SHORTER RON HART: Liberals are hypocrites to complain about violent imagery. After all, they make jokes.

(The real punchline: Nick Gillespie thinks this is astute.)

DON'T YOU FUCKING LOOK AT ME! I see at National Review Daniel Foster is pissed because CBS asked people in a "stupid poll" the question, "Do you think it is ever justified for citizens to take violent action against the government, or is it never justified?" Most of the respondents were true sheeple, eschewing violent action under any circumstances, with Republicans marginally more likely to take to the hills with their shootin' ahrns than Democrats.

"So I guess I’d be among that 28 percent" who would rebel, bravely asserts Foster, brandishing a dinner roll. "But then, so would Hobbes, and Edmund Burke for that matter." He knows not what course others may take, but thinks the weak sisters in the poll haven't thought the question through:

But what does surprise me is that 76 percent of respondents, including 64 percent of Republicans, think it is never right to take up arms against the government. Ever.

What about if the government canceled the next election and started seizing first-born; or arbitrarily disappearing whole classes of citizenry; or summarily abolished private property and confiscated all our belongings at the tip of a bayonet? Not even then?

Har. But the question, however awkwardly phrased, is relevant because a lot of people currently do believe the government, under the Muslim pretender Obama, will cancel the next election, seize their first-born, etc. Rather than call out specific cases of such like among the gomers and gun-nuts who now comprise the GOP base, I could just put a link to my whole blog, but for now I'll content myself with the Insurrectionist Timeline and stuff like this:

Mitch McConnell Accuses Obama Of Plan To Seize Internet

..."Today, the Obama administration, which has already nationalized health care, the auto industry, insurance companies, banks and student loans, will move forward with what could be the first step in controlling how Americans use the Internet by establishing federal regulations on its use," said McConnell.

This kind of crap goes on all the time, in both the high and the low registers of the outrage apparatus. I expect when CBS revisits their question in a few months -- after the Giffords situation has cooled down, and Obama has committed some fresh outrage, like further weakening America by extending unemployment benefits or something -- the shooty-shooty numbers will be higher.

Foster's complaint and the ones that are sure to follow once the central committee gets the memo around are part of a whole How Dare They movement to delegitimize even the mildest notice (aka the "blood libel") that the Republican Party has gone plain nuts. I'm reminded of Frank Booth, all ethered up and hissing "Don't you fucking look at me!"

CUE THE CRAZY JESUS LADY. I see that the President has made his speech, and the apparatchiks are working the Wellstone Maneuver -- the time-dishonored schtick in which conservatives pretend to be outraged at the upbeat tone of memorial services held by their mortal enemies.

Of course, it ain't over till the Crazy Jesus Lady sings -- by which I mean Peggy Noonan, who stuck the Triple Lutz of the Wellstone Maneuver back in 2002, actually pretending to be Senator Wellstone, and condemning his friends and family from heaven for their insufficient solemnity.

It was one of the lowest performances it has ever been my misfortune to witness, and it worked like a charm, helping to elect the horrible Norm Coleman to Wellstone's old seat. So Noonan must be greatly tempted to go for the hat trick. I can almost see her words crawling across the page:

Why can't I speak? My God, this must be what Terry Schiavo felt like! If I ever get out of this accursed bed, I'll mend my abortionist ways and fight for the rights of all God's children. And a balanced budget! And there's something else I'll do: Denounce everybody who didn't spend that memorial service blubbering like John Boehner at a supermarket opening. The very idea of those Demonrats cheering -- and that Kenyan pretender presuming to speak -- I'll tell you, the doctors think I'm fighting for my life, but I'm actually quivering with rage!

Etc. Of course, there's a danger, in that while Wellstone was dead, Giffords is not. If Noonan does go for it, there's a good chance Giffords will return to good health, fly up to New York, and kick her Crazy Jesus ass up and down Fifth Avenue.

Well, I'm convinced. Go for it, Peggy! I'm sending a bottle of Old Overholt and a scapular to your office for inspiration.

THE ETERNAL VICTIM. Now that Palin's gotten on Ole Perfesser Instapundit's "blood libel" bandwagon, I wonder whether the Anti-Defamation League will step up. (Update: Foxman issues a watery statement.) Traditionally, see, this is blood libel:

The blood libel is a false accusation that Jews sacrifice Christian children either to use the blood for various "medicinal" purposes or to prepare Passover Matzoth (unleavened bread) or for vengeance and mock crucifixions. It is one of the central fables of Anti-Semitism of the older (middle ages) type.

I suppose every time a newspaper runs an editorial against her, it's Kristallnacht. And if Obama wins in 2012, that'll be the Holocaust. Jesus -- is there no limit to their persecution mania?

UPDATE. Ha, Dave Weigel: "First reporter to obtain Palin react quote from Mel Gibson gets a cookie."

