NEW VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the rightbloggers who think the Boston bombings are a good reason to stop the immigration bill, or immigration in general. The whole thing reminds me of the Palmer Raids as performed by a clown troupe.

GEORGE JONES, 1931-2013.

Just heard. I'll have something more to say later, maybe. His music was my good companion through some bad times; next to Sinatra in the When No One Cares era, maybe, nothing suits a sorrow binge like George Jones. (He's good when you're not sad, too, I later found out.) And while I normally don't give a damn what happens to famous people, his apparent ascent into happiness late in life was very cheering to me.

For now it's enough to say that along with everything else, George Jones was one hell of a singer.



UPDATE. He could be funny, too. Used to cover this one in a country band I was in:



UPDATE 2. In comments TomParmenter supplies "Rock  It," a number Jones did in his "Thumper Jones" secret rockabilly identity. But does anyone have tape of him singing as Donald Duck?

UPDATE 3. Just wanted to add:

• In high school a friend of mine saw him at the Westbury Music Fair and told me Jones was using the name "Tammy" in place of female pronouns, which got some gasps from the crowd. I thought maybe Jones had just been having an episode, but then I saw him on TV singing "If drinkin' don't kill me, Tammy's memory will" on some awards show. I can understand trading in on one's legend -- he did have a funny number called "No-Show Jones," and joked about his drinking -- but think about what it would take to declare yourself like that, to keep telling people that you'd had that one big love and it didn't work out. Jones was in show biz, but I think the feelings the songs talk about weren't an act.

• The "Ragged But Right" clip shows a younger, lighter Jones; his vocal instrument is pure and strong and he doesn't mess with it much. And that kind of material ("White Lightnin'," "Love Bug," etc.) doesn't call for messing with. The later Jones most people know, though, is the one singing those heartbreak songs, and by then he'd learned a few tricks. I think of "A Good Year for the Roses," where he moves between a low, confidential delivery ("After three full years of marriage it's the first time that you haven't made the bed") and those amazing, keening high notes ("As you turn and walk a-way..."). I say "tricks," but they don't sound tricky -- because, as difficult as most singers would find that kind of transition, Jones made it seem very natural, like that's just how it had to be sung. And that's part of what gives me goosebumps whenever I hear it. He goes from a wounded murmur to something like a howl of pain, and back again; the thing he's talking about isn't just sadness, it's torment; the inconsolable sorrow of lost love. The reason you can bear it, and maybe the reason he could, is that he made it into art.

THE NEW HISTORY'S GREATEST MONSTER.

Dame Noonington's hate-on for Obama has engorged to the point where she's comparing him unfavorably to Jimmy Carter. If we invade Syria, expect Noonan to pen a column from the POV of Bashar al-Assad, who will have mellowed becomingly with age, and whose personal happiness she will posit as the real reason that emotional cripple in the White House is after him.

REALITY TV VS. REALITY.

You stupid hippies think you own this country? Well, PJ Media's David Vicker has news for you! Duck Dynasty is popular!

Each week millions think they’re tuning in to watch the crazy and entertaining antics of a bunch of hirsuit, rich rednecks... What viewers are really watching are the Bitter Clingers candidate Obama so famously disparaged at a San Francisco campaign event back in 2008, and the Makers that President Obama denigrated in his “You didn’t build that speech” of 2012. If anyone in America clings to God, guns and religion, and did build that, it’s the Robertson clan...

..in a reliably Republican redoubt in rural Louisiana. Good for them, but what does that have to do with America in general? Well, to hear Vicker tell it, it's aspirational:

If annual sales, endorsement deals, and TV ratings are any indicator, the brand of Americanism these swamp rats are peddling is white lightning in a bottle. Down on our luck, out of hope, and sick-and-tired-of-change Americans can’t get enough of Duck Dynasty’s message, or its messengers. They take us back to the ideals that really work in this country.

