SOUTH CENTRAL PUT HIS SOUL IN THE DEEP FREEZE/SHE GAVE HIM HER KEYS. Forgot to mention that I saw Passing Strange just before it closed on Broadway. I understand that Spike Lee is preparing a film version, which pleases me, because the show demands far more attention than it got.

Some good friends of mine have been raving to me about Stew's songwriting for years. I never got around to seeing him before I saw this show, which he narrated and wrote with his collaborator, Heidi Rodewald. Stew's a large, ovoid black man who has clearly learned patience from being a major talent in a market ill-equipped to reward anyone like him for it. His stolid, ironical manner communicates this, as does his play. This is especially surprising because Passing Strange is frankly autobiographical and even more frankly about the burdens of artistry, like many awful plays, movies, novels, albums etc by artsy people before him, memories of which even now cause my sphincter to clench. But Stew's story, like The Sorrow of Young Werther and Withnail and I and "I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight" and The Ginger Man and a precious few others, muscles over the hump of narcissism into revelation.

The through-line is simple and time-honored: a callow youth, full of the desire to make good, forsakes his family and goes on a journey. Young Stew -- in the play, The Young Man -- is a moody black kid in suburban Los Angeles, endlessly annoyed by his bourgie Mom's insistence that he go to church and get with the program. Tempted by a cute chorister, he joins the local church music program, and the music director's tales of Jimmy Baldwin and Josephine Baker and the treasures awaiting the young, gifted, and black in Europe convince the Young Man to break out and claim for himself.

This is a fine start, elevated by the director's heartbreaking revelation that he himself has been denied the pleasures of European exile by his "slavery" to the church. It's a slavery that, the play suggests, is really his own cowardice, and it sets a tone for The Young Man's journey: wherever he goes, he takes his internal shackles with him.

The free-and-easy culture of Amsterdam gives The Young Man's soul some much-needed air, and his libido a workout, but he only learns too late the cost of free love: once he crosses certain emotional frontiers, even in an open city, he can't go back. In Berlin his mind is humorously but genuinely stimulated by performance-art culture -- when the hardcore Berliners intimidate him, he defensively intimidates them back with "South Central L.A." bullshit, aggressively confronting them with complicated soul-shakes. And when he chants in Germanic performance, "My pain fucked my ego and I called the bastard art," it's joke but it's also a window into his state of mind. When his Berlin girlfriend calls him on his poses, he can't give them up -- not just because he's ashamed to admit them, but also because they're part of the self that he created to get himself this far in a frighteningly unfamiliar word.

The Narrator is onstage throughout, watching both his young Self and the characters he encounters. In the Broadway production, Stew's performance mode was mildly engaged but mostly removed. I couldn't tell at first whether that was because Stew isn't really an actor -- Oscar Levant and Dexter Gordon were also impenetrable in similar circumstances -- or because the style called for the Narrator to bear witness stoically and leave the feeling to us. I began to lean toward the latter interpretation when it became clear that The Young Man's mother was dying, and that he would not make it home before she went. When Stew explained, blandly, that The Young Man "could not accept love without understanding," and his dying mother suddenly turned from The Young Man and cried directly to Stew, "How do you feel about it now?" I burst into tears. Was it because I had played Berlin and Amsterdam, too, and left behind a mother who never understood? Or was it because I was feeling what anyone with a heart would feel -- that when you dare to reach beyond expectations you must also expect to leave a trail of hurt? Busted up as I was, Stew didn't flinch, and I think it was better that he didn't. Nabokov told his Cornell students, when he read aloud to them the death of Jo from Bleak House, "This is a lesson in style, not in participative emotion." But he must have known some of them would weep, even as they took the lesson.

Stew was very much front and center at the end, tying up the loose ends. I'm not sure how successful he was at it. Certainly he didn't possess the certainty with which the Chimney Man redeemed Jelly Roll Morton at the end of Jelly's Last Jam. But Stew's story was less mythic than specific, and to the extent that it clicked -- not as a Broadway hit; it only lasted five months -- it was mostly in its resonance for any auditor that knew what it was to break through a barrier and still feel he had left something behind. One late line collapsed the house: "You know it's weird when you wake up one morning and realize that your entire adult life was based on the decision of a teenager." I think that line is practically Shakespearean, and reflects what's wonderful in the play: the deep understanding that we can't know what we've done, or who we've become, until it's way too late to do anything about it.

And oh, yeah, the production was brilliant, with good use of the stage and gestural Paul Sills acting. And the songs are beautiful. If you didn't like Rent, don't worry, neither did I, and this is much, much better. That Stew has a future, as of course he always had.

GAWD, THE CLUB IS FULL OF POSERS TONIGHT. Pressing the back of her hand to her forehead, fluttering her eyelids wearily, and striking a despondent pose, National Review scold-in-residence Lisa Schiffren denounces "The Media's Anti-Substance Bias" as regards our current Presidential campaign. "If the standard [for success] is 'sizzle,' or sex appeal," says Schiffren, "then any rational, substantive argument is doomed to lose..." She decries the "dog and pony shows" that "dazzle our media," and compares the situation to "American Idol." The voters are also to blame: they don't dig McCain's "irony" like Schiffren does, and his "straight-forward, informational presentation only works with people who want real information. (Sigh.)"

Of course, it is the popularity of that cursed blackamoor Obama that has Schiffren talking this way. She was much, much more into sizzle, dogs, and ponies during the late, lamented heyday of Fred Thompson, when she wrote:

The former Senator’s most salient attribute is his persona. He has a large, comforting, commanding presence that Hollywood directors have seen fit to cast as an admiral, the director of the CIA, and even the President. His slow drawl, big eyes, and wrinkles make him the very image of the respected Southern lawyer. He is an excellent communicator, sympathetic, easy to watch, and never grating...

Neither did Hollywood Fred's extremely thin qualifications ("Thompson frequently fills in for ABC radio host Paul Harvey, and gives short 'position paper' talks on issues") bother Schiffren, so long as he kept working his presentational skills ("He is diplomatic, uses language better than any of the others, and has that wonderful deep voice... he could get away with attacking the fragile Hillary or the sainted Obama better than any of the others...").

Now that the Democratic candidate is a media phenom and his opponent a puffy dotard, Schiffren is all Dogme 95, disgusted by cheap appeals to emotion. Let us have substance, she demands! Presumably, when the press starts giving more coverage to McCain's multiple senior moments in discussion thereof, she'll wonder whatever happened to the good old days when all anyone ever asked of a President was that he'd been tortured by the Viet Cong.

UPDATE. In the course of her hilarious advice to der Alte ("A speech coach should be on the campaign plane... thoughtful, specifically empathetic and directed approach might also work with those mid-western blue collar voters who flocked to Hillary..."), Schiffren actually says, "as E.M. Forster said, memorably, 'Only connect.'" I refuse to believe that anyone could be this much of a fraud out of a mere desire to deceive. Schiffren is clearly trying to impress her peers, and attain super-villain status among them. I mean, that's the only explanation I can think of -- they can't be paying her for this shit.

BREAKING THE SANE BARRIER. National Review "editor" Kathryn J. Lopez has been pretty crazy lately, but I think she's officially outdone herself:

I have MSNBC on and I'm not listening to Barack Obama's Jordan press conference. Which is the point of this post.

I'm not proud, but the truth is, he is so not-impressive off-script that you easily forget that this is SOMETHING BIG you're watching. He's umming and throat-clearing and looking and sounding out of his league. Which is what he is, of course. But we don't always see the reality for what it is, because he can deliver a good speech and work a crowd. I may not be listening, but I'm appreciating the clarifying moment.

I'm used to hearing them say that Obama's not a good speaker, but Lopez's suggestion that we are distracted from the reality of Obama's bad speech-making by Obama's good speechmaking -- to which Lopez is immune because she's not paying attention -- is, I think, an artful paraphrase of the riddle that made the robot blow up in "I, Mudd."

As for K-Lo's conclusion:

McCain may not rally a trial, but there's there there that could plausible be commander-in-chief of a nation at war (really, we are, remember? It's not just over there.)

I'm pretty sure this is a paraphrase, too, but I haven't read enough Guillaume Apollinaire to be sure.

