FAVORITE FRAGMENT OF OBL BUTTHURT SO FAR. Daniel Foster, National Review:

I won’t go so far as to say that Obama was thinking about politics above national security here, but...

Oh go fuck yourself.

MORE ON OBL. In the cold light of day, having done the column, I thought about going down to Ground Zero (Steven Thrasher went in the wee hours and filed a fine report). But I never like going there. The last time I was compelled by events to do so, it was mobbed with stunned, sad people, and men in uniform poked up out of the crowd, standing on military vehicles with guns at the ready. I prefer this to that, and I'm sure there are some people for whom the death of Bin Laden brings comfort and a sense of justice done. Let them have it.

I'm just glad the fucker's out of the way. I appreciate the delivery on promised retribution -- the government's and Obama's -- and I can imagine why no one wanted a Nuremberg trial. I did, though. The guy'd been telling his side of the story in tapes from a cave, I thought, now let him tell it in the dock. As to inflaming the faithful, I figure if we can countenance it with Mohammed cartoons and stupid crap like that, we could have certainly done it in the cause of justice.

Surveying the usual idiots today, I find their message discipline remarkable. I note there is as yet not much conspiracy theorizing. I would actually be sympathetic to claims of a fix; governments lie, and if you bet that way at least you have a case. The notion widespread among the brethren that everyone deserves credit except Obama is just bullshit.

(At The Corner, Michael Potemra says, "on this day, I join everyone in saying, 'Good work, Mr. President, thanks — and we’re proud of you.'" Join everyone? He must not read his own site. Which I can understand. Potemra also calls Bin Laden "not a 'soldier' in a 'war,'" but "a murderer of innocents, and thus a common criminal, whose misdeeds were great enough to merit for him the end of a noose." Where was this kind of thinking before the rush to war, when we needed it?)

UPDATE: Claudia Rosett:

Bin Laden’s death is great news, but the president, in his rush to claim credit, made a mistake in delivering it himself. Osama bin Laden was a pied piper of mass murder, and every effort should be made to avoid in any way dignifying anything about him. Rather than using the presidential pulpit to break the news, President Obama should have left it to one of the U.S. military commanders or spy chiefs whose men took the real risks in this operation. (Recall how President Bush, rather than grabbing the center stage, and thus dignifying the ex-tyrant of Iraq, left it to Paul Bremer to announce the capture of Saddam Hussein.)

I'd forgotten that. I do remember this:

But, you know what? No worries and all's fair:


(h/t Michael Scott)

UPDATE. The old college try from Jim Geraghty: "I get the feeling that grassroots conservatives feel better about President Obama’s authorization of this operation than grassroots liberals do." Does he get this feeling from the same place he gets his paychecks? I wonder which of his colleagues created this tribute:



Couldn't be Goldberg; he's probably still in the snackroom telling an intern, "OK, now make Obama's nose wider."

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about rightblogger reactions to the death of Osama Bin Laden. Not much more to say about it now -- been up late doing a total rewrite. Good night.

TEAM PLAYERS. "Lionel and I censored ourselves in the interest of the greater good, " laughs Roger L. Simon of himself and PJTV colleague Lionel Chetwynd, "because we did a show about Atlas Shrugged, which we're gonna do today, but we didn't want to hurt the film because we're good team players so we decided to hold off." But now that the movie has "tanked," they're free to tell us it stinks.

Their fellow conservatives denounce this politicization of the critical process. Accuracy in Media finds it "noteworthy" that these critics "would ignore this particular movie while reviewing scores of others arguably less relevant to today’s current events." The New York Post's Lou Lumenick quotes a commentator who finds their failure to file "even more deplorable than that taken by the distributing company to withhold an invitation to its opening for reasons of editorial politics, operating policy or anything else." "Too bad the movie's already been out for two weeks," scoffs Ray Gustini of The Atlantic Wire.

Oh, whoops, sorry, they're talking about the New York Times. But I don't know why they're so upset that the Times hasn't reviewed the film. Haven't bloggers rendered the Lamestream Media irrelevant?

THE LAND OF MAKE BELIEVE. John Cole seems mildly excited that Paul Ryan has expressed a willingness to reduce or eliminate oil subsidies -- bucking his own party, and a previous incarnation of himself -- but worries that the GOP will get unearned points for it.

This, something pretty much every liberal the last few decades has proposed, will be hailed as courage...

