CULTURE WAR IS NOT OVER, IF YOU WANT IT OR NOT. Digging through some of my back numbers this evening, I came across old posts about World magazine, the rightwing Christian pub balls-deep in the culture war, which told readers that Prince was only okay to listen to if your English was so poor that you couldn't make out his sexy lyrics, that "baseball fosters the right mentality for sustaining a war on terrorism," and other gibberish.

These days I keep hearing that the Right is soft-pedaling such cultural issues in favor of a Tea Party anti-socialism pitch. I wondered if World had gotten the message. Thankfully, it appears they have not.

Take Marvin Olasky's Easter column. First he fills in the back story, Anne Rice style: In New York in the 1870s, a famous abortionist lived on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, enjoying "immense dining rooms and parlors furnished in bronze and gold" -- a clear victory for Satan. Then St. Patrick's was built, giving Jesus the upper hand. But then John D. Rockefeller, in an obviously Satanic challenge, built his Center:

At ground level the face-off has also been apparent: A two-ton statue of Atlas, the god in Greek mythology who carries the heavens upon his shoulders, faces the doors of St. Patrick. What holds up the world -- the economic and technological power housed in the skyscraper, or the faith of the cross?

Most people don't contemplate such questions...

But Marvin Olasky does! For years the Easter Parade has been a big deal on Fifth, and despite its Godless nature -- Irving Berlin certainly wasn't writing about Jesus -- Olasky approves; but this year the Parade wasn't all it might be, permanent-things-wise:

This Easter the mixture of refinement and ostentation that defined earlier parades was gone. Many women wore flowery hats, but men on display were less Hello, Dolly! and more Salvador Dali dada: They wore three-foot-high apple blossom branches, or tuxedo coats with shorts, or multi- colored bushy beards accompanied by white dresses.

Bearded men in dresses! What would Bing Crosby say? But it gets worse:

I wondered about the absence of the young: On a perfect-weathered day, sunny and 70, why were 90 percent or more of the strollers over 40?

Were the kids all in McCarren Park worshiping the vaginal tree? Well, on the plus side, Olasky saw a lot of them at Mass in the Hunter College auditorium; but on the down side, many cleaved instead to the latest ally of the abortionist and the Rockefellers: "I saw many other 20-somethings lined up to enter a glass cube: the above-ground part of Apple's flagship store on Fifth Avenue between 58th and 59th."

How will Jesus and Olasky be rescued from despair? By war on Muslims!

Will the Easter battle for the future feature not the cathedral and the statue, but the auditorium and the glass cube?

Maybe, but here's an O. Henry twist to this column: Will those latter two form an alliance against the Kaabah, an ancient granite cube in Mecca that is the center of the Muslim world? The cathedral and the skyscraper won World War II. What can the auditorium and the glass cube do?

And once their combined forces destroy the infidels, the auditorium and the cube can duke it out for supremacy! I'm surprised he didn't work in an NBA Finals theme.

Please remember that however the conservative spin doctors try to spruce up the public face of their movement, these guys are still back there being absolutely mad.

UPDATE. Commenters are especially excited by Olasky's symbology. "Wasn't it an apple that brought about the Fall from Paradise?" asks Halloween Jack. "(The company's symbol, after all, has a bite out of it, and always has; oh, and hey, it used to be rainbow striped, and we all know who's got that symbol these days, eh?)" Wheels within wheels, people!

NOT YOUR REAL FRIENDS. Proud as I am of my raw courage in the face of Islamicist oppression, I have to admit Glenn Greenwald has a very good point. "The various forms of religious-based, intimidation-driven censorship and taboo ideas in the U.S. -- what [Ross] Douthat claims are non-existent except when it involves Muslims -- are too numerous to chronicle," he says, but unlike most people who talk like that, he provides a nice little list of examples (including some productions of Terence McNally's gay Jesus play shut down by violent threats made right here in my lovely new home state).

He also reminds us that Douthat's buddy Jonah Goldberg is a big fan of censorship (which I've noticed also), and that Douthat agrees with him. It's almost as if these people aren't really interested in free speech, and have perhaps some ulterior motive for pretending that they are. Well, I sort of suspected that when they didn't rally to the defense of my farting Mohammed cartoon.

FOR SOME REASON THIS FAKE AD IS BOTHERING ME. As a new resident of America proper, I am cultivating an interest in ephemeral crap. This, apparently, is an 80s-style commercial created for Toy Story 3:



My intention is not to razz the makers, who did a pretty good job, but I sense something is off here and I'm not sure what.

