A NEW DISCOVERY.

Some of you may remember what fun I used to have with a little number called Acculturated, a rightwing ladymag apparently created to propagandize readers of the Seven Sisters and fashion books. They delivered some lulus, including columns by Boof Kavanaugh buddy Mark Gauvreau Judge and the deathless coochphrase “skin bus to Tuna Town,” before giving up the ghost at the end of 2017.

But wait! There is another, apparently: Something called Evie, which has apparently been operating under the radar since last year. It offers a premium print version, the covers of which appear to emulate the design of Elle, but mostly it’s online. 

I’m probably going to more fully scan the rack, as it were, for Roy Edroso Breaks It Down tomorrow, but for now I want to call your attention to this honey from August, “Man-Hating Feminism Is Turning Us Into Narcissists,” by staff writer Meghan Dillon. It’s all about how, while the good feminists of yore were about “equality and suffrage,” the kind you whores practice is about “sexual empowerment, man-hating, and bashing women who disagree with them.” Dillon also tells us that though stupid feminists think “there would be no more wars if women ruled the world” (“I even heard this sentiment echoed from history professors when I was in college”), she counters that “women can be just as cruel as men” and cites Margaret Thatcher as an example. (I’m not sure she thought that one through.) 

In defense of her thesis Dillon cites authorities like “podcast host Suzanne Venker” and Jessa Crispin, which brings me to my favorite part:

Crispin argues that this attitude leads to a sense of grandiose self-importance, making some modern feminists think they’re more important simply because they’re women. This sense of self-importance (and lack of empathy for others) leads to narcissism, as Crispin writes, “It is a failure of empathy to identify yourself only with those who resemble you. That is as narcissistic as working exclusively in your own self-interest.”

I can’t think of a more relevant example for this phenomenon than what Bachelorette fans witnessed during the season 17 finale.

Very promising! More tomorrow at REBID. 

UPDATE. My fuller consideration of Evie is up now. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

It's a zeitgeist thing. Perhaps you can relate! 

•   I've unleashed another issue of my newsletter, Roy Edroso Breaks It Down, for which subscribers pay big money (well, money anyway) but which you lot can have free 'cause I'm socialistic. It's my vision of how Mick Mulvaney and Trump post-mortemed Mulvaney's insane press conference over a nice bowl of Dr. Bornstein's formula. (I don't believe the obviously planted story that Trump was angry with Mulvaney's presser and made him go back and fix it -- I assume he wanted Mulvaney to be as belligerent about his criminality as he was, as part of his longtime process of numbing the public to his grifts. If anything Mulvaney probably pushed to have his second version on the public record in case some law enforcement agency finally gets the drop on this mob.)

•   After yesterday's fuckfest of Trump corruption -- more evidence of quid pro quo with Ukraine, selling out the Kurds, Trump awarding his own hotel a nice fat G7 contract, Rick Perry (recently implicated in the Ukraine mess) resigning, etc. -- what does Jim Geraghty have for his National Review roundup?

- How conservatives should love Mark Zuckerberg for refusing to vet his ads, which would be totalitarian ("Mark Zuckerberg Refuses to Bend the Knee");

- How Trump's "Impeachment Trial Could Come at the Worst Time" for the Democrats in the Senate (no speculation as to how Trump's impeachment trial, however, would affect Trump);

- "Amazon Decides It’s Had Enough Socialism in Seattle Politics" and is flooding the local city council races with money for corporatist candidates, which is totally not the "crony capitalism" Geraghty normally bitches about.

And in an addendum Geraghty applauds a former head of Planned Parenthood for

recognizing moral complexities and moral discomfort, at a time when the Democratic party and her previous employer are increasingly adamant that the issue isn’t complicated, and that any limitation under any circumstances represents a draconian patriarchal injustice. Wen sounds like the kind of pro-choice advocate that a pro-lifer could have a good conversation with, and in this era, that’s a small miracle.

and that conversation would start with "here's why you're a babykiller" and the pro-lifer throwing a jar of festuses at her.

•   Here, have another treat from the newsletter jar! This one's about what that rumored new conservative network might look like.

•   It's pretty axiomatic that you can judge someone by how they treat people who are serving them. Well:

Now, it's no shock that Fox News people would be total dicks, but I would take it further and say that -- while there are some nice people with conservative views -- as conservatism disintegrates as an ideology and becomes ever more clearly the "series of irritable mental gestures" Lionel Trilling described, it seems just being a specific kind of asshole is nearly all that conservatism demands. I mean, what do they believe in? Good stewardship of the public fisc? Come the fuck on. This quote from Yuval Levin in Jonah Goldberg's newsletter The Dispatch shows, I assume inadvertently, how ridiculous that is:

“The most conservative—fiscally conservative and otherwise—Republican members had a sense that they were there on behalf of a certain kind of voter, and then it turned out that it was their voters who were the first to go for Trump. And Trump talked about none of the things that they thought those voters cared a lot about,” Levin said. “They’re very insecure about their understanding of the political circumstances that they’re living through right now. And part of what that insecurity means is they just don’t bring up stuff that they’re not sure about.”

LOL. Imagine goons like Louie Gohmert and Susan Collins wandering the halls of Congress and having the existential crisis described here. "My voters don't care if we tax-cut our Treasury into the Grand Canyon so long as none of the gains go to black people? My whole life has been a lie!" And what else are they supposed to believe in? Freedom for the Kurds? "All men are created equal"? Who among them could even say it with a straight face? No, the jig is up and the grift is everything. And who's going to attracted to such a cause? Greedy, self-centered assholes. Hell, I wouldn't be shocked if Trump drops a bit into his roadshow about how servers don't deserve tips -- knowing that, unlike his idiot fans, he never has to worry about his next cup of coffee coming with a saliva infusion, because for the modern conservative even one's colleagues are just there to be conned.

2018: THE YEAR IN BULLSHIT, PART 1.

[See Part 2 and Part 3 as well.]

© 2014 Sean P. Anderson used under a Creative Commons license

10. The (Blessed) Silencing of Alex Jones. Remember that brief moment last summer when Alex Jones became the new John Peter Zenger because Facebook and YouTube "censored" him and all the top wingnuts nailed their colors to his escutcheon? You don't? Well, maybe that's because after a brief inital burst of caterwauling they all fucked off and left him to rot in his (still highly visible and lucrative) exile.

Here in December 2018, it's hard to imagine that conservatives were blubbering over Jones' removal from platforms that did not want him aboard. National Review's Theodore Kupfer did the old unintended-consequences thing: "Facebook can’t make Alex Jones go away; banning him might add to his support and further radicalize his fans." Others cried lefty censorship: "This is absolutely the first stage in a coordinated plan to deplatform everyone on the right," declared Instapundit Glenn Reynolds. All agreed Liberals were the Real Fascists.

Reynolds' prediction, alas, has not come true, and there are still rightwing nutcakes all over the damn place -- and while claiming they've been unpersoned or deplatformed has become a rite of passage for them (see Laura Loomer chaining herself to Twitter HQ), even bigtime conservatives have for the most part stopped playing along. You don't see many REMEMBER ALEX JONES memorials on the Right.