In no sane world would they ever be subsidized- it’s simply insane. And smarter folks have been pointing this out for quite some time, and are simply ignored.

But now that a Republican has suggested it, I guess it is “serious” enough that something might happen.

I can put his mind at ease. This will never happen. Maybe some Potemkin plan will be erected for show which moves the money around a little. But seriously? Come on. Obama proposed cuts in the industry's subsidies and tax breaks at the last State of the Union, and I didn't see Republicans running to endorse it -- quite the contrary.

And though some lefty sites are enjoying Ryan's retreat from orthodoxy, I'm not seeing the rightbloggers rush to second his motion. This bit from American Power represents the furthest reaches of their criticism of the oil biz -- namely, that its behavior encourages socialists:

It's hard to defend big oil if they adopt market positions that appear completely against consumer interests. There's an economic logic to trends, even economic necessity. Yet the bummer is that massive oil company profits feed the progressive left's demands for higher corporate taxes, and hence demands for ever larger spending initiatives...

Again, until the demand flattens out a bit after the peak summer travel season, it's going to be easy pickings for the communist left's attacks on big oil.

As far as actually withdrawing any of their perks, Bridget Johnson's perspective is representative:

With gas prices hitting $3.90 today, Dems are undoubtedly singing an alleluia chorus at the revived opportunity to swing the “Big Oil” bat once again.

ExxonMobil can sleep soundly.

THE END OF A BIRTHIC DAY. "MORE: But the question remains: Why did Obama, who has proudly vowed his administration would be the 'most open and transparent in history,' wait so long?" -- Ole Perfesser Instapundit.

"President Obama coughed up his birth certificate today. So, the question is: How is this good for Obama?" -- Melissa Clouthier, RedState.

"THE NEW BURNING QUESTION... But it does raise the perplexing question: If this was possible all along, why did the WH take such sweet time releasing it? Could it be that this White House, continuing a tactic used by Democrats for years, actually liked being able to cast their opponents — often through guilt by association — as paranoid nuts? No, that couldn’t possibly be it... Update: For the record, I don’t actually think this is the 'new burning question' in the sense that it must rise to the top of the national conversation. I just think farrrt faarrrrrrt farrrt fart." -- Jonah Goldberg.



"If it was anybody else I'd say what's gonna happen to you would be a lesson to you. Only you're gonna need more than one lesson -- and you're gonna get more than one lesson." -- Boss Jim Gettys, Citizen Kane.

GALTIAN SUPERMAN SPEAKS. (UPDATED.) The producer of the Atlas Shrugged movie, business for which has fallen off, tells the Los Angeles Times that he will fight to the last to bring Ayn Rand's vision to the promised 1,000 screens and follow up with the final two parts of the trilogy.

Just kidding:

"Critics, you won," said John Aglialoro, the businessman who spent 18 years and more than $20 million of his own money to make, distribute and market "Atlas Shrugged: Part 1," which covers the first third of Rand's dystopian novel. "I’m having deep second thoughts on why I should do Part 2"...

Though the film has made only $3.1 million so far, Aglialoro said he believes he'll recoup his investment after TV, DVD and other ancillary rights are sold. But he is backing off an earlier strategy to expand "Atlas" to 1,000 screens and reconsidering his plans to start production on a second film this fall.

"Why should I put up all of that money if the critics are coming in like lemmings?" Aglialoro said. "I’ll make my money back and I'll make a profit, but do I wanna go and do two? Maybe I just wanna see my grandkids and go on strike."

On strike! That'll show 'em.

It seems the perpetual motion machine runs on whine.

Here's a video of Aglialoro and other members of the creative team talking about the film last week ("This book, this movie… it's a liberation of the human spirit," Aglialoro says). The discussion is hosted by Nick Gillespie, who reacts eagerly to the filmmakers' sunny assessment of the movie's fortunes: "Does it seem somehow in keeping that the critical reception might be mixed but the audience response is huge? Because this seems totally in keeping with Rand's reception, which is there's something about her work that an audience gets that escapes the gatekeepers and the Wesley Mouches of the world."

UPDATE. Comments are choice. "Randianism: the sound of one teenager slamming a door in your face--forever" quoth aimai, who also collaborates with wiseguy cleter on a Galt-speech film starring Wallace Shawn, to be called My Dinner with Atlas. lacp posits Plan 9 from Galt's Gulch.

