NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT.

Rightwing pennysaver the Washington Examiner will no longer be handed out at Metro stations to all comers every day, but instead become a wingnut weekly in which the street-level reporting and 87 employees are replaced by double portions of "commentary" on why Obama is Hitler.

The product will offer news, analysis and commentary on national politics and policy, and its targeted readership will be roughly 45,000 professionals in government, public affairs, advocacy and academia, Clarity said.

Yeah, the same 45,000 people who ask each other every week if they've read the new Cal Thomas column.

This seems to be the new reality for the conservative world of makework in the Age of Obama II; like the factota at The Umlaut and other feeder streams for thinktank babies, they have begun to abandon the idea that their work might make a difference.

It used to be easier to believe that it did. For decades now, the allegedly liberal media has actually been thick with right-wing voices, from the lofty George Will to the humblest rightblogger. Every newspaper, even the communist flagship New York Times, has its Douthats and/or Brookses, albeit in lower-rent versions. The papers are scared not to have them; otherwise who would they point to when someone screams bias? (Not that it stops the screaming -- conservatives will be screaming about bias until the last newspaper lines the last birdcage, and for years after -- but having them aboard allows the papers' management to feel they've done something reasonable, though I wonder if a few of them don't actually feel bullied.)

It never mattered how brutal or crazy these guys' ideas were, either; they were the serious opposition, and had to be granted perches from which they might be heeded. This enabled and emboldened them. They also seemed to understand that what had gained them their perches was no better credential than that they were different from the "politically correct" milquetoasts the public was used to. So they leaned on that. If liberals maintained, for example, that the least among us deserved protection from want, conservatives cried for them to be given less, ever less, lest the welfare queens and strapping young bucks destroy America. Not only did they get away with it -- they had an effect on the discourse and then on policy.

Things got even worse during the early days of the Iraq War -- happy anniversary, baby! -- when conservatives became so comfortable with their own increasingly loud and bellicose voices that they got a lot of non-conservatives to howl along with them. And this too had an effect on policy.

But since the economy collapsed, things have changed a bit. There's not much market for market worship these days. And when you run a presidential campaign based on how the producers know better than the moochers -- well, you saw how that worked out.

Conservatives aren't going away -- their long spate of affirmative action has firmly ensconced them in the public discourse. But the Examiner, at least, seems to have lost faith.  For a while they could at least tell themselves that by running a by-God newspaper with lots of that local stuff local folk love, they were getting into the hands and winning the hearts and minds of the common people. But now they're going to stop covering school board meetings and city council hearings, and just regurgitate propaganda for like-minded souls. This will achieve nothing in the way of political outreach, but it will achieve what I expect remains important to them: It will keep their jobs. Because someone is still paying them to do it -- just like someone is still paying for The Umlaut and Liberty Island and Bill Whittle videos and Acculturated  and PJ Lifestyle and many such otherwise pointless exercises.

If the Examinoids really believed what they affect to believe, they'd recognize themselves as the moochers they are, apologize to old man Anschutz for wasting his money, and seek honest employment. But they're what we might call cafeteria capitalists; they don't want the hard stuff; they won't sacrifice anything real on the altar of the Dollar. But they'll step right up when the celebrant hands around the bread.

SHITSVILLE U.S.A.

Hey look, another rightwing culture-war magazine. Andrea Castillo at The Umlaut:

In the world of popular culture, the motives of capitalists are routinely portrayed as suspicious if not openly antagonistic to the public good, culminating in the cliché of the evil billionaire or businessman.

Like have you ever seen Citizen Kane? Total Alinskyite smear job. But --

At long last, the free marketeers are fighting back and attempting to reclaim an equal part of the moral high ground, but the challenges that they face are not insignificant.

Sounds promising! So whattaya got?

Fred Smith, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, hopes to help salvage the reputations of businesspeople by disputing the bad rap with which they’ve been unfairly saddled and proudly pointing to the wealth that they create as a moral good in itself.

If he's not proudly pointing while coated in silver paint, standing on a milk crate in Times Square, and doing the robot, I don't see this catching on with a large audience.

