NED FLANDERS' HOLIDAY FILM ROUNDUP. "Don't they care what they show kids?" Oh, go watch your singing vegetable tapes, you fucking doofus.

P.S. I know, Julia, even lefties can love Veggie Tales, but I used all my best right-wing-nut signifiers last week and have to deploy the weak stuff until reenforcements arrive. Say this for me, though: I haven't gotten down to the easy Ann Coulter laughs yet. Forbid it almighty God!

NUKED. The $87 billion Iraq reconstruction bill is the big-ticket item on which people are understandably focused. But the Bush Administration has many other ways to use our money to fuck things up. The energy bill they're about to ram through Congress gives between $16 and $20 billion in tax breaks to "producers of oil, natural gas, clean coal and nuclear energy."

Apparently the production of nuclear reactors is a dying craft, and its impoverished adherents require federal funding to keep this dark art alive. Not to worry, their plutonium rods will outlive us all.

Oh, yeah, the bill also authorizes Wildlife Refuge drilling. And for Corn Belt states, huge ethanol subsidies!

It's a good thing money grows on trees. Now if only we had more trees.

WHY THEY HATE EVERYBODY. "(Sometimes I swear that if a European hits his thumb with a hammer when no one’s around, he shouts GODDAMN JEWS!)" -- James Lileks.

Elsewhere on the page: put-downs of Michael Moore, Ted Rall, Howard Dean, and the French.

See, this is why I don't write about the guy as much as I used to: what would be the point?

YOU TAKE MY MEANING? McDonald's, you may have heard, is mad because Merriam-Webster has put "McJobs" in their dictionary, defining it the way anyone who has ever heard the word automatically and instinctually defines it -- as shitty, dead-end service jobs.

Mickey D's minions have hit the press hard with its complaints ("a slap in the face to the 12 million men and women blah blah blah"), and of course WSJ's OpinionJournal, flagship of scumbag bosses worldwide, has risen to its defense. OJ claims that M-W "misdefines" McJobs, because people do move up from burger flipping to better work. No figures at all are offered in defense of this statement, but plenty of can-do corporate-speak is: "ladder into the American workplace," "Ditto for opportunity," etc.

There is something piquant, and more, about McDonald's and the Journal's attempt to explain to the many, many people who use the word McJobs appropriately that they should be using instead as a positive term -- like McDonald's does in its jobs-for-the-handicapped program! (Turn that frown upside down, fella! You're on a ladder to the American workplace!) Kinda makes you feel like you're committing a hate crime or something if you even say the word, now, doesn't it?

And if we don't respond well to this friendly persuasion, well, both McD and OJ remind us that the term McJobs is a licensed trademark -- hint hint, see lawyer.

Does anyone else see something slightly sinister in this attempt by a corporation and its goons to change the universally accepted meaning of a word? It's one thing to work your company's image, but it seems to me that the way to remove an unflattering connotation from your nomenclature is to improve your own performance in that regard.

Instead, Mickey D (hey, am I allowed to call them that? Is it, like, racist?) goes running around the English-speaking world yelling, " McJobs good! Say it! McJobs good!" I suppose we'll find out soon if they're rich enough to pull it off, and if we're feeble-minded enough to have it pulled off on us.

If so, I expect that in the near future, Maaco or Jiffy Lube will aggressively attempt to change the popular understanding of the term "rim job."

SHORTER INSTAPUNDIT UPDATE: Ted Rall getting published in the Village Voice means all you stinking hippies want Americans to die. Conversely, you can't pin Misha's ravings on me just because he's on my blogroll. My "bad apple" theory of political life applies only to mainstream vehicles like what you hippies read, not to the Rolling Stone of the 21th Century.

(I guess I can't read the New York Times anymore since they started running David Brooks. That would make me a neo-conservative!)

SHORTER INSTAPUNDIT: This'll show Tom Tomorrow! See, warbloggers aren't the whiners with bad wrists -- Tom Tomorrow is!! Heh indeed! P.S. Ted Rall sux.

