R.I.P. KENNETH MARS. Attention must be paid.



He was lovely in Young Frankenstein, nastily impersonated the critic John Simon in What's Up, Doc?, and did a lot of TV, most of which I missed (though I have misty memories of him on He & She). But to me he will forever be Franz Liebkind.

In a way he had the most difficult job in the movie -- making an unrepentant Nazi funny -- but like all the other major players in The Producers, by going absolutely balls-out with his performance he achieved escape velocity. Roger Ebert recalls that one time Mel Brooks, chided by a woman for having created this "vulgar" film, answered, "Lady, it rose below vulgarity." That's what Mars did, too, turning the previously scary idea of the Hitler holdout dwelling amongst us into a ripe vaudeville joke: all tantrums, cowardice, sentimentality, and (best of all) absurd dignity ("Gentlemen, it iss magic time").

And timing. Never, ever forget timing. And lazzi. Check the nose wipe during the Churchill rant.

This is not to claim that the movie or Mars' performance did anything uplifting, but to note that they were in the very, very best of bad taste. And, in the words of the ad campaign for another old movie, boy, do we need it now.

THE HOLLYWOOD VERSION. Via Memeorandum, I see Oliver Stone wants to do a George W. Bush biopic. Roger L. Simon and Libertas have already started snarling.

I am intrigued. Stone's Nixon is a muddle, but a pleasurable one, and certainly not a hit job -- in fact, it's Stone's quixotic attempt to humanize Nixon that makes it both confused and interesting. Stone could never concede that Nixon was just a monster of ordinary ambition; he scours his biography for insecurities that might explain him ("I kept thinking of my old man tonight -- he was a failure, too"), even inventing troubled relationships with his wife and mother to show the depth of his existential loneliness. These Freudian interludes clash badly with the massive historical events to which Stone absurdly gave equal weight: Nixon goes to China, Nixon goes to Russia, Nixon goes to Hell.

At times the ill-fitting gears mesh to lovely effect, as when young Nixon attends his mother's admonition to seek "strength in this life, happiness in the next," and the camera sweeps skyward and then down upon a thoughtful Nixon waiting to take the Republican Convention stage in 1968. But the real Nixon, or even a poetic equivalent, remains as elusive as Nixon's dialect in the mouth of Anthony Hopkins. The real hero of Nixon isn't Nixon but Stone, the adrenaline-addled Vietnam volunteer seeking to justify his psychedelic patriotism even amidst ample, excellent cases for abandoning it. His sentimental inability to see Tricky Dick plain provides its own fascinating spectacle of wishful thinking, which reverberates through the eulogies Bob Dole and the ex-Presidents yammer during the end credits.

How could I not be eager to see what Stone will make, ten years later, of Dubya and his exceedingly strange family (and please God let James Cromwell play Poppy)? We'll see then if even Stone's forgiveness has its limits.

FEAR OF A GAY PLANET. Just thought I'd follow up on those rightbloggers who, I noticed in my Voice column, had previously remained tight-lipped about the New York gay marriage vote. RedState finally hosted Some Guy to try a Big Gummint spin. "Gay-rights activists are surely pleased with the new law," allowed Some Guy, "but they should ask themselves what they really want from this issue and whether the government can ever deliver." True, these activists seem pretty damned pleased about it now, but they may not have heard Some Guy's tightly reasoned argument.

Anyone can hold a marriage ceremony anywhere. Anyone can wear a ring. Anyone can cohabitate and raise children. The laws surrounding the transfer of wealth apply to less than 1% of taxpayers. Anybody can already visit Vermont for some syrup and a gay marriage. Very few lives will change in a practical way with the NY’s new law. Why the gay-rights obsession with government sanctioned marriage? Acceptance is the real gay-rights goal.

Those homosexuals whose ears lifted at this and who cried "O no, they're on to us!" will surely be affected by Some Guy's follow-up:

Gay-rights activists are sure to be sorely disappointed to learn that nobody’s opinion of gay marriage will change simply because NY now allows them to fill out a standard form. Gay marriage is a symbolic blast of hot air.

Hear that, faggots? Our fingers are in our ears, we're not listening, la la la.

Traditionalists will not change their beliefs. Life will go on, apart from a handful of politicians like Pres. Obama who in 2008 said “I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian — for me as a Christian — it is also a sacred union.”

Bwa ha ha! Where's your Obama now, gaysocialists? Finally Some Guy turns his rhetoric to whatever non-gay readers RedState might have:

Those who oppose gay marriage can only blame themselves for entrusting their institution with the government. The government twists in the political winds, and can only be relied on to disappoint. Most people now know that entrusting their retirement and healthcare to the government was a mistake. Entrusting marriage to the government is a similar roll of the dice.

The government should not endorse gay marriage; the government should get out of the marriage business altogether. Most of all, nobody should look to the government for validation of his life or defense of his religion. The governments of the US are corrupt, capricious, and are the biggest threat to the nation’s survival. Why should anyone expect such bodies to arbitrate morals?

This is lovely, as it conflates homo-hatred with libertarianism: Big Gummint can't protect us from universal health care, how can it protect us from the gay menace? Best to take down Moloch and have gay-free churches like grandpappy intended. But keep your Big Gummint hands of our Big Gummint subsidies!

Speaking of BG, Andrew Breitbart's Big Government finally ran a related story: "NYC ‘Pride’ Parade Turns Into Celebration of Gay Marriage." This was entirely cribbed from an AP story, but the commenters provided some pleasure. "They have until January of 2013 to live it up," muttered one cowboy, "then the Nation comes back to being the United States of America, with an American President, a Nation which includes New York State." So much for the federalist laboratories of democracy! From another, whom I am not entirely sure isn't kidding:

It's time to stop the perversion of the language. 'Gay Pride is an oxymoron, if homosexuals are proud, let them keep the word and not co-opt and redefine another word. I'm taking the word 'gay' back. 'Gay apparel' is a colorful Christmas sweater or blouse, not a leisure suit with a change pocket.

