HOME TAPING COLLECTIVE BARGAINING IS KILLING MUSIC. Aw, Jesus, that asshole Jay Nordlinger is combining his two great loves -- classical music and union-busting:

Okay, it is not so lovely down here that I’ve ceased to stew about Wisconsin. This morning, I thought of something that an insider once told me about the New York Philharmonic. I was inquiring about spiraling costs in the music business — also about why we don’t really have recordings or radio broadcasts anymore. A big part of the answer, of course, is the unions: killing or suppressing music, as they kill or suppress so much else. This insider said, “Don’t think of the Philharmonic as an orchestra. Think of them as Local 802.”

And yet some people want the Rockefellers to pay more for their season tickets! Can't we just fire these communist musicians and bring in the Portsmouth Sinfonia?

IMMORAL RELATIVISM. The Economic Policy Institute points out that Wisconsin public service employees are not, in the main, getting a better deal than private employees. "To get an apples-to-apples comparison," says Ezra Klein, "the study's author controlled for experience, organizational size, gender, race, ethnicity, citizenship and disability, and then sorted the results by education."

At National Review, Jim Manzi seizes on this as the study's fatal flaw, and tries to portray the study's original author, Jeffrey H. Keefe, as some sort of disingenuous leveller:

Stripped of jargon, what Keefe asserts is that, on average, any two individuals with identical scores on each of these listed characteristics “should” be paid the same amount.

But consider Bob and Joe, two hypothetical non-disabled white males, each of whom went to work at Kohl’s Wisconsin headquarters in the summer of 2000, immediately after graduating from the University of Wisconsin. They have both remained there ever since, and each works about 50 hours per week. Bob makes $65,000 per year, and Joe makes $62,000 per year. Could you conclude that Joe is undercompensated versus Bob? Do you have enough information to know the “fundamental personal characteristics and labor market skills” of each to that degree of precision?

Also, what if Joe really sucks at his job? Or what if Bob is actually worse at his, but has a winning personality and shoots skeet with the boss? See, if social science teaches us anything, it's that statistics are meaningless, if used by liberals.

Manzi claims Keefe does not take into account true "systematic differences in the market realities of the skills, talents, work orientation" between public and private employees, and made his findings "without adjusting for an all-but-infinite number of... relevant potential differences between the weight-average public-sector worker and the weight-average private-sector worker."

Manzi lists some of these differences ("Whether their years of education for the job are in molecular biology or the sociology of dance"), but never mind -- if you find that they still don't convince you that schoolteachers are worthless freeloaders, he can always cook up more. They're all but infinite!

And since Keefe didn't take all these infinitesimal gradations into account, says Manzi, his claims are "worse than useless; they are misleading."

The whole question — as is obvious even to untrained observers — is whether or not there are material systematic differences between the public and private employee that are not captured by the list of coefficients in his regression model.

You folks have probably caught on to what he means by systematic differences: The differences between his team and the other team. And as long as his team has a full tank of propaganda to run on, the pointy-heads can take a break.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the Wisconsin union fight. Remember when Lisa Simpson talked about "every teacher who cares less about young minds than about cashing their big, fat paychecks"? Apparently a lot of people don't know that was a joke.

I regret I had no room for John Feeney of America's Right and his post, "Fort Sumter, Wisconsin." "The ongoing events in Wisconsin may well be 'The Point' on which this country’s future hinges," claims Feeney: If Republicans strangle the union, that will be "the single greatest service this country has seen in at least the last generation" -- but if not, "the 'unionization' that is so much at the foundation of a socialist/communist infrastructure may well be at least the immediate future of our nation." (At least the immediate future? I thought socialist/communists were harder to get rid of than that, like bedbugs.)

But you gotta give Feeney credit for actually working the Burlington Coat Factory Mosque into the story:

I’m also forced to wonder about the manner in which these events are going to affect two other projects: the construction of the Freedom Tower and the Ground Zero Mosque. By all accounts, the Freedom Tower currently under construction by unionized labor is and will be a fantastic sight to see; on the other hand, until the 17th, I would’ve gone to any casino in the country and bet everything I own that those trying desperately to have the Mosque constructed would never, ever have a scintilla of a chance of getting unionized American labor to work on that project. After watching the clips of the Wisconsin events, noting the degree of solidarity shared amongst not only the teachers but also the many other state and local municipalities, I couldn’t help but wonder how long it might be until union laborers across the country either feel compelled to support or begin to feel sympathy for their brethren. Further, how long might it be until they’re potentially threatened with their livelihood, or worse? Is it possible that unionized workers might refuse to continue working on the Freedom Tower and to uniformly agree to construct the Mosque? Either decision would be a flat-faced decision to turn one’s back on his or her country.