BigHank53 asks the relevant question, though: "Remember how the critics slagged Sucker Punch, 300, and The Phantom Menace, and those movies sank without a trace? Do Objectivists ever take responsibility for anything?" Just so. Rand's characters never bitched so much about their reversals, even when they were caused directly by hostile moochers, looters, scalawags etc. This guy gets bad reviews for his lousy movie and suddenly he's Josef K.

UPDATE 2. Almost forgot: There's a "Support the Atlas Shrugged Movie(s)!" Facebook page. I'm not sure it's not a parody. One of the members suggests: "What about a fundraiser all of us could contribute to, for marketing funds for the movie, so the word gets out to other people?" Boy, is she unclear on the concept.

UPDATE 3. I'm beginning to rethink this Aglialoro thing, thanks to commenter Brian H, who has discovered a 2007 Milford (MA) Daily News report on a Massachusetts Opportunity Relocation and Expansion grant bestowed upon Aglialoro's company, Cybex:

Several officials noted the long process of the Medway Industrial Park project, which began in the 1970s. The town nearly lost Cybex, which recently opened a new $15 million facility in Minnesota.

"Cybex had been looking to state government for several years, or frankly, it had to leave,'' said John Aglialoro, Cybex's chairman and chief executive officer.

But within months of taking office, the [Derval] Patrick administration awarded Cybex one of the MORE grants, Aglialoro said.

"Our global competition would certainly maintain a dry eye if they learned the Medway facility was shut down,'' he said. "For America to compete effectively, businesses must work with local, state and federal entities.''

Doesn't sound lke the Rearden way to me. But I don't blame Aglialoro -- in fact, the more I think about it, the more I admire his nerve.

Like I always say, if you can swindle zealots into paying for your art, then swindle, comrades, and God go with you. And now that I know Aglialoro was full of shit coming in the door, even his ridiculous pretense of moral high ground is less offensive to me, and in fact has something glorious about it. I confess that when Oliver Stone was passing out "Open the Files" buttons during his talk-show publicity appearances for JFK, I was thinking: Greater love hath no man than this, that he would pretend to be an idealist for the sake of his project! That a drug-addled monster of ambition like Stone would play so well the reformer struck me as a miracle of artistic devotion. If Orson Welles had learned that trick, we might have been blessed with five or six more masterpieces.

Maybe, in the service of his mission, Aglialoro has a similar plan to shake down the dummies who pony up for National Review cruises and crap like that. You can imagine it: Liberal film critics have tried to silence Ayn Rand. But they won't get away with it -- if you give generously. I would prefer to think of him as a modern-day François Villon than as someone dumb enough to actually believe this Objectivist horseshit.

AFTERBIRTHERISM.

"I guess the Obama administration felt they had milked all the political advantage they could out of refusing to release the birth certificate," huffs Rob Port of Say Anything. This familiar blaming-the-victimology is seen elsewhere -- including a post from, get this, Tom Maguire, for years king of the passive-aggressive crypto-birthers:

My Official Editorial Rumination was that there was no reason for the White House to hide it other than Obama's practice of managing his brand by hiding everything (leaving critics and skeptics unsure which haystack actually conceals a needle which may or may not exist.)

I'm sure Comrade Obama appreciates Maguire's cooperation in that strategy.

Others use the occasion to declare a big win for Donald Trump, whom the release leaves without his one reliable source of publicity, and obliged to explain to the plebes why a thrice-bankrupt blowhard should be their next President. Well, at least those investigators he sent to Hawaii got a nice paid vacation out of the deal. ("Hello, boss? We're hard on his trail! Soon as I finish this stinger -- er, report -- we're on our way to Bimini to explore the Adam Clayton Powell connection!")

But where there's dumb, there's hope! PunditPress:

Why they waited until now and why they released it to TwitPic is unknown at this time.

Update- The White House website also has this picture as the birth certificate, which for some reason, is a different color...

Cue the Colorists! Nah -- the next phase of Operation Confuse-a-Con will be led by Obama's Alinskyite soulmate, the trickster Bill Ayers.

UPDATE. PunditPress seems to have altered its post. Have to wait for the cache.

UPDATE 2. William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection takes a Questions-Remain approach:

Succumbing to the realization -- which I also predicted -- that the "Birther" strategy was failing, the White House has purported to release this morning a "long form" birth certificate.