The paterfamilias of this duck-call dynasty is worth about $10 million, in a parish where the estimated median household income in 2009 was $32,777. (Percentage of residents living in poverty in West Monroe, Louisiana in 2009: 25.3%.) And apparently the Robertsons are looking for a raise from their TV show.

Again, good for them; anything the traffic will allow, as the old song says. TV's currently full of Duck Dynasts and Real Housewives and such like; they're the modern equivalents of the swells and toffs whose adventures impoverished Americans have enjoyed following since the screwball comedies of the Great Depression. But nothing in our history suggests these entertainments mean the American People didn't mean what they said when they elected a President last November who was less than duck-dynastic.

Fantasies like Vicker's remind me of hippies who thought the country was really with them because Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate were big at the box office, despite the electoral returns.  Counterculture's a fun game to play when you're losing, but if culture, counter or otherwise, is meaningful to you, then its effect on electoral results -- actual or mitigating -- will not be so important. Decades later, Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate are still worth watching, though. Can we expect the same of Duck Dynasty? If so, then politics is the least of our problems.

KILL US ALL, LET GOD SORT US OUT.

A lot of what the brethren have written about Boston has been deranged, but leave it to PJ Media/NewYork Post blowhard Michael Walsh to raise the bar. In this emission, his point is that with last week's lockdown the "pusillanimous toads... Gov. Deval Patrick and Mayor Mumbles Menino" had the city "cowering in fear" when they should have sent all Boston's able-bodied citizens out to shoot up the suspect and whatever got between him and them, or something equally butch.

There's plenty that's stupid and offensive in this, but connoisseurs will appreciate this bit about the 2004 Beslan school massacre, which Peters offers as a preferable model:

Note that, when the Russian military finally stormed the school, they were accompanied by armed residents of the village, desperate to save their children. In typical ham-handed Russian fashion, the former Soviets managed to kill almost as many people as they saved — but the point is they fought back.

Much better than last Friday's result, which was casualty-free as well as successsful, but without honor.

Sometimes I wonder if Walsh is just one of Col. Ralph Peters' secret identities.

POST-TRAUMATIC ATTENTION DEFICIT SYNDROME.

At The American Spectator Jeffrey Lord has one called "Jihad Blows Up the Liberal Utopia" and as you may have guessed, it reflects the growing rightwing consensus on Boston, which appears to boil down to Since you fuckers won't listen to us on any other topic, let us win you back with Terror! 

But as we saw in my recent Voice column, these guys also appear to have lost the self-discipline required to focus exclusively on the war-drum -- as one imagines they would if they were really serious about it -- without breaking into a tom-roll of talking points unrelated to the subject. It's like they want to go back to the Bush Years (now under new management and rehabilitation -- watch this space!), and they want to go now -- so rather than wait for Terror to soften the sheeple's minds, they just yell "Boo!" and then start yelling about deficit spending.

So after starting on-topic with "The Liberal Utopia is a land where gun background checks prevent mass murder" (I didn't say reasonably, I said on-topic), Lord veers, telling us the jihad has also blown up the Liberal Utopia of Social Security, Medicare, War on Poverty, etc.

He reaches what I would say is the nadir here, on the subjects of gun control and the apparent successor to Lena Dunham as the right's favorite female hate-object, Gabby Giffords:

Next up was former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who took to the Op-Ed page of the New York Times to say “I’m furious.” Giffords accused the Senate of being in the “grip of the gun lobby” fearful of political consequences. 

Gifford’s statement was filled with irony. There are people aplenty out there who have also discussed issues other than guns as being a problem in this area of violence in America. Indeed just this last Sunday Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley not only talked about guns but the role of abortion in what O’Malley called a “Culture of Death.” But did Gabby Giffords want to talk about abortion as a contributing factor?

In case you're wondering if you imagined it: yes, he did just ask why a woman who was shot in the head is more interested in gun control than abortion.

If their movement ever acquires a leader, I suggest for starters he or she should pass out some Ritalin.

TRIPPING.