It's easy to see why: As it becomes increasingly clear, especially since the midterms, that relying on only the nuttiest Americans to lift them to victory is not a repeatable strategy, conservatives are not as eager as once they were to be represented by crackpots and carny clowns. Speaking of which: keep an eye out because their abandonment of Jones will probably serve as a model for their abandonment of the ever-less-popular Trump.

© 2018 Mark Dillman used under a Creative Commons license

9. OMG AOC! I know the "Fill In The Blank Derangement Syndrome" template has been going since the Dawn of the Clintons, but look: Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is merely a freshman Congressmember from a safe seat in New York City, yet conservatives have gone ballistic over her. In fact they've been deranged since she beat the stand-pat Democratic incumbent for the nomination in July. Back then they were rattled that she was an unashamed Democratic Socialists of America member -- notwithstanding that a lot of other DSA candidates have been winning elections. (Which may be part of the reason for the syndrome -- a glimmer of awareness on the Right's part that Trump has made conservatism so toxic voters will run further to the left than Hillary Clinton ever dreamed of going.)

But even worse from a rightwing perspective, this socialist is popular: AOC is good on the stump and has fired up thousands of fans, which makes attacking her kind of a "this thing everyone likes is bad" proposition. Here's Virginia Kruter at The Daily Caller -- "YES, ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ ‘INSPIRED’ ME. NO, NOT IN THE WAY SHE THINKS... So, Rep.-elect Ocasio-Cortez, you did inspire me... You inspired me to fight the creep of socialism with everything I have. And you inspired me to raise my children to do the same." That's totally the kind of argument winners make.

Also, AOC is cute, Hispanic, *and* unafraid to clap back at dull-witted wingnuts, which attributes, taken together, probably ring at least a dozen psychosexual bells for conservatives. Did you see how she smacked a Washington Examiner facotum for his "creep shot" analysis of her walking down the halls of Congress in a dress? Imagine being a rightwing player accustomed to treating young women like chattel getting that kind of lip from a young Puertorriqueña with a House seat as thousands cheer.

Not only do liberals talk about how AOC drives conservatives crazy ("Why conservatives love to hate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez" -- Jane Coaston, Vox) --  so do conservatives ("Conservatives Keep Giving Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Exactly What She Wants" -- Jim Geraghty, National Review). It's like they figure there's nothing they can do about it except sluice off some of the clickbait.

My favorite in that genre is Kevin D. Williamson trying to turn it around with his traditional snotty patter -- "Ocasio-Cortez describes herself as a socialist," he quips, "a declaration mitigated somewhat by the fact that she doesn’t seem to know what the word 'socialist' means." There is only one thing worse than being witty, and that is not being witty. But even this notorious troll seems to sense it isn't working and finally goes full corncob, telling his fellow conservatives "if they were smarter, they’d be grateful [that]... this callow dilettante is the best the other side has to offer." That should be some comfort as she continues to kick their sorry asses.

8. The Kavanaugh hearings and the end of the Roe repeal boom. When SCOTUS "swing vote" Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement in July, wingnuts cheered the imminent end of the right to abortion. "The central mandate for the man or woman who will take his seat, and for all the justices," Glory-Hallelujah'd the Washington Examiner, under the unambiguous headline "Repeal Roe v. Wade," "is to wipe away a disgrace that ranks alongside Dred Scott, and overtun [sic] Roe and Casey.”

As Trump replacement Brett Kavanaugh was exposed as a groper and a goon (and, I was shocked to learn, a buddy-pal of longtime alicublog figure of fun Mark Judge), we heard more talk about all the women Kavanaugh didn't rape, and about how it was actually someone else disguised as Kavanaugh who tried to rape that lady, and less about how he was going to make rape victims bear their rape-babies. Theocons like Ross Douthat have kept the faith, but other conservatives have been tucking their hands in their pockets, whistling, and walking away -- and since Kavanaugh appeared to help Planned Parenthood in a recent SCOTUS decision, we're even seeing headlines like "Brett Kavanaugh is not the pro-life savior you're looking for" at the Washington Examiner.

It was fun to dream of damning women to unwanted children in the fall of 2018 -- but with elections and polls showing Republicans becoming even more unpopular, the idea of a sexual batterer repealing Roe v. Wade is suddenly less attractive to them. We don't know what the asshole will do in the clutch, but we do know he's not committed to anything so much as his career -- and probably the goodwill of the assholes who probably let him know they made him and can break him. So in one sense, at least, the Kavanaugh hearings may have done some good.

7. The Rod Dreher "Reader" "Mailbag." This is not a matter of national interest, but of my own desires (which are... unconventional), so give the blogger some: There's so much to enjoy about Benedict Option author/hyper-holy-roller Rod Dreher -- his racism, his gay panic, his love of fascist dictators. But my favorite Dreherism is his use of "mail" from "readers" to back up his points. These missives are often from a Democrat who now hates Democrats, a liberal who now hates liberals, or a Wiccan who now hates Wicca -- all of whom express themselves very clearly in a similar tone of voice.

One of 2018's great pieces of "reader" "mail" was the one in which the proud daughter of a "Scots-Irish 'clan'" laments that her family is being "torn apart" by an "LGBT bully" -- that is, a gay cousin "who publicly shames family members on Facebook." (Though this woman calls the gay cousin a "terrorist" she didn't say how or why his Facebook posts do so much damage. My guess -- assuming, for the sake of argument, that these people exist -- is that he described some family sleepovers.)

Another is from a "reader" who reports the nice young fellow down at the store was transferred to a distant location as punishment because he said he'd be uncomfortable using "transgender pronouns." I tell ya, it's a gulag out there ("there are some very obvious common threads between what happened in the early Soviet days and what we see today") for folks who want he-shes to know their place!

But here's my 2018 favorite:

I’m certainly not a typical Trump supporter — I believe in climate change and America’s responsibility to take policy steps to reduce our contribution to it, I’m anti-NRA, pro-Obamacare to an extent, and detest the Republican Party generally... 

But leaving the nuclear issue aside, the Left’s behavior in the last year has pushed me steadily more and more in the direction of being willing to vote for a sort of lower-key Trump (someone like Ben Shapiro)...

Soon Brother Rod will notice those Beto-Bernie fights that currently inflame the internet and propose the Virgin Ben as a unity candidate. You read it here first!

Stay tuned for Part 2 and Part 3 over the next few days.

FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT.

Sad news from Culture Warsyltucky:

As of January 1, 2018, Acculturated.com is no longer publishing new content. Our archives will remain available. 

Thank you to all of our readers, who inspired us to think about the many ways pop culture matters.

I still remember back in 2012 when, seemingly spurred by Ole Perfesser Instapundit's call for rightwing ladymags (but funded by Lord knows who), this outpost began tossing (but gently! And underhand, like a lady!) little Kultur bombs like this one about how feminism is alright but Downton Abbey showed you how the old-fashioned idea of womanhood was in many ways better, particularly if you were rich: "One side of me envies the women of Downton ever so slightly," thrilled Ashley E. McGuire. "Envies the thought of my husband referring to me as 'her ladyship.'" (I can't help but think of some slobby guy in a soiled t-shirt yelling from the kitchen, "Yer meatball sub is ready, yer ladyship!")