But give Fred a break, look what he's up against:

...the arts have a profound effect on influencing people’s moral dispositions and ultimately their worldviews. The “nefarious executive” trope is so established within the arts that it is doubtful that it will quickly fade silently into the past. If we are to adequately challenge this prevailing “commerce as a questionably-necessary evil” narrative, it makes sense to take stock of how our cultural narratives became so skewed in the first place. 

Ludwig von Mises, similarly assessing the cultural situation of his time, was intrigued by the overwhelming tendency for members of the “creative class” to adopt anti-capitalistic worldviews in their lives and crafts. In The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, Mises offers one explanation for this trend: artists, especially good ones, face constant frustration in a market that is notoriously fraught with that destructive combination of conspicuous consumption and poor taste.

I began to nod off at "Ludwig von Mises," too, but I must say, as a simple observation of human behavior, this, while incomplete, is not totally divorced from reality -- which may be why Castillo rushes to dispute it:

Despite the handful of type II errors in artistic appreciation that have occurred, in most cases, great artists have found success within their lifetimes, and mass culture expands both the quantity and diversity of commercially-viable forms of expression.

Then, one is tempted to ask, why you crying? If it ain't broke, why fix it? Why not just enjoy the expansive quantity and diversity of all this mass culture which the market has delivered unto you?

Longtime readers will have figured it out already: With culture warriors the "culture" is never as important as the "war." If the market produces wrongthink popular entertainment, the market, otherwise infallible, is wrong, and its protectors must set things right.

And Castillo's got some acts that'll do the job: The Moving Pictures Institute, for example, with "a youthful pop music video that alerts the hipster set to the perils of artificially low interest rates," and Emergent Order, which "made quite a splash with their humorous rap battles starring the modern doppelgängers of larger-than-life economists John Maynard Keynes and F.A. Hayek."

But even when you have steak, you need sizzle to sell it, and here's the promo copy Castillo has filed for this package tour:

The videos that have been produced thus far have been captivating precisely because of the sincerity and accuracy of their messages, a quality that is generally difficult to produce when one is merely clocking in. Contra Mises, it could be that not all artists fall prey to the short-sighted despair that follows a disappointing opening night or release. For some of them, the uncontrolled but orderly beauty of free exchange and association is their muse.

"The sincerity and accuracy of their message," "the uncontrolled but orderly beauty of free exchange and association" -- you think maybe these people are new to show business? Or to the planet?

Look, kids, I'll do this pro bono: Full page ad in Variety: "SUCK ON THIS, MOOCHERS!" Then tell your boys at Emergent Whatever that we need some chicks in thongs and a profane rapping granny. Thereafter, one word: Payola. I know your backers got it -- they just have to start spending it where it counts. By the way: Have you ever thought about why they don't?

UPDATE. Commenters are bearish on Castillo et alia. "Deal: you capitalists get rid of the nefarious executives, we'll get rid of the trope," says whetstone. mortimer informs us that "Emergent Order is a project of the Mercatus Center at (but not supported by) George Mason University, which gets most of its funding from those bankrolling gadflies of right-wing über-libertarianism, the Koch Family, with a little help from the likes of Exxon Mobil. Mercatus is also directed by Kevin Drum's favorite libertarian, Tyler Cowen..." Inbreeding will tell!

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP....

...about this year's sad CPAC.

An outtake I didn't have time to explain to Voice readers, but which you late-show hipsters will understand: Betsy Woodruff at National Review:

Here’s a weird CPAC moment: I’m sitting in a hallway in the Gaylord Convention Center with Cynthia Yockey...

Holy shit, I thought, Cynthia Yockey -- the second craziest lesbian in conservatism next to Robin of Berkeley! I remember Yockey telling readers ""Why Newt’s lesbian sister is a good reason for gays to vote for him." But now listen to her:

“People are courteous,” says Yockey, “but there is no courteous way to say, ‘You don’t deserve to be equal because you’re gay.’ That is intrinsically offensive.”

When you've lost Cynthia Yockey, the time is near when all you'll have left is Bruce Carroll.

HOW YOU KNOW YOU'RE WINNING.

