WE ALSO DEFILE CHURCHES AND HAVE 'BORTIONS LIKE Y'ALL HAVE QUILTING BEES. The needle on my bullshit detector went flying off the dial at this:

Many Republicans are afraid to put Bush-Cheney bumper stickers on their cars or signs on their lawns because they are afraid of physical retaliation from angry liberals.

It is not just that one sees few Bush-Cheney bumper stickers and lawn signs -- even in areas in which one knows his support is high. I do not have such a bumper sticker or lawn sign. In fact, most Bush supporters I have asked, even those who are fairly passionate on the topic, just don't think the risk of a key-scratch or broken home or car window, or much worse, is worth whatever benefit one receives from a partisan bumper sticker or lawn sign. There are just too many personal stories of cars and homes defaced and damaged.

I should like to hear these stories, preferably attached to names and, especially, police reports, since even the most dedicated of operatives may find filing false statements with the local P.D. less attractive than telling tales of liberal vandalism to credulous web-trawlers.

But wait, there's more:

The sentiment is not symmetrical: One sees plenty of Kerry-Edwards bumber stickers and lawn signs -- even in highly Republican neighborhoods. Indeed, one sees plenty of such stickers and signs that express left-wing sentiments much more intense and partisan than mere support of the Democratic presidential ticket. Not infrequently these stickers and signs mention some form of violence or even death with respect to Republican officials.

Oh, come on buddy -- can't you quote even one of these homicidal lawn-signs? I may want to copy the slogans and print them on banners in time for our next liberal Kristallnacht, when my Greenshirt brethren and I will march and maraud through Suffolk County, targeting landscapers, CPAs, and golf equipment stores.

Final, incontrovertible proof this is bullshit: National Review has picked it up.

SPEAKING OF THAT ASSHOLE LILEKS... Jimbo, onetime nuclear incinerator of New York City in his dreams, decides to try sarcasm on us instead:

Let the Red Staters spend Sunday morning in itchy church clothes at Perkins... you’re in your elegant spare little apartment with a cup of coffee (frothed on top; sprinkle of nutmeg) and a pastry from that wonderful place around the corner (okay, it’s an Au Bon Pain -- hell, they’re all Bon Pain now) and there’s some light jazz on the radio. Morning jazz, if you had to give the genre a name. Anyway, it’s a sunny fall morning -- well, noonish... Note: buy Smuckers maple syrup. Or real Vermont maple? Vermont would be better. Especially in those bottles shaped like a maple leaf, very authentic... The whole world is going to hell. Except for New York. New York is fabulous. It just has to be.

All of this begs to be read in the voice Homer used to say, "Look at me, I'm Flanders! I'm a big four-eyed lame-o and I wear the same stupid sweater everyday!"

Wonder what brought this on? My guess: Gnat's already bitching that there's nothing to do in this one-horse town. "I hate the suburbs and I hate the Twins and I hate corn on the cob, Dah-dee!" "That's it, young lady! No Battlestar Gallactica for you tonight!" What do you think?

NYTM REMIX. I am saddened to report that all references to alicublog have been edited out of today’s New York Times Magazine article on bloggers. Fortunately I obtained an early draft copy from the trash outside the reporter’s home, and have below reproduced the omitted copy:

I knocked several times on the green steel door of Edroso’s Williamsburg apartment before a loud, phlegmy voice bade me enter. I found the author of "alicublog" -- a little-read website devoted to politics, the arts, and bitter denunciations of the buy-back policies of local bars and clubs -- in his tiny bedroom, nestled between a closet and a bookshelf stuffed with volumes of 19th-century literature and old issues of Black Tail, and pounding furiously on an ash-smeared keyboard.

"Oh, it’s you," he said, not taking his eyes off the screen. He jerked a thumb toward his bed. I pushed aside empty bottles of vodka and Astrolube, and a copy of Commentary, and took a seat.

"Another death threat," sighed Edroso. "I answer every one personally. I say, ‘Look, motherfucker, here’s my address, here’s my schedule, you come over anytime and we’ll settle this like men.’ I told that pussy Josh Marshall to do likewise. As fucking if."

"Josh Marshall’s a friend of mine," I said.

His head swung around and his eyes burned into mine. "November 6, 2002, Red Rock West," he said evenly. "Tell Marshall I haven’t forgotten."

He finished off his pint bottle of bourbon and tossed it into the pile of empties at my feet.

Edroso moaned. He had just called up Wonkette’s site on his computer. "You know what you need to get ahead in this business?" he shouted. "Tits. Tits out to here." With both hands he gestured a few feet from his chest, then looked down and drew them in a few inches. "No, here," he said, and flexed his fingers. "Yeah, that’s better," he said with satisfaction.

