JOURNALISM 000. It's been a while since anyone brought up irony, but get a load of this from the Metro Section of today's New York Times (registration required):

New York neighborhoods do not announce their sea changes. There is no news release or banner draped across the street. Sometimes there is just a certain guy, and a thing that guy does, and before you know it the neighborhood has made one of those subtle shifts, the sort that keep New York City fascinating.

The neighborhood is Williamsburg and the guy is one Todd Fatjo, a former record store clerk who is moving to the Bronx to live with his girlfriend. That's really all there is to it, but the story goes on for a thousand words, these among them:

[Fatjo and his roommates] held five parties during their tenancy that Mr. Fatjo would later describe as major, defined as involving three separate sound systems blaring away in different parts of the apartment. "It was just insane," Mr. Fatjo said...

He wrote with a simple yet passionate eloquence, speaking directly to his peers in a parlance that showed him to be of the place and moment. "If you've ever been to my duplex loft you know how truly dope it is," Mr. Fatjo began...

If you have to ask why proximity to multiple 99-cent stores might be an advantage, you will never know. Mr. Fatjo's truly dope duplex loft is not in the gentrified Williamsburg of investment bankers and corporate media types. Those 24-hour bodegas he mentioned have bulletproof glass...

Love is a funny thing. It can spin a cynical hipster around like a record (baby, right round, round, round), and it has done a number on Mr. Fatjo, who is 28. He quit the music store this year and took a job showing apartments in Manhattan. He is working toward a broker's license, and this month he had the Afro shorn to a nice, respectable wave...

The fate of the truly dope duplex loft may be a sign that the hipster scene is fading in Williamsburg, or who knows? Some new generation could reinvigorate the neighborhood with its own brand of cool. As for Mr. Fatjo, who is fast becoming just some guy who has a job, the end of the party is bittersweet...

Here's my question, and I ask it in all sincerity: is there any way to tell if the reporter is kidding? The hipster-exodus story is a staple of metro sections, and one can get a lot of resonance out of some schlub's life changes if there is any trend or home truth with which to hook it up. But this guy just got a new apartment and a new job. Williamsburg has been gentrified for years, and from what I can see, from my vantage point a few blocks from Mr. Fatjo's dope duplex, kids are still shoving dollar bills through bulletproof glass. So what's the story? People move? Williamsburg has condos?

I wouldn't bring it up if I could be sure the reporter was just filling a news hole with a lazy-ass story -- hell, I've done that plenty of times. But I have this nagging suspicion that I'm hoping you can allay. I worry that this is actually news. I worry that, if the Olympics weren't on hand with its many color photo opportunities, Todd Fatjo would be on the front page. (Bad enough that today's actual front page had a story about the political significance of Bush hugging John McCain.) I worry that I've had my nose buried in the editorial, sports, and comics sections so much in recent months that, without my noticing it, all absolute values were completely overturned and I am now living in a Bizarro World where Todd Fatjo is copy!

Or maybe it's just a joke. I'm not ruling that out.

LIFE AMONG THE LIBERALS. For some time I've been a connoisseur of right-wing "life among the liberals" narratives. These wish-fulfillment pieces, typically showing a stalwart conservative (always the author) easily rebutting a bunch of liberal hippies out of old Mannix episodes, are as formally distinctive as Roman colloquys or medieval morality plays: neither the godlike central figures nor their moronic interlocutors have any discernible character traits, and all the pleasure comes from childlike caricatures of opposing thought.

I do what I can to spread awareness of these lulus, so that some future archaeologist may have a less cold trail to follow to these clear indicators of this parlous phase of our once-great civilization. "Behold!" he will say, "They had a highly developed dramaturgy, yet millions preferred these crude Punch-and-Judy shows -- and all for politics! No wonder the assholes got wiped out."

A few months back I discovered one Alan Bromley at OpinionJournal, and recognized him as a master of the form. Well, he's back at it again, and his latest, "No Holiday from Hate," is a peach. One day I expect I will teach a class on propaganda techniques, and "No Holiday from Hate" will be one of the seminal texts.

Bromley is on holiday, sitting on a porch with his family in Cape May, N.J. (Though his characters are mere cyphers, Bromley is always very specific with town names, perhaps from awareness that localities cannot sue for slander.)