Back in December, James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal had an article headlined, "The Sure Thing? Reconsidering a prediction about same-sex marriage." Though a few years earlier he had predicted gay marriage would win the day when the Supreme Court got hold of it, Taranto said, "now we're not so sure." (As he also described a pro-gay-marriage decision not as one that would enfranchise millions of his fellow citizens, but as one that would "declare the traditional definition of marriage unconstitutional," you know where his rooting interest lies.)

In a new column, Taranto returns to the subject and pulls what he probably considers a clever trick play:

The administration does not go so far as to urge the court to strike down all state bans on same-sex marriage. Instead it urges a novel solution that would have the effect of abolishing nonmarital civil unions, until now the compromise of choice between supporters and opponents of same-sex marriage.

You can hear the chortles in CPAC back rooms: Heh indeed, by pushing "gay" "marriage" Obama's killing civil unions! How do you like that, gay people? You should join us at CPAC -- er, on the downlow.

This schtick comes with rhetorical appurtenances. One: You're Denying Our Right to Self-Expression:

As a legal matter, the administration's position seems odd. The effect of banning same-sex marriage in civil-union states is purely expressive: The states are in effect declaring that homosexual relationships are inferior to marriages. That is a value judgment with which many people disagree, but why should the state not be free to express it--especially when the expression has no material effect?

Two: Obama is Applying the "Chicago Way" to His Fellow Travelers and They Will Fall In Line:

The likeliest answer is political: that the administration has concluded (or anticipates that the court, which is to say Justice Kennedy, will conclude) that imposing same-sex marriages nationwide would be disruptive in the way Roe v. Wade was--but the civil-union states are socially liberal enough that they would accept such a ruling.

Three: You're Only Hurting Yourself:

For supporters of same-sex marriage, however, there's a danger that adopting this legal compromise would shut down an avenue of political compromise.

These are not the kind of arguments you hear when you're losing. The struggle will continue, as it still does over the civil rights of black Americans. But the losing side will become increasingly legalistic, hair-splitting, and petty. That's how you know you're winning.

UPDATE. Speaking of which, here's Rick Moran reacting to the news that GOP macher Rob Portman, inspired by his gay son, has turned over on marriage equality:

As more and more Americans realize that they are related to, or work with, or live next to someone who is gay, it is inevitable that acceptance follows. This doesn't mean that opposing gay marriage is bigoted. People of good conscience can disagree (something the left refuses to acknowledge while trying to ram gay marriage down the throats of people by co-opting the legisalture and using the courts to gain their objective).

Translation: Yes, we're getting tolerant, but what about all these homosexuals trying to ram their big, hard gay marriage down my throat? Where's their tolerance?

I expect the brighter bulbs among the rightbloggers will keep quiet or roll more gently with it. Maybe we'll see a pro-equality, anti-drone Republican Party in 2016. Baby steps!

SHORTER PEGGY NOONAN:

When I think of you godless media criticizing my Church, I think of a severed head -- yours!

UPDATE. Our commenters are carrying the freight to a greater extent than usual. "I normally ascribe Peggy Noonan's incoherence to the fact that she's plastered," says sharculese, "but I'm pretty drunk right now and I'm still not getting this." smut clyde noticed something in the Longer:

words like “gender” and “celibacy” and “pedophile” and phrases like “irrelevant to the modern world.” But when they just prattle on with their indignant words—gender, celibacy, irrelevant—

One of those words in the first list has disappeared from the second! How can this be?

A couple of folks also notice Noonan's surly reference to the Mohammedans, in which she complains of the media-that-is-not-Peggy-Noonan:

They think they’re brave, or outspoken, or something. They don’t have enough insight into themselves to notice they’d never presume to instruct other great faiths. It doesn’t cross their minds that if they were as dismissive about some of those faiths they’d have to hire private security guards.

I thought the whole you-don't-have-the-guts-to-make-fun-of-Mohammed thing had long since passed into wingnut oblivion, along with "Democracy Whiskey Sexy" and "That Andrew Sullivan is one of the good ones," but I guess under stress these guys tend to revert.

LOOKING IN ON OLD FRIENDS.