I asked him what the impact of blogs had been on our national discourse. Edroso folded his arms and looked thoughtful for a long time. Then he started snoring. I josted him awake and, after telling him who I was and what I was doing in his bedroom, repeated the question.

"Before blogs," he said, "tendentious cranks such as myself had no outlets for our ill-informed opinions, besides Letters to the Editor and soapbox rants at parties that were winding down. Also we could not count on our reputations as fuckwads to extend much past the physical borders of our respective communities." He broke the seal on a fresh pint of Jim Beam and took a long swig. "But now," he continued, "we can all write Letters to the Editor round the clock, and see them published immediately, unedited and misspelled. And at three in the morning, we can get drunk by ourselves, and vomit forth our prejudices without having to yell ‘hey, where ya goin’?’ at people who suddenly decided they have to get home before the sitter gets nervous. And our names are curses on the lips of people who never even met us. " He raised his bottle grandly. "To technology!" he roared. "All hail the mighty microchip and modem! All hail the --" He looked at me, surprised. "Hey," he said, "who’re you?"

"So," I said, edging toward the door, "you would say that blogs have no real political impact?"

"I dunno," he said moodily, rising and rubbing his face with both hands. "What do I know? If I had any real talent, I’d be performing spectrographic analysis on George Bush’s dental records, or spending my disposable income on LexisNexis instead of on porn and Doritos. No wonder they never invite to their parties! No wonder the resumes I send to The Washington Monthly always wind up on The Smoking Gun!" His body shaking, his features contorted, he cried, "Christ, what a fraud I am!" and tore the keyboard from its port and hurled it to the floor.

While I fished bits of plastic from my hair and clothes, Edroso stared down at the smashed unit. "Shit," he muttered, and, opening his closet, pulled a fresh keyboard from a shelf apparently stocked with several of them.

"It’s after midnight," he said, plugging in the keyboard. "Gotta see what that asshole Lileks is doing."

ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED? I must give big ups to elementropy on this post concerning the poisonous confluence of art and propaganda. I hope Retardo will not mind if I quote his quotation of Christopher Hitchens -- from back in his more lucid days -- concerning Norman Podhoretz' ravings against Norman Mailer:

This is not just boring and tenth-rate. It is sinister. Like Andrei Zhdanov, Stalin's literary enforcer, Podhoretz doesn't content himself with saying that a certain novelist is no longer in favour or no longer any good. That would be banal. No, it must be shown that he never was any good, that he always harboured the germs of anti-party feeling, that he was a rank rodent from the get-go. Then comes the airbrush, the rewritten entry in the encyclopaedia, the memory hole. But even Zhdanov's hacks would have made the effort to employ some new phrases and new disclosures.

We've been around this mulberry bush before, but I will have another go. For a while, back in the 90s, the culture war was salutary, bracing, tonic. It caught people's attention, perked up artists, and got the juices flowing. But these are different times. The big political machines have extended their tendrils so deep into every aspect of our lives that it is impossible to refer to any aspect of society without some Scrutinizer ascribing it a value, plus or minus, left or right.

The by-now old-fashioned term, P.C., never very meaningful, has been rendered utterly irrelevant by numerous flying squads of rightwing Kulturkommando, whose overreach in these matters is gloriously exemplified by Rod "Flanders" Dreher's denunciation of The Hours (yes, that innocuous little movie about Virginia Woolf and stuff) as an "apologia for evil" on the grounds that one of its characters, who leaves her husband and son, is portrayed sympathetically. (For God's sake, nobody tell Flanders about Medea!)

Not to say that the squads' efforts are all negative. At OpinionJournal yesterday, some guy tried to make the case that a Lebanese reality-TV show indicates the future of democracy in Arab nations -- at least, democracy of a sort:

To be sure, over the past century many Arab nations have experimented with democratic reforms, some going so far as to establish constitutions, regular elections and institutional checks and balances. But in the end the overwhelming tendency has been to assume the rhetoric and rituals of democracy without actually putting it in place.

Into this environment comes an independently produced TV program that both celebrates personal achievement and puts Arab audiences at the center of the decision-making process. "Super Star" encourages, in fact depends on, the active involvement of ordinary Arabs in a "democratic" endeavor with real-time, mutually beneficial results. If the Arab people cannot choose their political representatives free from coercion, at least now they can select a cultural representative to champion their musical tastes.

I'd like to believe that any person of normal intelligence would comprehend the crucial difference between a simulacrum of democracy -- e.g., the "thumbs-down" of the Roman Coliseum -- and the real thing. But the new culture war -- much more savage and damaging than the old one; a total culture war, to avail an old phrase -- will probably, soon enough, render all such fine distinctions imperceptible.