UPDATE 2. The Perfesser's playing it close to the vest. Maybe he guessed that, once his noxious usage achieved wider dissemination through a celebrity spokesmodel, people would start making fun of it. Back to the bunker, fellas! (Update to update: The Perfesser has since added a lot of wounded gush about the "silliest hissyfit yet." And when he calls the New York Times Building the New Treblinka, betcha those silly liberals will pop off again! They're so predictable!)

UPDATE 3. Flop-sweat at National Review: Since Jonah Goldberg refused to take one for the team (I can imagine K-Lo trying to pull him out of the hall closet, his eyes streaming tears and his mouth streaming Cheetos), Jim Geraghty had to go out there and earn his bonus with a oh-yeah-liberals-do-it-too post.

The main difference is that Geraghty's examples refer to 1.) Claims that all gay people are pedophiles; 2.) Claims that all black people want to rape white women; 3.) A call for all Muslims to be profiled as terrorists; 4.) Claims that Al Gore tried to disenfranchise military voters ("almost a blood libel"). The last one's a little over the top; the others are less so, because they portray groups of people as guilty of horrible crimes simply because they belong to those groups.

The idea that wingnuts were blood-libeled because some people (including the victim) noticed the incendiary rhetoric used on Giffords before she was shot is worse that ridiculous.

UPDATE 4. Arizona District GOP Chair resigns because he's afraid the yahoos might kill him and his family:

In an e-mail sent a few hours after Saturday's massacre in Tucson that killed six and injured 13, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, [District Chairman Anthony] Miller told state Republican Party Chairman Randy Pullen he was quitting: "Today my wife of 20 yrs ask (sic) me do I think that my PCs (Precinct Committee members) will shoot at our home? So with this being said I am stepping down from LD20GOP Chairman...I will make a full statement on Monday"...

Miller said when he was a member of McCain's campaign staff last year has been criticized by the more conservative party members who supported Republican opponent J.D. Hayworth. The first and only African-American to hold the party's precinct chairmanship, Miller said he has been called "McCain's boy," and during the campaign saw a critic form his hand in the shape of a gun and point it at him.

"I wasn't going to resign but decided to quit after what happened Saturday," Miller said. "I love the Republican Party but I don't want to take a bullet for anyone."

Clearly he's blood-libeling Sarah Palin too! If he had any decency he'd put on a bullet-proof vest and get right back in there.

THE REAL PROBLEM. One of the best things I've read about this Giffords situation is by "hisnewreasons," made in comments to my last post:

I don't think Sarah Palin's rhetoric has inspired violence, because it's essentially meaningless. Whether it's Glenn Beck's Armageddon talk or the internet blather about gun confiscation and socialism, all of this tough talk eventually leads to rather banal ends -- i.e., the rise of a John Boehner to high office.

It's that banality that you find underneath the rage of suburbanites who seem themselves as Nathan Hale, simply because they joined the Tea Party. You don't find potential assassins, but tourists who practically need cannons to take down a moose on hunting trips...

"Lock and load" doesn't make people violent. It makes them stupid.

Just so. Their deliberately menacing blood-of-tyrants, Second-Amendment-solutions blather looks, in the wake of the Giffords shooting, rather sinister -- especially since, after one of their targets was slain, their first reaction was defensive rather than abashed.

But violent delusions aren't the only kind from which they suffer. Take National Review's Kathryn J. Lopez and her recent mooning over that nice Catholic boy Marco Rubio. Rubio inspired Lopez with some mild fourscore-and-seven-years-ago bombast to a bizarre flight of fantasy:

...Rubio recalled — with a savvy “Señor Smith Goes to Washington” appeal — visiting some of the Founders’ memorials in and around town. They stand as reminders and even rallying cries. Those who fought and died to establish this country, those who worked on its founding, believed that “every single human person had inherent rights that came from God,” he reminded the crowd... And what the 112th Congress does will help determine, Rubio insisted, whether, “when my children are my age,” they will come back here to admire the monuments of our core national values, or merely be “looking at relics of a once-great nation.”

I couldn’t have been the only one to picture the Statue of Liberty in Planet of the Apes — and without feeling entirely absurd.

Normal people may or may not be inspired by Rubio's patriotic mush, but they will be inoculated by common sense from taking it too seriously. When they hear the mournful line about relics, they may not know that it is straight out of a specific class of wingnut propaganda ordnance, meant to portray the brethren as the last loyal defenders of freedom -- like Douglas MacArthur's ravings about wanting the curse on a dying soldier's lips to be Roosevelt's name and not his own, and other such self-pitying bluster. They may even feel a little wistful, observe that freedom isn't free, resolve to teach their kids the Pledge of Allegiance, etc.

But they won't fantasize about liberal apes romping in the ruins of our national monuments while Charlton Heston roars GOD DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL! And if they did they'd be embarrassed. But K-Lo is proud. To her Planet of the Apes is a work of social prophecy, like 1984.

