SHORTER THEE ANCHORESS: I always disapprove of using kids in political ads, except when it's right-wing and aimed at unseating a Muslin.

THE BARREL HAS NO BOTTOM, PART 2,818,299. Thanks to Pour Me Coffee, whom you should follow, for pointing out this story at Fox Nation:



I understand the original headline was "President of the United States Loves Miles Davis," but not enough of their readers knew about Miles' stated desire to strangle a white man before he died.

UPDATE. They actually pulled the story off the website! If only it were possible to believe that they did so because they were ashamed. My guess is they're working on a version in which the message is conveyed, not with words and videos, but with MIDI files of "Cop Killer" and "Mind of a Lunatic" and animated gifs of Samuel L. Jackson.

Speaking of which:

UPDATE 2. At American Power, in a post timestamped well past Happy Hour, Donald Douglas:



After careful parsing of Douglas' gibberish ("MOFO CRACK PIPE"?), I have determined that he's trying to say, "I'm not a racist asshole, I'm just emulating other racist assholes."

LIFTING THE ROCK. Over at the Galt Gulch outlet store Reason, Steve Chapman says never mind all those protests and Koran-burnings, non-Muslim Americans and Muslim Americans get along great because capitalism. He starts by laying out the controversy thus:

On the one side is widespread opposition to the proposed Islamic center near ground zero in lower Manhattan, which the Republican nominee for governor of New York has promised to forcibly stop...

On the other side, you have the Lebanese-born man arrested for allegedly trying to set off a bomb near Wrigley Field in Chicago and Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, accused of killing 13 people in a shooting rampage at Fort Hood.

On the one hand, anti-Muslim bigots, and on the other, Muslim mass murderers -- America's toleration of whom is even more of a miracle than advertised! But seriously, folks, Chapman finds that "most American Muslims are about as radical as Jay Leno," and "only a quarter of them say they have ever suffered discrimination," which must be pretty good, because only a tiny minority of these citizens support Al Qaeda. Also, opposition to the Burlington Coat Factory Mosque is "restrained" to screaming about victory mosques and sharia, and the occasional act of violence. Thus,

The tensions and conflicts in evidence in our public debates do exist, but they give a misleading picture of modern American society. The reality is the one proclaimed by the Founders: E pluribus unum. Out of many, one.

Say, did you know Reason has a comments section? Let's see how their libertarian readers celebrate their Muslim brothers and sisters:

You can have a favorable view of an organization who's sole purpose is violent Jihad but since you haven't acted yet you lack motivation? Is AQ now some sort of Islamic scouting organization?...

Oh good. Only 1 out of every 20 American Muslims have a favorable view of Al-Qaida. Thanks for quelling all my irrational neo-con fear Chapman... Just so I don't jump the gun and prematurely relapse into my former state of hate and fear from which I've purged myself, when does salivating bigotry become rational fear of an existential threat?

I used to be share Chapman's overly simplistic and naieve view. Then I actually interacted with South-Asians Muslims... I reject the default assumption that all Muslims are basically decent, hard-working, religion-of-peace types. That doesn't mean I think the plurality are the exact opposite. It means, I know enough about what they say when they're in their group, to not buy into this politically correct jargon about how they're patriotic Americans just like you and me...

I am dumbfounded at how many people attempting to claim nice-nice and politically correct about Islam have never considered dishonesty in their game theory...

The tone and preponderance of these comments are about what you'd expect to hear at an Andy McCarthy smoker. But in fairness, I think things may be a little worse at Stormfront.

I think the libertarian view of how tolerant the free market makes us would be more convincing if it weren't for libertarians.

FURTHER ADVENTURES IN THE WAR AGAINST COMMON SENSE. A press release for a Jon Stewart book has made its way to the National Review editorial cages. One passage:

The book ends with a plea to the aliens to reconstruct the human race from DNA in the hope that, with guidance from the visitors, “we could overcome the baser aspects of our nature… and give this planet the kind of caretakers it deserves,” revealing the tears behind Stewart’s clown.

Clumsy copy, but it seems to describe a standard satirical trope about man's misspent time on earth, seen in such disparate works as H.G. Wells' The Time Machine and the popular doggerel "Evolution -- The Monkey's Viewpoint."