Perhaps sensing that the purportance was not going his way, he amplifies:

Update: For some reason people have seized on the words "[i]t looks to me like a 1961 version of the short form" as a reflection of skepticism on my part. That was not my intent. I merely wanted to point out that the document doesn't look all that different than the document previously released, although it does have some additional information.

My comment at Politico's Arena:
The document goes a long way, if not completely, towards quieting the issue...

To the last ditch with Colonel Mustard! The night before he was telling people that birtherism was Good News for Republicans:

Obama may be winning in some circles, but the polling indicates that increasing percentages of Americans -- including substantial percentages of independents -- do not believe Obama was born in the U.S. or are unsure. I'll have more on the polling tomorrow, but you never hear about the numbers for independents, you only hear about the numbers for Republicans.

Hint, go out to dinner with four independent voters; then try to guess which one of them thinks Obama was born elsewhere. Because if the polls are accurate, one of them does.

Easy. He's the one with the bib.

UPDATE 3. In comments, Cargo: "The conspiracies will continue as long as the President remains black."

Thanks also to mark f for alerting me to Jonah Goldberg's related mouthfart:

Distractions, Silliness Are Our Enemy

So proclaimed Obama in his “I am a grown-up” press conference just now. He railed against “distractions” and “silliness” that prevent us from grappling with our very serious problems. Then, he left to go tape the Oprah Winfrey show and hold a fundraiser. No word on when his next tee time will be.

I can't fault his reasoning here, because he doesn't supply any; it's just a bizarre tantrum. (I was going to call it an embarrassment, but Goldberg has never shown any capacity for that emotion.) And he keeps the tone up in his own comments section:

Stan - Troll much? I've never endorsed birtherism, I've been blistering in my criticism of Trump, and all you're doing here is tu quoque b.s. By the way I'd rather be a member of a party that flirts with birtherism than trutherism.

Which Democratic Presidential front-runner endorsed trutherism, again? Somebody throw Goldberg the rubber doll to wrestle till he calms down.

TIMOR MORTIS CONTURBAT ME. It's already a big death week for music. I thought I was unacquainted with Hazel Dickens, but apparently that was her heart-rending voice in Harlan County U.S.A., which I hold in my memory to this day. At least she made 75. Phoebe Snow was just 58 when she passed and had been sick. I saw her in the early 70s; she didn't move much, just stood there and skeined out that distinctive sound, which would often start big and then turn into husky static and evaporate. That trailing-off was her signature, which is kind of eerie considering how she went out. No one should have so much death and sorrow in her life, not even an artist.

For me, though, the chill wind really came with the news that Poly Styrene had died of cancer at, gasp, age 53. I saw her and X-Ray Spex at CBGB in 1978. James Wolcott was there too -- I was probably further back from the stage than he, because my stoner friends were not in the mood to be rushed and I lost my reservation. But I could have been out on the sidewalk and her presence still would have reached me. She was physically ample but in no sense heavy, and bounced with obvious pleasure every time the music started. Her voice was strong and from the gut, but though angst was the style in those days, she clearly delighted in her power and shared it with the crowd cheerfully. She lit that dank hellhole right up. It was one of those occasions in which showmanship and animal spirits are indistinguishable. I remember her full of life.

THE LONER. Thanks to Plonsky shop teacher Leyla Bandy I got to see Neil Young's solo show at Avery Fisher Hall last night. The audience appeared to be mostly middle-aged executives dressed like roadies. But who knows, I haven't seen him in about 15 years, so maybe that's his crowd now.

The old guy played some acoustic hits at the top to remind everyone he was Neil Young, and then strapped on the electrics and began to diverge. When I first listened to Le Noise I figured Young was doing a Nebraska -- stripping down to get to the essence. Or maybe he was tired of splitting the take with Crazy Horse. But this show convinced me that what he's tired of is the restrictions of playing in a band, including having to keep up a steady rhythm. He sped up "Ohio" till the choruses and then slowed back down for them, as if playing that riff was too pleasurable to rush. (Does he still get high?) In other songs he appeared to become enamored of a groove and stick with it till he was satisfied that it was wrung out. He deconstructed "Cortez the Killer" so that every line came with drawn-out guitar embellishments, and when he did the outro straight it seemed almost parodic -- like cheering Cortez "dancin' across the water" was the lame mainstream move. (He played many of the instrumental passages of "Cortez" to a wooden Indian upstage.)