UPDATE. Fixed bad link.

AN END TO TOKENISM. The Ole Perfesser and Co. say the New York Times is liberal, dying, will be sorry come November etc.

Let's get the decks cleared once and for all: have the Times stop sending Zev Chafets to do magazine cover stories on Rush Limbaugh and Mike Huckabee; fire David Brooks and William Kristol; and stop giving op-eds to Max Boot, Ross Douthat, James Dobson, Edward Luttwak, Fred Kagan, Paul Bremer, Tunku Varadarajan, Doug Feith, Bruce Barlett, Ann Althouse, The Ole Perfesser, et alia.

In return, the Wall Street Journal can lose Thomas Frank.

If that doesn't seem like a fair trade to you, please be informed that fairness has nothing to do with it.

UPDATE. In a hyperventilation worthy of L. Kudlow in his frosted nose era, The Anchoress says when the Times politely suggested that John McCain's op-ed writers try another draft, they denied McCain's right to "free speech." Requiring a periodical to publish something it doesn't want to publish sounds more like the Canadian way than ours, but if The Anchoress really believes this, I have a couple thousand words on what a dunce she is that, I'm sure she'll agree, the First Amendment requires she post at her blog.

UPDATE II. Tbogg points out the bitter tears of Roger L. Simon. Apparently the Times published a few of Simon's items once upon a time. Then -- without warning -- they rejected one! Simon's conclusion: "The Times is no more 'fair and balanced' than Fox News... Bias is as American as apple pie."

One little reversal, and the whole (media) world is against them. What keeps them from ever growing up, do you suppose? My guess is that wingnuts give off a kind of reverse ethylene, and when they become clustered (as in thinkthanks, National Review cruises, etc), the concentration inhibits ripening.

UPDATE III. Fixed gas. Thanks, Marc!

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP. This one's about the New Yorker cover that flipped people out last week. I'm really doing this stuff for future generations, who without documentary evidence might be tempted to disbelieve the stories old men will tell them about the Dark Times. But maybe it's as hard to believe and readable right now, too.

YOUR OWN LYIN' EYES, AND OTHERS'. The longer Americans believe their country's going to shit, the more conservatives insist it's all in their minds. Shortly after concurring with Phil Gramm that his fellow-countrymen are a bunch of whiners, the Ole Perfesser and likeminded operatives leap on a Rassmussen poll that shows half of Americans believing that the press paints a bleak picture of the economy and a rosy picture of Barack Obama.

Astonishingly, the same poll shows that "Only 34% of Americans believe the United States has the world’s best economy." Since it has been scientifically proven that evil reporters have been playing Jedi mind-tricks on us, shouldn't citizens be snorting up fat lines of irrational exuberance and launching into Larry-Kudlow-style "America is back" monologues?

The force of habit, not to say brainwashing, is powerful, so if the Republicans pull these gimp-strings hard enough, they'll win some votes even if Bush goes door-to-door molesting children and the National Debt gets so high we have to sell Hawaii to Saudi billionaires to make the vig. But there's a big difference between rounding up a few weak-minded stragglers and the mass psychosis to which these people are clearly accustomed, and for which they are clearly nostalgic.

Could this be the year in which Mencken's Law is broken, and somebody goes broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people?

THE ANCHORESS ADVISES ON COMEDY. No, really. Under the ridiculous pseudonym she uses when she's not pretending to live in a hutch, Thee Anch tells us how the Obama New Yorker cover could have been amended for maximum godly yucks:

In fairness, the reason some thought the cartoon would be misconstrued was that it was unfinished satire. The artist, Barry Blitt, simply did not go far enough; he should have included a "Honk if you love jihad" bumper sticker on the back of Obama's caftan, had Fidel Castro sitting nearby, and displayed a thermostat set to either "very cold in winter" or "sweaty in summer."

This is clearly mean to set, as David Frum once claimed to have witnessed when a Mark Steyn column was mysteriously disseminated throughout an airplane he was in, "the laughs exploding from the seat in front of me like artillery shells out of a howitzer" (which tells you everything you need to know about how conservatives experience humor). I am reminded of Groucho's comments (as rendered in Joe Adamson's bio) after the Marx Brothers screened roughs of one of their films. "Will they laugh?" asked Groucho. "Laugh? Look, they'll piss," said Chico. "I know," said Groucho, "but will they laugh?" Maybe The Anchoress should warm up with a few submissions to Reader's Digest.

Nothing stokes the hilarity like analysis, so The Anchoress takes it to the next level:

Satire is meant to be broad but -- for whatever reason, perhaps precisely because we cannot gauge Obama’s sense of humor [??? - ed.] -- the artist pulled his punch. In so doing, he ended up confusing and infuriating the Left and amusing the Right, who not only got the insult but found it particularly funny that, in their tortured explanations, the Left gave more and more exposure to those extreme ideas. Oh, irony!

Yeah, Castro, a bumper sticker, and a thermostat would have turned that around like a priest, a rabbi, and a minister. But seriously, folks: The Anchoress pleads for more laffs on Obama and, to raise the comedy stakes, sez she's doing it for Obama's own good:

Obama — if he is smart — will heed history and lighten up, before he falls from a glorious height and lands with a very cartoon-like thud. No one wants to watch him walk away with his head between his feet.

Except The Anchoress, whose blog has been an unrelenting hymn of hate toward Obama for months, and plenty of others like her. Obama has gotten off some good cracks -- like this one on Tyra Banks -- but lately he's had to focus on beating back all kinds of crazy shit about himself and his wife, promulgated by people like The Anchoress. That would harsh anyone's sense of humor. Now she's complaining that Obama doesn't make enough jokes. Truly the Lord works in mysterious ways.

But in case you've been taking her seriously, here's some material she's written for Obama:

If he truly believed that the satirical edge was missing -- and thus misleading -- he should have himself made the content plain with a genial laugh and a concurrence: "Wait," Obama could have said, "where's my fake birth certificate hanging on the wall? Why doesn't my wife have a Jackie Kennedy pillbox hat on her head? He left out my hammer and sickle!"

Can't you just hear the laughs exploding like howitzer shells? I just don't understand why Democrats don't take more seriously the advice offered to them by their mortal enemies.

RAISING THE LEVEL OF DISCOURSE. "I'm pretty sure this is photoshopped, but either way it says volumes about Obama's vapid sloganeering..." -- Mark Hemingway, The Corner.

I just drew a picture of McCain dropping a load in his pants. (puts thumbs under lapels) I await our worthy opponents' rejoinder.

SHORTER DAVID BROOKS. When Americans want change, they choose Republican leadership, which is why in the depths of the Great Depression they returned Herbert Hoover to power.

NATIONAL REVIEW: OBAMA IS A FAG. Former TV critic lists top 10 reasons why "Real Men Vote For McCain" which, in addition to being one of the very few NR articles to support McCain without evident embarrassment, portrays the Democratic candidate as anathema to the butch: "Obama supports higher taxes for a government-run nanny state that will coddle all Americans like babies," "Obama gets support from Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks, and every weenie in Hollywood," "Obama is married to a bitter, angry lawyer," etc.

In case some of the brethren have lost their decoder rings, Peter Kirsanow spells it out at The Corner: Obama "projects weakness," and not just "the vacillating, flip flopping weakness of your garden variety politician," but a "screaming, flashing, neon light on the forehead weakness." Not only is Obama a screamer, like all liberals; he's also a flasher. One wonders why Kirsanow didn't try to work "flaming" into the formulation. Maybe they do have editors at National Review after all.

Kirsanow also finds weakness in Obama's "attitude and demeanor." He doesn't really explain, though he does mention famous bachelor Adlai Stevenson, claim (without supporting examples) that "when Obama tries to talk tough it sounds either silly or plaintive," and make a jerking motion with his fist near his mouth while poking his cheek with his tongue.

"It may say something unflattering about human nature," says Kirsanow, "but everybody gets it." Indeed we do. The question is, what's the point publishing this in a wonky online magazine, when its intended audience barely knows how to read? Kirsanow would have had better luck reaching them by scrawling a seriously simplified version of his post on an outhouse door, printing it on a gimme cap, or painting it on Carl Edwards' Ford Fusion. (I would suggest they forward the top 10 to Larry The Cable Guy, but it's really not up to his standards.)

