HOW HAS THE LEFT OPPRESSED YOU TODAY? asks James Taranto, reacting to conservative columnists who don't like Rick Santorum:

In liberal metropolises like Los Angeles, Washington and New York (homes of [Conor] Friedersdorf, [Jennifer] Rubin and this columnist, respectively), a high proportion of conservatives have internalized the assumptions of feminism. One of those assumptions is that female sexual freedom, an essential component of sexual equality, is an unadulterated good. Santorum's statements to the contrary challenge this deeply held view.

Similarly, black activists/poverty pimps talk about black people's social freedom as if it were an unadulterated good. But intelligent people can disagree!

Furthermore, contemporary feminism is, as we recently argued, a totalitarian ideology, by which we mean one that tolerates no divergence between the personal and the political. If you are not a feminist, you can enjoy a lifestyle of sexual freedom and also take seriously the idea that sexual freedom is bad for society. If you are a feminist, that is a thoughtcrime.

People who have read 1984 but haven't kept up with rightwing theology may wonder how this thoughtcrime is punished. Does Big Feminism run the boardrooms and factory floors, and are offending non-feminists fired from their jobs and forced to live in shanties in Butchtown?

No. In real life, the answer is: They are sometimes made fun of for obvious hypocrisy. It's their Room 101!

It figures that Taranto has confused "laughing at your ridiculous arguments" with totalitarianism. The crazy, misogynistic shit they're forced to defend in these days of Surging Santorum has made them so ridiculous, it must feel like torture.

THAT'S WHAT THE NEW BREED SAY. James Poulos, a promising young rightwing intellectual, breaks it down:

In a simpler time Sigmund Freud struggled to understand what women want. Today the significant battle is over what women are for.

I'm going to make a wild guess and predict: On the one side, babies and Jesus, and on the other side, sterility, plus maybe careers, soft drugs, Tumblr, and kittens.

None of our culture warriors are anywhere close to settling the matter. The prevailing answer is the non-answer, a Newt-worthy challenge to the premise that insists the real purpose of women is nothing in particular.

I'm liking my odds thus far.

If the conservative movement’s nominal unity is actually belied by a stunning range of right-wing views on the status and purpose of women (and believe me, it is), the left’s alleged philosophical uniformity on the woman question is a complete fabrication — despite the fanatical discipline and norm-enforcement of much of the liberal cultural establishment.

I'm not expecting to hear an actual explanation of this "stunning range" of conservative opinions of what women should be -- maybe it has to do with this idiotic CPAC slutwear debate -- but I am eager to hear about "the left's alleged philosophical uniformity."

The purpose of lifting the left’s Potemkin skirts is not to score tits for tats.

Uh-huh-huh-huh-huh.

Let me shorten things up: careworn liberal consensus blah blah Sandra Day O’Connor blah blah Planned Parenthood v. Casey blah blah suffering of the crucified Christ. OK, onward:

Lurking beneath this procedural non-judgmentalism was a stubbornly conspicuous judgmental end. Roe couldn’t be overturned, the plurality argued, because Americans might think the Supreme Court was bending to public pressure. The court’s solution was to bend to the public reality that millions of women had altered what it meant to be a woman — and what status that meaning conferred — by having or supporting abortions. On the bogus theory that all linear change is progress, the plurality embraced the immoderate view that a descent into barbarism is impossible.

I can only extrapolate from these bits of rightwing cuneiform that women's insistence on having abortions is commandeering the meaning of What Women Ought To Be from the people who by right should be deciding it: Male public policy dorks.

Continued on Page 2 >>

Oh shit.

Today, the left is increasingly torn between old-school modern liberals who think like O’Connor and new-school postmodern liberals who find their cognitive elders in thrall to a haute-bourgeois conventionality that the deep premises of their own thought seem to strip of authority.

OK, I get that the O'Connor team hearts abortions, but what's the postmodern crew about?

So postmodern Cynthia Nixon, who used to be straight but now isn’t, tells The New York Times Sunday Magazine exactly what establishment liberals don’t want to hear when it comes to the sexual politics of women — “you don’t get to define my gayness for me.”

Gasp! He's onto us! This was all the liberals at my liberal cocktail parties have been talking about all week -- the crack in the aborto-haute-bourgeois facade represented by Cynthia fucking Nixon.

Nixon was swiftly accused by the left’s cultural policemen of “aiding and abetting bigots and bashers.”

I may be old-fashioned, but it seems to me you oughtn't use the plural of "basher" when you're talking about one guy, particularly one who added, "it might be wise if Nixon articulated her feelings in a more thoughtful way that would not lead to LGBT youth stuck in Bible Belt communities ending up in 'ex-gay' boot camps." Call me childish-foolish, but I have a hunch deviation from liberal orthodoxy was not high on his list of concerns.

Reihan Salam

Oh Jesus Christ.

has hinted that typically left-wing implications of academic theories like “erotic capital,” including mainstreaming prostitution, point in directions quite at odds with the dominant but failing framework of liberal sexual politics.

