MAU-MAUING THE FLAK CATCHERS. Always looking for that silver lining, that James Taranto:

If Obama is nominated and loses in November, we can expect a surge in bitterness from liberals and blacks who attribute the result to American and Republican racism... But if Obama is denied the nomination, that bitterness will be directed against alleged Democratic racism.

For more than four decades, blacks have been the most reliably Democratic constituency in American politics. Democrats have encouraged this by portraying both the GOP and America as racist. If blacks came to perceive the Democratic Party as racist, what effect would it have on their partisan loyalty? You can see why so many Democrats do not want to risk finding out.

That's how we lost the black vote to the Republicans in 1984, when "that cracker-ass Walter Mondale" became a curse on black America's lips. How's we get them back, anyone remember? Was it an ad campaign, or did we pay reparations?

Taranto gets extra credit for his last line, which suggests that Democrats are being intimidated into nominating Obama, as a terrified woman might be intimidated into handing her purse to a mugger. Expect this theme to be visualized in a McCain ad this fall: a dark alley... ominous footsteps... and then relief as the Maverick comes into view, perhaps with the rest of the Keating Five dressed as Guardian Angels.

JONAH GOLDBERG SWINGS FOR THE FENCES! At the Canadian National Post, John Moore defends prostitution -- puckishly, to be sure (the author is a talk-radio host) though he does take time to provide a few examples of happy sex workers to support his point.

At National Review Online, Jonah Goldberg is stirred to combat! The noted historian commences:

I find this amusing for several reasons...

(Like what, Goldberg doesn't and probably couldn't say, but he's just setting up the killer follow-through:)

...but the most glaring is that the argument is really stupid.

We could stop right there, but both Goldberg and I have column inches to fill.

In formal debate you'd call his opening an "appeal to authority."

Well, that's a slight stretch of that term, but let's allow it, and (even better) let's allow Goldberg to explain it:

This is like arguing "The U.N. is necessary because Henry Kissinger says it is." But in this case instead of Henry Kissinger, the authority in question is a two-bit gigolo actor who drops to his knees for a part and can't even imagine why he wouldn't since he already does it for free so often. The other authority — and his only actual example — is a single mom who whores herself out to make time for "volunteer work" and raising her daughters. No doubt Mr. Moore thinks Mrs. Brady-by-day, hooker-by-night, is a perfectly representative example of a "sex worker." And we know she's not being demeaned because she never has to dress up like a school girl. Because that would be repugnant! But servicing even dirty old men is just a straight-forward business transaction.

And so Moore's argument is proved fallacious because his authorities are pervs. They know what they're talking about, but what they're talking about is gross. And if Goldberg had called this an argument from example instead, he wouldn't have been able to bring in Henry Kissinger, which is funny because his name has a "K" in it. Also, he'd have to line up unhappy sex workers as counter-examples, and that would kill the buzz.

But Goldberg's rhetorical arsenal is not yet depleted -- in the last ditch he avails the argument from geography:

But I suspect that there's another variable at work here. Moore's Canadian. And as I discovered years ago, lots of Canadians have weirdly amoral views toward prostitution, perhaps because being "judgmental" is just so American.

Killer logic like this has kept libertarians happily yoked to the conservative coalition, and Goldberg gainfully employed, lo these many years. It's like the Enlightenment never happened. If you need a chaser, take up Goldberg's homage to Eric Voegelin.

TINKER TO EVERS TO FAT CHANCE. The Perfesser quotes an allegation of "hemming and hawing" and "life in a cocoon" against Obama, links to the quoted source, which amplifies on the charges ("shocked that [reporters] should demand answers," "When everyone you come in contact with agrees with you, and fawns over you to boot," etc.) and links to the actual video, which reveals the commentary to be somewhat overcooked. (Even the video host uses the odd adjective "semi-heated" to describe the exchange.) I don't know how much "uh" is too much for the general public, but the placeholder has been a prominent feature of Obama's manner of discussion from the beginning, and to my ears indicates more thoughtfulness than trepidation -- especially when he does, in fact, answer the question. A little stammering didn't hurt Jimmy Stewart, either.