And that was great. He's Neil Young, he can do whatever he wants. He did perform pretty normal versions of "After The Gold Rush" and "I Believe in You" and such like; the crowd swooned, and I suppose I did too. He's in pretty good voice, too -- despite a little thinness at the tippy-top and some unexpected downward modulations, it's surprisingly clean and expressive still. If you just wanted classic Neil you got enough of that.

But while he's happy to open up his treasure chest for the punters, he never comes onstage to pander. Some decades back I saw Young start a Meadowlands show with acoustic faves, then put on the headset mike and sunglasses and sing to tapes, which utterly stilled the swaying seas of buckskin. Later he asked the crowd, "Do you wanna go back?" Everyone roared that they did. "How far back do you wanna go?" he asked -- and he brought out the Shocking Pinks to play rockabilly. As I watched concertgoers stream through every exit door in the auditorium, I thought: This man will never be a nostalgia act. So far I've been right.

SHORTER NANCY FRENCH: I can't get excited about a royal wedding in which the bride is not a virgin.

KEEPING UP WITH THE OBJECTIVISTS. The Atlas Shrugged movie expanded from 299 to 465 theaters last weekend -- and took in about half as much money as it did opening weekend.

Nonetheless its fans proclaim it a success: "exceeding all expectations," "leaves Hollywood scratching its head, because it’s succeeding without them," "Hollywood baffled by success of 'Atlas Shrugged,'" etc.

Orlando Sentinel film writer Roger Moore caught some flak for pointing out that the film isn't doing so hot:

One loon calling himself Art Woolsey bombarded this site with scores of comments of the “Liberal pinko socialist conspiracy” variety. Another banned fact-bending commenter who labels himself “America” suggested, among many other things, that I am taking orders from on high (Does he KNOW my company?) for reporting this...

Another fibber ID’d himself as working for “Warner Bros,” and “we’ve just picked it up for WIDE” distribution...

Maybe one of those commenters was King of AttackingtheDemi-Puppets, who liked the movie better than critics did and, instead of taking a chacun à son goût perspective, announced that "the reviews turned out to be lies matching lies about the Rand novel—the most ambitious American novel ever written," and demanded to know "Why the lies about the 'Atlas Shrugged' movie found in review after review?" Ralph E. Vaughn of Right Here on the Left Coast said, "most reviewers savaged the film, but ignored the message - to attack the theme would require some commentary on a government that is far too much like our own, and they were too timid to do so..." -- a redefinition of the duties of the film reviewer that would render criticism as intolerable as rightwing blogging.

In short, their response to the movie's fortunes is the same as their response to everything else --bullshit and outrage.

BRODERISM 2.0. Kenneth Vogel has this long story at Politico about an "anti-Palin movement," which he portrays as massive and important and strongly tied to Trig Trutherism (the belief that Sarah Palin only pretended to give birth to the special needs child). This section kinda sums it up:

The members of this loose network have had their spats and rifts. Moore and Devon, for instance, reject Trig Trutherism, while the founder of Palingates asked Patrick and his partner to leave the blog after he posted an item about a massage therapist who had been implicated in a prostitution sting and with whom the National Enquirer tabloid alleged Palin’s husband, Todd, had a dalliance — a report the Anchorage police pushed back against.

But they have nonetheless found common cause in their shared belief that Palin is not what she purports to be and that the mainstream media, for the most part, have miserably failed to expose her.

This is like saying that, though Tim Pawlenty rejects birtherism, he and the birthers share a common mission of exposing the truth about Barack Obama. Which is to say, technically accurate but suggestive and misleading.

Maybe they're just looking for hits, but this story tracks with Politico's recent articles in response to an alarming poll showing birtherism strong among Republicans (for which, I may add, no Democrats/Trig Truthers equivalent exists). First Ben Smith told us that birthers are only kidding ("a way to express reflexive hostility"); then he reminded us that 51 percent of Democrats in a 2006 Scripps-Howard poll showed alarming trutheristic tendencies -- the 9/11 kind, not the Trig kind.