America betrayed by... the hardhats! Well, if you live long enough you see everything.

Also in solidarity against solidarity is Ann Althouse, who sees two city salt-spreaders honking their horns in support of the protesters in Madison and makes this complaint:

Two city salt trucks circle the block at least twice, with horns blaring. Only one is visibly spreading salt. The protesters wave and hold up fists, indicating that it is their interpretation that the city workers are sounding support for the protests. Obviously, we taxpayers pay for the salt trucks and the employees who drive them and we expect those trucks to be used to make the streets all over town safe, not to circle the Capitol Square for other purposes.

I can't wait to see how this investigation plays out. Who'll get in more trouble -- the guy who wasn't spreading salt, for his egregious waste of the city's time and gas, or the guy who was spreading salt, for double-salting and dangerous multitasking? Also, can we have video when Professor Althouse goes down to the stationhouse and tells the Captain she saw a police car double-parked?

FAILING UPWARD. Kathleen Parker in the Washington Post:

Women's liberation worked in ways we might never have imagined. The feminist woman of the left, who burned her bra and insisted that all hear her roar, is today a taupe-ish figure who wonders where things went wrong. The daughter she begat may well be a Republican - a gun-toting, breast-feeding supermom of several who condemns government for being a "nanny" and tells men to man up.

Adding insult to injury, she's also probably considered a "hottie" by the men who stand by admiringly, watching their women show those libs a thing or two about being a "hard-core woman."

I'm surprised Parker refrained from putting in a bit about a pigeon-chested, chinless simp taking his mannish, Birkenstock-wearing feminazi date to the Save the Whales concert but wishing he was instead with a Sarah Palin "hottie" who "got it going on" if you know what I "mean." (An editor might have taken it out, but I see no evidence that Parker has one.) Elsewhere, she tells us how the conservative hard-core hottie "carries a concealed weapon instead of a lace hankie."

Parker has a column in the Post, a Pulitzer Prize, and a TV show. I'm beginning to change my mind about Wisconsin -- maybe America's teachers have let us down.

UPDATE. Commenter Nance provides some background: "I once wrote a piece of un-fan mail to K.P. She wrote back with this jaw-dropper (which I've never seen in a column): her first husband left her when their son was an infant, to run off with 'a nationally known feminist whose name you'd recognize.'" That must have really scorched her bra.

PUNCHING BAGS. As conservatives denounce schoolteachers who seek to preserve their collective bargaining rights, it's good to be reminded by Matt Taibbi that the banksters who wrecked the economy have been let off scott free and then some by the government. Lehman Brothers' Dick Fuld, AIG's Joe Cassano, and assorted big and less-big fish have suffered no meaningful consequences for their actions. But that doesn't mean law & order sleeps:

Which is not to say that the Obama era has meant an end to law enforcement. On the contrary: In the past few years, the administration has allocated massive amounts of federal resources to catching wrongdoers — of a certain type. Last year, the government deported 393,000 people, at a cost of $5 billion. Since 2007, felony immigration prosecutions along the Mexican border have surged 77 percent; nonfelony prosecutions by 259 percent. In Ohio last month, a single mother was caught lying about where she lived to put her kids into a better school district; the judge in the case tried to sentence her to 10 days in jail for fraud, declaring that letting her go free would "demean the seriousness" of the offenses.

So there you have it. Illegal immigrants: 393,000. Lying moms: one. Bankers: zero. The math makes sense only because the politics are so obvious. You want to win elections, you bang on the jailable class. You build prisons and fill them with people for selling dime bags and stealing CD players. But for stealing a billion dollars? For fraud that puts a million people into foreclosure? Pass. It's not a crime. Prison is too harsh. Get them to say they're sorry, and move on. Oh, wait — let's not even make them say they're sorry...