But I'm prejudiced, of course. This daisy chain shows both the strength and the weakness of our vaunted internet transparency. You can get to the source more easily than in earlier days, but as the web is not C-Span, you'll generally get there via a few layers of deliberate framing, and that's if you take the time to get there at all. That the Perfesser said it, and that a source exists somewhere, will be good enough for the majority of his readers. (Not mine! You guys are unstoppable!) The internet has given us a lot, but I see no evidence that it has made us less lazy.

UPDATE. Thanks to commenter MFS for correcting my headline.

THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE. There's a lot of talk about the ongoing Clinton-Obama race, much of it from operatives taking the opportunity to make Republican hay of it. "This race is different from every other Democratic race because it's about race and gender, ultimately, and personality," says David Brooks. Presumably Brooks is bothered because he still thinks Presidential races are supposed to be all about religion, as he told us in 2004.

Brooks insists that the protracted fight is "going to make the party look pretty bad," and imagines voters asking, "Are these people going to really manage the entire health care system?" This last bit is jarring, as it mentions an actual campaign issue.

While the Democrats are hogging the spotlight, the McCain campaign has been thrown into deep shadow. This would seem an excellent chance for him to go around shoring up his finances and whatever base he actually has, but that doesn't seem to be going so well. I notice McCain's only significant endorsement in the past three weeks has come from Nancy Reagan. His public policy pronouncements have stirred few ripples, at least of the positive sort. Recently Republican Senator Mel Martinez said of McCain's housing-market prescriptions, or lack thereof, "I would give Senator McCain an Incomplete."

You have to wonder how people who are not Republican Senators feel about this and other issues. We know that people like McCain, but we have yet to see what they think of his policies, or the prospect of seeing them put into action in a McCain Administration. When the Democrats get a nominee, we will get a better idea of this, and we'll also get a better idea of who's really trying make the election "about race and gender," and why.

REVIEW: GEERT WILDERS' FITNA. Ugly shit from the Koran, World Trade Center attacks, another bomb, crazy Arabs, dead and bloody people, more ugly shit from the Koran, antique Arab, little Arab girl indoctrinated against Jews, Mogadishu, London bombing, more indoctrination, more ugly shit from the Koran, Theo Van Gogh, some other crazy Arabs, still more crazy Arabs, guy getting his head cut off, more ugly shit from the Koran, still more crazy Arabs, Ahmadinejad saying something rather mild, more crazy Arabs, even more crazy Arabs, "The Netherlands under the spell of Islam," "No ban on the burqa," graph of Muslim population in the Netherlands, graph of Muslim population in Europe, more crazy Arabs, "The Netherlands in the future?" with more crazy Arabs. Page appears to be torn from Koran: "The sound you heard was a page being removed from a phonebook." (Pussy.) Long scroll of stuff ending with "Stop Islamisation, defend our freedom." Danish cartoon with bomb animated to simulate explosion. Credits. Storm/bomb noises.

Uh, so he seems to be against blowing things up and crazy Arabs.

Big whoop. I already did my part, and mine was aesthetically superior. Blow me the fuck up. Better still, just blow me.

Rod Dreher: "I would call this film propaganda, certainly, but it doesn't operate on hate. It operates on fear, which is a different thing." Stop Crunchy Conservatism, defend our sanity.

UPDATE. I've been hard on Spaghetti Happens in comments, and probably misunderstand him. It's not that I think there's no threat, only that this little movie is pretty much the polar opposite of a useful counter-measure. Fitna doesn't overstate the viciousness of our enemies, but it does overstate their power -- disastrously, I think, for its own alleged purposes. It's designed to strike terror in the hearts of Westerners, when it isn't terror that's needed, but confidence.

SHORTER THEE ANCHORESS: All these irreverent seculars making fun of Our Lord! Attend the healing words of Ace O'Spades! No, not that Ace O'Spades -- no, not that Ace O'Spades -- no, not that Ace O'Spades -- no, not that Ace O' Spades -- no, not that Ace O' Spades -- no, not that Ace O'Spades -- this one! Jesus Fucking Christ, what have I gotten myself into!