I have seen Poulos in the flesh; I know he gets around. Yet to read this anyone would be tempted to imagine he'd been imprisoned in a faculty lounge since infancy. At union demonstrations against Scott Walker, the brethren would only be talking about "erotic capital" if it were the name of a strip joint in Madison.

To the growing discomfort of many, that framework hasn’t come anywhere close to answering even the most basic questions about what women are for — despite pretty much universal recognition across the political spectrum that a civilization of men, for men, and by men is no civilization at all, a monstrously barbaric, bloody, and brutal enterprise. A few inherently meaningful implications about what women are for flow naturally from this wise and enduring consensus, but no faction of conservatives or liberals has figured out how to fully grasp, translate, and reconcile them in the context of our political life. 

Ironically, one of the best places to look for a way out of the impasse is the strain of left feminism that insists an inherently unique female “voice” actually exists. That’s a claim about nature. Much good would come from a broader recognition that women have a privileged relationship with the natural world. That’s a relationship which must receive its social due — if masculinity in its inherent and imitative varieties (including imitation by quasi-feminized males of quasi-masculinized females!) is not to conquer the world.

Pardon me, I realize this (thankfully closing) section is long, but I have included it because I have something I wanted to ask about it:

What the fuck is he talking about?

Seriously. I'm not very well educated, and half drunk most of the time, but I do know how to read, and I swear to God I have no idea what he's saying. I don't know how "a civilization of men, for men, and by men" relates to anything else he said. I don't know what he means by women's "privileged relationship with the natural world," unless my browser has failed to show me the picture of a lady sniffing a purty flower that was supposed to explain it. And as to "imitation by quasi-feminized males of quasi-masculinized females," it sounds like Archie Bunker had one of those Flowers for Algernon operations.

MLA President Michael Bérubé, I know you read this thing -- help a blogger out. Is it modern?


(h/t Tbogg)

NOT EXACTLY JESUITICAL. In case you were wondering whether the Catholic Church really wants to get rid of birth control, here's what the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops came up with at the Congressional hearings today:

The bishops say that the White House’s proposal for insurance companies to directly pay for and provide contraception to the employees of Catholic universities and hospitals and other religiously affiliated institutions couldn’t work because “the cost of providing those service are born some place.” The Catholic Church opposes most forms of birth control.

Guess the new Magisterium says that if anybody pays for contraception, it's a reverse Inquisition.

At National Review, where they've all gone coo-coo for contraception, attend the ravings of Andrew C. McCarthy:

First, the Left is getting away with saying that religious organizations want to deny coverage for birth control. That is sheer idiocy. As I contended in last weekend’s column, contraceptives and abortifacients are cheap, cheap, cheap in this country. If there were enough months in the year, you could have two second-trimester abortions for less than I spend on pizza — to say nothing of flat-screen TVs, iPods, X-boxes and the scores of other extravagances that the “poor” in America manage to score without government mandates. What we are talking about here is not walling people off from birth-control — condoms will still be free in New York City, the pill will still set you back less than $4 per week, and so on. 

So, to recap: The proof that the Catholic Church doesn't want to deny birth control coverage is that "poor" people get all the good electronics plus birth control, and Andrew C. McCarthy spends a surprising amount on pizza (perhaps because he has it specially delivered by Gitmo slaves just for the lulz).

Why are we acting as if these people even have an argument, again?

SHE ENJOYED IT. I thought we'd have to wait for the general election for this kind of thing, but here comes Daniel Foster at National Review with a defense of Mitt Romney strapping that dog to the roof of his car:

See, some people think that Romney’s decision, 20 years ago, to strap his Irish Setter (ensconced in a canine travel crate) to the roof of his station wagon during a family trip was an act of animal cruelty. Was it? Depends on the dog. I can certainly think of some dogs who would be terrified of such a prospect. Others — including pooches I have known who favor riding in the front seat with fully half their body out the open window, jowels aflap — would probably find it exhilarating.

Later Foster affects to find carrying a small dog in a protester's papoose inhumane. Maybe his physical universe has different properties than the one the rest of us inhabit.

Expect this to become a conservative thing; for example, the new vaginal wanding forced on abortion patients in Virginia will be explained as an act of kindness because women who want abortions are all sluts who probably like dildos.

THE WAR ON VALENTINE'S DAY. Did you see that cute Google doodle today? Didn't that sixth-of-a-screen, nano-seconds long image of two gay men ruin it for you, like it did for Tim Graham?

The animation’s finish includes a half-dozen tiles featuring various ”couples,” including an astronaut and an alien; a dog and a cat; and a frog and a prince, reported the Post's Michael Cavna. "Some early viewers of the Doodle wondered whether the tile featuring two tuxedoed men holding hands would stir any controversy." Says the animator, Michael Lipman: “I think Google was pretty aware of everybody in those final squares and they decided [them] with purpose.” 