(editor's note: using the "Shorter" format on this cracker asshole really is like sticking a pin in a balloon.)

NOT THEIR LITTLE GIRL ANY MORE. Betsy Hart at NRO tells us that Jessica Lynch's I'm a Soldier, Too is a load of Howard Dean propaganda. Hart makes other mystifying statements, which Soundbitten admirably deconstructs.

Not mystifying at all is this new animus against Lynch. While more sentimental conservatives, like those at RonaldReagan.com, at least appreciate Lynch's service to her country ("The young soldier may not have engaged in any Sgt. York-style feats of daring -- but she's a hero, nonetheless"), the movement's Kulturkommando think she's nothing but trouble. Some, like Mona Charen, have been denigrating Lynch for months because she's a poster girl for female participation in America's armed forces, which to Charen et alia is just another liberal scheme to destroy America.

Others, like Hart, seem to be responding to a more recent need within their little community. Remember when conservatives were defending Lynch's heroism against "crackpot" debunkers? That was before she was able to speak for herself.

Now that's she has, it's apparently time for the story of the plucky little soldier from Palestine, WV to turn into something a little less flattering.

MR. SULLIVAN'S PLANET. In his latest article, Andrew Sullivan tells us that America is divided between those "baby boomers" who "see everything" through the "prism" of Vietnam and are destined to lose the entire south and the next Presidential election, and regular people like himself.

Taking care to be fair and balanced, Sullivan admits, after reproducing a long, incendiary and (if you know anything about the source) anomalous screed from Democratic Underground, that "Free Republic... is sometimes just as outrageous in the other direction as Democratic Underground."

Yes, he's talking about that Free Republic, at which members commemorate Lincoln's Birthday by toasting John Wilkes Booth, and would likely beat hell out of Sullivan if he stumbled upon their trailer park. (Representative post from a recent Freeper board: "...most queers aren't neat and pretty like tha' teevee shows either. Might as well stereotype them as lazy, self-absorbed, perverted, and living in pig sty apartments that reek of chain smoking and overfilled trash cans -- because that's what a lot of them are and that's where a lot of the queers live. Or better yet, why not take a tour of the AIDS wing of a large metropolitan hospital and set it to a laugh-track...")

Oh, and Sullivan thinks that Bush might lose "if he nominates a real extremist to the Supreme Court or backs a Constitutional Amendment against gay marriage." Yeah, that'll alienate his base, alright.

I used to wonder what planet Sullivan was from, but now I'm thinking in terms of galaxies.

P.S. Sullivan also says, "[Dean's] from Vermont, one of the home bases of what's being called 'the Starbucks Metrosexual elite.'" "Called" by whom besides Sullivan?

MILOS FORMAN WAS RIGHT. Larry Flynt claims to have nude pictures of Jessica Lynch, and to have procured them soley to keep them out of circulation, and thus spare from further degradation the Iraq War's most famous POW, whom Flynt feels has already been exploited enough by the Bush Administration.

I don't believe him, but you have to admire the showmanship. Some men will enjoy even the idea that the photos exist; some who do not enjoy the idea will still wonder if the photos exist; others will decry the whole concept as violently as if the photos exist. Thus Flynt has associated himself with a pornographic scoop that does not exist. Whotta demon!

I prefer this kind of buncombe to the kind dispensed by more diligent shapers of public opinion, and not only because it involves porn. While Roger Ailes and his drones, for example, methodically enforce their own version of political correctness among the serfs at Fox News, Flynt steps up like P.T. Barnum with an outrageous public claim that deftly mixes equal parts of concupiscence and sanctimony. One offense to reason and decency smells of the carnival tent, and promises at least a little cheer with the cheat; the other smells of Wite-Out and expensive cologne, and bores mercilessly into the skull, not caring to stop and tickle anyone's fancy along the way, lest they fall off-message.

Flynt's approach is, dare I say it, more American, and Ailes' more Orwellian. There is after all a difference between bullshit and Newspeak.