REMAIN CALM! ALL IS WELL! One would expect an article entitled "Who Do Iraqis Want to Be U.S. President?" to include some quotes. Yet Omar Fadhil at Pajamas Media provides none, maybe because anyone he might ask is terrified that he or she would be killed for answering him. Nonetheless Fadhil has strong opinions on the matter, hilariously expressed:

If I were to try to predict their feelings, I’d start by restating the fact that most Iraqis are concerned first and foremost about their living conditions — economy, security, water, electricity — and they care primarily about coming up with solutions to these problems. Iraqis have also come to realize that their problems are essentially domestic...

I wonder how people without running water and electricity came to realize that their problems were essentially domestic? Maybe the same way people who have to "decide between buying a gallon of gas or a gallon of milk" do. Only with more dysentery.

...I believe there’s wide agreement that Iraq still needs America’s commitment to the democratic project in the country. Perhaps this belief is more prevalent among ordinary people than it is among politicians, particularly those who aren’t sincerely interested in the idea of a unified state. Those politicians, while still more or less silent, view the American presence as a restraint to their ambitions in the long run.

Not only the people but also the politicians are silent. It's a wonder Fadhil's editors chose that headline -- oh wait, it's on Pajamas Media. Boy, they have a lively sense of humor.

Visits like [McCain's to Baghdad], with the absence of similar visits from Democrats, have two dimensions: first, they push the political process in Iraq in order to achieve stability there, which would help the Republicans in the elections. Second, it makes Iraqi politicians and the public understand that a change in the administration does not necessarily mean abandoning Iraq and the immediate withdrawal of troops from the country. The Iraqi government has to work on these basics instead of standing by idly and wasting precious time.

Here's how the Iraqi politicians have been wasting precious time:

Iraq's Parliament holds an emergency meeting to discuss how to end violence in Basra and Baghdad. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has imposed a three-day curfew in Baghdad, where insurgents have attacked the Green Zone. U.S. diplomats have been ordered to take cover.

I don't know how Fadhil's story failed to include an anecdote about children giving flowers to U.S. servicemen. Maybe it was a lapse on the part of Pajamas Media's editors. Assuming, perhaps unfairly, that they have any.

UPDATE. In comments, R. Porrofatto explains Pajamas Media policy: "At PJM, they're all editors, i.e., they've privatized the profits and socialized the ineptitude."

PICADOR. At the Wall Street Journal, Daniel Henninger condemns "the blog-driven media Scream" (aided and abetted by "YouTube, the galaxy-sized video archive") that has caused nervous campaigns to fire operatives whose partisan gibes attract too much unfavorable attention. He worries this has made our political discourse "artificially civil."

Whom is Henninger shitting? In just the past few weeks we've had imputations of racism both for and against Jeremiah Wright's most famous parishoner, and endless variations on "bitch" aimed at Hillary Clinton. Even the relatively invisible John McCain has been accused of senility by Brit Hume. These people are not officially connected with any campaign staffs, but neither was James Callender. If there's a problem with the current election season, civility, artificial or otherwise, ain't it.

The main change would seem to be, in Henninger's reading, that some highly-placed people have lost their jobs over gaffes Henninger thinks would have earned a mere "trip to the woodshed" in the Arcadian past. But why would the defenestration of Geraldine Ferraro and Sam Power trouble him?

Henninger has previously decried the pernicious effects of YouTube, though in that case he was mainly concerned that the viral video vendor was making Republicans George Allen, Conrad Burns, and Rick Santorum look bad. Now he affects some sympathy for Democratic campaigners who are also caught in the great maw of citizen journalism. Knowing Henninger's history, we may be forgiven for wondering if this is a tactical ploy.

Henninger works for the Journal's editorial department, which practices a slightly different kind of advocacy than that practiced by bloggers and video guerrillas. True, they sometimes go in for small-bore character assassination; indeed, they might be considered the forefathers of the method now favored by top political bloggers. But in the main they prefer big-picture essays -- ponderous examinations of (to use Henninger's own contributions as examples) the death of diversity, the impossibility of empathy, the necessity of religious myths, etc. Their approach is not so often specific as miasmic; while they sometimes endorse candidates and policies, they are much more comfortable promoting a world-view that makes their opponents look morally confused, devoid of "guardrails," and philosophically unfit to run the country.