John J. Miller, the Kulturkampfer who brought you "The 50 Greatest Conservative Rock Songs," pulls it in through the bars and poops an analysis:

What a perfect embodiment of liberal utopianism: a call for extraterrestrials to make us better by changing who we are.

Within two weeks, expect the rightblogger bottom feeders to spread the word that Jon Stewart has betrayed America and declared his allegiance to alien powers.

Sometimes I think they must have classrooms where the teacher holds up a hard-boiled egg and asks, "Johnny, why is this conservative?" and if Johnny can come up with an answer like "Because it is nature improved by man!" or "Because it is suitable to fuel Jonah Goldberg's farts of wisdom!" he gets promoted.

UPDATE. Further down The Corner, we learn what happened to Jim Manzi, who was a reliably dunderheaded NatRev commenter until the Epistemic Closure fracas last April, when he criticized made man Mark Levin for taking the whole global warning denialism thing a little too far and was denounced for wrongthink by his fellow wingnuts. He writes from Paris:

Living in Europe has created for me a mostly pleasant sense of distance from a lot of the day-to-day of U.S. politics, hence my limited blogging over the past months. Or maybe it’s just that the warm summer breezes and French wines and cheeses have put my ambitions at bay.

Jesus Christ, he had to leave the country! These people take omerta pretty seriously.

ANNALS OF LIBERTARIANISM, PART 1,929,001. Another culture-war denunciation ("Hollywood Hates Capitalism") of commie movies like Wall Street, Avatar, Aliens, Mission Impossible:2, etc. (No, I'm not kidding.) Followed by an explanation that in real life companies that "break the rules" don't benefit from their crimes -- ask Goldman Sachs! (Which is doing fine, thanks, and advertising itself as the mentor of "10,000 small businesses," which those who are dumb enough to believe the rest of this crap just might also believe).

Newbies may be blinking, astonished, and assuming that this comes from National Review, Forbes, Weekly Standard, StormFront, or something like that. Regular readers will have already guessed it's from libertarian magazine Reason.

Refresh my memory: What's the difference between them and Republicans again?

UPDATE. In comments, some astute answers to my question. Susan of Texas: "Conservatives are authoritarian followers. Libertarians are authoritarian followers who think they are authoritarian leaders." By my life and my love of it, that's good.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the Stephen Colbert Congressional appearance and the shitstorm that came with. The reactions of the usual blog dummies were funny enough, peppered as they were with the sort of accusations of ungood unfunniness you would expect from Stalinist goons -- for example, HillBuzz, which militated against laughter at unapproved targets:

Laura Ingraham called [Jon Stewart] a “sad clown”, because Dr. Utopia is failing so badly in the White House, his presidency is crumbling, and he’s leading Democrats to a midterm election that will be the biggest political disaster for a party since 1896.

Yesterday, his cohort in shenanigans, Stephen Coldbear, made an absolute ass of himself at a Congressional hearing and humiliated the Democrats who invited him to testify (as a migrant worker, no less). Stewart and Coldbear will join together the day before Halloween to make further asses of themselves at the Lincoln Memorial, where they will attempt to make fun of the Restoring Honor rally we went to last month.

These guys are ridiculous, but not in the way Comedy Central wants or needs.

Da, da, please to refrain from wronglaugh at so-called comedians, and to laugh instead at funny names made up by Politburo! Victory in culture war is within our grasp. Now, a serving of gruel and performance of four-hour ballet! As Chairman Mao said, that's entertainment!

More interesting to me, though, was the cooperation of several Lamestream Media outlets like Politico and Chuck Todd in denying the official Good Humor certification to Colbert. It seems he stepped a little close to their toes, if not upon them.

You can read the column here.

THE BARREL HAS NO BOTTOM, PART 1,543,929. I hate to make this Megan McArdle week, but she's been spectacularly awful lately. After her "How to Survive a Layoff" post -- an astonishingly condescending, EST-type exercise clearly meant to be enjoyed by other screw-the-poor types, not by actual jobless people, who probably feel bad enough without McArdle telling them what wasters they are -- she actually composed something called "Why Are The Rich So Rich?" that basically answered the question with Beats me, but it's definitely not because they have some unfair advantage!

