! LOL.

Tuesday, 1:15 p.m.: About that Nation soccer thing: We don't hate soccer 'cause we're racists. We hate it because liberals like it! Oh, and they only like it 'cause it's P.C. Obvs.

Tuesday, 1:22 p.m.: I'm doing a thing.

Tuesday, 3:30 p.m.: Here's a bunch of letters about soccer my intern put up.

* Inspired by compilations by Instaputz and Tbogg, among others.

FLASH! UPDATE AT CAMP McARDLE! Yeah, this is going great.

UPDATE. Har, from comments: "Whadda they have -- like 14 guest-bloggers -- and a total of one sorta-post for all of Tuesday? Even Kaus is harder working than this."

UPDATE 2. Everyone else was at the Northside Festival so K. Mangu-Ward had to double up. She chooses a new trend in food obsessives' labeling, which she wants to make fun of; but she hasn't the talent for satire, so she falls back on the last refuge of a libertarian: A swipe at those jackbooted thugs at the relevant federal bureaucracy, in this case the USDA ("If there's money to be made, there are regulations to be written"). Good thing we've got people like her standing athwart food inspection. How are future generations going to develop a resistance to e coli if we insist on nannying them?

THE ATLANTIC 90210: AN UPDATE. Since introducing themselves, the McArdle guest bloggers have stirred themselves to go out for coffee, check the action at the dog run, and cover the McArdle-Suderman wedding.

I thought I'd mention another notable thing about the wedding: the promiscuous use of Twitter by the assembled guests. As you might expect at a marriage of two bloggers, we used Twitter for everything. Peter used it to announce that the deed was done...

Finally, Twitter enriched the experience in more pedestrian ways.

These kids are gonna make the whole world fall in love with Generation A equals A.

Ms. Mangu-Ward had an extra cup of Stumptown and revisited that online university education Wal-Mart is offering its drones, which had earlier excited her so much that she expressed a desire to live at Wal-Mart. She is delighted to hear that diploma vendor American Public University was willing to "go the extra mile" by customizing programs for Wal-Mart -- which "includes giving course credit for on-the-job time and training."

Mangu-Ward shows some awareness that there's a "question of whether there will be more than one employer interested in those Wal-Mart degrees." But it seems not to have crossed her mind that Wal-Mart's arrangement is designed to push workers who may, once upon a time, have expected free job training into spending thousands of dollars to improve their chances at promotion (or even at keeping their jobs). They might as well call it Company Store University.

So Mangu-Ward is bullish: "The company brings dramatic change to every industry that they touch," she says, "and higher ed will be no exception." And that's good, because colleges have gotten too arty-farty for her tastes anyway:

If we're going to push every 18-year-old in the country into some kind of higher education, most people will likely be better off in a programs that involves logistics and linoleum, rather than ivy and the Iliad. And, in contrast to an associate's degree in Japanese studies from Northern Virginia Community College, we know there is at least one employer interested in a Wal-Mart-subsidized logistics sheepskin: Wal-Mart.

Mangu-Ward knows whereof she speaks, having attended Yale, where she no doubt majored in Food Handling.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP. I just called this one "The Week We Talked About Sarah Palin's Tits." I ain't proud.

From the cuttings, a nice new bit of Palin victimology from new rightwing It Girl Lori Zingrano:

They attempt to diminish [conservative women] and turn them into a caricature of some airhead bimbo. You can spot the leftist bias regarding Sarah Palin usually within a first sentence or two of an article: “former beauty queen” will be used.

Palin hasn't been much called a "former beauty queen" since 2008. But I agree if we did use it, it would be unhelpful, like calling Richard Nixon a former community theater actor.

Zingaro's a find. This is from her fist-shaker on Tina Brown and other feminazis:

Sorry, Tina Brown, but feminism is already dead. And I say, “You’re welcome.” As perpetual children, you self-avowed feminists may not thank us yet. You may continue to stomp and whine and throw your little tantrums, petulantly holding your mouths closed to the icky vegetables known as truth, personal responsibility and self-sufficiency, but one day you will thank us.