Gay advocates would likely claim that the cartoon before the end is awfully "heteronormative." Perhaps they'll complain that they don't like to be compared to love between an astronaut and a space alien.

I don't know what's sadder here: NewsBuster Graham's eagerness to show us that, oh no, the gayness wasn't sneaked in by stoned animators behind their bosses' backs but approved by the Google Central Committee; or the "gay advocates would likely claim" bit, apparently meant to exempt Graham from charges of bigotry on the grounds that the homosexuals in his head are totally bigoted against something ha ha joke (commonly known as the Goldberg Maneuver).

I predict this becomes the next big social conservative thing: Liberals, having previous ruined Valentine's Day with vaginas, are now double-ruining it by promoting sexual behaviors outside the approval range of Ludwig Von Mises. Wachet auf! 

UPDATE. In comments, Michael Bérubé catches the "frog and a prince" bit, and reacts: "You thought Tim could watch that little cartoon without thinking man-on-frog? You were wrong." Man on frog! Now you know how that slope got so slippery.

Oh and hey, Michael, congratulations on the MLA Presidency. Use your powers only for good, however much you're tempted.

UPDATE 2. Steve M. sinks the hook shot.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about this whole stupid birth control thing. Their latest argument seems to be that because insurers will use money paid to them by Catholics to finance birth control benefits, it's a violation of religious freedom. I had no idea they were so fastidious about where their money went. Prada better watch its investments or Ratzinger may switch designers.

WHERE THEY'RE COMING FROM. I see National Review has gone coo-coo for contraception coverage. Andrew C. McCarthy takes time off from his usual torture advocacy to steer the conversation into surrealism -- from making Catholic hospitals offer employees health insurance that includes birth control pills (triple Hitler to the beliggerati, a big yawn to even most Catholics) to a late-term abortion bill from years past which has nothing to do with what's going on now. McCarthy quotes his own long-ago attempt to scare people off voting for Obama, hoping in the heat of the present Pillmania it will rattle some bones:

Infanticide is a bracing word. But in this context, it’s the only word that fits. Obama heard the testimony of a nurse, Jill Stanek. She recounted how she’d spent 45 minutes holding a living baby left to die.

Hold on a minute -- Jill Stanek? Here's a sample of how Stanek's been keeping body and soul together since then: Waving dismembered fetus photos at Jimmy Kimmel.

The youth pro-life activist group Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust is picketing comedian Jimmy Kimmel's Los Angeles home as I type (read to end) and will be picketing his studio on Hollywood Blvd later today. 

The group is demanding an apology, and here's why.... 

On June 25 the Survivors were holding a Face the Truth event in front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Blvd (click photos to enlarge).... 

A Kimmel crew showed up to film a stunt across the street from the Survivors. You can see their light set-up and intended direction of the shoot in the photo, right (click to enlarge). 

But at some point the crew became aggravated by the pro-life activists because they refused to move along and turned one of the hot spotlights on Survivor Ryan Bueler... 

Bueler refused to move and for 15 minutes there was a stand-off, during which time a bracelet he was wearing and his sign were partially melted, although he escaped uncooked. 

The police were called, and of course they arrested a pro-lifer, Survivors founder Jeff White...

All inappropriate typography and ellipses in the original. (Follow-up here.) This is the sort of nutcake who's trying to control this debate, and with the help of dopes like Chris Matthews they may pull it off.

It's almost heartbreaking to consider what a fine country this could be if we weren't in the habit of treating babbling lunatics as if they represented anyone besides other babbling lunatics.

UPDATE. Thanks to commenter wjts for providing some background on that 2002 "Born Alive" bill via RH Reality Check.

ALLOW ME TO EXPLAIN. Jazz Shaw tries the Because of The Hypocrisy schtick:

...here’s a video of the President explaining his position to clearly skeptical gay marriage rights activists. I mean, he’s not against gays having equal rights. He just doesn’t want them getting married.

Right?

Let me field this one: Obama was lying. Because the woods are still full of mouth-breathing douchebags like you and he didn't  have time to mess with them. And that turned out to be the smart move: Now he's President, people are getting with marriage equality,  and Prop 8's on its way to the ash heap of history. Maybe next year this time, we'll have White House Pride Day rainbow parties for which the CoC will oil up and get down while you wallflowers are whining about the hypocrisy of it all.

Happy Gay Day, asshole!

HISTORY REPEATING. A new rightwing pennysaver, the Washington Free Beacon, has debuted, and the introductory essay by Matthew Continetti catches perfectly the tone of modern conservatism: an endless mobius-strip mood-swing from triumphalism to persecution mania and back again.

Antipathy between the right and the establishment press was of course not new. The animosity has deep roots. The decades after World War II had seen journalism transformed from a blue-collar to a white-collar profession.

Things were fine when it was all Ida Tarbell and George Seldes.