Now she's onto school loans. Perhaps to compensate for his frequent logrolling, she quotes Ole Perfesser Glenn Reynolds to the effect that we just make people soft by letting them take subsidized loans to get into college. As anyone who actually walks this planet knows, people take on these ever-more-expensive loans and the years of debt that come with because they want to get jobs -- increasingly scarce jobs -- and live, if not better (who can expect that anymore?), then perhaps almost as good as their parents. But the Perfesser and McArdle treat this motivation like some kind of ridiculous presumption, as if a beggar had come to their door and asked for his tin cup to be filled with mocha latte.

Nonetheless McArdle does acknowledge that the poor students have been exploited -- by the schools, who have upped their tuitions to capture the increased loan money ("It's hardly surprising that colleges began to claim more and more of the surplus created by their college degree"). And of course by the dad-gum Gummint, which subsidizes the loans, thereby enabling the scam.

Guess who never gets mentioned in her post? The banks. Banks whose profits on college loans have exploded thanks to the recent boom market in private loans. From MSNBC:

Private loans reached a high of 23 percent of the student-loan market in 2008. The number has fallen since the credit markets seized up but will probably go up again. These, not federally guaranteed loans, are the ones implicated in the worst stories of student debt. It's not just undergraduate programs but graduate and especially professional schools where this has become a huge issue. That's why the American Bar Association, worried that excessive private loan debt is keeping students out of public-interest fields, has pushed for an increase in the (professional school) subsidized-loan limits.

Wonder how McArdle missed this piece of the puzzle.

My favorite sentence in the whole thing:

Who but a lunatic would loan money to an eighteen year old with no job and no credit record, in the hopes that they will graduate college and begin speedy repayment?

Too bad she wasn't around to say this when FDR was signing the GI Bill. It would have made history more interesting, and then we'd be slightly less likely to miss its lessons.

MEGAN McARDLE'S ADVICE FOR OLD PEOPLE WHO LOSE THEIR JOBS: Have more money, and get to work.

UPDATE. You don't get the full flavor of these McArdle posts without the spices added by the Patrick Bateman impersonators who populate her comments section. In this case they talk about what a terrible thing it is that unemployment insurance exists, the liberal bias of the New York Times (one gripes that the paper gave a better review to Menace II Society than to The Pursuit of Happyness), and how, on those rare and justified occasions when they were out of work, unlike the wastrels under discussion they lived in a paper bag in a septic tank to economize. (Now, of course, they are all rich arbitrageurs.)

If you want to know what happens when libertarians are in power, try to imagine a boot kicking at a sleeping bum, forever.

ANNALS OF LIBERTARIANISM, CONT. On the Bill Maher show, Jon Hamm (Mad Men) said some stuff:

Actor Jon Hamm said that the "Luo tribesman" statement [made about Obama] was racist. "That's what it's all sort of couched in ... that's the secret agenda." He then added this: "When they say [Obama] is a 'Luo tribesman,' it's all sort of code"...

Hamm finished up the "racism" discussion with a jab at conservatives. He said that the Tea Party keeps ta[l]king about "taking back" America. "Well," he said, "who are 'we' taking it back from?" Hamm then concluded with this remark: "I'm pretty sure ... 'we' as Americans still have America. I don't know who 'we' need to take it back from." The crowd applauded when he was done.

This is just good sense. The whole Gingrich-D'Souza Luo thing is clearly racist, and the TP "taking America back" message is clearly populist piffle by which well-funded Republican pressure groups try to position themselves as the Forgotten Man.

As followers of rightbloggers may have already guessed, this was seized upon by the usual idiots with Gol-Durn-Hollyweird rants like "is there something that happens to you when you become a huge star in Hollywood... that makes you unable to understand that Americans are often partial to limited government" etc.

There is a particularly ripe example out now, entitled "Don Draper Thinks You Might Have a Hidden, Racist Agenda" (even though its author says of the "racist" charge, "the actor never actually says it outright"). It's got all the rightwing culture war crap you've learned to expect from such outlets: The author laments that "actors, musicians, and comedians" have "exceptionally dumb political views" (like the Dixie Chicks, amirite? Shut up and sing!). He "wonders how Mad Men star Jon Hamm would react to Maher asking about the 'violent' nature of Islam." He bets Hamm would be all "reasonable" about that, yet he smears good tea party Americans on Bill Maher by almost-sorta saying they're racist. Etc.

