SHORTER MICHAEL POTEMRA: Catholics are embracing same-sex marriage; the polls say so. But Catholics also are turning against Obama; Glenn Beck says so. This is good news for Republicans.

UPDATE. In a follow-up, Potemra adds a new proof-point: a Times poll showing that Americans don't think "religiously affiliated institutions should have to cover the full birth-control costs in their insurance plans." But the Administration is not making them, and is in fact going to ridiculous lengths to appease such organizations, the bishops' disingenuousness notwithstanding.

GET YOUR WAR ON, AGAIN. Sonny Bunch reads about the Obama Administration's "creation of an Atrocity Prevention Board, an interagency mechanism that calls for a new means of preventing mass atrocities and genocides," and is moved to sarcasm:

Wow! Such strength! Such fearless vision! I do hope the board shakes their magnificent finger VERY HARD at this:

Then he tells us about a Syrian guy who got buried alive at gunpoint. Or was he shredded in a shredder -- no, my mistake, that was from the Iraq War prep. Still, even if this one happens not to pan out (and the Daily Mail, from which the story is taken, suggests it may not), there are undoubtedly plenty of real horror stories in Syria to make your blood boil. Bunch doesn't wait for those:

But hey, we’re totally going to sanction those bastards into the ground, right? Right?...

I guess not. Welcome to a Brave New World of American Impotence. But hey! At least we’ve got that prevention board manning the walls, keeping the world’s vulnerable populations safe from atrocities!

If you thought this kind of gung-hodaddiness went out with warblogging, it's only because you haven't been listening to Fox News:

“In Syria,” Krauthammer continued, “we have been watching for a year something that isn’t hypothetical. It’s not happening in the future. It’s happening now — 11,000 dead in front of our eyes; the indiscriminate shelling of cities. [Obama] hasn’t lifted a finger. He gives a lot of good speeches... 

“And what did he announce today at the Holocaust Museum?’ Krauthammer said. “He would be establishing an Atrocities Prevention Board. Now imagine that. The Russians are supplying plane-loads of weapons every day. The Iranians are supplying weaponry and financiers and trainers... Well, this really is going to make a difference. I mean, it’s embarrassing.”

 Or reading Commentary, and that reliable action fan Max Boot:

Barring greater action led by the U.S., Assad will remain in power. And I fear that the U.S. may not do anything serious until after the November presidential election. Unfortunately, the way things are going, the killing will still be in full swing then.

Or attending the speeches of potential Republican Vice-Presidential candidates:

Potential Republican vice presidential candidate Marco Rubio said Wednesday that a unilateral "military solution" from the United States may be needed to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb... 

Rubio, 40, noted how Washington should be prepared to bypass the United Nations when "bad actors" prevent the global body from taking meaningful steps, such as on Syria. 

"The Security Council remains a valuable forum, but not an indispensable one," he said. "We can't walk away from a problem because some members of the Security Council refuse to act."

While agreeing with Obama that "global problems do require international coalitions," Rubio reminded the president that "effective international coalitions don't form themselves," but need to be instigated and led by the US. 

"And that is what this administration doesn't understand."

When you hear them talk about "distractions," just remember that there's no distraction like Americans fighting in a foreign war, and it's the only one they've got left that will work.

SHORTER ENTIRE RIGHT-WING BLOGOSPHERE: Obama is sending his coloreds to kill us!

Ace of Spades cites three (3) crimes in which black people attacked white people, and cries, "No national coverage of this racial hate crime pattern in the media." The population of the United States is 311,591,917.

What was it the Crazy Jesus Lady said the other day about aggregating isolated stories? You can get a lot of propaganda value out of that shtick so long as you're only talking to people who are down with your program [play snippet from Theme from "Deliverance" here] and primed to accept that your tiny sample gives an accurate picture of the world. But what does it say about these guys that this is the picture they want to paint?

Worse, in a way: What does it say about the voters they hope to attract with it? Run this racist horseshit by normal people, and the older ones will marvel that anybody still thinks that way and the younger ones will just marvel. But their target consumer will nod ruefully and sigh over the race-treason he's seen going on all around him ever since they started letting those people on American Bandstand. Now, by God, maybe people will see the truth!

Speaking of neo-Confederates, I see Ole Perfesser Instapundit is trying, via a reader write-in, a familiar variation on this hooey:

Don’t be surprised if, as Obama’s fortunes wane, incidents like those of Mobile are insinuated to be a future consequence of his electoral defeat...

Readers may recall that they tried this in the last ditch in 2008 -- telling people that black people were prepared to riot if Obama lost, presumably on the secret orders of the HNIC himself.

Think it'll work this time?