One of the saddest things about the decline of this country is that we've relearned a pre-democratic contempt for the suffering of the less fortunate and a solicitous interest in the problems of the very fortunate. Poor saps who never had a chance are presumed to never have deserved one, while the rich are treated with kid gloves lest they take offense and go Galt on us. Once Americans cheered the underdog. Now I see there's a book out called Underdogma: How America's Enemies Use Our Love for the Underdog to Trash American Power which tells that this generosity of spirit is actually a dangerous delusion:

David versus Goliath, the American Revolutionaries, "The Little Engine That Could," Team USA’s "Miracle on Ice," the Star Wars Rebel Alliance, Rocky Balboa, the Jamaican bobsled team and the meek inheriting the Earth.

Everyone, it seems, loves an underdog.... But this tendency, which international political consultant and human rights activist Michael Prell calls “underdogma,” can be very dangerous – both to America and to the world at large.

We hear a lot of talk about "hippie punching" these days, but make no mistake: Under a certain, very high net worth, everybody's getting punched.

TEACHER'S PELT. The big teachers' union fight is on in Wisconsin. The Republican Governor Scott Walker claims the government needs to severely curtail the union's collective bargaining power in order to save money; TPM notices that Walker blew a hole in the budget himself and suggests that he did so in order to create this crisis and break the union.

As the Christian Science Monitor headline demonstrates, the union is aware of the stakes: "We’re fighting for our very existence." Conservatives know it too. They have been full-throated in their denunciations not only of the union but of teachers in general, portraying them as parasites -- like Teamsters, only easier to beat up. National Review's Jay Nordlinger has been particularly obsessive in this regard. First:

Teachers used to be something like a holy caste, practically the most honorable among us. I come from a family of teachers. Everyone thought of it as a noble calling. Teachers earned too little, but that was remedied, over time.

Then everything went screwy. Teachers were not just well paid. (“Best part-time job in America,” Lee Iacocca once quipped, to the howls of many.) They were some of the most petulant, greediest, nastiest unionists around...

Then:

In a previous era, long ago, teachers were rather like missionaries. You practically had to take a vow of poverty to be a teacher. Often, a teacher [blah blah, miles in the snow]...

I would never go back to the days of missionary-teachers. They ought to be generously compensated. (Shouldn’t we all.)

Even Grandpa Simpson has his moments of generosity, I guess, but Nordlinger quickly catches himself:

But good grief: These grasping, lying, bullying unionists are enough to give the teaching profession a bad name...

Later:

And everything the teachers do, of course, is for the sake of “the children.” I wish the children could talk back, borrowing a phrase from anti-war movements: “Not in my name.”

Instead of playing in the yard and thanking God for their luck.

For decades now, union militancy has dragged the teaching profession through the mud, robbing that profession of its public spirit, even of its professionalism...

And so on. Funny as it is, I don't find the situation cheering. They're trying to turn teachers into a pariah class in order to normalize their removal from the middle class. The whole energy of our rulers seems devoted these days to squeezing that remnant, and if they are not completely successful in this grand opportunity to reduce its number and further weaken union power at the same time, they will keep coming back until they are.

Their cheerleaders ("Look, I am the daughter of union folk; I appreciate why unions were initially formed") spread the story that the rollback is unavoidable, as the morality for collective bargaining died with their parents' need for it, and anyway "the money is not there." Indeed it's not there, because it has been painstakingly relocated.

Though the state of American manufacturing is so parlous even the CIA is worried about it, "economic futurist" Jeff Thredgold is bullish. He explains:

The common wisdom notes that most of these jobs left in search of less-costly havens, initially Mexico and then China. This is certainly true for a share of the jobs.

However, the most important factor leading to lesser employment was major gains in worker productivity. We simply make more goods with fewer bodies. While overall U.S. worker productivity gains have run just under 3 percent annually over the past 10 years, productivity gains in manufacturing have run two to three times higher.

Maybe Thredgold has good reason to feel confident. There's just been an uptick in the mid-Atlantic manufacturing index. The big winner from this, so far, is Mexican stocks, as the uptick "indicated strength in one of Mexico’s most important export sectors," says MarketWatch. I wonder how much of that money is going to be left over for the guy on the line.

THE FAN CLUB. The story of reporter Lara Logan's beating and sexual assault in the thick of the Egyptian revolution is horrible. But there isn't anything on this earth that can't be made more horrible by Debbie Schlussel:

Hey, sounds like the threats I get from American Muslims on a regular basis. Now you know what it’s like, Lara.

Uhhh...

I just love it when the people of the profession of “the public’s right to know” suddenly want “privacy.” Tell it to your next interview subject, Lara.