For five years, Acculturated gave us this and more; here are my few clips from their era which may be the only memorial some of their great works will ever have -- were it not for me, who would remember McGuire's "Is Ivanka Trump America's Kate Middleton?" or that ideas like "Drugs are ruining EDM" or pseudo-academic thumb-suckers like "'Fuller House' and the Disappearance of Marriage" were once entertained by presumably straight-faced editors before being released upon an apathetic public.

Acculturated also gave an outlet for Mark "Gauvreau" Judge, a Kulturkampfer with a long history in the movement that includes a 90s attempt to spread conservatism though swing dancing ("in the revival of swing dancing, [Judge] detects a model for cultural renewal," blurbed his publisher); without Acculturated, we may have missed such late Judgean gems as

When I was in high school at Georgetown Prep, a Jesuit school that prided itself on producing men who could both lay down a block and conjugate Latin, we had a term for well-rounded women: “cool chicks.”

I confess, I worry for Judge; in our low, mean, Breitbartian time, what conservative publisher will accommodate his daintily daffy style? I worry less for the many, often three-named junior misses who filled many of Acculturated's pages; consider, for example, McGuire's resume:

She has appeared on CNN, CNN International, CBS News, Fox News, PBS, The History Channel, HuffPo Live, ABC/Yahoo News Live, EWTN, and the BBC, and her writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, First Things, the Claremont Review of Books, and the Huffington Post, among others...

Like many a pundit maudit before me, I have a soft spot for lunatics and whackadoodles, and Acculturated's Bizarro analyses often came close to appealing to that part of my nature. But that was always spoiled by my awareness that when all was said and done, Acculturated was just a wingnut welfare warm-up studio, and instead of clawing their way out of incompetence or, like Ed Wood, apotheosizing it, these writers were just going to get kicked upstairs and given tighter briefs ("Nice idea about 'Fuller House,' honey, but howsa 'bout you dumb it down for National Review into something like, 'Why Lena Dunham Is a Whore'?"), and over time whatever mad effulgence they had would cool and harden into careerism, and they would still be shitty writers. Well, there are plenty of real mad geniuses out there to fuss over.

UPDATE. Comments are a gas, by which I mean part of the toxic miasma that has poisoned Western Civilization and which Acculturated sought in vain to dispel -- but funny! BigHank53 offers a clue as to why the site's doilies-and-dogma anti-feminism became unneeded in the modern conservative paradigm: "Today, of course, everyone has realized you can just walk up to those same women and grab 'em by the pussy." Pere Ubu remembers, apparently, and obliquely refers to one of the racier wingnut-ladymag articles I've covered, posted at The Federalist because (presumably) it was too hot for Acculturated: "6 Reasons to Sext Your Husband" -- which, despite the impression its title may leave, was meant to get the wife of said husband to sext him, not as a taunt; nonetheless it did contain the deathless phrase, "skin bus to Tuna Town." Top that, Peggy Noonan!

Oh, and I found us all a treat -- the Acculturated Pinterest Page! Sample:

Back in the early 60s nobody got depressed or syphilis because they had cocktails, sexism, and Jesus; also, if you get a high-and-tight you can tell the "cool chicks" you joined the Marines. Sigh, it was fun while it lasted, guys...

WHO'S NEXT.

The end of O'Reilly's TV show means nearly nothing to me. Big-ticket rightwing rageclowns like him are like blockbuster movies and reality shows, just gargoyles for gawkers, and we who have free souls it touches us not.

I'm more interested in the conservative pseuds who try to explain it all on the internet, and so far their take seems to be that the preferred viewing choice of your aged relatives who send you pictures of Obama with a bone through his nose doesn't have anything to do with conservatism.

"He Was a Centrist, Not a Conservative," claims Joel B. Pollak at Breitbart. But look where Pollak's baseline is, via his approving quote of some wingnut chin-stroker:

What if we could magically remove the metaphoric glass and see, face-to-face, the average American, once his political views are no longer distorted by media bias? What would we see? 

The answer, basically, is Ben Stein.

Tell your aged Obama-hating relatives that their avatar is Ben Stein and they'll smack you. I won't even accept that slander on them! Hell, if the average American were the chinless Stein, we'd have receded into the primordial ooze years ago. (Try to imagine Ben Stein without money. He'd be raving next to an overpass. Or at least whining loudly.)

The others are worse. I include the worthless Chuck Todd who, seeking to impress Hugh Hewitt for some reason, "agreed" with him according to this Daily Caller report that O'Reilly wasn't a real conservative, that is, not a fancy intellectual like Hugh Hewitt:

“He was — to me, what he did — he was the tone-setter,” Todd continued. “He was sort of that anti-political correctness.” 

[facepalm]

“He was the opening act that brought the crowds, but he became almost more fun to watch than the concert itself, sometimes, but he was the entertainer, probably more entertainer than any of the others.”

Similarly, gameshow buffoon Trump isn't conservative either -- he just pumps out rightwing policies self-identified conservatives eat up, but he ain't got good taste so when the smart guys stand around in cigar bars with snifters and talk about the Glooory of the Mooovement & Burke & Hayek &tc they shove Trump into a coatroom and blame the smell on the dog.

Plus there's Mark Judge at Splice Today -- "The left is cheering the demise of O’Reilly, but liberals have nothing to boast about," he says, because someone got raped at Occupy and what about that bitch who said she was raped but wasn't, huh libs? And Scott Lehigh at the Boston Globe: "Bill O’Reilly types aren’t just a conservative problem," because all those liberal TV hosts are sexual harassers too and the only reason we don't have proof like with O'Reilly is because chicks lie to protect libtards to keep their precious abortions.

At National Review Ian Tuttle tries a variation: Sure, the old-fogey conservatives go for O'Reilly, but we youngs are modern and a-go-go and we think O'Reilly's trad, dad:

This rough-and-ready genealogy might even include a third generation, emerging now — one whose world was shaped by September 11, Iraq, economic recession, and the hyper-partisanship of the Obama years. These conservatives are not Bill O’Reilly; they’re Ben Shapiro, Mollie Hemingway, and Mary Katharine Ham. Their media are podcasts and Twitter, and while they’re certainly combative, they are more interested in a savvy, cosmopolitan conservatism that goes toe-to-toe with progressivism on its own turf (consider Shapiro’s popular campus-speaking events) than in the countrified, bigger-government, populism-tinged conservatism embodied by Mike Huckabee.

"Ben Shapiro, Mollie Hemingway, and Mary Katharine Ham??" cry the youth of today. "That's all I needed to hear. Direct me to the scene of their symposia, where I will vape, denounce socialism, and maybe beat up some antifa chicks!"

At least Tuttle's got enough sense to be ashamed, but not enough to see that O'Reilly isn't the problem. You still need someone; that someone could be younger, and maybe even female (sexual harassment is a nice-to-have, not a need-to-have for this gig!) or non-white (the murderous psycho Sheriff David Clarke might even do). But you will need someone to summon the clans, and he or she will have to be a scumbag -- and, since this is the age of Trump rather than the age of Reagan, that person also has to let the slavering masses know he or she is a scumbag. Because St. Ronnie wouldn't make it today; they'd see through his unctuousness right away and despise him for thinking them dumb enough to believe he's a nice guy. Shit, even conservatives don't believe in "trickle down" or "law and order" or any of those magic words anymore -- you can imagine what the marks they've been bilking for decades think!