Just looked in on Ed Driscoll's latest, yet another sprawling stream-of-semiconsciousness about how America was destroyed by the beatniks of the Frankfurt School and whatnot, and it's all too convoluted to pull apart but let me at least share with you this wonderful passage:

1968 contrasted the two American space programs: real-life NASA had to compete for attention with the Cinerama visions of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, the top-grossing film of 1968, which smuggled its Nietzschian philosophy into movie theaters via space stations and talking computers, and was a magnificently photographed and scored exercise in liberal fascism.

Perfect as it seems, it's the next line that really makes it:

I don’t use the phrase lightly.

Please don't ever show him Forbidden Planet. They'll have to scrape him off the ceiling with a broom.

UPDATE. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard wins comments: "The black monolith represents the 90% Democratic African-American voting bloc." But the game ain't over! e.g. GregMc: "My god! It's full of shit!"; Spaghetti Lee: "'Lower the top marginal income tax rate, HAL.' 'I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.'"

UPDATE 2. This reminds me of the great Mad parody "201 Minutes of Space Idiocy," which reminds me of a lovely Film Comment article on Mad movie parodies you should read.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP....

.... about Boston. It runs long, but I had a superabundance of material. For example: The Czech Republic's press release, forced by general ignorance, that told people Chechans were not from the Czech Republic but from Chechnya, might prompt any number of reactions -- but check out this amazing response:

National 'Education' Association: YOU OWN THIS IGNORANCE.

John Birch Society paranoia PLUS War on Terror paranoia -- that's brilliant. Sometimes it's hard to believe they extemporize! 

WHAT, THEY FEEL SHAME?

Yeah, I wouldn't sign it either.

UPDATE. They finally put Kevin Williamson's name on it -- guess he drew the short straw.

ALSO, LET'S STORE GAS OVER BY THE SMOKERS' CORNER.

Cynical old cuss that I am, I never expected Democratic gun legislation to accomplish anything except the further embarrassment of their enemies. Looks like that's how it's playing out. The votes seemed choreographed to deliver maximum attention with minimal effect. They must think it was a good one to lose: Ours is a gun-friendly country, but not a gun-crazy one, and the sight of honkies jubilant at the defeat of a popular and harmless background check law may pay dividends for the Democrats down the road.

If that doesn't do it, we can always count on lunatics like Jack Dunphy to help. At PJ Whatsit he comments on a Ready Houston video that shows office workers fending off a shooter with chairs and coffee pots.  While he commends the can-do spirit, Dunphy is yet unsatisfied -- he wants those desk jockeys armed:

Wouldn’t it be far preferable to bring a gun to the gunfight instead of a chair or a coffee pot? ...If I were to enter an office building under those circumstances and ask some fleeing worker where the gunman was, I would hope to hear an answer like this: "He’s face down in the stairwell. Williams from accounting shot him."

I bet many of you folks are at an office right now. Take a look around.



Sure, arm the workplace. What could go wrong?

UPDATE. Arm the teachers, too.

DUH-BLE STANDARD.

Shorter Ole Perfesser: People expect me to disseminate bullshit indiscriminately -- what's your excuse?

UPDATE. Oh yeah, readers remind me, there's also his charming tweet to Gabby Giffords. Some guys prefer their targets wounded, I guess.

ALSO TOTALLY CONSERVATIVE: THOSE DELICIOUS BALLPARK FRANKS.

You knew it was coming -- from John Boot at PJ Media:

5 Core Conservative Values in the New Jackie Robinson Biopic 42

Among these:

2) There’s no substitute for a strong, loving nuclear family.

Demonstrated thus:

Robinson never knew his own father, who left his mother and her five children when Jackie was still a baby. In 42, when he gets the good news that the Brooklyn Dodgers want to give him a shot at being the first black player in the major leagues (in reality, there were some black players in the early days of baseball back in the 1880s), Jackie phones up his girlfriend Rachel (Nicole Beharie) and asks her to marry him right away. Later in the film, Jackie is seen cuddling his newborn son Jackie Jr. and telling him, “I’m going to be with you till the day I die.” Robinson, who along with Rachel raised two other children as well, was as good as his word, remaining a family man until his too-early death at age 53.

