HIP TO BE SQUARE. I mentioned in my most recent Voice column Jonah Goldberg's typically incisive response to the whole alleged issue of Obama being too cool:

I wish the ad had at least one or two really solid clips conveying how despearately Obama wants to seem cool, which is always the great coolness-killer. It would have helped set the tone of the ad much better. What would those clips be? I'm not sure, but then again I'm not making the ad. Michael Moore seems to find a way to find that kind of footage pretty easily, and I have no doubt it can be found in Obama's case.

If only we had a picture of him with poop in his pants, holding a commie flag, everyone'd know what a poopy-pants commie he is! Faart. Yet it appears someone took not only this ridiculous subject but also Goldberg's thinly-veiled bleg seriously. At her internet Sunday school, The Anchoress prowls the aisles with a metal ruler and tells you what's cool and what isn't:

Have you heard the news? Barack Obama is cool!

He’s not just cool, he’s way cool; the coolest thing ever!

Too bad she forgot to link to a citation; I'd love to know what idiot said that.

Never having been “cool” myself (or desperate enough to seek its conferral upon me by people I always found to be rather sad trend-followers)...

While you so-called cool kids were friggin' and frugin' in your discos, The Anch was pretending to be a nun. That's totally Goth!

Coolness does not need anyone to define it, but allow me to try.

How much time we would save if only The Anchoress could occasionally remember the thing she said just before the thing she said.

The quality of “coolness” contains within it an attitude of discrete detachment, which is not the same as aloofness. It suggests an intellect attuned to a different frequency—perhaps to a higher muse—but still comfortable sharing the ground with the rest of us. Its muted confidence is so supreme...

On and on goes Sister Malizia's cool lesson, and just as the boys and girls are about to nod off she pulls out the visuals:

Come to think of it, by these definitions, one could safely opine that the “coolest” leaders currently athwart the world’s stage are still England’s Queen Elizabeth II, who recently crashed a wedding simply to wish a bridal couple well, and His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, who takes the daily piñata beatings that come his way in stride, and answers with a blessing.

Somehow I don't think this will get the kids to throw in their porkpie hats for mitres and crowns, much as I would enjoy that.

Meanwhile Ole Perfesser Instapundit uses reader mail to explain how uncool Obama really is:

My theory is Obama represents the supremacy (however short-lived) of the beta-male. The only people who think he’s a hep-cat are hipster betas and 60′s radical-nostalgia dopes (also perennial personal-risk-averse betas who never did anything bold on their own). It’s all projection, much like the rest of the way that demographic operates

The thing about the "I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members" attitude is, it's more impressive when Groucho Marx says it than when some guy who writes letters to Instapundit says it.

How hard this all is for them -- because once upon a time, they were cool. Back in the 1980s Reagan was everyone's daddy, John Paul II did a world tour and danced with the kids, and everyone dressed and wanted to be like characters from Dynasty. Fashions fade, though, and you're left with the enduring values behind what made your heroes cool. In their case that's tax breaks for the rich, endless wars, and persecution of homosexuals. We already had a retro revival of that:

I'm not sure the time is right for another. But who knows? Show biz is tricky.

UPDATE. "Weren't these the same guys who insisted that George Bush calling people 'Stretch' and 'Pooty-poot' was a veritable laff riot?" asks Doghouse Riley in comments. mortimer reminds us that Lisa Schiffren wrote "an entire, very wet column" in the Wall Street Journal about how "she and her soccer mom friends" found Bush "'hot' as in virile, sexy and powerful." Not to mention proto-Anchoress Peggy Noonan's swoon over both the President's testicles. Chacun à son ghoul.

WHITHER BREITBARTISM? A clue may be found in a piece at Big Somethingorother by Jeffrey Scott Shapiro. It's over a month old, but Breitbart Lieutenant Lee Stranahan is pimping it, so it's apparently central to their worldview.

It’s hard for people to pinpoint exactly what it is they don’t like about President Barack Obama, but I think I can easily sum it up: his thinly veiled contempt for America, and his transparent resentment for the country he was elected to lead.

This is like a glimpse into a magical, private world -- a world where you can just assume that people don't bother to judge how the President is running the country, but instead instinctually dislike him because he hates America. (It's also, I'm guessing, a world festooned with Confederate flags and spittoons.)

You’ll often hear people say, “He just hates America.”

Not only in Shapiro's own survivalist compound, but also among the patriots he picks up on ham radio.

But try this on for size: Barack Obama may just be our first “oppositional identity” president. What’s that mean?

I’d never heard the phrase oppositional identity before because I don’t subscribe to collectivist identity theories.

Another hallmark of this psychology is the need to distance yourself from the very theory on which you're about to instruct the troops -- very much like the popular shtick whereby they insist they're only using Saul Alinsky as a model because it's the only way they can defeat Alinskyite liberals.

I believe--much like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.--that people should be recognized by their own individual actions, not those of their ancestors.

Also he's no racist, and after he and his buddies crush Obama, Shirley Sherrod, et ooga-booga alia, he's going to dance to a Temptations record.

But when I recently met a special education graduate student from Antioch University in Los Angeles and she told me about oppositional identity...

Hm -- maybe this started out as a Penthouse letter.

...I wondered whether it could help explain why President Obama harbors such apparent animosity toward his own country--and why he’s said some of the things he has in the past. So, she loaned me her textbook to write this article.

And that's where the thirst for knowledge comes from -- opposition research!

There follows a bunch of schoolly talk, which I'll spare you; you can get some idea of how seriously Shapiro takes it by this section:

Oppositional identity is a theory that is applied to classroom situations, but let’s replace the words “school,” and “education,” with “country,” and “America.”