The postwar journalists who came of age in the late ’60s or early ’70s saw themselves not only as reporters but also as devoted servants of truth and adversaries of authority. Happy coincidence for them that the country’s president at the time was a Texas Democrat overseeing a liberal establishment which was losing confidence in itself and in its country. The striving and conniving moderate Republican Richard Nixon was no more likely than Johnson to win the journalists’ affections. The media campaign against the Vietnam War and the presidency of Nixon was relentless—and successful.

So... the muckraking press took down liberal LBJ and conniving moderate Nixon -- this was a good thing, right?

Conservatives responded to the assault in two ways.

Never satisfied, these people.

Continetti's all over the place. He celebrates the ever-expanding Mighty Wurlitzer -- Safire and Spiro, the Media Research Center, the Murdoch empire ("News Corp.’s purchase of the Wall Street Journal in 2007 led to editorial improvements"), the Washington Times, Rathergate, etc. -- and it sounds like America's team has got the commies on the run.

But "in the end," says Continetti, "there was no way for a handful of papers and a single television network to nullify or even sublimate the loud, constant, coherent progressive roar of" lefty networks, newspapers, blogs, Hollywood, Soros, etc. "Try as they might," says Continetti, "conservatives could not command anything that approached the cultural power of the progressives."

Sounds like the commies have them on the run! But hold on --

...these groups may have excelled at rallying the small but ferocious left-wing base of the Democratic Party, but they were unable to accomplish their foremost goal: defeating George W. Bush.

So much for the cultural power of the progressives! What happened? Maybe Jesus intervened; Continetti doesn't say.

But he knows what the libs thought: That the problem was "not only conservative organization and Republican perfidy, but also Democratic squishiness. The Democrats were not anti-Bush, anti-Republican, and anti-war enough."

So the libs pumped up their awesome cultural power even more, with... the netroots and Ned Lamont.

Meanwhile, "The political tide began to change in a liberal direction, as well. Bush’s second term was a disaster from start to finish..."

Someone else might have stopped there and thought: Maybe this Miltonian media struggle isn't nearly as important as retail politics and the caprices of fate. Maybe the really good reason to talk about these subjects at all is not to try and advance some agenda, but because they interest you and give you something interesting to say. But that someone would be less devoted to justifying yet another think-tank giveaway and his employment therein than Continetti. I mean, come on, look at this:

Whether the victim was George Bush, Joseph Lieberman, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Charles and David Koch, the Chamber of Commerce, Fox News Channel, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, or Mitt Romney, the technique was the same.

That's quite an impressive and well-compensated list of victims. God send that I could be that victimized! I got people calling me names now, and I'm wearing a cardboard belt. But on Continetti goes, promising to show us "what would happen... if a website covered the left in the same way that the left covers the right," as if this wretched game of Spy Vs. Spy hadn't already been going on for decades. Hell, the Beacon's current front-page headline, "CHINESE COMMUNISTS INFLUENCE U.S. POLICY THROUGH EX-MILITARY OFFICIALS," could have been written by Robert Welch.

I'm beginning to think Obama's next bailout should be of the PR industry, so these schlubs could redirect their talents toward writing press releases for widget manufacturers and cabaret performers.  Everyone would be better off. Well, except maybe the widget manufacturers and cabaret performers.

UPDATE. Lots of commenters zero in on Continetti's bad writing. "Continetti's last paragraph is so sodden with ersatz testosterone that it should be adorned with a pair of truck nuts," says mortimer. A few others have fun with the sleigh driver of the wolf pack, etc.

Bad writing is in this case not a bug but a feature, because it aids the whole smoke-and-mirrors approach to history in which events are chosen and sequenced not to create a coherent narrative, but to rotate emotional effects; when he senses the tales of liberal media Moloch have gotten too dispiriting, Continetti fires the blood with brave tales of propaganda victory -- which have heretofore been insufficient but just you wait because here comes the Beacon! It's like an adventure story written by an 8-year-old who has ferocious ADD and is very mad at his mother.

IMA CROWDSOURCE. Some commenters, mostly from Australia, tell me they're having trouble accessing comments here. They think it has something to do with Google. I'm thrown. Know anything?

UPDATE. Thanks guys. Apparently, in order to censor websites more efficiently, our dread lord Google has stuck country codes to the ends of Blogspot addresses, which affects the comments for some reason. Commenter Andrew sends us here for advice:

However, if the blog’s readers would prefer to reach the U.S. (non-censored) version of the site, they can add “ncr/,” which stands for “No Country Redirect” to the end of the URL (i.e. http://name.blogspot.com/ncr/) and the user will no longer be served the country-specific (potentially censored) version of the blog.

So if you're having the comments problem, you can try that. Fish (and a correspondent named Hamish) recommend Tor.

AD NAUSEAM. Must be a slow day at The Corner. Here's Christian Schneider going deep on a fucking car commercial:

But in Wisconsin, where the entire state is still grieving over the Packers’ loss to the Giants three weeks ago, the reaction was much different. While most cheeseheads saw the Super Bowl as a rare night off from the sucking hole of union politics, there it was in the ad — an image of the state capitol occupation by union protesters nearly a year ago.