That's how her mind works -- and how their minds work. The "eliminationist" tropes we've been hearing about recently are part of the problem, but so are the less violent notions we see them parroting every day: That Obama is a Muslim, an alien, a psychopath, and consciously trying to destroy the United States; that Teddy Roosevelt was a dangerous radical; that America's scientists are engaged in a deliberate conspiracy to bankrupt the nation via global warming fraud; that deficits, which were harmless and even kinda fun under Reagan, are under Obama a menace to the future of our famous statues; etc. etc. etc.

The cumulative impact of this kind of magical thinking may or may not lead to assassinations, but it certainly weakens the sufferer's ability to respond to even obvious problems in any reasonable way. And in the long run this is more dangerous to the Republic than the grrr-lookit-me-I'm-a-Minuteman blood-lust we're currently focused on. The wingnut looks, for example, upon millions of citizens financially unable to visit a doctor when they're sick, and the first thing he asks himself is, "How can we defend these people from socialism?" He sees the stock market doing great while ordinary people can't find jobs, and surmises, "This Administration is anti-business." Etc.

Even if you embarrass them (fond hope!) into talking less about guns and revolution, you aren't touching the real problem. I'm not confident that it's curable. The best we can do is keep them away from sharp objects and the levers of power.

UPDATE. Lotta pushback in comments. I'm aware of the copious evidence of conservatives gone kill-crazy, including the bill of particulars of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence's Insurrectionist Timeline (which makes Michelle Malkin's "progressive climate of hate" list look like a kindergarten bad conduct report). And I can imagine the effect the constant threats of violence, masked and otherwise, have on Democratic organizing, especially in communities infested with gun nuts and tricornered delusionals.

I still say that's a problem but not the problem. These nuts wouldn't be out there going shooty-shooty in the first place if they hadn't been convinced by the orchestrators of their own stupidity that Big Gummint is a tyranny that cannot be effected by voting and petitioning. Why should they take part in working groups or doorknocking campaigns when they've been told, contrary to all evidence and common sense, that because these things worked for Obama they have ceased to work for white rageaholics, who must in consequence attack every policy as if it were Bunker Hill?

UPDATE 2. A long comment on this post from Doghouse Riley. Includes:

So much of our politics seems to be a debate about how best to remove most of the pieces of eggshell from our omelette, and none about figuring out how to properly crack an egg.

WON'T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE WINGNUTS? Since I wrote about it at the Voice, it's just gotten worse: The entire right wing is in mourning over the recent assassination of their reputations. (I hear some Democratic Congresswoman got shot, too, but they don't have much to say about that.)

The Corner is one long blubber-fest. Brian Bolduc repurposes a Glenn Beck press release "decrying" -- get this -- "political opportunism of all stripes." Yeah, let's get past these sideshows and fight the real enemy: George Soros and Teddy Roosevelt!

Rich Lowry laffs about a gun-sight image from the sports section -- how could those silly liberals take such things seriously? -- then turns grave over a GOP elephant festooned with swastikas on an anti-war poster. (Lowry doesn't tell us how many people were shot at that rally; must have been dozens.)

Michelle Malkin does one of the longer SKREEEEs in her history, a list of liberal hate crimes generously padded with egregious misrepresentations ("The Green War on Children") and trivialities (a mug shot of Josh Medlin, who "threw an ice cream pie at Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol"). It all goes to show that liberal hate (and Mexicans!) created the climate of terror that led to the shooting of Rep. Giffords and, possibly, the Kennedys and Davey Moore.

And of course, that bastard Bill Clinton and his Oklahoma City false flag operation, as hawked by the Ole Perfesser, Byron York and Dick Morris. Not that they're turning a crisis into an opportunity or anything, but this makes a great teachable moment about how liberals use wingnut violence to make wingnuts look bad.

It is something to see the Perfesser, normally glib to the point of apathy, feverishly glomming every bit of propaganda provenance he can get his hands on (including more "blood libel" stuff) as if he needed them immediately for a firebreak. They must have doubled his stipend, or cut his ration. That other tenured radical, Ann Althouse, meanwhile pre-emptively declares that "the accusations backfire," and retreats to her happy place. We all deal with stress in our own way; Althouse's seems the cozier; the Perfesser will have a hard time achieving immortality if he continues to strain himself like this.

I sure hope no one shoots Obama. These poor people have suffered enough!

UPDATE. You must admit, they have nerve:

Glenn Beck told his radio audience this morning that Sarah Palin had e-mailed him about the tragic shootings in Arizona this weekend, writing, “I hate violence. I hate war.”

“Our children will not have peace if politicos just capitalize on this to succeed in portraying anyone as inciting terror and violence,” Palin added.

During his show, Beck also urged Palin to seek extra security for herself and her family.