The whole thing's an atrocity, so let's move on to the rest of the rightbloggers. Some are incensed by the insensitive reaction of NYU's Nir Rosen, and they're certainly right to be. (Update: Rosen has apologized.) Others are very caught up in the white-lady-among-heathens narrative. theblogprof:

As the saying goes - you mess with the bull, you get the horns.

There's not even a profession of sympathy to leaven it, though there is a big photo of Logan in a low-cut dress. Let us be charitable and assume steroids have affected theblogprof's brain.

Patterico wants answers, preferably in detail:

Nobody else seems to know more than this and of course “brutal and sustained sexual assault” could mean several things. LA Weekly claims she was repeatedly raped, but they seem to be assuming that this is what CBS news is saying. That is less than clear. I would add that the LA Weekly article is downright creepy in the way it was written

"Did they...? Was she...?" "What do you want me to do? Draw you a picture? Spell it out?" I don't know what's worse -- that he wrote it down, or that he wanted to share it with the rest of us.

As usual, if you go into the comments sections, you'll get even worse. From one of the fans at Gateway Pundit:

The arrogance of these journalists amazes me.

They might as well walk into a lion cage wearing a meat suit. Let’s see, “hot young blond American reporter (read infidel) stands in the middle of thousands on drunken, uneducated testosterone driven radical Muslims”.

Is anyone really surprised THAT ended badly?

This cowboy was probably at the first run of I Spit On Your Grave, telling the rest of the audience what was coming next. Oh, I forgot his closing:

Meanwhile, I plan on taking a relaxing stroll through Harlem tonight wearing a gold Rolex.

No, really, buddy, it's cool, just leave your Confederate flag t-shirt at home.

UPDATE. A needed corrective.

UPDATE 2. Oh Jesus, Atlas Pam: "Imagine if this were ..... Israel. Or a tea party." Imagine! You may say she's a screamer, but she's not the only one.

UPDATE 3. Echidne breaks it down.

UPDATE 4. The real monsters here, says Robert Stacy McCain, are feminazis:

There is only one acceptable way to discuss sex, and feminists are the self-appointed arbiters of the discussion.

Also, feminists "control the conversation." Maybe McCain is looking at a different internet from the one the rest of us see.

As with all leftist ideologies, feminism is collectivist in nature. Rape is therefore not a crime perpetrated by specific criminals against specific victims. Rather, rape is men’s collective crime, of which women are the collective victims: All men are therefore complicit in every rape, and all women suffer when any woman is raped.

The more enlightened view, it would seem, is that rape is Arab men's collective crime.

UPDATE 5. Good journalism angle by Nancy Nall.

UPDATE 6. Comments are brill, but a special award goes to JohnEWilliams, who says now that "Scott Brown says he was abused by a camp counselor as a child, I'm certain we'll hear how he shouldn't have been so hunky and fetching."

Oh, and Jason informs us that Gateway Pundit Jim Hoft realized he was losing the crazy derby and weighed in:

[Lara Logan's] liberal belief system almost got her killed on Friday.

If Lara Logan were a man, no doubt Hoft would call what she had "courage" or "mama grizzliness."

Well, reckon it's about time for another article about how conservatives are the real feminists.

R.I.P. KENNETH MARS. Attention must be paid.



He was lovely in Young Frankenstein, nastily impersonated the critic John Simon in What's Up, Doc?, and did a lot of TV, most of which I missed (though I have misty memories of him on He & She). But to me he will forever be Franz Liebkind.

In a way he had the most difficult job in the movie -- making an unrepentant Nazi funny -- but like all the other major players in The Producers, by going absolutely balls-out with his performance he achieved escape velocity. Roger Ebert recalls that one time Mel Brooks, chided by a woman for having created this "vulgar" film, answered, "Lady, it rose below vulgarity." That's what Mars did, too, turning the previously scary idea of the Hitler holdout dwelling amongst us into a ripe vaudeville joke: all tantrums, cowardice, sentimentality, and (best of all) absurd dignity ("Gentlemen, it iss magic time").

And timing. Never, ever forget timing. And lazzi. Check the nose wipe during the Churchill rant.

This is not to claim that the movie or Mars' performance did anything uplifting, but to note that they were in the very, very best of bad taste. And, in the words of the ad campaign for another old movie, boy, do we need it now.