It makes one yearn for the fresh fruit of coherence.

LOOK, IT'S THE KIDS FROM FAME RENT GLEE McARDLE! While Tbogg was introducing his crack team of substitute bloggers -- which I now learn includes Athanae of First Draft, adding to his unfair advantage -- Megan McArdle was unveiling hers.

I figured she'd bring in her previous stringers, like Poulos and Friedersdorf, which would have been good for some laughs. But apparently the glibertarian blog world is like Hollywood and everywhere else -- only Xtreme youth will serve. Sorry James and Conor, welcome to the hag pit!

By way of credentials, she's had the n00bs put up their headshots. They seem to have put more thought and effort into these than into their writing, anticipating no doubt a future National Review spread in the manner of Vanity Fair. This blogging thing has certainly changed since I was a lad. I wonder if any of them already has an agent shopping the tumblr version?

Tony Woodlief declined to supply a photograph, which made me want to give him a fair hearing till I saw some of the crap he's written.

I've actually gone to change the boy after hearing one of the intestinally generated explosions that are his hallmark (explosions: another SEAL specialty!), only to find…an empty diaper. Somehow, he's able to fire a whole payload of poop over the rim of his diaper, and up his own back. The Defense Department pays, what, $2 billion for a Stealth bomber? I say this to our nation’s military leaders, with all due respect: you folks don’t know from Stealth bombing. I’ve got a Stealth bomber right here under my roof, and he only cost one dinner, half a bottle of wine, and nine months of misery to make.

Woodlief also has a book out about "unmerited, unexpected grace," which led me to believe he was born into money. But he went to the University of Michigan, so there is hope for him yet, though not much.

The other Children of the Damned include a couple of liberaltarians: Tim Lee (Princeton, Cato Institute), a repeat customer whose Randian icebreaker is "I've criticized top-down institutions, ranging from the the iTunes app store to the the Johnson administration" (but he's also a technocrat who's going to work for Google so obviously he doesn't take that shit too seriously), and the Top Chef of the Tendency himself, Will Wilkinson (University of Maryland, Cato Institute). Hey, a gig's a gig!

Working the other side of the street, there's Julian Sanchez (NYU, Cato Institute) , who was smacking down the Civil Rights Act before Rand Paul joined the family business (he is strongly against the "Care Bear Stare" of ostentatious compassion, which is no shock), and Katherine Mangu-Ward, previously described here as "the Reason author most likely to obsessively check her email for an offer from National Review." (She actually brags on this insane article, in which she professes a desire to live at Wal-Mart because they offer their wage slaves an online university education; Mangu-Ward, you will not be surprised to learn, did not graduate from an online university, but from fucking Yale.)

I don't know who Courtney Knapp is but she's already exhausted my patience.

UPDATE. Sanchez sent me an email of complaint, saying that, since his unfortunate 2005 remarks in Reason ("If some employer decides it doesn't want to hire people named Sanchez, I think it ought to be able to legally—though I'd hope for it to be swiftly punished by public opinion"), he's written in defense of the CRA, in Newsweek no less.

Sure enough, after Rand Paul ruined it for everyone, Sanchez admitted that libertarians might have to concede that in this "fallen world" their principles might not always apply in a pure form. But this wasn't just a learning experience for libertarians, continued Sanchez, but for DFHs as well:

Liberals and progressives, for their part, should also reconsider whether the civil-rights era’s expansion of federal power ought to be seen as a norm or an exception. Faced with the enormities of history, a unanimous Supreme Court stretched the constitutional power of Congress over interstate commerce to permit an attempt at a remedy. But if we recognize the circumstances of the time as exceptional -- as the exigencies of war are exceptional when we consider the scope of executive power -- we should be less eager to make it the basis of a general federal license to pursue any attractive end through the commerce power.

In other words: Okay, you guys were sort of right about Jim Crow and the power of the state, but that was just an accident of history, so don't try to get away with it again. It's similar to the classic McArdle post in which she explained that lefties were right about Iraq for the wrong reasons, but much subtler. No wonder she's godmothering him.