One of Palin's targets gets shot, but Palin is actually the one in the cross-hairs. In Hell Joe Goebbels is laughing his ass off.

UPDATE 2. In comments, whetstone follows through: "Unfortunately that Corner post doesn't capture the full nerve of Beck's concern for Palin: 'But please look into protection for your family. An attempt on you could bring the republic down.' Goebbels, having gotten the full quote, has now stopped laughing and is now quietly seething with envy."

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the Giffords shooting. The fallout has in some ways been what I'd expected: as with Pentagon shooter John Patrick Bedell, conservatives have been quick to label Jared Loughner a liberal even though his actual politics as expressed in his ravings could best be described as aphasic.

The thing that took me aback was the vehemence of some of the more prominent rightbloggers on the subject. Ole Perfesser Instapundit, for example, did several posts with more manic intensity than he usually betrays -- including a couple of bizarre references to "blood libel." The Southron, apparently, is the Jew of Liberal Fascism.

This is taking conservative victim status to new heights. But why? I think they may be suffering flashbacks to Oklahoma City -- to which, I notice, they increasingly refer as a scam by Bill Clinton, or in the words of Tea Party Nation's Judson Phillips a "tactic" which "worked then, backing conservatives off and possibly helping to ensure a second Clinton term," rather than as an act of mass murder. Their rapid-response muscles have been so assiduously trained for so long, it seems, that they're constantly on hair-trigger, and every event, however horrible or moving, they immediately perceive as a political opportunity before anything else; I imagine they were working out their spin for this before the bodies hit the floor.

Favorite outtake: HillBuzz, who's also obsessed with this, discovering that the assassin's Facebook and MySpace pages were no longer available, and demanding to know, "What is the Left hiding on these pages?" Wait'll he finds Loughner's Facebook manifesto, ghost-written by Aaron Sorkin! Then Hillary will surely consent to lead the Army of God.

UPDATE. The Perfesser's charm offensive continues: "FLASHBACK: Sarah Palin hanged in effigy during 2008 campaign." That might mean something if she were the one who got shot. But people like her seldom are.

LEARNING TO SAY "THANK YOU" IN ENGLISH. My sister and I are in some ways so different that I think it startles both of us. (Edrosos are so fundamentally contrary that we have long since gone beyond disagreeing on specific issues, and passed into divergent realities.) But in some ways she and I are absolutely alike. These traits fascinate me, because they offer some clues as to our heritage and the way it has shaped us.

For example: Since we were old enough to buy our own Christmas gifts, every December we would get around to asking each other what Christmas gift would be appreciated. Unfailingly we both had the same response: Don't get me nothin'. Then each would ask again, and the other would brush it off again.

So we'd have to guess what gift would please the other. I for one was always nervous about it, and despite assurances never felt like I had guessed right. I think she felt the same way.

One year my sister just declared: We're not doing presents this year. That worked great. In fact Christmases were a lot easier after that, and not just logistically.

If you think it's weird that we were so reluctant to ask each other for something, even with the best excuse modern merchandizing had to offer, then you and I are in agreement. Weirder still, I'm often like that with other people, too: Friends, lovers, employers, store clerks. It's not unfailing; if I want a bourbon and soda, I find a way to express the thought. But it tends to be worse when I really need something. Then for some reason I become a lot less eloquent than I like to think I am.

I'm not sure I have the subtleties right, but I've figured out this much: I have a particularly ornery independent streak. I can't stand to feel beholden to others. Of course we're all of us beholden to others, generically and cosmically; even I know that. But if I feel someone's carrying me, even casually, I feel the need to get off and walk. It's all right. I got it. I don't need help. Don't get me nothin'.

So recently, in ornamenting what I usually think is an politics and culture blog, I made what I considered mordant jokes about some personal reversals I'd suffered. I figured longtime readers would get the joke: That pissant maudit Edroso and his black cloud, doing a little trapeze act for the crowd. I welcomed sympathy, and would have been grateful for any little back-pats and hang-in-theres, but figured I'd get onto the usual Jonah Goldberg fart tricks as soon as I had time and opportunity for them, and we'd forget all this.

What I sincerely did not expect was for people to offer me something more substantial. Like, money.

When I saw that Jay B had done the Edrosothon, I didn't at first absorb the fact. I figured maybe a few people might kick in some bucks and that would be that. I'd be grateful for it, of course, but best of all I could sort of dismiss it. You know, as if all those people in It's a Wonderful Life burst into George Bailey's house and said, "Here's twenty bucks, George -- when you get out of prison, you can take a cab home."

But I talked to Jay, and it appears a lot of people have contributed. A lot. And the take is meaningful -- enough that I'm not really hearing the hellhounds anymore, and should be able to get to a clean, well-lighted place soon.

