MORE CAPITALIST THAN THE POPE, AS THE OLD SAYING GOES.

I haven't said much about conservative reactions to Pope Francis' talk about capitalism for a couple of reasons. Mainly it's because I know the Church, and while they might let Francis reap some PR hosannas for the talk-talking, they'll never stand for any walk-walking -- too much money at stake. So while it's pleasing to see wingnuts forced to either denounce or explain away the teachings of Jesus Christ, it's ultimately meaningless. You know it's Moses, I know it's Moses, but business is business

Still, it's nice to see a handmaiden of capitalism like Ramesh Ponnuru try and explain why the Pope doesn't understand it:

One can favor a much stronger safety net than the U.S. has and still disagree with some of what Francis has to say.

I'd like to see him explain that last sentence. Is there a Democrat somewhere outraged by Francis' anticapitalism? I mean besides Joe Lieberman.

Most of the arguments in Ponnuru's essay are on the order of "is not" or "is too," but overall "so what" is his favorite recourse ("the pope appears to blame businessmen for sometimes downsizing their companies... Even in a well-functioning economy with low unemployment, that’s exactly what businessmen will and should sometimes do"). As you might expect, he is especially wounded by the Pope's denunciation of trickle-down economics, which he first minimizes as due to "some issues that have been raised about how these words were translated from Spanish," and then dismisses because "self-interest can yield unintended benefits for others." And isn't that was Christianity's all about -- unintended benefits?

Ponnuru saves the best for last:

Much of Francis’s economic thought, though, seems to rest on the identification of free markets with extreme individualism. A generation ago, the writer Michael Novak and others were instrumental in persuading many American Catholics that markets could instead enable a creative form of community. The pope’s remarks suggest that this type of evangelizing still needs to be done.

If only some real Christians could talk sense to the Pope about how capitalism helps the poor! Maybe he'll listen to a Harvard professor who accuses the Pope of spreading "envy" and preaches Bible stories at him ("The Ten Commandments conclude with: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house...'"). Well, he's got a point -- there are lots of ungrateful peasants in the Bible, but not one story about a rapacious corporation destroying a community for its own profit.

This excites Ann Althouse, who thinks the Professor "may win over even the Pope fans." Then will come the inevitable backlash, with cries of "THANKS FRANCIS" and Ratzinger on "Miss me yet?" billboards, culminating in a new Pope who's a Calvinist.

UPDATE. In comments, Spaghetti Lee: "Maybe I'm projecting onto the Pope here, but I'd like to note that he spent his adult life in 60's and 70's South America, which saw a series of right-wing, authoritarian and explicitly corporatist dictatorships seize power, the most infamous of which, in Chile, was at the behest of the sort of people who write Ramesh Ponnuru's checks. Needless to say, I think he's seen plenty of the glories of unrestrained capitalism for himself"

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about this year's War on Christmas festivities. Hard to believe it's been a year since the last one, eh?

First-tier wingnuts have to stay ahead of the curve, and I regret there was no room at the inn for David French's piece at National Review, in which he beseeched the brethren join him in taking Christmas purism a step further:

This Christmas Season, Consider Becoming a ‘Santa Truther’ 

In her weekly column at Rare, my wife outed our family as “Santa Truthers,” those killjoys who don’t teach their kids that Santa is real, leaving Christmas to the story of Christ’s birth and the gift-giving to Mom, Dad, and legions of over-generous family members... 

The story of God’s grace is at the very heart of the Gospel. Why muck that up with fake stories of magical works-based theology?

As French rises in the organization I expect National Review will offer a Roundhead Christmas Cruise on which passengers will swab the deck and eat gruel on December 25th. Then conservatism can be truly said to have triumphed.

RICHARD PRYOR, ON THE OTHER HAND, WAS ALWAYS VERY POLITE.

I know, another day, another Victor Davis Hanson you-helots-get-off-my-lawn essay. But sometimes he rises from senescence to insanity, as in this one's skein about how Obama brought racism back.

Once, soothsays Hanson, you could criticize Colin Powell, Condi Rice and Alberto Gonzalez without being accused of racism. You might think this was because they were self-evident monsters and buffoons, but Hanson thinks it was because of the Bush golden age of racial tolerance.

But "Obama changed that calculus and equated his own popularity with a referendum on racial harmony," says Hanson, by noticing Trayvon Martin and Henry Louis Gates. "The result is a creeping racial polarization that we have not seen in fifty years."

Even more horrible -- Obama spurred black celebrities to race war on his own behalf, thereby costing them their popularity with unnamed, uncounted white people:

Before Obama, the billionaire Oprah Winfrey was a national icon. Morgan Freeman had transcended race and resented identity politics. A Kanye West or Chris Rock made millions of dollars by appealing to suburbanites. All have lost their broad appeal, largely due to some of the most polarizing racial rhetoric in memory...

If only there were some way to back up this assertion. Maybe a time-based analysis of magazine covers at the supermarket check-out?

A Jamie Foxx or Chris Rock casually derogates “white people”; does that mean either wishes them not to go to their movies or shows?...

The net result of the new racialism is an impossible situation of establishing one’s racial fides only by permanent support for Barack Obama — and because it is impossible, more are resenting those who imposed it.