UPDATE. In comments, Mr. Leonard Pierce performs the standard recommended test for such accusations of media "silence" as Ace has made: Put the relevant names into Google News. CBS, ABC, CNN, AP, UPI, Huffington Post, Gawker...  all these Lame Stream Media outlets covered these crimes up by actually reporting them.

There's also some discussion, launched by DocAmazing, of how in the rightwing imagination "Those People can simultaneously be shiftless and well-organized, lazy and filled with violent energy, uneducable and politically savvy..." The Other is mentioned, but I think it has more to do with the logic and characterization standards of WWE and old comic books.

SHORTER CRAZY JESUS LADY: We are at the mercy of Negroes and champagne-swilling government bureaucrats, and it's all the fault of Casual Fridays.

UPDATE. Give Noonan credit for showing how the game is played:

In isolation, these stories may sound like the usual sins and scandals, but in the aggregate they seem like something more disturbing, more laden with implication, don't they?

Similarly, if we stuck three of her columns onto a psych intake form, we could probably get her committed.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the Obama-eats-dogs thing. Again this week, the bonus bit is by Ann Althouse, who offers this analysis:

Notice how the individual will of the child is missing. The father figure teaches; the child learns how to eat. He receives instruction. He has feelings in that he reports the texture (but not the taste) of the various foods, but we hear absolutely nothing about whether he resisted these impositions or felt any sort of disgust. 

Somehow I get the feeling that when young Ann Althouse refused to eat the carrots on her dinner plate, her parents just sighed and got out the Cap'n Crunch.

And now, Obama, President of the United States, is married to a woman who purports to teach us all how to eat. She's not forcing us to do anything. And despite some recent talk on the subject, the government has never undertaken to require us to eat broccoli. But young Obama wasn't forced to eat dog. He "learned." He was "introduced." (Fido, meet Barack. Barack, meet Fido... meat Fido.) It's instruction, not compulsion.

And maybe you will eat what you're told.

Children.

Similarly, W's youthful consumption of Jack Daniels inspired Laura Bush's sinister literacy drives. Yet we resisted the subtle pressure to join a book club. Never surrender!

UPDATE. Althouse disputes my characterization. For one thing, she says she was too old for Cap'n Crunch. Come now, Professor, you're being modest! Also:

Here I am explaining my cereal preference to 2 guys including a guy who looks like my dad and has a name like some guy in my adopted home town, Guy Madison.

Is this like El Topo and I'm supposed to get high before going to see it? The whole blog, I mean.

WINGNUT WELFARE MAG AND HOLLYWOOD TAX WRITE-OFF MEET CUTE, PART II. Last year I and some few brave souls saw Atlas Shrugged: Part I, the shitty movie made from part of Ayn Rand's shitty novel. The Galtian supermen proclaimed the film a record-breaking smash, though the actual box office returns contradicted this assessment.

But where some saw disaster, others saw a market opportunity; as the sharks circled, the boys from Reason magazine kept faith with their Randroid readership and ballyhooed the film shamelessly. Nick Gillespie interviewed the principals, offering such deathless observations as, "Does it seem somehow in keeping that the critical reception might be mixed but the audience response is huge?" Matt Welch gave the film one of its rare positive reviews under the headline "This Objectivist Gives Atlas Shrugged Part I a Hearty Thumbs Up," which may have referred to the opinion of a Rand fan he quoted rather than his own -- Welch is slippery that way -- though he did offer that "the look and sound [of the film] were mostly (and surprisingly) handsome, Dagny in particular and Hank were good, and there are some pretty awesome capitalism, bitches!-style moments," which despite the plausible deniability must have goosed the punters good and proper. (They couldn't get Kurt Loder to do the same, for which he was probably forgiven; after all, he may want to work somewhere else again one day.)

Now Part II is in the works, and Reason's back to beat the PR drum for it. Brian Doherty draws the short straw and goes "on the set." He starts with a little revisionism about Part I:

Official critical reception wasn’t so great—though normal folk seemed to like it better than the credentialed tastemakers, according to fim review sites such as Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes.

The film, we remind you, cost $20 million and made less than $5 million, so I guess Doherty means that guys who think their jobs in middle management make them "wealth producers" and that Patrick Bateman had the right idea are the new normal.

And hey look -- production news:

In a move that might prove controversial to fans of Part I, this new movie has been entirely recast—not a single actor reprises their role. Director Paul Johansson, meanwhile, has been replaced by John Putch (a TV veteran with many episodes of Scrubs and Cougar Town behind him).

That might be "controversial to fans," but I'm sure the agents of the escapees are pleased. How does co-producer Harmon Kaslow feel about it?

“The message of Atlas is greater than any particular actor, so it’s one of those pieces of literature that doesn’t require in our view the interpretation by a singular actor,” Kaslow says.