We've had a lot of fun with Mark "Gavreau" Judge here in recent weeks, so on a whim I dropped by the rightwing culture mag that employs him to see how he was passing his days. Behold:

Can the Hollywood reboot of The Fantastic Four, now in the works, succeed where the original movies failed? It all depends on whether producer Matthew Vaughn and director Josh Trank have the guts to do one thing: To make The Fantastic Four about the family versus communism.

Don't ever change, fella.

FAMILY VALUES.

I rarely go read Sarah Hoyt's stuff; she's a yeller (that is, she uses ALL CAPS for emphasis quite a lot) and seems a little crazy. But I happened upon her latest about how teachers are horrible and we must homeschool to fight the power, and noticed this:

I’ll just say that I once screamed at [her son] Robert for three hours for writing something about half as bad as what I see from college students. He was in third grade. I told him unless he improved he would be an illiterate peasant at the mercy of people who could express themselves better. (More on that later.) He took it to heart and improved.

I'll bet he did. Later:

However, as I’ve learned over the years, my knowledge is often far from complete, and what happens OFFICIALLY is also not what happens in truth. (For instance, if I’d known both the kids were sent to the school psychologist once a week through elementary, to fish for stuff that might be considered “abuse” – probably because Dan and I were troublesome – they would have been out of there so fast that the school’s head would spin. Unfortunately both kids assumed this was “normal” and didn’t tell me till high school. On paper, it never happened.)

They were asking the kids (including the subject of the three-hour tirade) about abuse every week? I don't know whether this is a genuine reminiscence or the script of a Lars von Trier movie. (I also think the hotel maid Hoyt says short-sheeted their beds every night just wanted them to leave.) Oh also:

While they were sending him to Title One, one of the books confiscated for reading in class was one of our signed Pratchetts (can’t remember which now, but might have been The Color of Magic. I remember because instead of telling me – he wasn’t supposed to take those to school – he broke into the teacher’s closet and stole it back. He was never caught.)

And I thought Lileks' family stories were creepy.

DRAMA QUEEN.

Those of you familiar with (or who read our consideration of) Mark Steyn's flair for the dramatic will appreciate this Daily Caller headline:

Steyn declares America ‘doomed’ in wake of Pop Tart gun suspension

The transcript (they have audio but Jesus, who'd submit himself to that? Unless Steyn accompanied himself with some lovely Richard Rodgers melodies) has lots about the boys who stormed Normandy and such like, but this is my favorite bit:

"You’re doomed, America,” Steyn said. “You’re done for. No society can survive this level of stupidity..."

To paraphrase Groundhog Day, this is America he's talking about, right?

A HANDUP NOT A HANDOUT.

John Williams, the hardworking graphic artist... ok, stop right there, graphic artists do work hard; maybe not in the big agencies where they play beer pong for a hour and a half and then make a squiggle, but in John's world the dollars are hard. Anyway, the hardworking graphic artist who did the cover of my lurid novel hasn't been having the best time of it economically, and losing a bread-and-butter freelance gig to the caprices of corporate scumbaggery hasn't made it any better. What say you click this link and send him some scratch?

Thanks in advance for being such angels.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP...

... about the Rand Paul filibuster and the new outbreak of bullshit libertarianism it has engendered among rightbloggers. Among the outtakes was the claim by Bookworm Room that "the mainstream, drive-by media did what it does best: it pretended Paul’s epic filibuster never happened." In evidence BR showed front pages of major newspaper editions with no mention of Paul on them. Yet if you put site:nytimes.com "rand paul" "filibuster" into Google, at this writing you get 70,400 results. And I thought the internet was supposed to change everything.

UPDATE. Ace of Spades features prominently in this column, but did you know that Spades is also a culture critic for Breitbart.com? His latest is about how you only ever hear about shows that middle-aged women like because Obama or something. This'll give you a good idea of his method:

I don't know the politics of Mad Men (though I have heard-tell that it largely about delivering a frisson of satisfaction for liberal women about the dastardly men of the late 50s), but I'm going to guess here that Middle Aged Liberal Women Who Work in the Media are Huge Fans, because dang, if I have not absorbed whole plotlines of the show just by reading Maureen Dowd's column. (Tell a lie, I don't read her column. No one does. But you know what I mean.)