Neither is this "more" identified or quantified, but maybe they're the real reason Yeezus sales dropped in the second week; it took the downtrodden whites several days to figure out Kanye was one of those black racists. If African American showfolk don't start mending their ways, Victor Davis Hanson and his cousins won't let them have any more People's Choice Awards.

WATER FINDS ITS OWN LEVEL.

I have no objections to Jonah Goldberg's latest column. No, that doesn't mean it's good, or right. It just means the column is a "decency" rant about all the swears on the TV, and this is a form which, unlike all the other the forms he attempts, suits his stupidity down to the ground.

Still, a couple of notes:

But my complaint isn’t really with singers, shock-jocks, comedians, or whatever category [Miley] Cyrus falls under. They’re not merely immune to finger-wagging on this score, they actually think such criticism is proof they’re rebels. The wiser course is to simply yawn and move on.

I like the idea of Goldberg willing himself to yawn  -- though I'm unclear as whether this is meant to convince the Miley Cyruses of the world that he doesn't care, or his own limbic system, and also wonder if it isn't just a ruse to make room in his mouth for an extra Hostess Fruit Pie.

Finally, anyone who writes the world's least funny comedy sketch about buttsecks one day and gurgles about "vulgarians" this next should be declared brain dead and taken off life support.

COURTESY IS TREASON.

At Nelson Mandela's memorial service, Obama shook the hand of Raul Castro instead of (as William Wolfrum suggested) punching Castro in the mouth, screaming "Capitalism!!" and then eating a Big Mac. Early reaction from idiots:

When I read yesterday that both President Obama and Cuba's murderous dictator Raul Castro were both going to be speaking at Nelson Mandela's memorial service in South Africa, I knew the odds were Obama would end up greeting and shaking the blood-stained hand of the Cuban despot. I had hoped against hope (no pun intended) that Obama would somehow find the courage to fend off his proclivity to act submissive before other world leaders, especially the most despotic ones, but apparently, he simply could not resist. Once again, Obama lends credence and recognition to a vile and bloody dictatorial regime responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of innocent people.

Obama Bows To With Cuba’s Raul Castro
It’s not just a handshake, notice the tip of the head and bend of the back, it’s a bow. Notice also Castro did not bow back.

Bowing to dictators again: Did Obama just bow to Cuba’s Raul Castro?

The bowing thing is ancient wingnut catechism. Obama's about a head taller than Castro, which might explain his actions this morning if you're not too busy using Occam's Razor to carve OBAMA LOVES CASTRO into a tree.

I wonder if any of these guys has ever been to a funeral, not counting field trips with the Westboro Baptist Church.

UPDATE. For the Breitbarglers, John Nolte:

For those who believe in human rights and liberty, the sight of our president bounding up some stairs to energetically shake hands with Raul Castro, dictator of Cuba, was more than a little unsettling -- regardless of the circumstance.

But for those who believe in blahde blah and blahdeblah, the sight of Rupert Murdoch bounding off to China for his extensive dealings with the dictatorship is no big deal. In the words of Lucie Cabrol: Money can make the dirty clean! Same to Mona "shameful day to be an American" Charen at National Review, and to her colleague Otto "The Damage of a Handshake" Reich, who claims "the Castro brothers have been vying for the world to see a handshake with a U.S. president for over 50 years," which makes them sound like they're collecting bubble-gum cards  -- only bubble-gum cards that could destroy our nation!

Until now, every American president had studiously avoided this mistake: At U.N. and other gatherings U.S. Secret Service and diplomats were under orders to make sure such a “photo op” so highly desired by the Castros did not happen. 

With his action President Obama has squandered U.S. prestige and honor.

Now when the U.S. drops multi-megatons of bombs on some country, the natives will cry "Big deal, he shook Castro's hand" as they're blown to smithereens.

UPDATE 2. Now there's reams and reams of this stuff, including the obligatory Rush Limbaugh treatment and bow-truthers ("Funny, now that I think about it, I can’t recall ever seeing Obama 'bend down' to shake hands with the obviously shorter Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu"), but for our final yuks let us turn to Scott Shackford at Reason: "Oddly, though, I’m not seeing the actual faux outrage from the right." One is always least likely to notice faults in one's friends.

REPUBLICAN OUTREACH TO WOMEN CONTINUES.

Good catch, Dr. Spencer:

It's by Patrick Howley at The Daily Caller. Spencer believes it to be "officially the Dumbest Thing on the Internet. It’s like a Derp Unicorn vomited derp in a bucket full of derp..." I am more cautious only because I've seen the vastness of their derp mines. But this one is pretty ridiculous.

Howley bases his ravings on a paper, humorously titled "My Eyes Are Up Here..." (Howley doesn't seem to get the joke, however often he's heard it), about measuring men's attentiveness to women's breasts, the existence of which he links, on no basis, to a harassment suit and a "social media uproar." Presto, Liberal Fascism!

This is the kind of study MSNBC commentators can hold up when they’re talking about 'rape culture. Because men are just all Bashar al-Assad and sex is their chemical weapon... This is what the progressives exist to do. They take away our activities.

It's getting so you can't even wave a Confederate flag anymore. Well, you can wave it, but people will make fun of you. Maybe not real people, but the people in your head, like those MSNBC commentators in Patrick Howley's head who say he can't look at tits. And now that'll happen every time!