Well played, sir. Doherty seems to have seen some scenes, and reports:

The new Rearden, Jason Beghe (most recently of Californication), plays Hank with far more gruff menace than his predecessor, the suave Grant Bowler. Beghe goes with an intensity that draws you in to him rather than projects flashily, and delivers his lines with a deep growl that almost made him feel like a Hollywood take on a Randian crime boss, someone driven to organized crime in a world where just trying to be productive on your own terms had become illegal.

A crime boss in a world where just trying to be productive on your own terms has become illegal -- sounds like Tony Montana. I never fucked anybody over in my life didn't have it coming to them. You got that? All I have in this world is my balls and my word... Does Rearden get coked up and take everyone out with an M16 and a grenade launcher at the end? They may get my $12 again!

And despite the fact that both Rearden and his metal were invented by Rand in the 1950s, while audiences today participate in an economy where more and more people are living not through mass production but by individualized creativity (what some social scientists are calling the “personalized economy”) Rearden and his troubles still feel more of the moment than they do some sort of outmoded industrial age castoff.

Well, of course. I can see kids watching the trailer and thinking, "As a seasonally-employed barista/DJ barely making enough to split a loft with six friends in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Hank Reardon with a face covered in cocaine is relevant to my interests."

But for the real Randroids -- and, face it, who else would pay any attention to this beside them and us? -- Doherty has some juicy come-ons:

Yes, Rand fans, “looters” and “moochers,” both delivered seriously in mainstream movie dialogue... 

... Rearden’s office set, complete with Randian modernist metal sculptures: shining, swirling ribbons and abstract geometries made solid. In fact, there's lots of great metal work everywhere.

If that doesn't have them breaking down the theater doors, I don't know what will. The makers also coyly deny that their intended October release date is a "deliberate attempt to have the movie’s pop culture impact influence the November election." This reminds me of a bit Paul Lynde and Alice Ghostley did on some variety show back in the 60s: the unprepossessing Ghostley, playing an aspiring actress, says she doesn't approve of nudity, but would perform unclothed if it were essential to the script, and Lynde replies, "Who asked ya?"

As I am increasingly wont to ask: Do these guys even know any real people?

RAISING THE TENOR OF DEBATE. At Commentary, Jonathan S. Toobin:

This evening, Jews in Israel and around the world will mark Yom HaShoah, the day of remembrance of the Holocaust. For most, it will be a moment of mourning as well as an occasion to ponder the lessons of history and to ask whether humanity has learned anything in the 67 years since the end of the Second World War. But for some on the left, the Holocaust has become a political liability that must be drained of all relevance to the contemporary world.

What, did someone make fun of Liberal Fascism again?

That’s the gist of today’s editorial in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper that demands that “Netanyahu stop hiding behind Holocaust warnings.” Haaretz, which articulates the opinion of the minority of Israelis who espouse the views of the hard left about the conflict with the Palestinians as well as the potential confrontation with Iran, has come to negatively view any attempt to ground the country’s security policies in the historical experience of the Jewish people. Thus, for them it’s not merely enough to chide the prime minister for what they wrongly believe is the promiscuous use of Holocaust analogies. Instead, their goal, as well as that of others who pay lip service to the idea of proper commemoration of the Six Million who died at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators, is to strand the event in history. Doing so serves their immediate political purpose but, in fact, confounds the entire concept of remembrance of the Holocaust.

In other words, the real proper commemoration of the Six Million is to involve them in present-day retail politics and cast your (Israeli) opponents as post facto Hitler apologists.

Funny, the Commentariat were pissed when Newt Gingrich claimed Romney was making the alte kakers eat trayf. "Politicizing the Holocaust," sniffed Seth Mandel, "especially when it’s this transparent and forced, is not traditionally the way to Jewish voters’ hearts." But on you it looks good.

If Godwin's Law were really a law, Toobin would be on his way to the chair.

UPDATE. In comments, satch: "IIRC, the first thing Likud did when they came to power was ram a provision through the Knesset exempting themselves from Godwin's Law." Smart move!

WHISTLING IN THE DARK. At the Wall Street Journal, Holman W. Jenkins rags on all the silly people who are concerned about income inequality:

Income inequality is a strange obsession, at least to the extent the obsessives focus their policy responses on trying to adjust the condition of the top 1% rather than improving the opportunities of everyone else...

One factor is a certain human soul-sickness that's impossible to put a constructive gloss on. Why is the New York Times disproportionately given over to cataloging the consumption of the rich in a tone even more cringing for its pretending to be snarky? Why do some of our dreariest journalists spend all their time writing about Goldman Sachs, except to associate themselves with the status object they attack in order to raise their own status?