BOOTS ON FIFTH. I spent my lunch break today at the Veteran's Day Parade. I'd heard this event is always sparsely attended, and I was prepared to be depressed by the sight of aged warriors hobbling up Fifth Avenue as gaggles of seniors feebly clapped. But while this year's Parade certainly won't set any attendance records, that didn't seem to matter, because the vets were rocking. Didn't matter that St. Patrick's and Gay Pride are bigger and brassier. The vets had their parade. They hoisted the flag, worked the rifle, and styled their peacoats and camo with brio. Even the old ones had some spring in their step; even the ones bearing the POW-MIA flag had an upright and energized bearing.

I'm sure they'd have preferred huge, cheering throngs, but fuck it -- they've been through a lot worse than a weak house. Though many of the NYPD sawhorses held back naught but November air, and what applause we spectators raised died fast in the concrete corridors, the marchers waved and smiled and, when they recognized a brother on the sidelines, saluted.

There were representatives of all the services (I think -- didn't see any sailors), and of particular squads and special interests. There was an equal-rights group that flew the Pride flag next to Old Glory. There were guys carrying rifles as if on point, and others who slung them carelessly over their shoulders. There was a group of Bronx Vietnam vets who looked like they got back yesterday. There were Veterans Against The War, chanting BUSH LIED, PEOPLE DIED -- I wonder if the guys down at the New York Post who bitched today about poor V-Day attendance caught this act, or showed up at all. And there were high school marching bands playing the American military's greatest hits (including "Onward Christian Soldiers"), baton twirlers, and honor guards.

It wasn't all high spirits and happy faces. The POW-MIA flags, once an urgent distress signal for men presumably left behind, now seems a bitter reminder that soldiers know well whom they can and can’t count on. One improvised "float" featured a bamboo tiger-cage with tattered fatigues hanging in it. On the side of an armored vehicle read this legend: NEVER AGAIN WILL ONE GROUP OF VETERANS ABANDON ANOTHER.

It struck me that while the Parade does honor the fallen, it also honors the folks who came back from our wars, who must feel not only proud but lucky. These guys sure seemed to feel that way -- lucky to be alive, to hear and feel their boots tromping on safe concrete, to smell the tang of autumn. Having never served (too young for Nam, by the grace of God), I feel lucky, too; and I acknowledge that these guys, and their absent friends, may have bought me some of that luck.

HEADLINE OF THE WEEK. "Kidman To Keep Kravitz Romance Private," TeenHollywood.com.

FUTURE SCHLOCK. This recent piece of Virginia Postrel gush is about the new architectural template for Home Depot stores. Postrel posits that the "higher aesthetic expectations" of "urbanites" have led to this design marvel, and backs it up with a passage from the Engineering News-Record and a photo.

The News-Record does concur that "shoppers are flocking to buildings that are navigable, organized and well-maintained." The photo, however, forces me to make an observation: the buildings, if this is a reliable example, are butt ugly.

Now, to a Dynamist, I'm sure this is judgment is incomprehensible, or comprehensible only as a pathetic dying yawp from the withering tribe of The Future's Enemies who cannot see heaven in a box of steel, stone, and glass, however ergonomically sound.

But fuck it. I say they're eyesores and I say the hell with them.

P.S. I also think Philip Glass and Blink-182 are clearly inferior to the dusty, low-tech creations of Beethoven and Iggy and the Stooges.

'TIS A BLESSING TO BE SIMPLE. "FOR DEMOCRACY IN THE MIDDLE EAST: ARABS... AGAINST: NYT, GUARDIAN, AND THE LEFT." -- OxBlog. Writing must be easier to do when you are not simultaneously obliged to think.

IT'S OKAY, BUT IT'S NO MALLARD FILLMORE. Zara Downs tipped me to this unique series of instructional comics from Law for Kids. Even more curious than the authors' idea of a good gag-panel punchline ("You are both suspended") is the whole idea of Law for Kids, "America's first stand alone web site dedicated to teaching children about the law." Is the presumption here that first-graders need legal counselling, or that teenagers read at a first-grade level?