Oh, there's also this:

Ladies, how are you going to feel when the progressives prohibit men from paying you a compliment on your walk home from the bar? You know there’s always one friend of yours who waited all night for that.

Well, you can't say those How to Talk to Women for the Party lessons were totally in vain.

UPDATE. Big_bad_bald_bastard in comments:

It's weird that their compulsion to disparage women outweighs their desire to get laid by non-professionals.

Yeah. If you like tits, there are all kinds of easy and fun ways to regard and admire them. For someone who's all HEY I'M LOOKING AT YOUR TITS YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT, access to breasts is at best a secondary goal  -- perhaps a gesture of support/establishment of bond with other grudge-ridden psychos whose proudest boast is that they are Victims of Political Correctness (understandable, as "Recipient of Wingnut Welfare" and "Dateless Wanker" are far less exalted titles).

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the rightblogger reaction to Nelson Mandela's death. I was surprised to find so many of my usual subjects still condemning Mandela as a menace -- message discipline ain't what it used to be -- but for the most part the big boys made with the crocodile tears, though without much disguising that they are in fact crocodiles.

Here's a bonus for you late-night people from one of the holdouts, Some Guy at Babalu:

The MSM that is now in full honors mode for Nelson Mandela who was a political prisoner for decades, and who fought against apartheid and for freedom in South Africa would be the same MSM that would be in full honors mode if the dictator of the Cuban apartheid, Fidel Castro ... who currently holds political prisoners ... were to die.

Yeah, dead Castro's gonna be big on network. They'll get Rachel Maddow to do the eulogy and Miley Cyrus to dance.

UPDATE. Found in course of research: I wonder if these t-shirt models know to what purpose their images have been put at whiteresister.com:

"Oh hi, Marge. I saw your son modeling a shirt on the internet! Er, no, I can't remember the name of the site..."

UPDATE 2. Speaking of white resisters, at National Review today:

Former Secretary of State: Reagan Regretted Apartheid Veto

Oh, well then.

SNEAK PREVIEW.

Thanks to Nelson Mandela, I should have plenty of insane rightblogger shit for the Sunday night column. Here's a nice specimen for you from Joel Pollak of Breitbart.com, who has a few other columns up about Mandela, distinguishable mainly by the ugly dissonance between Pollak's attempted generosity toward Mandela and the repulsive gibberings of his readers in comments (Samples: "MANDELA was a communist... He and BO have lots in common," "He is hanging out with Yashir arafat and Hitler in Hell right now," etc). Perhaps out of embarrassment (look, stranger things have happened), Pollak follows up with something to get the punters on Mandela's side: an article about how Mandela makes Obama look bad -- which God knows is true, but Pollak's angle is that Obama looks bad because he doesn't share the conservative values of Nelson Mandela. (Sample: "Mandela was fiscally responsible, Obama is profligate." Funny, I've never read a conservative encomium to Mandela's economic stewardship before this.)

Pollak gets even further out in his colleague Tony Lee's interview of him, which contains this gem:

[Pollak] also said Mbeki also did not think a virus caused AIDS and denied the vaccine to South Africans because he unilaterally believed that government knows best and has intellectual and political authority. Pollak said Obama also has that tendency, thinking he can tell Americans "what reality is and what reality isn't."

And that's why Obama, like Mbeki, ignores the scientific community and supports such ignorant superstitions as anthropogenic climate change. Not to mention his wacky plan to extend health insurance to all Americans.

UPDATE. In comments, Sharculese: "Squaring the circle between their commenters' rabid hatred of Mandela and the desire not to look like total loons is going to show us which recipients are truly earning their wingnut welfare and which ones are just strapping young bucks buying t-bone steaks."

RACE TO THE BOTTOM.

Quin Hillyer, whose buffoonery at the American Spectator helps fill my Voice columns, declares himself a victim because Jonathan Chait almost sorta-kinda called him a racist. (Chait suggests Hillyer's weird obsession with Obama's alleged "haughtiness" comports with  classic "uppity" characterizations of blacks who are thought to get above themselves.)

Hillyer thinks Chait has provided him such a large opening that he can muscle his fellow conservatives through it into racial absolution. Here are his talking points, removed from the weak broth of his prose:

Hillyer is no racist
Hillyer resisted the campaigns of racist David Duke. (Chait acknowledged this; Hillyer pretends not to notice.) He also turned on Trent Lott and Strom Thurmond when everyone else did, and has said some nice things about black people.
Hillyer does not believe blacks are "inherently racist or ill-motivated," but merely "unprepared" for the advantages of white life "when race-based government edicts stack the deck in education or access to employment."
Hillyer's father applauded Brown v. Board of Education and loved Louis Armstrong.

Liberals are the real racists
"It is leftists, not conservatives, who are obsessed with race."
Liberals pick on definitely not-racist conservatives like Jeff Sessions just because some things he said and did may look racist to the untrained eye.
Liberals think it's racist when conservatives make "Obamaphones" their new T-bone/Cadillac/welfare queen shtick (notwithstanding that the program dates back to the Bush era*), so obviously they don't know what racism is.
Liberals are in fact racist against whites because they are racist for blacks and  "see and hear no evil from their favored groups or policies even when the evils are blindingly obvious." As to what those blindingly obvious evils are, see below:

Blacks are also the real racists
Blacks vote for black people. They are arrested for most of the "hate crimes" in the United States. "At least some polls" show blacks think they're racist too, so who's the racist now?