I think it's that the bear isn't given any distinguishing qualities at all, either in copy or in interaction with the kids, other than his implied eagerness to receive affection. See this and this for comparison. In my experience even dolls are supposed to have a USP.

It's bugging me for some reason. What do you think?

THE GLIBERTARIAN ARGUMENT FOR THE ARIZONA IMMIGRANT LAW: "A reader says he’s suprised to see me support the Arizona bill. Well, I really don’t — that is, I don’t know if I’d have voted for it if I were in Arizona. I’m mostly reacting to the fact that — as demonstrated by Linda Greenhouse — the opposition displays that special combination of self-righteous outrage and bone-deep ignorance that really sets me off." -- The Ole Perfesser. Take that, hehindeed, Radley Balko!

Remember: They don't have any principles -- merely a sense of entitlement, resentment when it's challenged, and rage when it's thwarted.

ONE MORNING I SHOT AN ELEPHANT IN MY PAJAMAS. I just shot a rattler this mornin' that was threatening my cat. Ain't no thang around these parts; we all has firearms. Then I ate me that rattler and made mah woman a necklace out of his bones.

What? I have just as much evidence of my feat as our Governor has of killing that coyote. Neither of us had our security detail around.

There are some differences, I admit. I'm not running for reelection, which (along with my natural modesty) is why I'm also not dressing up my story with quotable quotes like "he became mulch."

And I don't have fans like Michelle Malkin to use my alleged accomplishment as proof that politicians she doesn't like are less than men:

This could cost Texas Governor Rick Perry the endorsement of PETA, but to save the life of his dog, it’s worth it...

In a related story, Florida Governor Charlie Crist screamed like a woman and jumped on a chair when he saw a mouse run out from under his tanning bed.

If you find that outburst about Crist weird and unseemly, remember: the sourcing is every bit as good as Perry's and mine.

I advise Mitt Romney, if he wishes to remain politically viable, to announce that he killed a dog -- not by strapping it to the roof of his car, his usual method of canine torment, but with his bare hands -- or with a scalpel, so he can work it into a metaphor about health care.

THIS IS JUST NICE: Some folks in Kuala Lumpur yelling "WAR CRIMINAL" at Tony Blair.



May he never be shut of them. Asshole. Now can we get someone to follow around Andrew Sullivan, too? (h/t Prog Gold)

WHERE I'M CALLING FROM, PART 3. I continue to like this "Texas" I find myself in. I haven't forgotten, however, that it's politically... retrograde. Our Governor calls Obama and health care "socialist" as casually as you or I might call Williamsburg "over," and loves to cheer the folks at home with talk of seceding from the Union. I never thought I'd say this, but I miss David Paterson.

And Perry isn't even the worst of the lot: There was some kind of bizarre Gathering of the Nuts last weekend at Tyler, where the purty roses come from, with Perry, Glenn Fucking Beck, and State Rep Leo Berman, who called Obama "God's punishment on us." No word in local press reports as to whether a cross was burned at the event, though maybe that happens too frequently thereabouts to merit notice.

Perry is a graduate of Texas A&M, and I note with interest this reminiscence from a speech he gave at the 2005 Muster:

We toted my footlocker up to the dorm, and then dad went outside and pulled George [Shriever] under a tree and delivered a message: “Make a man out of him.” It’s too bad dad felt compelled to say that, because my fish hole ended up being next door to George Shriever and Roger Matson. At any hour of the night, George would not knock loudly on the wall, my signal to come running. Sometimes he needed his brass shined or his sink cleaned or his bed made. Often, he just wanted me to sing him to sleep. But whatever George wanted, I did. I was his fish.

Well, I suppose old Yalies sound just as strange talking about their homoerotic rituals, too.

Here in Aggieland there's an alt-paper called the Maroon Weekly; I guess it's the local equivalent of the Voice. Instead of Tom Robbins or Wayne Barrett, though, here's what we had in this week's editorial section:

This past week, Obama took the first major step towards banning guns from all United States citizens...

Yes, you read that correctly. We will be subject to gun laws not created and voted on by our congress.

International laws that were adamantly opposed by the Bush administration, who preferred to use national gun control legislation. International laws that have been developed and promoted by organizations such as the United Nations and individuals such as billionaire businessman George Soros...