QUICK TAKES. Charles Krauthammer is mad that Obama will appear at the Brandenburg Gate. Reagan "earned the right to speak there because his relentless pressure had brought the Soviet empire to its knees," says Krauthammer; Kennedy "was representing a country that was prepared to go to the brink of nuclear war to defend West Berlin." What has that punk Obama done? I am in some sympathy -- I felt the same way when The Knack played Carnegie Hall, and when people were comparing George W. Bush to Winston Churchill.

But in my old age I have accepted the realities of modern marketing, and things being what they are I'm glad this year's Democratic candidate has some understanding of them too. The Republicans certainly have acknowledged them. Their new thing is to create videos critical of Michelle Obama which they hope will go viral, as the kids say, and contribute to their big Scary Negro campaign. When their festival opens in Minneapolis, they will have plenty of dry ice, strobe lights, and jungle drums in place to amplify their message.

So I can't blame Obama for his audacious photo, film, and possible music video op. You can't beat Big Bullshit with flexi-discs.

THE LAST REFUGE OF A WINGNUT. Rod Dreher points to a French academic's book which contradicts long-accepted ideas about the Islamic role in spreading Greek thought in the West. Edward Said et alia said it was big; the new guy says it barely existed. As usual when someone says something bad about Islam and not everyone in the universe applauds, Dreher yells thought police:

...many in the academic establishment have set out to ruin its author, Sylvain Gouguenheim, by tarring his as a racist and a tool of the right wing. Some medievalists have come to his aid, saying that it's a perfectly legitimate question and area of inquiry. But the politically correct academic police de la pensee are out for his head.

First, I checked Dreher's link, which is to Le Figaro and unhelpfully in French. Babelfish gave me a suspect but hilarious translation ("D' other researchers choose Libération to express their 'stupor' in a signed letter... The guards of the doxa leave their hinges"), which nonetheless shows the article to be highly prejudiced against the unhinged doxa guards -- that is, the petitioners against Gouguenheim.

But not everyone in Dreherland sides with the chief. One commenter points out another story about the controversy from the International Herald Tribune, which is in English and makes clear (as Dreher does not) that Gouguenheim has plenty of mainstream support. And several commenters point out that it's not thought-policing to point out that the guy's theory is full of shit.

Dreher updates:

Just to clarify, it's beside the point whether or not the historian Gouguenheim is correct in his theory. The point is, he should be able to raise the question, and to be able to be wrong in his theory, without being professionally ruined by the academic thought police.

Ruined? I notice his book is still selling. And, with the support of Le Figaro, Le Monde, and every Muslim-hater in the Western World, we expect Gouguenheim will become an international "contrarian" superstar, like Oriana Falacci or Camille Paglia. For people like that, the outcry from colleagues is the best possible advertising.

Dreher is a professional schismatic who owes his entire Crunchy Con following to the massive persecution complexes of like-minded vegetarian Jesus freaks who consider themselves the one true church of conservatism, as proven by the contempt in which all other conservatives hold them. That such a person would fail to recognize the selling power of apostasy is nearly unbelievable.

So unless he's faking -- never a longshot with this bunch -- the best explanation for Dreher's thickness is this: conservatives, even the fringier conservatives like him, have reached a point in their degeneracy where they must believe other people are trying to silence them. It doesn't matter that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, they are not being silenced at all, but merely called out on their bullshit -- to their fragile psyches, it's the same thing: an intolerable assault on their egos that, if not repelled, will result into the obliteration of their carefully-constructed personalities. So of course any opposition loud enough to reach their ears is Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini all rolled into one.

A pity that Dreher and Jonah Goldberg fell out; they have so much in common.

SEX MAD. I go away for a couple of days, and I find the folks at National Review have been talking about Cosmo and Barbies. Even a short recess will make this stuff even more hallucinogenic. It's like I left what I thought was a mildly dysfunctional family and came back years later to realize they were really the House of Atreus.

So I'm having a little trouble wrapping my head around it, but I will say this about the Kathryn J. Lopez column, which seems to blame feminists for way-to-bring-out-the-animal-in-your-man articles. Between the old days and the new, not much about human nature has changed. People will take the main chance every time it is offered to them, absent morality. Though it's clear that Americans have fewer restrictions on them when it comes to sex and sexual expression, it's much less clear that they are any more or less moral than once they were. The kind of guy who thinks of a woman as "a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment" because she let him fuck her would have, a hundred years earlier, thought that way about her if she showed him a bit of ankle.

The new way gave us more chances to screw, and also new chances to screw up, and so many people have. That's what happens with everything pleasurable in America, it seems. And it's very interesting that in the country where citizens most strongly prize their personal freedom, so many of us are drunks, junkies, overeaters, and/or sex mad. It's one of the things I sorta like about the place.

Of course we have our Puritanical side as well. We see it still in smoking bans, drug wars, and other such nannyish pursuits. But it has generally been on the decline for a long time. Its zenith was in the days of the Volstead Act -- the legal prohibition of a previously widely-enjoyed right. Not so many people think that was a great idea anymore. And I'm sure the few that do think it was a good idea, and would like to bring it back, must feel as oppressed by the contents of the wine and beer aisle in the supermarket as Lopez feels by the smutty mags at the checkout.

Lopez faults feminism for its part in the promotion of birth control, because it led to Cosmopolitan and all these other sexed-up artifacts of our modern life, which she believes are harmful to women. Let's tally it up: once, women only had to worry about unwanted childbirth, frustration, shame, ostracism, and ruin; now they have to worry about ways to bring out the animal in their man. That's some trade. Anyone who wants a do-over is welcome to join a cult -- or, in Lopez' case, remain in one -- and have it themselves. As the wonderfully American expression goes, it's their life.

UPDATE. I should add: if Lopez is really looking to form an anti-sex coalition, why does she start with an appeal to feminists, who are probably not inclined to take her seriously, rather than with an appeal to her fellow wingnuts? In today's edition of Rupert Murdoch's New York Post we find this:

GOOD news, horny New Yorkers!

We're the No. 1 destination in the US for tourists from other countries, and you know what that means, right?

Fresh international meat!

Come to think of it, maybe it isn't just an unwillingness to talk to her own kind. Maybe Lopez senses that the Post's repulsive reduction is, in its way, just as anti-sex as she is. Maybe, being a conservative, she thinks that if sex is exploitative, it is thereby redeemed.

UH... From Wake Up America:

Jesse Jackson Shows Hypocrisy By Calling Blacks, Niggers

Uh....

The portion shown in the original video was where Jackson had said that Barack Obama was "talking down to black people". What wasn't shown was the remark made after that.

The full remark was, "Barack...he's talking down to black people...telling niggers how to behave"...

This brings back up a situation in 2006 when Michael Richard's, who played Kramer on the popular Seinfeld television comedy show...

Uh... uh...

Is it hypocritical for Jackson to have tried to get movies, books and the entertainment industry, as well as the general public, to ban the use of a word that he, himself, utilizes?

You really can't imagine that someone living in America doesn't understand the difference between a white guy saying it and a black guy saying it. Then you see Michelle Malkin and a whole bunch of others saying the same thing, and you realize there are only two possible explanations: 1.) They have never been around any black people; 2.) They do know the difference, but are fond of tendentious, circular logic puzzles -- e.g, "You say you're against prejudice, but that makes you prejudiced against people who are prejudiced," or "You say you're for human rights, but you didn't want to invade Iraq" -- that shield them from the mundane reality in which the rest of us live.

In this case Jackson's unfortunate promotion of a ridiculous hate-speech ordinance makes it easier for them, but no less transparent.

Just to prove my own hypocrisy, I'll say the correct explanation is 3.) They're full of shit.

APOLOGIES. BEEN BUSY. Will try to get back later today. Meantime there's a bunch of stuff here you might enjoy.

NEW VOICE POST UP. Odds & sods -- Phil Gramm, Bernie Mac, etc. What? Hell yeah, it's worth reading! You read this, didn't you?

BEYOND SATIRE. It's pretty depressing* that some liberals don't get that the New Yorker Obama cover is satire. That conservatives don't even know what satire is would also be depressing, were they not ever and always blind to even the simplest aesthetic concepts.