Not bad, but I prefer the Homer Simpson version:



Many other top rightbloggers remain silent on the issue. Michelle Malkin can't be arsed, nor can Gateway Pundit, Roger L. Simon, Jeff Godlstein, Ed Driscoll, Dean Esmay, and even the mean fake nun The Anchoress, among many other top-tier lunatics. If I didn't know them better I'd say they might be embarrassed, but I do, and assume they're merely waiting for the day when they can either claim credit for gay marriage or lead torch-bearing mobs against homosexuals, depending on the breaks.

For shits and giggles (mostly shits) let's close with one of those low-end vendors who had nothing to lose and so were happy to extemporize on the subject, Francis W. Porretto. After explaining the biological basis of No Gay Marriage in his inimitable, Looka-me-I'm-Chesterton-after-a-brain-injury style -- "Women, therefore, are vulnerable before the male sex drive. They have their own sex drive, of course, and are legally 'protected' against rape in all civilized nations" -- Porretto delivers the saddest-ever defense of het marriage in an age of abundant divorce:

Most spouses remain faithful to one another while the marriage lasts.

Eventually he gets around to yelling at gay people, more in concern-trollery than in anger: While declaring that the "great majority" of same-sexers "are just as decent as the great majority of heterosexuals" ("for the sake of argument," that is, not really), Porretto asks:

• Given that the correlations among same-sex marriage, declining fertility rates, and single-parent families are so strong, and that the obvious path forward is to research the matter for its causal interstices, why are homosexuals so determined to prevent even the discussion thereof?
  
  
• If there is a causal link, such that the legalization of same-sex marriage does lead to various social pathologies and accelerating social decline, what benefits do homosexuals expect to reap from it that are:
  
  • Currently unavailable to them; and:
    
  • Great enough to justify inflicting that much damage on American society?

Or, to put it another way, when did you stop beating your same-sex so-called "wife," and Western Civilization? Look at it this way: He's just saying what rightbloggers are all thinking, but are too career-minded to say out loud.

UPDATE. Thank you commenter Keith: "Gay Panic no longer holds any water since they've been screeching about it for more than a decade and the worst thing to happen is that it's become socially exceptable for men to use hair gel."

THIS YEAR'S MUDDLE.

After hearing blessedly little from or about him in recent years, I see Hugh Hewitt has become the Important Conservative Journalist of the moment. At National Journal, Shane Goldmacher tells us in "It Had To Be Hugh" that "Hewitt, a professor of constitutional law who often sounds the part, isn't a conventional right-wing talk-radio host" and has "the demeanor of a friendly academic"; he also says Hewitt's "relationship with the mainstream media is complicated." At Power Line John Hinderaker says "Hugh tries to elevate our discourse about politics and public life" and "believes that, day by day, intelligent conversation with important, knowledgeable people on both sides of the political aisle can bring us closer to realizing the democratic ideal."

This does not much comport with the Hugh Hewitt I've been observing lo these many years. For example:

In 2005 an Iraq War correspondent suggested to Hewitt that he didn't really know what was going on at the front, and Hewitt rejoined that he did indeed know because he was at that moment broadcasting from the Empire State Building and "the Empire State Building... has been in the past, and could be again, a target..." Also, "in downtown Manhattan, it's not comfortable, although it's a lot safer than where you are, people always are three miles away from where the jihadis last spoke in America... Although you are on the front line, this was the front line four and a half years ago." Hewitt's primary residence at the time was in California.

By 2006 the war wasn't as popular as it had been and Hewitt explained that turncoats like Andrew Sullivan and Peter Beinart had only "turned defeatists" because they "feel disdained" by President Bush, and that the President should have them over to the Indian Treaty Room for a chin-wag: "Even if some are too far gone into opposition to be recalled, some will wake up." Ah, what might have been!

Hewitt also does his bit for organized religion: When Tom Hanks was pushing his Da Vinci Code movie and said "we always knew there would be a segment of society that would not want this movie to be shown," Hewitt warned Hanks, "Tom: Careful now... stick to the obvious – it is an absurd piece of invention that makes for a fun thriller – and all will be well." Nobody crosses the professorial Hugh Hewitt! When Jeff Jarvis (!) said something negative about the religious right, Hewitt said, "it is a useful exercise to run through Jeff's piece and substitute 'the Jews' for the 'religious right' and all pronounces referring to the 'religious right.' Jeff is of course not anti-Semitic..." That's elevating the discourse!

And Lord, does he go on about that Emm Ess Emm. You can catch Hewitt doing the traditional goldurn-librul-media schtick anytime, but a particularly good example of his "complicated" relationship with it is this 2004 bit in which he suggested that Michael Kinsley, who'd just taken over the L.A. Times editorial page, should hire Roger L. Simon, Laura Ingraham, Max Boot, Jim Lileks, and Mickey Kaus. But what's the difference, Hewitt went on, "even a reinvigorated editorial page and opinion page won't help much given the senior staff's refusal to deal with the poisonous bias in the 'news' reports..." Kinsley for some reason didn't take his advice, and Hewitt must have been pissed: In 2005, when Kinsley's paper did a story about a couple of North Koreans who offered an obviously untrustworthy defense of their country, Hewitt pretended to believe the L.A. Times -- or, as he called it, The Pyongyang Times -- was peddling Nork propaganda.

Hewitt's devotion to the "democratic ideal" is such that in 2011 he was trying like hell to get Herman Cain and Ron Paul bounced from the Republican primary debates so the establishment candidates could have more time on camera.

Other Hewitt nuggets: "The only reason [Chris] Muir [creator of the horrible Day by Day comic] isn't widely syndicated is MSM bias." There's also Hewitt pretending to be outraged at the treatment of John Murtha a year after supporting that treatment.  And Hewitt predicting in 2005 that the Catholic cardinals, inspired by "the cruel death of Terri Schiavo," would elect an American Pope.

And given that one of Hewitt's plums is the right to ask questions at a Republican debate, we should recall this brainstorm of his from 2013:

Proposed opening question for the first GOP presidential debate in the fall of 2015: "Was the 'shutdown showdown' of October 2013 good or necessary -- either or both -- and why?"