In other words, Hillyer advances ancient arguments that will be accepted by everyone who already believes such horseshit, like Matt K. Lewis at The Daily Caller. Lewis too has some killer talking points -- like, how can conservatives be racist when they also smear white people? ("Conservatives were happy to accuse Bill Clinton off all sorts of things — of dodging the draft and [for some, at least] of having Vince Foster murdered. Was race the cause of all of that?") Oh, and Lewis is also a victim of racist liberal smears -- a black guy accused him of "deploy[ing] the very principles of white privilege" once! Him, Matt K. Lewis, who has "spoken out" against racism! It's like when hyperleftist Dave Weigel suggested resistance to gay marriage had something to do with bigotry against gays. Where do these liberals get that stuff?

Bottom line, it's 2013 and white people are still the ones who suffer the most, or at least the most publicly, from racism.

*UPDATE. Some commenters remind me that these phones come out of the Lifeline program established in the Reagan era. I'd forgotten this point has frequently been brought up to counter the racist gibberings of Obamaphone obsessives -- and missed this awesome bad-faithfest in response by W.A. Beatty at American Thinker:

The only defense offered by Lifeline Program supporters is that it was begun during Ronald Reagan's term, and expanded to include cell phones during George W. Bush's term. But so what? Circumstances change -- even Democrats are not immune. The Jeffersonian Republicans-Democrats represented those who visualized an agrarian future. Then, as the 20th century began, progressives with socialist-Marxist doctrine began to infest the Democrat Party. The result is what we have today.

Which is an elevated way of saying that when a Democrat gives you a phone it's intrinsically bad because Democrat. The whole thing is so poorly reasoned, I feel a duty to preserve it so those who come after will understand why were so easier conquered and enslaved by sentient pigs.

DA, COMRADE, PLEASE ONLY TO LAUGH AT STEVE CROWDER, RUSH LIMBAUGH, AND STARVING PAUPERS.

You know what's not conservatively correct now? Enjoying the comedy of Sarah Silverman. Kevin D. Williamson explains at National Review that Silverman thinks she's being oh so liberated but she's really "convention itself" because PC. For example:

But there are taboos and there are taboos. NBC and Conan O’Brien both apologized for airing a bit in which Miss Silverman considers the possibility of using racist sentiment to disqualify herself for an unwanted stint of jury duty by proclaiming, “I hate chinks.” Not wanting to be thought of as a racist, she instead proclaims, “I love chinks — who doesn’t?” If that was a step too far for the gentle souls at NBC, consider that that was the toned-down version; the original contained a slur directed at blacks rather than Asians.

So, I don't know -- she didn't say "nigger," so it wasn't funny? I don't get it. Well, kulturkampf, like comedy, is highly subjective, I guess.

Also, Silverman is in fact not really Jewish, because she went to an expensive school:

Miss Silverman is a kind of cultural appropriator, too, a native of New Hampshire and a graduate of the Derryfield School (this year’s tuition: $28,535) who constructed for herself a super-Jewish dramatis persona and practices a kind of postmodern Borscht Belt comedy heavy on Jewish ethnic humor.

I wonder if Williamson's seen how gentrified the Lower East Side has gotten -- oh, Christ, don't tell him, he may write another column. Where were we? Oh yeah: Silverman gave a TED talk and "the audience was less than impressed." Too bad they couldn't have booked Kevin D. Williamson for a comedy clinic instead. (Check this out, Chris Anderson: "Freud’s triune description of the human personality may be useless as a model of the mind, but it works as a method of classifying comedians." Is that Oh Wow or what?)

Oh, and guess whose name appears six times in this essay? No, it's not Molly Picon:

Barack Obama is a fan — it is not mere cultural accident that their careers are contemporaneous... 

It is only natural... that one of the more significant evangelists for Barack Obama and Obamaism would be a woman who starred in a faux French New Wave film called Féte des Pets (Fart Party)... 

...she has been as slavish a devotee of the Democratic cause generally and the cause of Barack Obama in particular... 

She makes get-out-the-vote videos that are in practice get-out-the-vote-for-Obama videos...

...Sarah Silverman, whose politics are as crass as her sense of humor, is a perfect cultural fit for the Age of Obama.

That's what we show folk call "giving 'em what they want." Sure, let him write about whatever makes him mad, just make sure it has plenty of Obama!

There are many nuggets of nonsense in the thing ("her career has been made possible by the same corrosive forces that enable the pornographer’s"), but all you really need to know is 1.) Williamson is the doofus who got mad at a lady who was using a phone in a theater and grabbed the phone and threw it, and 2.) the story is front-paged at National Review Online as "Infantile Sarah" (subhed: "A comedian for the age of Obama").

UPDATE. Jay B relates in comments that the "I love chinks" bit was performed back in 2001. Barack "Age Of" Obama and his comedy courtesan are playing a very long game indeed!