I'd like to see an extended version, in which scenes of Robinson eating prove the conservative value of nutrition.

UPDATE. In comments, Doghouse Riley: "The part about how Robinson -- who called himself an independent, but supported Republican candidates -- left the party after what he witnessed of the '64 convention and became a Democrat? Demonstrates the conservative value of voluntary deportation, I suppose."

DEMOCRACY PROMOTION IN ACTION.

At National Review, Otto J. Reich complains about the Venezuelan elections:

If I were still assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs I would urge the secretary of state to not recognize the results of this election unless and until independent auditors documented that it was accurate. Even then, it was not a free or fair election. All assets of the national government were mobilized to support Maduro and international observers and media report widespread “irregularities” in the process.. the will of the Venezuelan people is being thwarted.

From Wikipedia:

Reich held the post of Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs at the time of the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt on April 11, 2002 against Hugo Chávez. On the day Pedro Carmona was installed as president, Otto Reich summoned ambassadors from Latin America and the Caribbean to his office to express their support and that of the US administration for the new government.

They should start hiring guys off the street to do this sort of work, just to avoid this sort of embarrassing backstory. Then again, why bother?

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the Rand Paul speech at Howard, and what a great success it was with the real audience, which was not the one in the actual room.

UPDATE. The paragraph breaks went away for a while, but they seem to be back now; please let me know if the formatting goes haywire again.

IS THIS WHAT WE SENT YOU TO COLLEGE FOR?

At PJ Media, Susan L.M. Goldberg explains that Family Guy is the poisoned fruit of feminism. No, really. A section about what a terrible father Peter is begins with this:

Never has a term been so despised in the ivy halls as “The Patriarchy.”

Later:

Whether it’s the military, the doctor, or the monkey in the closet, the men on Family Guy do more to avoid perceived threats than to confront them, even if it means putting their own self-respect on the line. Ironically, while feminism focuses on the disenfranchisement of women, it has often done so by disenfranchising men.

Later still:

Whether playing up to feminist theory or playing into the results of a generation of male bashing, Family Guy’s definition of masculinity is the monster pieced together between books and over Cosmos.

The italicized Cosmos is in the original, so I don't whether Goldberg means the drink or the Carl Sagan TV show. (It's also possible her demoralized copy editor was laying a trap to find out if she can even read.)

Best part is Goldberg's bio:

Susan L.M. Goldberg is a writer with a Master's in Radio, Television & Film...

Wingnuts used to make fun of cultural studies gush -- look at all those liberal brats "studying" Madonna! Now they're not only going to college for it (and worshipping the queen of CultStud crap, Camille Paglia), they're writing a ridiculous amount of horrible cultural studies gush themselves.

They seem to think they're plumbing the Dark Mystery of the Arts to find the pulse of the electorate, but they just remind me of Chris Cooper trying to kiss Kevin Spacey in American Beauty. 

ANNALS OF THE CULTURE WARS.

Brad Todd at the Daily Caller:

Washington’s pundits have been united this spring. They’ve concluded that a single shift in culture on gay marriage has marooned one of America’s political ideologies from the public majorities of tomorrow.

The pundits are right that one political philosophy is being left behind but wrong about which one. It is liberals, not conservatives, who are chained to an ideology built for yesterday’s culture. The proof of this realignment is not on cable news, but...

I have to admit, folks, at this point I was very interested to see what, besides the political events of the day, presaged this conservative ascendancy.

... but on cable television’s hippest drama, “Mad Men,” which this week kicked off its final season to great fanfare.

Blink. Blink.