No, for them only the Savage Messiah will do. And if the prissier among the Movement Conservatives have to stand off the side, look as innocent as their careers as childhood snitches taught them, and say oh no this is not what we meant at all, well, they can afford to pretend it's strategy instead of self-deception -- after all, they still get paid.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Dan Hicks died this year, too, in case you needed  another reason to hate 2016.
•  WWC whisperer Salena Zito has done very well for herself by going amongst The Common People, and reporting back to readers why they think Trump Rulez. Now at the New York Post Zito reports her conversations with jes' plain Trumpkins on an Amtrak train (a proletarian non-Acela one, for only elites take Acela), specifically "Audrey and Robert, a Virginia couple... heading to Montana to visit their daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren," and "Edward of Lancaster, Pa... traveling to see his mother and brothers and sisters in Fort Wayne, Ind." She doesn't say what they do for a living, but from the way they talk I'd say they're in public relations, possibly for the Republican Party:

“On Nov. 8 I went from a responsible, hard-working, upstanding citizen to an uninformed bigot who gleefully supports Russian interference in our elections and the destruction of our republic,” Robert said. “At least that’s what I have read in the newspaper or seen on television, so it must be true, right?” 

Edward smiled, paused, and then said, “It is refreshing to hear your candor, it’s gotten to the point where you are afraid to not only express your opinion, but to stand by your opinion. Yes, I supported him and yes, I would do it again.”

It is refreshing to hear your candor, too, citizen! Zito also talks to a Clinton supporter and guess what, she eloquently regrets her vote and that her party is/are blaming things:

“It astounds me that the press still doesn’t get it, that my party (Democrats) are blaming everyone but themselves for a poor message, poor messenger and the responsibility she bears for placing her email security in jeopardy . . . it’s not Comey’s fault. It’s hers,” said Elizabeth who was sitting in the booth across the aisle.

Elizabeth voted for Clinton, but wasn’t sure she’d do so again. “The way everyone is acting now post-election shows that no one, no one, has learned anything. She is just proving she deserved to lose"...

Zito concludes that "people, even those who supported Clinton, are tired of Trump’s win being blamed on fake news, the Comey letter and the Russians," so stop talking about the so-called popular vote and Trump's insane post-election behavior because the Voice of America (all four of them) has/have spoken. Give Zito credit -- at least none of these Real People were cab drivers.

•  At National Review, Christian Toto finds a new category of Your Article is Very Bias journalism:

If you think liberal media bias is strictly an issue for the New York Times and the Washington Post, you haven’t looked at your average entertainment site lately. 

Nearly every major Hollywood news site leans left. It has been that way for some time, but in recent years it has gotten worse. The improbable rise of Donald Trump is hastening that shift. And, in an age when pop culture plays an increasing role in our body politic, that matters.

People in the arts don't like Trump -- why, that's as big a shock as Guns & Ammo not liking Obama. What examples ya got, Chris?

[The Hollywood Reporter’s Daniel Fienberg] also referred to former Daily Show host Jon Stewart as “the most trusted man in comedy news.” Trusted? Sure, liberals trust he’ll echo their worldview. What about the other half of the country? Doesn’t Fienberg have a duty to consider them?

And then there’s the recent news that Adam McKay signed up to shoot a movie based on former vice president Dick Cheney. Deadline.com broke the story but failed to mention McKay’s political leanings.

Well, stop my presses! Toto never gets around to explaining why this "matters," except for the already-classic You-Elites-Must-Now-Be-Nice-To-Tumpkins routine ("try to learn something from the election results"). But I suspect Toto's article isn't really meant as an exposé anyway so much as a long-copy Position Wanted ad.  I've written several times about Toto's shit, and discovered him a true child of Zhdanov, specializing in attacks on movies that don't flatter his political prejudices. He bylines himself here as a "conservative movie critic," so despite his whinging about bias in arts journalism you know "balance" is not his shtick -- but he's probably praying it's what some stupid publisher thinks is needed in the back of the book, and that will get Toto on a major pub as Counterpoint for your Very Bias. Till then he traipses the same sad circuit as Mark Gauvreau Judge and other culture warriors. That Rupert Murdoch can't loosen his pursestrings and buy these guys some columns in his publications is a pity -- or maybe the tricksiest Bias of all!

THINK OF YOURSELVES AS INTERNS AT THE PRESTIGIOUS UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!

When a Texas judge stops an executive order granting overtime rights to millions of workers, you expect the usual suspects to rush to yell hooray; though I see Megan McArdle is a little slow off the mark this morning, National Review got Carrie Lukas on the case pronto. Unfortunately, Lukas' bullshit dispenser wasn't warmed up. After announcing the injunction is "good news for workers," she falters in the crucial "make it look good" part of the routine. After trying the old employers-will-just-reclassify-those-workers bit -- at least that's what I think she's trying to convey with that Tammy McCutchen quote -- she gives us this:

Moreover, many workers simply don’t want to have to track their time and inform their bosses exactly when they are leaving early and when they are working late. Moving to an hourly position entails a loss of prestige for some workers, who prefer to feel as though their contributions to the company are bigger than just their time logged.

Sure, you would have gotten a higher rate after 40 hours, but you'd have had to record your hours! And if you're like me -- a rightwing factotum -- you hate bureaucracy more than you need to feed a family! Also, think of the loss of prestige -- imagine your "walk of shame" from the paymaster's office as your coworkers glare at you; you can even hear some of them saying, "yeah, looks like old Smith's only slaughtering pigs for the money!"

Well, there's one real upside: We should stop hearing about economic anxiety any day now.

UPDATE. Hi, guys, Disqus seems to have deleted a bunch of comments I did not ask to be deleted, and I cannot yet figure out how to get them back up. Working on resolution now. New comments seem to work, so feel free to blow off steam here.

CULTURE WAR IS WAR ON CULTURE, PART 1,927,922.

So I'm idly flipping through National Review when I find this by Ian Tuttle:

Novelist? Essayist? Short-story writer? From our friends at Taliesin Nexus, for creative types who love liberty...

"Love liberty" is the hi-sign -- like "getting a little dark in here" and "I hate fags." There follows a prize pitch familiar to readers of Writers Digest: "Calling the next great American author! If that’s you, then September 9 – 11, 2016, have us fly you out to New York City, put you up in a hotel, and spend an entire weekend developing your work at the Calliope Authors Workshop..." This connects us to Taliesin Nexus which, it turns out, was previously pimped at National Review in 2015 by John J. "50 Greatest Conservative Rock Songs" Miller as "a 'safe space' for libertarians, conservatives, and other right-leaners who want to work in the arts." I guess they've gotten secretive, since you know how Liberal Fascists are always oppressing rightwing artists.