One day, sitting next to a couple from Philadelphia, I was asked what I thought about the Democratic Convention and who would win the election. Being in a state between relaxation and boredom, I wasn't sure if I wanted to enter this discussion, so I replied by asking them what they thought the biggest issue was.

Note that Bromley, like other classic heroes of the LATL Narrative, never provokes the argument, and always has some dandy Socratic way of undermining his adversaries' clearly malevolent intent.

"Restoring trust to government," the wife replied, sounding like a Kerry bumper sticker. Her husband, munching a cracker with cheese, nodded in agreement.

"Munching a cracker with cheese" is very good (well, by the standards of the form); no one looks good munching a cracker with cheese.

I sensed my 17-year-old daughter's ears perk beneath her black hair and my wife's spine straighten, both sensing a political storm brewing.

The tension suggested here is merely a vestigial literary device; as in the novels of Horatio Alger, there is so little real danger to the hero that even his loved ones seem to be play-acting their symptoms of concern.

"You don't mean the legend on our currency, 'In God we trust,' do you?" I teased.

"No!" the husband, who had swallowed his snack, sharply responded. "We're in favor of separation of church and state, and would prefer that those words not appear on our dollar bills, just as we want 'under God' removed from our pledge of allegiance. And you know what we mean," he continued, ratcheting-up the tone. "Bush lied to us about the war in Iraq!" The chairs rocked faster.

Bromley's remark would, in company of even normal intelligence, draw perhaps a polite chuckle and a return volley of badinage, but the liberals in LATL narratives always explode upon contact with conservative wit.

Bromley thereafter delivers to his audience of seaside vacationers a long, long Republican speech ("We had Ted Kennedy, who lied about trying to save Mary Jo Kopechne. We had Hillary Clinton, who lied about her billing records..."), and the liberals' only responses are literally these: "Screw you!" "Speaking for myself, any news that helps defeat Bush makes me happy" (this referring to unemployment), and "You're a fascist! We're leaving!"

There is some passing resemblance to versimilitude here -- if I were taking the sun on a porch in Jersey, and some asshole suddenly started raving about Mary Jo Kopechne, I might leave, too, just as I might leave a subway car occupied by a bum who smelled strongly of human excrement. But as portrayed by Bromley, the liberals' retreat is a rout, his tendentious speeches are a blow for liberty, and his family is deeply proud of the spectacle he has made at the beach house (whereas the real-life version suggests a thought-balloon reading, "Another vacation ruined.")

Isn't this what cultural studies are all about -- trying to understand people whose ways of life are otherwise incomprehensible to us? My understanding of conservatives has been greatly enhanced by my study of their culture. And through my close attention to their LATL narratives, I have even developed some sympathy toward them. That is to say, if they need crap like this to make themselves feel smart, they're even more fucked than I thought.

WHY IS REDSTATE DOWN? POSSIBLE REASONS:#5: Refused to pay ISP portion of fee that would go to unconstitutional federal taxes. #4: Still looking for all-heterosexual web design team. #3: Decided to eschew web, will use mind power to beam messages directly into the brains of constituents. #2: Alan Keyes took a baseball bat to their servers -- claims he thought he was in the offices of National Review. And the number one reason Redstate is offline is: Rope-a-dope! (cue music)

UPDATE. They're back! Never mind.

MORE GOOD NEWS. The butched-up Kerry campaign seems to be working. Evidence: it has inspired Deep Thoughts on manhood from the Ole Perfesser. First, apparently after doing bong hits all night with his much smarter father, the Perfesser hallucinates Kerry morphing into LBJ: "The constant photos of Kerry with Harleys, guitars, guns, and soldiers... it's, like, blowing my mind." OK, he didn't say the last clause, but he did say,

Lyndon Baines Johnson was another President with a silver star and a short combat career who seemed to feel that he had a lot to prove. Might Kerry's rather clear desire to be seen as a tough guy make him a surprisingly resilient warrior? Or might it backfire, as it most likely did with LBJ?

He does answer himself, convincingly, "I don't know," but all hope of drug-induced revelation and the attendant humility before God are dashed when he tells Oliver Willis, understandably confused by the tenured radical's pipe dream, to "read it again," as if Willis were a slow freshman and Reynolds' gibberish A Theory of Justice.