Then art will not exist, except as an arcane misnomer popularly applied to the circuses glorifying whomever is in charge.

It is embarrassing to have to say it aloud, but some things are more important than politics.

SIMON DRINKS THE KOOL-AID. I had a feeling this would happen.

Professor Glenn Reynolds used to tell people he was not a conservative, using a pro-gay-marriage stand as his trump non-con credential. But once he had descended sufficiently deeply into the Bush tank, he felt it necessary to issue this post (much longer than usual, because the need for obfuscation was so great), in which is explained that arguing for gay marriage was the worst thing its advocates could do ("that sort of thing can only serve to alienate Republicans"), and told his no doubt astonished gay readers that Bush's plan to amend the Constitution to exclude them was "not worth getting too excited about."

Now it's Roger L. Simon's turn. He has said that Bush's stance on gay issues "make[s] me cringe." Well, he ain't cringin' no more (not in that sense, anyway)! The tone of his Damascene conversion is less tortuous than Reynolds' and, as befits one who has shed some confining principles, more liberated and breezy:

Sure, [Bush] doesn't support gay marriage. But hardly anyone even talked about gay marriage in the whole history of our country until a few years ago. Relax. Gay rights are on extraordinarly fast upward curve. Take a slight breather to give the Islamic world a chance.

En otras palabras: Relax, bitches, we're goin' to Mars!

How long, do you figure, before Andrew Sullivan comes around?

RETURN TO JIMBO. Say, I haven't looked in on James Lileks in a while. Wonder what the crazy old sonuvagun is up to? Hmm, says here he's noticed Jimmy Swaggart wants to kill a homosexual. Why, Jimmy Lileks is commencing to speak on it!

...anyone who uses him to discount the extraordinary and largely unheralded impact of religiously inspired philanthropy is a fool. I have no problem with atheists; if that's what they've come to believe in the end, then fine. But I have no time for atheists who look at the good works of churches, and nevertheless feel superior because they don't believe in a Magic Book...

Haw! Jimmy Swaggart makes a death threat, and the atheists get the lecture! Old Jimbo's still got that -- what'd you call it, Ed? "Ida Fixy"? Yeah, crazy as a loon, bless him.

FUNNY GIRL (DISCLAIMER: FANNY BRICE REFERENCE DOES NOT GUARANTEE ANTI-SEMITISM). The claim that being anti-neoconservative is the same thing as being anti-semitic has been brought to its logical apotheosis by Julia Gorin:

When a member of the enlightened classes, or Pat Buchanan, makes reference to a "neocon," what he's saying is "yid." That's right, "neoconservative," particularly in its shortened form, when employed by a nonconservative (or by Buchananites) and therefore meant derogatorily, is the modern, albeit more specific, word for "kike" that the left can say--and it has been doing so liberally (no pun intended) ever since American conservatism became yet something else that Jews have managed to benefit from--the conquered, final frontier of that famous Jewish manipulation.

I am aware that Gorin is supposed to be a comedian, though the absence of actual laughs in this and her other material argue against that impression. If this piece is intended as "satire," it is of the Ann Coulter variety -- you know, the kind where you make an outrageous assertion, your followers beat their chests and yell "boo-yah," and you ask the people staring at you in horror, "What's the matter, can't you take a joke?"

What's the tipoff? Special pleading, for one thing. Juvenal and Swift didn't take time out from their work to moan about how unjust it all was, whereas Gorin buffs up the alleged link to real anti-semitism ("Jews jokingly called one another by their Ellis Island designation 'keikle' [Yiddish for 'circle']..."). Neither did the masters cite the authority of contemporary pedants to justify their bagatelles, while Gorin cites bloggers and columnists in defense of her thesis.

The big problem, though, is that Gorin isn't really joking at all. Her outrageous thesis, the when-they-say-neocon-they-mean-yid idea, is something she believes -- or, at least, wants us to believe, so that we'll restrain our anti-war complaints for fear of appearing anti-semitic.

But maybe I don't I just don't get conservative humor. And maybe Swift really was trying to get the Irish to eat their children.

UPDATE. Much funnier than the alleged comedienne Gorin are readers' responses to her article. Lots on non-Jewish cons declare themselves neos in solidarity. (Brave, brave lads! They don't care if they never get another letter from Norman Lear!) One guy says he became a neocon when he realized Al Gore wanted to be dictator. Another says liberals aren't using the "neo" label to call attention to conservative Jews, but to make them look like Nazis. Aside from a few voices of sanity (most notably Steve Sailer's), this is as batshit crazy an assemblage as we're likely to see all day, or until the Rush Limbaugh Chorale holds its next rehearsal of The Foster Barton Song (T-shirt high, ranks closed...).