I don't have any idea how it will be answered by the 10 or so potentially serious candidates who may be on that stage, but the difficulty of predicting the best answer can be found — where else? — in two movies about war.

But what's the use -- every so often a rightwing apparatchik like Hewitt is elevated and promoted as a fair-minded voice of alternative reason; in fact it's happened to Hewitt before, in a 2005 New Yorker blowjob ("Hewitt is definitely a Republican, but he is no mere mouthpiece"). If Hewitt really thinks the MSM is as nefarious as he portrays them, maybe he'd consider they might only be promoting him to make conservatism look bad.

UPDATE. In comments, The_Kenosha_Kid: "Don't make fun of the dangers of working in the Empire State Building! I saw a documentary once where it was attacked by a giant monkey."

Hardcore spelunkers can also read Hewitt's 2008 propaganda ebook, "Letter to a Young Obama Supporter." At the time, I reviewed its mendacious and definitely not "friendly academic" approach, though I missed some of Hewitt's youth outreach, such as this let-me-put-it-in-terms-you'll understand explanation of why Obama's lack of experience should concern the youngs:

If you could be given golf lessons by either Tiger Woods or the local club pro, guitar lessons by Eric Clapton or the guitarist for the garage band playing downtown, cooking lessons by Emeril Lagasse or by the night cook at the local diner, which choice would you make in every case?

 I like to imagine Hewitt laying aside his pen after that one and sighing with satisfaction, "eat your heart out, Greg Gutfeld."

CONSERVATIVE OUTREACH TO WOMEN AND MINORITIES CONTINUES.

You may have noticed the snit libertarians had over "vagina voters" who weren't giving us menfolk a chance at the presidency because misandry. The term had been used by assholes before ("Thanks, vagina voters. Thanks a pantsload. Enjoy your unregulated vaginas..."), but Brendan O'Neill's article at Reason spread the usage till it reached the attention of Rush Limbaugh, emperor of its natural constituency, who did what you'd expect with it ("you know me, just trying to stir the pot out there" ah shaddap).

Over at PJ Media (aka "Roger L. Simon's Tax Write-off"), Susan L.M. Goldberg ("a writer with a Master's in Radio, Television & Film") asks "How Will the Republicans Combat Vagina Politics?" After complaining that today's sheeple "don’t know a thing about [new AG Loretta] Lynch beyond the fact that she is black and a woman" -- not like in the dear, dead citizen-scholar days of Alberto Gonzalez! -- Goldberg prescribes:

In an increasingly visual culture, what candidates will the Republicans proffer to fit the demographic bill? Even Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are too white and too male for this tough crowd. If they took a few lessons from Sofia Vergara they might stand half a chance. You know, jazz up that accent, tease the hair, get loud with the wardrobe, be ethnic. Sure, it was a strategy that kept your demographic out of office for the past 200 years, but times have changed. Race is in. Desi Arnaz would stand a better chance than these family values-laden dudes.

Happy Cinco de Mayo! Other conservatives focus on the racial mixture of the Freddy Gray defendants, which appears to prove to them that there's no racism except against Whitey. The best exemplar is neo-neocon:

But I can’t help but reflect that this case might have gone down differently if this information about their races had come out earlier.

How?

But although their names were released early on, their races were not.

Yes. How?

Not only that, but most of the speculation I read prior to learning their races indicated, or at least hinted or guessed, that they were all white. Typical is this article that appeared in the April 22 Atlantic:

And she gives us a quote that says lots of Baltimore cops are black -- that is, it implies the opposite of what she says. Maybe she's not actually trying to make a point at all, just... well, effusing would be a polite word for it.

...I also wonder what would have happened had Freddie Gray been white, with the same set of fact circumstances otherwise.

You mean if White Freddie Gray got killed? Not much chance of that.

Would there have been much of an outcry? 

Or what if all the officers had been black; would that have defused the protests entirely? Or would it not have mattered?

Or what if all of the officers had been white...

And so on, into "who would win in a fight, Bon Jovi or a blade of grass" territory. Anyway, neo-neocon finally tells us how mad she is that black Baltimoreans were happy to hear about these indictments ("something like a reverse OJ Simpson phenomenon") -- though I don't know why, given the mixed racial composition of the defendants; maybe she assumes the citizens don't know about that, just like they don't know Loretta Lynch's credentials -- and eventually starts calling these citizens a "mob" (four times in two grafs! I hear neo-neocon's a shrink in real life; wonder if she'd consider that some sort of a tell if a patient started doing it?).

Personally, I don't see how they have any choice now but to nominate Ben Carson.

DA, DA, WE ARE McLOVIN! Attention comrades! Choose wisely your Labor Day blockbuster! At National Review, comrade Lowry assures us that Superbad is affirming of conservative moral values, while comrade Foreman finds The Bourne Ultimatum "one of the most anti-American movies made since the early 1970s." So enjoy approved tits and swears and avoid double-plus-ungood shoot-'em-up! Enjoy also your popcorn ration.

Ultimatum director Paul Greengrass' previous film United 93 was highly praised by NatRev's culture war review board. (Peter Suderman said, "Asking why this film was made is like asking why we go to funerals... We do it because we must," a pull-quote for the ages.) Greengrass' descent from patriot to traitor has been swift, but he should not despair. In 1999, Brad Bird was excoriated in the New York Post for making The Iron Giant, which had a nice Soviet robot in it. When he made The Incredibles, though, Bird was declared rehabilitated.

Of course Greengrass may still have to worry about the cultural journalism skills of Don Surber:

Based on my experience, women raising boys without fathers and urbanization are ending the hunting tradition. Disney and Warner Brothers certainly did not help the cause by depicting hunters over the years as shoot-em-up yahoos.

Even Bambi and Bugs Bunny aren't safe! I suggest Greengrass take a look at the long-awaited screenplay by Roger L. Simon and Michael Ledeen if he values his citizenship.

EARLY AND AWFUL.

That's how yez do it in a Demmy-crat town, yerrah!

It's Election Day, and already hilarious, with turnout depressed in traditional bellwether Dixville Notch -- 4 for Hillary, 2 for Trump, 1 for the stoner and 1 for Mitt Romney. Protest votes in Dixville Notch! By 2020 they'll have armed poll watchers.