I mean, Jesus:

IF OBAMA LOSES, THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM WILL BE that it was because sleazy rightwingers portrayed him as a Muslim terrorist sympathizer.

When that happens, show 'em this New Yorker cover and remind 'em that The New Yorker is not generally regarded as a right-wing publication.

The Ole Perfesser then follows by sneering, "but it's satire!" as if satire were some ridiculously effete and rarefied concept which he couldn't possibly take seriously, like "conscience" or "humanity." That any piece of communication has value other than as propaganda probably doesn't even compute with him; his robot brain just perceives the images, goes "Beep beep, consistent with Obama TPoint 7A, promote to morons," and moves on.

Jonah Goldberg, as usual, is even worse:

Of course, if we ran the exact same art, the consensus from the liberal establishment could be summarized in words like "Swiftboating!" and, duh, "racist." It's a trite point, but nonetheless true that who says something often matters more than what is said — and, obviously, that satire is in the eye of the beholder.

Goldberg is very fond of categorical imperatives when it comes to nearly everything, yet he imagines satire to be "in the eye of the beholder," rather than the clinical term artists (and, indeed, anyone who graduated from a decent high school) know it to be.

It's understandable that anyone whose sense of humor misfires as often as Goldberg's would be motivated to confuse definitions relating to humor, in hopes that this may provide cover for him next time he really fucks up. What I wonder is: do his, and the Perfesser's, and all the other idiots' readers really think the same way? Do they also look at the New Yorker's frequent joke covers and, instead of laughing or scowling or any other human response, think, how can this be spun for my political candidate?
'Cause if they do, having to sell John McCain is the least of their problems.

*UPDATE. Sigh. Tom Tomorrow just tipped me to this comment from Drum's site, which reads in part, "Is your objective another Crystal Night, and trains of jews, gays, minorities, and other non-Aryans headed for the ovens?... This is not satire. It is race hate, religious hate, and political hate. It is an invitation to violence, lawbreaking, and cultural war." I'd like to think it's a plant, but alas, given what I've been hearing, it may be legit. Can't we let the conservatives be the crazy ones for a little while longer?

UPDATE II. Okay, this is more like it: minutes before defending the Obama cover, Megan McArdle humphs that August Pollak's lampoon of her proves that "the left has no sense of humor" -- at least, that's what her commenters and I think she's saying; it's one of her more mysterious, impenetrable constructions. Commenters, with all the philosophical heft libertarians traditionally bring to such topics, discuss the nature of humor ("Most humor relies on the propagation of general truths with a twist of absurdity thrown in") and Megan McArdle ("Megan knows that waiting for the iPhone and being a refugee are not the same experience"). Thank God someone's working to restore the balance of the universe!

THE REAL END OF COMPASSIONATE CONSERVATISM. If you're wondering what Phil Gramm was thinking with that "nation of whiners" crack, let me suggest that it may just be part of a new charm offensive from the right, at least if these bits from the weekend's New York Post are any indication.

"The baby boomers... have once again spoken. What they have said is, 'Waaaaaahhh,'" says Monica Hesse, who reads a Pew study showing boomers "worry that their income won't keep up with rising costs of living" and "that things don't look too good for their kids." They sound like most Americans of whatever age, but Hesse responds, "Oh, the drama! Oh, the anguish!" A separate study "found that boomers have never been happy," so there's no need to pay any attention to them now -- only Hesse does, and at column length, because "the rest of us are doomed to study them, analyze them, wave shiny objects around for them," though by what coercive mechanism she doesn't say. "BUCK UP ALREADY!" she shouts, or she may have to write another column about them, instead of one about "The Google Ogle Defense" ("'Orgy' might be a popular [Google] search term not because it's a popular practice, but because it's not. How do all those limbs fit together, anyway?"), or "Things that are 'awk-ward,' according to a group of University of Maryland students hanging out on the campus quad," or other topics of national importance. Trend reporting seems like an easy gig, even when the economy's in the toilet and some fossils are bitching about it.

Younger people get it -- at least the ones in Iraq, reports movie reviewer Kyle Smith, who pimps LiveLeak, "a destination spot for short war films that are awesome or disgusting, depending on your viewpoint." Smith's own viewpoint is clear: "LiveLeak is doing a much better job presenting the facts than, say, the latest foamy-mouthed drivel about corporate masters of war from the formerly popular actor John Cusack." The lead featured item at LikeLeak at this writing is "Man Shows Unique Ability To Put Hands Into Cauldron Of Hot Fat," but Smith seems to be talking about stuff like this:

...a clip of gunship attacks set to the metal song by Dope called "Die Mothe - - - - er Die." The video wasn't gruesome, though, since the enemy was well off in the distance and disappearing tidily under puffs of white smoke. One of the troops is overheard saying, "This was great. I need a cigarette. This was like sex." And a few more shocked grad students get some fuel for their eroticization-of-violence papers...

Actually it sounds like "Jackass," except instead of injuring themselves Johnny Knoxville and Wee Man kill other people from a distance. Smith believes "the primary message fired-up young men are likely to take from [these films] is that fighting for your country is a lot cooler than the mainstream media make it out to be. " One wonders why the Army hasn't dispatched teams of movie-makers to Iraq to do fan-film versions of Halloween and Saw, casting the natives as terrified teenagers, and release them with titles like Be Kind Re-enlist.

The gem of the bunch is of course by Umpty-Star General Ralph "Blood 'n' Guts" Peters. The General's been on a roll lately, and his opening here is a classic: "We all have irritants that make us want to reach for the revolver." Don't I know it! But what gets the General in a killin' mood is bumper stickers -- "One per car is OK, but anything more is public masturbation"; get it, maggot? -- people who call dissent patriotic, and Barack Obama. The dissent fans misquote Jefferson, who was of course against dissent, as shown by his accommodating attitude toward the Alien and Sedition Acts; as for the "last refuge of a scoundrel" thing, though the General admires Samuel Johnson ("I've got a huge two-volume replica edition [of Johnson's Dictionary] -- it's so heavy you could bench-press it"; real he-man writin'!), he reckons the Great Cham was just blowing smoke. "I'd rephrase the line," announces the General, "to read: 'Attacks on patriotism are the last refuge of the coward.'" Get some REMFs on it most ricky-tick, and then fetch the General a copy of the Constitution and a blue pencil!

But you know what really chafes the General around the chaps? Obama and that "Hope" bull-hockey. "Hope is the opposite of audacity," says the General. "It's passive, an excuse for inaction. Medicating ourselves with fuzzy hopes, instead of rolling up our sleeves and fixing things, has wasted countless lives and entire cultures..."

So, to sum up: Don't hope, don't complain, and enjoy your free war videos. It's the new conservative message! They must really be counting on those Diebold voting machines.

A LOATHSOME DUTY, PART 2. As conscience dictated in the case of Mark Steyn, I must offer my sympathies to Harry's Place, whose proprietors are apparently being sued by Mohamed Sawalha for their interpretation of a statement by him.

Not being a student of Arabic, I don't know that their interpretation is correct. But Harry's Place noted, however incredulously, the British Muslim Initiative's response to it. If they're wrong, they've certainly made it easy for anyone who can read the language to figure it out.

Harry's Place is a nest of racial obsessives -- sort of Little Green Footballs for people who can process complex sentences -- but the proper reaction to their interpretation would be a countervailing interpretation of one's own, not the hammer of the Law, the use of which in this case may lead disinterested viewers to suspect that the object of the suit is not to shine the light of truth, but to intimidate opponents. Maybe that's how they do things in Blighty, but not 'round here.

SAVINGS AND LOAN SCANDAL II -- THIS TIME IT'S PERSONAL! More good economic news! Another mortgage lender goes down -- and an Administration factotum blames the whistleblower:

The director of the Office of Thrift Supervision, John Reich, blamed IndyMac's failure on comments made in late June by Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.), who sent a letter to the regulator raising concerns about the bank's solvency. In the following 11 days, spooked depositors withdrew a total of $1.3 billion. Mr. Reich said Sen. Schumer gave the bank a "heart attack."

"Would the institution have failed without the deposit run?" Mr. Reich asked reporters. "We'll never know the answer to that question."

