RACE, TO THE BOTTOM. The absurd hit piece "So Much For That 'Conversation' on Race" in Politico today -- in which the White House, having been caught out by the rageaholic race-baiting techniques of Andrew Breitbart, is criticized for racial insensitivity by Erick Erickson and Abigail Thernstrom, and Obama's record on helping black people is compared unfavorably to Bill Clinton's -- shows just how it works:

• Right-wingers gin up a controversy allegedly proving that the Obama Administration is anti-white;
• Obama, rather than telling them to kiss his black ass, bends over backwards to accommodate them;
• The establishment tut-tuts over Obama's incompetence while the wingnuts go looking for more Black Panthers to scream about.

I don't make Obama for a wimp, so I assume he doesn't tell them to kiss his black ass because he's taken the measure of white insecurity and decided the nation just couldn't take it if he did. I have to admire his restraint. In his place I'd be running around with a torch yelling "Ungawa."

UPDATE. In comments, Hunger Tallest Palin breaks it down: "'And so with great sorrow, I must conclude n!gger n!gger n!gger!'" See also.

UPDATE 2. The method its further exemplified at Gawker, where commenters pull hoary routines like "As a Democrat who voted for Obama... under the bus," and suggesting we avenge Shirley Sherrod by voting Republican.

UPDATE 3: Oh Jesus -- Shorter The Anchoress: May the good Lord show Sister Sherrod the error of her ways and get her to renounce the NAACP, hallelujah!

Wonder if she's seen this?

IDIOCRACY. This is the most depressing thing I've read today (but then, I got up late):

President Obama's speech on the gulf oil disaster may have gone over the heads of many in his audience, according to an analysis of the 18-minute talk released Wednesday.

Tuesday night's speech from the Oval Office of the White House was written to a 9.8 grade level, said Paul J.J. Payack, president of Global Language Monitor...

Though the president used slightly less than four sentences per paragraph, his 19.8 words per sentence "added some difficulty for his target audience," Payack said...

It's depressing on several levels. It's like a parfait of suck.

First, that someone at CNN gathered this opinion, and someone else at CNN said, "Let's use it, but find a way not to say out loud that people are idiots."

Next, the widespread reports that nobody likes the speech because it proposed long-term solutions to our oil dependency when everyone just wanted Obama to announce he had developed a giant oil tampon in his secret laboratory.

There's also the diligent repetition of the "Rahm Emanuel said never let a crisis go to waste which means Democrat treehuggers supertax skree" mantra. (And that's just in the trad rightwing news sources -- as usual, their blog operatives are better at mindlessly repeating it.) Thus you get guys like Lamar Alexander telling constituents about "the advice of the White House Chief of Staff which has been so often quoted," which 99 percent of them, not being poli-sci nerds, never heard of before he told them -- but will probably go away remembering that it's supposed to be a famous saying, having something to do with Obama and skree.

Worst of all is the presumption that even in the face of vivid, horrible consequences of our oil culture, these people continue to insist there's no point in even trying to change it. Erick Erickson makes this "argument" about as well as anyone:

Most oil goes to fueling our cars. Windmills, nuclear reactors, and solar panels will not fuel our cars. If we don’t extract the oil, we will grow more and more dependent on Hugo Chavez and Iranian President I’manutjob. I realize he doesn’t want a crisis to go to waste, but his priorities are clearly not those of the rest of the nation.

Well, no one will accuse him of writing to the 9.8 grade level.

Did I say that was the worst of all? Actually the worst of all is that this horseshit might actually go over.

UPDATE. Aw Jeez, Joe Barton:



(My homeboy! Well, Texas ain't all Willie Nelson and chicken fried bacon.)

Astonishingly, this is the GOP talking point on the issue. At first I was surprised their schtick wasn't to investigate the corrupt deal between Obama and BP -- but then I realized that would require them to say something bad about an oil company. Not fucking likely. So they have to apologize to BP on behalf of the real America (i.e., lobbyists and nuts).