How could you force Wisconsin to endure five seconds of a protest scene made generic by the removal of union signs? Don't you know how they've suffered?

Also, Eastwood accompanied a generic scene of division with a generic plea for unity. To normal human beings, this is advertising, but to Schneider this is injustice. Because division isn't what's bad -- it's unions!

Of course, the “division, discord, and blame,” in Wisconsin began when unions tried the burn the state down over Governor Scott Walker’s plan requiring them to begin paying into their own pension accounts... 

Everyone knows the results. Union protesters calling the Lieutenant Governor a “f***ing whore” to her husband’s face after a Walker speech. Screeching demonstrators being dragged out while attempting to disrupt Walker’s State of the State address. WWII veterans being greeted with Nazi salutes at a capitol Christmas-tree-lighting ceremony. Protesters disrupting a Walker-led ceremony for Special Olympics award recipients. Forged recall petition signatures. Lawmakers having beers dumped on their heads. The list goes on and on.

Wow, swearing and beer-dumping. It's a wonder no one called out the National Guard. Oh wait...

According to Chrysler, these are times when we just “didn’t understand each other,” and where both sides can be ascribed “blame.” In fact, it was the union protesters that understood perfectly — that their boorish behavior would probably one day land them in an ad lauding their activism.

Clint  Eastwood occasionally got on the wireless and rasped to the union thugs, "You boys ain't cuttin' the mustard. Now I wanna see some boorishness and I want to see it now. No beer-bath, no TV! I'm not doing this because I want to take long showers with you assholes..."

I'm going over to the Times. Surely Douthat must be explaining by now how the Fiat ad is weakening America by something something sex.

UPDATE. Schneider's colleague Charles C.W. Cooke leaps in with the Goldbergian Unity is Slavery angle:

The commercial’s theme was more closely informed by Barack Obama’s recent SOTU call for the country to put aside its differences and march to the president’s tune than by the rugged individualism that one usually associates with the star who played Dirty Harry and The Man with No Name. It was full of injunctions to “all pull together” and calls to “rally around what [is] right and act as one,” which are fine if one wishes to storm the beaches of Iwo Jima, but are the death knell of a healthy democratic culture.

A car commercial. It's a car commercial. I --

Oh to hell with it. If you showed this guy the Mean Joe Green Coke ad he'd probably interpret it as propaganda for a radical redistribution of Pittsburgh Steelers jerseys.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the Komen/Planned Parenthood thing. It's the usual passive-aggressive routine, with the brethren Electric-Sliding between chest-thumps and victim-cries. But don't worry, abortion and The Anchoress keep the laughs coming. (I didn't use too many straight-up Jesus sources -- the first dozen or so bloggers using "Planned Parenthood a/k/a Worse Than Murder, Inc" as something other than a joke are amusing, but after that they start to get creepy.)

THE UNWORTHY POOR. Remember that "Look, these so-called 'poor' have refrigerators" thing? In preparation for the Age of Mitt Romney, they're ramping that shit up. From the Washington Examiner:

As President Obama crafts a reelection income equality message aimed at punishing the rich and rewarding the poor, his own government finds that the 46 million living below the so-called “poverty line” live and spend pretty much like everyone else.

Forget the image of Appalachia or rundown ghettos: A collection of federal household consumption surveys collected by pollster Scott Rasmussen finds that 74 percent of the poor own a car or truck, 70 percent have a VCR, 64 percent have a DVD, 63 percent have cable or satellite, 53 percent have a video game system, 50 percent have a computer, 30 percent have two or more cars and 23 percent use TiVo.

The new model conservative is a Victorian gent who would pity the poor, but has seen them dicing and drinking instead of acting out pathetic scenes from melodramas, and so cuffs them whenever they ask for change. Or a job. (The cheek! To think he would employ such as them in his sky garage.)

Here's the most damning evidence of all:

83 percent of the poor said they have enough to eat.

You want their sympathy? Show them some distended ribs!

The intended target, of course, isn't the poor, since no one in American politics cares about them. It's all those formerly or soon-to-be-formerly middle-class people who are with reason worried about becoming poor in this shitty economy. First, they want to assure you it won't be so bad: When you bottom out, you'll still be able to surf for porn and Tivo Toddlers & Tiaras. Second, they want to remind you of the public treatment you'll get if you become poor and complain about it. The Village doesn't like pauper ingrates!

Cars and VCRs, can you imagine? Charles Murray can't assemble his gang of upscale Belmont busy-bodies fast enough. Someone's got to get these wastrels reading the Bible and embroidering samplers that read ONLY MYSELF TO BLAME.

TOPSY-TURVY.  A lot of people marveled when Dr. Keith Ablow told the world, apparently with a straight face, that Newt Gingrich's multiple marriages were a sign that he'd make a good President. But as I have discussed here many times, part of the conservative project, especially since the multiple Republican scandals of 2006, has been to turn conventional ideas of decent human behavior on their head. Conservatives have long been in the habit of dispensing Values yak but, since some of them started getting caught with their pants down in spectacular ways, they have become equally accustomed to defend swinishness, unless it's exhibited by Democrats, it which case it's back to the yak.