Mr. Schumer quickly fired back.

"If OTS had done its job as regulator and not let IndyMac's poor and loose lending practices continue, we wouldn't be where we are today," Sen. Schumer said. "Instead of pointing false fingers of blame, OTS should start doing its job to prevent future IndyMacs."

Speaking of factota, the usual suspects rush to support Reich's spin. If only Charles Keating or Herbert Hoover had such a blogosphere to work with! True, it's a hard sell, but, like anything else for Republicans these days, worth a try.

UPDATE. The Ole Perfesser seems to have caught the memo, but not the enthusiasm: "Problems with the bank aren't Schumer's fault, of course, but publicity-seeking is a well-known Schumer flaw, and subjects like this call for a degree of discretion that he seems not to have demonstrated." Maybe he was pulled off-message by Schumer's evident willingness to fight back. I'm not overly fond of my senior Senator, but it's nice to see him show a bit of spine. Maybe he and his colleagues should try it more often.

UPDATE II. An L.A. Times blog says the accusation against Schumer is "an important angle in the IndyMac failure that may get lost in ominous headlines tonight and tomorrow." I don't see how, with the Wall Street Journal giving it prominent play and the rightbloggers shopping it aggressively.

OFF LINE. Instaputz deftly sketches the progress of the Atlantic Monthly from Julia Ward Howe and Nathaniel Hawthorne to Megan McArdle reporting on her iPhone campout ("I imagine this is what it feels like to be a refugee"). Worse is yet to come, though, when the Apple Store people ask McArdle for her papers:

While I was buying the iPhone, they pulled me aside for a credit review. Since I have good credit, this was shocking--and humiliating. For a middle class American, telling your two friends in the store that the AT&T folks are having second thoughts about giving you credit feels a little like confessing that you're a criminal.

McArdle shows some sympathy toward some people with bad credit -- she's known journalists and folks just out of grad school, apparently, who have had such problems -- but she ends with this:

Of course there are irresponsible profligates who borrow money they've no intention of repaying...

The worst part is that the profligates are immune to the shame (or seem to be). It's the decent people, the ones who were overtaken by events, who cringe when the store clerks motion them aside.

This puts me in mind of characters from Nelson Algren, Charles Bukowski, and The Life of Oharu; also, of real people who passed in despair from caring anymore whether they were playing by rules that, experience seemed to show, never gave them a chance to succeed on even the simplest terms, and who stood in line not for iPhones but for food and shelter.

It may seem in bad taste to mention such people in a blogosphere largely devoted to middle-class problems. Still, it's worth considering that they exist, and in greater numbers than a romp through these precincts would suggest. If your frame of reference consists entirely of the relatively fortunate, then you may naturally consider all credit problems to be the result of wickedness or, at best, poor choices to which you owe no sympathy. From a libertarian perspective, certainly, there's no reason to feel any differently. Which is one good reason why, even in a country that loves liberty, libertarianism hasn't caught on, and won't until citizens outside the citadels of privilege wholly lose their acquaintance with misfortune. And though most of our public discourse since the Age of Reagan suggests otherwise, that is not even close to happening.

SAY ANYTHING. From last week, but new to me -- a pamphlet by Hugh Hewitt called "A Letter to a Young Obama Supporter." Three-quarters of it flatters the YOS:

Because of your passion for the planet and your interconnectedness, you have already profoundly shaped the debate over climate change. Now you are poised to perhaps decide the 2008 presidential election. You are very engaged in the election, and leaning — by a large majority it seems-towards Barack Obama. Yet as with so many other things, your generation is very open to new information and arguments, and not at all self-conscious or stubborn when it comes to changing your mind when new perspectives arrive. So it seems that many of you will be keeping an open mind until you actually check a box or pull a lever.

Yes, Hewitt is getting you cozy, nubile voter. He also says that he knows other "well-informed young people with great parents and promising futures" just like you, and is "thrilled that so many young activists are interested in the campaign"; it's "a sign of political renewal and a rebuke to the cynics." As for the YOS' intended, he is "unconnected to the bitter political struggles of the last 15 years," "a brilliant, almost hypnotic speaker" (Wait -- did his hand just touch your thigh?), whose "success is a testament to the country’s long, uphill struggle to deliver on the promise of the Declaration of Independence’s radical statement that all men are created equal."

Now the gear shift:

It is entirely possible to be proud of the country for nominating Senator Obama, even as you work hard to defeat him...

It starts to dawn on the youngster that this isn't the sort of encounter it had seemed just moments earlier.

Indeed, he lacks even the barest minimum of life experiences needed for the job. Though his intentions will be good, his failure in the Oval Office is a near certainty because he is simply not ready - cannot be ready-to be president, and the failures that will certainly follow his taking the oath of office could - indeed, almost certainly would– devastate the country.

Hewitt closes with some bold-face questions -- "Is Barack Obama anywhere near ready to be President of the United States in a time of war and economic uncertainty?... What if he’s not and he wins anyway?" -- which we may suppose represents his technique for closing the deal.

All in all, not a bad effort from the author of If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat: Crushing the Democrats in Every Election and Why Your Life Depends on It. But I still prefer the original.

HOW BULLSHIT WORKS, PART 56,309. Rightbloggers have discovered a Photoshop forgery of an Iranian missle launch, done by that Government to make itself look more powerful, presumably:



The bloggers' outrage, as it was when Adnan Hajj's altered war photos were exposed in 2006, is split between the offending parties and the shadowy "MSM," some outlets of which incuriously published the fake. Stop the ACLU is mad that the Main Stream Media isn't giving bloggers credit for discovering the fraud; Blackfive saw a more sinister MSM desire to "tailor anything to fit their narrative" -- in this case that America's enemies are 33% stronger than they really are.

Much less covered in those precincts (The American Thinker was a rare exception) was another bit of "fauxtography" from Fox News last week:

Below is a screenshot of Fox & Friends featuring the photo it used of Steinberg, with the original photo on its left. Comparing the two photos, it appears that the following changes have been made: Steinberg's teeth have been yellowed, his nose and chin widened, and his ears made to protrude further.

Fox News hadn't said much about this one before Bill O'Reilly recently retorted that the New York Times had once published some unflattering cartoons of him. Of course the doctored picture of Steinberg (and another, of Steven Reddicliffe) weren't drawn caricatures, but portraits offered as true representations of their subjects' appearance.

Experience, not to say common sense, teaches that we should always be alert to the possibility that war photojournalism may misrepresent the true situation, whatever its source. With some sources, though, you can't even trust the file photos.

NO CAPISCE. Crooks and Liars wonderfully covers the wingnut drive to make Obama's call for foreign language education into a class "snobbery" issue. Amazing how they all suffer the same delusions at once, and so near the event: you'd think they were on some sort of mailing list.

Since Crooks and Liars is more about analysis than pathology, it did not include in its roundup the ravings of The Anchoress on the subject. Like her colleagues, she tumbles from a gross mischaracterization ("telling Americans how much better people in other nations are!") to incoherent rage ("Americans did not need to speak French to save that nation... twice. Americans did not need to speak German to save the lives of our vanquished German enemy," etc). But she also adds this delightful bit:

I'm all for people, especially when they're young, learning other languages. I'm doing a Rosetta Stone in Italian right now, myself.

Obama endorses an activity in which The Anchoress is currently engaged, and The Anchoress rails at his effrontery in endorsing it. We should not be too surprised. Very few top rightwing bloggers actually live in trailers, wear clothes from the bins of the 99 cent store, and subsist on hamhocks and Crisco; in fact they are as likely as not to display elevated tastes, as seen in the Ole Perfesser's frequent consumer reports on high-end products. Nonetheless, they're quick to set aside their top-shelf cocktails, artisanal cheeses, and boutique coffees to declaim on the snobbery of Democrats. What a racket! It almost makes me wish I'd thought of it first and had no conscience.

UPDATE. In commments JohnEWilliams points out a beautiful related story from Rumproast: "Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild calls Obama an 'elitist' on CNN." Sometimes I think they do this kind of thing as an inside joke.