Also:

Men like some TV shows too -- Archer, Justified, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. But no one talks about them in the media. You're not surrounded by constant references. Middle Aged Liberal Women Who Work in the Media don't like them, I guess.

"Justified FX" in Google = 3,300,000 results. I'm guessing "Media" is an imaginary magazine put out by a G.I. Joe doll Spades genitally mutiliated in 12th Grade.

THE OTHER MAN BOOB.

John Hawkins, who delighted us last week with his butchitude, is at it again with another essay. This one's about how bitches get away with everything .

Among the prime sniglets:

Moreover, from a common sense perspective, if you could actually get by with paying women 76 cents on the dollar to do the same work that men do, wouldn’t all women firms dominate every field because of the reduced overhead?

And:

But, here’s a question: Has anyone ever considered passing a “violence against men” act?

At the very end:

Playing the blame game ultimately serves no one but the people who make their living as professional grievance mongers and so, it would be counterproductive for guys to claim that they’re victims of the “matriarchy.”

Come on come on you'resoclose come on...

But...

ACK

...it is time to recognize that men today have gender-related complaints that are every bit as serious and legitimate as women do, if not more so.

Science has debunked a lot of the myths about men, but Hawkins proves at least one of them: We sure do whine when we're sick.

#StandWithThatAssholeRandPaul.

I'm glad someone's standing on the floor of the Senate against domestic droning even if it is Rand Paul.

It's true that many of Paul's supporters are full of shit. When such esteemed civil liberties advocates as Michele Bachmann ("[Obama] is allowing the ACLU to run the CIA") start pretending to give a shit about drones, you know what a put-up job it is.

And Rand Paul is a nut -- not only wrong on the Civil Rights Act but sneaky about it, a Benghazi conspiracy theorist, etc. And he's only a civil libertarian in the uncivil libertarian sense, by which I mean highly selective:

....if someone is attending speeches from someone who is promoting the violent overthrow of our government, that’s really an offense that we should be going after — they should be deported or put in prison.

The new Tom Paine ovah heah. If he ever gets close to high office you can expect him to talk more like this than like Glenn Greenwald, guaranteed.

Still, like I said in an earlier consideration of this phenomenon, wrong is wrong and there's no reason for me to pretend it isn't for partisan advantage. I understand Obama has to -- he's got to deal with the traditional vulnerability of Democrats to charges of being, in the hoary old phrase, weak on defense. And hoary as it is, the charge still has power -- that's what Benghazi-mania is all about: wingnuts holding desperately onto an ancient equity.

But Obama's a politician; that's his lookout, not mine. And while I think he's better than the regular run of postwar U.S. Presidents, "having his back" does not for me extend to countenancing the assassination of U.S. citizens. So I endorse the current news-cycle-grabbing story, and look forward to hauling out the scrapbook when Presidential candidate Paul endorses the invasion of Iran.

A DUNCIAD OF CONFEDERATES.

Found via a link on the Ole Perfesser's page -- looks like Reynolds is getting even deeper in with the survivalist/prepper/posse comitatus crowd -- is Herschel Smith:

In this article I have three objectives. First I want to discuss what would happen to a lone wolf fighter if he tried to be effective without aid and assistance. Next, I want to distinguish between thinking tactically and strategically concerning survival. Finally, I want to describe things that might catalyze the need to invoke such plans, from rogue, illegitimate groups to patriots who will not relinquish their their second amendment rights, regardless of the consequences.

This cowboy makes Reynolds' other rebel buddy Bob Owens look like David Frum.  Here's his poetic description of what renegades who don't play by society's rules will go through during the fraternity-hazing "Lone Wolf" phase:

Within a couple of days of being in the wilderness, your personal stench is merely disgusting. By the end of the first week, the putrid, toxic paste that develops around the groins of men becomes a risk to health and safety and can cause serious diseases. Within another week your feet develop a cocktail of fungal infections, and within another week the skin begins to fall off of them.

Around this time sores develop across your entire body...