This nonsense, straight out of the emails your grandma has been sending you (and proven bullshit), is what the weekly whee-funtime paper thinks the kids will go for. They're probably right. Though there's a big college here, we don't have the traditional pinko collegetown thing going on. Most of the local entertainment district's storefronts are distressed and art-directed to look like Old West saloons and whatnot; the big dance club, Daisy Dukes (!), looks like a grainery. When the kids go out, they dress like they're going to appear in a Ke$ha video. It's like an alternate America where beatniks and hippies never existed, and youth style went straight from Elvis to backwards baseball caps.

I can live with that, though. No place is cool enough for me; my Voice readers may recall that I was constantly complaining about the nanny state New York had become when I lived there. Griping's just one of the privileges of citizenship. Admittedly Texas is part of a larger and more destructive madness that will eventually consume and destroy this once-proud nation, but that probably won't happen till after I'm blessedly dead. Everybody wins -- me, and the howling feral children that will inherit this blackened continent.

In the meantime there's so much that is not political to enjoy. A couple of weekends back I went to visit a friend in San Antonio, which was serendipitously having its annual Fiesta (we took in the River Parade). I just got a taste but it was nice: The Riverwalk is much prettier than the pictures let on; I took a long walk down down South Flores and saw some of the gentrifying shabby-chic; El Mercado was like San Gennaro with Mexicans, and the Norteño, like all the music here, was splendid. Part of the fun of just scratching the surface is knowing there's still so much more left to dig.

MORE TALES OF ORDINARY MADNESS. Yes, it's another post by The Anchoress about how the Democrats have broken the seventh seal and the end times loom.

Maybe she's beginning to bore even herself, though, because she puts some extra spin on it this time:

The only thing I am certain of right now is that what we knew of America before 2008 is not what we will know of America by 2012. I know that nothing is ever going to be what it was, and those on the right who think “if we can just get the right people in office, then everything will go back to normal,” are deluding themselves.

Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, etc. But here's how the crafty Dems and Satan will pull it off: First, they're going to make a Republican Governor of Arizona release the hounds on illegal Mexicans. Then all hell will break loose!

Meanwhile the Democrats and the press (if I am not redundant) understand how well they played the immigration card in 2006 -getting the right all hopped up in May to reap the rewards in November- and so they will be repeating that gambit – manufacturing parades and outrage once again, as they did before. The charges of “racist nazis” will fly; the press will fan the flames, and the situation will become toxic.

I expect that the right -which has done a very good job of ignoring deliberate provocation up to now- will end up losing its composure in this debate, and once that happens, once they let fly with their passions, they will be defeated.

I'm not sure what she means by "losing its composure," but it probably has something to do with Mexicans thrusting their jaws into redneck fists. So, you see, the Satanocrats will attack both Republicans and Mexicans with their passive-aggressive hopping-up of patriots!

Read around her post for extra lunacy: She believes, for example, that as the world falls into darkness the abbeys will become powerful redoubts (but this kind of wishful thinking is common among apocalyptics), and endorses the notion now popular with her fellow wingnuts that by drumming up the youth and minority votes, Obama is pursuing a "divisive strategy." Also there's her interesting idea that 2006 had less to do with exploding Republican scandals than with immigration.

But wackiest of all may be her contention that "I am neither Republican nor conservative. I belong to Christ first, not to a party, not to an ideology." Hell, in the very teeth of the Apocalypse she's spinning for the right, committed to making sure we know the poor Republican white people are (or rather, it is prophesied, will be) the real victims here.

A LIBERTARIAN MUGGED BY LIBERTARIANISM. As Arizona hunts down illegal Mexicans like dogs, it is touching -- in a hilarious way -- to hear Radley Balko wonder aloud at libertarian redoubt Reason that his good, freedom-loving friends the Tea Partiers could be in favor of such ungroovy measures:

There's obviously not going to be pure ideological unity at these events... But it's increasingly looking like the right's favored big government policies are a fairly important part of the agenda of a fairly large portion of the Tea Party crowd.

You're kidding! He'll get over it, I'm sure, as soon as one of his colleagues reminds him the Tea Parties have dozens of black people, or about the socialism of estate taxes.

TODAY ON BIZARRO WORLD: "[Civil rights legend] John Lewis, who spent his life presumably fighting for equality, now seems little better than racists such as David Duke, Jesse Jackson, or Al Sharpton," says... a guy who calls his site Confederate Yankee.

He's a previous winner, too, and was recently seen accusing infiltrators of trying to tar the Tea Parties with Confederate flags, despite his own loyalty to the Fallen Standard ("a Confederate battle flag is supposed to be a sign of bigotry and racism according to the leftist orthodoxy...").