Anyway, Taiesin Nexus connects us to a delightful blog, "a (loosely affiliated) beta project of Taliesin Nexus," called Smash Cut Culture. Its slogan is "Liberate the Culture" -- in case you haven't caught on that what's happening here is culture war, as opposed to what the libtards call "culture" -- books, movies, pah! What's wanted is wingnut propaganda essays, and Smash Cut Culture's got loads. Here's one:

Sexy Panties and Prison: What Orange is the New Black Can Teach Us About The Regulatory State

Wait, don't go yet -- let's give author Anne Butcher a chance!

If you are a fan of Netflix’s Orange is the New Black, you already know that far too much of Season 3 was spent telling the tale of Piper’s Prison Panties. As a fan of the show, I was a bit sad that the screen time invested in this plotline was not spent on some of the more interesting ones. But as a libertarian, I must say that the way this story concluded in Season 4 provides a great parable for how regulation hurts people in the real world.

Yeah I want to run too, but wait -- she's talking about an ep where the female prisoners sell their used panties to pervs (though Butcher seems shy about saying so). Let's see what the libertarian angle is!

At the start of Season 4, Piper has gotten cocky. After mercilessly disciplining some of her rogue employees, she loves her new position of power within Litchfield. But as in the real world, money-making ideas breed imitators. Just like Apple inspired Microsoft, and Coke inspired Pepsi, Piper’s Prison Panties inspired a copycat business as well. This new business, lead by Maria, draws many of of the Latina inmates into the illegal panty trade, and Piper is not happy about it. 

In the real world, there are constantly new startup businesses challenging more established ones. This is a good thing, as it can inspire all businesses to be more innovative, gives the consumers more options, and give employees more freedom to leave unfair employers. Of course we’ll never know if that’s what would have happened to the used panty industry of Litchfield Prison because like other established business people before her, Piper decided restrictive rules were preferable to a free market.

THEY'RE IN PRISON! THEY'RE SELLING PANTIES DRENCHED IN THEIR COOZE BECAUSE THEY'RE IN PRISON! THERE IS NO FREE FUCKING MARKET IN PRISON!

..In real life, protectionist regulation doesn’t just hurt the businesses that challenge more established competitors. It can hurt the consumers who have to pay higher prices.

Yeah, freaks who buy cooze panties from prisoners. Fuck, what's the use of talking to this nutty chick. Elsewhere at SCC:

The Original Ghostbusters: More Than Just Busting Ghosts?

BE NICE, author Brodie Cooper is not like the fedora-heads in your building, bitching about bitches who ruined their childhood. This is about the original, and stupid in a mostly different way:

A lot of public frustration over the government bureaucracy tends to stem from its inaction or overaction resulting in the loss of an individual’s ability to control his or her own decisions. In the case of Ghostbusters, the EPA, which represents bureaucracy, ends up interfering and shutting our heroes down. 

Oh fuck -- the planet is being boiled like a frog, and Cooper is still all about William Atherton getting slime dumped on him because statism.

A recent New York Times poll found that 54 per cent of Americans believe over regulation has stifled economic growth. Furthermore...

OK, Brodie Cooper has ruined my youthful Ghostbusters experience  -- except she's a woman, so yay feminism, it's Thatcherrific. Let's see what else they have --

South Park’s Stance On Censorship: More Relevant Than Ever?

AHGGGHH! OK, I quit, let's go to Acculturated and make fun of Mark Judge.

HEAH COME DA JUDGE.

It may seem as if I'm picking on Mark Judge of culture-war catastrophe Acculturated, but look, it's a busy day and sometimes you just have to take the easy lay-up. His latest is about how men should be able to go out with other men -- no, he doesn't mean anything gay, though it does get physical -- when Judge hangs with his old school buds "it’s noticeable how physical our friendships still are, even decades after we graduated. At reunions we tend to fall back on the age-old male expression of affection—light punches on the shoulder, a bear hug, even playful wrestling after a few beers." (I would pay good money to see Judge's remake of Cassavetes' Husbands.)

Judge's plea is actually for Boy's Night Out, which leads me to ask: so who's stopping you? Like all culture-warriors, he thinks behaviors of which he disapproves reflect political ideologies:

Both feminists who hector men to spend every moment with them—making sure all activities are of equal time—and conservatives who argue that a man’s entire life should revolve around his family, are both presenting ideas that are harmful to men.

Hectoring men to spend every moment with you -- isn't that from Our Bodies, Ourselves (That Includes You, Larry)? And even the comedy strawmen that pass for conservatives here at alicublog don't think "a man’s entire life should revolve around his family" -- how then, for example, would married preachers ever get away to Bible conferences for anonymous sex with men?

Here are my two favorite parts of the thing, devoid of context because who gives a fuck:

Feminists of course will take this (like everything else) the wrong way—I’m mansplaining why women don’t feel stress, etc.—but it’s actually a compliment.

And:

The decision was instant and near unanimous: No. All it took to make the right call was a reminder of last year’s monkeyshines: the drinking, pick-up games, late night skinny dipping in the ocean, frank talk about women and sex. We needed to pick the insects and fleas off of each other, and that was best done without girls.

Readers Who Liked This also enjoyed "Why the ‘Conan the Barbarian’ Sequel Should Focus on Fatherhood," which amazingly exists but was written by somebody else.

A DANGEROUS GUIDE FOR BOYS.

As a young'un, Marco Rubio got tagged by the cops for drinking beer in a park; when the story recently came to light, he laughed it off. Credit where due: I am in sympathy with anyone who has brownbagged his bottle, even if he later turns out to be a shit, as Rubio has. And though his team's "humorous" response is not actually funny, and implies the Washington Post reported his youthful transgression to attack him rather than to generate a more clickbaity story, at least it's dismissive.

That is how I would leave it, but for the gloss of Mark Judge, the artist formerly known as Mark Gauvreau Judge, at Acculturated, my favorite culture war/wingnut welfare cluster. Judge isn't satisfied with good news for Rubio -- he wants thinkpiece fodder! And so:

Rubio hit back with a fake ad revealing his other crimes—coloring outside the lines, double-dipping potato chips. The episode was a seemingly small political blip, but it inadvertently points to another problem: We need to stop trying to prevent our boys and men from being boys and men.

It's Routine 19 -- the feminaziation of our boys by libtards! But Judge doesn't know when to quit:

We need to let them feel passion and lust and adventurousness and act on it. We need to let them get in trouble, drive fast cars, and chase girls. The dark and dangerous part of them—us—that does these things is also the place that can call forth great leadership....

He seems to have upgraded "teenager drinking beer in the park" to the Scarlet Pimpernel.

The Rubio “story” in the Post reveals how our culture has become uncomfortable with male behavior. On one hand there are the liberals who seem to celebrate any kind of sexual expression except heterosexual manhood, which they aim to deride and ultimately destroy...

Guess Judge would be happier if the Post ran items like "How to Knock a Bitch Up" in the Sunday Comics.

Both left and right attempt to do the same thing: stamp out the shadow. The shadow is an idea from Jungian psychology...

Ugggh I'll spare you -- oh, wait, get this:

The shadow is crucial to psychic health, and particularly powerful in leaders (both male and female). Think of the classic Star Trek episode where Captain Kirk was literally divided into two people, one good and one evil. While the evil Kirk...