In short, they are culture warriors -- or, more properly, culture picadors, who weaken their prey with many cuts so that the matador of any given electoral season may more safely apply the coup de grace. Theirs is an unglamorous but vital role; they may not get glory, but they make glory possible. And they face limited danger in the arena. Among our pundit class there has always been one thing bigger than politics, and that's job security.

From their perspective, then, there may be something unnerving about the example of other supporting players who have lately taken a sword between the shoulder-blades. Henninger may have noticed that in our new media age, even some journalists have been known to take a fall. The threat remains distant, but why take chances? If Paris was worth a Mass, surely a Journal column is worth the odd profession of interest in civility, however far-fetched.

MEANINGLESS POLL GIVES PERFESSER CHANCE TO PUBLICIZE YET ANOTHER GIBBERING-LUNATIC BLOGGER, MAKING HIMSELF LOOK REASONABLE. I don't really need to say anything else, do I? Maybe I should write them all this way.

SHORTER JAMES LILEKS: Flowers disturb me. You goddamn hippies probably LOVE flowers, because you're divorced from my nobler, purer reality. As I said, I love flowers, but only because they are inherently beautiful, not for reasons. Flowers just are. Like skyscrapers! Hippies don't like those either, because they don't have the guts to oppose capitalism. And another... whew, I thought they'd never leave.

WHOOPS! BACK TO THE SLAUGHTERING BOARD! Five years ago the Fourth Estate gave all its respectful attention to people who thought the Iraq War was a great idea, and none to those who thought it a mistake. Now, the mainstream media are willing to consider that the war wasn't the no-brainer they'd assumed it was, but still won't listen to any but the same idiots who bamboozled them in the first place.

As Tbogg has pointed out, Megan McArdle has previously defended her own Iraq wrongness on the grounds that her heart and methodology were in the right place and her opponents are mean, and darned if she isn't doing it again. Give her credit, though: in her follow-up, she has actually found a way to make her argument simultaneously more abstract and more viscerally offensive:

My discussion of failure in the context of the Iraq discussion is part of my broader beliefs about innovation...

To succeed quickly, he said, what you want to do is fail. A lot. Failing eliminates wrong answers faster than any possible analysis. I was reminded of the famous Thomas Edison quote: asked how it felt to have failed to invent an electric lightbulb, Edison said "I haven't failed! I've discovered 10,000 filaments that don't work."

By this point McArdle has segued to the economy, but those of us who can remember two whole paragraphs back are thinking: did she just defend the death of 4,000+ Americans and countless Iraqis on a "try try again" basis?

Why, yes she did, and I'm sure she doesn't even know what's wrong with that, except that certain mean people may insist on making a big deal of it.

I've changed my mind about the First Amendment. I want to ban Ayn Rand. Let's not lose another generation. Our dorks should be fiddling with computers, not applying their hideously deformed ethics to matters of life and death.

CLAWING THEIR WAYS THROUGH THE BOTTOM OF THE BARREL. Oh Jesus. Some guy at Pajamas Media:

“I charge the the white man.” This incendiary speech, opening the film Malcolm X and culminating with a burning American flag resolving into the letter, encapsulates the anger and fear surrounding Barack Obama’s association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright...

Obama is unlikely to become president unless he can explain Malcolm X ...

I predicted they'd get on Obama for Richard Pryor, but this is almost as ridiculous. So I'll up the ante, and predict that they will next demand Obama answer for Fat Albert, whose self-destructive abuse of carbohydrates for years set a negative example that has done so much to hold black people down.

I can see it now: The Ole Perfesser quotes a citizen journalist who says Obama was observed laughing at a Fat Albert episode. (It'll turn out that it was "Roots," and he was weeping, but there'll be no retraction.) Perfesser notes that Obama himself is quite thin; isn't this, he asks, some sort of a double standard? Then he'll quote some guy who calls Obama an "obesity pimp."

Everyone will go "heh" except the conservative spokesman of the moment, who will gleefully shake the bars of his cage and rasp, "Ah kin calls 'em niggers agin?"

Well, as I also said before, I was only in this thing for the riots anyway.