(I think this informs their excitement over Charles Murray's latest prole-uplift project: It implies that their own Belmont crew, while not as butch as the Fishtown proles they wish to redeem, are morally superior to them because the stats show they stay married and "defer gratification" better. Statistical superiority is something they can all share. Rising tide and all that.)

Anyway, here's the latest example from Jason Lee Steorts, talking at National Review about Mitt Romey's tendency to reveal himself as a clueless rich prick:

It’s peculiar that Romney so often gets criticized for seeming inauthentic. A gaffe such as today’s is the essence of authenticity: The problem, politically speaking, is precisely that he failed to calculate about how his remark would be received. Ditto his comment about liking to be able to fire people. It was all too authentic when he revealed that $10,000 would be a trivial sum for him to wager. And there is a deal of authenticity in the naked ambition of a statement such as “I can’t have illegals, for Pete’s sake — I’m running for office!”

Maybe there is some angel out there who could be, without effort, precisely what we want our politicians to be. But what we really seem to expect of them — for we well know they aren’t angels — is a believable sort of fakery. (Romney sometimes does fake it, of course, but he doesn’t seem believable — e.g., his pink-slip comment.)

I especially like the "maybe there is some angel out there..." bit.  It not only suggests that it is we who have let Mitt down by indulging all those fake populists for so long -- it also suggests some wonderful bumper sticker ideas: He may be a prick but at least he's not pretending! If you were that rich you'd be an asshole too! etc.

A MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN: Charles Murray and David Brooks:

I’ll be shocked if there’s another book this year as important as Charles Murray’s “Coming Apart.”

And it's important because it explains why the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor has nothing to do with capitalism.

It’s wrong to describe an America in which the salt of the earth common people are preyed upon by this or that nefarious elite. It’s wrong to tell the familiar underdog morality tale in which the problems of the masses are caused by the elites.

The "familiar underdog morality tale" that the rich get over on the poor every chance they get is not, as Bobo portrays it, an old wives' tale like "cats steal babies' breath"; it is human reality; it has been for centuries, it's in full effect now, and everyone knows it. That's why guys like Murray have to keep coming up with new loads of bullshit to dump on it.

Brooks of course is in the reality-denying business. But he has to be careful -- while Murray's premise that poor people don't work because they're too busy aping liberal morals is good enough for the doofuses who read the conservative press, the Times crowd wants its bullshit with a little less roughage. Here's how that load comes out of Bobo's fudge factory:

Members of the lower tribe work hard and dream big, but are more removed from traditional bourgeois norms. They live in disorganized, postmodern neighborhoods in which it is much harder to be self-disciplined and productive.

Disorganized postmodern neighborhoods! So they can't make it to the employment office because the layout is confusing and someone deconstructed all the street signs? Or is it that they're so spellbound by all the Kathy Acker novels in the shop windows, they can't commence to a-entrepreneurin'? 

All that's left now, besides the inevitable endless seminars by libertarian dorks, is for the first bullshit liberal to take up Murrayism. Say, what's Joe Klein up to these days?

CHILDS' PLAY. At first I wasn't sure about Kermit's and Miss Piggy's press conference, in which they gave Fox Business' Eric Bolling a hard time for accusing them of communism:

While publicizing the upcoming U.K. release of the movie, Kermit responded, “If we had a problem with oil companies, why would we have spend the entire film driving around in a gas-guzzling Rolls-Royce?”

“It’s almost as laughable as accusing Fox News of being news,” Miss Piggy added.

In general, I prefer that my pop culture crap be left out of the dismal swamp of politics. In years to come, I don't want to see a noble biopic about Kermit's brave stand against McCarthyism, which took its toll and left him dead of an overdose on the toilet. (Wait, actually that would be awesome.)

On the other hand, it's hard to resist the rare and pleasurable spectacle of celebrities refusing to take Fox seriously. They act like it's no big thing to hit back at the people who had attacked them. Admittedly, as Muppets, they have a considerable power base; on the other hand, they are made out of felt and plastic. Also they presumably plan to keep making movies, and you can imagine how Murdoch will treat their product when next it emerges.

They show more guts, in other words, than most people in media.

But the thing I like most about it is John Nolte's sulky reaction at Big Hollywood:

As a response, and nearly a week after the segment aired, the Fox-hating entertainment media (which is all of them) viralized the clip, blew the controversy up into something it really wasn’t, and did so because they find it impossible to turn down an opportunity to prove they’re one of the minions in the club.

What effectively happened, though, is a week-old Fox Business segment was consequently amplified into the news narrative...

Week-old, huh? Let's take a trip down memory lane to Big Hollywood's 2009 attack on Oscar the Grouch, written by Larry O'Connor:

Last week, in a re-broadcast of an episode that originally aired two years ago...

