PRESIDENTIAL TROLLING.

I see Obama proposed some weak-ass gun rules, including executive orders such as "Starting a national safe and responsible gun ownership campaign," "Issuing a presidential memorandum to require federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations," and (my favorite) "Nominating an A.T.F. director."

This may or may not save any lives, but it has definitely achieved this:

Already the talk radio guys are over the top (Mark Levin: "UnAmerican," "fascistic"; Rush Limbaugh: "With Kids as Human Shields, Obama Will Unveil Left's Long-Held Plan to Grab Guns"). It's nothing new -- they've been calling Obama Hitler for years. But the current controversy is built, one might say, to exacerbate the tendency. Guys like Limbaugh and Levin used to set their own level of crazy -- now they're basically trying to outdo Alex Jones, and Jones isn't making it easy for them. It won't be long before they're all singing La Marseillaise and declaring each other freedom fighters.

When the dust settles and very little is accomplished, people will remember that Obama tried to Do Something, and his loyal opposition was a bunch of nuts yelling about the Third Reich. 

I do get tired of nothing ever getting much better, but at least it's fun to watch Obama troll.

UPDATE. In comments, Michael points us to this week's, and possibly this year's, golden nutcake award winner: Bob Owens, formerly known as Confederate Yankee, bragging about how easy it would be for him and his buddies to take out a power station:

Were an angry group of disenfranchised citizens to target in a strategic manner the substations leading to a city or geographic area—say, Albany, for example—they could put the area in the dark for as long as it took to bring the substations back online. Were they committed enough, and spread their attacks out over a wide enough area, perhaps mixing in a few tens of dozens of the residential transformers found every few hundred yards along city streets, they could overwhelm the utility companies ability to repair the damage being caused or law enforcement’s ability to stop them...

How many days with partial power or no power, how many nights in the dark, would it take before the local economy collapsed in the targeted area? Insurgents could cripple a city, region, or state, without ever firing a bullet at another human being. 

Progressives seeking to undermine the Constitution seem to think they hold all the cards. I would warn them that they are not remotely prepared for what will happen if they attempt to cross Constitutional boundaries and natural rights. 

It could be a cold, dark winter. 

Tread carefully.

Owens recently appeared in a PJTV video with Ole Perfesser Glenn Reynolds ("Are lawful Americans preparing for civil war? Bob Owens of Bob-Owens.com thinks so. Hear why as Glenn Reynolds discusses the Second Amendment on this InstaVision"). Reynolds either hasn't noticed what a crackpot the guy is or has been watching too many episodes of Doomsday Preppers and come to believe all the white people who failed to materialize for Romney are out there waiting for him and Owens to sound the final trump. Shine on, you crazy conservative comeback!

DRUNK AS A...

Jeffrey Lord is having a bravura breakdown at The American Spectator. He's attacking Joe Scarborough in an essay of over a thousand words, which is rather like using anti-aircraft guns on Howdy Doody.

According to Lord, Scarborough's crimes are 1.) accusing Sean Hannity and Mark Levin of birtherism -- not quite accurate, as these esteemed broadcasters merely promoted birthers rather than birtherism; and 2.) siding with Colin Powell, who thinks the GOP might be a tad racist, which is itself the worst kind of racism (i.e., the kind that makes the GOP look racist).

Lord's fugue includes abusive statements from Hannity and Levin, dudgeony characterizations from Lord himself (e.g. MSNBC is "a network that spews racism and bigotry"), and several single sentence-fragment paragraphs, including "Disgraceful," "Say again: despicable," "To which I would add: Period," "The progressive card," and "Potrzebie." (Kidding about that last one.) It's like hearing Larry Kudlow teach rhetoric to kindergarteners.

Much of it is about how Democrats are the real racists. ("Race and Progressives," says Lord, "have been... the ham and eggs of the Democratic Party," with a side of mendacity and a garnish of deceit.) Did Powell question Sarah Palin's use of "shuck and jive" in relation to President Obama? Why, sir, Chris Matthews said to Rachel Maddow, "What has it been like, as you shuck and jive, hang out with the men over there, the women over there, in uniform risking their lives every day?” which I guess makes Chris Matthews racist against Rachel Maddow -- and, Lord quavers with outrage, not only that:

The “men over there,” the “women over there” were American troops serving in Afghanistan. The New Pittsburgh Courier (whose owner describes the paper as part of America’s “black press”) did a little research on the number of blacks in the American military — including “over there” where Maddow had spent her time, according to Matthews, “shucking and jiving” with said troops. It seems that a full 9% of Americans killed in both Afghanistan and Iraq were black. 