THE FEAST OF UNREASON. In 2008, enraged by untoward election results, RedState's Erick Erickson announced "Operation Leper," for the purpose of "tracking down all the people from the McCain campaign now whispering smears against Governor Palin to Carl Cameron and others" so that, when they were caught, Erickson and his colleagues might "make these few people political lepers."

In 2009, when Doug Hoffman screwed the pooch in NY-23, Erickson roared:

The GOP Establishment Must Be Purged as the GOP Loses in NY-23...

I am, however, serious that the GOP must purge its staff and leaders who have decided to always go with the liberal. In particular, the NRCC, NRSC, and RNC need some wholesale job terminations of senior staff.

(All typographic peculiarities in the original.) Now that -- at Erickson's urging -- insufficiently rightwing Utah GOP Senator Bob Bennett has been defenestrated by his own party, Erickson has declared new realities in effect. None of this "purge" stuff! Erickson has found a longer and more sonorous keyword, so listen up, "you media types who look for great meaning in all things considered":

Your shibboleths are crumbling around you and you grasp it not. As you struggle to interpret what the tea parties do and do not mean, you media types and others are getting Utah all wrong.

It’s not about a purge. It’s about an insurrection.

Actually "insurrection" doesn't even cover the great scope of it:

Now, the great disentangling of conservatism has begun.

If the next big Tea Party win comes soon and big enough, "great disentangling" will remain the password; if not, after some screaming for heads to roll, we will get a "grand expostulation" or a "disembraining" (Hurrah, arse-horns, long live King Erick!).

People who go in for purges, manifestos, battle flags, and fanciful names for their own movements are either genuine revolutionaries, emotional cripples, or both. The odds that Erickson is another George Washington are very, very, very slim.

UPDATE. I'm always impressed with the mockery innovations of my commenters ("get with the pogrom," "Gollum as interpreted by Gilbert Gottfried," etc). They also notice that Erickson's "your shibboleths are crumbling around you and you grasp it not" is, in the words of one reader, "irredeemably douchey."

Yeah, when they get into the Forsooth and Zounds lingo it's always a little creepy. Most rightbloggers are aware of poetic conventions -- from Gor novels, if nowhere else -- but, being propagandists rather than poets, they see only one purpose for them: To throw a little reverb on their spiel so's they sound scary and sepulchral-like. It's meant, I believe, as a signal for the punters to further suspend their disbelief. Though, the way they're acting these days, I'd say all of them have already gone the full limit.

NEVER FORGET 4/7! First those seamen were rescued from pirates, which was an Obama Administration failure. Then the crotch-bomber failed to crotch-bomb a plane, which was another Obama Administration failure.

But that was nothing. Now a diplomat -- with an Ay-rab name! (or as Founding Bloggers like to call such people, "a man with striking similarities to the profile of a potential terrorist") -- smoked a cigarette in an airborne restroom and made a snotty comment! And we had to turn him loose!

Aargh! Blaargh! Aargh and Blaargh again! "All of that talk about making our enemies like us and forgiving us in the post-Bush era isn’t really working out for us, is it?" thunders Erick Erickson. Later he notes grimly that "speculation has moved" to what actually happened. But we will never, ever forget 4/7. (Hey, 4 goes twice into eight! 2-4-8 -- there's got to be some numerological significance to this.) (UPDATE: It was last night, not this morning -- numerology crisis averted!)

Etc. My favorite (so far -- these guys can always top themselves) is from The American Pundit, who's all like "'Diplomatic immunity!' 'BOOM!' 'Revoked!'" across the entire diplomatic corps:

We tried to have sex with a child, but we had to release him and he still leaves free because of his diplomatic immunity.

Don't ever change, American Pundit, and especially don't ever change that typo.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, picking through some of the recent attacks on Obama during his vacation, including the recently discussed Photo Phunnies. There's plenty of other choice stuff, including a rant by Erick Erickson suggesting that the President's condolences on the CIA agents recently killed in Afghanistan might be an attempt to "sabotage the intelligence community." Of course, if Obama hadn't said anything, it would prove he hates America's Spooks.