Got that square peg hammered in nice and tight? Good. On to the double reverse Alinsky!

The question I’m getting at is this: does Barack Obama believe that adopting the fundamental values of America would be seen as surrendering to the "enemy"?

Barack Obama is the President of the United States, but identifies a member of an involuntarily minority that was forced to come to this country as slaves.

It's like Gingrich's Kenyan anti-colonialism bullshit, but even better because it's homegrown -- Obama's not pissed about some people stuck over in Africa; no, he's pissed at us honkeys just 'cause we gave his ancestors the free ride to America that allowed him to be President! What an ingrate!

Oh, but wait, there's more. Shapiro's not just a lunatic, but also a soldier in the cause, and he's willing to put his own Second Life identity on the line to prove his (newly adapted from collectivist identity theories) thesis. Ladies and gents, behold his magnificent swan-dive of reason:

To test this theory, I tried to put myself in Obama’s position the best way that I could. I am Jewish. I love America with all my heart, and to me the United States is a heroic, liberating force that saved my people from extermination during the Holocaust in WWII. 

Let’s assume however, that I was born in Germany, and somehow I became Chancellor of that country. Would I identify more with my country, which at one time systematically murdered six million of my own people--or my group--which in post-Holocaust Europe could (by Finn’s definition) be considered an “involuntary minority?”] 

That’s a difficult question to answer, but another way of asking this question is: would I still harbor suspicion about the country I now led despite the majority electing me? 

Yes--I would.

Tried and proven in the court of roleplay! If some little boy or girl out there hopes to be Germany's first Jewish Chancellor, watch out -- Jeffrey Scott Shapiro's already written Die Freiheit's campaign strategy.

UPDATE. Ah, I see the meme walks:

Something's happening to President Obama's relationship with those who are inclined not to like his policies. They are now inclined not to like him. His supporters would say, "Nothing new there," but actually I think there is...

It's Peggy Crazy Jesus Lady Noonan, in full omniscient mode. She even does dialogue!

The shift started on Jan. 20, with the mandate that agencies of the Catholic Church would have to provide services the church finds morally repugnant. The public reaction? "You're kidding me. That's not just bad judgment and a lack of civic tact, it's not even constitutional!"

And, after the Trayvon Martin story broke,

At the end of the day, the public reaction seemed to be: "Hey buddy, we don't need you to personalize what is already too dramatic, it's not about you."

Surely you, dear reader, heard such talk down at Joe's Diner, over at Mike's Bar, among the parishioners at Father Flotsky's Church Social, and in other corners of the Noonan soundstage. She makes Whit Stillman sound like Stan Mack.

Elsewhere, in the tiny radical enclave known as America, Obama's approval rating is moving up -- probably not because of anything he's done, I'm guessing, but because people are noticing that the people who oppose him are fucking nuts.

UPDATE 2. Har, Good Roger Ailes in comments: "Nooners also seems to have written Trayvon Martin's dialogue for George Zimmerman's father and brother."

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the S&P downgrade. Among the rightbloggers, the downgrade appears to be a terrible thing when mentioned in a paragraph including the word "Obama," but otherwise it's no big deal; in fact it can even be a positive good, so long as the author believes it may convince people to give up their Social Security in hopes that their neo-feudal overlords will give them a shed to lie in when they are too broken by work to move.

I don't think I'm being optimistic when I say that this probably won't go over with your average citizen, who may be tumbling to the fact that his alleged GOP saviors are in the thrall of a bunch of nuts who would kill him or anyone else in furtherance of their dogma. But it may not matter what he, you, or I think; the Villagers want full-on austerity, and probably believe that if the tea party people are a little dèclassè, at least their heartlessness is in the right place.

UPDATE. In the spirit of Shared Sacrifice, commenter EndoftheWorld asks, "Could you imaging the uproar we started seeing serious cuts in the sanctimonious blowhard industry? I mean, do we need a Cokie Roberts AND a Peggy Noonan? And paying a mexican child to cut and paste from AEI position papers has to be cheaper than keeping Krauthammer around." Well, now you're just talking crazy. If it weren't for the promise of such sinecures, young Republican weasels might avoid the think tanks and talk shops altogether, and take jobs as corporate lawyers or confidence men. Then America might lose its leadership position in the global bullshit market. We'd be lost!

While I am normally in perfect sync with Halloween Jack, I can't completely agree that this column represents "Megan McArdle... forced into a sudden attack of sanity." McArdle does see that the GOP shake-yer-foundations approach has been bad for the weakened economy, but then she has to spoil it by saying the Democrats are just as bad because... they blocked the elevation of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court in 1987. This absurd example of on-the-other-handism has been well-treated elsewhere, but it always bears repeating that Bork is a dangerous lunatic and if he were on the Court with the current crop of nuts, rightwing activists would no doubt have found a way to reverse Virginia v. Loving by now. For blocking him, the Dems of '87 don't deserve tongue-lashings about "borking" -- they deserve statues hard by the Jefferson Memorial and fresh flowers every morning.

UPDATE 2. If you want a quick refresher on Republican seriousness about deficits, I recommend Steve Benen's. Contra Verbal Kint, this may be the greatest trick the devil ever pulled.

AROUND THE HORN. I know, it's hot. But as someone who was born in July and spent a summer in east Texas, I advise that you screw your courage to a sticky place, and try not to look at the thermometer. Heat waves are unpleasant but, making allowances for the medically vulnerable, they're unlikely to kill you, while internalizing the endless newsbreaks about them could make you crazy enough to kill yourself. Like a lot of what's on the TV news, those stories use endless repetition and alarmism to keep you twitching. Ignore them. Stay mentally chill, and hydrate.