At the New York Post Charles Gasparino just can't fathom "The markets’ foolish panic over Donald Trump":

Since nearly the moment Comey made the announcement, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has lost 357 points, or nearly 2 percent of its value, through Friday...

All of which is lunacy.

As crazy as Trump’s demeanor has been at times during the campaign — I’ll admit it’s more than a bit odd that the possible leader of the free world gets into late-night Twitter feuds — there’s nothing nutty about what he has proposed on taxes or regulation, at least from the market’s perspective. If history is any guide (see the Reagan years, and the last six years of President Bill Clinton) lower taxes on individuals and corporations, as Trump is proposing, are usually a good thing for stocks, as are fewer regulatory burdens for business.

I know Uncle Ragey smells like "medicine," runs red lights, and has a tendency to reach over the seat and grab the girls, but I still don't see why you'd rather take the bus to school -- the bus costs money!

Will update as often as goddamn job allows.

UPDATE. At National Review, Dennis Prager is bringing in the sheaves:

I was one of you in vigorously opposing Trump’s nomination – on my national radio show and in my syndicated column. And I paid a price, as you have, in losing longtime supporters – in my case, any number of listeners who supported Trump from the outset and found my strong opposition to him disappointing and worse.

Unlike you, however...

I'm a sleazebag whore who's really only here for the money and the white supremacy.

...I did say from the beginning that if he were to be the nominee, I would vote for him.

Oh man, Dennis, you were so close! Quit living the lie, Dennis! You're only 27 years old, your hair shouldn't be that white!

Most of you are simply too intelligent, too idealistic, and too self-questioning not to have at least on occasion had second thoughts. If you understand – and I cannot believe that most of you don’t – how destructive another four years of any Democrat in the White House, let alone the truly corrupt Hillary Clinton, would be, it is inconceivable that you have never questioned your Never Trump position. Never Trump, after all, is not the same as Never Question.

"Doesn't my hand feel good on your little pussy? You can say 'Never' to Uncle Dennis, but you can't say 'Never' to pleasure!"

To prove my point, one of my favorite Never Trumpers, Jonah Goldberg, wrote in May: “If the election were a perfect tie, and the vote fell to me and me alone, I’d probably vote for none other than Donald Trump.”

In that moment of exquisite honesty, Jonah acknowledged one of the most important moral arguments to be made for voting for Trump – the lesser-of-two-evils argument.

YOU WERE RIGHT ALL ALONG -- YOU ARE ALL ALONE IN THE UNIVERSE! YOU ALONE CAN CHOOSE THE FACE OF GOD, AND YOU KNOW YOU WANT IT TO BE ANGRY AND MALE FOREVER! Prager also addresses that tiny minority of conservatives worried about their conscience or, as Prager dismissively refers to it, "self-image":

How can they, truly decent people, vote for someone who has exhibited the uncouth speech and behavior that Trump has? Or, as some have expressed it, “How can I explain to my daughter that I supported Donald Trump?”

As someone who also thinks of himself as decent...

Yeah I know but give it a minute.

...I think that saving America from Hillary Clinton, the Democrats, and the Left is the most decent thing I can do. And as for your daughter, just have her speak to any of the millions of wonderful women who are voting for Donald Trump. They will provide your daughter with perfectly satisfying moral and woman-centered answers.

He doesn't say what the woman-centered answers are; probably the usual bullshit, only in pink.

UPDATE 2. Roger L. Simon dismisses the "virtue-signaling" conservatives who couch their support of Trump and act embarrassed -- "I have supported Donald Trump unabashedly from the moment I thought it was clear he would win the nomination," he says. Trust me, what he's signaling ain't virtue:

At first blush, or any blush, Donald Trump -- a brash real estate tycoon who made much of his money from gambling casinos -- would seem an unlikely leader for such a crusade. But I submit it's the contrary (and, no, I'm not virtue signaling—at least I don't think so). The extreme situation we are faced with today -- we might call it "crony socialism" -- needed and needs an extreme personality both to get our attention and to get change accomplished. Nothing much would have happened, in all probability, with any of the other candidates. This time, of all times, an outsider was necessary.

Put another way, we have to fight their thuggery with a thug of our own.

In hell, Franz von Papen gets the small comfort of seeing, albeit through a wall of flames, his shtick become fashionable again. My favorite of Simon's insights is this:

He is also the first Republican in decades to make a serious attempt for the African-American vote. We can only hope that others will follow his lead, for the benefit of all our communities.

If only Republicans knew it was so easy -- and so effective!

UPDATE 3. As of 9:30 pm, I see some of you guys are nervous. Don't be! Not because the worst can't happen -- the worst currently has the inside track. But let's be honest with ourselves -- the frog knew that scorpion was a scorpion when it gave him a ride. Is America the frog, or the scorpion? Questions Remain!

If it all goes to shit, remember, nothing in this life is guaranteed. The next four years may require more of us than you expected. But when you get to a certain stage in life, you realize that no road is smooth all the way. Get you some tires with more tread, and press on.

UPDATE 4. 

Silver lining: They're not going to even pretend not to be white power peeps. 

THE REDEEMED CAPTIVE. Last week, while he was hard on Weiner Watch, I asked Lee Stranahan on Twitter what he meant when he said he was a liberal. After all, these days when he's not parsing penis pictures he mainly works on Breitbart's Pigford/Shirley Sherrod jihad. He got pissy:



But now, because of Weinergate he is, as they say, outraged at Chappaquiddick:



I teased him about that, got this response:


Before someone starts yelling about Marching in Lockstep and Thought Police, let me say that I'm in no position to enforce anyone's orthodoxy, and am somewhat unorthodox myself. But Stranahan's behavior would baffle any neutral observer. He's in favor of all those liberal things, but because Anthony Weiner got caught sexting, Stranahan doesn't want to be a liberal anymore (except for purposes of market differentiation)? Also, he works with Breitbart, who repeatedly describes liberalism as a near equivalent to Satanism; does Stranahan think that after he's helped Breitbart take down some more liberals with penis pics, Breitbart will help him get Single Payer?