RUN THROUGH THE JUNGLE. At first I thought Infinity-Star General Ralph "Blood 'n' Guts" Peters was going somewhere else with the title "INTELLECTUALS LIE, THE POWERLESS DIE" -- you know, toward a Treason of the Clerks sort of thing, in which the evil intellectuals of a particular nation sell out their particular people to a particular evil. The giant face of Mugabe that appeared with the article in the New York Post suggested that the General had tracked down some Zimbabwean professors who had enabled the dictator by teaching Women's Studies or something.

Turns out the General is just on a rampage against writers in general. Doesn't matter whether it's Paul Begala or Christopher Hitchens -- in the General's view, no fancy-pants scribble-boy is worth the sweat off a rifleman's ass:

THE greatest lie intellectuals tell us is that "the pen is mightier than the sword." That's what cowards claim when they want to preen as heroes...

While intellectuals wrestled with compound sentences, Darfur degenerated from selective oppression to savage anarchy...

Regiments of professors and pundits have bemoaned China's gobbling of Tibet for half a century...

Only when better men acted did the surviving victims of one of the world's worst dictatorships glimpse freedom...

There was a good reason the assassins of 9/11 attacked the targets they did, rather than steering those planes into Columbia University or Harvard Yard: They knew that the potency of the intellectual is illusory, that it dissolves at the first shot...

Later, "No elegant phrase has ever stopped a bullet," "a sword will cut off the writer's head," etc.

Really, that's pretty much it. Politics doesn't enter into it; anyone not a soldier is an ineffectual, puking pussy. This represents a new and promising frontier for the General. As we have seen, he has in the past been content to attribute unmanliness to Democrats and liberals, as part of a propagandist's job-o-work. Now it looks as if he has gone freelance, and answers only to the law of the jungle. Before long he'll spend his columns explaining how easy it would be for him to kill us all with the end of a rolled-up newspaper or a bottlecap, and his signature line will be "The horror, the horror."

ALLLIES. Iraq says, we hate to be inhospitable, but get out. The U.S. says, fuck you; John McCain seconds.

The Charleston (S.C.) Post and Courier editorializes: "The growing confidence of the Iraqi leadership is a clear sign that progress is being made and an end is in sight." The Wall Street Journal appreciates Maliki's "confidence" and is charmed to see him "playing hardball" like a big boy, but eventually has to firmly remind him that the grownups are talking: "Despite Iraq's impressive security gains, Iran can still do plenty of mischief through its 'special group' surrogates," it says, and counsels (or maybe we should say "notifies Iraq of") "a significant long-term U.S. presence."

Ed Morrissey will grudgingly allow for timetables, so long as they are not the treasonous Democratic kind ("Democrats wanted timetables for withdrawal in order to surrender in Iraq"). If he wants a Republican timetable, I'd suggest this one.

HYSTERIC WATCH. Victor Davis Hanson:

At first I thought the standard Obama warnings about crowd fainting when he started speaking were just peculiar, as was the bit about oceans receding and the planet healing. Then I noticed he has plans to move his speechmaking at the convention to a large outdoor arena, to allow the 'people' the right to hear him en masse. Now he negotiates to address Berliners in Kennedy/Reagan style (but weren't they already presidents?) in front of the Brandenburg Gate? Next? No doubt the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.

At National Review, at the moment, you can see Obama compared to both Hitler and Jesus. Surely this must be some kind of first.

EMAIL DOWN due to some NetSol nonsense. Try me at royedroso074@gmail.com meanwhile.

THE PERSONAL IS THE POLITICAL. These days, when a conservative buffoon likes something, he will rush to tell you that the thing he likes is itself conservative -- even if it's something apparently non-political in nature, like a rock song, chase movie, TV show, or music video.

They don't limit this bizarre ideological narcissism to the popular arts, either. I've heard 'em say that their favorite wine varieties and football teams are conservative. But this one from a National Review correspondent may be my all-time favorite so far: it's about how men crying at It's a Wonderful Life is conservative.

The author's explanation for this breathtaking assertion does not convince, but I'm just surprised that he bothered to explain it at all. Soon they'll just start using "conservative" as a synonym for "good," e.g., "he makes a really conservative pot of chili," "I got a conservative deal on this muffler," "It's all conservative," etc. No one else will know what they're talking about, but so what? That's pretty much the case now.

HOW THE MIGHTY HAVE FALLEN. Obama suggests national service for the young. At National Review Jim Geraghty talks about the "Obama Youth," etc.

I'm wondering about the President using federal funding to coerce schools into requiring community service for middle and high school students. Community service is (often) a noble act, but Obama appears to be very close to echoing John Kerry's Orwellian call for mandatory volunteerism. Notice it's always those who are old who are calling for mandatory time and energy commitments of the young.

Later, Geraghty offers a veiled comparison of Obama to Hitler. This reminded me of something, so I went online and found an excerpt from William F. Buckley's Gratitude: Reflections on What We Owe to Our Country, in which the founder of National Review argues for something very similar, powered by incentives and "sanctions":

It is feared by many opponents of national service that the use of state power in whatever form, even in a voluntary program, is nevertheless an effort, even if half-hearted, in that direction: an effort to change the human personality, and for that reason to be resisted categorically... Milton Friedman, my hero, was quoted as finding in national service an "uncanny resemblance" to the Hitler Youth Corps.

This last occasions only the reply that by that token, all youth programs, including the Boy Scouts, can be likened in the sense that they have something in common, to the Hitler Youth program, plus the second comment, that because Hitler had an idea, it does not follow that that idea was bad. (Albert Speer is said to have reflected, soon before his death, that it was a "pity that Adolf Hitler disliked Picasso.")

...Some libertarians will never agree with the Founding Fathers that a responsibility of the polity is to encourage virtue directly, through such disciplines as service in the militia, reverence for religious values, and jury service -- the kind of thing Prime Minister Gladstone had in mind when he proposed "to establish a new franchise, which I should call -- till a better phrase be discovered -- the service franchise." Opponents of national service must establish, to make their case, that national service, unlike the state militia, or jury service, or military conscription in times of emergency, is distinctively hostile to a free society.

Funny, just a few weeks ago they were blubbering over the sainted Buckley. Now he's a liberal fascist.

I'm not keen on either Buckley's and Obama's proposals myself, but I'm less worried about them these days, thanks in large part to the influence of the Boy Who Cried Hitler. I suspect most normal people would react similarly.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP. Jesse Helms this time. The impulse to speak well of the dead is fine, but I was stuck by the brethren's defensiveness about Helms' civil rights record, especially in view of their late and much celebrated reassessment of Strom Thurmond and Trent Lott in 2002. We might just say that those were different times -- that is, Thurmond and Lott were after an election, and Helms is before one.

UPDATE. Fixd tiepo, thanx boney.

UGLY BEAUTY. Before attending Die Soldaten at the Armory Saturday night, I hadn't been to an opera in years. I usually plead budget, but I could always get rush or standing room tickets at the Met. Frankly, lacking much background in the form, I've chosen to cultivate a lazy indifference instead of a taste for it, to my discredit.

Die Soldaten got through to me, though, perhaps by brute force. For one thing, there's the 110-piece Bochumer Symphoniker blasting away at the obviously difficult 12-tone Zimmermann score. Then there's the grim story -- girl forsakes lover to make an advantageous marriage within the warrior caste; madness, rape, murder, desolation result -- with its class tensions and sexual panic starting at red alert and proceeding to full-on Sturm und Drang. And there's the Robert-Wilson-Meets-Pirates-of-the-Caribbean staging in the Armory's gigantic Drill Hall, with the actors spilling from an extra-wide stage down a 220-foot runway, along which the entire audience is sometimes slowly locomoted on railroad tracks.

It's all a bit much -- at one point the music is supposed to suggest thunder, and I was a little confused: hadn't the percussion-heavy score been thundering all along? And the everything's-awful modernism is pretty relentless: look, here's a ceramic bog -- I wonder how it looks on the side of the stage where the chorus is taking a piss! But the excess is mesmerizing, and often makes brilliant theatre: a rape scene in which assailant and victim are multiplied by supernumeraries who enact it in a savage ballet along the length of the runway; a bathhouse suggested by garishly-lighted holes; the slow march at the end of Marie's father into the distant floodlights, and of Marie the other way toward the frigid mountains of exile.