SOCIAL, AND A CON. From that great laboratory of Republican neo-medievalism, South Dakota:

A law under consideration in South Dakota would expand the definition of "justifiable homicide" to include killings that are intended to prevent harm to a fetus—a move that could make it legal to kill doctors who perform abortions. The Republican-backed legislation, House Bill 1171, has passed out of committee on a nine-to-three party-line vote, and is expected to face a floor vote in the state's GOP-dominated House of Representatives soon.

(h/t HoneyBearKelly.) Meanwhile elsewhere in the hinterlands, in Washington, and in the propaganda mills of the Right, the war on abortion rights is suddenly hotter than it's been since the 1990s

One way I'm able to tell that I haven't gone senile is that I knew from the start this talk about the Tea Party being a libertarian phenomenon was utter bullshit -- which is gratifying, since even the New York Times has been flim-flammed by CPAC into reporting that "the Tea Party tenets of smaller government and fiscal conservatism were at the center of the conversation, rather than social issues." There, however, I imagine the problem is not hardened arteries, but wetness behind the ears.

History shows that when conservatives get even a toehold of power during a Democratic Administration, the first troops to appear on the field are from the Jesus Brigade. And when the Republicans take over, they'll also be the first to appear at the paymaster's window. If things go as usual, I expect a few of them will drop by the armory in the days to come as well.

UPDATE. The bill's sponsor says abortion providers (or, in South Dakota's case, provider) have no worries, because abortion is legal and the law would only pertain to criminal acts, as when some guy "beats on his ex-girlfriend's abdomen in trying to abort her baby." You may go read the bill and see what you think. Considering South Dakota's history of trying to get around Roe v. Wade, and the nullification fever spreading in red states thereabouts, I remain suspicious.

A LITTLE SOMETHING OF MINE AT ESQUIRE. Just my 25 fave quotes from CPAC. (Front matter done by editors. Editors! What won't they think of next.) When I'm shuffling senile and confused down Broadway, five years from now, I hope I have sufficient presence of mind to shout, "I was a contributor to Esquire magazine" after each coughing fit or self-wetting. (Say, is Rust Hills still over there? I believe he still has some manuscripts of mine.)

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP about CPAC, specifically the great gay (and Muslim) outreach and what came of it. The Muslims drew a shitstorm from Atlas Pam, David Horowitz, and other members of the He-Man Muslim-Haters Club. As for the gay group, GOProud, they crossed CPAC's gender-preference barrier like Jackie Robinson in whiteface, doing everything possible to be acceptable, and in return -- well, you can read it there.

Not much by way of outtakes, though I did enjoy Yid With Lid's "CPAC Wrap Up: What The Media Didn't Tell You." Apparently the media conspired to cover up for... Ron Paul.

3.) Ron Paul Supporters Hate Was Under-Reported, Their Presence Was Over Reported. Every year at CPAC Ron Paul’s political action committee buses supporters to the convention (more on that later). While this group does not represent more than 15-20% of the attendees, they are very passionate, very unruly and very bigoted.

Mainly I'd say they're bigoted against losing CPAC straw polls -- so much so that Paul won it again this year with 31 percent, despite his alleged 15-20 percent support level. How? YWL explains that the other attendees didn't bother to vote for their candidates. And the Lamestream Media ignores this highly flattering portrayal of Republican enthusiasm.

The mainstream press protects Ron Paul, his crazy positions create a wealth of story ideas, and his continued participation provides the opportunity to label the entire conservative, Republican and/or libertarian movements as right-wing extremist nut jobs.

You know, you could switch just about any Republican's name in for Paul's there and that sentence still works.

CPAC DAY 3. Well, I'm bummed -- Jonah Goldberg was supposed to show up, but he had an emergency (gastric bypass, I'm guessing)* so they sent Rich Lowry. Lowry said that after the 2008 election "I came back home to my neighborhood which is infested with liberal college kids… in my neighborhood it was like we had won a war. You've seen the pictures of Tahrir Square, it was just like that." He compared this tragic encounter with that one time Ronald Reagan was confronted by "unwashed, unshaven dirty hippie types."


He called Goldberg's Liberal Fascism "a very prescient [critique], given what we've seen over the last 2 years," and explained that America must always be conquering if it wants to stay alive.

Now Coulter's on, which is every bit as charming as you would imagine. She's pissed that we didn't stand up for Mubarak, and blames slavery on liberals.