CHANGING SHIFTS. I'm trying to correct my sleep habits, and so can no longer stay up till 3 am waiting for James Lileks to walk the halls in a nightshirt and stocking-cap, holding his arms out in front of him and wailing "Buy War Bonds." So I checked out that buzz.mn thing he does in the daytime.

Here he reports that the film Leatherheads was not made in Minnesota because the state didn't offer the filmmakers a big enough tax break. Lileks seems on the verge of complaining about corporate welfare before recovering himself and targeting instead the Hollyweird non-interlopers: "Why them, and not every other company that wants to set up shop here? Is it just because they’re pretty?" (Answer: What other company that wants to set up shop there? Wastelands R Us?)

Next post, still-steaming Lileks makes fun of Renee Zellweger's face. Fortunately there are hippies onto whom he can offload his rage: Lileks commences a series of photo-posts about some 1970 protest, within which he promises readers will find "a lovely irony." And what is the irony? That hippies smell! Haw haw! And that the stupid hippies were protesting one chain restaurant but not another. Moral: complaining is useless, unless you can get a newspaper to pay you a hundred thousand dollars a year for it. Then it's awesome.

Daylight doesn't do much for him or me. Back into the shadows!

UPDATE. Oh, wait; I can read Bleats when I wake up! Here we go: "I’ll gladly hand over six Carnegie libraries for three 60s coffee shops." I'm going back to bed.

ALSO: 78% OF AMERICANS PREFER CHAW TO DIP. Rod Dreher says McCain will win the election. How does he know? You may be amazed to hear he did not receive the information directly from Jesus. Actually maybe he did: he's kind of cagey about the source, but he does say his prediction is "based in part on various in-person and e-mail conversations I've had over the long weekend":

...there are quite a few whites who are pleased to see Obama, the great liberal hope, suffering because of the same rules of public discussion of race that liberals have used to punish conservatives who deviate from them. I've been hearing a strong "sauce for the gander" sentiment from whites who believe Obama is asking to be held to a lesser standard than whites. These feelings run very deep.

Quite a few, eh? And they're all within Dreher's circle of communicants. Using a similar polling method, I can safely tell you that Rose McGowan will be the next President (of my dick) and that the new breed of crystal meth is more powerful than the old but "Tina" is a stupid name for a drug even if gay people thought it up.

I can imagine how Dreher's fact-gathering was conducted:

[Music]
DREHER: Have you heard about Reverend Jeremiah Wright?
ZEBULON, a rustic: Whuh?
DREHER: You know, the preacher at Obama's church.
ZEBULON: Obama whuh?
DREHER: Obama. Barack Obama, that black fella who's running for President?
ZEBULON: Whuhhuh nigger Preznit whuh? (laughs, mimes tying a noose)
DREHER: (takes notes) Now, see, when I lived in Cobble Hill, folks were too politically correct to tell me that. Did I ever tell you about the time they gave my job to a minority?
ZEBULON: Groot.

He still could be right about McCain, of course, because, as Dreher often reminds his readers, Jesus hates us.

PS If you feel you haven't gotten your money's worth from Dreher, go back one post and hear him accuse the makers of Horton Hears a Who of prejudice against homeschoolers. I swear to fucking God.

UPDATE. Fixd mor speling errers.

AHA! At RedState, Pejman Yousefzadeh is displeased that his former Constitutional Law professor, Doug Kmiec, has endorsed Barack Obama. Yousefzadeh has a secret weapon with which he hopes to sink Kmiec's credibility with his fellow conservatives. Kmiec, it seems, had previously endorsed...

(The heart palpitates. Jesse Jackson? Huey Newton? Shirley Chisholm?)

...Harriet Miers.

A former Reagan and Bush I AAG who went to the mat for an unpopular Bush II Supreme Court nominee now supports Obama. This presents an opening! Previously Yousefzadeh counseled, "the best way for McCain to win it is with the same devil-may-care, nothing-left-to-lose attitude that has helped him succeed in ways that pundits and reporters did not think possible as little as nine or ten months ago." So McCain should now present Kmiec's advocacy of Miers as one of George W. Bush's many stupidities that would be avoided by a McCain Administration.

I have already suggested a similar approach, but despaired of the Republicans availing it. I see now that they are warmer toward such a strategy than once they were. Shall we live in hope? All men, I hope, live so.