NEW FRONTIERS IN WINGNUTTERY. Andrew Sullivan comes thisclose to calling George Soros, a Jew, an anti-Semite. God, what torture it must have been for Sullivan: he had the Right-wing slur of the moment all ready, and couldn't use it because his adversary possessed ethnic kryptonite!

Perhaps Sullivan can take comfort in the news that Putin's boys are dealing with this troublesome billionaire the old-fashioned way.

VERY EASY COMPOSITION TEST. Class, tell us what's wrong with this sentence from the Wall Street Journal's editorial about why Souterners won't vote Democratic:

And far from playing the race card, most [Southern] Republican candidates nowadays strive to avoid making race an issue, if only because they don't want to boost largely Democratic black turnout.

Answer: The sentence is too long and should be edited to carry only the words needed to carry its meaning, e.g., "Southern Republicans don't speak their minds about race, because black people would kick their ass if they did."

Of course, in this new version, one also loses the reference to "playing the race card," which in the original implies this cowardly course of action is in fact a form of courage.

SHORTER JONAH GOLDBERG ON CITIZEN KANE: In order to maintain my reputation as a young, hip conservative, I will affect boredom with a famously brilliant American film and pretend to prefer a Patrick Swayze action picture. That's, like, way iconoclastic!

OVER TO YOU, BILL. I ought to read Whiskey Bar more often. Billmon makes an excellent point about Bush's NED speech -- which, like all Bush orations, has already received gushing fanboy treatment from Sullivan and those guys.

Of course, Billmon and Sullivan seem to be talking about different speeches. The one Sullivan heard reveals that "The fundamental lesson of 9/11" is that "it [is] no longer possible for the West to ignore or enable the poisonous and dangerous trends in the Middle East." But Billmon points out that Bush's speech was actually quite sanguine about freedom's hopes in that region, and rang with praises of allegedly incipient democracies in the Middle East -- including, rather hilariously, Saudi Arabia.

At the same time, Bush criticized Iran's government, which he commanded to "heed the democratic demands of the Iranian people." Here's what Billmon made of that:

Even for Shrub, this is hutzpah. For all its obvious flaws, Iran is a hell of a lot more democratic than any of the feudal oil kingdoms Bush cited in his speech. It has a real parliament, with substantive budgetary and oversight powers, holds real elections, and has a president who can stake a stronger claim to a popular mandate than having the votes of five Supreme Court justices.

The problem with Iranian democracy, of course, is the theocratic veto given to the Shi'a religious establishment, which has managed to frustrate most, but not all, efforts at popular reform. But does Bush really propose to argue that the Ayatollah Khamenei is less legitimate than the semi-comatose side of beef currently sitting on the Saudi throne? Bush cites the example of Shirin Ebadi, Iran's Nobel Peace Prize winner. In Saudi Arabia, she'd be horsewhipped by the religious police for even showing her face in public.

I mention all this not just to flog a blog, or even to draw your attention to a neat peiece of rational analysis of the sort I am usually too bile-choked to attempt. It's also an experiment in blogging efficiency. I am tired this week, and believe me, it is easier to find smart stuff on the web, link to it, and add a few words of set-up, than it is the delve into the psychological rat's-nests of this world's Kim Du Toits, Ralph Peterses, et alia, as I normally do. In fact, if I stopped devoting such craft and style as I have on the set-up here, I could easily do this all day long, and maintain a tenured position at the University of Tennessee.

BLOOD 'N' GUTS REDUX. After yesterday's rousing column, I thought General Ralph Peters' minders would have insisted on a week of bedrest for him at least. Yet here he is again with an even more enraged article. For if there's one thing that gets Peters' goat worse that Iraqis firing on Americans, it's Germans.

Peters has had this bee in his helmet for some time -- here, for instance, he tells us that Germans are loud and smell bad. But now the General has an excuse, sort of: a German general named Guenzel got caught passing some anti-Semitic remarks.