Urkel just called Judge a nerd. Eventually:

Rubio’s satirical response was fine, but it would have been better if he had embraced his shadow, freely admitting that as a young man he felt lust, the thirst for danger, anger, and even depression.

Jesus Christ, I would so love it if Rubio read this, felt inspired, flew Judge down for some intensive speechwriting work, and at the next Republican event answered his first question, "Sure, we're all against Obamacare, but what I really want to talk to you about tonight, America, is this: How you ever, when you were young and high on teenage angst and MDMA, made it with a girl who's into superstitions, black cats and voodoo dolls? Who'll make you take your clothes off and go dancing in the rain --  make you live her crazy life but she'll take away your pain? Like a bullet to your brain? Come on!"

A THIN CROP.

I guess it's time for another stroll around Acculturated, the wingnut welfare training school for the shock troops of the cultural revolution. But there's less overt craziness there these days, it seems; maybe they've given up on trying to get attention outside the WW community. For example, what is one to do with something like "Celebrities, Please Stop Talking About Menopause," which author Charlotte Hays asks because, well, who knows -- this is as close as she gets to a reason:

But embedded in the current menopause talk is the notion that menopause was once a stigma from which women are now boldly freeing themselves. No, it was never a stigma. It was a fact of life. But it was private.

There are certain things about which one simply does not talk because they are disgusting -- like defecation, or menopause. And definitely don't tell your little girl that she can be anything she wants when she grows up, that's just too "vacuous" and "tiresome," says Carrie Lukas (seen before here). Sometimes I think the brief at Acculturated is "Advocate for a world in which no man ever learns anything about women except they're supposed to smell nice and wait for marriage to fuck them."

Thank God, then, for Mark Judge, who tells us that the new James Bond movie is really about "what is arguably the modern social problem that is at the root of all other social problems: fathers abandoning their sons":

Whereas Steve Jobs won’t acknowledge his own daughter, being too busy creating machines that will turn people into petulant narcissists, Bond ventures into the world, throwing himself into danger and accepting the mantle of father figure – and not just for one child, but for an entire civilization. Beneath his cynicism Bond loves Britain and Western Civilization. In his designer suits and gold watches he is a brutal but sophisticated guide for the soft boys and weak Millennials of today... 

In his novels, Bond creator Ian Fleming gave 007’s family a motto: “The world is not enough.” This reflected Bond’s Scottish-Catholic roots – the idea that the things of this world are not sufficient to attain happiness or salvation.

That's why he was always helping those pretty ladies say their prayers at night, see. Now that's the kind of thing we expect from Acculturated! Maybe we should think of this as a rebuilding year and come back later.

UPDATE. In our comments, which are as always very good, some readers note that Judge includes the Steve Jobs movie in his paradigm, with Jobs symptomatic of the wages of fatherlessness, and Bond, who was adopted and had, in essence, two daddies, of the blessings of fatherfulness. "Somehow, James Bond is the well balanced personality, and Steve Jobs is an empty husk of failure," observes Downpup E. "Imagine an editor, staring blankly into the void, and finally shrugging: 'Hopeless. Just run it as it is.'" Some funny stuff about Orbis non sufficit, too.

GET ME REWRITE!

I haven't been paying proper attention to Acculturated, that most enjoyable culture-war make-work project, so thanks to alicublog commenter mortimer2000 for alerting me to a new column there by Mark Judge (known as Mark Gauvreau Judge in an earlier incarnation). It's called "'Manhattan': Remembering a Near-Great, Near-Conservative Film." Get a load:

Manhattan was famously shot in glorious black and white by Gordon Willis, who passed away in March. Manhattan is also, at least at times, a conservative film. This sounds absurd about a Woody Allen film, but it’s useful to remember that Allen has always had a lot of criticism for the cultural revolution of the 1960s. His films often poke fun at drugs, radicals, rock and roll, and the movie industry. Allen’s obsession with sex and younger—much younger—women has often obscured this fact. But without it, Allen could write for National Review.

Well, he could still serve as president of Hillsdale College.

Anyway: the fact that Woody Allen's character Isaac has the hots for the Diane Keaton character Wilkie, even though she believes in God and talks smack about Norman Mailer, proves to Judge that "he’s a New York liberal with a conscience that tells him that Wilkie may have a point," because there's no bigger turn-on than philosophical differences, look at James Carville and Mary Matalin, preferably not before lunch. Also, Isaac is mad at his lesbian ex-wife -- which has to be a moral imperative, because it can't possibly be the kind of psychological reaction you'd expect Woody Allen to have to a woman who left him for a woman -- and also has character-building tips for his underage girlfriend:

Isaac criticizes his young girlfriend Tracy for being raised in the Sixties.

I hope you've learned your lesson, young lady! Next time pick a responsible decade to be born in.

“You were brought up on drugs and television and the pill.” He then adds that he believes “people should mate for life, like pigeons or Catholics.” Then, disgusted with the drug-taking hippies who produce his show, Isaac quits. This is not a member of the Weather Underground.

No, this is typical Woody Allen, a crabby guy who likes to lecture his friends about God and death -- and in the end gets his comeuppance from, surprise, the teenage girlfriend, which shows at least a little self-awareness on his part. In Judge's view, though, "Manhattan sets up a great premise and then fails to deliver" and guess what, it doesn't have to do with anything as puny as art:

Keaton’s Mary Wilkie arrives as an intellectual equal to challenge Allen’s assumptions. Then, just as suddenly, she and Isaac fall in love and she loses all of her edge. She vacillates when she gets involved with a married man, Isaac’s best friend Yale. Where she was once fearlessly direct, she becomes dithering and morally uncertain. It’s fine to have characters who have self-doubt, in fact it makes for a more compelling film—and a fresh alternative to so-called Christian and conservative films, which give us square-jawed protagonists who get all their answers from God.

Allen will be relieved to hear he avoided this pitfall.

But you don’t establish a powerhouse female character who dismisses liberal journalists as “schmucks... mired in Thirties radicalism,” and two scenes later have her almost begging Woody Allen for a date.

I have asked this many times but: Has Judge ever met a real person? Or at least seen a Whit Stillman picture? Eventually Judge tells us how he would have made Manhattan:

How different and better Manhattan might have been had Allen just gone with the initial premise of the script: a middle-aged TV writer who is uncomfortable with the Cultural Revolution meets a sharp journalist who validates his doubts. They don’t become born-again Christians, but they do navigate their way to a better moral place. He stops dating teenagers, and she stops fooling around with a married man.

I'm on the edge of my seat! You won't be able to sell tickets fast enough! Maybe for the foreign markets, though, in the third act we should have them go on vacation to the Grand Canyon, and have one of those humorous encounters with wildlife Allen's so good at.

Next week at Acculturated: "Citizen Kane -- So much better without the class politics."

UPDATE. Comments are already fun! Gromet:

Chapter one: He adored Tulsa. He idolized it all out of proportion. Uh, no. Make that He romanticized it all out of proportion. To him, no matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of Toby Keith...

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

One of the funniest things by two of the funniest people of all time.