But there's really no point in asking these questions. This kind of redemption narrative works fairly reliably. Take a walk down memory lane to see this 2003 summoning of the pro-Bush liberals (scroll down to July 22) -- Michael Totten, Roger L. Simon, Gerard Van Der Leun [!], et alia. With a few exceptions, none of these guys are even pretending anymore. And I will tell you right now that the chances that we'll see Stranahan working to take down opponents of gay marriage the way he's worked to take down Weiner are very, very thin.

I guess there's a call for this sort of thing. Some people think it's great that David Brock was a big wingnut before his conversion, and some even trust Andrew Sullivan's mood-swing toward the left. Maybe such people see converts as living testimony to the power of their cause. But this is America, and these are operatives; maybe they're not responding so much to the tug of conscience as to a market opportunity.

THE FUN NEVER STOPS WITH THE FUN FACTORY. I'm recovering from ACL surgery, and so have time to retrace old steps. Wuzzadem, I thought -- haven't visited it in a while; is it still nuts? Why, yes, yes it is: here Wuzzadem correspondent "Mrs. R" denounces a movie (which she hasn't seen, natch, as per the Kultur Kop protocol) in which liberals save baby seals or something:

Redford, plays the wise and ruggedly denim-clad professor who does his best to dissuade a young student from leaving school to join the military.

"Rome is burning, son. The problem is not with the people who started this..."

"The problem is with us. All of us..."

"Do nothing."

Ah, yes, do nothing. Sound advice for any occasion, especially ones involving wild-eyed jihadists wielding meat cleavers and rocket launchers.

A quick look at the web clip which provides Mrs. R's sole point of reference shows that Redford says "All of us who do nothing." Regrettably none of her readers play Jane Curtin to Mrs. R's Emily Litella, instead joining in her full-throated roars against the filth shown at the Sundance Festival.

Later Mrs. R notices news of a carjacking and declares, "When the Rule of Law Breaks Down... The public is no longer safe. Period." Not sure what she means: Los Angeles is in a state of anarchy? Liberals hijack cars? Maybe the carjacker was on his way to the Sundance Festival. It's awfully hard to tell.

That was fun. Maybe later I'll drop by Roger L. Simon's place.

FUTURE SCHLOCK. For years most of my own work has been online, and the subject by which most of my readers know me has been the blogosphere. I know as well as the rest of you that online is not only the present, but also The Future, because it is tirelessly presented as such by people like Jeff Jarvis on websites and in well-compensated speeches.

I've always been annoyed by that kind of talk, and most of the time if you ask me why I'll say it's because I'm a miserable old curmudgeon who likes newsprint and daguerreotypes and LPs, and for whom everything has to be old and in black and white. But that isn't wholly true, as this Reason article by up-and-coming libertarian Katherine Mangu-Ward and some interns reminds me.

The article is a kind of guide to online stuff, a popular favorite -- why, I've done that sort of thing myself, pimping mostly small local blogs of diverse agenda.

But the premise here is that these Randian super-genii will instruct you in "kicking your dead tree habit." No, there's no Kindle promo tie-in -- the object of ridicule here is not longform dead tree, but newspapers. The intro is all ha-ha-stupid-foolscap-people:

Newspaper. Personally, I never touch the stuff. But rumor has it there is a certain amount of distress about the impending doom of the news-on-dead-tree industry...

We assumed for the sake of the experiment that The New York Times would be the last to go. Since I refuse to sully my delicate hands with filthy newsprint, Jesse and Robby paged through Wednesday’s edition in search of facts and insights that would need replacing in the event that print news goes kaput.

Though I don't know much about mockery myself, the tone seems a little forced to me -- as if KMW were not trying to summon a new audience of strangers not yet educated to the superiority of the internet, but instead trying to stroke and signal the usual true believers, who are always up for a round of ragging on paper-pushers.

It reminds me of the preemptive gloating of folks like Roger L. Simon, who tells his readers all the time that the MSM is a dinosaur, dying, on the ropes, in extremis, etc. (We're still waiting for the body to fall, but never mind.) For years this has been one of the key tropes of the rightwing online community -- which came out of the rightwing offline community's contempt for the offline equivalent, the impudent snobs of the lying liberal media, usually short-handed as the New York Times.

The Times, it just so happens, is mentioned several times in Mangu-Ward's article, mostly derisively ("New York real estate obsessives have long since left the Times behind... the Times tech reviewer, appropriately enough, senses his own irrelevance...").

Mangu-Ward does give the online edition a left-handed head-pat at the end, though. Clearly the Times and whatever it represents will be part of The Future -- just not so big a part. If years of yap have yet to completely displace the Times, they have opened up some space for an alterna-press which, like alt and indie vendors since time immemorial, not only hopes but asserts that it's The Future, your future. And they mean it, man!

In reality, when the smoke clears you are likely to find that the main effect of such a revolution has been to transfer some power -- not so much to you, though, as to those who have positioned themselves to profit from revolutionary sentiment. Here's who Mangu-Ward recommends for opinion journalism:

As for the Opinion pages, Reason should meet your needs there. But if you must, it could be supplemented with the columns aggregated at RealClearPolitics, or you could enjoy a firehose of opinion at Huffington Post or Daily Kos. Want to come back over and over to a name you trust? Hit up brand name bloggers like Glenn Reynolds, Matt Yglesias, Megan McArdle, and more.

Glenn Reynolds, Matt Yglesias, Megan McArdle! That's some groovy revolution right there.

That's the real reason this stuff bugs me. It's not that I like the Times and newsprint so much. I don't, really. And I like the internet fine. But I've also seen some come-ons in my time, and The Future is one that never gets old.

THE HEALING POWER OF LAUGHTER. Remember when National Review’s David Frum argued in defense of Ted Haggard that there was no such thing as hypocrisy? That must have been a trial balloon, because some conservatives are now using the idea as a defense of Larry Craig.