THE PEOPLE, UNITED, CAN NEVER BE DIVIDED. Atlas Pam Geller claims PayPal cut her off on account of the jihad. RS McCain steps up to the plate:

Some are suggesting a boycott of PayPal but — good Lord! — how else am I supposed to pay for my daughter’s wedding next month? I need that money, and since Amazon ended its online payment service, PayPal’s got a monopoly.

Let’s hope PayPal can be made to understand that they’re being used as weapons in a financial jihad against truth and will rescind their fatwa against Geller. In the meantime, those who wish to help Pamela Geller and SOIA can send checks by mail to...

Somewhere a Tea Party Patrick Henry impersonator is weeping.

UPDATE. Atlas Pam follows up with more crazed skree about Obama the Muslim. I just can't understand why McCain won't go to the mat for her -- clearly she's asking all the right questions except, "What happens if I don't take my Haldol?"

UPDATE 2. So funny in so many ways, Five Pounds of Racism in a Two Pound Bag Feet of Fury:

Those who trumpet the advent of YouTube, Google etc as tools that have "permanently changed the media landscape" and will make it easier for right thinking people to get their messages past the legacy media blockade, take note:

These sites are all just tools, privately owned by individuals with fears, weaknesses and a perfectly commendable desire to make money.

That "perfectly commendable" is great -- it's like all that quivering anger she was showing at the weak, fearful tools at YouTube and Google had to get sucked up once the Free Market police showed up. But sir, they love jihad -- Quiet, soldier! They're part of the Invisible Hand Alliance, and God damn it, we can't touch 'em!

The follow-up's even better:

These tools belong to people who are not like us and don't like us in many ways; we must develop our own independent YouTubes and Googles to ensure that developments like these will have minimal impact in the future.

Don't they already have those? Pajamas Media? QubeTV? People's Cube? I guess they have to develop new versions -- powered by whining! When they're ready, please send the press releases here -- I can always use a laugh.

Apparently the cries of "dying MSM dinosaur lamestream media" will henceforth apply to YouTube and Google as well. Somehow I don't think they've thought this one through.

UPDATE 2. Gates of Vienna:

Conservatives and libertarians and Jews live in a world whose default is leftist and under-the-radar anti-Semitic and anti-black.

GoV makes the common mistake of imagining that, because they are conservative-libertarians and sympathetic to Jews, all conservatives, libertarians, and Jews are therefore as paranoid as they are. Well, if I were them I'd imagine myself a bunch of fellow-sufferers, too.

Inevitably, the Old Perfesser:

YouTube’s reputation, on the other hand, takes another hit. Perhaps the perception is inaccurate, but people on the right are beginning to feel that YouTube can’t be trusted. If I were YouTube, I’d be trying to address that somehow.

I was going to say this is another category error, but maybe by now "on the right" is a straight-up synonym for paranoid. As to the Perfesser's references to what YouTube should do to get back in his peeps' good graces, I think he overestimates his power. Or maybe he just wants his readers to believe everyone's clamoring to duplicate the success of his sponsored Amazon links. Makes sense -- we all know what a credulous bunch Instapundit readers are.

UPDATE FINAL. Oh, yeah -- I must say that, of course, their YouTube thing should be protected under the fair use parody exemption. Defend to the death their right to say, and all that. But it's awfully funny to see wingnuts clamoring for their rights under the example of 2 Live Crew.

SHORTER DOUG POWERS: Hey Limeys, when I said your boys weren't dying for our cause in Afghanistan, I didn't mean nothing by it. Now let's put it all behind us, blame Hollywood, and unite for a common purpose: Getting that bastard Obama.

WHERE I'M CALLING FROM, PART 4: DINNER AT SODOLAK'S ORIGINAL COUNTRY INN, SNOOK, TEXAS.









That, friends, is chicken fried bacon. As prepared by the fine people of Sodolak's Original Country Inn, it is as light as chicken fried bacon can be, or so I assume, though the white gravy adds ballast.