*UPDATE. My apologies and condolences -- I'm told his brother died, a horrible thing no one deserves.

IT'S THE FEEL-GALT MOVIE OF THE SUMMER! I know the rest of sane humanity is absorbed with the revolution in Egypt, but surely some of you must be excited by the debut of the Atlas Shrugged movie trailer:



It's got good production values and the jump-cuts-per-millisecond of a real trailer. And Michael Lerner is Barney Frank! Best of all, the makers know that story appeal isn't as important to their intended audience as faithfulness to the Rand philosophy, so while it's hard to figure out what or who exactly we should be rooting for -- Two unpleasant people and their railroad? Capitalism? -- it's clear that statism sucks and money is too important even to joke about.

Personally I think Hollywood does capitalism a much bigger favor with comedies like Trading Places, but I can't begrudge the Randroids their moment in the cineplex. The only question is, are there any theaters within driving distance of the Gulch?

THE HEARTBREAK OF CPAC. I originally thought this tweet by KevDough was the saddest CPAC '11 artifact :

I bet I could have gotten a lot of chicks at #GOPROUD as it seems they are there in force. Damnit, #CPAC!

Or maybe he was only kidding -- KevDough's a real funster. (Sample: "Tomorrow night at #FauxPAC, we will be roasting a whole pig. Her name is Meghan McCain.")

Never mind, I've actually found something sadder in David Weigel's account of the commotion caused by a Sarah Palin impersonator at CPAC:

Alas, it was a hoax, and she disappeared. Some people kept passing word that "she's here!" through the halls, unaware of the interesting lesson about the psychology of fame and crowds that was being demonstrated. Some were disappointed, for a number of reasons.

"I was bummed out when she said she was married," said one attendee, Tom Delano. "But Palin's prettier."

Tom is going to have that box of chocolates all to himself on Valentine's Day, I'm guessing.

CPAC DAY 2: JUST JOY-POPPING, TRYING TO STAY CLEAN. I can't, I just can't -- oh well, the live feed is right there. Some guy is introducing the guy who's introducing John Thune. I didn't catch the name of this warm-up act but he says he wants to test the idea of Obamacare the same way Reagan did in the 1980 Presidential debate, when he asked "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" As Obamacare is just getting started/strangled, the analogy turns out to be shaky, and the questions are on the order of "How many of you believe that the quality and availability of your health care will go down under the health care law?" Believe! Well, guy, you can get them to believe anything, as their response shows.

Also "the real liberals really want Obamacare to fail so they can get what they really want" -- Single Payer Hitlercare! Cripes, why didn't you guys tell me that was the plan! (He also traced the problem of attempted national healthcare back to Ted Kennedy, but by that point the crowd was too worn-out to boo.)

The event's moderator -- some loopy talk-show host -- characterizes the Obamacare approach as, "Well, at least the senior citizens won't die as quickly waiting on all those long lines." Even the CPAC crowd doesn't know what to do with that. (Later she tells a long story about how she got messed up in a motorcycle crash, but "I'm an American -- I wanted to live.")

Eventually Thune arrives. He looks like a former high-school swim team star grown rich in the tanning-salon business.



"We can't win the peace if we don't tell it like it is." He's talking about Obama's under-utilization of the word "terrorism." You can imagine how serious the speech is. Oh, also Reagan Reagan Reagan, cut everything, Jesus loves Israel and torture, "The FCC is trying to take over the internet," and such old, old chestnuts at the Balanced Budget Amendment. I can see why the fringe of the fringe like him -- he spits the talking points without gagging -- but he's basically the same old vanilla dairy queen in a plastic cup and he has as much chance of being President as did the man he replaced and physically resembles, Tom Daschle.

NEW ARTICLE UP AT ALTERNET. It's called "10 Historical 'Facts' Only a Right-Winger Could Believe."

You may notice that every so often conservatives, in talking on this or that subject, will say something about women's rights, the founding fathers, etc., that suggests a bizarre notion of history (e.g., "self-avowed modern day feminists are anything but feminist"). Since not only the right-blogosphere but also the conservative world in general has become more full-throatedly crazy, sometimes they'll even express these historical fallacies out loud. That's what the article is about.

It's in bite-sized Top Ten form, and goes down easy. Tell your friends!