Nolte reminds us that the Muppet movie "didn’t do anywhere near as well at the box office as some had expected and hoped," and predicts that the press conference clip "probably will go viral, and as a result this once universally-beloved brand will no longer be loved quite so universally." But, perhaps sensing that he looks like an ass trying even feebly to fight back against Muppets,  Nolte adds that the contretemps "wasn’t the fault of the Muppets. That was the immature, clubby entertainment media." Nothing personal, Kermy baby, call me!

Now I'm psyched for Yo Gabba Gabba! to do something about global warming.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP about the Alinsky craze that sweeping the nation, and how the rightbloggers have started accusing Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and each other of double secret Alinsky.

Something I couldn't find a place for is the wonderful outrage expressed by Monica Crowley that Alinsky dedicated his big book to Lucifer -- the sort of literary trope that Crowley was born to misapprehend. But Pat Dollard goes her one better in "Saul Alinsky: A Role Model For Left-Wing Satanists," a hallucinogenic essay decorated with pictures of Hell:

I’m not sure whether Alinsky really was a Satanist/Luciferian of some sort or whether he was just joking. He may well have been just joking. The man certainly did have a sense of humor...

Be that as it may, he’s an excellent role model for politically left-leaning Satanists, whether theistic or symbolic. (When I say “role model” I mean only in a very general sense, not one to be followed slavishly.) Certainly he can be said to have manifested his true will. And he espoused a lot of values that are familiar to today’s Satanists, such as his emphasis on power, self-interest, creativity, and practicality.

Creativity and practicality! So if you're trying to make it in show biz but work nights and save your money, you're about as SatanAlinsky as it gets. Find yourself a tenure track position ASAP!

For extra credit, explain to me what Godlstein is trying to say here. So far, to me, it sounds like It's not Alinsky if you cross your fingers, but with bigger words, and a steady background noise of pants-rubbing and shirt-retucking.

I'M A LONER, DOTTIE, A REBEL. Obama's snoozy SOTU address contained this bit about the military:

At a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, they exceed all expectations. They’re not consumed with personal ambition. They don’t obsess over their differences. They focus on the mission at hand. They work together. Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example. Think about the America within our reach.

Seems like a generic sort of rah-rah teamwork thing to me. But to Jonah Goldberg it's worse than Hitler:

That is disgusting.

What Obama is saying, quite plainly, is that America would be better off if it wasn’t America any longer. He’s making the case not for American exceptionalism, but for Spartan exceptionalism.

It’s far worse than anything George W. Bush, the supposed warmonger, ever said. Bush, the alleged fascist, didn’t want to militarize our free country; he tried to use our military to make militarized countries free.

Instead of killing scores of innocent Iraqis, Obama wants Americans to work together on the country's welfare. That's Librul Fascism! Also welfare!

Goldberg's not a joiner, I guess. Remember what he said when he actually had the chance to help George W. Bush "use our military to make militarized countries free"?  "I'm 35 years old, my family couldn't afford the lost income, I have a baby daughter..." That's one of the great things about being Goldberg's kind of freedom fighter -- you never have to do any actual fighting.

(I expect he's always been like this. Can't you see him getting out of gym in high school on anti-collectivist grounds? "But mom, they told me to be in a relay race just when I really needed to go get a triple chili dog. So I said I swear by my life and my love of it Farrrt.")

CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS. Charles Murray, best known for his book Niggers are Stupid (sorry, The Bell Curve), has a new one out called Kinder, Küche, Kirche 2.0 (sorry, Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010). We saw last week his promotional essay at the Wall Street Journal, which posited an America desperately class-riven but insisted it had nothing to do with money, and prescribed that upper-middle-class people show a good example and a constant wagging finger to their lower-class brethren, who had fallen into the unfortunate habit of making illicit babies and such like.

Well, Murray's been making the rounds, as has a quiz from his book which is supposed to tell you "How Thick Is Your Bubble" -- that is, how isolated you are from the real down-home white America that Murray thinks needs redemption. Among the questions: "Have you ever had a close friend who was an evangelical Christian?" "How many times in the last year have you eaten at one of the following restaurant chains? Applebee’s, Waffle House," etc., and "Have you ever watched an Oprah, Dr. Phil, or Judge Judy show all the way through?"

Nonetheless I scored 63, as many of the questions had to do with low birth, manual labor, cheap beer, and stupid shit on TV and at the multiplexes, notwithstanding that I have become over the years a hoity-toity scribbler.  But so what? Murray explains:

To my knowledge, sociologists haven’t gotten around to asking upper-middle-class Americans how much they know about their fellow citizens, so once again I must ask you to serve as a source of evidence by comparing your own experience to my generalizations. This time, I have a twenty-five-question quiz for you to take.

I hope it will serve two purposes: first, to calibrate the extent of your own ignorance (if any); second, to give you a framework for thinking about the ignorance that may be common in your professional or personal circles, even if it doesn’t apply to you.