This was published on the blog at Reason, where consumers who have some lingering doubts about going full wingnut can get their talking points in the "libertarian" flavor. In advertising, they call this a niche market.

UPDATE. Commenter Bob asks, "Okay, so how long before there's a full blown Mad Men boycott by people who already weren't watching it?" The hardcore cases are way ahead of you, Bob -- they recognized long ago that even such seemingly innocuous entertainments as Paul Blart: Mall Cop are full of liberal propaganda, and have stopped engaging so-called "pop culture" altogether. Bible Reagan puppet shows for the kids on Sunday will suffice. The rest of the week's for Galt-Goin'!

NATIONAL REVIEW COVERS THE ARTS. After yet another series of complaints about how artists say liberal things to which conservatives are forced to listen (presumably at gunpoint), Jay Nordlinger addresses an objection:

“That man and his wife can’t expect to go to folk concerts and not hear leftist politics from the stage! Come on! That’s like going to a Chinese restaurant and objecting to the sight of rice.” Well, maybe: I don’t know. Are there right-leaning folkies? Performers, I mean? I bet there are. And I bet many are closeted (as right-leaners are in the classical-music world).

What richness this adds to our picture of persecuted rightwing artists -- now joining the novelists, filmmakers and actors cowering in the attic, we have cellists and hammered dulcimerists! I would especially like to meet the folksinger who trudges from coffeehouse to coffeehouse, blaming the poor reception he receives for his renditions of "Where Has Spiro Agnew Gone?" and "Masters of ACORN" on liberal bias, and taking heart in the examples of Bob Roberts and The Goldwaters.

You might also enjoy this Nordlinger reader letter:

I was a very prolific jazz reviewer for years — live performances and recordings — but totally quit when Obama got elected. The constant e-mails, liner notes, and remarks at gigs that trashed Bush and the Right, while extolling the coming of The One, enraged me, and I just couldn’t take it anymore. Why should I spend one minute of my (volunteered) time helping jazzers when they obviously despise what I stand for?

I like to think this is from Nat Hentoff.

Nordlinger's colleague Benjamin Weinthal catches the bug, and tries an artsy angle on Iran:

Where does the musical film Cabaret, which depicts the rise of German fascism, intersect with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s appearance at the United Nations this week? “It is clear the future belongs to Iran,” said Ahmadinejad in an AP interview on Sunday, which conjures up the eerie beer garden scene in Cabaret in which a young Nazi stirs up jingoism with the song “Tomorrow Belongs to Me"...

The pressing question at the end of the Cabaret scene was posed by the British actor Michael York, who expressed justifiable disbelief about whether Germany’s aristocracy could exercise control over the Hitler movement.

I'm constantly hearing claims that the future belongs to some damn thing or other -- Microsoft, Linux, Matt Meola, walkable communities, et alia. Previously I thought these were just harmless enthusiasms or marketing gimmicks. Now I know they're Hitler! I expect this will be included in the next edition of Liberal Fascism.

Wait a second -- Hitler once said that "the future belongs to color photography." Gasp! His influence lingers to this day! Set the color saturation to zero, for democracy's sake!

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP about the Christine O'Donnell funsies. It's less of a surprise to me that rightbloggers would do anything to cover for their tea party princess -- we all know what good little soldiers they are -- than it is that the Delaware GOP let her get through. I mean, I don't see how it can be that no one looked at her MTV stuff and thought: Hmm, Jesus freak desperate to get on TV -- 10 to 1 she's spoken some holy-rolling that would make William Jennings Bryan blush.

Anyway, I see some of them like Don Surber are doubling down ("I have news for these liberals, most Americans do have questions about The Won’s true beliefs"), which suggests less real confidence to me than a full-scale retreat into fantasy. I'm not optimistic in general, but you only tout a nag like this when you're desperate to sell your tickets.

I'm also interested to see their big knock on O'Donnell's opponent, Chris Coons, is that he once wrote an article for his school paper called "Chris Coons: The Making of a Bearded Marxist.” "Of course it’s doubtful that Chris Coons’ bearded Marxist paper will get half the scrutiny that O’Donnell’s masturbation video will receive," wrote Right Pundits. "Dems Hope Voters Will Focus on O’Donnell & Not on Chris Coons’ Marxist Past," said Jim Hoft. "O'Donnell's Opponent: A Bearded Marxist," announced TownHall. Etc.