Speaking of crazy, Peggy Noonan endorses the Gang of Six plan, and says the only thing standing in its way is... Barack Obama, who talks too much and should instead "stay in his office, meet with members, and work the phones, all with a new humility." In reality, conservatives have been screaming bloody murder about the plan ("[Brent] Bozell: Republicans who support Gang of Six proposal ‘will walk the plank’'; National Review, "Worst Plan So Far"; etc). But they scream bloody murder about everything and then when it's done, whatever is done, declare victory. Noonan wants Obama locked in his office so he won't be at the champagne party when the inevitable agreement is reached. Given that said agreement will probably be awful, maybe Obama is well-advised in that respect.

My old Voice pal Steven Thrasher has an interview with Kitty Lambert who is expected to pop the cherry on New York's marriage equality act and be legally wed to Cheryle Rudd on Monday "in front of the specially rainbow lit Niagara Falls," thus destroying the institution of marriage and Maggie Gallagher's digestion in the most spectacular way possible. Yay!

NOW SHE TELLS US. Peggy Noonan used to love Donald Rumsfeld ("these days he seems, as leaders go, a natural... As a communicator he's clear as clean water," etc) but now she's mad at him because he seems to have spent his recent memoirs deflecting blame from himself for the clusterfuck in Afghanistan. In fact she wants to take that book of memoirs and "break its stupid little spine."

It's not her last violent thought. Eventually our Crazy Jesus Lady gets around to talking about why we are in Afghanistan, despite our citizens' disgust at the enterprise. Followers may recall that Noonan was as recently at 2009 telling us that "Afghanistan is a great American undertaking," but was very unclear as to what the goal of that undertaking might be; she talked about what other people were thinking and saying (actually, mainly that they were thinking and saying indeterminate things), and implied of course that Obama had it all wrong, but didn't give us her own view on the subject, other than it was great and American and an undertaking.

Well, in today's column Noonan offers a little clarity:

If you asked most Americans why we went into Afghanistan in the weeks after 9/11, they would answer, with perfect common sense, that it was to get the bad guys—to find or kill Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda followers, to topple the Taliban government that had given them aid and support, to destroy terrorist networks and operations. New York at the time of the invasion, October 2001, was still, literally, smoking; the whole town still carried the acrid smell of Ground Zero. The scenes of that day were still vivid and sharp. New York still isn't over it...

Yeah, yeah, cut the bagpipes and get on with it.

...America wanted—needed—to see U.S. troops pull Osama out of his cave by his beard and drag him in his urine-soaked robes into an American courtroom. Or, less good but still good, to find him, kill him, put his head in a Tiffany box with a bow, and hand-carry it to the president of the United States.

It wasn't lust for vengeance, it was lust for justice, and for more than justice.

As you may have noticed long before now, that box was never delivered, and now Noonan says:

The failure to find bin Laden was a seminal moment in the history of the war in Afghanistan. And it was a catastrophe. From that moment—the moment he escaped his apparent hideout in Tora Bora and went on to make his sneering speeches and send them out to the world—from that moment everything about the Afghanistan war became unclear, unfocused, murky and confused.

I wish someone had told us at the time that we were just there for the head of Osama Bin Laden and that, once we had established that we weren't going to get it, we could split. Oh well, too late now.

CUE THE CRAZY JESUS LADY. I see that the President has made his speech, and the apparatchiks are working the Wellstone Maneuver -- the time-dishonored schtick in which conservatives pretend to be outraged at the upbeat tone of memorial services held by their mortal enemies.

Of course, it ain't over till the Crazy Jesus Lady sings -- by which I mean Peggy Noonan, who stuck the Triple Lutz of the Wellstone Maneuver back in 2002, actually pretending to be Senator Wellstone, and condemning his friends and family from heaven for their insufficient solemnity.

It was one of the lowest performances it has ever been my misfortune to witness, and it worked like a charm, helping to elect the horrible Norm Coleman to Wellstone's old seat. So Noonan must be greatly tempted to go for the hat trick. I can almost see her words crawling across the page:

Why can't I speak? My God, this must be what Terry Schiavo felt like! If I ever get out of this accursed bed, I'll mend my abortionist ways and fight for the rights of all God's children. And a balanced budget! And there's something else I'll do: Denounce everybody who didn't spend that memorial service blubbering like John Boehner at a supermarket opening. The very idea of those Demonrats cheering -- and that Kenyan pretender presuming to speak -- I'll tell you, the doctors think I'm fighting for my life, but I'm actually quivering with rage!

Etc. Of course, there's a danger, in that while Wellstone was dead, Giffords is not. If Noonan does go for it, there's a good chance Giffords will return to good health, fly up to New York, and kick her Crazy Jesus ass up and down Fifth Avenue.

Well, I'm convinced. Go for it, Peggy! I'm sending a bottle of Old Overholt and a scapular to your office for inspiration.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the TSA tsimmis. As I mentioned before, while I'm pleased that conservatives are standing up for their civil rights, they seem far less interested in those of people who do not resemble them. How far we've come, though, from the time when Peggy Noonan complained about airport security in 2008 and Scott Johnson of Power Line sighed, "Better to bash Bush from the perspective Noonan imputes to the weary travelers at Gate 14 than to help readers understand Bush's predicament as a politician constrained by the consent of the governed... . Included in the actions that Bush has taken to prevent a terrorist attack on the United States since 9/11 are those Noonan mocks in the column." Johnson is now much less inclined to defend the President of the United States on airport security grounds. Something has changed -- must be a new respect for civil rights!