And all the singing and acting is great. If the music purposefully evokes ugliness, craft and commitment make it beautiful. In a scene featuring Marie, her sister, and the Baroness, their voices made me think of exotic birds trilling in a jungle above the roars and grunts of the other beasts. As Marie, Claudia Barainsky makes a physically specific progress from schoolgirl to climber to outcast; as her lover, Claudio Otelli nurtures his desperation into a sort of semi-catatonia that looks harmless to his intended victims and terrifying to us. And that band -- excuse me, orchestra -- is really tight.

Muscially I'm pretty unsophisticated, and an evening of serialist opera wouldn't normally be on my to-do list, but for me this production made great sense of the unaccustomed sounds. I don't know how much Die Soldaten educated me, or if I'll be better able to appeciate La Bohème or Schönberg or anything else because of it, but I'm certainly more inclined to pay attention.

UPDATE. A dissenting opinion from the Washington Post. "The vocal level was that of a respectable regional production" -- wicked burn! Clearly I have a ways to go before I know classical music well enough to be snobby about it; having fond memories of the days when I was that much of a n00b about everything, I will cherish every moment.

DEFINING FASCISM DOWN. Roger L. Simon reacts to the news that Obama's Convention acceptance speech may be moved to a larger venue:

I’m not going to indulge in the obvious comparisons. But I am disturbed by this development. 76,000 people blindly screaming “Yes, we can!” in a giant stadium is not an image I relish seeing in a free society.

First some semantic notes. "I'm not going to indulge in the obvious comparisons" is a lousy preamble to an indulgence in comparisons. If he's going to obfuscate his intentions like that, he should start with a phrase like "Far be it from me" or "I'm not one"; the extra verbiage promotes deniability and helps confuse readers. You'd think a professional writer would know this. Also, the assumption that whenever liberals raise their voices the result is a "scream" is much overused and perhaps losing effectiveness; "shriek" is a little fresher, at least, and better supports the imputation of effeminacy. ("Bellow," "holler," and "roar" are more suitable to the Nuremberg analogy, but perhaps more butch than Simon would like. Someone at the central office should send him a backgrounder on Ernst Röhm.)

As to content, I've pointed out before that these guys have started using fascism as a synonym for popularity, especially now that nobody likes them. This suggests that they don't expect anyone outside of a hardcore cadre to read their stuff. Especially with an election coming up, I wonder that they don't try harder to reach beyond their base.

Adding to the humor, Simon posted this on July 4, when normal people are least likely to imagine themselves shadowed by fascism's heel. I hope you're all enjoying the blessings of liberty this weekend, and preparing to make more of them.

START THE WEEKEND OFF RIGHT! Crunchy Rod Dreher:

The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, writing from the magazine's Aspen Ideas Festival, chaired a panel yesterday in which experts put the chances of a nuclear attack on US soil, probably on Washington or New York, in the next 10 years as fifty-fifty....

Do you ever think about it? I mean, really think about it? If Joe Cirincione et alia really do believe that chances are as high as 50 percent that terrorists will set off a suitcase nuke in DC or NYC, then why do they still live there?

Because it keeps us far away from pants-wetting little shits like you.

KEEPING IN TOUCH. Sometimes, if it's been a while since I've heard from them, I look up my old wingnuts. Whatever happened, I wondered this morning, to Kieran Michael Lalor? We first encountered this Iraq War vet, director of the Eternal Vigilance Society ("With the keyboard as our sword, Eternal Vigilance Society will work tirelessly to defeat those candidates..."), and yeller at protestors in November 2005, when he was complaining in the New York Post that Pace Law School was teaching him treason. We found this very funny, as Lalor had previously attended Pace Law School, complained in the Washington Times they were teaching him treason, gone off to war, then come back to Pace Law School to be taught more treason and to complain about it again.

Such wonderful memories. So I looked around and found that Lalor had not been letting the grass grow under his boots. He's been doing wingnut welfare make-work gigs, including contributions to The American Thinker, which holding tank for fledgling wingers we've noticed before. In March Lalor announced at the Thinker that "Democrat control must end for the sake of the nation's security," and that he had founded yet another group to that purpose: Iraq Vets for Congress. This coalition of Previously-Enlisted Congressmen and would-be PEC boldly stands for "Portraying our Troops Fairly and in a Positive Light," and "Advocating for Veterans and Their Families," though they understandably fail to mention Jim Webb's GI Bill.

And, surprise! Lalor's not just the founder, he's also a client. From an understandably elated Daily Kos:

Some great news. Local Republicans in NY's 19th District have now tapped wingnut Keiran Michael Lalor to take on John Hall in November, with the likelihood of a sweeping win by Hall...

I'll say. Any District that elected a former Orleans guitarist and anti-nuclear activist to Congress is not likely to dump him for a guy whose campaign strategy is to denounce Volkswagens, Susan Sarandon, Bonnie Raitt, and Pete Seeger and show off his thousand-mile stare. But who knows? I'll be watching the race with interest henceforth. And maybe later I'll go look up Melinda Ledden Sidak.

NOW THEY GOT WORRY. Barack Obama is black, his opposition is relentless, and McCain could easily win this election. Still, it's pleasing when the wingers panic. From National Review, ladies and gentlemen, here to do his rendition of "Stranded in the Jungle," please welcome Victor David JoHanson:

It is not hard to see why and how the middle classes, the poor, and the union members would like to see larger government programs and greater taxes on the wealthy, but why are so many in the upper-upper middle classes so vehemently pro-Obama?

Oboy, rightwing intramural class war! Let's go to the Trans-Lux and hiss Bill Gates!

After talking to and observing lots of Bay Area affluent and staunch Obama supporters, I think the key to reconciling the apparent paradoxes is done in the following ways...

I can well imagine VDJoH's journalistic approach: "talking to" = VDJoH asking, "Are you crazy? Can't you see that that man is a ni?" and receiving an unsatisfactory response; "observing" = glowering at the stylish jeans of rich hippies.

Many enjoying the good life worry that their own privilege in some sort of way comes at the expense of someone else, or they fret that their present lifestyle in ecological terms is hardly sustainable. That concern does not translate into much concrete action. SUVs (Mercedes rather than Yukons) are no rarer in Palo Alto than in Fresno, while such progressives are just as likely, or more so, to abandon the public schools...

How dare they share VDJoH's privileges while rejecting his politics? Yessir, there's no class war like Republican class war.

Somehow an Obama sticker, sign on the lawn, or a lapel button has become the equivalent of a crucifix around the neck of a prosperous 16th-century burgher: easy fides of inner good and a valuable totem in reconciling the apparent irreconcilable.

And it's even better when they get so mad that they diss Christianity, too.

NatRev has run out of room, so let's sneak over to VDJoH's dressing room for some of the good stuff:

I spent some time speaking in San Francisco recently. In crude and exaggerated terms, it reminds me of H.G. Wells Eloi and Morlocks... smartly dressed yuppies, wealthy gays... What is missing are school children, middle class couples with strollers, and any sense the city has a vibrant foundation of working-class, successful families of all races and backgrounds...

So no one picks up the garbage? But the city looks so nice. Maybe when the wealthy gays come home from the clubs, they sweep. In contrast, VDJoH's hometown has a lot of farms, owned by such as VDJoH, and a lot of Mexicans, so we can guess how they git-r-done.

All in all, I got a strange creepy feeling that whatever was going on, it was unsustainable –- sort of like an encapsulated Europe within an American city.

And these doomed, encapsulated Europeans are funding Obama! With such quasi-foreign influences in play, the citizens of Hansonland will have their work cut out for them, rejecting Obamamania in favor of a continued Bush boom. Assuming, of course, they see it the same way as he.

INTRO TO GOLDBERG. National Review lists Jonah Goldberg as an "editor," but he doesn't seem to know what people with that title normally do. This post is a fine example of his argumentative style: aggressively desultory, like a Tasmanian Devil with its head stuck in a pail.

The idea that "science won't allow" absolute categories between animals and humans is pretty silly in its plain meaning. And I don't think you should show it as much deference as you do.