Sounds like little boys trying to gross each other out, doesn't it? If you can handle that, citizen, Smith may just let you carry a AR-15 in his beloved corps!  But then you'll have to consider some tough questions:

Should I go buy a relatively inexpensive polymer frame semi-auto handgun and some ammunition in order to be able to assist friends and loved ones in their time of need? We need to think through these issues. Are you a diabetic? Do you have the insulin you need for a protracted period of time? Are there other medications you need?

I'll take out these jackbooted ATF bastards as soon I get my inhaler!

Plus, gibberish about Obamacare, patriots taking out the power grid, etc... Gun nuts are the Manson Family of the 21st Century. They're all "helter-skelter" on the internet, but will probably just end up killing some innocent bystanders and raving away the rest of their lives in prison.

WHEN SLAVE GIRL PRINCESS LEIA ISN'T ENOUGH.

Mark "Gavreau" Judge apparently felt the need to be humiliated, and went about it the way conservatives often do these days, by writing about Lena Dunham and Girls:

Girls creator Lena Dunham is very talented, and she’s only twenty-six, but it has to be said: like so many liberal Hollywood and New York artists, she has a powerful streak of cowardice... The girls in Girls are frustrated because the guys they date are either passive, psychotic, pretentious, degrading, or plain old losers. But what if Dunham had written in a male character who is strong, caring, attractive, highly intelligent, sexually unambiguous, great in bed, and a conservative?... 

How about this: a handsome grad student from Fordham who is Catholic, articulate, a college football star, compassionate, manly, and can debate any liberal to a standstill. Maybe his flaw is that he drinks too much, or that he once bullied a gay kid.

He could be called Gark "Javreau" Mudge! And the dark secret that drives him is that a black kid may have stolen his bicycle.

I understand the celebrity fantasy but, guy, this thing about trying to dare Lena Dunham into fucking your avatar (or at least wearing its promise ring) is just creepy. Also, did it never occur to you to make Gark Javreau Mudge's hamartia two wetsuits and a dildo?

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP...

...on the alleged assault on Bob Woodward, a hilarious concept. If this is how things worked, Ross Douthat, George Will, Jennifer Rubin, and dozens of other such like would be occupying deep landfill right now.

At least this story introduced me to the wonderful #StandWithWoodward Twitter tag, which has given me such gems as "Woodward goes after another #liberal President, the 1st being Nixon. Unlike Nixon, #Obama tries threats & intimidation." History education ain't what it used to be.

MAN BOOB.

John Hawkins breaks it down: Men enjoyed recreational fistfights and gunplay for centuries but, around the time Raiders of the Lost Ark came out, for some unspecified reason they stopped and, no longer being able to relate to action movies, became emasculated.

A few generations before that, women started getting educations and jobs, which was either a retroactive secondary cause of this emasculation or just made it worse. In any case you'll all be sorry.

Conclusion: Civilization is for pussies.

(We have ought to rewrite the old saw for this crew: First time as farce, second and every subsequent time as farce.)

UPDATE. Guess we'll have to quote some Hawkins, because commenters have referred to it. Brace yourselves:

Some of us take martial arts classes or go to the firing range, which is fine as far as it goes, but it’s often like practicing for a game you’ll never play. Chances are, you’ll probably go your whole life without shooting anyone or having to defend yourself from a thug trying to beat you to death on the street.

Substance McGravitas: "OMG I have gone my whole life without shooting anyone! I need a hug. WAIT NO, I need to shoot someone." Michael Søndberg Olson: "Yeah, Hawkins really enjoyed gouging my eye out, and then I made a drive-by of his shack and killed his daughter-wife. And now we're tit-deep in spraying cocks!"

WHOA, NELLIE.

Mark Steyn has something out about how much he hates homosexuals. Oh, wait, sorry, there's a MacGuffin -- gay people are oppressing him, or somebody. For instance:

By contrast, Canada’s GSA is the Gay-Straight Alliance. The GSA is all over the GTA (the Gayer Toronto Area), but in a few remote upcountry redoubts north of Timmins intolerant knuckle-dragging fundamentalist school boards declined to get with the beat. So the Ontario Government has determined to afflict them with the “Accepting Schools Act.” 