UPDATE. For some reason I'm reminded of this.

HEED THE CRAZY JESUS LADY'S FILTHY CARDBOARD SIGN! What is this, Old Home Week? First Lileks showed up, and now comes the Crazy Jesus Lady herself, Peggy Noonan, to tell us: Skree terrorists will kill us all Obama sleeps skree.

Oh -- you want proof? Well, aside from the usual ass-coverers saying "If something blows up, don't say I didn't warn you (and if nothing blows up, no harm done)," there's this:

You can see a certain air of complacency even in government websites. On the front page of the House Committee on Homeland Security site there's a picture of Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, then, below, an area devoted to something called "Business Opportunities Model" and an area for "DHS Business Opportunities." On the Homeland Security Department's website, the priorities seem equally clear: "Find Career Opportunities," "Use the Job Finder." There's little sense of urgency; it's government as employment agency, not crisis leader.

They're actually wasting time hiring people! When they should be sending Tommy Lee Jones out to recruit Will Smith and put on dark glasses! When will the madness stop!

Why don't they just dress Noonan up as a Get-Ready Man and march her around the streets with a sandwich sign? But then I suppose her message would go unnoticed by the crucial "thought leadership" demographic, and be more visible among the sort of people who know enough to focus on something in the middle distance and keep walking .

BACK ON THE CHAIN GANG. Peggy Noonan, newly filled with a sense of purpose, tells us that people don't like Obama anymore. That is, the polls indicate a lot of them do, but the people who matter don't. Among these: columnists, and people Peggy Noonan meets in unspecified "bipartisan crowds":

As I read Ms. Drew's piece, I was reminded of something I began noticing a few months ago in bipartisan crowds. I would ask Democrats how they thought the president was doing. In the past they would extol, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, his virtues. Increasingly, they would preface their answer with, "Well, I was for Hillary."

It's amazing Clinton didn't win the Democratic nomination, with so much vital bipartisan support.

This in turn reminded me of a surprising thing I observe among loyal Democrats in informal settings and conversations: No one loves Barack Obama. Half the American people say they support him, and Democrats are still with him. But there were Bill Clinton supporters who really loved him. George W. Bush had people who loved him. A lot of people loved Jack Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. But no one seems to love Mr. Obama now; they're not dazzled and head over heels. That's gone away. He himself seems a fairly chilly customer; perhaps in turn he inspires chilly support. But presidents need that rock --bottom 20% who, no matter what's happening -- war, unemployment -- adore their guy, have complete faith in him, and insist that you love him, too.

Her model for such people might be Peggy Noonan, who once said things like "Mr. McCain is the Old America, of course; Mr. Obama the New." Remember those days? In any case it would explain her certainty in this analysis.

But Obama does have such people, despite the fact that Noonan is no longer among them. Even the Rasmussen polls favored by wingers show far more than 20 percent, in his alleged hour of darkness, strongly approve of Obama's performance. Maybe she figured someone might look this up, because she makes this move:

Obama probably has a hard 20 too, but whatever is keeping them close, it doesn't seem to be love.

What might it be, then? Personal threats if they don't answer polls the right way? It may not be "love" as Noonan experiences it for politicians, but given how loopy she can be her ardor, that only speaks well of the Obama diehards' psychological health.

When numbers fail her, Noonan retreats to memes. "The Obama bowing pictures," she asserts, "are becoming iconic, and they would not be if they weren't playing off a growing perception." She compares Obama's bows with Gerald Ford's lack of physical grace, which was also parodied on Saturday Night Live. We'll see if SNL is still working them in 2012, but Noonan is convinced they are deathless, probably because they were seized upon by conservatives who obsess on them to this day.

Noonan, not having been offered a bipartisan sinecure by the Administration despite her service, is back to reading the rightwing tea leaves and portraying them as the wisdom of the people. So, though her long years in the journalistic trenches must have shown her that some political schtick is evanescent, now that she is stuck playing the conservative on Sunday morning shows she is milking every anti-Obama talking point as if the udders were full of benedictine. You will recall she also counseled that the only thing that could save Obama from the Nobel Peace Prize was to reject it as rudely as possible; this he was disinclined to do, and now nobody gives a shit.

So Noonan grabs the Next Blog Thing. Off the pages of history and back to ordinary political cycles, she is condemned to worry each outrage du jour as if it were Watergate to infinity.

She's still offering advice to her late espoused saint, though: Lose the health care bill. "He can't afford to win with such a poor piece of legislation." That must go over big with the boys in the green room, especially among those who take morbid pleasure in the thought that she may have once imagined herself, like Bob Gates and Dana Perino, standing behind a lectern that bore the Presidential Seal.

CRAZY JESUS LADY NOW JUST CRAZY. Peggy Noonan says our leaders are too stupid to know that nothing they try will work, while her nameless friends in the pharmaceutical and insurance industries realize that the reanimation of her former boss Ronald Reagan will.

As she is a nut, they're all nut graphs, but I'll represent this one here:

When I see those in government, both locally and in Washington, spend and tax and come up each day with new ways to spend and tax -- health care, cap and trade, etc. -- I think: Why aren't they worried about the impact of what they're doing? Why do they think America is so strong it can take endless abuse

She professes to believe that a national health care system is a form of abuse; also, that her anonymous buddies will stop working if their tax rate approaches something 25-30 percent less than what they had under Eisenhower. And she thinks the government is filled with "Callous Children."