UPDATE 2. In comments also, Dr. Bethany Spencer, L.GM.: "Oh, I get it. This is one of those formulaic wingnut posts where the author lists a few things he doesn’t like then says 'because Obama' or 'because feminists' or 'because liberals.'" I believe Dr. Spencer has cracked the code.

AROUND THE HORN.

Some neat stuff on the web:

Old-timers, remember Sasha Castel? She used to be a pain in the ass. Well, she's still alive, in Australia no less, and has become funny and charming on her Self-Pollution site, talking about food, opera, and whatnot. See, there's hope for us all.

Our old friend John Williams has decided to stop laboriously pen-cil-ling and ink-ing funnies like a fucking monk, and now just zips them right the fuck out in ballpoint on his Spiral Notebook Comics blog. It's SO FREEING.

Kathleen Geier is a great writer for the Washington Monthly and others, and has decided to do Late Shows for The Real People at her own blog called Inequality Matters. She ain't wrong.

WHEN ALL YOU HAVE IS A DEATH CULT, EVERY OBAMA LOOKS LIKE A HITLER.

The White House is having a "Youth Summit"...

...offering young people from around the country an opportunity to discuss the Affordable Care Act and other issues with senior White House officials. White House Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Google+ followers ages 18-35 are eligible to apply to attend this White House event on December 4.

Interested in joining? Sign up for your chance to join other White House social media followers at the #WHYouth social.

This anodyne event has me halfway between "good for them" and "so what." But among my usual subjects, it's Hitler. No, really -- The Right Scoop:

White House youth. I think it has a certain ring to it…don’t you?

Jim Geraghty of National Review:

It's Springtime for Obama. #WHYouth

Bryan Preston of PJ Media:

We Have a ‘White House Youth’ Now?... It’s about the cult, not the country, with this administration.

(Preston also complains Obama's "hosting this 'summit'" -- Scare quotes! So-called! -- "not to talk about our nation’s history or anything that all Americans could get behind. It’s hosting this summit to transmit its talking points about Obamacare." To appease the right -- always a big concern with Democratic Administrations, alas -- I advise the President to say "Columbus sailed the ocean blue in fourteen hundred and ninety-two" before launching into his explanation of national policy/fascist propaganda.)

It's a sign of the times that, while normal people would be embarrassed to be associated with this nonsense, rightbloggers are actually reveling in this comparison of a bunch of kids visiting the White House to Nazi bund meetings. "The hashtag #WHYouth prompted all sorts of Hitler Youth-related mockery," giggles Breitbart.com. "The Photos ‘shop themselves and the tweets roll on," whoops Mary Katherine Ham at Hot Air. My favorite is RedState's Moe Lane:

Somebody in the Obama administration had an opportunity to say You know, fellows: perhaps we shouldn’t describe this upcoming young person summit thing in a way that could be heard as “White House Youth” – only he or she didn’t, and so here we go again.

It's not his fault -- they keep making him compare Obama to Hitler! Just like all those people on the internet who wouldn't be wasting their weekends Photoshopping a toothbrush mustache on Obama if he weren't always going around annexing the Sudetenland and gassing Jews.

I've been joking about this for years, but it's worth noting that Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism has had a powerful effect on modern conservatism -- mainly by lowering the brethren's reading levels, but also by convincing them that slapping a swastika on anything they don't like is analysis, and inspiring a million puke-streams like "Top 50 reasons people keep comparing Obama to Hitler" (and no, that cowboy's not kidding, nor taking his meds, apparently).

It's been going on long enough that I wouldn't surprised if it were damaging the conservative brand. Or maybe just clarifying what it stands for.

UPDATE. Meanwhile, for upmarket conservatives, James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal:

ObamaCare and the Totalitarian Mindset

That's how the toffs do it: Don't say Hitler, use abstractions. Less messy.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

about the latest round of Ooga Booga over the Knockout Game. Well, nothing to do now but sit back and wait for the racist comments to roll in!

UPDATE. Some late-breaking nuttery:

Knockout game is preview of the chaos coming to America...

In this day and age, it has become much more important for all of us to learn how to defend ourselves. As the US economy spirals downhill, people are going to become increasingly desperate. And desperate people do desperate things. The thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted on a daily basis is beginning to disappear.

It sounds like Confederate Yankee, but it's actually something called "Islamic Invitation Turkey" and appears to be what the brethren like to call an Islamofascist site. Well, I figured these two teams would find each other someday.

This one's pretty good too: "Is the Knockdown Game the Work of Government Agent Provocateurs to Start a Race War?" It's from something called The Lone Star Watchdog, but I found it via The Daily Paul, a Ron 'n' Rand EVOLution site. Who says the GOP doesn't have a deep bench?

BECAUSE YOU CAN'T SPELL THANKSGIVING WITHOUT LIBERAL FASCISM.

In his Morning Jolt thing he sends around to subscribers (here's a heavily-edited version some guy put on the internet), Jim Geraghty makes fun of the OFA PR campaign encouraging liberals to tell relatives about Obamacare at Thanksgiving dinner. Fair enough. I myself wouldn't bring it up, though if one of them came at me with some bullshit I would say, "that is some bullshit" and take it from there.