Even if it doesn't apply to me? This sounds like an invitation to consider myself possessed of special knowledge, and thus prepared for the lower-class reclamation work Murray has in mind. But this wisdom might also prepare me to exploit the shit out of my former class-comrades by appealing to their tastes and prejudices with an ad campaign or a political candidacy or some other such wallet-extracting device. Richard Nixon and Jimmy Swaggart would have scored very high on this test.

Which is really what I think he's after. He and his adherents aren't interested in saving America, but in saving themselves.

Conservatives are convinced, and always trying to convince others, that liberals are all sissies who have soft hands and never drink Bud, and thus are Out of Step with America. Thus liberals are presumed to be ignorant of, and to despise, real Americans; and when Obama tries to spread a little of the nation's wealth among them, it cannot be to help them at a time of great need, because he's not one of them (and why, a conservative would reason, would anyone help anyone who was not of their kind?), and so must be due to his Kenyan anti-colonial socialist whatchamacallit.

It must have occurred to some conservatives, though, that they themselves don't have the common touch -- right now they're fighting over whether to nominate a rich asset-stripper or a college professor/lobbyist for the Presidency. And they don't think it has anything to do with their ruinous policies, which seem designed to make life harder for the working people they're hoping to woo. So they're interested in this test, and trying to figure how to ace it by using Murray's Cliff Notes. (I can imagine David Brooks crying, O I've got this, I've been to Applebee's! For a general consulting fee I will take part in this project!) They think if they can get the Branson and Budweiser thing down, they can go among the rabble and not get laughed off the earth.

I look forward to seeing them try. Come on, Mitt, tell them how much you enjoyed Little Fockers.

UPDATE. In comments, Batocchio is reminded of the "You might be a redneck" routine. (You knew it was by Jeff Foxworthy? 2 points!)

professor fate wants to know why Murray didn't ask about porn. Well, you must consider his audience, which is not actual lower-middle-class people but joy-popping nerdcons who want to hear about a cleaned-up Real America -- "Leave It to Beaver," not Wisconsin Death Trip, or even Winter's Bone. Imagine though if he'd taken the thing more seriously:

- Have you ever done meth? Maximum of 7 points. 3 points if you've ever done it, and 1 point for each tooth lost as a consequence up to 4. (No points if you took it at a gay orgy and called it Tina.)

- Have you ever had your credit card refused by the Home Shopping Network? 5 points.

- Are you still paying interest on a rear-projection TV you dumped in the woods last year? 3 points.

Etc. Comments are a joy in general. "'Have you ever had a job that caused something to hurt at the end of the day?' Yes. (sniffle) My heart," says Spaghetti Lee. "I've taken Cosmopolitan quizzes that were more scientific," says DocAmazing. "I got 60 (I know and have eaten at all the restaurants, but I'm on a diet)," says redoubt. "What's unusual about this? I'm African-American." No points for you, redoubt -- this test's restricted!

UPDATE 2. Har, Tbogg: "I took The Bubble Challenge and, well... 21. It would appear that I am Cornel West." This is despite his working-class bona fides, which Murray's finely-tuned calculus somehow missed. Also scoring low on the test, the insufferable Ilya Somin:

I managed a middling 37 on his 0–99 point scale. As Murray recognizes, one can easily quibble about the details of many of the questions. For example, I not only have “attended” a Rotary Club meeting, but actually gave a speech at one when I was 17. Maybe I should get extra credit for the latter.

I should think they'd take points off. "Here's Ilya from Little Libertarians, he's going to tell us why he wears a suit and tie to gym class."

I would also have achieved a higher score if there were more sports-related questions.

I expect all the pointy-heads will start asking for Bubble Test Affirmative Action. "No, I don't know any Skynyrd, but I know I'm supposed to like Drive-By Truckers." "No, I didn't participate in sports, but I used to pretend to be Tom Landry when I was yelling at the gardener."

STATE OF THE UNION. I think I get it: Obama knows nobody except DC nerds cares about this stuff, so he's going Hi NRG and throwing a baffling cloud of programs to get over. By the time analysts have sorted them out, everyone will be on to the next celebrity breakup or funny animal video.

Good for him, and for them. I get sicker every year of the thudding Kabuki, and the bizarre sound that makes the applause sound like ball bearings being poured into a dumpster.

At this point (9:36 pm) I most admire the Lock Them In School Till They're 18 Act, which is clearly designed to get Republicans to loudly insist on their Constitutional right to drop out of high school. Well played, Black Hitler!

Oh, it's also cool that he's getting the Navy to buy enough windmills to power three million homes. It's Swabby Capitalism!

UPDATE. Is this thing still on, or is this a Red Tails promo? Well, I suppose a Democratic President has to lay on the military references. And it was nice of him to wake up Joe Lieberman with the prospect of war with Iran.

I'm not gonna enjoy these things until with they come with the sounds of rapidly approaching tumbrels.