Some shuck. Some jive.

Potrzebie. Walnuts!

No wait, it gets better: In answer to Powell's complaint about Republicans calling Obama lazy, Lord retorts that Obama called himself lazy, making Obama racist against himself. But not as racist as those old-timey Democrats.

Now, any lunatic can talk about Copperheads or the Democratic hegemony in the South until for some unexplained reason all the good ol' boys became Republicans, but the following of Lord's indictments are, in my experience, unique:

How many times has Scarborough talked about the Federal Reserve on his show? Social Security? The federal school lunch program? No idea, but I bet lots.

But one can Google away and never find ole Joe talking about the racist formula used to create these programs...

• Social Security? Why, Joe never quite gets round to talking about all those racist progressives who scared the hell out of white voters with race so they could stay in office and pass Social Security. A prominent example being old Mississippi Senator Theodore Bilbo, a card-carrying Klan member and deeply proud of creating a program for the old folks. 

• School lunches? That would be a program from the great Southern Manifesto Senator Richard Russell, the segregationist Senator from Georgia, who singlehandedly got what is known today as the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act passed in 1946.

Social Security and school lunches as racist plots -- I swear you could comb Free Republic all day long and not find anything like this. Good Lord!

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP

about Chuck Hagel's nomination and his investigation by citizen journalists. A hilarious amount of it seems to be about mischievously making points by which no normal person would be swayed -- cf. Robert Stacy McCain: "Hagel nomination and Left's dilemma: Do they hate Israel more than they love gays?" har har, as well as "By Any Means Necessary," "they bring a knife, you bring a gun," "The Chicago Way," "If that vicious bastard Andrew Sullivan supports Hagel, this is reason enough for any patriotic American to oppose the Hagel nomination," and -- here's real berserker logic for you -- "the conservative strategy must be aimed at making that 'win' as damaging as possible to the reputation of the Democratic Party," etc. I'm beginning to think McCain's a mole. But who would pay him?

TRY THIS SIMPLE TEST.

Hi. Do you live in America? Ever had a job there? Good. Let me show you something that The Anchoress wrote about why the minimum wage is evil:

Prior to minimum wage laws, a smart employer knew that he could not keep good employees without paying them their worth. Once employers were told what they “must” pay, however, it created a baseline that mentally (and perhaps emotionally) narrowed, rather than broadened an employers sense of what wage was fair or deserved. In fact “fair” and “deserved” went out the window. If all a businessman (or woman) had to do was make sure a minimum wage was being paid, what did fairness or merit have to do with anything?

And that sort of thinking, born of the good-intentions of our own government — is how we get to the reality of a 20-year employee making $8.25 an hour, and having to live a pretty hardscrabble life.

OK, people who've worked for actual bosses, and observed first-hand why they do and don't give raises -- does your assessment suggest to you that employers pay as little as they can get away with because that increases their profit margins? Or does your experience suggest that they pay as little as they can get away with because the government inflicted upon them "a baseline that mentally (and perhaps emotionally) narrowed, rather than broadened an employers sense of what wage was fair or deserved"?

If the former, congratulations, you're a normal human being living in the actual world. If the latter, congratulations, you may have a job as a conservative columnist.

SQUARE PEG.

Victor Davis Hanson goes on for more than 4,200 words about how everybody loves you if you're "hip" -- which in his lexicon is just another word for "liberal" -- and it's just not fair. One of his dozens of examples:

Would Google have had more trouble for all its outsourcing and overseas tax avoidance had it been named American Internet, Inc., or if its founders had grown up together as good ol’ boys in Mobile, Alabama, who still had a nagging propensity for putting patriotic slogans under the Google logo when the browser pops up each morning? Imagine waking and hitting the American Internet, Inc. logo — and then reading “Live free or die” before your search. (How odd that liberals — e.g., “the medium is the message” — always lectured us about advertising-driven false demand, and then became past masters of deceptive branding.)

I thought that's what Bing was for.

The odd thing is, Hanson never seems to grasp how these alleged hip people and things  -- he includes Starbucks, Jay-Z, "Snoop Dogg," Al Gore, and Katie Couric, believe it or not -- acquired whatever cachet they have. Since he hates them, the explanation can include nothing of what they offer the public, which severely limits his options.