Instead of the Times and the other elitists who talk smack about those poor fellows at Goldman Sachs, Jenkins might have directed his disdain at the overwhelming majority of Americans who now want to soak the rich.

That he didn't shows that even dim toffs such as he know the jig is up. Though the awful legacy of the Reagan years still plagues us in many respects, at least people seem to be getting over the bizarre delusion, widespread in that era, that the hyper-wealthy view them any differently than the kings of yore viewed peasants or livestock. Where once, for example, a lot of normal folks who should have known better were genuinely interested in the views and amours of Donald Trump, his recent Presidential campaign only excited the sympathy of the sort of rightwing buffoons who think Holman W. Jenkins is really giving the redistributionists what-for. Jenkins' column is not meant to convince anyone, but to comfort rich-bastard apologists in a lonely time.

Accordingly, the upcoming election will be about socialism, the unfair advantages enjoyed by African-Americans, and Obama eating dog meat as a boy.

A LITTLE PERSPECTIVE. Ted Nugent is an asshole, as he has recently made extra clear, yet I find myself in sympathy with him. Not because of his wretched politics, but because I value artistic freedom.

Nugent's death threats were, like everything the guy does, a performance. I can approve his being investigated for them, just as I approve of the occasional necessary legal interventions against Daniel Johnston and other deranged creatives, but what I can't take is all these people talking as if it's some kind of outrage that the author of "Wango Tango" is saying crazy shit. If the Nuge can't be psycho, who can?

UPDATE. "Well, I'm an 'alleged comedian' too. Kill Nixon!"

SHORTER ROBERT VERBRUGGEN. How dare Alex Pareene lump me in with the racists? I'm not saying science has proven that black people are inferior -- just that, if we keep working diligently, we may attain this goal in my lifetime.

(The comments to VerBruggen's post are pretty much what you would expect, too.)

UPDATE. In comments, Margarita: "Henry Louis Gates, Jr., 'himself is famous for using genetics to trace people’s ancestry.' Surely this is an amulet, if you will, against any accusations of prejudice. I mean, Henry Louis Gates, Jr.... He's black."

Like I said some days back, they'd be so much better off if they just stopped trying to talk their way out of it. John Derbyshire is probably happy as a clam now, working on his next piece for American Renaissance or VDare, where they won't be giving him any funny looks.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the Ann Romney thing, discussed here previously.

Not included because it's so weird that it doesn't really line up with anything is Ann Althouse's conversation-starter about -- well, let her tell it:

What I want to concentrate on in this first post, initiating my "single-earner household" tag, is the way it's not just for traditionalists. I want to challenge liberals, left-wingers, feminists, progressives — all those folks — to see why they should want to actively promote the single-earner household.

I thought we were all supposed to be in favor of unwed mothers with no man about the house. Doesn't workfare qualify as earning?

Single-earner households benefit the environment. You believe in global warming? Prove it! A 2-earner household has a much larger carbon footprint. 2 adults travel to work each day, they buy extra consumer goods (such as work clothes), they rely on fast-food, they take their children to day care.

You think Althouse hasn't anticipated the objection that many couples don't have tenure, and both parties have to work to pay the bills? You forget she's a law professor!

Here's "The Tightwad Gazette." It's all about using ingenuity to make it possible for a family to live on a single income. Why should we all have to join what they used to call the "rat race"? Is life about having a job? Some people need jobs, but why have we come to believe that every adult must have a job?

I liked it better when they were offering us bootstraps instead of old newsletters; at least you could sell bootstraps.

GENDER WARS. While the nation's idiots have been promoting Ann Romney as the voice of the downtrodden, Dr. Mrs. Ole Perfesser spares a thought for those other the-real-victims, America's menfolk:

I have spent part of the day doing research for my book including reading a fairly biased book by the name of Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men by Michael Kimmel. In it, like so many other supposedly “pro-male” development books, he makes guys out to be a bunch of commitment phobic, extended adolescent types who are a pack of homophobic losers who prey on women.

So, it's like most 20th Century American fiction, then? I might buy it, then; I kinda miss John Updike.

Good grief, it’s no wonder no men buy these types of books. I’m already feeling disgustingly denigrated by this Uncle Tim author and I’m not even male.

American men are so oppressed, they even have their own slave narrative: Uncle Tim's Man-Cave, in which the gentle, good-hearted males of Obamatown are persecuted by Hillary Legree. Features Tipsy, a charming drunk who, as an icebreaker at parties, likes to point to his penis and say "I 'spect I growed."

I have spent the week talking with experts and others about how men can fight back against the backlash and misandry that is so rampant in our culture and many have given me good suggestions for my book.