Mona Charen claims that she can’t find evidence that Craig “ran on family values” so, despite Craig’s support of Idaho's version of the Defense of Marriage Act, he can’t officially be a hypocrite:

I have no trouble saying that Craig should resign in disgrace. But the rest of the folks out there, particularly the lefties, who disbelieve in sexual disgrace (except perhaps where children are involved) can exult in cases like Craig’s only because this supposedly makes him a hypocrite. But what if he’s not a hypocrite? Suppose, as my admittedly hasty search suggests, he’s been pretty quiet about family values?  Doesn’t that mean the Democrats should be defending him?

I imagine Charen asking these questions in the manner of “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” and getting, as was gotten in the original context, the Big Ig.

Meanwhile Dean Esmay 's Kevin D.* offers the argument that secularists are the real hypocrites, man:

When pushing out one idea the void must be filled with another. You can't, as [David] Limbaugh points out, complain one group is legislating morality when you yourself seek to do the same thing.

So if you think, say, we should legislate against the persecution of homosexuals, you must also respect my legislation persecuting homosexuals. Otherwise you’re a hypocrite. Q. E. Duh.

As usual in cases involving gay people, Roger L. Simon pleads for tolerance, causing (again as usual) his commenters to roar their displeasure. One circulates a talking point from James Taranto’s Wall Street Journal defense of escort enthusiast David Vitter:

Hypocrisy does not mean saying one thing and doing the opposite. It means saying something that one does not believe…

So don’t call him a hypocrite -- he’s just someone who “weakened” under the awful strain of pretended heterosexuality.

We’re used to winger sophistries, of course. But this one’s in a special category. These guys are eager to defend Craig against charges of hypocrisy even as they accede to, and even demand, his resignation. Clearly they don’t give a damn about Craig, but they care deeply about negating the idea that their champions are hypocrites. They do it, I think, because hypocrisy inspires derision, which makes one's high horse about other people's morals less of an electoral asset, and that's an asset without which the modern American conservative movement is seriously weakened.

Hell, they're even making jokes about Craig themselves. Probably to keep from crying.

UPDATE. New reality: Larry Craig was set up. Defenders still want him out of the Senate, though. Sympathy and condemnation at the same time! This must be what they mean by "compassionate conservatism."

The Wall Street Journal:

Defenders of "outing" politicians argue that the cruelty is not gratuitous--that politicians are in a position of power, which they are using to harm gay citizens, and therefore their private lives are fair game. But if the politician in question is a mere legislator, his power consists only of the ability to cast one vote among hundreds. The actual amount of harm that he is able to inflict is minimal.

Clearly liberals should stop bothering gay anti-gay members of Congress until their number reaches at least a plurality. Which, given the trend, should be any day now.

Anyway, most lawmakers who oppose gay-rights measures are not homosexual. To single out those who are for special vituperation is itself a form of antigay prejudice. Liberals pride themselves on their compassion, but often are unwilling to extend it to those with whose politics they disagree.

OK, I've got a new idea: Keep the pressure on till growing conservative dismay at liberal "antigay prejudice" leads to sweeping legislative protections for homosexuals.

UPDATE II.Shorter Jonah Goldberg: Conservatives aren't uptight about sex. We laff at fags! Oh, and harumph harumph the humanity. (Must put that first.)

*UPDATE III. Fixed attribution on Esmay quote; thanks, apostropher.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about Benghazi Round Which One Is It I Lost Track. Nonetheless it's fascinating to see them work variations on the theme, in a sort of late-Bowery-Boys sort of way.

UPDATE. In comments, AGoodQuestion responds to Roger L. Simon's pep talk to the troops ("Every one of us has to stay the course on Benghazi until this gets sorted out... Remember, even OJ didn't get away with it in the end"): "So the plan is to keep bitching about Benghazi until Obama slips up and steals back some of his sports memorabilia?" I think he's got it!

UPDATE 2. I've got a great idea for the Benghazi guys -- collectively sponsor a NASCAR vehicle, like Reddit Dogecoin enthusiasts did at Talladega. Then, if their car wins, the guy can go to the mike and dedicate his victory to those four brave men Obama and Hillary murdered. Hell, why not have Soros and the Kochs buy up all the sponsorships and make every victory an occasion for political speech? This country's finished anyways.

TEAM PLAYERS. "Lionel and I censored ourselves in the interest of the greater good, " laughs Roger L. Simon of himself and PJTV colleague Lionel Chetwynd, "because we did a show about Atlas Shrugged, which we're gonna do today, but we didn't want to hurt the film because we're good team players so we decided to hold off." But now that the movie has "tanked," they're free to tell us it stinks.

Their fellow conservatives denounce this politicization of the critical process. Accuracy in Media finds it "noteworthy" that these critics "would ignore this particular movie while reviewing scores of others arguably less relevant to today’s current events." The New York Post's Lou Lumenick quotes a commentator who finds their failure to file "even more deplorable than that taken by the distributing company to withhold an invitation to its opening for reasons of editorial politics, operating policy or anything else." "Too bad the movie's already been out for two weeks," scoffs Ray Gustini of The Atlantic Wire.

Oh, whoops, sorry, they're talking about the New York Times. But I don't know why they're so upset that the Times hasn't reviewed the film. Haven't bloggers rendered the Lamestream Media irrelevant?

LEGACY PLEDGE WEEK AT NATIONAL REVIEW. National Review's having their annual (or is it monthly?) pledge drive. Let's see how it's going. First. a show of gratitude from Peter Robinson:

You make an extremely valuable point about the Progressive Movement and the New Deal, Jonah, and you make it splendidly.

If every time I miscalibrate an event in American history I prompt such a lovely, knowledgeable little essay from Brother Jonah, I'll plant half a dozen errors in every episode of Uncommon Knowledge from now on.

So shocked was I to find an admission of error at The Corner, let alone one so covered in slobber, I had to go see what had prompted it. Turned out Jonah Goldberg had informed him that the Franklin Roosevelt Administration started "a scant 12 years," rather than "a couple of decades," after Woodrow Wilson left office.