Midway through he comes upon an answer that's at least plausible --

Could not Wal-Mart put memorable lines from Shakespeare on its plastic bags, or a Greek hexameter from Homer, or sell vitamin water called Sophos, Kalos, or Logos, or pipe in John Lennon’s “Imagine”?

You're getting warm, Doc -- marketing might have something to do with it. But Wal-Mart has a marketing budget, too, and it eschews Shakespeare for Low Low Prices. I don't hear them crying that they're misunderstood, and I sure don't hear them crying poor.

Alas, this explanation would cost Hanson his opportunity for self-pity, so he avoids it, and retreats thus:

Hip: borrowing became “stimulus”; entitlements, “investments”; and paying it all back became “paying your fair share.” In Obama’s case, he is not just black, but black with an exotic name and a liberal ideology, unlike a Clarence Thomas, who is most unhip...

I predict the first "hip" thing Hanson will adopt will be emo.

IT'S OUR OWN STORY EXACTLY! HE BOLD AS A HAWK, SHE SOFT AS THE DAWN.

Acculturated is a new dispenser of culture war ordnance that yells "WHY POP CULTURE MATTERS" from the masthead.  Connoisseurs of the genre will find it a little bit Culture 11 and a little bit Speculative Rightwing Ladymags The Perfesser Wants Created.

One thing the Acculturati like to talk about is Downton Abbey. (Here's a thing where Emily Esfahani Smith twits Simon Schama for calling it "snobbery by the bucketful." "The scenes take place in and out of a manor inhabited by tony aristocrats," sniffs Smith. "Its appeal is aesthetic. As an art history professor, Schama should know this." I'm pretty sure she's not kidding.)

And in case you thought Jonah Goldberg had farted the last word on the subject, get this: Ashley McGuire lets us know up front that she's sophisticated and Has Agency --

I’m no dummy. My last order from Amazon included The Feminine Mystique, Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, and Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics.

-- But she watches crummy TV shows. Why? Not merely to relax; that'd be common.

I simply think that I (like my fellow educated female consumers of garbage television) am looking for intrigue. Intrigue that gives us something to talk about. Something to think about. A framework to ponder our sex. 

Television is a sort of social barometer, and as women we are particularly inclined to take the temperature of our society and it how it views us and treats us.

Those days when you were a kid and imagined TV shows really spoke to you and your generation? That's why you have this coming to you -- McGuire pondering her sex:

It’s a sort of lifeline to any woman drowning in the thick waters of modern culture... 

Indeed, the show evokes wholly contrary thoughts about womanhood and feminism. As I watch the show, I find myself fighting between two selves. One side of me hardly envies the women of the era, when marriage was a woman’s only ticket in life, when the corset still grasped the fashion industry, when one make-out session with an exotic boy could ruin your prospects for life. 

But then one side of me envies the women of Downton ever so slightly. Envies the thought of my husband referring to me as “her ladyship.”

In previous sub-generations, ladies who didn't want to live in Dallas might yet have envied the women of Southfork and dreamed of falling under the spell of courtly if amoral J.R. Ewing. But when the show was over and the Asti Spumante drained, I don't think their fantasies spurred them to social analysis like this:

Are we happy with where we are? Do we demand enough of men? Do we demand enough of ourselves? Can we do better than table flipping in Jersey or ten plastic surgeries? Are we really that much better off today, or are today’s television shows any indication that there is still much work to be done?...

The women of Downton want driving lessons, they want jobs, they want the vote. But are there things from that era that we have thrown away that might have had value?...

If only we had cars and servants with crisp aprons! Clearly society has failed us.

Did respect for a woman’s reputation keep men in check and protect ourselves from winding up like Ethel, pregnant and scared? Did good-old-fashioned esteem for women raise the odds of winding up like Anna and Mary, wives who had been thoroughly woo’ed by good men?    

We'll never know now; there's no time machine to whisk us back to the days when women were thoroughly woo'ed and could do without that spinster's toy, the Vote. Ah well; there's still a little Red Bicyclette left, and a page where one can send eloquent essay-length distress signals that Ross Douthat may pick up. In the words of Martin Mull: It's not that great and it's late and once again, honey, you lose.

ANNALS OF THE CULTURE WARS: A VERY SPECIAL JONAH GOLDBERG EDITION.

The Pantload on Downton Abbey:

I do wonder what the left, particularly the British left, thinks of the show. For starters, one of the chief villains is gay.