I envision these "experts and others" as one 5'7" guy who spends long days at the gym working on his frighteningly articulated abs, and has written a book called Grr! Power: Unleash Your Inner Rapist and Grow Rich; and two of Dr. Mrs.' patients who can't afford their therapy bills and are working them off as walkers.

However, one way of fighting back is “going Galt,” that is–going on strike–against the system and individuals who are causing the problem.

Not that again! Dr. Mrs. flogs the Going Galt thing like she had the patent. Maybe somebody at the Atlas Society gave her a fake one as a practical joke.

Some men don’t marry, others don’t go to college, some work low-paying jobs and enjoy hobbies to keep from paying into a system that transfers men’s taxes to women through federal and state programs.

Is that why people are skipping college and working low-paying jobs? I thought it was the recession. Is Going Galt also the reason we're eating more beets?

I was directed to the DMOP's nonsense by the OP himself, whose page is otherwise nearly entirely devoted to the Hilary Rosen case, which he and his fellow propagandists portray as their come-from-behind victory  in the War on Women. It strikes me that Dr. Mrs. and the Ole Perfesser are working two sides of the same street. Like everyone else, they're aware that men and women can be approached as political interest groups, and that to sway people politically it helps to use symbols. But for DM, the OP, and all their kind, the symbols are all there is. Liberals point to a wave of restrictive conservative legislation that targets women; conservatives counter with a woman who noticed Ann Romney is rich enough to pay someone to wipe her ass. Your Argument Is Invalid, boo ya, we win.

Meanwhile Dr. Mrs. works on the fellas, telling them that the bitches are keeping them down. It's like a police interrogation scene where they've got the suspects in different rooms and are telling each that the other one ratted them out.

Willing as I usually am to suspect the worst about my fellow creatures, I'm not sure this will go over. I suspect this works on the poor, confused souls who fall under Dr. Mrs.' sway. But in my experience women are smarter than that.

UPDATE. "Yes, it's stupid to have to walk on eggshells because of stupid people," says Jennifer in comments, "but [Rosen] really garbled the message by not making clear that Ann Romney's experience as a mother has been nothing like the experience of 95% of other mothers in the US because of her wealth, not because she was a stay at home mom." All this is true, but the first 13 words are especially relevant to my interests. In any battle of propagandists such as that in which Rosen et alia are engaged, there's no point in choosing any side but truth. Then you can say what you mean, rather than what you think will get over. Also: Fuck the RIAA.

zencomix provides a suitable gloss on DMOP's sad-sack following: "There's a reason one of the kids in The He-Man Woman Haters Club was named 'Spanky.'"

HOMAGE TO REVEREND AL. Victor Davis Hanson, deep breath now:

There were several reasons why it was unwise for the attorney general of the United States to praise Al Sharpton at a convention of Sharpton’s organization, “for your partnership, your friendship, and your tireless efforts to speak out for the voiceless, to stand up for the powerless, and to shine a light on the problems we must solve, and the promises we must fulfill,” in the midst of the Trayvon Martin case (“I know that many of you are greatly — and rightly — concerned about the recent shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, a young man whose future has been lost to the ages”), even as Sharpton has been quite actively inflaming an already tense situation...

...but the main one is, the bigots who aren't going to vote for this Administration anyway will be mad at you.

I once voted for Sharpton for the Democratic nomination for Senator from New York. It is one of my most cherished electoral memories. Sharpton has made mistakes, God knows, but he does indeed speak out for the voiceless and stand up for the powerless, something you'd never catch Hanson doing on a bet. Based on his long-term record, if I see Sharpton is on a case, I don't assume it means another Freddy's Fashion Mart; I assume it means that someone the powerful don't give a shit about is in trouble. Life experience and my Christian upbringing dispose me kindly toward such people.

Anyway, if he's good enough to train NYPD recruits, he's good enough for me.

As for Sharpton "actively inflaming an already tense situation," I suppose Hanson means this:

Al Sharpton urges Trayvon Martin supporters not to "tarnish" his name with violence 

..."We are not in the business of revenge. We are in the business of justice," said Sharpton, speaking at a convention for the National Action Network, his civil rights group. "We must make the justice system work. Otherwise the movement is for nothing. To go outside the justice system is to achieve nothing."

These people are such lying assholes that if they said something bad about Satan, I'd give Satan the benefit of the doubt.

A DREAM DEFERRED. There was never any chance of Santorum getting the nomination, and even the dead-enders have known it for some time. But it was fun to dream. Like their now-despised, once-worshipped George W. Bush, a President Romney will give them what they really require -- unkind words for the people they hate, kind words for the people they love, and the plunder of the Treasury that they associate with free enterprise and self-reliance. To get all that and a religious maniac in the Oval Office was more than they could really expect. Still, enabled by mainsteam media dopes, they may yet look forward to a Golden future time when Santorum, or some other lunatic like him, will return with the seven seals and regulate for reals.