I'm going to be writing to my contributors as soon as I get their names. But I want to extend this gratitude not only to them (and to Jay B, who I'll tell the world is definitely someone you want on your side) but also to everyone who didn't contribute but who has been kind, encouraging, sympathetic, or just plain nice to me, and whose gestures I may have accepted graciously but may not have fully grasped were tokens of real friendship. I get it, folks. I get it. Thank you.

SERVICE ADVISORY. Sorry to have dropped off the grid again, friends, but the past few days have been a challenge. My Harlem sublet came to an end, and none of the tickets I had out on a follow-up came through, so I was obliged to lodge with an old friend in Inwood, way up by Fort Tryon. It is a fascinating, hideous neighborhood. Here is a picture of an orange-seller on Dyckman, sweeping away the foul remnants of the late storm so that her customers can come right up to her, instead of flinging coins at her from the street:



I'm sure there's plenty else just as charming about Inwood, but I have been too sick to notice. I caught a chill New Year's Eve, spent two days I should have spent packing incapacitated by fever, and my lungs and sinuses are full of epoxy. Also, though I am very grateful to my buddy for lending me his spare room, it has seen little use and no absolutely no cleaning since the 28th Olympiad, and I'm not sure this is facilitating my recovery.

Every so often, in my delirium and through fluttering lids, I catch sight of Jonah Goldberg shaking his finger at figurines made of long-hardened Play-Dough, and demanding, "Oh, so you're all 'hands off my body' when you want an abortion, but then you also want to make me have socialized medicine, which is hypocrimi, hypocriminical, hypo squirtfarrrarrrarrrrrrrrrrrrart," and I try to respond, but no one can make out what I'm saying, or else they think it's a Blake Edwards tribute.

Also: No wireless internet.

This may take a while.

AULD LANG SYNE. At Vagabond Scholar, Battochio has restarted a tradition begun by the late Al Weisel aka Jon Swift: A year-end roundup of what some bloggers considered their best posts of 2010. There's a lot of fine stuff there that I missed the first time around, and maybe you did too.

Tonight I hope you all enjoy your Possum Drop or whatever you use to celebrate.

UPDATE. How do your New Year's resolutions stack up against Richard Nixon's?

CONSERVATIVE INTELLECTUALISM: A STATUS REPORT. In case you were wondering what that crazy motherfucker Robert P. George was up to, I followed a link at National Review and got this. George is apparently still into mystical anatomy as a justification for homophobia:

Like Andrew Koppelman, Barry Deutsch has posted a critique of our recent Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy article arguing that marriage is the conjugal union of husband and wife. And, like Koppelman, Deutsch makes central to his critique a denial that marital coition effects a true organic (bodily) union of spouses. For the reasons we set forth in our reply to Professor Koppelman, we believe his critique is unsuccessful...

Our studies show 98 percent of readers do the record-scratch/double-take thing on "marital coition effects a true organic (bodily) union of spouses." But wait, George and his co-authors have more. They quote their original article, which I gotta give them credit for because if I had written something like this...

In coitus, but not in other forms of sexual contact, a man and a woman’s bodies coordinate by way of their sexual organs for the common biological purpose of reproduction. They perform the first step of the complex reproductive process. Thus, their bodies become, in a strong sense, one—they are biologically united, and do not merely rub together—in coitus (and only in coitus), similarly to the way in which one’s heart, lungs, and other organs form a unity: by coordinating for the biological good of the whole. In this case, the whole is made up of the man and woman as a couple, and the biological good of that whole is their reproduction.

...I wouldn't be spreading it around. I mean, how many times can people hear "I was drunk" before it stops being a valid excuse?

If you want to read a couple thousand words about how fucking makes you and your beloved into a single super-creature (but only if you do it in the right hole, and sucking is definitely out), Happy Kwanzaa!

George kinda reminds me of the mad doctor in The Human Centipede.

UPDATE. Commenters make the connection I missed: to Voltron, Defender of the Universe, by C.S. Lewis.

HOW BULLSHIT WORKS, PART 9,230,933. Rolling Stone interviewed Merle Haggard, who was exceedingly gracious about President Obama:

...It was also nice to meet Obama and find him very different from the media makeout. It's really almost criminal what they do with our President. There seems to be no shame or anything. They call him all kinds of names all day long, saying he's doing certain things that he's not. It's just a big old political game that I don't want to be part of. There are people spending their lives putting him down. I'm sure some of it's true and some of it's not. I was very surprised to find the man very humble and he had a nice handshake. His wife was very cordial to the guests and especially me. They made a special effort to make me feel welcome. It was not at all the way the media described him to be.

What's the biggest lie out there about Obama?

He's not conceited. He's very humble about being the President of the United States, especially in comparison to some presidents we've had who come across like they don't need anybody's help. I think he knows he's in over his head. Anybody with any sense who takes that job and thinks they can handle it must be an idiot.