Coons' reference, it turns out, is to friends who joked that Africa, where he had spent a semester, "takes in clean-shaven, clear-thinking Americans and sends back bearded Marxists." (He himself merely became a Democrat.) You don't even have to guess at the context -- it's obvious if you know how to read. But rightblogging doesn't require that skill; in fact, at times it seems like an outright impediment.

UPDATE. The latest refinement of the schtick, as advertised by the Ole Perfesser, seems to be that the judgmental liberals are attacking O'Donnell for actually being a witch, whereas the conservatives are accepting and embracing her for it. This is actually pretty clever, as it may excite evangelicals, who will enjoy both the image of O'Donnell picnicking on Satan's altar (presumably in the traditional state of undress) and the opportunity to embrace her in Christian forgiveness. I suggest they get working on those prayer meetings now, and include full-immersion baptisms at every stop.

CONSERVATIVES WILL TELL YOU WHO THE REAL BIGOTS ARE, PART 56,298. Ann Althouse compares the dissemination of wacky "Political Incorrect" clips starring Christine O'Donnell to the smearing of a civil rights worker:

It's a good attention-getting ploy by Maher. He's got the video and he's taking clips out of context for the maximum shock/comic effect. It's perfectly okay to do that with video, right? Remember when Andrew Breitbart did something like that to Shirley Sherrod, and all the liberals got all righteous about taking things out of context?

Shirley Sherrod was shown, when context was added, to be making the polar opposite of the point Big Breitbart falsely accused her of making. What context is going to redeem O'Donnell's witchcraft stories? A clip of her saying, "Oh, I'm sorry, these are not actually my thoughts and experiences -- I was reading the cue-cards of a character who's supposed to be a total idiot"?

Better still is this Althouse commenter:

One quibble--no, Breitbart did not do any such thing to Shirley Sherrod. That was liberal spin that successfully changed the subject from the very damaging thing that Breitbart did do, which was expose the hypocrisy and racism of the NAACP.

Reminds me of the general under investigation in Costa-Gavras' Z who, when a reporter asks him if he's being railroaded like Dreyfus, righteously hollers, "Dreyfus was guilty!"

UPDATE. Michelle Malkin helpfully explains:

At 1:03 in the video, one of the panelists on the show criticizes O’Donnell for criticizing Halloween — “Wait a minute, I love this, you’re a witch, you go ‘Halloween is bad,’ I’m not the witch, I mean wait a minute.” She responds by explaining that she opposes witchcraft because she has had first-hand experience with what they do.

So O'Donnell was only saying that silly-sounding stuff to defend her real point -- that Halloween leads to witchcraft. Or vice-versa. Glad we cleared that up!

THE TEA PARTY'S DEVOTION TO WOMEN AND DEMOCRACY, AS REVEALED BY DAN RIEHL'S REACTION TO THE NEWS THAT LISA MURKOWSKI WILL RUN AS AN INDEPENDENT:

Bitch: Murkowski Will Run As Write-In.

I await the wingnut's traditional response that Riehl is the real feminist.

THE TEA PARTIES EXPLAINED SO CLEARLY THAT NO NORMAL PERSON WILL WANT TO HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH THEM. Sigh. Young James Poulos is again shaking fists against his corrupt, sex-having elders.

Having previously done his part for the groovy Puritan revolution by denouncing nude yoga, the whorishness of Miley Cyrus, sexual harassment litigation, and softcore pornography, he now explains that the tea parties will succeed because they, like Poulos, are anti-sex:

Indeed, anti-tea-party voices are already congealing around the narrative that the Tea Party is powered by these people -- that a vote for Tea is a vote for Crazy, and that any decent American freak or rube had better throw in with the liberal sex vote in the first case and follow union orders in the second.

There you have it, America: Poulos says you must choose! On the one hand, "The liberal sex vote" (and organized labor!) and on the other, Tea Party blueballs. The choice is clear!  If you ain't done havin' fun, you might pursue young Poulous' extra points:

Only a fool can deny the deep resonances between [Hunter S.] Thompson's Southwestern libertarianism and the Nick-Gillespie-chronicled Tea Party longing to restore America's honor while keeping America weird.