Rightbloggers still complain about "pro-Che colors," though Che worship is hardly a going concern. Yet they give their respectful attention to neo-Confederates -- no doubt because they're a major bloc of the Republican-conservative alliance. They apparently don't expect anyone to notice the contradiction; the question is, do they notice it themselves?

ALAN SILLITOE, 1928-2010.. I've never read his fiction, though I've admired the bracing films made of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, but by chance I recently picked up his autobiography, Life Without Armour, which is so far very good. Though not quite the Angry Young Man they painted him as, Sillitoe had indeed been working-class and done mucky jobs -- "my job was to hump hundredweight sacks of alum and flour to a vat and empty them in, stirring to an even broth with the requisite amount of hot water to make the paste. Overall and boots got caked with the stuff, and I would go home stinking like a pig" -- before he found success as a writer.

I'm more eager to finish the book now, and get to his others. He seems to have been very serious about his craft, and describes some of his writing education, including attentive reading-aloud at home:

The cadences of style became apparent enough to help improve my prose, a revelation which could no doubt have come sooner with a nineteenth-century education in the Latin and Greek classics.

Reading my work aloud was a good way of ensuring that it had the fluidity and clarity of good English...

Clear English could be enriched by idiomatic or personal quirks as long as they fitted in with the narrative and echoed my inner voice, the way things sounded to me even before I had a pen in my hand...

During this long winter it became obvious that I had not been working hard enough on style: every word, every phrase, every sentence -- in every story and on every page of a novel -- had to be broken up and had to be knitted together again so that no loopholes in the prose remained.

I am reminded, writing that out, that work is a constant refrain in the book; when Sillitoe was young, he said, he took care not to get a girl pregnant because "those who did not take such precautions asked for all they got, and a bit more. As Arthur Shelton's father said, 'When you get married, a penny bun costs tuppence!'"

Sillitoe picked his Desert Island Discs last year. Some nice considerations here and here.

UPDATE: If the writerly stuff interests you, you may like the Writers Guild East tweet updates on today's New York City Mayor's Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting seminar -- though it has more to do with careerism than craft.

TELL US ANOTHER ONE ABOUT "POLITICAL CORRECTNESS" WHILE YOU'RE AT IT. Holy shit: An Obama official makes a joke about a Jewish guy outwitting a guy from the Taliban at a pro-Israel gathering, where it is warmly received, and the rightbloggers rush to portray it as anti-Semitic.

Leading the idiot derby by a nose*: The Anchoress, who pulls one that I haven't seen since high school:

Is it anti-Semitic?

Maybe yes, maybe no.

Presumably, the Taliban member was of Arab descent, which would make him a Semite, as well. If one takes any of the views listed above, then the joke portrays both Arab and Jew negatively, and it is anti-Semitic.

Zing! After many lines of this kind of concise analysis, The Anchoress concedes that the joke may be what any listener whose head is not fogged with politics will know it is. But that doesn't let Obama off the hook: "...for all anyone knows, the White House might have omitted the joke from its transcripts because it was too pro-Jew for their tastes!"

What a miserable, joyless job Joke Patrol must be.

* Not meant as a reference to The Anchoress' Italian-American heritage, so please don't call the Anti-Defamation League.

I CAN'T WAIT UNTIL TOMORROW 'CAUSE I GET MORE HEROIC EVERY DAY. I see the organizer of that Draw Muhammed thing has backed out:

I made a cartoon that went viral and I am not going with it. Many other folks have used my cartoon to start sites, etc. Please go to them as I am a private person who draws stuff,

The associated Facebook page keeper has bailed as well ("This event was not supposed to be about hatred but its opposite").

Am I the only True Son of Liberty to stand for freeeeedom? I figured Mark Steyn would have churned out a graphic novel by now.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP about the state of rightwing opinion journalism as shown by those National Review writers who beat up a colleague (Jim Manzi) for betraying his class.

It's a little incident that says a lot -- especially when seen through the ever-shifting kaleidoscopic lens of Jonah Goldberg, whose history of gaseous emissions about the intellectual awesomeness of his movement might lead some readers to expect he'd be embarrassed by this whole sorry affair at his own magazine. Connoisseurs of Goldberg's style, though, will enjoy his particular method of evading reality in this instance.

I probably should be inured to such breathtaking hypocrisy by now, but it's kinda like life itself: However convinced you are that you've heard all the stories, they keep coming up with new angles.

P.S. There's something very special about Reliapundit calling Stephen Hawking an idiot, too -- especially when he points out that Hawking "was WRONG about black holes and admitted it," which the blogger seems to take as a sign of his own intellectual superiority.