Meanwhile let us enjoy the lamentations of the wingnuts. Left Coast Rebel:

Newt Gingrich has said he will remain in the race. But his chances of winning are virtually non-existent. This is no longer Romney's race to lose - it's his. That's truly unfortunate. A brokered convention may have been bloody, it may have been expensive and unproductive, but that was not a guarantee. It may have been healthy. None of these candidates were ideal, but a brokered convention may have caused someone to rise to the occasion. It might have resulted in some great speeches and it might have ended in a unifying rally cry. But it's not to be.

If only sorrow could make them eloquent.

DERP DE DERB. Over the past day or so, several of John Derbyshire's former colleagues at National Review have posted on his dismissal. As you might expect, whether they approve or disapprove of his defenestration, they all agree that  political correctness is the real crime here.

"Unfortunately the entire vocabulary of racist slurs has been cheapened, and few anymore insist that no one of any race should use any racial slurs," says Victor Buster Poindexter David JoHanson. By this Hanson means black people saying "nigger," which always enrages conservatives, who consider it yet another unfair advantage enjoyed by African-Americans. "There was a time not too far in the past," Hanson reminiscences, "when the black community attempted to stop the use of the N-word in rap music, on radio, and in movies..." It's interesting that Hanson interprets the politicians and public figures who made a stink about this once upon a time as "the black community" -- when such people speak up instead about, say, a black kid getting murdered, Hanson considers it "demagoguery."

Mark Steyn, among others, seems to believe Derbyshire being fired by a rightwing publication is P.C. censorship by liberals.

The Left is pretty clear about its objectives on everything from climate change to immigration to gay marriage: Rather than win the debate, they’d just as soon shut it down. They’ve had great success in shrinking the bounds of public discourse, and rendering whole areas of public policy all but undiscussable. In such a climate, my default position is that I’d rather put up with whatever racist/sexist/homophobic/Islamophobic/whateverphobic excess everybody’s got the vapors about this week than accept ever tighter constraints on “acceptable” opinion.

Out of his devotion to free speech, Steyn is volunteering to listen the one about the coon in the woodpile. What a hero. He also spreads that bullshit about the liberals trying to silence David Weigel, based on something he read at some guy's blog. As I reminded readers at the Voice, Weigel has indeed been fired from a major publication for his opinions -- that is, for making fun of conservatives.

Similarly confused about cause and effect, Jason Lee Steorts, who approves the separation, nonetheless laments that "there is something thuggish, not to mention insecure, in the mob’s expectation that a head be thrown to it without any discussion of the nature of the offense, and in its refusal to entertain any possibility of forgiveness." Rich Lowry, the new Robespierre, throwing Derb's head to the leftist rabble! Someone should paint that.

The best thing about all this is, I can offer these idiots valuable advice and there's no chance in hell that they'll take it. So I will:

Let's say there was some truth to the idea that liberals are mau-mauing you -- using their Svengali influence over black people to make you look like racists. What would the smart reaction to that be? It would be to act like a normal human being; that is, to blow it off, to make nothing of it, and to rely on your impeccably non-racist example to show the world what these awful people say about you is untrue. If it feels tough at times, you could always pray for strength from that God you're always yapping about.

In other words, the smart thing is to actually be, and behave like, the person you are always loudly insisting you are -- unconcerned with race, not even recognizing it, a good friend to all humankind, etc. But the "loudly insisting" part seems more important to you than anything else. It's like you can't help yourself -- anytime you come within range of a racial issue, you have to start talking about it. And you talk rubbish.

Had you been paying attention to, oh, anything when you were growing up, you would have observed that whenever you go on and on about what a [insert positive model here] you are, one result is almost inevitable -- you make a fucking idiot of yourself. You start explaining why, though you buy everything in The Bell Curve about black people being inferior to white people, that doesn't mean you can't treat them as equals, and isn't that what really matters? At which point everyone in the room is giving you the "Springtime for Hitler" stare, and you find yourself wondering yet again why you're always so persecuted by the Thought Police.

I mean this sincerely: You would gain a lot more at this point by giving up than by fighting. You could concentrate on the core strengths of conservatism -- tax breaks for the wealthy and hatred of homosexuals -- and hope for that to win you enough rubes to carry the day.