We can stop right there; you could make a parlor game out of guessing Goldberg's other insights ("the whole point of the show is to sympathize with the landed gentry," "the one fairly radical lefty in the show... remains something of a bore," etc). The thing that defies imagination is: What does he think is going on? Is he trying to using conservative hanky code to find if Abbey's producers would like to provide the entertainment on the next NR Sadcruise? Or is he laying the groundwork for the case that, when the history of early 21st Century conservatism is written, Julian Fellowes will be the Goldwater of the Kulturkampf? (After all, as Goldberg's colleague Jay Nordlinger noticed years ago, Fellowes once complimented America. Maybe he's a mole in the commie arts community, and can be recruited to make movies with Bill Whittle.)

Oh, one more thing, from the aesthetic part of Goldberg's episode review:

Indeed, the whole show felt bizarrely cut up, like they had to put it together at the last minute.

At last he's talking about something he understands. [Farrrt.]

A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION.

I think National Review's trying a rethink:

"Meant to be together forever" -- sounds like a Bieber joint, yes? This Jesus cover boy, Christopher West, goes in for the usual Anti Sex League ordnance -- he counsels "infinite bliss" over rim jobs, and asks leading questions like "can’t we see that such a notion of choice is actually the negation of freedom?" But he has a softer, daisy-strewing  side, too, and rhapsodizes that "art is the language of the heart." Kathryn J. Lopez asks him if there's any art around now that he likes; he replies,

I’m not an art critic. I can only speak to what moves me personally. And I’d have to say that today, in the specific sense of right now, I am stunned by the artistry expressed in the movie adaptation of the musical Les Misérables. I saw it three times in its first week of release. Treat yourself and go see this movie.

Roger Scruton he ain't. Instead of having to beg change all the time ("National Review is not a non-profit — we are just not profitable"), NR should just convert to a pictoral format a la Tiger Beat.

UPDATE. Commenter Montag2 directs us to this intriguing 2009 item at the Catholic News Agency:  "Christopher West’s ideas on sexuality ignore ‘tremendous dangers,’ Alice von Hildebrand says." Excerpt:

The news segment showed [West] calling for Catholics to complete “what the sexual revolution began.” He also described “very profound” historical connections between Hugh Hefner and Pope John Paul II. 

West spoke to CNA on Friday, claiming the report somewhat sensationalized his views. He also denied several characterizations conveyed by the news story, explaining that he believed Hefner to be right in rejecting “the disease of Puritanism” but radically wrong in beginning the “pornographic revolution.” 

He had told ABC that Hefner had a "yearning," an "ache" and a "longing" for love, union and intimacy.

Well, clearly Hef's a fan of marriage. I expect after this scare West went and sinned no more, or he'd never have gotten close to K-Lo's inbox. True, he's responsible for provocative titles like The Love That Satisfies, but the Theology of the Body Institute West serves as a "research fellow" seems to have no hot tubs or encounter rooms. Still, his theology stirs some controversy -- for example, there was

the argument between Dr. Scott Hahn and Christopher West on the set of “Franciscan University Presents” which turned Dr. Hahn into a “closet critic” of West and his theology after West disagreed with Hahn when Hahn said the proper response if he was to see his colleague's naked wife's would be to turn his eyes away.

 His colleague's naked wife's what, I'd like to know. Maybe it was something innocent, like a tax-exempt contribution.

UPDATE 2. Oh wait, they explain further down:

... [Dr. Scott Hahn] told West that if he were to see a friend’s wife [the friend being fellow panellist Dr. Regis Martin] naked, it would be his responsibility to look away. West responded, ‘No, it would be to not lust.’ [Hahn] and West took turns repeating themselves until the moderator called for a break in the program.

You gotta admit, it beats This Week with George Stephanopoulos.

Also from that same report: "James J. Simons, who by his own admission listened to West over 100 times... argued that it is right to baptize people naked in front of an entire church so everyone can see them and it is right for women to read in church topless." Next time a conservative starts going off about wacky liberal arts courses, I'll bring this up.

UPDATE 3. "And, as if on cue," comments Alexander von Humbug, "Sullivan quotes West approvingly." Looks like there's a big PR push for West among the sort of people who would like him, and I wonder why, as they could disseminate the book as effectively by just handing out copies at David Brooks' parties. It's not like normal people will ever give a shit.

IT'S GOOD FOR YOU.

My old friend Martin Downs, M.P.H. Dartmouth, has embarked on a very interesting project:  "a full picture of sexual health in the United States" based on an index of 26 measures of sexual health. (Full report here.) The fun part of the project is the resulting Sexual Health Rankings™, which finds Vermont, Connecticut, and New Hampshire the most sexually healthy states, and Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas the least healthy. Lots of opportunity for mean regionalist jokes there!