Guess how Ole Perfesser Instapundit and Andrew Malcolm spun it?

Merle Haggard, who likes Obama, compliments him by saying, 'I think he knows he's in over his head'

I used to think no little boy or girl ever wanted to be a propagandist when he or she grew up, but I'm beginning to think some people are just born to the job.

TRUE GRIT. My memory of the 1969 original is faint, but you can see some of its playing style in this old trailer. John Wayne is kind of doing Wallace Beery, and everyone else is taking an old-fashioned comedy-Western approach.

The Coens' version is, as you might expect, in the modern Deadwood manner: Formal but lethal. Their Old West is a cruel if mannerly place where even grandma will steal the blanket from you, and justice is something you only get if you're more fiercely devoted to it than most men are to their lives.

Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) is that devoted. She wants the man who killed her father brought to justice, and wants it badly enough that she will push, cajole, and (in her ornery way) seduce two hard men to abet her. That doesn't mean they wouldn't have done it anyway (one of them was already on the case when she got there, the other is up for it if the funds are right), but her interests are significantly different from theirs.

While finances are of course imperative, the Ranger La Boeuf (Matt Damon) and the Marshall Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) are really on the hunt for honor: La Boeuf because he is, by God, a Texas Ranger, and will have his man; Cogburn because he is, by God, Cogburn, and likewise. Tracking's their job. From this comes the grand joke of their constant bickering: Though they seem to have much in common, each is so implacably devoted to his own code that they'll argue out of personal pride, and even over whether a Ranger really will drink muddy water from a hoofprint ("Oh, I believed it the first 25 times I heard it…").

But Mattie alone is devoted to justice. She expects, for example, that they will bury a felled outlaw because Cogburn promised the man as he lay dying that he would. But Cogburn brushes it off: "Ground's too hard." When she insists that the killer be brought to justice on her terms, Cogburn tells her -- rather kindly, for him -- that in this world you can't have every little thing.

Mattie never accepts that. She is singular in both manner and mission, and her steady, urgent voiceover isolates her further. The Coens start the show with a Bible quote, and I surmise (for where else?) that the Bible is where Mattie gets her determination. No one in the picture will accommodate her vision, but she insists upon it, wins her chance at it through unearthly determination, and in the end (rather, near the end) gets it.

[Here, I warn, are some very severe spoilers.]

Once she's fought her way onto the trail, Mattie is left mostly an observer of the grisly action, until suddenly she finally gets her chance to administer justice by her own hand. In doing so she is propelled, or more literally repelled, into a pit of snakes and an amazing coda that I believe the Coens made the whole movie to achieve.

Once Mattie is snakebit, things change rapidly. Cogburn's kindness toward her turns to heroism, and he rides her on her cherished horse Blackie toward salvation. The whole picture looks great (the wonderful Roger Deakins is DP) but on that ride the visuals turn to magic. The Indian territory that had been familiar becomes ghostly, the dead trees rising like phantom snakes; the horse sweats, falters, and is sacrificed; Cogburn goes beyond his duty, and what we would imagine his capacity, to carry Mattie within sight of an ember of civilization.

The Coens, gently evoking John Ford, will not show Cogburn entering that promised land.

We go suddenly forward to when Mattie is about 40, missing an arm from that long-ago adventure. (She is shown erect, impeccable in dress and bearing, her sleeve sewn carefully up.) She has come some distance to see Cogburn, who had sent her a letter (perhaps the only one he ever sent and, she notes, badly spelled), bottom-billed in a Wild West show. At the fairgrounds Mattie is told Cogburn died shortly before. She responds with, under the circumstances, monumentally correct behavior, then harshly insults a man who did her the dishonor of not rising in her presence. And she does Cogburn the honor of removing his body to her ancestral burying place.

Over his grave, she recalls in voiceover La Boeuf, who showed some interest in her all those years ago and from whom she never heard after her amputation; he must be over 60, she recalls, probably closer to 70, and, her still-level voice declares, "time must have taken some of the starch out of his cowlick." She has never married.

Well, I warned you there were spoilers. But I had to indulge them because, though I enjoyed the movie, my memory could dispense with everything from it but the ending. The Coens give fair play to all their characters, but the fate of Mattie -- a girl who never wavered in her resolve, and lived with its hard consequence -- is a glorious movie unto itself.

I need hardly comment upon the acting, which has been elsewhere justly celebrated, except to say that young Miss Steinfeld may or may not be good at it, but she is earnest and comfortable in the company of great actors, and that's no small thing. I must add that Elizabeth Marvel, whose acting I have had the great privilege of seeing onstage, is sublime as the older Mattie, and that it is a shame she has not had more attention for her brief but searing performance.

ADDENDUM. I have written about the Coens' work before here, here, here, and here.

UPDATE. Glenn Kenny has some smart things to say in comments, and an astute review of True Grit here.