Today Reynolds gets back on the horse at his mainstream media gig."The party that gave us Al Gore's earth tones is now the party of swaggering machismo," chortles the Perfesser. "But it rings kind of hollow." Hollow why? Because Reynolds and his pals say so, that's why -- with references to commedia dell'arte, yet!

What I am actually enjoying here is the sound heard throughout the land of the Right blowing a gasket, because The Big Stiff seems to be putting it over. This drives them nuts for the usual reasons, but what twists the knife is that Kerry's doing it with a schtick they thought they had patented -- oh, they would have included more homosexual panic, of course, but that flag thing, that butch thing, that's got © GOP all over it!

So don't you fret, my children; when the frothers tell you that the Democratic candidate is too manly, that ain't nothin' but good.

IT COULDN'T HAPPEN TO A NICER GUY. The Mayor has been playing cagey with the UPJ protestors and their demand for a Central Park demo during the RNC, but his game with the cops is about to run down, I should think:

Weeks away from thousands of anti-Bush protesters converging on the Republican convention, police union members employed to control the crowds on Thursday stepped up their own threats to disrupt the meeting.

"No contract, No convention!" about 20 off-duty officers chanted before Mayor Michael Bloomberg arrived to open an HIV/AIDS services center -- the latest protest by police and firefighters who have publicly hounded the mayor for weeks over a contract dispute on wage increases.

They've been working without a contract for two years.

For most of us citizens, it has been a little unnerving, having a rich mayor who can do whatever the hell he feels like doing -- apeshit smoking and noise bans; on-again, off-again property tax increases -- knowing that if we finally get up on our hind legs and kick him out, he can always buy an island someplace and rule that; but his well-unionized opponents know they've got him now. Rudy may be whispering in the shadows, Fuck 'em! Show 'em the back of your hand, like I did! That's all they respect! But Bloomberg must be worrying, insofar as worry ever penetrates his dense skull, that the last-minute cop comity in his old home town, Boston, will make him look bad -- what will his friends at the Club say?

Now the officers are keeping him up nights, which is very bright -- a man accustomed to getting himself and his friends around by private jet may be driven mad by even the mildest inconvenience.

Whatever happens, he looks like an asshole. Which is only just.

The massive number of energized local Democrats, plus the cops -- it's a nice little coalition. And the words "Mayor Ferrer" -- what a nice ring they have.

I'm starting to like this Convention.

YOUR CHOICE. You can go to OpinionJournal today and read Brendan Miniter's piece on how Kerry was wrong not to go to post-hurricane Florida, or you can wait until Miniter is dead and go view his private papers at Bob Jones University, where you can compare the published column with the one he almost certainly wrote at the same time, in case Kerry did go to Florida, calling him an opportunist, French, etc.

I would not be making such charges were Miniter's scribblings not so consistently content-free that their only imaginable use is as the rankest sort of propaganda.

ERA OF GOOD FEELING. In a day of tactical evasions, John Kerry talked down a MoveOn.org anti-Bush ad, apparently in solidarity with John McCain, who had talked down the Other Swift Boat Guys' anti-Kerry ad. I see the political usefulness of this for the Big Stiff, and invite him to denounce my own ravings as well if it will help him defeat the fascist scumbag space-alien freak Illuminatus Bush.

Meanwhile the Mayor has invited RNC demonstrators to don "Peaceful Political Activist" buttons for discounts on hotels, Broadway shows, and other tourist attractions. Well, if it'll get me 10% off at Applebee's, I guess I can behave myself. But if the wings aren't hot, all bets are off.

RATHER WELL PUT. In case some of you were wondering why New Yorkers are hatin' on the RNC*: here. (Thanx Ezra.)

* "A recent survey by a Manhattan public relations firm found 83 percent of those polled do not want the Republican convention in town. When asked why, more than half, 53 percent, were worried about traffic, street closures, and security hassles." -- WABC-TV. (Found by Margaret.)

WE KEEP TELLING THEM CONSERVATISM IS COOL, DAMMIT. WHY WON'T THEY LISTEN? Michele Catalano:

I'm not a huge moralist and I don't think there is no place for sex - or sexuality - in our society. But there is a big difference between promoting sexuality and promoting sex.

I forget, which is the good one -- sex or sexuality?