Her loss of faith is remarkable. Once upon a time, when she was the Crazy Jesus Lady, Noonan directed our attention heavenward, confident that this would get our minds right. Now that the Republicans are no longer in power, she is less inclined toward spiritual remedies. I guess she has sensed -- as even dullards like George Pataki have -- that the tide in rightwing fashion has turned toward Tea Party rage, and decided to grab a pitchfork.

I saw the Crazy Jesus Lady losing Jesus about a year ago, when she was trying to maneuver the GOP faithful out of the hands of gooberish preachers and toward the healing embrace of Mitt Romney. Now it appears she has found a new animating force. There will be no murmured prayers or other pretenses of divine grace to soften her spiels now. She has become the Crazy Lady of the God of Wrath.

THE NEW CRAZY JESUS LADY. The Anchoress:

In 8 years of Bill Clinton’s presidency, I dreamed about the man once, and it don’t remember feeling good or bad about it.

In 8 years of Bush’s presidency, I may have dreamed of him once. I think I did, but don’t really remember....

Oh my God. She isn't. She can't be. When people reach a certain stage of insanity, don't they lose the ability to type?

I was surprised to wake up this morning, ’round 7 AM, from a dream so full of the goodness of Obama, the love of Obama, the grace of Obama, that I was strongly repelled. If I were the time to consider mass-hypnosis, I’d have wondered about it.

There follow outtakes from Wild in the Streets starring Obama which The Anchoress claims to have dreamed. (The general idea is that he is charming but wicked.) Now, if you or I have dreams that provoke or upset us, we imagine that our mind is ill at ease, and endeavor to bring it ease, with therapy, or meditation, or pills, or prayer, or strong drink, etc. How does The Anchoress respond?

I suspect the dreams are occurring because the man is never not on television.

Then she tells us about how much more Obama the mind-rapists are pushing at her than they did Clinton or Bush. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that, pending the investigation I'm sure some media center is conducting as we speak, the odds that Obama has been on TV more in the first five months of his Presidency than Clinton or Bush were in their ninety-two months in office, apiece, are very long.

Though mad, The Anchoress possesses sufficient faculties to recall that she has talked a lot about how the press never missed an opportunity to denounce Bush, so this new idea that the former President wasn't on TV much will need some explaining. Here's her offer:

Bush got as much negative coverage as could be written, but little videotape. Toward the last two years of his presidency, if I remember correctly, he would 60-90 seconds on the nightly news shows, if that much.

I'm trying to remember what she's talking about. Maybe whenever the subject of Bush came up, the MSM Propaganda Teams showed a scarecrow wearing a sign that said STOOPID BUSH, and jiggled in while someone went "Yuk, yuk, duh-huh" in the background. Or maybe they showed footage of Hitler instead.

I hope The Anchoress will explain it at length sometime. Meanwhile here's a little of her close:

Obama is literally ever-present. Like our sins he is “ever before our eyes,” wherever we turn...

Her minders at First Things must have sent her back to soften this:

And no, I don’t need 100 emails scolding me for calling the president “sin.” I’m not. I’m just having fun and playing on Psalm 51, there, but take it as you like it; people believe what they want to believe.

The passive-aggressiveness is vintage Althouse, but on the whole I'd say The Anchoress, under the pressure of having to produce every day without the excuse of prayer circles or whatnot to relieve her, has turned into a Crazy Jesus Lady for our time. As my regular readers will know, this honorific was once bestowed upon Peggy Noonan, but as I noticed some time back, she has either lost her tendency toward hallucination or soft-pedaled her pretense of it, and behaves now more like an ordinary, glib hack. The Anchoress seems to have Crazy and Jesus and Lady in equal measure and plenty all around. I think it's time to hand her the crown.

THE POWERLESSNESS OF SUGGESTION. In zipping through the political nonsense last week I noticed a Victor Davis Hanson article asking, "Why are so many Americans so depressed about things these days?" and providing a long list of reasons -- mostly Obama with a little o-tempora-o-mores thrown in for the seniors.

Depressed? I thought. Who says Americans are depressed? Hanson's article offered no citation, and I could find no concordance among the relevant political and medical news.

Hanson also asked, "Why are Americans hesitant, bewildered after the arrival of the Messiah?" without telling us where he heard about that, either.

Then Power Line's Scott Whatshisname said, "Victor Davis Hanson asks why so many Americans are depressed," and, without questioning the premise, offered reasons why he was depressed ("the fellow in the Oval Office who combines infantile leftism and adolescent grandiosity in roughly equal measures," "the mullahs love the weakness and stupidity that President Obama transmits," etc).

Bruce Kesler of Maggie's Farm also accepted and even confirmed out of his ass the uncorroborated premise ("Both Johnson and Hanson, in effect, point at frustration at both external events and at our own behaviors. They are correct") but insisted he, perhaps alone among men, was not depressed, because "Forty-eight percent did not vote for Obama" and because "Ordinary Americans" -- though depressed -- "are buckling down in their personal affairs and continuing to achieve for themselves, society, and our futures."

Then the shrinks were brought in. Dr. Sanity agreed with someone else's assertion that polls showed Obama's policies are "showing signs of not going over very well" -- one hell of a qualified statement -- and took from this that "it is not only Republicans and conservative Democrats who are utterly aghast, but a large majority of the population." Also, "Those who innocently voted for him are beginning to sicken on the bitterness of their regret and betrayal." Still no numbers, nor even the testimony of an irate cab-driver.

ShrinkWrapped seconded -- "We now see the spread of despair to the Center and Left" -- and finally offered some anecdotal evidence at least: the demurrers of those tribunes of the common man, Paul Krugman and Thomas P.M. Barnett. (Good ol' Moe Lane was convinced -- but he wasn't depressed, no sir! He liked his odds in 2010!)