Those of you puzzled that Robinson would respond so obsequiously to Goldberg for correcting a date should know that Goldberg is a rightwing legacy pledge and therefore his every fart is worthy of great respect. Also, Goldberg took the opportunity to rehearse one of the speeches he gives at junior colleges ("The point here is that we shouldn't concede that the New Deal was the continuation of a venerable American tradition. Rather, it was the continuation of a radical" etc), for which he has to be applauded if you don't want to find itching powder on your office chair.

The mistake was made not by Robinson, but by one of his interview subjects, pimped by Robinson thus:

To learn how Woodrow Wilson and FDR begot Woodstock and free love, click here.

How could one resist? Throughout the day Goldberg rattles his cup for donations, emphasizing that National Review, like other rightwing magazines, doesn't make enough money in the free market (and never has) to continue raging at welfare bums without spare change from rich crackpots.

I expect they'll get it, as they scratch an important itch among the moneyed and mad -- or, as one sucker is quoted, "Some take Prozac; I read NRO." I have a sneaking suspicion most of them use both, and wash them down with gin. But it's an ill wind that blows no one some good, and somewhere Roger L. Simon is sobbing into his Oscar nomination certificate.

THEY DON'T MAKE LIBERTARIANS LIKE THEY USED TO, PART 6,620. Over at libertarian flagship Reason, Tim Cavanaugh demands Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano be fired for burning little babies to a crisp at Waco.

Ha ha! Kidding! Cavanaugh actually wants her canned because she once claimed there was such a thing as rightwing terrorists, and because she isn't tough enough on the War on Terror to suit his libertarian tastes. Here's his Roger L. Simon impersonation:

...if you believe in the necessity of a Homeland Security Department, every day Napolitano is in charge of it creates an actual risk to life and property. Napolitano has a positive burden of proof: She needs to demonstrate some understanding of how to do her job, or she needs to be fired, for the security of the United States and the safety of the American people.

The True Sons of Liberty in Reason's comments are a joy ("This administration is incompetent re foreign affairs and the prosecution of the war on terror [yes, i'll call it that]...").

Refresh my memory: Why are they even pretending to be something other than conservatives again? Does it have something to do with Nick Gillespie's leather jacket, or Matt Welch's awesome new glasses?

UPDATE: To paraphrase Yoda (because, let's be honest, any comments box at Reason is pretty much a Comic-Con plus agoraphobia), better it gets:

Ray | 5.9.10 @ 4:03PM | #

Obama is scared shitless he will lose white women still mad that Hillary got beat. He won't be firing Napolitano come hell or high water.

Eminent Threat | 5.9.10 @ 6:13PM | #

Napolitano is a woman?

Plus she's a big lesbian! No, really, read a few of them. It'll put the Libertarian Purity Test out of business.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...and surprise, it's an end-of-year top ten! Specifically, "Rightbloggers' Top 10 Facepalms of 2015." In its own tweet the Voice calls it "Conservative Media's Top Ten Facepalms," which shows they're paying attention: our dummies laureate include not only pure bloggers like Dr. Mrs. Ole Perfesser and Roger L. Simon, but also Megan McArdle and the boys from National Review, who are only rightbloggers in the broadest sense (that is, they're online and they suck). The journalistic race to the bottom is over and we all lost.

This column is pure fun -- well, fun for me, but my desires are unconventional -- and since it's pulled from a year of my  "research" at alicublog, there are no outtakes or overflow: you can just go through the archives for that. I must say it was hard picking ten.

SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE. From an excerpt from the forthcoming Roger L. Simon book, The New Blacklist:

...But to what extent my political switch or supposed switch (more of that in a later chapter) – a change writ large on my blog and later on Pajamas Media, a change that made me, to my knowledge, the only person to be profiled positively by Mother Jones and The National Review within one fleeting lifetime - hurt my movie career, I simply don’t know...

...I would like to think that my public stand against Islamofascism cost me a half-dozen Academy Awards or three, but that would be blowing my own horn in the extreme. Hollywood careers are fragile things at best, especially for writers. And mine wasn’t at its height at the beginning of the Millennium anyway. I was then a decade past my Academy Award nomination and I was getting on in years for the business in general...

So I have not lost sleep worrying whether I have been blacklisted. Still I am sure this new form of Blacklist exists, but not nearly to the formalized extent of the original list of the forties and fifties with its Red Channels and dramatic hearings in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee, featuring ‘friendly’ and ‘unfriendly’ witnesses. Times are different and the system functions in a very different manner. Now it operates through an almost invisible thought control caused by a post-Orwellian “liberal” conformity so pervasive a formal Blacklist is not necessary, indeed would work against itself...

alicublog has come across still more excerpts found on microfilm in a pumpkin patch:

..."I'm working on a new screenplay," I told [Michael] Ovitz.

He continued to work the Playstation. Seconds passed. Tiger Woods reached the fairway easily. "Great," Ovitz finally said.

"It involves American soldiers railroaded at Haditha," I explained, turning my head so that [Harvey] Weinstein could hear, "and their lonely search for justice." Weinstein was preoccupied with the starlet who was fellating him. "Ron Silver's on board," I added. Weinstein grunted, whether in recognition, approval, or sexual ecstasy I couldn't tell you to this day.

I then noticed that [John] Lasseter had finished ingesting his cocaine, so I joined him on the waterbed and wrapped up my pitch. From his vacant stare I could tell that my proposal, so far from the usual Hollywood anti-military fare, had blown his mind. Finally he blinked and asked, "How did you get in here?"

I don't need to tell you what happened next. As I painfully rose from the asphalt, dusted myself off, and fished for my car keys, I said, half to myself, "I'm getting too old for this." "Just get the fuck out of here," rejoined the burly thugs who had pitched me into the driveway. Well, at least their pitch had been a success. No, I hadn't left the movie business; the movie business had left me with multiple cuts and abrasions. The major players had internalized Marxist dogma, while I had internal bleeding. Somewhere, Brian De Palma was laughing, but I knew that the blogosphere, and my lawyers, would have the last laugh.