OSCAR CATCH-UP, PART 2. The Kids Are All Right. Cholodenko's a weird one -- High Art and Laurel Canyon are like traditional Hollywood movies re-edited by someone with brain damage; all the right pieces are there, and sometimes beautiful, but they're stuck together in ways that vitiate rather than amplify their impact. (I really like High Art, especially when Patricia Clarkson's onscreen, but watching it is a frustrating experience.)

But The Kids Are All Right benefits from Cholodenko's discursive approach more than the others because it's unified by a conflict that is almost laughably formulaic: Daughter of uncooperative lesbian couple tracks down sperm-donor dad; hijinks and hetero adultery ensue! It's like someone smart and serious radically remixed I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. The plot is so strong that Cholodenko can mix and mash to her heart's content and never lose track of what's at stake.

Thus, we can have enjoy the bonding of the kids with the donor, and even have some fun with the (spoiler spoiler spoiler) affair between the donor and one of the lesbians, but the danger these developments present to everyone's happiness is never far from our minds. When the broken pieces are put together at the end, the resolution feels incomplete, not because the art has failed because it has succeeded -- she actually captured the messiness of life without making a mess.

There are plenty of good privileged moments in the movie, but I especially liked the scene in which the donor (the ultra-brilliant Mark Ruffalo, who reacts to the pain he's feeling with some petulance, as if it were something from which he thought he was exempt) explains to his usual fuck-buddy why he doesn't want to sleep with her. He wants to say what's in his heart without actually revealing anything -- the secret affair requires it, but we get the feeling this is not an uncommon mode for him. Finally he clumsily burbles about how at this stage of his life "I don't want to be that guy" who's still going around doing what... he obviously really still enjoys doing. The girl responds, with perfect appropriateness, "Fuck you." Life, ladies and gentlemen, captured on film.

The Social Network. A smart friend asked me: Why does anyone think this movie "defines a generation"? Oh, that's easy: Because they're old and The Social Network believably shows young shits acting like shits. Duh.

I'm old too, and a Leveller to boot, so my favorite part of the movie is the beginning, when the shittiness of Harvard shits is vividly revealed, and the Trent Reznor music has just started to kick in. Really, I loved it: For 20 minutes we're immersed in a milieu both dark-and-aged (kudos, DP Jeff Cronenweth) and totally frattish, and the kids are believably and expeditiously shown to be in equal parts callow and ambitious, and swimming in privilege. It's such a casually brutal portrayal that, at that stage, you might have convinced me that it defined something-or-other.

That doesn't last, but that's not so bad. Indeed, the ripping Alan Sorkin gabfest unto which we devolve is sort of the definition of not-bad. Sorkin's dialogue is always crisp, glib, and fun, and he's major enough that he can get top actors to supply the character attributes his writing by and large doesn't bother with.

In this regard he's extremely fortunate here, especially with Jesse Eisenberg. His Zuckerberg has been characterized as an Asperger's case, but the brilliance of the performance is that you can't write off his self-involvement that easily -- you can imagine all kinds of reasons for his behavior (parental coddling, youthful alienation, genius), and still be left wondering -- which, if I may say, is the kind of mysteriousness that distinguishes great acting, and probably why his narrow-band performance got an Oscar nomination.

But his singularity is something from which the other characters aren't exempt (except for his partner Saverin, very well played by Andrew Garfield). I still recall with a little shiver the shy arm-punch Zuckerberg gives Saverin when he arrives at his and Sean Parker's apartment, and it strikes me now that this is the reason: It's the most intimate gesture in the movie. Most of the characters are so absorbed in self-definition strategies that they can't bond. Maybe that's what really spurred the "defines a generation" idea -- unlike almost any other movie about young men (and it's almost exclusively about men) I can think of, The Social Network portrays a set of manhood rituals that drives them apart instead of bringing them together, and maybe people (and, who knows, maybe Sorkin) think that this is what the internet has done to them.

SHORTER ARTHUR LAFFER: Watch me write a 983-word article about Reaganomics -- for a major newspaper with editors, yet! -- without once using the word "deficit."

UPDATE. Shorter is shorter, but not always better, and Doghouse Riley does the hard work of identifying some of the specific streaks of bullshit in Laffer's self-serving item. One of his digressions struck me hard:

Y'know, somebody, sometime--I nominate Mitch Daniels--needs to explain to me why simple is always better than complex, except when they decide it isn't. You don't go to a mechanic who can only work on flathead Fords. You don't go to a doctor who stopped studying surgery when anesthesia was introduced. If this were just proposed as an ethical argument that would be one thing, and bad enough at that. But it's not; it's supposed to be a declaration of apodictic certainty even though the facts say otherwise.