I see this blitz of breasts on even network television every day and it saddens me to think that my daughter is growing up in a media-crazed society that rewards most the women -- and girls -- who show the most. Maybe I've become a bit of a prude in my old age, but I cringe when I see women parading around in next to nothing because I know that teenage girls are impressionable and will emulate these women...

That reminds me: I don't have a TV Guide -- anyone know when women's floor exercises are back on?

IF IT WEREN'T FOR CHEAP IRONY, WE'D HAVE NO IRONY AT ALL. The only two entities I have found that responded favorably to the victory (such as it is) of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela are The Islamic Republic of Iran and the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It's an ill wind, I guess, that blows no one some good.

More ominous still: John Derbyshire will no longer buy American cars.

Ah, big deal. Everyone knows the real threat to our Republic is insolent teens and wide-band watches in the Marshall Field's catalogue.

A CITIZEN RESPONDS. The Mighty Mighty Reason Man has chewed out the Kerry campaign for its lame responses to the Republican spin machine. "There's a lot of dirt gonna be thrown your way in the next few months, and the time to pattycake with this bullshit is over... what your crew needs to do," he advises, "is set up a resource, a central repository of factual bitchslaps across the jaw of all this character assasination."

Who am I to argue with Reason? But allow me to add a nuance. The GOP is not dishing out truth, it's dishing out, as MMRM correctly calls it, bullshit -- smears, deliberate misreadings, and mountainized molehills. In the feral playground that is current American politics, one looks weak even trying to counter much of it logically. Edwards can point out very reasonably that Cheney is quoting Kerry "out of context" and a thousand operatives will react as if he were the kid with asthma challenging the assertion of bullies that he caught asthma by being gay -- that is to say, with more abuse.

So if the Kerry operatives are going to get talking points, maybe they should go more like this:

On Cambodia: "Aw, hell, man, you know how it is. Guys get together at the VFW Hall, have a coupla drinks, they say all kinds of shit. It was spooky back in 'Nam, man, and Kerry was smoking a lot of the good weed, so maybe in his mind he was in Cambodia. Hey, hit me in the stomach, hard's you can."

On Kerry's "sensitive" remark: "When he said 'sensitive,' he meant sensitive like an ultra-thin Trojan condom. I mean, when you get in there, you want to feel it, know what I'm saying? We think Bush's approach is more like a ribbed condom, betraying a deep insecurity that he can produce the desired effect. Plus which it's probably loose and he only has a piss-on."

On gay marriage: "Dude, why you care so much about it? Got troubles in the bedroom? Jesus Christ."

On a varieties of other issues: "Oh, no you didn't. Oh, no you didn't. Pundit, please."

Alternately, the Kerry people can simply repeat the interrogator's questions in a high-pitched voice.

It's worth a try, and if it doesn't work everyone will have forgotten about it in a week.

WHATTAYA WANT ME TO DO, DRAW YOU A PICTURE? SPELL IT OUT FOR YOU? AS LONG AS YOU LIVE, DON'T EVER ASK ME MORE! Pretending to be mentally retarded, Daniel Henninger marvels at a Democratic fundraiser with rich Hollywood stars. "Isn't it becoming harder by the day to take the Democrats seriously as the party of the common man and the left-out?" cried the faux dumbass.

Sigh. Here's the top ten list of contributors, from OpenSecrets:

1. Goldman Sachs -- $3,910,296. 51% to Democrats; 49% to Republicans.
2. National Assn of Realtors -- $2,062,839. 51% to Democrats; 49% to Republicans.
3. Morgan Stanley -- $1,882,535. 33% to Democrats; 67% to Republicans.
4. Microsoft Corp -- $1,768,446. 64% to Democrats; 36% to Republicans.
5. Time Warner -- $1,730,995. 75% to Democrats; 25% to Republicans.
6. Citigroup Inc. -- $1,659,287. 50% to Democrats; 50% to Republicans.
7. SBC Communications -- $1,632,381. 32% to Democrats; 67% to Republicans.
8. Wal-Mart Stores -- $1,585,410. 19% to Democrats; 81% to Republicans.
9. UBS Americas -- $1,584,828. 37% to Democrats; 62% to Republicans.
10. Intl Brotherhood of Electrical Workers -- $1,556,630. 97% to Democrats; 4% to Republicans.