And so on. I can't be absolutely sure where they got it from. Maybe Fox News is still putting out the Morning Memo. They might have been channeling the March 13 Peggy Noonan WSJ column, in which the Crazy Jesus Lady, as is her wont, saw the face of America in her drinks tray ("People sense something slipping away, a world receding, not only an economic one but a world of old structures...") and even gave credence to the lunatic ravings of an apocalyptic preacher in support of her vision.

But I can guess at the spirit behind it. These people have been dealt out of the conversation. Day after day they smack their lips and predict the impending downfall of the Democrats. But even if Obama were caught sniffing coke off Bin Laden's ass, they'd still have many hard months left before they could do anything with it. Nor do they have a plan to offer voters they expect to convince except their own moral superiority, tax cuts for the rich, and persecution of homosexuals.

Politics is everything to them, but they don't respond to it like politicians -- they respond like spurned lovers. They have been in stark shock since the November election, and even then could not admit that they had been rejected by the country they thought was theirs for the pandering. One day they'll see, they mutter into their tear-stained pillows. And in their exile they comfort one other with stories that America isn't doing so well, she pines, she sighs -- she is depressed.

I had thought there was some kind of strategic meaning to their Tea Parties, but now I suspect they're just pity parties: ways of huddling together to fill their aching void.

THE USUAL GANG OF IDIOTS. I feel I must apologize again for the paucity of posts, and this time admit that it's not all because I'm worked to death (though I am) or sick (better, thanks). I am also suffering from a lack of interest in my usual subjects. Maybe the emotional discharge of the post-election has affected them, or me.

I mean, what could anyone do with this? It's as mawkish and maudlin as any earlier Peggy Noonan joint, of the sort I used to enjoy, but now she provides no burr to catch the imagination. That she believes the economy can't be too bad because she can't see, from her dirigible high above Fifth Avenue, its effects ("Everyone is dressed the same... The mall is still there, and people are still walking into the stores...") is highly provocative; a few minutes' research might have revealed to her, for example, that crops are bad and crop insurers are defaulting, which in the current situation might discomfort any sensible person, and that things aren't so hot in the cities, either. Also, as I've said before, in our first stages of decline Americans naturally try to keep up appearances, not giving up the outward appearance of sociable, solvent life until it's absolutely unavoidable. What do you think was fueling that great credit surge before the bust?

But just as you're getting ready to pounce, Noonan decides she doesn't really mean it, but it doesn't really matter: things "will roughen," but "we've gotten through roughness before." Of course her model for getting through is the hands of Jesus guiding her jet liner to safety ("Lord, thank you for our previous safety, and get us through this turbulence"), and her coda a mention of a book with vodka in the title, which was probably to Noonan a sign from God that she should have another.

It's like that scene in Post Office where Bukowski's finally had enough of that co-worker who's always muttering insults, and wheels on him only to realize that the guy is lost in a private fog and has no awareness of him or anything else around him. It takes a lot of the fight out of you.

Likewise Lileks is moonier than usual and hard to grasp, as here, where he mourns (after some broken-field running to disguise the vapidness of his theme from readers, and possibly himself) the godlessness that has left our Modern Arts shallow and brittle, unlike the works of the Immortal Beethoven etc. All I can think to say is: so where's your cathedral, pal?

Maybe I'll start jabbing my leg with a penknife like Gide's Lafcadio until these guys start giving me more to work with.

SORRY SO QUIET. I've been busy, natch, and also sick -- like my idol Jim Lileks I get colds, but instead of having dozens of them every year like he does, I just get one or two, but they're doozies and sap my essence.

Despite chills and bronchial tumult I have continued to earn my meager living at the Voice. You can always go look at that stuff; just because no one reads it doesn't mean it's not good. And I have a bit about Peggy Noonan today that might gladden your black little hearts.

THE BIG-LEAGUER AND THE BUSH-LEAGUER. The conservative heretic hunt proceeds apace. Witchfinder General The Anchoress thinks that Peggy Noonan, of all people, is angling for a job as Obama's Press Secretary:

Some of us have rather suspected that Peggy Noonan -- over the past few months -- has been playing pretty for a seat at the Obama table. Hey, a girl wants to be relevant, right?...

Hey, if Noonan manages -- like a few others from the right -- to successfully anchor herself within the coming regime, more power to her, I guess.

She's talking about the same Noonan who said that Obama represents the awful "New America," for whom "Politics is life," who sue smokers, and for whom "love of country is a decision... What you breathe in is skepticism" and "Tradition is a challenge, a barrier, or a lovely antique." She also asked, "Are the Obamas, at bottom, snobs? Do they understand America? Are they of it?" Hell of a way to curry favor, I'd say.

But Noonan said some bad words about Sarah Palin, which to The Anchoress is proof of treason. In a way you can't blame The Anchoress. She doesn't understand that Noonan's loyalty is not to a set of principles but to a brand. Brand Peggy is a comfort brand for conservatives and seeks to ease their minds; if something went wrong with some Republican campaign, it was not the conservatism, but some bad choice. She isn't going to work for Democrats, as her most recent column (about "flinty elderly Republicans from New England, home-schooling mothers in Ohio, libertarianish Republicans in Colorado, suburban patriots outside the big cities... the beating heart of conservatism") amply proves, any more than Tony Bennett is going to start covering the Vivian Girls.

But she is going to protect herself, and she wants to leave the impression that she has been true to the cause while others deceived themselves. Republican candidates come and go, but Peggy will be at the hearth with a blanket on her lap for years to come, talking to a large audience about the good old days.