This hardstruck me because earlier I'd been listening (though I'd promised myself not to) to Paul Ryan at CPAC talking about how the Obama Administration/liberals/socialists/Hitler were in love with experts -- "government wizards," "bureaucrats," etc. -- and the idea that "there must be someone or some few people who have all the information." He contrasted this with the allegedly more homespun conservative concept that "each person is the world's top expert in his or her unique skills, the people as a whole understand society as a whole, no matter how complicated it gets," etc.

Bullshit. Our economy was self-evidently fucked by purported free-marketeers like Ryan who'd been telling us for years that government should get out of the way and let the people drive us to prosperity. But the "people" they were talking about weren't Joe and Jenny Six-Pack -- there were Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs. And contrary to Obama's piquant analogy, they didn't exactly drive us into a ditch -- they pushed us out of the car and over a cliff, and then drove on down the road to sinecures and prosperity.

The financiers who screwed us over were "experts," too -- and very good ones, as they successfully achieved their goal of directing a larger share of the nation's wealth into their own hands. The only experts Ryan and his buddies oppose are those who might attempt to direct some of that money back to the rest of us.

CPAC: NO, I'VE STOPPED WATCHING...


...Can you blame me? Sure, I missed Cheney's name being heckled, but I got a little fresh air. And if I'd stayed outside, I wouldn't have seen this monster who once ran our trillion-dollar multi-war pretending to be a tea partier and talking about "the gentle despotism of Big Government."

(Oh, and no cutting the Defense budget!)

CPAC 5: DONALD TRUMP. I'm really starting to have a toxic reaction to this and would like to stop, but... Donald Trump?

Introducer announces Trump is "thinking about tossing his hat into the ring" for the Presidency, which Rick Santorum didn't even get.



Some drunk chick is yelling YOU'RE HIRED! at him. He thanks her, tells them he'll decide about running by June. He sounds like Ed Koch with a bad cold. Says the United States has become a "whipping post for the rest of the world... they are not treating us properly... we have become the laughing stock of the world..." And Trump knows from laughing stocks! He claims his many foreign contacts have informed him that all foreigners now "view our leaders as weak" and have actually been ripping us off, by means which Trump really should be sharing with the Treasury if they're factual rather than with CPAC.

Talks about how his money is a "scorecard" showing how great he is. Then comes a long ramble about billionaire psychology that I couldn't follow, which is probably why I'm not rich.

The current President "came out of nowhere... with no track record and, I will tell you... wonderful guy, nice man, but he had no record." With Trump, however, you know what you're getting: Giant ugly buildings! And now he brags on his press clippings. New York magazine, Steve Forbes, they all love the Donald! Segue: "We don't have free trade," says Trump. China is manipulating their currency -- Trump won't stand for it. "We buy so much of their product because their currency is so low" that it's too cheap not to buy. What to do, Donald? "We need a highly competent person or we're going have very, very serious trouble very, very quickly."

But what do we do, Donald? "We have to watch China and we have to watch OPEC..." Suddenly he's talking about OPEC. "$4.54 for gas. Get used to it, folks... nobody calls up OPEC and says, 'That -- price -- better -- get -- lower -- and it better get lower fast!'" The crowd loves it: War with Saudi Arabia! Maybe we can hire George Bush as a general.

"How 'about this?" he says, working the room. "Germany is buying the New York Stock Exchange!... how about the Somali pirates?" Where you from, darling? Salt Lake City? Wonderful town.

"By the way, Ron Paul cannot get elected, I'm sorry to say." OUTRAGE! BOOING! "I like Ron Paul, I think he's a good guy" -- silence -- "but honestly I think he has zero chance..." More yelling! But! If Trump runs, "This country will be respected again." YAY! GO TRUMP! "I'm pro-life." YAY! "I'm against gun control." YAY! etc. "We'll be taking in hundreds of billions of dollars from countries that are screwing us... create vast numbers of productive jobs..."

He's just spinning and cruising like he always does. I think his goal might really be to see how full of shit you can be and still get away with it. Well, at least he has the brains to smell that he's dealing with rubes here, and he laid it on thick. But I wonder what the organizers were thinking. Maybe they too wanted to see how far they could take them down the primrose path. As far as you like, it seems.