PERFECTLY KERNED BULLSHIT. When the kids ask me, "Why, Uncle Roy, what do you mean when you say that the rightwing attack machine greases its gears with excremental journalism?" I never have to reach far for a quote, as planted, massaged, and/or managed stories are as plentiful in the conservative press as sunshine in Florida.

Let's take a story making the rounds today, which has received so far the imprimatur of Jonah Goldberg ("SOME COWARDLY S.O.B. beats up a US soldier for wearing an Iraqi freedom shirt") and Professor Reynolds ("new climate of fear in America... not anti-war. Just on the other side"):

A local soldier back from the war in Iraq said he was beaten at an area concert because of what was printed on his T-shirt, NBC 4's Nancy Burton reported.

Foster Barton, 19, of Grove City, received a Purple Heart for his military service in Iraq. He almost lost his leg last month after a Humvee he was riding in ran over a landmine.

Barton said he was injured again Friday night in a crowded parking lot as he was leaving the Toby Keith concert at Germain Amphitheatre. The solider was injured so badly that he can't go back to Iraq as scheduled...

Barton and his family said he was beat up because he was wearing an Iraqi freedom T-shirt.

We know Goldberg and Reynolds, like the hundreds of Fighting Keyboarders who will flog this tale over the days to come, do not practice journalism, and now it appears that they do not exercise, or credit to others, even the basic sort of reasoning popularly known as common sense.

They imply that a guy who went to a Toby Keith concert and got into a fight -- which sounds like a normal, red-blooded American knucklehead's perfect Saturday night to me -- was motivated by leftist politics. (Even Goldberg's colleague Kathryn Lopez is confused by this; as confusion is the NRO denmother's natural state, however, this leads to no further questioning.)

Some witnesses say the assailant was "screaming profanities and making crude remarks about U.S. soldiers." While this seems to shout "leftist political operative" to our new Woodwards and Bernsteins, observers even mildly acquainted with waking reality would rank the possibility that the ruffian in question had once been rejected by the Army (or had an asshole father who once served, or had just been listening to "War Pigs" while availing a bong) much higher.

Other aspects of the story smell. For instance, it appears that the assailant has not been arrested. As one of the witnesses is described as "a friend of the alleged attacker," it cannot be that the cops are unable to locate him. If this assault is as the victim describes it -- unprovoked and severely damaging -- why isn't the perp in jail?

As my phony angle is as good, or as bad, as anyone else's, let me offer this: perhaps the bounder in question is a loyal Bush supporter and, having gotten a bellyful of Toby Keith's testosterone entertainment, went around looking to pounce on anyone who fit the profile of the enemy: i.e., a veteran with a Purple Heart.

Hell, if Barton were a multiple amputee, the guy might have killed him.

UPDATE. The story inspires the usual reasoned analysis in the blogosphere:

"Did John Kerry teach you guys anything? Oh, yeah, I suppose he did at that..." -- Weapons of Mass Destruction

"Apparently, 6 assailants, who are no doubt peace loving anti-war loyal oppositionist fans of [Ted] Rall, who attacked this soldier at a concert , didn't feel to surpressed..." -- Infidel Cowboy

"Nice to know Kerry hasn't lost it -- He can still get the loons to hate our bravest!" -- Life Trek

"...the angry anti-war rhetoric coming from leftists in this country -- yes, that includes John Kerry, Howard Dean, moveon.org et al -- has reached a point where it is no longer distinguishable from the propaganda of our enemy .. and it is inciting the type of actions last Friday night at the Germain Amphitheater." -- Merry Mad Monk

"Peace-loving liberals: Yeah, those people you see at peace rallies really are the type that support our troops... Profanities. Crude remarks. Yeah, that sounds like our war protester-types." -- Hoy Story

Etc. Funny, I didn't get the memo from the Kerry campaign telling us to skulk around Toby Keith concerts looking for soldiers to beat up, did you guys? Ah well. It takes a Reichstag... actually, it doesn't even take that.

ON THE INTERNET, NO ONE KNOWS YOUR STORY'S A DOG. Andrew Sullivan prefaces an alleged letter from a solider, linked from Hewitt, this way:

I can't "authenticate" it, and I hope Hewitt vetted it. (Hewitt is, alas, a pure partisan -- his own site's motto is about the destruction of Democrats, whoever they are -- but the email rings true to me.)