Holy shit: Hunter S. Thompson = the Tea Parties? Try to imagine the Good Doctor going among the living Ralph Steadman drawings that are the Tea People and finding anything in them but bad craziness, or hearing Gillespie's PR on their behalf and taking it seriously. I suppose Poulos has, and expects that with his prodding zombie Thompson would eventually clasp hands with Richard Nixon and join him in a celibate Valhalla. I won't say it's out of the question, but I have to ask: Where, in this day and age, would you get drugs good enough to convince him?

LET'S DO IT AGAIN. Remember last year's savior of conservatism in New York's 23rd Congressional District, Doug Hoffman? How he was going to upend that RINO Dede Scozzafava by running on the Conservative Party line in a special election, and restore dignity etc? And how conservatives were so sure of victory that they nationalized the election, only to see Hoffman destroy both Scozzafava's and his own chances and elect the Democrat to a seat the Republicans had held since the 3rd Century B.C.?

Well, the regular election is upon us, and guess what:

With 93% of precincts reporting, businessman Matt Doheny has 53% to Hoffman's 47% and the Associated Press has projected Doheny as the winner. Doheney will now face Democratic Rep. Bill Owens, who narrowly defeated Hoffman in last year's special election...

However, Hoffman is still the nominee of the Conservative Party...

If I wasn't very well aware that they didn't work that way, I'd start to think Hoffman is a Democratic mole.

ONE THING YOU GOTTA SAY about Reason's Matt Welch and Steve Chapman -- not for them the hand-wringing of moderate Republicans over the loony new tea party candidates. As libertarians they understand the vital necessity of electing Republicans, no matter how crazy.

Chapman gets extra points (and maybe a nice bonus check from the Koch Brothers) for reminding us yet again that George W. Bush started it all, which is why the tea party movement dates back to 2004, or will as soon as they get that time machine built.

Wouldn't it be nice for Democrats if they could count on that kind of support from Ralph Nader?

SERVICE ADVISORY. This is just to notify you that I'm still doing the Tumblr thing. Tonight the Times gave me an opportunity to harsh on the Yankees and their douchebag fans, which some of you know is kind of a hobby with me.

That Yankees gear has become popular among crooks does not surprise me: as I observed on the occasion of the Bombers' most recent World Series victory, "as in the old days, the favored leisurewear of the city's mouth-breathers, subways gropers, and bump-and-runners will become a Yankees jersey." I'm not clairvoyant. I just used to live with these people.

UPDATE. Actually, when Kander and Ebb do the song themselves, I kinda dig it.

A GOOD EXAMPLE OF THE TEA PARTY'S LIBERTARIAN, POPULIST IDEALS. Last night's other nut, GOP New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino, isn't getting as much coverage as Christine O'Donnell, which is unfair -- he's at least as crazy as she is, as his recent interview with Rick Sanchez at CNN shows:

SANCHEZ: How do you feel -- what is your position on abortion?

PALADINO: No.

SANCHEZ: Should a woman have a right to have an abortion if she's -- if she's been raped?

PALADINO: No.

SANCHEZ: She should not? She should have to have the baby?

PALADINO: And the baby can be adopted, yes.

SANCHEZ: What if it's -- what if it's a case of incest?

PALADINO: The baby can be adopted, yes.

Also, Mr. Limited Government wants to use eminent domain to stop the Burlington Coat Factory mosque. And he made this extraordinary statement:

I'm not -- I'm not a person looking for money. I have no political ambitions whatsoever. I don't seek power.

This is pretty much the polar opposite of the truth -- first, because he's fucking running for Governor. Also, his whole life has been a hunt for money and power -- as Joshua Holland points out, he's what the Buffalo News calls "the state government’s biggest landlord in Western New York, holding half of the 52 leases the state has taken out on offices in Erie and Niagara counties," with yearly rent receipts over $5 million-- swollen by humongous tax breaks he has received from the tyrannical, business-strangling state.

Holland also points out that Paladino uses the same pseudo-revolutionary rhetoric favored by the rest of the Tea Party guys, and specifically mentions the "ruling class" that was a big talking point among rightwingers a short while ago -- even though if anyone in America qualifies as ruling-class, it's Paladino.