As often happens when a conservative has half a point, Geraghty keeps going until he has negative-a-point-and-a-half:

Our friend Jonah gets a lot of grief over Liberal Fascism, usually from people who have never read the book, and who usually go on to insist they don't need to in order to criticize it.

(I have read it; it's a piece of shit.)

But there is a creepy quasi-fascist vibe in this effort to turn families' holiday gatherings into an opportunity to dissuade critics of the president's policies...

When you say the word 'fascist,' people usually picture Mussolini speaking from a balcony and his high-booted goons marching around in public squares. Because we don't see those images in American society today, a lot of people recoil from labeling anyone in our modern politics with the term "fascist." 

Also because a lot of people aren't nuts.

But Mussolini wrote, "for the fascist, everything is in the state, and no human or spiritual thing exists, or has any sort of value, outside the state." Among the Organizing for Action crew, there seems to be some irresistible compulsion to take something outside the state -- Thanksgiving dinner -- and co-opt it for the purposes of the state -- or its leader, or its agenda.

Meanwhile over at his National Review blog, Geraghty encourages his readers to send out Thanksgiving cards devised by the Heritage Foundation with messages like "Let's be thankful Kathleen Sebelius isn't coaching our football team." This isn't a fascist use of the holiday at all, though, because, as Professor Goldberg has taught us, faaaart.

UPDATE. The remainder of Geraghty's thing is even worse, in a way: When a fellow wingnut suggests that maybe income equality on the massive scale we're seeing in this country isn't good for democracy, he sorta sees the point ("All societies have winners and losers, but modern America's winners are separating from the rest of us rather rapidly"), but retreats into victim-blaming:

A big question that is likely to dominate our politics in the coming years is: How much are the "losers" of modern America responsible for their circumstances?... if most of our countrymen getting the short end of the stick are folks who "worked hard and played by the rules," some significant chunk of them exacerbated their problems with bad decisions: They dropped out of school, had children before they were ready, abused alcohol or drugs, pursued unrealistic career paths... 

If most of you who are punished by inequality are blameless, comfort yourselves that your suffering also touches the nation's whores, junkies, and MFAs!

Obama has talked in the past about a “culture of irresponsibility,” but he’s mostly used that phrase in the context of Wall Street, and in fact pledged to “protect consumers from bad mortgages and greedy credit-card companies.” In his world, it’s always the big powerful corporations making trouble for the person in debt, not the person who actually ran up that debt. 

Quite a few Americans want to hear that we ourselves are most responsible for the quality of our own lives. If we could overcome that, the rest of the problems would fall like dominoes.

I guess Geraghty had to satisfy himself that income equality, like everything else, is not Wall Street's fault before he could really enjoy sending out his Heritage Foundation Thanksgiving cards.

Again I have to ask: Do these guys even know any real people?

LOL WTF OMG.

Sometimes all you have to do is quote them or, in the case of Twitchy, Michelle Malkin's alternative-universe Twitter, screencap them:

I will add, though, that it's about time for another Jonah Goldberg essay on how conservatives haz all the intellectual traditions.

UPDATE. Amy Lutz' twitter feed is a gem, too.

UPDATE 2. cleter, in comments: "Wait, is she criticizing Fluke for all the hashtags? Has she ever seen conservative kooks on twitter? With all the #tcot this and #BENGHAZI that? There's hardly room to squeeze in 'President Blacula Sucks!' or 'Hilary Pooped her pantsuit' for all the hashtags."

True, which may lead to the next wave in conservative social media floated by D Johnston: "a short sequence of letters and numbers corresponding to whatever outrage is going around. After more refinement, they will shed text altogether and become a soundboard with nothing but howls of rage." Wait, isn't that The Five?

YOUTH CULTURE STOLE HIS CHAINSAW.

If you did not know that Kanye West was the singer of the background music, by the quality of the lyrics and beat, you might think that a fourth grader was spewing rhymed obscenities...

Ah shaddap Gramps -- also known as Victor Davis Hanson, who in his latest essay regales his readership with the kind of kids-today yap that used to pad out middlebrow magazine essays. Only instead of blaming permissive parents or the Bomb, Hanson blames aesthetes:

Once classical canons of artistic, literary, or musical expression were torn down, and once those classically trained rebels who ripped them apart have passed on, we are left with the ruins of trying to shock what is perhaps beyond being shocked...

In other words, once you have rebelled against hexameters, quarter notes, or realistic representation, and after you have rebelled against that rebellion with crucifixes in urine, obscenity-laced rap, and peek-a-boo nudity on stage, what are you left with? The 20th-century rebels who knew what they did not like have been replaced by the anti-rebels who don’t know that there was ever something against which to rebel. Again, we are left with the 21st-century of Lady Gaga giving birth to a blue sphere, Miley Cyrus probing body orifices with a foam oversized finger, and Kanye West humping on a motorcycle while reciting obscene nursery-rhyme ditties.

I think general idea is that the Moderns ruined everything, but it's hard to be sure; the rebellion against "hexameters," for one thing, would seem to mean most poetry after the ancients -- when Shakespeare wrote in iambic pentameter, was Party in the U.S.A. the inevitable result? Also, if culture fell when "realistic representation" ceased to be an aspiration, where does that leave Agamemnon? It's less representational than Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Maybe everything really went downhill after ring shouts and cave paintings.