I ate nearly all of it, which may be why I couldn't finish my 16-ounce ribeye. Or maybe it was the salad. Yes, I'm sure the salad was a mistake.

I've been putting this sort of stuff on my tumblr of late, but I wanted to make sure you folks heard about the chicken fried bacon.

GOOD, MORE FOR ME. Tbogg's taking a long vacation to relieve "burnout." Ha! Maybe Mr. California should go take a few mud-packs and be doused in healing weeds at the spa! [rolls eyes, flaps hands limp-wristedly]

I understand his fatigue and disgust with the whole sorry business of blogging, and frequently share it; but when I have nothing in the tank, I don't tell people to stop paying attention until I'm feeling better -- I just keep writing. Not always at fever pitch, of course; during my Runnin' Scared tenure, I had to slow down here, because I was producing 2,000-3,000 words a day (and that was quality prose, too -- not always accurate, but quality!), which led not to burnout in the creative sense (at least not that I noticed), but to plain physical incapacity. By the end of the day I couldn't even write a grocery list. Why, some nights I couldn't even talk, and at the bodega had to mime the ingestion of a six-pack and the resulting drunken collapse so they knew what I wanted. (Actually I think they knew anyway, but just enjoyed watching me do it.)

If there's one thing I've learned during my mottled career as a pro writer, it's that if you keep going you get better. But Tbogg probably doesn't worry about that because he's already pretty near perfect. The big sissy. [rolls eyes, flaps hands limp-wristedly]

EXTREMELY IMPORTANT UPDATE: Holy shit, in T's absence Jay B -- onetime CEO of lamented Brooklyn maudit imprint Contemporary Press, advertising legend, and ace alicublog commenter -- is picking up the slack! Now you can get him without having to go through me! It's win-win. First installment here.

WHA-A-A-UPDATE? Susan of Texas is also on board. She too is a friend of ours, if you know what I mean [winks archly, readjusts green carnation]. A door closes, a window opens, and genius vomits out of it!

HEED THE CRAZY JESUS LADY'S FILTHY CARDBOARD SIGN! What is this, Old Home Week? First Lileks showed up, and now comes the Crazy Jesus Lady herself, Peggy Noonan, to tell us: Skree terrorists will kill us all Obama sleeps skree.

Oh -- you want proof? Well, aside from the usual ass-coverers saying "If something blows up, don't say I didn't warn you (and if nothing blows up, no harm done)," there's this:

You can see a certain air of complacency even in government websites. On the front page of the House Committee on Homeland Security site there's a picture of Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, then, below, an area devoted to something called "Business Opportunities Model" and an area for "DHS Business Opportunities." On the Homeland Security Department's website, the priorities seem equally clear: "Find Career Opportunities," "Use the Job Finder." There's little sense of urgency; it's government as employment agency, not crisis leader.

They're actually wasting time hiring people! When they should be sending Tommy Lee Jones out to recruit Will Smith and put on dark glasses! When will the madness stop!

Why don't they just dress Noonan up as a Get-Ready Man and march her around the streets with a sandwich sign? But then I suppose her message would go unnoticed by the crucial "thought leadership" demographic, and be more visible among the sort of people who know enough to focus on something in the middle distance and keep walking .

HE HASN'T CHANGED A BIT. Emerging from the Vale of Old Matchbooks: Jim Lileks! How I've missed him! What's up, Jimbo?

My nine-year-old daughter looked at the front page of the paper, and her eyes grew wide:

The president said “ass”?

What th-- he's actually doing this? The President swore in front of my widdle girl? It's like the Clenis, only PG!

Also, Gnat managed to make it to nine without running off to join a gang? She has guts; must get 'em from her mother.

She swallowed the A-word, because it is, after all, the A-word.

My admiration for Miss Lileks' nerve grows by the minute. What a picnic is must be at that house. Swallow your ass, young lady! Boy, when she gets to Bryn Mawr the fur, so to speak, is gonna fly.