Sullivan doesn't know if it's real, the source has a grudge, but he's going with it anyway, and then commenting on it as if it were revealed truth. Advantage: Blogosphere! That'll show Ra^ther.

(Earlier, Sullivan had refused to even visit the Iraqi Body Count page -- which is extensively sourced -- because "its biases are so blatant and so hostile to the liberation.")

I'm sure the Bush people will forgive Sullivan his (probably temporary and certainly unconvincing) apostasy. Anyone who can torture reality like that is too valuable to lose. Besides, they can always trot him out as some sort of "diversity" figurine -- until such time as they don't have to worry about appearing diverse at all.

BIG STIFF ON LATE NIGHT. Only saw a bit of this, but Kerry looked looser than usually, by which I mean that the stick up his ass seems to have been broken in several places, allowing great flexibility of movement.

I will say that his explanation of "voted for before I voted against" makes sense. Wonder how I missed hearing it before? Hey, look over there -- inappropriate kerning!

TIGHT NOT TOUCHING. The CBS memo thing seems to have worked out adversely for Dan Rather et alia. I imagine this link will give a good view of the bloggers' chest-beating denouement for quite some time. Their enthusiasm is wilder now than at their last victory party over Trent Lott, because, as I observed at the time, most of them didn't so much care about Lott's racism as they did about the prospect of a scalp to call their own. But, while Lott lost some accoutrements of power, Rather seems to be keeping his job. So for the moment effigies will have to do.

The next phase of the operation seeks to establish a link between the memos, CBS, and the Kerry campaign via Joe Lockhart. But the notion that Democrats and Big Media are mobbed up is received wisdom among the bloggers and their constituents -- right up there with the sanctity of gun ownership and heterosexual marriage -- so it is hard to see what hearts and minds are left to be won in that regard.

There are other options. Representative Christopher Cox has called for a Congressional investigation of CBS. This is probably just an attempt at leverage against an ancient enemy, but you never know where wildfire will get to once the flames have been fanned.

Some who remember the various bullshit stories floated about Clinton in the last decade might wonder at the fuss. Technology is a marvel, friends. Not only can it extend power to an unprecedented degree; it can also make the powerful look like underdogs, if there is a purpose to be served by it.

AND BESIDES, IT'S ALL ABOUT HOMOSEXUALS! Guess I wasn't the only serious political journalist watching the Emmys. Brent Bozell clone Tim Graham announces that "giving Emmy awards to 'Angels in America' is transparently political and anti-religious." Boy, I don't know why the nets don't turn their Emmy beat over to the guys from Fox and Friends -- soapbox cranks on awards shows are a barrel of laffs!

Even laffier, not to mention taffier, are the linked ravings of the original Bozell on Angels in America: "Artistically," he bravely begins, "it's a sprawling mess... a parade of blasphemy and profanity, a concerto of conservative-bashing... It’s exactly what playwrights and actors love – self-consciously writerly, intellectually preening, over-emoting..." Oh, and "Theologically, it’s even worse." Just in case you thought theatre criticism was Bozell's only stock in trade.

Part of the problem with these guys on art, any art, is that they confuse John Simon's old Tonight Show appearances with Hazlitt and Dr. Johnson. They think dyspepsia and outrage are criticism. And they think ideology is an artistic standard. Maybe in the journalistic schoolyard they inhabit, that kind of slipshod work passes, but not 'round here, sir.

And they wonder why artists don't like them.

EMMYS. I spent most of Garry Shandling's monologue adjusting the color on my TV. It's amazing they found him a tux that fits so well, since he's been obviously been living on a sidewalk in L.A. for a couple of years. He's still pretty funny though.

Since I don't have cable and just watch the same few things over and over again (mostly test patterns, infomercials, and that episode of "Seinfeld" with Molly Shannon), I can't possibly judge what's going on here. I see they're sticking skits in between awards. I don't know about that. We'll see if the tabloid coverage tomorrow includes big pictures of the skits.

UPDATE. I kind of like the skits. It's you're going to be derivative, derive from quality. Speaking of "The Larry Sanders Show," it was nice to see Jeffrey Tambor up there. I really believe Hank Kingsley was one of the greatest comedy characters since Tartuffe -- an immediately recognizable type and completely unique and idiosyncratic at the same time.

Hey, is that Jon Stewart theme really "I Feel So Good" by Richard Thompson?

UPDATE 2. Elaine Stritch has the music people scared. Well, who wouldn't be? There goes the big flourish -- they have a trap door, I assume.