As a crazed dead-ender, The Anchoress can't grasp this: for her every battle is Armageddon. But she works a small market. Noonan is playing in the bigs, and though she may sometimes descend among the people for effect, she will always return to the skybox when the paychecks are being distributed. Whatever she tells the rubes, she knows where the "beating heart of conservatism" is really at.

PLAYING PARTISAN WHEN POST-PARTISANISM DOESN'T WORK. At the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan says she wants McCain and Obama to explain to people why they are respectively a Republican and a Democrat. I expect Noonan is influenced by the current bailout situation, in which Republicans who built and prospered from the go-go, lightly-regulated economy are positioning themselves for the moment as rebels from its bailout -- though, as tipped by McCain's remarks tonight, they will cave as soon as they think they are sufficiently covered politically. It's standard-issue Noonan jiu-jitsu -- to call for something that can't possibly happen because of her own party's tactics, and hope the uninformed will find her lofty and wise rather than disingenuous.

Of the many things that are ridiculous about this, a few scream to be mentioned. First, as we just saw, the Presidential debates, which McCain lately endeavored to evade, are meant to explain this -- or, more usefully, to explain why the parties are properly represented by them. Second, I recall that Noonan used to swoon over George Bush, who was allowed to distance himself from his party as a "compassionate conservative" before he went on to embody Republican principles so thoroughly as to discredit them for all time, and even force Noonan to renounce both Bush and the Republicans (though I think their refusal to hire her had something to do with it).

Both parties have evolved, not to say been shifty, and their candidates have prospered by playing for them and against them as they see fit. I can't imagine Noonan, who despite the paucity of her paying gigs with the GOP of late is still a reliable tool, would be suggesting this party-identification program if McCain were leading strongly. Then, as always, she and her colleagues would be doing the identifying -- Democrats treasonous and spendthrift, Republicans butch and economically sound, and so forth.

It must also be mentioned that Noonan wonders at Obama's slim lead, and attributes to it to Obama being "unusual, singular," "not your basic Dem," and "exotic," without ever mentioning that he's black. This too is audacious, but only in a familiar way.

OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS. "Dems rally for Obama at Ohio congresswoman's memorial." Quick, call out the Republican mourners-in-absentia. The schtick they used in 2002, when they denounced Paul Wellstone supporters who paid tribute to the late Senator's political causes at his memorial, may work again. Everything's in place: Some Democratic splitters are already on it, and Free Republic and Lucianne Goldberg are roiling the swamps. All that's needed is a credible mainstream figure like Peggy Noonan to don the mantle of propriety and cry "shame." (No, this guy doesn't count, but he's got the right idea.)

The fact that the office at issue this time is not the same one held by the deceased makes no difference. It's a national election, and every little helps.

THESE ARE THE JOKES, FOLKS! Peggy Noonan seems to want another campaign job. In today's Wall Street Journal she pleads for the Republicans to release the real McCain, highlighting "the antic part of his nature, his natural wit... That's why the boys on the bus loved him in 2000. That's why the Republican base rejected him in 2000."

Well, that seems a mixed outcome at best, but maybe even the base will be won over by such sure-fire material as this:

[He] volunteered that Brooke Buchanan, his spokeswoman who was seated nearby and rolling her eyes, 'has a lot of her money hidden in the Cayman Islands' and that she earned it by 'dealing drugs.' Previously, Mr. McCain had identified Ms. Buchanan as 'Pat Buchanan's illegitimate daughter,' 'bipolar,' 'a drunk,' 'someone with a lot of boyfriends,' and 'just out of Betty Ford.'"

Ha... huh? "That's the McCain his friends love," Noonan confidently tells us, "McCain unplugged."

I have to ask, will these Friars' Club Roast routines be used only on friends, or are they also meant for the press pool ("Helen, you brain-damaged old whore! Remember when you sucked me off behind the statue of William Borah? I felt like the Lion of the Senate all day") and the debates ("Let's be honest, homes, if I may call you homes. Puffy Combs is still mad about J-Lo, and if he finds out you were tappin' that back in '99, you can stop worrying about white people for the rest of the campaign and perhaps your life. In fact, maybe you should just grab a Bronco right now and do an OJ, while you still have your balls")? That would be a bold move, certainly.

Or maybe McCain unplugged should direct his schtick toward the voters: "Yeah, you had a nice time drinkin' beers and clearin' brush with George Bush, didn't you? I notice Prozac consumption is up. Maybe if you pillheads could come down long enough to see what a mess this country's in, I wouldn't have to worry about you voting for the other guy because you thought he did a good job in Men In Black. See these medals? I didn't win them in a debate competition. You want a tongue job, we'll get the missus out here. That ain't my bag. You people are fucked and it's gonna take a crazy, half-senile old sailor to get you unfucked. Now, somebody tell that cunt to come up here for the grip-and-grin, or as we call it in my house, the money shot. Thanks, morons, and try the veal."

SHOT BY BOTH SIDES. I am a citizen of two Americas. No, not John Edwards' -- Peggy Noonan's. And to hear Noonan tell it in the Wall Street Journal, these Americas are not separated by anything so tiresome as income or class, but by the lingua franca of the commentariat, attitude and political affiliation ("Mr. McCain is the Old America, of course; Mr. Obama the New").

Noonan implies we must cleave to one America or the other, but I am torn:

In the Old America, love of country was natural. You breathed it in. You either loved it or knew you should.

In the New America, love of country is a decision. It's one you make after weighing the pros and cons. What you breathe in is skepticism and a heightened appreciation of the global view.