Follow the links back and you'll find that the real issue is animal rights, and whether they intersect meaningfully with human rights. Students of Goldberg will understand why he's grabbing such a uselessly narrow handle on the point: this is his version of "What's this on your shirt? Psych," a goofy opening gambit meant to confuse the enemy. Luckily for Goldberg, on the internet there's no one to grab his finger and pull it back till he cries.

Science has all sorts of absolute categories distinguishing between animals and humans. Vertebrates vs. Invertebrates, reptiles vs. mammals, phylum, kingdom, and all of that stuff amount to absolute categories of one kind or another. What Sullivan is really getting at, it seems to me, is that there are some areas where there are more similarities between some animals and humans that are less absolute than many think. That sounds right to me...

Sensing that even National Review readers won't put up with much of this semantic horseshit, Goldberg generously concedes the point -- or as they might say in Chocoholics Anonymous, the point as he perceives it to be. In respect for your delicate sensibilities, I have omitted a Goldberg parenthesis suggesting the horrifying possibility that he will write another book. Onward:

The idea that these things are on a "continuum" isn't all that profound by my lights. Aristotle and that crowd would have bought into that, I would think. The question is, so what? I mean ice and fire are on the same continuum of temperature, but they are very different things.

To recap, (1.) things can be the same in some ways and different in others, and (2.) fart, burp.

But what about animal rights? Goldberg's getting there, but he has to talk it through. You know, kind of like a batter has to step out of the box, adjust his gloves, etc. Except in the big leagues, a batter don't usually wind up in the press box with his bat up his ass:

Anyway, I should say that while I really dislike the language and logic of animal rights, I have no problem with conferring special status on gorillas or lots of other animals. My guess is 95% of Americans agree with me on that.

Again, generous of him, but I don't know why we were bothering before with the disciplines of biology and philosophy when Goldberg could just refer these questions to the will of the imaginary people.

Come to think of it, why does he even need them, when he has himself?

It should be a serious crime to shoot, say, a bald eagle. It should be a routine chore to kill a rat. Killing a dolphin is different from shooting a deer. Whether or not science will "allow" us to draw these distinctions is largely irrelevant because we will rightly draw them anyway and, besides, science has little to tell us about such things.

Stupid science! It's always telling Goldberg things that aren't true, like that his love of his wife is nothing more than "mere electrochemical signals." So why should he let neuroscientists tell him anything when he can just dish out some morality? But then Goldberg experiences another spasm of generosity, and concedes a little somethin-somethin to the whitecoats:

But, again, it's worth pointing out that "science" records all sorts of important differences between dolphins and deer, eagles and rats. Dolphins live in the ocean, deer don't. That's an absolute difference, I think.

I could go on, but life is short. Those who wish to examine the rest of Goldberg's thicket of unsupported assertions ("This is scientifically true, morally true, aesthetically true and politically true"), appeals to emotion ("reduce the relative worth of a staggeringly beautiful creature like a tiger by saying it's just as 'valuable' as a snail darter*"), and, of course, sudden reversals ("*Obviously, some ugly, brainless, species are valuable because of their role in the ecosystem") and the rhetorical schtick Goldberg pioneered, "central to my point" ("But this is just another example of how some species are more important than others"), go with God. Some of us come back from such journeys half-mad.

FRIENDLY ADVICE TO MY MORTAL ENEMIES. Tigerhawk, a gamer to the end, is trying to gin up outrage with a little movie about Obama's pals Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. Pessimist that I am, I can't see this having much electoral impact, if that's what he's going for. I seem to recall Jim Hunt trying to make hay of Senator Jesse Helms' ties to Salvadoran death squad macher Roberto d'Aubuisson, and that didn't work out so well. 1968 is in the punters' minds as far away and irrelevant as El Salvador. Helms' operatives did better calling Hunt "SISSY, PRISSY, GIRLISH AND EFFEMINATE." If you're going to go with the classics, go with classics that work!

P.S. Current rightwing laughlines like "question their patriotism" may not be understood by the wider population. You guys may enjoy applying phrases like "under the bus" to "the 'fist-jab'" and such like, but ordinary folks who do not begin their days, as we do, scanning the trades may not get the reference. (They don't understand my inside jokes, either, but I am working mainly to the hipsters at the late show.) Stick with tested tropes like "flip-flop," "San Francisco Democrats," "I have in my hand a list of 206 known communists," etc.

MORE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES. I see (and he sees) that Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism is gaining some traction. Jeffrey Lord at the American Spectator:

SO LET'S SUM UP what America would look like in an age of Obama.

To start there would be no more driving SUVs. No more Rush. For God's sake absolutely no driving your SUV while listening to Rush. No more eating whatever you want. Definitely no keeping your home as warm or as cool as you prefer. No capital gains cuts because they are unfair. Your guns will be banned. And if you have a different opinion on global warming? All those lofty supporters of rights for terrorists are going to strip every oil executive in America of theirs in a heartbeat, live and in living color...

What do we have when the sole purpose of the government as run by the chilling principles of Obamaland is to "use the political process" to remove freedoms large and small one by one by one?

Someone needs to speak it plainly.

The word is fascism.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the banning of SUVs, Rush Limbaugh, private thermostats, guns, etc, not to mention "a Nuremberg-style trial for oil executives," are extremely unlikely unless the power of the Supreme Court is severely curtailed. I guess that's something to worry about, as in recent years there has been a lot of talk about judicial overreach and proposals to term-limit its Justices and allow Congress to overrule their decisions.

UPDATE. How could I forget Ross Douthat and his proposed Supreme Court Supermajorities? The future of the Republican Party, ladies and gentlemen! Should bring the "Impeach Earl Warren Democrats" back into the fold.

I WANT YOU TO HURT LIKE I DO. Crunchy Rod Dreher is back from vacation -- which was not spent, as I had hopefully fantasized, scouting locations for the New Jerusalem, but in such normal yuppie pursuits as wine-tasting, restaurant-hopping, and driving an SUV. No sooner has he unpacked his cilices that he starts bitching about other educated white people whose attitudes perversely differ from his own.

See, while Dreher enthuses over Jesus and Montepulciano d'Abruzzo, some honkies choose to enthuse over what they call their "vibrant" neighborhoods "where blacks, whites, gays and Hispanics all live together." Dreher thinks they're just trying to make him feel bad:

White people who use the word "vibrant" to describe a piece of real estate on which ethnic or tattooed people live really want to make a statement about their own broad-mindedness or social progressivism (versus the supposed fear and closed-mindedness of suburban white people). This is why I'm so fascinated by the word. It's an elite white-people social marker, a sign that one-upsmanship is being attempted.

It's not that Dreher doesn't approve of or use the word "vibrant." He just doesn't like it when folks use it on multi-ethnic neighborhoods.

How then should we speak of these neighborhoods? Emulating Dreher's own example, we might speak of our Hispanic neighbors as a potential threat to our real estate values ("We are close, though, to a barrio... should I sell my house while I still can, or risk putting up with crime and the degradation of the quality of life in the neighborhood?").

Or of our gay neighbors as disgusting perverts ("I was amazed by how a city park in my neighborhood became a popular cruising grown for gay men seeking sexual encounters after dark... what are the rest of us supposed to think about gay male culture, and the degree to which it self-defines according to behavior that most people rightly find repulsive?").

To be fair, maybe it's not the racial or gender-preferential identity of specific neighbors that bugs Dreher. In a 2007 column he says, "the day will never come when we give [our children] permission to play unsupervised on our front lawn," because his neighborhood contains "halfway houses for sex offenders," "stray dogs," and "dodgy older teenagers from someplace else." Dreher laments that his urban nabe is not like the rural Louisiana hamlet in which he was raised.

You can understand why he'd object to "vibrant," or just about any other positive adjective applied to such places. Poor Dreher just plain doesn't like where he lives. He would prefer to live in Bumfuck or Coon Holler, so long as he could also have access to all the conveniences of a large city. It's bad enough that he can't have it all, geographically speaking. That some people who live in cities are content, even enthusiastic about where and how they live -- well, that just steams his vegetable dumpling.

I really hope he gets to exercise his Benedict Option, not just for the comic potential but also for his own sake. No man can serve two masters, and Dreher's unappeasable yearning to have the bright lights of the big city and the ol' swimmin' hole will eventually drive him crazier than he already is.