I thought next he was going to say that Mad Men shows the ruinous legacy of the liberal 60s because they made Don suicidal and Betty fat; alternatively, that it shows how great life was when women and black people were oppressed. Those would have made some sense on a juvenile level at least. But... To boil it down for you, the left is old and gross because Obamacare is sooo LBJ and soaked in "the collective emotional DNA of the post-war era," which the kids don't like because it's analog.

LBJ sold that audience national retirement pensions as easily as the age’s Mad Men built national brands of soap and beer. Similarly, the rest of society’s institutions nationalized as well — the American Legion, the Moose Lodge and the Methodist Church saw their ranks explode as the parents of Baby Boomers equated quality with conformity.

Fifty years later, Budweiser now disguises its products as pseudo-craft brands and the Methodist Church is withering in plain sight. The dominant brands of this age are not purveyors of conformed consumption but enablers of individualization — Apple, Google and Facebook.

And any fool can see that if you like social media and fake microbrews, you're just naturally gonna be right wing.  Haven't you seen Twitchy? Also:

Customers at the decade’s most ubiquitous national food merchant, Starbucks, have developed an entire language to express their half-caf, soy-no-whip, double-shot individual solutions.

It's like the conspicuous consumption of the Reagan era, only much cheaper, which is good because since our economy was destroyed in 2008 fancy coffee is about all we can afford.

So why, in the era of individualization, is the American political left still selling top-down mandatory standardization in everything from health insurance to local electricity generation? When nearly every thriving national brand succeeds by empowering Americans to seek and achieve different results, only the Democratic Party is peddling redistribution and a system that on its best day generates only mushy mediocrity.

Todd, you will not be surprised to learn, is an ad man, and this ripomatic reminds me of those post-Berlin-Wall corporate ads in which former slaves of Sovietism stepped into the sunlight and had a Coke and a smile. Only that's a bit out of style now. It's harder to convince people you represent the future when your suit is caked with dust from the demolition job you've done on the American Dream and your pockets are stuffed with fraudulent securities. Also, if you want to own "choice" as an equity, maybe identifying yourself with the dying anti-gay cause isn't such a hot idea.

I hope next they try to bring back South Park Conservatism and put Steve Crowder in charge. I could use a laugh.

UPDATE. Slightly edited because, like all the greats, I am constantly fiddling with my own work.

UPDATE 2. In comments, Mr. Wonderful asks:

There's got to be a name for this--this confident extrusion of analysis and prediction that seems so astute until it dawns on you, and your dog, that it is objectively, visibly wrong. Is this what they mean by "post-modernist political commentary"? Where they type something like, "Bernie Sanders, whether he knows it or not, is actually a Republican, because he's a member of the Senate, which is one of our oldest and most traditional public institutions"?

PoMoPolComm might work, but being a traditionalist I prefer "bullshit."

CONSERVATIVE MINORITY OUTREACH CONTINUES, CONTINUED.

Rand Paul did even worse than I expected. He literally did talk about Republican efforts on behalf of black citizens a century ago, and then explained the 20th-century switch in electoral trends this way:

You may say, "oh that’s all well and good but that was a long time ago what have you done for me lately?"

Ingrates!

I think what happened during the Great Depression was that African Americans understood that Republicans championed citizenship and voting rights but they became impatient for economic emancipation. 

African Americans languished below white Americans in every measure of economic success and the Depression was especially harsh for those at the lowest rung of poverty.

The Democrats promised equalizing outcomes through unlimited federal assistance while Republicans offered something that seemed less tangible--the promise of equalizing opportunity through free markets.

In other words: The Democrats bribed you to forget all your old friends. No mention of Republican racial politics from the Compromise of 1877 to Nixon's Southern Strategy, nor of the traditional conservative attitude toward integration and equal rights, nor Jesse Helms, nor Strom Thurmond, et alia and ad nauseam. The Civil Rights Act Paul only mentioned defensively, as something from which he'd "never wavered" except for that part about using the power of the state to enforce it.