I wondered why Hanson was even bothering with this Andy Rooney schtick, and then found to my horror that he thinks it has something to do with Obamacare.

Why would a culture that canonizes a Kanye West, Miley Cyrus, or Lady Gaga have the discrimination to determine whether their chief executive tells the truth or lies? Obamacare is a great program in a way that West, Cyrus, and Gaga are great artists, in a way that more iPads will mean more geniuses.

Well, in a way he's got a point -- would stuff like Hanson's even be tolerated if we hadn't been inured to it by decades of absurdism?

Next week: The curse of Instagramsci!

UPDATE. In comments, Dr. Hunky Jimpjorps: "It's like one of those Oliver Sacks patient histories: classics expert Victor H. has woken up every day since about 1964 to be shocked anew by the existence of pop culture."

Also, for newcomers, here's the referent for the title.

UPDATE. Whetstone, in comments: "Oh, horseshit. Ask someone who actually pays attention to contemporary popular music—rather than just railing about whatever YouTube video happened to pop up on PJ Media—whether there are 'hierarchies.'" It's one of the institutionalized absurdities of the Culture War that guys like Hanson believe pop culture represents some refutation of values. Pop fans actually have much more rigid formal demands than high art fans at this point; in the dimmer ones, they're made even more rigid by sentimentality, and if you don't believe me get a load of this Star Wars dork who's also a National Review writer -- though I warn you, you may throw your action figures away after reading it. Sample: "And why would Disney go to the bother of globe-trotting in search of future celebrities if not to brazenly drum up publicity? If that’s true, it totally worked, with Exhibit A being the article you’re reading right now." Next she'll do a story where she realizes actors don't make up their own lines.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about two events last week -- the filibuster vote and the Iran deal -- that seem to have thrown the brethren for a loop. They'd gotten used to just piling abuse on Obamacare, and I think they genuinely believed they'd never have to work hard for a dollar again. No wonder they're pissed!

Not that they haven't quickly developed some tropes for the occasion, but they're kinda lame. For example, after referring to the "Obamacare train wreck" -- man, that one never gets old --  Doug Powers of the Michelle Malkin site refers to Obama's attempts to seat judges on the D.C. Court of Appeals, which the GOP filibusters was blocking, as "court stacking." This comes straight off the Republican Party boilerplate, which would embarrass Powers if he had any pride, but worse that that, how's that supposed to motivate voters? Maybe they think it sounds enough like "court packing" that some elderly voters will get outraged and storm the voting booths in 2014, thinking they're turning out for Wendell Willkie.

UPDATE. On the Iran tip, I missed this bit from Power Line's Paul Mirengoff, claiming that Obama and Kerry "grant concessions to regime that don’t like America because they themselves don’t like America all that much" and want to surrender it to Islamic fundamentalism, which totally rocks. Mirengoff cites as back-up the fact that after serving in Vietnam, Kerry said he thought the war was a mistake. (Mirengoff, uncontaminated by experience of combat, presumably thinks it was great.) Most Americans seem to share Kerry's opinion, which means they also don't like America, which is why they reelected the America-disliking Obama in 2012, which leaves Mirengoff to wait patiently, as a representative of the Saving Remnant, for Jesus to reincarnate Reagan and reclaim his people. At least that's the charitable explanation; it may just be that Mirengoff's an idiot.

FORCED INTO HEALTH CARE: A MOTHER'S LAMENT.

Joining John Birch and Joe McCarthy in the pantheon of conservative martyrs is Nicole L. Hopkins' mom, who is forced by the Kenyan Pretender to have free health care via the hated Medicaid -- disguised as Washington Apple Health, "the mawkish rebranding of Medicaid in Washington state," but everyone will know she's reduced to taking poor-people medicine, especially since she complained about it in the Wall Street Journal:

"How has it come to this?" she asked in one of our several talks over the past few weeks about what was happening. When she was a working mother and I was young, she easily carried health insurance for our whole family. "How have I fallen this far?"... 

"I just don't expect anything positive out of getting free health care," she said. "I don't see why other people should have to pay for my care, whether it be through taxes or otherwise." In paying for health insurance herself—she won't accept help from her family, either—she was safeguarding her dignity and independence and her sense of being a fully functioning member of society.

I sincerely do not get this. If Uncle Sam decided to send me food stamps, notwithstanding that I have a job, I wouldn't look for a national newspaper to amplify my cries of outrage. This is not because I am a moocher or a socialist, it's because I'm not nuts. Free food? Thanks, Obama!

But Mom is outraged, her daughter says, that she's been "in effect, ordered to take a handout." Well, we've all got our problems. Maybe don't use it, I guess? What am I missing here?

UPDATE. At RedState, Some Guy takes a study showing no significant change in measured health outcomes over two years of Medicaid to mean that nobody who was sick got better under treatment (bet Some Guy got his MPH at Trump University), and suggests we just get rid of the damn thing and put all paupers on the Pay or Die system. Well, at least Nicole L. Hopkins' mom would be spared some indignity.

HIS PERFECT RECORD OF WRONGNESS IS INTACT.