SHORTER ROGER L. SIMON: Home? I have no home. Hunted, despised, Living like an animal! The jungle is my home. But I will show the world that I can be its master! I will perfect my own race of people. A race of conservative filmmakers which will conquer the world! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

LAST GASPS. Obama leaves Trinity and the reaction is telling:

Obama can't stand the heat of a campaign without tossing aside his grandma, then his pastor, and now HIS WHOLE FREAKIN' CHURCH. One he'd been defending until NOW. One many leftists defended.

What a low life.

Unfit for the office.

Kerry had more class. At least he pretended to be honorable.

Later: "THE LEFT IS ALREADY SEEING OBAMA FOR WHAT HE IS. IT'S OVER. A NATIONAL NIGHTMARE AVERTED." In case you were wondering, this is not a disappointed former supporter, but one of the folks who were really counting on Reverend Wright to knock Obama out of the race and have just seen their last slim hope of it melt away.

Reliapundit is choleric under the best of circumstances, but the news is inciting strong language from even more temperate writers. "Thirty Pieces of Silver From the Pulpit," says RedState. "Why is he leaving all of a sudden? Is it because there is another untold story out there?" The author suspects shady in-church fundraising, based largely on his own experience as a perpetrator. (The post also contains yet another citation of Obama throwing someone, or being thrown, "under the bus," fattening that conservative meme for the winter, when its promulgators may need to live off it. )

Other make the best of the situation. "Now [Obama] is riding the whirlwind," writes Roger L. Simon. (Some whirlwind.) "Shocker... unbelievable!... UPDATE: Will Not Denounce Church!" says Gateway Pundit. Even the normally highbrow Victor Davis Hanson has to resort to all-caps: "So the question always arises-WHY?" he writes. "Is it because he didn't know the nature of his associates, OR is it because he finds their well-known messages suddenly as politically disadvantageous as he once found them essential in jump-starting his Chicago career?"

Most observers will guess the latter, and not be too exercised about it, as they are probably sick of hearing about Trinity Church and will welcome any development that puts an end to its coverage. It certainly will come up again, of course, but as a historical citation rather than as breaking news. By any rational analysis, the downside of this for Obama is very slight compared to the upside. But at the outrage factories where this sort of thing is stock in trade, it's as if one of their best-sellers were being recalled, so we can hardly blame them for making some noise about it.

UPDATE. Very interesting discussion in comments about how well or badly Obama plays these things in general. I'd say that he and his staff seem to do a lot of improvising, which is never a good sign from a political campaign. On the other hand, they improvise pretty adeptly; the "discussion on race" speech was good theatre and gave Obama a buffer against the Wright fallout. It wasn't a stopper, obviously, but it worked well enough to get him this far.

Tex, talking about the McClurkin episode, says "Well, it did cost him my respect. But he will still have my vote." Just so, and he's one of the few who remember McClurkin in the first place. We're well out of the time when naive enthusiasm was carrying the day for Obama, and into the difference-splitting part of the contest. This gives an advantage to McCain, who was never going to win an inspirational campaign; though his own improvisations haven't been so hot, the press hasn't belabored them nearly as much as Obama's.

It may be Obama will win or lose on his ability to play a game that has nothing to do with his advertised appeal as a healer. Right now, part of the opposition game plan is to reductively characterize Obama as a "Chicago politician" with old-fashioned backroom tricks up his sleeve. Well, he'd better be.

JESUS SWEPT. I see the brethren are claiming victory in the war on contraception. Let's use Kathryn J. Lopez as an example:

And when asked, “What about for religiously affiliated employers, such as a hospital or university? Do you think their health insurance plans for all employees should have to cover the full cost of birth control for their female employees, or should they be allowed to opt out of covering that based on religious or moral objections?” 57 percent responded “Allowed to opt out.” 

That is most definitely news. 

Americans, according to the New York Times’s own polling, support the positon of the Catholic bishops on the HHS mandate.

Except religious employers already have been allowed to opt out -- because the insurers will be paying for the birth control, not them. This may be what the poll respondents think the Times is talking about. The questions might have been more specific

What certainly isn't demonstrated by this response is that respondents buy the bishops' line, which is that if anyone pays for their employees' birth control, Christ and George Washington will be crucified one on top of one another (front to back, so it looks dirty).

You'd expect rightbloggers to grab the more self-flattering interpretation, but K-Lo, wrapped pretty tight even under the best of circumstances, may be taking it a little far:

Proponents of the HHS mandate would like everyone to believe that high gas prices explain all the drop in support for Obama. But considering the president has taken a lead in defense of his coercive mandate, it’s mistaken to pretend his war on religious liberty isn’t part of his public-opinion wounds.

That's the America I remember from English dystopian fiction -- forget the economy, stupid, it's the war on religious liberty! Lopez seems to expect a holy-roller revolution to come charging over the hill, crying "Freedom of religion, not freedom of worship!" Just another reason to hope the Republicans nominate Santorum -- if they did, Lopez would probably bust out in stigmata, and start pimping a JESUS 4 VP campaign.

UPDATE. Also feelin' the surge: Old Perfesser Instapundit, who smells victory in a bunch of readers who tell him they've cancelled HBO over Game Change. No, I'm not kidding. This is the break PJTV has been waiting for! Quick, get Roger L. Simon to slap together that movie version of The Inferior Five the world has been waiting for. Jonah Goldberg was born to play Herman Cramer.

UPDATE 2. Commenter/comics dork John E. Williams is on the case:

I see there's a role for Dana Loesch. Think of the merchandising opportunities! 

UPDATE 3. They're still at it -- here's James Taranto's women-reject-contraceptives-and-Obama variation. They really seem to believe this, which may explain why their compatriots in the legislatures are pulling increasingly crazy anti-birth-control shit --

Arizona legislators have advanced an unprecedented bill that would require women who wish to have their contraception covered by their health insurance plans to prove to their employers that they are taking it to treat medical conditions. The bill also makes it easier for Arizona employers to fire a woman for using birth control to prevent pregnancy despite the employer's moral objection.

If they think this approach is such a winner, Santorum should abandon his recent quietism on the issue and begin all his campaign appearances with a pledge to overturn Griswold v. Connecticut. That should turn the tide in his favor soon enough, and give those of us who aren't insane time to get our passports renewed.