•    It is axiomatic that Jonah Goldberg can make anything worse, and the Indiana RFRA case is no exception. Here he shows evidence of having been crammed with some libertarian revisionism: Goldberg argues that the pre-"clarification" RFRA was not like Jim Crow because Jim Crow was really about economic oppression -- because everything is! -- and had nothing to do with anything so gauche as violent prejudice against a despised minority, and still less to do with political power:

Of course, the more infamous Jim Crow laws were aimed at barring blacks from being able to vote. But there was a pernicious logic to such efforts. Denying blacks the vote, even in states where they were the majority of citizens, guaranteed that they couldn’t overturn racist state economic regulations. 

In fact, says Goldberg, Confederate businesses loved serving black people, but because a flood of emancipated black workers caused a labor shortage (forget it, he's on a roll), both blacks and black-loving shopkeepers were Jim Crowed into submission not by the Klan nor by the White Leagues, but by Big Business -- you know, the people conservatives worshiped as gods until Tim Cook said he was gay. "Ultimately," says Goldberg, "the federal government had to use just coercion to crush unjust state-government coercion," without mentioning that his own magazine was against that "just coercion" every step of the way; they affect to feel sorry about that now, and one would like to think that they'll apologize for their absurd attitude toward gays fifty years from now (if they and the nation last so long), but alas, Goldberg shows that they haven't really learned a thing:

In Indiana, the most vocal and arguably the most powerful voices against even the perception of anti-gay discrimination have come from the business community. And, one suspects, there are plenty of people in the wedding-planning industry eager for such business. 

We could impose a fine on recalcitrant religious wedding photographers. But the market already does that, every time they turn away paying customers.

They still think Title II is an injustice and don't want it applied to anyone else.

•  One Bob & Ray thing isn't enough: Enjoy this bit -- first four minutes of this clip from the Letterman show, but the rest is okay too -- in which "Barry Campbell" talks about his disastrous opening in the play "The Tender T-Bone."

•    From the Weird Reaction file: You may have seen the fascinating story of a suitcase full of photos, receipts, and diary entries chronicling a German businessman's extra-marital affair forty-five years ago that has been revived as a gallery show. Most of us find it interesting or creepy or a spur to reflection. Ole Perfesser Instapundit, however, reacts thusly:

IT WASN’T AN AFFAIR, it was performance art. Bow down and don’t criticize, philistines!

Most of the time I think Reynolds is just putting it on for the rubes, but sometimes it seems he really is that weird mix of Babbitt and Nathan Bedford Forrest he plays on the internet.

•    Speaking of the arts, I went over to Acculturated to take in the latest by Mark Judge, or Mark Gauvreau Judge or Gark Jauvreau Mudge or whatever he calls himself these days. He's sighing over a 1954 Sports Illustrated cover showing a pretty girl in a modest one-piece bathing suit largely obscured by sea spray. As you may have guessed, this inspires a meditation on how much sexier things were before sideboob.

More than fifty years later, the Pamela Nelson photo ignites my passion more than anything that is in the hyped, recently published 2015 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. The photographs in the new swimsuit issue are dull. The poses are clichéd, similar, and the models look like cyborgs. There is the arching-back pose. The bedroom-eyes-on-the-beach shot. The backside shot (or shots). Did I mention the arching-back pose?

In our culture today, pornography has excelled at titillating the masses, but is poor at capturing the soul. And no matter what our sex-drenched society tells us, sex is sexier when the soul is involved.

Every single one of the poses named above comes with a link, so Acculturated readers can decide whether they want to beat off to contemporary or vintage pin-ups -- which I guess is how some people measure cultural seriousness. Chacun à son gout is very very true...

•    Still speaking of the arts, this is from a report on wingnut intellectual George Nash's speech to the Philadelphia Society last month:

“Many conservatives, of course, including many in this room, are laboring valiantly and effectively in the realm of cultural renewal,” Nash said. “But as a historian I am constrained to note that the ‘progressives’ in this country continue to predominate in the production of culture, and in the manufacture and distribution of prestige among our cultural elites. As long as this imbalance continues, the fate of post-Reagan conservatism will be problematic.”

Do remember this, dear reader: You may think of novels, plays, ballet, music, etc. as works of art that illuminate the human condition, but to the great minds of the conservative movement they are merely widgets in "the manufacture and distribution of prestige among our cultural elites." Their policies are inhuman, that is, because they don't really relate to humanity.

CULTURE WAR FOR DUMMIES: AN ONGOING SERIES.

Haven't looked in for a while on Acculturated, the culture-war jump school for would-be Douthats that has given me much pleasure in the past. There's currently a post-Grammys piece there by Mark Judge, the artist formerly known as Mark Gauvreau Judge, beginning thus:

Don’t make Sam Smith gay. 

That is to say, don’t make Sam Smith a representative of the gay community and a symbol for all things gay.

See, Judge hates it when people see sexual orientation -- that is, when gay people recognize gay people -- and also when people see color -- like when black people tell Iggy Azalea to fuck off. It all goes back to a youthful trauma:

When I was in college, the British duo the Pet Shop Boys were key contributors to the soundtrack of my young life. The Pet Shop Boys are gay.

[Blink. Blink.]

When I heard their first album Please in 1986, I felt that delirious swoon of falling in love with a piece of musical art...

I followed the Boys for years, but something started bothering me: they increasingly became known as a gay band and not just a band. Great songs like “King’s Cross,” “Liberation,” and “It Always Comes as a Surprise” were subordinated to the larger theme of homosexuality. The Pet Shop Boys were not brilliant songwriters who could touch the hearts or people all over the world—they were “queering pop.” It was like only selling Van Morrison’s music in Irish pubs...

I was a suburban kid at a Catholic university who occasionally snuck a look at Playboy. If I was to listen to the journalists, and the political club goers, and the subculture police, I would have turned myself away. Because I wasn’t the target audience.

The Gay Gay Gay took my babies away! The subculture police with their phallic nightsticks tried to drive Judge out of the disco, just as the black radicals tried to spoil his appreciation of Motown, I suppose. I'm surprised he survived with his perfectly-unexceptional tastes intact.

This is a high point of the issue, though you might also enjoy Acculturated's "Celebrities Behaving Well Award" nominations, including "Taylor Swift for reaching out to one of her adoring fans to give her real, thoughtful, honest advice about an unrequited love," "Kate Middleton for maintaining a certain level of class and decorum in the pop-culture sartorial scene," and "Justin Timberlake for his unprecedented awe and humility during his recent visit to Israel" (by which I assume they mean he didn't come onstage wearing a BDS shirt and a keffiyeh). "The winner of our contest will be announced on Monday, February 23," Acculturated says, "and we will award their charity with a $2,500 donation." $2,500! Dunno who's giving this ad-free site its wingnut welfare, but if they can come up with that kind of scratch  for a contest, I'd be happy to explain to their readers (for a reasonable fee) how my heart was broken the day Camryn Manheim became a fat activist.

UPDATE. In comments, tigrismus encapsulates Judge's problem: "He gets to decide what's universal, and quelle surprise, it's him."

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.

ANNALS OF THE CULTURE WARS, SPECIAL BREITBART EDITION.