This might help: Try and forget that Obama is black. Try to suppress that swelling feeling in your gut when you see people cheering for him, or hear the band playing "Hail to the Chief"... oh, but I can see that just my mentioning it has got you drafting another explanatory essay. Well, I did what I could.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the John Derbyshire thing. I'm sorry they fired the old bastard -- his was a clarifying, overtly racist presence among the more milquetoast race-baiters of National Review. I liked to imagine him at their parties, drunk and going "nigger" this and "faggot" that, with all the Lowrys and Yorks and Lopezes giggling about how wonderfully incorrigible and English he is while Mark Steyn bellows GOOD SHOW DERB! and vomits up a flagon of Rhenish.

We could pore over my collection of Derb reminiscences, but let us not be too valedictory; Derbyshire will certainly re-emerge, perhaps on This Week With George Stephanopoulos.

UPDATE. Look who's been inspired to do his bit for racial discord: Mark Judge -- nee Mark Gauvreau Judge, culture-warring, trend-setting swing-dancer for Christ. He had his bike stolen in a DC neighborhood from which all the black residents have not yet been chased by gentry-waves. Judge must be over 30 by now, but apparently he's never been robbed before, because this has caused him to turn against all black people, and to relinquish the "white guilt" that once made him watch Norman Jewison movies.

Perhaps sensing that even ordinary racists would be disgusted with his whining, Judge invents wimpy liberal friends beside whom he can look butchly Politically Incorrect. Unfortunately, this is how the gentleman essays to roll:

Hearing the kumbaya song from my liberal friend, I immediately thought of a phrase Piers Morgan had recently used...

I think Jesus just carried his Smirnoff Ice into the next room.

I'll leave the last word to an especially astute Daily Caller commenter:

I stole your bike. I only did it because you're a wanker. I didn't actually want it, or want to sell it for drugs or beer or anything. I just wanted to throw it in the river. So I threw it in the river.

Respect.

SHORTER JOHN DERBYSHIRE: I hate niggers. (h/t @jbposnanski)

LUDICHRIST. Reading and writing about all these horrible things said by all these horrible people takes a great psychic toll on yours truly. But sometimes Fate (represented in this case by reader Ed Lederer) is kind and sends me something so delightfully absurd that I can only be absurdly delighted by it. Ladies and gentlemen, get a load of this: A theological discussion between Rod Dreher and Andrew Sullivan. Is it my birthday?

It may help to start by reading the endless Sullivan Newsweek essay on (retch) faith and politics that kicked this off. That may be asking too much. It does have its howlers --

Whether or not you believe, as I do, in Jesus’ divinity and resurrection—and in the importance of celebrating both on Easter Sunday—[Thomas] Jefferson’s point is crucially important.

Also:

I’ve pondered the Incarnation my whole life. I’ve read theology and history. I think I grasp what it means to be both God and human—but I don’t think my understanding is any richer than my Irish grandmother’s. Barely literate, she would lose herself in the rosary at mass...

Grant me grandmama's simple faith! cries Sully on the jitney to P-town. But life is far too short. Let's go straight to Dreher's objection and I bet you can guess what it's about (hint: it ain't transubstantiation):

Holy Week reading from Sully’s blog this morning: a reader’s letter about his magical experience hiring his favorite male porn star to have sex with him as a birthday present to himself.

The faggity-fag-fags are having sexity-ex-sex!

To be sure, I don’t know to what extent Sullivan endorses his correspondent’s actions, but I’m a regular reader of his blog, and given the things he does endorse, and write, I think it’s reasonable to assume he approves of his correspondent’s point of view. How is that letter-writer’s actions remotely compatible with Christianity?

If the porn star were the correspondent's cousin, and they did their coupling in the corn-crib, and the correspondent felt so sick about it afterwards that he made a big donation to a megachurch and embarked on a contrite, loveless, and quiverfull heterosexual marriage, all would be hunky-dory. But the gays just have sex for fun, which makes Jesus stabby, as do Sullivan's other infidel friends:

Sullivan praises in his Newsweek essay the selective Christianity of Thomas Jefferson, who famously edited the New Testament to take out the parts he didn’t agree with.

On the other hand, Jefferson did have sex with his slaves, which you have to admit is pretty Biblical.

But for Dreher it's mainly about the gaysex, though he can't supply any direct quotes from the Top Guy to justify his opprobrium. "Jesus’s teachings weren’t as explicit as St. Paul’s," Dreher admits, "but then again, if you cut Paul off, you don’t have Christianity," just as you don't have George Orwell without the glosses of the neocon propagandists who appropriated him.

Dreher continues to yell at Sullivan for his lack of chastity, inevitably inserting the Bullshit Christian Moment of Self-Abnegation:

Look, I don’t exempt myself from this. Every day I resist the radical call of Jesus to detach ourselves from our desires for His sake.

Sadly, he doesn't go into details; I imagine him jerking off with his Wii console.