But it's also a sign of where public health's going in general, and how it breaks against cultural tides. The indicators include the expected relative incidence of STDs and rape but, taking off from the World Health Organization's idea of sexual health as "not merely the absence of disease, dysfunction or infirmity," but also "a positive and respectful approach to sexuality and sexual relationships, as well as the possibility of having pleasurable and safe sexual experiences, free of coercion, discrimination and violence," they also consider access to contraception and abortion, sex education in schools, gender equality (partly measured by "proportion of seats held by women in state legislatures"), and "sexual satisfaction" measured by the "proxy indicators" of percent of population married or partnered, and general good health ("numerous studies show that self-reported health is positively associated with sexual satisfaction, and that worse self-reported health is a strong predictor of sexual dysfunction").

You may quibble with some of the metrics; I'm not sure how well you can track sexual satisfaction in the aggregate, short of a Masters and Johnson version of Nielsen Ratings or a test panel made of these. But I like the idea of defining sexual health more humanely than would, say, medical authorities at an Army induction center. Old-fashioned as I am, I still tend to think of public health as reactive, eradicating abnormalities clearly identified as disease -- as in, hmm, people in this village are dying of cholera, let's see if we can stop it. But in some communities, the appearance of such agents of death was once so commonplace as to be considered the norm; it's only when somebody began to think that it didn't have to be that way, and that it could be changed by something other than prayers and mumbo-jumbo, that human health progressed.

Now we see folks turning this approach to conditions no one considered public health issues before -- obesity, for example. Because our general fatty-fat-fatness doesn't look like cholera, and can't be fixed by replacing the town water pump, we are slow to identify it as disease. There's also a better reason: Because the nobs then might determine that we must be saved from ourselves, and try to keep us from having eating barbecue potato chips and onion dip because we must not know what we're doing to ourselves.  Lord knows I've felt resistance myself in the face of Mayor Bloomberg's nannying on the soda tax and all that.

Maybe the problem there is that we're Americans, and everything having to do with pleasure confuses us. Maybe we stuff ourselves with junk because we're missing something in our lives, and our leaders try to take these palliatives away from us without any genuine concern for us except as cogs in their machine and reflections of their own enlightenment, and offer us nothing in return except good citizenship medals.

But with this sex thing I don't see a downside. Gender equality?  Access to women's health services? "Pleasurable and safe sexual experiences, free of coercion, discrimination and violence"?  That doesn't sound like health nazidom to me. Maybe that's because it's about giving access to more choices instead of fewer, and normalizing pleasure instead of restricting it. In any event, I'd sure rather have that than a healthy snack.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the alleged end of the culture war. Both rightwingers and leftwingers have suggested it's done, but I say this is America, where no grift stops until it runs out of suckers -- and this one's not even close to running out.

I should mention that the white-flag-waver with whom I started the column, Matt K. Lewis, has in a follow-up hedged on his original claim that "The culture war is over, and conservatives lost." Now he thinks there's a chance. Among his proof points:

The good news for cultural conservatives is that a new generation, aided by new technology, might finally conspire to change things. Young conservatives like R.J. Moeller — the man who brought comedian Adam Carolla and Dennis Prager together — are dedicating their lives to ideas and culture, not overt partisanship.

Apart from creating the headline lounge act in Hell, this is what Moeller's about.  I'm sure he can get people to pay him for it, but it hardly seems like a way to win hearts and minds.

UPDATE. In comments Spaghetti Lee has an angle:

I think the overtly churchy, you're-going-to-hell culture warriors are going to fade out, honestly. Who the hell is going to replace Pat Robertson or Maggie Gallagher when they bite the big one? I think we're going to see/are already seeing a rise in its more insidious cousin, the libertarian conservatives who are too hip and cool and with it for things like making sure 90% of the country actually has livable incomes and that the air and water supplies aren't full of poison...

He numbers among them the Randroid priest who can talk to kids.

HOW'RE YOU GONNA KEEP 'EM DOWN ON THE FARM AFTER THEY'VE SEEN THE FARM?

Some guy at Ace of Spades is excited about Atlas Van Lines' map of what states have more mover-outers and what states have more mover-inners:

Frankly, I'm surprised that CA and MI are treading water on that chart but then again it is only one source and does not indicate what type of people are moving in and out (i.e. producers or takers).