UPDATE 3. I think the Democrats should have nominated Jon Stewart. And while we're on the subject, I should be writing for his show. I make lots of jokes about politics. Perhaps I'll send them some of my humorous meditations on Professor Glenn Reynolds and Roger L. Simon, with a letter of introduction from Kevin Drum. Pure comedy gold!

UPDATE 4. I've got to see that Sopranos show sometime. I hear it's pretty good.

UPDATE 5. I can't wait for the tearful farewell episodes of "World According to Jim" and "CSI Miami."

UPDATE 6. Well, I guess Mary-Louise Parker and her dress will be in the papers tomorrow. That's a good combination: serious Broadway actress and vertical cleavage.

So, is the deal with The Forgotten that Julianne Moore is really dead, or that everyone else is dead, or that everyone including Julianne Moore is dead, or that we are all the dream of a sleeping giant?

I don't mean to brag and it's certainly nothing to brag about, but I figured out The Sixth Sense when Bruce Willis first met the kid. After that it was very funny. I kept expecting Willis to say to people, "Oh, so you won't talk, eh?" and "Givin' me the old silent treatment, are ya?"

Boy, I'd hate to be George Lopez' otolaryngologist.

UPDATE 7. Oh, now, that isn't fair -- Tony Kushner wrote that play already. What do they do when a Shakespeare play wins a writing award? Get Larry Gelbart come out and say how sad it is Bill couldn't be here because he would have been thrilled?

UPDATE 8. I don't know anything about reality shows. My Mom likes all of them, so I guess I have to go with the one with the midget, if only as a sort of cryptic tribute to Michael Dunn's great Dr. Loveless on The Wild, Wild West. I will say that the whole show should be presented by ordinary people who don't know what's going on. Or maybe it should be presented, like the craft awards on the Oscars and the Best Musical Program awards tonight, at ceremonies held earlier in San Luis Obispo, and mercilessly excerpted. Then they could run a whole bunch more more Kmart commercials, and Shandling could do improv with people in the first five rows.

UPDATE 9. I'm sure Pacino was great as Roy Cohn (one day I'll see if he was as good as Ron Liebman) but he's a terrible award-winner. He needs some writers, but hell, so does Kerry, what are you gonna do? I'm amazed what a robot Mike Nichols has turned into. Mike Nichols of Nichols and May! I guess that comes from being a one-man major entertainment institution for ninety years; after a while that tan seeps right down into your soul.

UPDATE 10. It's nice that they're talking about Danny Thomas, and so sad that he isn't around today to come out here with a big cigar and say, "Everything on television today is sex! They got 'Sex in the City,' sex in the country, sex in the bathroom, the living room, everywhere except in the bedroom, where it belongs! With two beds! You think Desi and Lucy woulda been funnier if they were sleeping the same bed? They'd both be lucky to wake up alive, lemme tell ya! And don't get me started on that rap music..."

If the cops were doing their jobs the Raveonettes would be in jail for that Jesus & Mary Chain ripoff.

UPDATE 11. Now, it's too bad that Patricia Heaton didn't win because I really had a premonition that this would be the year she just flipped out and started screaming about abortion and what a bunch of murderers everyone in the audience was. Plus, Sarah Jessica Parker isn't that good.

UPDATE 12. Conan is so funny. Not so funny is Kelsey Grammer. It's weird that the new Bob Hope is an actor obviously perfectly suited to play a blowhard, so much so that I'm sorry I didn't see his Macbeth -- it must have been hilarious.

These dead-people things are so weird. First of all, there are the lulls (who is that guy? He's Jack Elam, you stupid fuck, he was in Once Upon a Time in the West). Then there's the added weirdness of film people in the TV necrotribute. It seems almost presumptuous -- like the Fat People of America doing a tribute for Peter Ustinov and Brando. (Glad they showed a clip from "Roots: The Next Generation" though.) And the people who died latest get the biggest claps. In heaven right now, Tony Randall is doing a little victory dance around Alastair Cooke.

UPDATE 13. James Spader kinda walked into TV like a CEO who'd been squeezed out and decided, fuck it, I'll go run a little shop on the boardwalk like I don't give a shit because I don't. And the little shop is a major success.

UPDATE 14. I used to wonder if the absent nominees get to choose the pictures that are shown when their names are called. Emma Thompson convinces me that they do not. Meryl Streep was very charming. Mike Nichols' grin is getting creepier, like a Bond villain's: yes, yes, everythink is going accordink to plan...

UPDATE 15. It must suck to work on a mini-series for thousands of hours and then have "Angels in America" come out the same year. Goldfinger delivers a suitably downbeat valedictory.

Hey, now we're moving. "Arrested Development" lets Opie claim a much-deserved Emmy to go with his are-you-joking Oscar.