Guenzel was summarily fired, and denounced by the Chancellor, but Peters insists that "millions of Germans" also hate the Jews -- in fact, to hear Peters tell it, all citizens of Germany hate Jews:

There are good Germans. Plenty of them. But they live in Philadelphia, not Frankfurt. They and their ancestors all left Germany by 1938. Those who stayed didn't just support Hitler - they loved him and fought for him to the bitter end...

The whopping difference between the Allied occupation of Germany and our occupation of Iraq is that the overwhelming majority of Iraqis welcomed their liberation. We had to force freedom and democracy on the Germans at gunpoint.

They'll never forgive us...

Right off the bat, this prompts a question: do German Jews, being German, also hate Jews? But we know better than to interrupt the General.

On he rages, explaining that a lot of the universal anti-Semitism of Germans is craftily hidden: "Oh, sure, making anti-Semitic remarks is a crime in today's Germany. But anti-Israeli remarks are just fine. You've merely got to choose your words carefully."

Of course, stateside we are well-used to this mad idea that criticism of Israeli policy = the blood libel. But why would anti-Semitic Germany have such notoriously strong laws against anti-Semitic speech -- and try so hard to get the rest of the world to follow them? Shouldn't they instead be pushing a free-speech line, in hopes that their children may one day be allowed to watch Jud Suss and yell ethnic slurs?

Again, there's no containing the General. His conclusion: we must boycott Germany as we boycotted France. "The boycott of French wine sent a strong message," avers Peters. Well, considering that, as Reuters reported, "Americans overtook Germans as the biggest spenders on France's Bordeaux wines in the 2002-03 sales year," that message must be that Americans are too fucking self-indulgent to stage a decent boycott.

I was at first disposed to declare Peters mad. He has all the attributes of a lunatic: he has strongly fixed ideas about people that experience cannot dispel, he takes chimeras for hard facts, and he is in a perpetual state of rage. But I haven't shaken the feeling that perhaps Peters is playing a different game: maybe he's just deliberately inattentive to facts and reason, not because he's nuts but because he's aware that his function is to stimulate anger at selected enemies rather than rational debate.

The "either evil or crazy" formulation, though, I could live with.

KIM? ISN'T THAT A GIRL'S NAME? It's never a good sign when the Ole Perfesser does a long post, but this one represents a new low ("Have you got that, Mr. Bernstein? A new low!").

In some ways it's the usual Reynolds rap -- a lot of bizarre, offhand assertions ("I wonder, though, if this phenomenon doesn't go part of the way toward explaining why network TV is losing so many male viewers") interrupted by quotes from dopes and links to dinks -- but here the premise is so ridiculous (basically, that men have it rough, and the bitches get everything their way) that you wonder why he bothered to type it instead of just getting shitfaced and blurting it out on the street while smashing beer bottles.

Also, at this length, it's more obvious than usual that he doesn't know how to build an argument, or even what an argument is. (You say this guy teaches law?)

But rank as his stuff is, the inspiration for his post is even worse: a guy whose unfortunate name, Kim Du Toit, seems to have scarred him for life. As pictured at his site, Du Toit looks like Floyd the Barber after a weekend in Paris ("Oooh, Andy! Such wonderful little cafes they had there -- ooh, but their hair was so messy!"), and writes like -- well, there's almost no describing it. Put it this way, though: If I washed a dozen percoset down with a bottle of Jim Beam, and had to write with a magic marker that was sticking out of my ass, I'd still do better than this guy.

Not to waste too much of your time, but here are the two most illustrative examples:

"...in the twentieth century, women became more and more involved in the body politic, and in industry, and in the media -- and mostly, this has not been a good thing."

And:

"I'm going to illustrate this by talking about TV, because TV is a reliable barometer of our culture."

I'll say this for most self-styled he-men: at least they attempt to back up their claims at supermanhood with entertaining stories about drinking, fucking, and fighting. This guy just wants to talk about TV.

The fact that this nerd is getting play in the blogosphere (if, self-evidently, not in the sack with non-vinyl women) tells you all you need to know about the general dumb-assedness of the current scene.