I nodded; he said that. She was silent for a while, digesting the information. Presidents, after all, are part of the great Pantheon of Authority, standing over the school principal, teachers, the pastor, police, and perhaps the mailman. To consider them using bad words reordered everything.

"Where were you when the President said the A-word?" asks Mike Huckabee, roaming the audience with a microphone as the super reads A-DAY: THE END OF THE INNOCENCE.

Barack Obama is probably the last guy you’d think would introduce “ass” into the mainstream political discourse. It’s like Spock announcing he wants to “knock boots” — a expression both crude and banal coming from someone renowned for dispassionate cool.

Well, Jimbo, Obama was working from the original Harlan Ellison script, before that bastard Roddenberry softened it up*. Does that make it easier for you to understand?

But the idea that the president should confine himself to polite terminology is one of those antiquated chocks that prohibit true, honest expression, and if the post-Boomer culture has taught us any-effin-thing, it’s that authentic people use earthy language, authentically, and only the spats-and-monocle crowd blah blah blah

Oh no, Jimbo -- surely not the beatnilks-dirtied-up-my-TV routine again? Alas, it is: And you can read the rest to find out how the beats, led by Barack Obama, Bill Maher, and Helen Thomas, destroyed civility -- and, even worse, impeded traffic:

The hero isn’t the man who invents the traffic signal, it’s Ratso Rizzo who crosses against the light, bangs on a hood of a car that dares to nose into the intersection, and yells “I’m walkin’ here!”

Just for reference:



If you've ever laughed appreciatively at Ratso's reaction, in Lileks' world, you are Ratso, one of those 70s New York skels whom he fears will crawl out of his home entertainment center at night and Death Wish his family. That's why he keeps a go-bag at the ready, so they can escape to the tall pines and join with the guys in the tricorners, with whom he will set about remaking America out of old Sears catalogues, back into a land where no pauper can interrupt the majestic parade of gas-guzzlers.

Well, at least it's good to know he can finally stop thinking about 9/11 for a while, even if it's only to think about ass.

* If coffee isn't doing it for you this morning, try Ellison's hilariously acerbic "introductory essay" to The City on the Edge of Forever: The Original Teleplay that Became the Classic Star Trek Episode. "There's only one reason I'm doing this book: Fyodor Dostoevsky..." I bet he knows how funny he is, though.

UPDATE. I should note that the illo snatched 'n' patched above is the work of famous rock star Tom Tomorrow.

UPDATE 2. Not being a blowhard like me, commenter Christopher extracts the nub: "This sort of pre-emptive whining of 'I know you're going to call me a pussy for not getting the joke, but I'm not, damn it!' combined with 'You guys think you're so cool but you aren't!'"

MORE FREE ADVICE FROM A SHOW-BIZ PROFESSIONAL. From TV Squad:

The writing team who brought Superman back to TV screens in 'Smallville' are set to work their magic on the reboot of 'Charlie's Angels' for ABC.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, hit writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar are replacing Josh Friedman ('Terminator: The Sarah Connors Chronicles') on the Sony Television Pictures project, which is being developed for a potential pilot order and midseason launch.

Oh, that's a mistake. After -- what was it, seven Charlie's Angels movie? That salt has lost its savor.

But there's one project that's screaming for these guys' revivalist touch: Riverdale. The world has been waiting for a moody, introspective Archie ("What's wrong, Archie?" says Veronica. "Why won't you ever let me inside?") and a Jughead with father issues ("Are you proud of me now, Dad?" he asks, forcing down another burger).

When people get sick of the primaries, Gough and Millar can zoom in on the peripheral characters. By 2013 viewers should be ready for the budding romance between Moose and Dilton.

If they have trouble getting it lit, five words: Mickey Rourke as Pop Tate.

Now, as a reward for wasting your time: Here's the entire Kurtzman/Elder "Starchie" comic. Also: their entire "Goodman Goes Playboy." And while we're at it, Goodman Beaver meets Superman! You're welcome!