UPDATE 16. Thank God, we're almost done. Hey, everybody love-a "The Sopranos"! David Chase is a much more manicured type than I expected. But what do I know about real writers? Thank you and good night!

THE JOE ROGAN ADMINISTRATION. Here's a good, concise pdf from the Century Foundation, about rising personal debt in the U.S.A. (That TPM ad wasn't wasted, guys.) It is very clearly written, and peppered with astute and depressing observations like these:

Households are spending more of their incomes than ever on servicing their debts. The debt burden indicator constructed by the Federal Reserve, which measures how large a proportion of families’ incomes goes toward paying off debts, reached a new high recently... Low-income families have become especially vulnerable -- 27 percent of households in the lowest income group now report spending a staggering 40 percent of take-home earnings on debt payments.

Debt burdens are at record levels because families have been stretched to the limit in recent years. With more income going to housing and other rising expenses related to medical care, education, vehicles, child care, and so forth, families are relying on credit as a way to meet everyday needs. Remarkably, a family with two earners today actually has less discretionary income, after fixed costs like medical insurance and mortgage payments are accounted for, than did a family with only one breadwinner in the 1970s. [emphasis added]

This is one of those things that anyone who is over the age of 40, and who either lives in or has access to middle-class society, knows by both observation and instinct. Anyone who's trying to keep what was once a typical American life going, especially with kids and a house, knows that the slope's getting steeper.

But when you have pixie-dust salesmen like Larry Kudlow -- who thinks the President will landslide into a second term on the strength of the economy -- telling you that everything is going great, you might feel like a big loser if your own struggle isn't getting as exponentially easier as the economic experts tell you it should be.

So maybe a guy keeps his mouth shut about it, even to pollsters. For in the Fear Factory America has largely become, it hurts to admit defeat, or even a little weakness, because it is the same thing as loserhood, and in the modern imagination there is no greater crime than losing. So maybe he stays "positive," that is, works longer hours, or eats more bugs, just to stay even (and quietly accepts another five grand in debt to keep the house painted and the kids innoculated and the strain from showing too overtly); then, with the next jump in the price of staple goods, or the next disappointing raise, he steps up and does it again...

I wonder if the job has been done so well on him that he'll still feel that way in the voting booth.

YOU'VE GOT YOUR GOOD THINGS, AND I'VE GOT MINE. John J. Miller avails that popular rightwing dream-object, the cabby who confirms your prejudices:

My driver was Bosnian... Toward the end of the ride, he mentioned that he thinks Republicans are much more polite than Democrats. "Someone can be in the car with me for three minutes, and I'll know their party just from how they behave," he said... my driver turned around (we were at a red light) and lit up: "Ken Starr is the nicest man in Washington."

This contrasts strongly with the opinion of the cabbie with whom I rode last night, who told me that, during the recent Convention here, GOP delegates would routinely greet him with "To my hotel, nigger," urinate on themselves and the upholstery, and then run off without paying what they owed; whenever Rashawn (for that was my cabbie's name) shouted for a cop to apprehend the farebeaters, the delegates would merely wave their credentials in the officer's face and skip merrily away, singing the Horst Wessel Song.

Ken Starr, he noted, was particularly bad: "Fucker tried to shoot me in my own cab," said Rashawn. "But he was so fucked up on junk he couldn't draw a bead on me from the back seat, so he shot the chick that was suckin' his dick instead."

His Democratic fares, on the other hand, always offer to rub his shoulders as he drives, and tip him with summer houses in Amagansett.

Rashawn also tells me that this "little girl" is actually a 35-year-old midget who works for the RNC. "She's always blubbering about something or other," observes Rashawn. "I bet she ripped up her own sign just to get attention. A few lines of coke ought to shut her up. Back when she was dancing at the Baby Doll, she always had a frosted-donut mustache, if you know what I mean."

My cabby is no more believable than Miller's, but he's far, far more interesting.

SPEAKING OF FRAUDS. Daniel Henninger goes to Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley:

At the seniors center in Allentown, I met a fellow who said he'd lived all his life in New York City, when one day his wife said she wanted to move out west. They made it 30 miles into Pennsylvania, stopped and stayed. He's a Bush man, supports the war and the way Mr. Bush has handled it.

Standing next to him was a fellow named Francisco Figueroa. Mr. Figueroa was wearing a red U.S. Marine Corps cap pinned with a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. A big-city journalist too familiar with stereotypes blurted: "Guess we know where you stand." Mr. Figueroa said, "What do you mean?"

Mr. Figueroa got his medals in Vietnam, where he did advance scouting on village conditions, one of which was My Lai. He's been shot at, a lot. He is voting for John Kerry. Why? Because John Kerry was over there, in the middle of it. The other guy never was....