Like all citizens who have sung the National Anthem, attended a 4th of July picnic, taken an American History class in America, or just noticed what an amazing place this is -- that is to say, nearly everyone who lives here -- I grew up an America-lover. But eventually I also learned skepticism, which is apparently the opposite of patriotism, and awareness that there are other countries on the planet with their own interests, which forbidden knowledge, Noonan seems to think, makes it impossible for me to place my own country's interests first.

Old America: Tradition is a guide in human affairs. New America: Tradition is a challenge, a barrier, or a lovely antique.

The guidance of tradition, even as interpreted by such presumably patriotic persons as Supreme Court Justices, may take us in directions unexpected by Wall Street Journal writers. But by Noonan's lights, New Americans consider such generous readings of civil rights to be a refutation of the Old America. Where might they have gotten that idea?

The Old America had big families. You married and had children. Life happened to you. You didn't decide, it decided. Now it's all on you. Old America, when life didn't work out: "Luck of the draw!" New America when life doesn't work: "I made bad choices!" Old America: "I had faith, and trust." New America: "You had limited autonomy!"

After decades of sunny Reaganism -- promulgated in large part by Noonan herself -- that told us bad choices led to poverty and that each atomized citizen was the master of his entrepreneurial fate, this is rich to the point of vomitousness.

She goes on, and on, and on ("The Old: Smoke 'em if you got 'em. The New: I'll sue"), even dropping in the ridiculous but not unprecedented notion that Obama followed community organizing as a path to riches. What it all comes down to is something I've noticed before: that the old leftist slogan "the personal is the political" has been appropriated wholesale by conservatives. And in the last ditch, where they have reason to believe they currently reside, they will lean on the personal as never before. Because, really, it's all they have left.

UPDATE. There is some discussion in comments as to whether patriotism, even the wiseguy-leaks-furtive-tear kind cynically practiced here, is invariably toxic. Well, any kind of loyalty can be dangerous, but it's pretty hard to imagine life without it. Even personal loyalties can lead to ruin, and we can see that loyalty to something as large as a nation leaves that much more room for untoward consequences. But it also grants (in the ideal case, to which America-love is closer than most) room for dissent. That I can sometimes assert, as I have, that I hate this fucking country and wish to see it defeated by militant Islam (which totally rocks) without being torn to pieces by an angry mob shows that membership in America isn't quite the same thing as allegiance to a death cult.

Of course, membership has its privileges, and we can argue that it is what the United States does to other people, in all our names, that is the real moral problem. I hope we can address that in the election, but I don't deceive myself that the Democrats will wipe all traces of blood from our honor.

So what's my alternative? Japan stubbornly refuses to appoint me as a Living Treasure, though they may just be having trouble reading my application. I guess I'm stuck with the land in which I was born and the culture in which I am steeped, and will have to make the most of it.

PROS BEFORE HOS. In her recent Obama column in the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan slaps the main stream media, then disingenuously describes herself as a "proud member since 2000." In a way, that's quite true; she wrote speeches for Reagan, fatally setting the tone for what we still describe as the liberal media, which has done nothing since then but cosset her old boss, amplify and exacerbate every half- and quarter-baked scandal-story about Bill Clinton, and treat subsequent Democratic Presidential candidates as if they were third-party radicals. In that sense there is no one more mainstream than her.

So let us in this instance give Noonan the credit she deserves as a big-time operator. Her praise of Obama, before the knife-twist, is almost as syrupy as her Reagan encomia from back in the day. She does not tip her hand too soon, as this well-regarded amateur does. Executive summaries of the sort he offers ("While I was impressed by his argument, I could not help but return to the central question of his candidacy...") may impress other right-wing internet essayists, but Noonan has been to the Show, and knows to keep the forkball hidden until it's time to release it. Her depth-charge is truly deep:

But "a similar anger exists within segments of the white community." He speaks of working- and middle-class whites whose "experience is the immigrant experience," who started with nothing. "As far as they're concerned, no one handed them anything, they've built it from scratch." "So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town," when they hear of someone receiving preferences they never received, and "when they're told their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced," they feel anger too.

This is all, simply, true. And we are not used to political figures being frank, in this way, in public. For this Mr. Obama deserves deep credit. It is also true the particular whites Obama chose to paint -- ethnic, middle class -- are precisely the voters he needs to draw in Pennsylvania. It was strategically clever. But as one who witnessed busing in Boston first hand, and whose memories of those days can still bring tears, I was glad for his admission that busing was experienced as an injustice by the white working class. Next step: admitting it was an injustice, period.

I have already mentioned the "You already admitted black people have prejudices, now insult some black parishioners" approach of such as Andrew Sullivan, but Sullivan is a mere columnist, and not so accustomed to dishing the poisoned treacle as a practiced operative like Noonan.

Sullivan could never find room in his columns for a call to revival of the Louise Day Hicks doctrine. He has staked too much on his "post-racial" angle. To call for Obama to revisit and renounce busing would harsh Sullivan's modish and studiously-established cross-cultural mellow.

Noonan, on the other hand, is old school. She recalls the ancient racial wars, and knows from long experience how to make segregation look reasonable to white people. Though in the current state of play it would look bad to endorse white mobs screaming at buses full of black children, Noonan knows she can, in the cacophony and confusion attending to Obama's speech, reframe that disgusting episode as a legitimate white grievance. And she knows that no one on her side, least of all Sullivan, will raise a demurrer.

I have to say Noonan's rancid, racist gambit is well-played. I only wish there were someone with establishment credentials and balls to refute her, or to plainly state why they won't.