In his response, Sullivan seems at first to panic and admit everything; while insisting that "sex is an extremely minor theme" in Christ's work, he accepts that "the notion that Jesus was a free love kinda guy is also preposterous, and I never wrote otherwise." So he is guilty, guilty, guilty of lust -- and since that includes lust in one's heart, then so is everyone else -- "Any man who has ever had a chubby for someone not his wife is an adulterer," he writes. "Every celibate priest is an adulterer. The Pope is an adulterer..." One begins to suspect Sullivan experiences guilt not as a psychic or mystical transmission, but as a kink. In desperation he brings up The Woman Taken in Adultery and Let He Who Is Without Sin Etc. Translation: Don't hurt me/Or you're a Pharisee.

Then it's Sullivan's turn to have the Bullshit Christian Moment of Self-Abnegation, which he performs splendidly:

I have had good moments in this struggle and terrible, lasting failures. This Lent has forced me to consider my constant failures more than my intermittent moments of grace. That I confess. As a practical matter, I have not had the strength to live as Saint Francis, without possessions, without a home, without sex, without anything but a subsistence diet, reliant entirely on physical labor and begging on the streets as a last resort.

Oh well, maybe next year, Sully.

Dreher comes back to patiently explain to Sullivan the real meaning of the WTIA story: Apparently the cast-the-first-stone thing is a minor part of it, perhaps added by script doctors on the road, and the real message is that woman was a whore and she better not do it again. And that reminds him: Homosexuals! By which he means, why do you liberals keep bringing it up?

It’s interesting how so many liberal Christians accuse conservatives of being obsessed with sex, yet so much of their own writing and activism focuses on sex and sexuality, especially homosexuality. In my old, lily-white Philly neighborhood, there was a mainline Protestant church that posted a banner out front with the rainbow flag, announcing that it was a “welcoming and affirming” congregation. Which is fine, if that’s their thing. I passed that church every day, though, and it finally occurred to me that they never put a banner up announcing that they welcomed black people, or Hispanics.

Somebody make this man a BUTTSEKS=RACISM bumper sticker, stat. Also Dreher returns to Thomas Jefferson, "a brilliant and noble man who, in his intellectual pride, only accepted as much of Jesus as made sense to him. This won’t work, and it won’t work because it can’t work." Thomas Jefferson burns in hell! But Dreher won't, because in his early 20s he let Christ all the way in, if you know what he means, and has been fighting for his chastity ever since. He even has his own version of an "It Gets Better" message for the kids:

It is not true, by the way, that marriage is any kind of “cure” for unchaste thoughts. You have to keep at it, repenting, repenting, repenting, and allowing the grace of God to work on you. I am not the man I was at 25, when I had my conversion. I am not tempted as I once was, but that’s only because I was able to receive God’s healing grace.

Translation: Yes, there is enough good French wine in the world to get you through the long nights of bootless bundling Jesus requires. Get thee a nice wingnut welfare sinecure to pay for it, and sin no more!

IN PASSING. I see the Trayvon Martin case has gotten under their skin -- at National Review they're pretending to give a shit about whether black people live or die.

Won't do any good -- they'll have to stop before the next election anyway.

UPDATE. In comments, whetstone: "Reframing the ooga-booga so that its deployment is a sign not that the Republican party is veering towards George Wallace-level race-baiting, but that we only talk about the ooga-booga because we care... The Willie Horton ad as racial outreach."

Fats Durston goes for parody: "His name was Muhammad ibn Abd'allah. He was by all accounts a very good kid living in a very tough neighborhood. He was attending a party for young Baghdad teens, there to enjoy some fun, free from the fear of violence that too often inhabited the streets outside. But violence found a way in. At about 10:30 pm, an errant shot from a Marine manning a roadblock went through two walls and Muhammad was fatally struck in the head...." I remember when conservatives pretended to care about Iraqis, too. Hard to believe now, huh?

EVERY TIME YOU TURN AROUND, THERE'S ANOTHER HARD LUCK STORY THAT YOU'RE GONNA HEAR. The alicublog commenter known as Provider_UNE (you may know him better by his Cletus avatar) has a blog, it turns out, and quite a story to tell:

I was hoping that I could return to a semblence of normal (minus the eye that would never again focus light on the retina) as quickly as possible. Another manifestation of my illness has resulted in my right index finger has a permanent 30 degree bend at the middle knuckle, which can be a nuisance, but can also be worked around.

I had hoped that within six months I would be able to trust my right knee enough to run again. Six months later I was hit by a truck while riding to work...

We've all had days like that, haven't we? You haven't? Whether you have or not, Provider_UNE, aka Kent, has some trouble making ends meet and a PayPal Donate button. I will just leave those suggestive facts out there for you to do with what you will.