If the Dems are not "the party of the common man and the left-out," that sure doesn't mean the Republicans are. All us po' folk are fighting for an ever-shrinking slice of the American pie. If you trust Bush, Cheney, et alia to give you a bigger one, God go with you. But let's not make believe that the presence of Bruce Springsteen at a Donkey fundraiser means that the GOP, of all entities, has become the party of the little guy.

McGREEVEY. We can almost entirely ignore the pundits' reactions to this, because they are hamstrung by politesse. Indeed, the intemperate Tacitus is having such trouble working this corner that he has spun out of the blogosphere and into the ionosphere, at least:

The coincidence of the rumored harrassment suit -- or imminent social exposure -- is a convenient excuse for an action that was ultimately inevitable. Pace those who feel sorry for him, a victim of society and its mores he is not. Which is not to say he shouldn't be.

(Had to slip that in there, didn't he?)

Second, it's worth pointing out that McGreevey came to office in the fall '01 election season -- part of an incoming class of Democrats that included faux-Republican Michael Bloomberg and Virginia Governor Mark Warner. Some good conservatives went down in that cycle. Why mention this? Because it puts the lie to the Democratic canard -- repeated by no less than John Kerry himself -- that the President has relentlessly used 9/11 for partisan purposes from the get-go. His popularity was assuredly at its peak in the months of that grim fall season, and he refused to use it in the service of electioneering or his own party. Count me among those who thought at the time that he should have -- and were appalled that he did not. Next time you hear this line dragged out for ritual flogging, quash it dead: in the heat of the crisis, the President was President alone. Those who give him no credit for it do so because they, by contrast, are partisans all the time.

What the hell is this guy talking about? normal people might ask. Go to the dictionary and look up "sublimation." McGreevey's resignation and disgrace have nothing to do with Bush, 9/11, and "faux-Republicans" -- unless you live over your head in a murky swamp where homosexuals are senior partners in an imagined tyranny that has been keeping every decent American down, and must use issues of national security and authenticity to give some socially-acceptable form to your inchoate rage.

For source matter, look at the lumpenprole response to the gay side of McGreevey's revelation:

Who is the person he had the affair with? Barney Frank?!?!??!?!

This is probably due to the fact that they have a relationship similiar to the Clintons. A Business relationship.

But where are the NOW people screaming that he placed his wife and child in EXTREME DANGER with AIDS and other STD's!!!! Where was his respect and love for them and their health??

Maybe he should hook up with Marv Albert and Howard Dean! Yeeahahahahhahaa!!!!!!!

Dump your dumocrat legislators in Nov. if they don't force the sodomite to resign this week.

And:

Mind you, the guy didn't say he was bi-sexual, but that he was homo. He looks as though he is a bit on the thinnish side (yes, I am using code for possible aids).

Far from accepting deviance, we should buckle down and reinstate society's stigmas.

We are seeing the groundwork laid for the 'Closet Homo Defense' here.

The sad thing is that there are sick perverts like this in even more powerful and prominent positions. McGreevey is a start -- but we need to flush them all out.

There are many more, but I'm just sick of looking at them, though you may go and find them even in the "respectable" quarters of the Web.

The procurement of a sinecure for McGreevy's inamorato is a matter yet to be dealt with, and it certainly will be, but let us not (pardon the expression) mince words: the national result will be an intensification of the Republican Fags 'n' Flags strategy for the Presidential election. It's a good idea for them, too. I mean, what else have they got?

UPDATE.Mild edits for clarity. As to T's national security angle, I see WorldNetDaily got a copy of the hymnal: "Given that New Jersey was where one of the 9-11 planes originated from... one would think McGreevey would have vetted his security czar closely... According to a sexual harassment lawsuit to be filed shortly by Cipel, perhaps McGreevey did vet him ... a little too closely." Using the same standard by which the President is often judged, though, I'd say McGreevey and Cipel did a great job -- no one has blown up New Jersey on their watch, have they?

WE'RE ONLY IN IT FOR THE MONEY. David Frum on Kerry's plan for government purchase of cheap Candian scrip drugs:

...drug re-importation is a cheap and cynical non-solution to a real problem: the unfairness of asking Americans to pay the whole cost and more of new drugs while the rest of the world pays less. But it’s no kind of answer to cut prices in the US: In that case, innovation could disappear entirely. (emphasis added)

The scene: a high school chem lab in the Midwest.