Smith neglected to mention that the Democrats in that poll were actually not so far ahead of their fellow countrymen: 36 percent of all respondents answered the same questions affirmatively. Maybe that would have harshed the Broderrific overall message that Republicans and Democrats say crazy things sometimes but they're really just blowing off steam. For a growing political media empire, I guess, there's no percentage in saying that a disturbing number of people say crazy things because they are in fact crazy.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about recent developments in birtherism. I think the fresh divisions among conservatives on this issue actually work to their advantage. Not in common sense, but politically, I mean. It's another example of how being crazy works in one's favor in American politics today; with birtherism you can play both ends against the middle, whereas the wacky ideas held by Democrats -- for instance, that millionaires can afford to kick in a couple more bucks to keep America from turning into Kyrgyzstan -- cannot be similarly leveraged.

In another decade or so, assuming perhaps unfairly that the United States will last that long, I expect the major parties' candidates will be debating whether Bewitched or Mad Men is more awesome before a small audience of citizens who still have cable.

OLD MOVIE NIGHT. Saw a coupla rock docs recently -- Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin' About Him?) and Lemmy -- as well as the Ian Dury bio Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll. I just now noticed the pattern, and that I'd been missing music. Yes, music is all around, but some years back, when I put down the instruments and set to work at the writer's trade, I sort of deafened myself to it -- abandoned my stereo, didn't follow new bands, stopped paying attention. (This is consistent with a psychological quirk of mine best explained by Uncle Tupelo.)

But my time in Texas, where I was surrounded by a less familiar kind of music, must have re-sensitized me; time and solitude have probably done their work too. Now I find myself responding emotionally, even outsizedly, to songs, including crap ballads played in the supermarket. The heart is a garden, I guess, and flowerings come and go with the seasons and conditions of the soil.

The three movie subjects are among my very favorite musicians, but for the most part the movies disappointed me. As I've observed before, biographies don't often ascend to the higher level of art, so we can only hope to have the story of a person's life presented in pleasing dramatic form. The makers of the Dury pic, unfortunately, muck about a lot. For instance, there are semi-animated sequences which are meant, I guess, to mirror Dury's garish style, but still play like misguided efforts to liven up the film for the benefit of video addicts.

There's also a peculiar extension of the movie's focus to Dury's troubled son. The best excuse for this would be that Dury, too, had father-abandonment issues, and these are recreated in his kid. But as is common in the disturbed-genius genre, Dury is shown to have problems with responsibility, and it's mostly left to his loved ones to be understanding and make adjustments; it's not satisfying to show the hero's struggle to be a good father if he doesn't actually change to accomplish it.

Finally and frankly, I didn't rent the movie to see the Baxter Dury story. I wanted to see something of what the great man was about. The best thing about Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll is its believable picture of Dury as a romantic character, a nobleman/shit defiantly dancing his rickety leg to the front of the stage and the Top of the Pops. Andy Serkis pushes the Richard III a bit too hard, but I bought that his brave front bonded people to him, even after they'd seem him snap. The portrayal gets right, too, Dury's vision of sex magic as folk wisdom. But overall I'd have been better off listening to 90 minutes of the real Ian Dury.

The Nilsson and Lemmy docs share some common problems. The pleasure we get from hearing our idols eulogized by famous people is really a cheap kind of pleasure, isn't it -- aimed at our insecurities about our own opinions. I think that's why comedy roasts are so popular -- constantly seeing toffs jerk each other off at banquets and on talk shows offends our better natures so much that it's a real pleasure to hear them insult one another. Still, it's bearable to hear someone like Randy Newman or Van Dyke Parks praise Nilsson, albeit with a remarkable lack of eloquence -- watching Lemmy get his ass kissed by the likes of Dave Navarro and Lars Ulrich is just repulsive, and watching them act out their admiration by playing with him is even worse. (The redeeming feature in Lemmy's case is that he doesn't seem too excited about it.)

Nilsson has the advantage of being dead and thus spared the obligation to play along. The sound and video clips of him are very nice, especially rarities like his demo for Popeye's "Blow Me Down"; the glimpses of his childhood are tasteful and of real interest. Over time, though, I got the dispiriting sense that I was being sold Harry Nilsson. I realize not everyone knows a lot about him, but I don't think even novices would appreciate the film's slightly pushy way of trying to convince you that the guy was a genius with awards and celebrity endorsements.