One thing I didn't get into was the high volume of complaints that Obama had a vacation at all, and had the temerity to golf during it. This is an old trope among the brethren ("Media Cheer Obama's Golf Outings; Criticized Republicans' Trips to Course"). I wonder how long it'll be before someone puts up an Obama Golf Watch.

ELECTORO-SHOCK. I'm very tired after Election Night -- drunkblogging these things is fun, in a dudgeon-stroking way, but hard on my liver and my lights -- but if I need boosting during the day, I will take little nips off the rightblogger responses to the Hoffman debacle. Here's my early-a.m. scan. BradlyNo seems to be enjoying particularly the Black Knight routine of Erick Erickson. That guy was absolutely bughouse through the home stretch (though unlike R.S. McCain, he kept his overt screaming fits to himself), and his declaration of victory in NY-23 is a fitting climax to the whole crazy business.

Though I'm sure someone will come along to top him.

In a way it's too bad we don't have Citizen Hoffman going the Washington to carve out a bold path as the Bernie Sanders of the GOP, and staring with incomprehension at farm bills and such like. I had a clock all set up for counting the minutes until his RedState buddies put a fatwa on him for voting yes to an appropriations bill. Congratulations meanwhile to the Republicans in Virginia and Jersey, who I'm sure will provide much amusement in the days to come.

SERIOUS AS CANCER, BUT MUCH FUNNIER. Some of us are happy to hear Ted Kennedy's cancer is in remission because we're human beings. And some of us are happy to hear it because they are Erick Erickson, Beastmaster of RedState, with the ability to make turn anything into a homily on the socialist menace.

The sad and tragic irony is that when Senator Kennedy returns to work, he will actively work to deny you the access to treatment he himself had.

What, he was treated by wizards? That must be it. Even I can see a doctor, which is what I thought Ted was doing, but I damn sure as hell can't see a wizard when I'm sick. Not unless he's in-network.

Actually I'm not that far off -- turns out Erickson's talking about an imaginary health care system:

Given media reports of Senator Kennedy’s health, we can postulate that, had Senator Kennedy had access to healthcare under the system he intends to design, he would not have gotten the treatment that put his cancer in remission.

We can also postulate one other thing — when Senator Kennedy does design the Democrats’ healthcare system, they will make sure people like Senator Kennedy are not subjected to it.

We can also postulate that this evil Obamacare will shoot lasers from its fingertips that will be designed specifically to attack pre-borns, elderly priests, and Iraq War veterans. And that it will be homosexual, and drive a Prius.

Coming up: When Ted Kennedy gets home, he'll have a nice hot meal -- the kind Americans will never get if Obamagriculture passes!

UPDATE. Turns out Kennedy's cancer may not be in remission after all. More proof that government healthcare doesn't work!

NOTHING BUT A MAN. When Erick Erickson tells you "the left was right," you know there's got to be something funny going on.

The left, when it decided Bristol Palin was fair game, went after Levi Johnson for being a thug and redneck. He was not interested in college -- only in scoring with the Governor’s daughter. The classic tale of the high school jock who is, in essence, a low life loser in it for a good time. The left and media regaled the rest of us with tales of what a loser the Palin kid slept with.

The left was right. Now, though, they can’t be bothered by it.

Actually, the people who were "bothered with it" -- that is, Levi Johnson as a subject, or object -- during the late campaign were the folks who spent some days spinning Johnson and his knocked-up girlfriend into a holy family for political purposes. That bloom faded pretty quick and they abandoned him. Now he's out there taking care of himself as best he can.

Erickson imagines Johnson "will be greeted as a hero by the left because boosting him hurts Sarah Palin." Like David Brock, I guess, or Mother Kusters. But I'm not -- nor, I guess, are most of us -- interested in Johnson as a political football, to be intercepted and carried toward the goal line. The poor guy has been used enough by his so-called friends.