Maybe he's not getting the media play because he's expected to lose badly in November. Or maybe he's been kept out of the spotlight because the insanely racist emails he got caught sending around don't make him the best poster boy for the tea people. In any case it's too bad, because the wealthy landlord who portrays himself as a tribune of the people -- whose interests he says he will support against those of the folks who've been making him rich for years -- is as perfect a symbol of the whole bullshit tea party movement as you'll ever see.

He puts me in mind of Tom Golisano, the perennial self-financed gubernatorial candidate who tried to manipulate New York's 2008 elections the old-fashioned way, with massive contributions -- and, when they didn't work out to his liking, backed Pedro Espada's coup in the state senate. He also announced he was leaving the state. Poor Golisano -- absurd as he is, he might have had a chance if he'd only hung in long enough to get with the tea party and let them portray him to the punters as Tom Joad.

THE NEW NORMAL. You'd think that as a connoisseur of right-wing comedy I'd be delighted with last night's GOP primary results. And in a way I am. Christine O'Donnell could be the most fun Republican quote machine since Michele Bachmann. And the racist lunacy of Carl Paladino should make for an entertaining six weeks in New York, especially with sad sack Rick Lazio contending on the Conservative Party line.

However, I'm not just a comedian; I'm also a citizen. And so I have an auspicious and a drooping eye because, along with the promise of lulz, I get an unpleasant feeling of deja vu.

Atrios says that with the ascent of the nutbags, the new Party leadership is Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and Rush Limbaugh. That's true as far as it goes, but leaves out that at least one of these worthies has already held the Chair. National Review was calling Limbaugh "The Leader of the Opposition" back in 1993. They meant that the talk radio phenom was supposed to provide the propaganda fodder for the GOP comeback. (Talk radio, for all you kids out there, filled in the 90s the what's-happening role now filled by the internet.)

Limbaugh riled the troops, and the benefit went to that other revolutionary leader, Newt Gingrich, with his Alvin Toffler and his blessed Contract with America. When Gingrich and his Now People took over the House, there was much mooing over the new era in conservative politics this allegedly presaged.

At Reason Virginia Postrel gushed over the new Philosopher-Speaker. The sheeple resented him, said Postrel, for his "fascination with big ideas," his Progress & Freedom Foundation that "attempted to expand Washington's mind" (i.e., provide yet another make-work project for wingnuts funded by corporations) and other such innovations. Why did they disdain this groovy revolution? Because

it threatens the controllers of convention because it says they, and even Gingrich, aren't especially important. It declares that the most significant people, events, ideas, and innovations are outside Washington, outside government, outside convention. It dares to suggest that society changes first and government (and media) must adapt...

In other words, Rush and Newt were leading the Tea Party of 20 years ago, the New Thing that was going to change politics.

We all saw (and students of human nature foresaw) how that worked out: Gingrich led a pack of con men who fattened their districts and themselves at the expense of their allegedly sacred public trust -- even copping out on the self-imposed term limits that were the big come-on in their Contact with the voters. The whole thing was a fraud top to bottom.

Now we have another New Thing, also said to be revolutionary, also right-wing. Only instead of being driven by the Power of Talk Radio it is driven by the magic of the internet. It's also supposed to be leaderless and "crowd-sourced," as is asserted in the latest guff on the subject, disappointingly written by Jonathan Rauch.

Rauch tells us that the tea party is "a coordinated network, not a hierarchy" -- which he knows because organizers from the Tea Party Patriots ("a 501(c)(4) nonprofit group") told him. (Rauch doesn't even mention Dick Armey's TP front, FreedomWorks, in the article; maybe he promised TPP an exclusive.)

The real oddity, though, is Rauch's refusal to acknowledge that the tea parties are a conservative movement. For the most part, he swallows the organizers' line that "the real point is to change the country's political culture, bending it back toward the self-reliant, liberty-guarding instincts of the Founders' era," and only gets around to mentioning near the end that the tea parties have a "right-wing, or at least libertarian, ideology."

This comports with the tea partiers' own propaganda: Our new futurist patriots now don't even admit they're conservative, even though their platforms are without exception extremely conservative, and they are backed almost exclusively by conservative activists and media outlets.