UPDATE. Fixd speling misteaks.

ANNALS OF LIBERTARIANISM PART 56,440. SLA radical Sara Jane Olson was paroled, then taken back to prison after five days because the board discovered a "clerical error."

Whatever you think of Olson, this sort of take-back makes our criminal justice system look worse than it already did, at least from what we might laughingly call a libertarian perspective.

Surely our friends at Reason are all over this? Let's check:

Click below to check out reason.tv's three-minutes-and-change take on last week's anti-war protests. More hippies than Woodstock! More questions about health care than the first two years of the Bill Clinton admin!

Oh yeah, anti-war protesters are dumb. Sigh. We ought to devise a political orientation based on maximum freedom under Constitutional law. Any ideas as to what we should call it?

UPDATE. The Powerline/Ole Perfesser take on the Olson case: "This story is almost enough to give you warm feelings about bureaucratic incompetence." But: "A vote for Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton is a vote to put these people in charge of your health care." Again, do you folks have a new name? Because "libertarian" really doesn't mean shit.

STILL ANOTHER NEW LOW. Obamanation accelerates with a wingnut calling black people niggers. No, he's not being ironic; it's not part of a script in which he imagines someone else using the slur. He's using it like they did in the old days, and still do in some dark warrens, with no fancy-pants intellectual pretensions -- though he does offer plenty of excuses, which we may take as a sign of progress.

P.S. Please note that I have been scrupulous about the link, so this post affords an even flimsier pretext than usual for attacking Obama through third parties. Not that this will stop those so minded.

PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE PERFESSERISM OF THE WEEK:

FLEMMING ROSE RESPONDS to bin Laden's latest threat. “What kind of civilization are we… if we refrain from mocking and ridiculing bin Laden and his followers?”

A pretty sorry one. Which, I fear, would suit some people fine.

Experience suggests that by "some people" the Perfesser means liberals, not because there's any proof that liberals support Muslim extremism at the expense of free speech, but because everything bad is liberal and vice versa. Any other ideas? (Besides that he's an asshole, I mean.)

IT GNAWS ME! IT GNAWS ME! Ann Althouse's tribute to the late Paul Scofield:

Here's the lawyer's favorite scene from "A Man for All Seasons"...

ADDED: Actually, I've never seen "A Man for All Seasons." I was around in 1966 and went to a few movies in those days, but that wasn't one. It might have interested me back then. It must have played around campus in the years went I was in college (1969-1973). In those years, we went to see every movie we had any interest in, because we never knew when we'd get another chance and assumed it would only be on TV with commercials messing it up. But "A Man for All Seasons" was the exactly kind of movie we shunned and scoffed at then.

The quote in the post title is from "Egotism, or: The Bosom Serpent" by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Now if you'll excuse me, I am going to drink this bottle of whatever this is in front of me.

UPDATE: Apparently that really is her in comments. She reframes the debate, gets all Dwight Macdonald, then runs back home and calls me nerdy. Whoo! Is it hot in here or is it just me?

UPDATE II. 100+ comments! And the thread has spooled so far away from where we started that I have no relevant response to offer. Since I cannot address it logically, I can only take it personally, and I'm flattered to blushes, as any gentleman would be.

YET ANOTHER NEW LOW. You know, it's amazing to admit that I "expect better" from National Review on -- well, anything. But Mark Hemingway's link to a bottom-feeding winger site -- by which Hemingway seeks to demonstrate that Keith Olbermann's girlfriend is a "hypocrite" because ZOMG HERE ARE PICTURES OF HER DANCIN LIKE A SLUT -- seemed to me at first like something even they wouldn't do.

After a few moments' thought, though, I realized: what's to stop them? Buckley's dead -- not that they paid much attention to him anyway -- and Kathryn J. Lopez, the publication's putative online editor, does not to any observable degree provide oversight (aside from policing Star Trek references). There's no indication that NRO actually has standards -- just a general instinct as to what they can and can't get away with. And as they seem to be getting some traction, or at least a hard-on, from the whole white-people-rise-up-against-black-racism thing, it's no shock that they would be feeling a little expansive right now.

By the election, it'll be like Ace O. Spades without the elfin wit, or maybe this without the dissents.