I DON'T USE THE WORD "HERO" VERY OFTEN, BUT I AM THE GREATEST HERO IN AMERICAN HISTORY*. I see glibertarians are also pissed about the South Park Mohammed incident, and are doing a Spartacus -- that is, massing to diffuse the wrath of crazed jihadist nuts with a Draw Mohammed event. The promotional illustration they offer -- showing the Prophet as common household objects, at which no reasonable person could take offense -- shows that they have no guts at all compared to me.

Plus I was doing this shit years ago.

I fully expect that when the fatwas come down, these pussies will say, "What about Edroso -- we were just being free-speechy in a harmless way, but he made fun of religion, which we of course don't endorse!"

Enjoy your "freedom," posers.

* via.

THE REICHSTAG FIREFOX. It's a neat trick that Darrell Issa has managed, making the proposed reform of securities oversight all about federal employees looking for porn. Scared Monkeys makes the desired (if not quite logical, nor literate) connection:

It is comical an absurd for government to even consider pointing the finger at private business when it comes to scandal, waste, fraud and abuse... Who knew that SEC government financial “oversight” was a porn site? By the way who is going to monitor the monitors?.. Is it any wonder why used cars salesman know rate above government officials?

Statism plus porn equals propaganda gold! Or so it's hoped -- after the sex scandals of 2006 that helped rip them out of government, the GOP would love to put the shoe on the other foot.

I explained at the time why this sort of thing is unlikely to work, but times may have changed sufficiently that they will: Maybe after a few years of recession, the average citizen will be jealous that federal workers have jobs at which to surf for porn.

I AM A FREE-SPEECH HERO. This sucks. In retaliation, I reproduce my blasphemous drawing of Muhammed from 2006:



Come and get me, fatwads!

UPDATE: Althouse: "I have no end of respect for Stone and Parker. What brilliant artists! What political heroes!" Jesus, Professor, where's my encomium? I got the guy farting and smoking a cigarette!

SHORTER GAY PATRIOT*: Michael Steele's no good at being black. Here, I'll show you how it's done.

* UPDATE. Specifically, Nick aka "ColoradoPatriot from an undisclosed secret HQ," and no wonder.

A commenter to the site suggests Steele be replaced by Alan Keyes: "Not too welcoming of gays, but that’s not a problem in today’s GOP; it’s a plus." This, at a site called Gay Patriot. I've grown accustomed to conservatives embracing identity politics, but when are they going to get good at it?

DOGS RETURNING TO THEIR VOMIT. Remember, way back in early 2008, when conservatives were trying to disqualify Obama because he had "terrorist buddies"? One of the second-string names they threw around was that of Rashid Khaladi, not a mad bomber but a pro-Palestinian Columbia professor whose connections to Obama excited the ire of the Right.

But no one else gave a shit, and Obama was elected.

Now Roger L. Simon and the Ole Perfesser are trying to revive Khalid as an issue. Simon is demanding the L.A. Times release the Kraken videotape of a 2003 (!) dinner party for Khaladi which Obama attended.

The original LAT story reports some guests at the party spoke critically of Israel. "No word of the details of how Obama reacted..." says Simon. Perhaps the tape will show him giving the Israel critics a big thumbs-up, or raising the roof, or doing the Humpty Dance. (Or maybe he'll just look somnolent. They can always get on him for that!)

Also, the story's sole Obama quote "contains an ellipsis in the middle." Maybe he started screaming "Death to Israel" or "Crucifixion ain't no fiction/So-called chosen frozen/Apologies made to whoever pleases/Still they got me like Jesus."

Simon compares the videotape, which he acknowledges is neither government nor public property, to the Pentagon Papers, and demands it be delivered unto him. "Sometimes I want to yell and scream," he writes. Why don't you, buddy? It certainly won't affect your reputation.

UPDATE. Now how could I have forgotten the inevitable next step, of which commenter aimai reminds me -- a revival of the Michelle Obama "Whitey" Tape! Come on, guys, make me proud! I know you're hot on the Israel angle, but the fanciful MO audio file has always been way more popular than ol' Khaladi's among your who-us-racist-no-sir fans. And there's plenty more where that came from!

TO THE STAFF. When your Morning Memo message is that Tea Partiers are kind and helpful to their enemies, it is unhelpful to exult over getting those enemies fired.

UPDATE. Of course, the usual claims of conservative victimhood can still be made as you celebrate getting someone fired, as such tactics are not meant to convince the general population, who might find them unseemly, but to lift the spirits of other conservatives, who are unlikely to notice the obvious contradiction.