“Accepting?” One would regard the very name of this bill as an exquisite parody of the way statist strong-arming masquerades as limp-wristed passivity were it not for the fact that the province’s Catholic schools, reluctant to accept government-mandated GSAs, are proposing instead that they should be called “Respecting Differences” groups. Good grief, this is the best a bigoted theocrat can come up with?

While he's frothing, let's look at the bill. It's long-winded and bureaucratic, but the net effect seems to be to keep kids from being bullied in school, and to require that if someone's getting bullied in school, the school has to talk to the bully's parents, which hardly seems like the thin end of any wedge to me.  The bill does mention gayness as a casus bully, which is what seems to have set Steyn off.

Also the frostbacks apparently have both a Pink Shirt Day in February and a Day of Pink in April for the kids, both about not bullying gay kids. This doesn't seem any more or less objectionable than the 100th Day of School shirt thing, and who knows, the little thugs might learn something from it; doubtless if any of them feel put upon, they will bear with it as we did back in my day, and develop Bad Attitudes. Maybe Steyn is eager to regain his youth, and is doing so vicariously by writing this:

That’s great news! Nothing says “celebrate diversity” like forcing everyone to dress exactly the same, like a bunch of Maoists who threw their workers’ garb in the washer but forgot to take the red flag out... 

What about if you’re the last non-sexualized tween schoolgirl in Ontario? You’re still into ponies and unicorns and have no great interest in the opposite sex except when nice Prince William visits to cut the ribbon at the new Transgendered Studies Department. What if the other girls are beginning to mock you for wanting to see Anne Of Green Gables instead of Anne Does Avonlea? Is there any room for the sexual-developmentally challenged in the GSAs?

In and among these paranoid delusions there's a lot of yap about "soft totalitarian, collectivized, state-enforced, glassy-eyed homogeneity" and such like. But I get the sense Steyn's not serious about that. (Who could be, apart from religious maniacs ululating about Sodom and Steve? And for all his faults Steyn doesn't seem to swing that way.) I'm told he wrote a whole book about how the West is doomed because Mooslems, and another about how America is doomed because debt, but if this is the order of evidence he offers, I'd say he's just looking for some high school drama. Has no one told him about Glee?

THEY EAT THEIR OWN.

Twitchy:

It’s also liberals who would encourage the sort of creepy messaging coordination that [S.E.] Cupp is proposing. Get Republicans to denounce Limbaugh on different networks? What would that accomplish, other than making George Soros proud?... Her remarks have left a bad taste in the mouths of many conservatives, who feel that in issuing a sweeping indictment of Limbaugh as “dangerous,” Cupp is only hurting the conservative cause...

Warren Todd Huston:

S.E. Cupp's unhelpful apostasy... S.E. Cupp is wrong, wrong, wrong.

RedState:

And that’s the point that Cupp misses even as she explains herself. She can disagree with Limbaugh all day. Hell, she can make a career out of it she wants (she may have unintentionally done so already). But if you’re going to rage against the machine, expect some return fire, and don’t be surprised that when you go to the New York Times, they may apply motives to you that don’t exist.

Jeffrey Lord, The American Spectator:

The fact that Ms. Cupp doesn’t get this — even now, almost a full year after this controversy — startles. It means, apparently, one of two things. Either Cupp herself is a moderate on the issue (can a “conservative columnist,” as conservatives mock of elected officials, “grow in office” — i.e., become moderate?), or she is simply unaware of the history.

Either way Cupp vividly illustrates that she — and presumably her Proximus compadres — are advocating nothing newer than yesterday’s moderate Republicanism.

J. Robert Smith, American Thinker:

Picking a fight with Limbaugh, the dean of conservative talkers, particularly in a New York Times interview, is a nice little publicity gambit for a reputed young conservative. The liberal media eats up apostasy on the right... Cupp's elevation to talking head and opinion shaper couldn't have possibly occurred but for contemporary America's obsession with youth -- youth and looks... One suspects that Cupp cares more what's said about her, at least among Manhattan's liberal set.