Then Henninger sees some flags, a Marshmallow Peeps factory, and a car race. "Lasting impression," decides Henninger, "The Bush voters sounded solid. The Kerry votes came over as soft; everyone seems aware of the flip-flop label. Timid prediction: The Lehigh Valley goes Bush."

I understand Gallup uses similar methods.

INSTAFRAUD.

You've never seen me sing the praises of George W. Bush the way that, say, Andrew Sullivan was doing at one point.

The Ole Perfesser is never less convincing than on those occasions when he rambles at length between quick link/heh jobs, and his latest cracker-barrel blather is perhaps the worst in his whole ignoble history. The comparison to the crimson-prosed Sullivan is telling; no one seems more grandiloquent than Sully in the throes of passion, whereas the Perfesser's schtick has ever been a pomo pretense of loftiness.

I don't need to link evidence -- go to his archive and look at any one or two pages: The guy's a straight-up Bush operative. Just the other day he blew the doors off his erstwhile pretense of support for gay marriage just to preserve style points for his beloved Bush. How long before he goes that way on drug law reform? About as long as it takes for the next wave of draconian legislation to spew forth from a reenergized Republican Congress. Then the Prof will tell us, as he did with the gay thing, how everyone should just stop fussing and wait for a "generational" shift to save us.

Maybe this conservatarian dodge baffles the unformed minds in his classroom, but why do some adults fall for it? Call Roger L. Simon's disease: a disassociative condition occuring in formerly cool guys when they look in the mirror one day and see Dick Armey staring back at them.

HA FUCKING HA. Jonah Goldberg has Marion Barry laffs, resuscitating one of his old gags about how Barry's base is well-stocked with felons. If one didn't know Goldberg's history, one might be surprised that he thought it worthy of repetition.

YOU GOTTA FIGHT TO STAY INDEPENDENT/I GOT MY PRIDE AND I'M GONNA DEFEND IT. Another Ramone done gone, this time Johnny, age 55, of prostate cancer in Los Angeles. In End of the Century, he was asked why he hadn't reached out to his old partner Joey when he was on his way out in 2001. He said that he wouldn't have wanted the shoe on the other foot: somebody he wasn't speaking to calling him up when he was dying to say how sorry he was. Knowing what we know about Johnny, the quintessential hardass, that's understandable.

Look who was with him at the end:

Along with his wife, Linda Cummings, Johnny Ramone was surrounded at his death by friends Eddie and Jill Vedder, Rob and Sherrie Zombie and others. Other friends who gathered at his Los Angeles home included Lisa Marie Presley, Pete Yorn, Vincent Gallo and Talia Shire.

Vincent Gallo and Talia Shire! I have no doubt they were really his friends, but the combination is still funny -- like Allan Arkush and Stephen King, y'know. Like a Ramones song.

R.I.P., tough guy. Thanks for putting a damper on all those wanking solos.

DEAF FOREVER. At National Review Online, it's John J. Miller's turn to grab the crayon and write about culture. I gave him Dude points at least for choosing Iron Maiden's Powerslave as a topic, till I came to this part:

The second song is one of Iron Maiden's most familiar: "Two Minutes to Midnight." It's an anti-nuke tune whose politics aren't exactly to my liking. Although the lyrics admit that "blood is freedom's stain," they also suggest that during the Cold War, both sides were deluded. The title is a reference to the Doomsday Clock, whose main purpose is to serve as a propaganda tool of the Left. None of this means that the boys in Iron Maiden are Commie symps -— they aren't -— but a piece of me always has wished this song had been about Dunkirk or something...

I want it understood that, when I bemoan writing about the arts by conservative factota such as Miller, it's not because I believe their conservatism makes any difference, but because they invariably believe it does. Does any normal person think, "I like Whit Stillman, but I wish he had overtly praised labor unions in The Last Days of Disco," or, "I like Evelyn Waugh, but I wish he were more sensitive in matters of race and gender in Black Mischief"?

That's like saying, "I like turkey, but I wish it were pork."

These people are always bitching about how terrible it is that there are so many lefties in the arts (please, nobody tell them that musical comedy is riddled with homosexuals!), and when you read crap like Miller's it really seems as if their answer would be to nationalize culture and institute their own values by fiat and force, so that the orgasmic climax Ravel's Bolero would be interrupted by an abstinence lecture, Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath would wonder aloud whether it weren't selfish of him to resist dynamic capitalism just so's he and his family could have something to eat, etc.

It worked with journalism, after all. Why shouldn't it work with heavy metal?