GOLDBERG FOR THE DEFENSE. I sympathize with BigHank53, who commented on my analysis of Jonah Goldberg's Big Gay Column, "Christ, it's a Jonah Goldberg essay. Looking for an actual argument in there is like taking the back of the TV off during The Lone Ranger so you can grab yourself a miniature horse." Yes, it's all futile, but heaven hath pleased it so, to punish me with this and this with me, etc.

Thus harried, I must also note this from Goldberg's follow-up at The Corner, regarding his own fudgy pronouncement on gay marriage ("Personally, I have always felt that gay marriage was an inevitability, for good or ill [most likely both]. I do not think that the arguments against gay marriage are all grounded in bigotry, and I find some of the arguments persuasive, fart fart"):

The first is the complaint that I rely on the crutch of “inevitability.” As a couple readers put it, National Review writers, of all people, shouldn’t be talking about “inevitability.” We’re the ones who stand athwart inevitability yelling, “Stop.”

I like the point and I think it’s a fair one to some extent. But all I can say in my defense is that I think I’m right about the inevitability of gay marriage or at least very strong civil unions (which would ultimately lead to gay marriage, anyway). I don’t take this position because I’m dodging, or caving, or playing games of some kind. I just happen to think it’s true (barring some scientific developments down the road). Moreover, as I suggest in my column today, I don’t consider inevitability to be synonymous with conservative defeat and liberal victory, because what we mean by such things can be a lot more complicated than what the daily chatter reduces them too.

Did I just have a tiny stroke, or is Goldberg saying that he thinks it's so because he thinks it's so?

Also, what "scientific developments" might stand in the way of gay marriage? Could he be talking about the "gay gene" concept that has been knocking around for years? (I guess then conservatives would start advocating increased medical research funding and abortion. Wow, he's right, this could be complicated!) Or maybe he has advance word on a paper from the Discovery Institute proving homosexuals caused the Ice Age.

IT'S AN ILL WIND THAT BLOWS NO ONE SOME GOOD. Charlotte Hays at National Review:

The blizzard is definitely a force for conservatism...

You wouldn't think this would be anything to brag on, but wait, she's going somewhere with this:

... and not only because it has had the global-warming crowd scrambling for explanations. The blizzard reveals something basic: Liberals in government want to tell us what to eat, counsel us about how and when to die, and in general attempt to engineer our lives. But when reality knocks, they can’t do the basic stuff such as clearing the streets so that newborns don’t die in bloody apartment-building lobbies. Mayor Bloomberg may be receiving an unfair amount of criticism for his lackluster performance in coping with Mother Nature, given the almost unprecedented nature of the storm, but the unplowed city streets provide a metaphor for the nanny state: It can order us to do anything, but it can’t take care of the basic obligations of government.

The hundreds who died in the Blizzard of 1888 at least had the comfort of knowing that they had not been killed by socialism.

Not bad, so far as this sort of thing goes, but it needs some laugh lines from Jonah Goldberg.

DUMBASS, DON'T TELL. 11 months ago, Jonah Goldberg said, "conservatives shouldn’t take Obama’s bait on repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell... I’m not saying he doesn’t believe it should be repealed. But no one seems to think Obama will do anything to achieve this supposed goal." That ship has sailed, so now Goldberg's back to tell us how the repeal of DADT is good news for conservatives.

Goldberg starts, as conservatives tend to do when talking about gay people, with sex:

Two decades ago, the gay left wanted to smash the bourgeois prisons of monogamy, capitalistic enterprise and patriotic values and bask in the warm sun of bohemian "free love."

Two decades ago would be 1990, at which time I was living in the bohemian Ground Zero of the East Village and perceived very little monogamy-smashing among gays or straights. Maybe he means the 70s, bathhouses, and such like. (I still don't know how this relates to "capitalistic enterprise and patriotic values.")

In this, they were simply picking up the torch from the straight left of the 1960s and 1970s, who had sought to throw off the sexual hang-ups of their parents' generation along with their gray flannel suits.

Gay people had to learn about free love from heterosexuals? But I thought they were supposed to be corrupting us!

As a sexual lifestyle experiment, that failed pretty miserably, the greatest proof being that the affluent and educated children (and grandchildren) of the baby boomers have reembraced bourgeois notions of marriage as an essential part of life. Sadly, it's the have-nots who are now struggling as marriage is increasingly seen as an unaffordable luxury. The irony is that such bourgeois values — monogamy, hard work, etc. — are the best guarantors of success and happiness.

Goldberg can't claim that America, exhausted by the Great Orgy of 1990, has fallen in love with marriage all over again -- in part because marriage rates among young people have actually dropped. So he falls back on the standard rightwing idea that getting hitched makes you wealthy, leaving us to wonder why the poor haven't caught on to this money-making secret and how a bunch of rich people having weddings constitutes a conservative social revival. Maybe getting married is the new Going Galt?