Hm? Oh, I don't have a point here; I'm just enjoying myself. It's almost as good as the Sparticists vs. the ISO, or the People's Front of Judea vs. The Judean People's Front. It's getting so I hope they lose worse in 2014 -- not for political reasons, but because if they're this much fun now, imagine how much fun they'll be when they're even more aware of their unpopularity.

QUI TRANTULIT SUSTINET.

For years now, Joel Kotkin's been telling us that the Blue States are through, because demographics. Things haven't worked out for him, but he's still at it. In the Wall Street Journal:

In the wake of the 2012 presidential election, some political commentators have written political obituaries of the "red" or conservative-leaning states, envisioning a brave new world dominated by fashionably blue bastions in the Northeast or California. But political fortunes are notoriously fickle, while economic trends tend to be more enduring. 

These trends point to a U.S. economic future dominated by four growth corridors that are generally less dense, more affordable, and markedly more conservative and pro-business: the Great Plains, the Intermountain West, the Third Coast (spanning the Gulf states from Texas to Florida), and the Southeastern industrial belt...

I'm so old I remember when all those Californians who were escaping from high taxes to Southwestern states like Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado were going to become Republicans, but hey look what happened. When places get more developed they tend to get more liberal.  (Kotkin's got a better bet in those areas where growth will come from gas and fracking jobs. The ensuing poisoned air and water ought to keep Louisiana from going Democratic for generations.)

I don't know how long they can keep telling themselves stories like this before they try to win votes by changing their policies instead of trying to grow new Republicans in shale oil.

UPDATE. vista, in comments: "If this is the case then our future is the growth of the undereducated, working low wage jobs with zero benefits, living in polluted areas with crumbling infrastructure." I believe that's the plan.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP...

... about the "Day of Resistance" for gun nuts. Now please excuse me, I'm watching the Oscars (and doing okay with predix, and live-tweeting).

UPDATE. Oh speaking of Oscars, attend this especially Zhdanovite horseshit from Mark Joseph at National Review called "Lincoln’s Lost Opportunities":

First, there was the team that brought forth this film about the president who founded the Republican party, a team led by the blue-state heroes Steven Spielberg, screenwriter Tony Kushner, author Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Daniel Day-Lewis....

Oh wait, it gets better:

There is another surefire way to keep traditionalist audiences away from a movie, and the makers of Lincoln played that card as well: bad language...
“Sadly, the movie also contains about 40 obscenities and profanities, including four ‘f’ words and more than 10 GDs,” noted MovieGuide, a site that a good number of traditionalists consult before attending movies...

And another thing: What was all that anti-businessman talk in Citizen Kane? No wonder America hates Hollywood!

UPDATE 2. Jesus, Nate Silver knows everything.

UPDATE 3. Post-Oscar whining commences; I assume tomorrow there'll be plenty of rightwing argh-blargh about Michelle Obama's appearance. (Here's an early return from Todd Starnes on Twitter: "Tonight was supposed to be about Hollywood - but Mrs. Obama made it about herself." The concern of a Fox News shouter for the noble traditions of Hollywood is touching.) Meanwhile at National Review, somebody named Gina R. Dalfonzo:

Whatever one thinks of the movies being honored, and however fervently one roots for one’s favorites, there’s a depressing sameness to the annual Oscar ritual these days.

"These days"?

Chris Loesch was tweeting about how conservatives need to quit “belittling” pop culture, and start recognizing “the importance of engaging in and making good art.” He made a very good point. But the engaging would be so much easier if, on occasions like these, Hollywood’s best and brightest would give us something to work with.

The Oscars gets a billion viewers worldwide every year. Why would they give a fuck what conservatives think? See "market, free."

Still -- do read my Voice thing. They beat us if we don't deliver traffic.

UPDATE 4. Also at National Review, Wesley "Make Sure to Include My Middle Initial, I'm a Pompous Ass" Smith:

Can you imagine the Oscars allowing anyone to host the big show who had mocked defenseless minorities? No? Well, think again. This year’s host, Seth McFarlane, created Family Guy, a show which castigated the late Terri Schiavo as a “vegetable”...

I await Smith's denunciations of those who wring humor from the tragedy of people slipping on banana peels.