Layer in a generous helping of self-pity ("and when I think of how political enemies often twist and distort my positions... My hope is that you will hear me out, that you will see me for who I am, not the caricature sometimes presented by political opponents... Republicans are often miscast as uncaring or condemning...") and you've got a perfect speech -- not for the folks at Howard University, but for the commenters at Reason who seem to understand Paul perfectly ("Maybe Paul should have offered up more free shit since that seems to work so well").

So in that sense it was a great success.

CONSERVATIVE MINORITY OUTREACH CONTINUES.

Thanks to Jack Fowler at National Review for steering his readers to this amazing promo:

It reminds me of my first job in high school, cold-calling people from a crummy office in downtown Bridgeport to try and get them to attend a presentation about a Florida real estate development scam called Rotunda. (You can read how Rotunda played out here.) It was run by something called the Cavanaugh Corporation, which claimed as one of its partners Ed McMahon -- whose autographed photo we cold-callers offered as a premium.

Also, I never noticed before how much Allen West looks like Alfred E. Neuman.

If you have to watch one of the crazy videos, this is the one: West on Hollywood! After a few fish-out-of-water gags about coming to Los Angeles -- when someone offers him some sushi, he says "I don't eat bait" -- he gets right down to how liberals won't let you say what you really want to, and conservatives are "so afraid of the Hollywood backlash that they meet in secret," by which I guess he means no one goes to their parties except Roger L. Simon. "Is this the America that some of us fought for?" roars West. "Is this some type of new Soviet-style Politburo being formed? Regardless I find it utterly disgusting to think that many of us who fought for the freedoms of our nation so that now it seems a handful of individuals get to define who can and who cannot speak..." He's also mad that Hollyweird stars are against guns: "I doubt Jim Carrey will be invited to give the start command at any NASCAR race. [Pause for laugh.]"

This scam is brought to you by PJTV, who seem to have gotten the down-on-his-luck West the way William Grefe got Rita Hayworth.

IF I CAN DREAM.

Press release:

U.S. Senator Rand Paul, R-KY, will speak at Howard University on inclusion in the Republican Party at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, April 10.

Imagine if Paul's appearance at Howard meant he was serious about minority outreach, as Colbert I. King at the Washington Post seems to think he is. Imagine if he owned up on behalf of the Republican Party to the Southern Strategy, by which the GOP won and held the South (and not a few Northern votes) by portraying themselves as the party of keeping you-know-who in line, and how that strategy persists to this day -- or rather to yesterday, he might say, because, he might even dare to admit, Republicans are not getting anywhere as a white people's party, and have surrendered to the necessity of treating black Americans as actual constituents rather than as objects of ooga booga, and are interested in hearing what they want.

Imagine how refreshing, not to say cleansing, such a speech might be! Because contrary to what Republicans seem to think, black Americans are hip to politics, and would probably appreciate it if Paul cut the bullshit and were willing to deal.

A beautiful dream. But --

Sen. Paul’s speech will focus on the importance of outreach to younger voters, as well as minority groups. He will also discuss the history of the African-American community’s roots in the Republican Party and current issues, such as school choice and civil liberties.

In other words: We used to be the Party of Lincoln, you people should love vouchers, etc. Kind of like Mitt Romney at the NAACP, but with more crazy eye-gleam.

Maybe he'll surprise me, but it sure looks like the Republicans are still, despite every motivation to do better, moving with all deliberate speed.

UPDATE. Commenter mds reminds me of what I had forgotten, even though I wrote about it at the time: that in 2010 Paul came out against the Civil Rights Act. Which would make him the perfect Republican to extend the olive branch! In fact, I think he should start weeping and announce he has sinned against his brothers -- "Forgive me, moochers!"

Is this thing going to be on TV?

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the slow shift rightbloggers are making, in their hour of defeat, from yelling about gay marriage to yelling about straight marriage. You may not notice it yet, but I predict it'll be a comer; it'll be their chance to do outreach to gay people by giving the scolds, nags, and shrews in their community a place of welcome. Hell, they might even turn Andrew Sullivan back around.