Getting back to the homosexuals, Goldberg explains how they lost their taste for free love:

Of course, AIDS played an obvious and tragic role in focusing attention on the downside of promiscuity. But even so, the sweeping embrace of bourgeois lifestyles by the gay community has been stunning.

To put it another way: Yeah, there was this virulent, sexually-trasmitted plague, but still and all, you gotta wonder why gay couples are nesting in front of the TV.

Nowhere is this more evident — and perhaps exaggerated — than in popular culture. Watch ABC's "Modern Family." The sitcom is supposed to be "subversive" in part because it features a gay couple with an adopted daughter from Asia...

I'll spare you the detailed explanation, but the upshot is, Americans like gays on the TV, which means something conservative, because everything does. Finally we get to DADT:

Or look at the decision to let gays openly serve in the military through the eyes of a principled hater of all things military. From that perspective, gays have just been co-opted by the Man. Meanwhile, the folks who used "don't ask, don't tell" as an excuse to keep the military from recruiting on campuses just saw their argument go up in flames.

For years gay people have been fighting for the right to serve openly in the military and conservatives have been fighting against them. This month Democrats finally got a handful of Republicans to go along with DADT repeal. But Goldberg has found in his imagination a "principled hater of all things military" who doesn't approve. Plus ROTC! It's a wonder Mitch McConnell and Jim DeMint didn't get in on the big win in the Senate.

Finally, on to the next frontier:

Personally, I have always felt that gay marriage was an inevitability, for good or ill (most likely both). I do not think that the arguments against gay marriage are all grounded in bigotry, and I find some of the arguments persuasive.

Remember this ringing endorsement when marriage equality hits 50 states and Goldberg is telling us that gay is the new Tea Party.

UPDATE. See also Zandar.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, announcing the The 10 Best Rightblogger Rants of 2010. But really, they're all winners.

A CHRISTMAS FUGACITY. Here I take a short Xmas break to call your attention to alphaDictionary's "The 100 Most Beautiful Words in English" (h/t Jay Rosen).

I didn't know some of these words, though of course in a few months I'll claim to have used them all in ordinary speech since I was nine. But the really nice thing about the list is that it includes many words we all know -- and yes, "umbrella" is a beautiful word, come to think of it.

There's a humbling aspect, too. I thought "mondegreen" was pretty exotic, but look at the Twitter results. Gasp! Am I like the rest, after all?

What did they miss? I'm very fond of cachexia, tremulous, termagant, and -- probably a good one to use here -- catachrestic. How about you?

UPDATE. Thanks to all contributors in comments, especially those who helped me fall in love all over again with homey old words like flange, kaput, and gonorrhea.

SERVICE ADVISORY. I have to do human-type stuff for Christmas, so I'll be off the grid a day or two. I hope you all enjoy this preposterous holiday in your own way. If you get a moment, can you tell me if there's any holiday TV special in history that's worse than the Family Ties Christmas Carol?

UPDATE. Oh...



Story here.

UPDATE 2. Commenter Matt T: "Man, I like Ellison a lot but I've decided to stop reading stories about what kind of raw cob he is." I understand. One of my favorite reading experiences this year was Harlan Ellison’s The City on the Edge of Forever, The Original Teleplay That Became The Classic Star Trek Episode, in which the great man tells us what a bunch of shits nearly everyone else involved with the episode was. I don't have it in front of me, but I recall a lot of "fasten your seat belts" and "we're going down the rabbit hole, people" type of admonitions.

UPDATE 3. New worst Christmas Special: Poliwood on How the Boomers Killed the Spirit of the Season. Lionel Chetwynd tells us how Boomers promote "cynical, cold views of the human condition" via subversive entertainments like Elf; also, "I just can't imagine George Soros bending his head and saying 'O God, thank you.'" And no musical numbers! Who greenlighted this thing?

SPITTING THE DIFFERENCE. So what had happened was:

• Net neutrality was advocated by, among others, Tim Berners-Lee, Steve Wozniak, OK Go, and the Obama Administration.
• Conservatives portray net neutrality as a power grab by Big Gummint on the pretext of fighting an "imaginary problem."
• The besieged FCC passes a compromise measure which many people find unsatisfactory, including key net neutrality supporters.
• Conservative opponents insist that even the compromise measure, "passed on a partisan 3-2 vote," is a power grab by Big Gummint, which message is picked up by the troops.

How Net Neutrality Lite will play out, I don't know (Dan Costa thinks it will be fine). But the way this has gone down is a good reminder that in the short term, compromises please almost nobody.

I don't recall much excitement about enthusiasm for* Don't Ask Don't Tell when Clinton came up with it as a compromise on what used to be called the Controversy over Gays in the Military. Yet here we are.

*UPDATE. Edited for clarity.