The kulturkampfers at Breitbart.com just can't quit Lena Dunham, even when another of their hate-objects is in their line of fire:

Tina Fey, like other Hollywood-created stars including Lena Dunham, is showing herself to be a box office bust.

That's Ben Shapiro, who goes on to tell Fey that though she's "very talented... her pokes at Palin did her no good with mainstream America, and her cutesy 'too-smart-for-the-room' routine does her no favors with audiences." No, really: Ben Shapiro's giving Tina Fey career advice.

Dunham Alert also for this Maurice Black column:

Although Girls never fails to find humor in its characters’ haplessness, it also reflects the disturbing reality that more than half of college graduates under 25 are now unemployed or working jobs that don’t require a degree.

The title is "HBO'S 'GIRLS' OFFERS STARK FISCAL LESSONS IN AGE OF OBAMA." According to Black Dunham "unwittingly lends credence to moves by governors such as Pat McCrory in North Carolina or Rick Scott in Florida to shift higher education funding into fields that have better job placement rates." Maybe he's thinking of Laverne & Shirley.

(Black, BTW, is Vice President of the Moving Picture Institute, progenitor of that "youthful pop music video that alerts the hipster set to the perils of artificially low interest rates" we were talking about the other day; given his obvious commitment to agenda-driven entertainments, it must drive him nuts that Dunham isn't aware of what a conservative message she's sending; I imagine him yelling "You're one of us and you don't even know it, Lena!" at his TV while masturbating furiously.)

There are many other Dunham dumps at Breitbart.com, but let's close with one about an older favorite: The communist menace that is Law & Order. Wingnuts have had a hard-on for the show and its treasonously topical story lines for years, and now Warner Todd Huston brings the fist-shaking fury as L&O makes hay of Todd Akinism:

A character sitting in the witness box then says, "It's nearly impossible for a victim of legitimate rape to become pregnant." This is followed by looks of disgust by the two female lead detective characters sitting in the courtroom gallery.

Jesus Christ, people, do I have to spell it out for ya?

To subtly drive home an allusion to a politician like Todd Akin, on the lapel of the character testifying is a prominent U.S. flag pin, just like one a conservative politician might wear. How often do you think characters on Law & Order: SVU have worn flag pins?

Yeah, they may act regular, but that guy who played Lennie Brisco? He was in musicals!

UPDATE. Some extra culture-war nuggets for you: Our old friend Mark "Gavreau" Judge at Acculturated,  musing on gay marriage, gives us the line of the week:

It is important to celebrate tolerance, while keeping watch to make sure that the tolerance itself doesn’t become oppression.

The rest of the column never equals this, though it does tell us that Dan Savage is the real bully. Second place winner: Tevi Troi at Real Clear Politics, in his brow-squeezer "Can Republicans Close the Pop Culture Gap?" --

A move towards hipness must come from the party leaders themselves...

Comrades, the hipness of mere apparatchiks will not suffice -- the party leaders must themselves be hanging and banging. Draft a memo!

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.

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?

ANNALS OF THE CULTURE WAR, CONT.

I am grateful to Will Sommer -- who's doing fun things with the Washington City Paper blog, by the way -- for luring me back to Acculturated, the rightwing kulturkampf factory where I had previously found an essay about how feminists kept us all from living in Downton Abbey and saying "jolly good" or something. Sommer's find is by Mark Judge, nee Mark Gavreau Judge and a recurring minor character in the alicublog buffooniverse, who agrees with Kay Hymowitz's shtick about American men having too much fun, and blames women.

These days the problem isn’t as much pre-adulthood males as it is uncultured people–including women. When I was in high school at Georgetown Prep, a Jesuit school that prided itself on producing men who could both lay down a block and conjugate Latin, we had a term for well-rounded women: “cool chicks.” Yeah, she’s a cool chick. A cool chick would go to a baseball game with you, maybe liked a cool band, and also had a favorite museum and novel. They were cool because they weren’t just one thing–the Lena Dunham hipster, the scholarship-obsessed athlete, the Ally Sheedy Breakfast Club basket case. Do cool chicks exist anymore? Is there a Dianne Keaton of this generation?

Translation: I just can't beat off to the Vanity Fair "Hollywood" annual since Meryl Streep got crow's feet.

But then I found that Judge's essay is only "part of a symposium in which a variety of writers and thinkers weigh in on the question: 'Can men be men again?'" -- a line I'd prefer to believe is a Rusty Warren set-up, but which these brightish youngish things apparently take very seriously. One of these is Ryan Duffy, and his essay is called, not even kidding, "Training Men to be Better: Rewards and Punishments."

Duffy tells us it's important that we get guys to stop liking casual sex because who knows why (with this crowd the reasons don't even have to be mentioned, but I bet birth rates are involved), and like Judge he blames women (I sense a pattern), because they "have been feeding the beast of men’s desire for short-term relationships." But if the stupid bitches will just listen to him and Steve Harvey, we can turn this thing right around:

But should we also look to women to play a role in this process? In his book Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, Steve Harvey talks about men like animals and the importance of rewards and punishments. Harvey actively acknowledges his suggestions might not work so well with feminists, but makes suggestions likely waiting ninety days before having sex with men to ensure he is truly in it for the right reasons. 

I believe there is some morsel of truth to Harvey’s claims. If we as a society want men to grow up and be real men–whatever that definition is–it’s critical that we go back to the simple rules of behaviorism. People will feel, think, and behave in ways that they are rewarded or punished for. If we truly want men to change, we can hope they will reward and punish themselves, but acknowledge that we (and especially the women dealing with them) must also play a part.

I suppose it is progress, in a way, that instead of relying on embittered mothers or maiden aunts to teach women to treat men like dogs, conservatives are starting to enlist the aid of Magic Negroes. Maybe this is the direction their minority outreach will take: encouraging Ice Cube, for example, to go out on stage with Allen West to do "Black North Korea."

Still, if your strategy relies on convincing people to stop having sex, you've got a hard sell no matter how you jazz up the pitch. Maybe it's time they went really retro and advocated the establishment of red light districts. Of course, they'd probably abandon the project once they realized they have to pay the comfort women at least $9 an hour. Sigh. I guess it's rightwing sitcom reviews until someone gets them all jobs at The Atlantic.

Parting irony, though: Isn't it rich that their plan for whipping male sexuality into shape requires women to behave like a union?

UPDATE. ADHDJ, in comments: "Indeed, it's easy to forget the world pre-January 2009, before titty bars and pool halls were invented."

UPDATE 2. Late as it is, I should like to add chuckling's observations on Judge and his Lena Dunham hangup, which could easily be applied to any of these guys and their Lena Dunham hangup:

Anyway, interesting the dude's definition of cool when applied to a young woman: It's not someone who's smart, well-educated, cultured, ridiculously successful in television, probably crown fucking princess of the New York indie celebrity scene -- no, none of that is cool -- but someone who will fetch him a hot dog at a baseball game. Of course pretending to share the interests of some conservative ass and smiling as he drones on and on about whatever infuriates him at the moment is a more achievable aspiration than being Lena Dunham for most women, but unfortunately it's pretty much nobody's definition of cool.