Lemmy's doc is more gross that way, and also throws in testimonials about his drinking and drugging prowess. But at least the man himself has real dignity. When the filmmakers put him on camera with his late-acknowledged son, Lemmy doesn't seem to pay him much mind -- he's aware of the absurdity of the situation, and that it requires his interest but not his effusions. And if the film can't make anything interesting out of Lemmy's random enthusiasms -- video poker, Nazi paraphernalia -- his attitude makes clear that there's nothing to make of them: He's a simple person who likes things because he likes them. As his songs reveal, Lemmy's a philosopher but not a deep thinker, and the thing he's most serious about is not taking things too seriously. This is refreshing, but it also invites us to ask ourselves why we're watching a movie about him in the first place.

UPDATE. Lots on interesting reflections in comments on music appreciation and the effect of age and disappointment upon it. I've known people all along the spectrum, from early abstainers to guys still crunching away at bands into middle age. How we get where we get with music would make a fascinating study. The caprices of Euterpe are hard to figure, but I understand she responds well to tickling; the bitch goddess Fame is less easily appeased.

SHORTER ANN ALTHOUSE: Paul Krugman is a hypocrite because he complained about "eliminationist rhetoric" after Gabby Giffords' assassination, and now he's talking about shooting zombies in the head.

(I expect she's got her teaching assistants going through the cast and crew of "The Walking Dead," trying to find Hollyweird liberals against whom she can make the same charge.)

UPDATE. Giffords ain't dead, commenter map106 reminds me, so it wasn't an assassination. Swap in "attempted assassination."

TOWARD A NEW THEORY OF TRUMP. You know the rule of three -- Anaheim, Azuza, and Cucamonga, etc. Having plumbed the depths of conservative insanity with Wizbang's tale of Obama's attempt to impeach himself and Big Journalism's tale of the Democrats' attempt to hide/promote birtherism, I knew I would need a button before the weekend.

Fortunately I also knew the most reliable well of craziness on the internet. I ran to American Thinker to take in the latest Robin of Berkeley posting, and all my problems were solved.

Guess what: She's endorsing "Donald Trump -- or a Trump-like man" for president. Mainstream conservatives are, after a brief flirtation, now fleeing Trump, but they apparently don't deliver their memos to wherever Robin hides from the world.

Reminding us again that she used to be a leftist, Robin tells us that though she will "no longer vote along gender or ethnic lines," she was at first at least open to the "many strong female politicians out there, the so-called Mama Grizzlies. Some of them, for instance, Gov. Jan Brewer, have bigger cojones than many of the conservative pols."

But can they win? "My opinion is no, and for one simple reason: because of what the left does to women."

And what did the left do to even Robin's favored, cojone-hung women? Sarah Palin "has been subjected to a high tech wilding, replete with verbal rape and sexual objectification," she says, and "[Michele] Bachmann's abuse has already started, and it will get even worse should she run for President."

And it's "not just conservative women that the left will eat alive," says Robin. "It is any nice guy or gal, anyone who plays by the rules. Mitt Romney, that wholesome Mormon; Tim Pawlenty, the soft spoken Midwesterner; Paul Ryan, the brainiac; Huckabee, the pious. Obama and his henchman will chew them up for breakfast and spit them out before noon."

Among the Obama thugs mentioned in the article: The "New Black Panthers" and Cornel West.

But unlike these Republican pussies, Trump will stand up to the right people. For example: "Notice how Trump didn't back down after The View's Whoopie Goldberg insinuated that he's a racist. In fact, Trump went on to confront that other black icon, Bill Cosby."

You get the picture: Only Trump is tuff enough to save America from black people who eat alive GOP white men and verbally rape Sarah Palin.

I'm pretty sure the other people who would vote for Trump see things the same way.

APB. Need an ebook cover designer. Preferably one who works cheap and can either hook me up with a cheap photographer or do the snaps him- or herself. If you are or know someone like that, please drop me a line.

BUT THEY'RE ALL NUT GRAFS. These are golden days for wingnuttery. The new column by SusanAnne Hiller at Big Journalism -- swear-to-God titled "What If The Birthers Are Right?" -- has to be seen to be disbelieved. I commend her on packing so much lunacy into one tasty nut cluster:

While I won’t rehash all of the issues here, I will note, for the record, that the left started the birther issue (and continually attacked McCain) and Obama is also a McCain birther as he co-sponsored the Senate Resolution declaring McCain a natural born citizen–clearly understanding the difference between being a US citizen and being a natural born US citizen and its importance.