TEACHER: Congratulations, Timmy, on your acceptance to Stanford! As my best student ever, I'm sure you'll make a great translational pharmacologist.

TIMMY: (exhaling a cloud of cigar smoke) What's in it for me?

TEACHER: I beg your pardon?

TIMMY: You heard me, cloth-ears. This Kerry mug wants to buy drugs on the cheap from Canada. That'll cut into Big Pharma's racket but good -- and then it's bye-bye, fat signing bonus from Eli Lilly.

TEACHER: But surely your interest in medicine grows from a desire to help your fellow man?

TIMMY: What put that in your nut? There just one reason anyone gets into the pharmacology game -- and that's the sweet do-re-mi. You think I spend my nights drawing time-concentration curves just to heal some poor sap in a charity ward? Harvard gave Otto Krayer his own private jet, for Chrissakes. I won't so much as pick up a beaker for less than six figures.

TEACHER: But Timmy, what will you do if not pharmacology?

TIMMY: (shrugs) A little of this, a little of that. I'm pretty handy with a shiv. I've had offers from the Sudanese government and JPMorgan Chase, but I'm keeping my options open. So go tell your highbrow friends to lay off Bush, or us pill-packers will cut off your flow of new life-giving drugs but pronto, get me?

TEACHER: (placing the back of his hand to his brow) My faith in the younger generation is shattered.

TIMMY: (aside) I guess now would be a bad time to tell him all his engineering prodigies are going to work for Halliburton.

(Aaaaaannd... scene.)

AND ALSO I DISAPPROVE OF WHAT I JUST DID. The Vanderbilt student newspaper slots two AP dispatches to humorous effect. First:

A statewide poll last month by Middle Tennessee State University found that only 20 percent of Tennesseans support gay marriages, and about one-third favor gay civil unions... Also, Tennesseans were nearly divided in the poll about whether the U.S. Constitution should be amended to define marriage as a relation only between a man and a woman.

Immediately after:

More than half of adult Tennesseans have trouble reading well enough to understand a street map or to calculate postage, a new study on adult literacy shows.

Professor Reynolds' tenure explained! ad hominahominahomina... (Found via Alice.)

I should take this opportunity to note, in the spirit of Andy Kaufmanesque self-reproval, that my only travels in the Volunteer State centered around Nashville, where I met some of the nicest, brightest people in the world, along with many musicians.

SELF-DETONATING LOGIC BOMB OF THE DAY: "My position against gay marriage is essentially libertarian, although I've never managed to convince my libertarian friends of this." -- Cathy Seipp, NRO.

THEY DON'T MAKE CULTURE WARRIORS LIKE THEY USED TO. Really, I miss Pat Buchanan. At least he could write -- vicious ravings, sure, but well-turned! Sadly, the Right couldn't abide Pat's alleged anti-Semitic stink, and has replaced him with a squad of pablum pukers who, while perhaps even crazier that Buchanan, utterly lack his chops.

One of these is Duncan Maxwell Anderson, last seen in this space comparing Jesus to a Marine. Twelve years ago he was telling America how the nefarious, little-known Securities and Exchange Commission ("The Securities and what Commission? The SEC was founded in 1933 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt...") was going to destroy multi-level marketing. Today Anderson runs something called Faith & Family magazine -- yes, it has a weblog, where you can can read ALL CAPS exhortations to avoid Calvinism, as well as some extremely confused Constitutional theory -- and runs something called High Tor Media, whatever that is (There was once a very fine playwright named Maxwell Anderson, and he wrote a play called High Tor -- if this DMA is in fact his progeny, let us take up a collection to have some spikes driven into his coffin to arrest the poor man's spinning.)

Occasionally, mystifyingly, Anderson writes for the New York Post. Today the Post has published his "A Time for Manhood," which treats the ancient conservative Daddy Party theme (Right is Strong, Left is for Homos, etc). Even poor, crack-brained Peggy Noonan knows that this sort of thing requires an angle, however trite -- but Anderson just combines various cliches as a child might mash together lumps of Play-Doh. And they're not even current cliches -- there's "Let's Roll" again, and when was the last time you saw Alan Alda used as a symbol of liberal emasculinity? On an episode of C.P.O. Sharkey?

Though I must admit, comparing the Democratic Convention to "the Berlin Olympics of 1936" is a new one. Incomprehensible, but new.