You can see the strategy here: Just a few years ago, the Republicans self-evidently destroyed the economy, which loosened their grip on the electorate. The smarter conservatives knew their best hope was to portray the Democratic rescue remedy as dangerously alien -- black socialist fascist etc. But to complete the trick, they also had to pretend that they were not who they had been back when America fell out of love with them.

Thus their candidates' advance men tell the world that they are beyond left and right, and stand merely for Freedom, which as Thomas Jefferson knew means no capital gains tax or teaching evolution.

Maybe in future iterations these candidates will refuse to even acknowledge they're actually running for office. They'll ask reporters why they're following them around; do their speaking engagements with their backs to the audience and, when people applaud, look around as if confused; finally, they'll walk into their election-night victory celebrations as if they're surprise parties, and announce, "Well, as long as I'm 'elected,' as everyone keeps telling me, I guess I'll do away with Social Security and Roe v. Wade."

But here we are onto science fiction: It won't be proper satire for another year or two. And by then it will be too late.

A CHILDLIKE FAITH. Apparently orders for new, improved Obama insults have gone out to the talkshops of the right. In the blog mills, where they churn out the rough stuff, they call the President insane. In the journalism plants, where they water the stuff down a bit for mass consumption, they promote softer-sounding diagnoses of Obama's alleged dysfunction, such as Dinesh D'Souza's and Newt Gingrich's contention that Obama is playing out the anti-colonialism of the father he barely knew, Dorothy Rabinowitz's that Obama is an "alien," etc.

In the fudge factory known as National Review, Kathryn J. Lopez churns out the pablum version. It begins with the sort of belly-flop that first made her NR bosses say, "Make her an editor if it'll just keep her from writing":

If Carly Simon were a conservative, she might be writing “You’re so vain, you probably think this White House is beneath you,” to accompany the next big tea-party rally.

Thereafter she tells us that everything Obama has done has been a failure and all the Democrats hate him for it. Example:

He made a lot of Democrats fall on their swords for a health-care plan that could conceivably be dismantled before it’s even remotely fully implemented.

Similarly, he keeps showing up at work and signing bills even though God could strike him dead at any moment.

Stop there, K-Lo, someone should have told her -- it's not too late to be merely rather than spectacularly incoherent. But no, she had to come up with philosophi-mological explanations like the former Speaker and all the other cool kids did. Here's her first:

Some of what Barack Obama does can be attributed to a fondness for socialism.

Well, here at least she's using understatement, because all conservatives know Obama isn't just fond of socialism, he likes to kiss and hug it. Maybe Jonah Goldberg saw this over her shoulder and laughed, thus fatally encouraging her, and after she brushed the Cheeto crumbs from her jacket K-Lo wrote this:

The answer for all the analysts may be just a bad old-fashioned vainglory, one that the man just can’t keep in check. Thus the snippy Slurpee comments, about Republicans standing on the sidelines (drinking them). Besides the issues of truth — House GOP leader John Boehner has been making concrete bipartisan proposals, so he can’t legitimately be attacked for standing on the sidelines — more Americans today could probably relate to 7-Eleven than to Martha’s Vineyard.

Obama's snotty comments (making them) about Slurpees (disdaining them) shows reg'lar Americans he'd rather be in Foofytown drinking fancy drinks (umbrellas in them) than chowing down on an Arby's Chicken Cordon Bleu Sandwich by a dirty overpass and telling Mooslims to go to hell.

In addition to his godless attacks on sugared slush, Obama proves his hubris by acting as if his Presidential victory means something -- "It’s as if he won American Idol fair and square and he’s going to do with the win what he will, make of his title what he will." Whereas K-Lo knows he only won it because he's pretty and has a nice voice, not like George W. Bush, who earned his victory on Jeopardy! after long nights of hard study.

In short, Lopez' entry is less like the baroque conspiracy theories now fashionable, and more like the first injured wingnut peeps heard after it sunk in that the hated blackamoor had won: That he's snobby and he isn't all that. It's a time trip back to when they were all snarling about "The One" and the Obama Dear Leader Song, and dreaming about how he'll get his comeuppance after the Prom.

Well, I'll say this for it -- it has the advantage of simplicity. If I am sometimes moved to pity for K-Lo because even he own colleagues look down on her, I can also see a benefit to being so incurious and Jesus-addled -- she doesn't need fancy theology to know that her redeemer (John Boehner) liveth.