I at first expected her "left started the birther issue" link to advance the theory promoted by Jonah Goldberg that Democrats were "pumping the birther story in order to tar Republicans as extremists." But that one's kinda hard to work now that birtherism is on its way to becoming the consensus among Republicans.

It turns out Hiller's point is that liberals were trying to screw McCain by pushing his Canal Zone background as an issue in 2008, although as someone who was alive and sentient at the time I recall that it blew over very quickly, despite the strenuous efforts of some Ron Paul people.

The most obvious counter to her claim is that McCain's Democratic colleague Pat Leahy put the issue to rest with a Senate resolution way before the national conventions met -- which Hiller tries to preempt by implying that the resolution was actually an attack on McCain, because of the "difference between being a US citizen and being a natural born US citizen and its importance" -- which importance the U.S. Constitution ("a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States") does not acknowledge.

(I wonder that Hiller didn't advance the more elaborate McCain eligibility conspiracy theories of Orly Taitz. They make just as much sense.)

Further down Hiller's column:

Now that that’s out of the way, I’ve been watching the brouhaha that Donald Trump is causing and he is not backing down–that’s obvious. But during these interviews, it makes me wonder why the MSM so aggressively attacks anyone who even dares come close to this issue–even now–after they seemingly put it to rest. What are they afraid of–what might they find? And was Oprah wrong again?

Another question that I’d like to float: Is Obama intentionally withholding his long-form birth certificate to continue to perpetrate the notion that those who question him are crazy giving the media more ammo against the birthers and the right? It wouldn’t surprise me, but with [Jerome] Corsi’s evidence [in an impending birther book] that may not be the case.

Son of a gun, she got to the Goldberg Variation after all -- and in the most mind-bending way: Immediately after suggesting that Obama's MSM enablers are trying to hide the fact that he's foreign-born, she suggests that Obama is maliciously advancing the false theory that he's foreign-born.

If our country seems to be going insane, it's because the insane have all the advantages. If you're crazy enough to write something like Hiller's column, and have readers who are crazy enough to swallow it, you don't have to make the slightest bit of sense. Just mouth whatever random talking points come to mind, and you have a publishable column. Think how freeing that must be!

Oh, and as Teresa Kopec points out, the Very Serious People will cover for you. Politico's Ben Smith on the GOP birther boom:

What does this mean? I find it hard to believe that millions of Republicans have looked at the non-existent evidence and soberly concluded this. It seems that answering "was Obama born in a foreign country" elicits from Republicans the sort of response from Repubicans that "is George W. Bush a moron" would have elicited from Democrats -- a way to express reflexive hostility...

Really, in a world like this, what's the percentage in not being crazy?

THE NEW NORMAL. From Jay Tea at Wizbang, Obama's plot to impeach himself, and no I am not even joking:

Which brings me to what should be an unthinkable possibility:

Does Barack Obama want to be impeached?

On the face, it sounds absurd. But I can construct two scenarios under which he just might.

Jesus Christ.

...impeaching Obama would be a disastrous move, tactically and strategically [for Republicans]. But it really looks like Obama is pushing for such a move, calculating that it would do him far more good than harm.

That bastard! Well, let's not let him get away with that!

Plus, there's always the possibility that the longer Obama is denied his impeachment, the more aggressive and reckless and offensive he'll grow, and might even push enough Democrats into abandoning him and going along with removing him from office. Yeah, it's a long shot, but why rule out the chance?

I... uh... it...

I don't even know what to say. What can I say about a grown man talking about Obama's dastardly plan to sabotage Republicans by getting them to impeach him*? That it's the most insane thing yet? How do I know until I look at, say, The Anchoress or Patterico? Because all these guys have been absolutely tearing asunder the very fabric of space and time with their insanity on a daily basis.

Sometimes I really think the right-blogosphere is just one immense practical joke.

*UPDATE. Oh yeah -- not to mention the idea that Obama might go too far with his impeachment scheme and actually get convicted. I wonder that Tea didn't war-game that one -- once freed of the cares of office, Obama can go back to building bombs for Al Qaeda, while Lord Biden reigns supreme and the Delawarean Prophecy is fulfilled!

UPDATE 2. Tbogg brings my attention to Confederate Yankee, who calls Obama "in some respects pedophilistic" because young people like him. If not a practical joke, perhaps some kind of contest?