Meanwhile we have Jonah Goldberg explaining why feminism is to blame for girls' pants with words on the butt (all the while explaining, as is his increasingly pathetic wont, that he's no prude). And Dennis Prager, defending his right to beat on children ("why should a 12-year-old girl be immune from adult criticism?"). At least he's found an adversary whose stage of intellectual development may not have exceeded his.

Such are the new Shondekommando. Go here, punks, and see how it's done. If you're gonna be nuts, at least be articulate!

HOW MUCH TO MAKE THIS GO AWAY? I'm surprised it hasn't dawned on anyone else: our treatment of Libya basically says you can do whatever you want to innocent civilians as long as you pay for it afterwards:

Libya agreed Tuesday to pay $35 million to some victims of a bloody terror bombing at a Berlin disco nearly two decades ago, making another step in Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's effort to rebuild relations with the West.

The deal, coming after much larger settlements for the bombings of two U.S. and French airliners, does not cover 169 American victims, including two soldiers who died in the blast at the La Belle disco on April 5, 1986. Lawyers are seeking separate compensation for them in U.S. courts.

Agreed to by German lawyers and officials of a Libyan foundation run by Gadhafi's son, the settlement deals with 163 non-U.S. citizens, including Germans who were wounded and the family of a Turkish woman killed by the bomb...

In Washington, State Department spokesman Adam Ereli welcomed the accord, but he emphasized that the claims of U.S. victims also must be met.

Maybe one day Bin Laden will hold a pan-Arab telethon to pay off the vig on the World Trade Center.

LAFFS. This Slate article about the literary efforts of three Maxim associates is so much funnier than I expected that I must, in gratitude and wonder, share. The author, Dan Chiasson, turns some delightful phrases -- e.g., "Itzkoff's promise to 'consider the torturous path that any piece of copy had to follow before it ever appeared in print' might well mark the all-time low-water mark for the quest narrative..." -- and the careers of the authors on view say more about the collapse of literary culture than a thousand Roger Kimball essays ever could.

I am especially grateful to be made aware of Felix Dennis, who has led a fascinating life and now builds a poetry career for himself out of money and balls. Good for him! If his hoary verse fails to raise his literary profile, they will at least damage Tom Wolfe's.

AN ERRAND BOY SENT BY GROCERY CLERKS TO COLLECT A BILL. As to the recent Vietnam-related doings of the VRWC (Vast 'Re-elect W' Committee), I note that the medium seems to have become the message, as the blogosphere congratulates itself on holding the media's feet to the fire. You know you've reached the tertiary stage of scandal-mongering when the subject becomes "Look how much braver we are than CNN."

The Swift Boats Vets For Truth seem a minor annoyance: some of Kerry's comrades like him, some don't; at least we're thus assured he's no Raymond Shaw. The Cambodia story is a little stranger, though.

I find the John McCain's quick defense of Kerry on the Vets' ad, and his disinclination (not to mention Bush's) to leverage the Cambodia story on the stump, very interesting. It may be mere, collegial courtesy on McCain's part, as conventional wisdom has it. It may also be that McCain knows how these boys operate from previous experience -- in fact, some of his opponents are still at it -- and he wanted some of his own back.

But it may also be that both Kerry and McCain know some things about America's operations in Southeast Asia -- no so much through their combat (and McCain's POW) experience as through their work on a Congressional POW/MIA inquiry years ago -- that they're not prepared to get into.

Kerry's and McCain's MIA work was sufficiently shady to arouse the interest of Sydney Schanberg -- the sentinel of My Lai and Abu Ghraib -- who still thinks Kerry and McCain were less devoted to uncovering the truth than they should have been. Given what we do know about Vietnam, I would be shocked if Kerry and McCain didn't have secrets about the War and its aftermath. Whether these secrets are dishonorable, or merely disturbing and (in someone's view) politically or diplomatically necessary to keep, is unknown to me.

But I would say that if Kerry is less than transparent about his service, there many be more than one reason.

Time may tell much more -- there was a lot no one knew about America's Cambodian adventures until someone dug it up, so someone may yet dig up something on Kerry's Cambodian adventure, or lack thereof, too. Or it may be that this thing sinks back into the vast, unexplored backwaters of history, and the political operators will content themselves with working whatever unease its moment in the media sun has stirred up.