I've been living in DC for a couple years now, and I don't talk about it much because, well, you know me -- if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything! Kidding, slightly. Our Northeast neighborhood is pretty chill and friendly, except for the white people, and DC certainly has world-class museums and a couple nice bars. But let's be frank: This is no New York. For example, the entertainment "corridor" to which we are closest, the fabled H Street, is a joke. Most of the venues are pitched at kids -- that is, the brown-nosing little climbers who throng DC's "corridors" on weekends -- and since DC's small scale allows rapacious developers to completely overwhelm whatever strip they choose to devour, it has made the street into a Disneyland of crap. Last year some schmo invested what looks like at least half a mil to erect a shiny, art-directed new joint here that sells -- I swear to God -- cheesesteaks and flavored ices. It's a Bennigan's bohemia.

I could go on, but why should I -- Isn't the fact that Andrew Sullivan prefers DC to New York proof enough for you? Apparently he has a long thing about it in the Times of London, to which I'm not going to subscribe but the bits that have been quoted are probably all I should read for my heart's sake:

Every journey to any other place in the city is a battle of wills with everyone else; no one ever steps aside or evinces the slightest shade of civility on the pavement. There are no queues, just teeming masses of selfishness and hostility...

Picture Sullivan pausing to contemplate the muse of centrism on a Midtown sidewalk and getting knocked on his ass by people who have to get to fucking work. It improved my day!

If you think you’ll find intellectual stimulation you’re thinking of another era. The conversations are invariably about money or property or schools.

What else would one talk to Andrew Sullivan about? They were trying to do you a favor, schmuck. Or maybe themselves -- just imagining Sullivan trying to talk about art, for example, makes me cringe.

If you bring up any political subject you are engulfed by a smug liberal consensus that borders on outright bigotry and brutal intolerance towards dissent.

"Oh, so you're that asshole Andrew Sullivan, huh? Well let me tell you something...." -- Overhead at the 92nd Street Y. After years of having his ass kissed, Sullivan probably ran into people who don't care who Andrew Sullivan is. No wonder he fled.

Oh, Sullivan earlier referred to DC as a "Second Brooklyn." This is probably based on brunches in the Heights with Martin Amis. "And over there, Andrew, is where Norman Mailer used to live." "Rather small, isn't it? Have I mentioned my DC apartment? 1500 square feet of a school classroom I got for a steal in 1991?" "Many times."

AAAAANNNNND... SCENE.

My thanks to mortimer2000 in comments on a previous post for alerting me to this job listing:

Bestselling author and columnist, Jonah Goldberg, writes on U.S. politics and culture as a fellow at AEI. One of the most prominent conservative political commentators today, Goldberg frequently appears on television and radio shows, and his syndicated columns are circulated widely across the United States. Interns will conduct research on a large range of policy-related topics to assist Mr. Goldberg with his columns, lectures, and media appearances. The ideal candidate will possess strong research and writing skills, as well as a demonstrated interest in U.S. politics, culture, and the media. 

Job Location
Washington, District of Columbia, United States 

Position Type
Intern 

Salary
0.00 - 0.00 USD

Doesn't that suggest a scene --

JONAH and K-LO in the NR breakroom; JONAH thumbs through a pile of resumes.

JONAH. (through a mouthful of Hot Pockets) Lookit all these resumes from old guys! (pulls one out) "Mark Gauvreau Judge." God, why can't they get their moms to get them jobs! Losers. (wipes mouth with resume)

K-LO. (sniffs) Something smells -- (gasps, stands) Mother of Christ! Jonah, not again! (gags, pulls her wimple across her nose and mouth) Do you have Satan inside you?

JONAH. Better call a exorcist, K-Lo, 'cuz I just shotgunned a can of these.

JONAH holds up an empty tube of French's French Fried Onion Rings, and simultaneously farts, knocking over a ketchup bottle and two wastebaskets. K-LO flees.

JONAH. If ya can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Hey, I should put that in the ad! (pulls a resume marked BEN SHAPIRO out of the pile, reads aloud as he writes on the back with eyeliner pencil) "Candidate must have high level important eh-pee-see-mo-lotical discussions with his boss,  Jonah Goldberg." (wraps one of his hands with the resume, talks to it) So, you went to Harvard, huh? (shakes hand wrapped in resume, speaks in a falsetto) "Yes I did, Mr. Goldberg, I'm a very smart man and I'm 40 years old and I write for free on the internet." (normal voice) Oh, I see. Well, tell me, Mr. Harvard Man, can you tell me what is happening now? (farts, knocking down a set of venetian blinds. Sirens are heard in the distance.) "Oooooh, Mr. Goldberg, you made a very bad fart!" Is that so? Well perhaps they didn't teach you at Harvard that HE WHO SMELT IT DEALT IT! "Ooooh noooo!" Oh yes! "Ooooh noooooo!" Oh yes! (JONAH pushes the resume-draped hand between his legs) Ha! "Ack! Oh no! P.U.! It stinks in here! Lemme gooooo!" No! "Lemme gooooo! Lemme --"

TWO FIREFIGHTERS in Hazmat suits burst in and lay hands on JONAH.

FIREFIGHTER. Methane levels are beyond the safety limit, sir! We're taking you out of here!

JONAH: LIBERAL FASCISM!

He lunges and grabs an industrial-size bag of Tostitos Hint of Jalapeno Chips as they carry him away.