The idea (or "narrative," as these dinks like to put it) is that big bad blue states are bleeding "producer" population, and soon will be overtaken by Workers' Paradises like North Dakota. Similarly, Some Other Guy at RedState headlines his story about another mover's poll (United Van Lines'), "Unchanged: Americans Are Still Fleeing High-Tax, Forced-Unionism States With Good Reason," followed by lots of hurp-durp about lousy blue states boy won't they be sorry.

Well, it's always instructive to do what rightblogger readers are unlikely to do, and click the links. At the United Van Lines site:

I'll be durned -- Americans are flocking to Washington, D.C., even though such geniuses as Ole Perfesser Instapundit, Nick Gillespie and David Brooks were just telling us it's the moocher capital of the evil Hunger Games empire.

And the United Van Lines item the RedState link takes you to is sub-headed, "Washington D.C. the Most Popular Destination During the Election Year." Guess America's really Obama-depraved after all!

Don't worry -- it looks like there'll be plenty of room in DickCheneyland for them all to Go Galt in.

I LOST IT AT THE MOVIES.

Roger L. Simon, the Citizen Kane of Pajamas Media (if the Inquirer had quickly turned into a pennysaver), saw some Chinese people at a high-end outlet mall in Cabezon, California.  The Man Who Was Moses Wine is on the case:

A large number, possibly a majority, of the shoppers there are the privileged scions of the Communist Party. Their parents and grandparents are the ones who played along and did their best not to make waves, even cooperated, throughout the mass murders of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.

Now, they and their kids are reaping the harvest of their modern state capitalist system that still flies under the banner of communism, a false flag operation if ever there was one. Ironies abound, and those same ironies provide a snapshot of what constitutes “leftism” in our own culture.

Ironies indeed, except Simon seems not to have asked himself why the Chinese have all that money. Hint: They got a lot of it from us, and not all in the days of Comrade Obama, neither.

Anyway Simon is not really concerned with foreigners but with the domestic terrorists called liberals:

Leftism has devolved into a kind of scam run not only on others but also on the self. Leftists are brilliant at convincing themselves of their own altruism and then broadcasting it to the public, thus providing cover for the most conventionally greedy and selfish behaviors. We see that in our society all the time: the quondam Marxists of Hollywood, the media, and the academy blathering on about economic equality while living lives the Medici could not have dreamed of.

Son of a buck -- there's money in this? You bastards have been holding out on me! I've been writing for the Village Voice for years -- surely I have carloads of Moscow gold coming!

Relatively unbridled capitalism has always been the best way out of this, the best way to true social mobility, but our nomenklatura doesn’t want to admit this because it might threaten them and their perquisites. It would blow their cover.

I dunno -- the Crash of '08 gave pretty good cover all by itself to the idea of "unbridled capitalism" as a panacea.

I suspect those Chinese shoppers knew this better than anyone, having lived through a similar experience ratcheted up to the nth degree. Although I was too polite to do it, I wanted to question them. I would have loved to know what they say to each other in the privacy of their own homes, not that they would be likely to tell me.

Unfairly deprived of my communist lottery winnings as I have been, I would have paid cash money to see Simon grilling the "Chinese shoppers." You, chop chop! You mamasan and papasan, they wash the brains, yes? In my country this call irony! Obama, him big commie, yes? 

But there was something to learn from watching them. I felt like a detective and it made me think of Roman Polanski and Robert Towne’s Chinatown.

A detective who doesn't want to ask questions to which he doesn't already have the answers. But he's still got the fedora, and the hangdog grace of a lone wolf:

I also thought of myself, of the way I was when I was a leftist. Yes, I drove a Porsche then (a used one). And had a house in the Hollywood Hills. And ate at gourmet restaurants. And there were plenty like me. I was part of a class. I felt safe and protected for many years, though finally I just left it. I couldn’t stand the hypocrisy anymore. Or maybe I just lost the ability to convince myself of my own altruism.

You might imagine Simon is eating off a hot plate in a rooming house with his integrity to keep him warm. But he's still a player, in fact more of one than before: His last film, A Better Life, was well-reviewed by the pinkos he disdains as lying nomenklatura. But keep that under your hat -- if a fella's gonna keep his place in modern conservatism, he's got to hold onto his victim status.

Whatever the case, when it comes to the truth about leftism, it’s about the cover it gives. Or, as Bob Towne put it: “It’s Chinatown.”

Actually it's Hollywood; like modern conservatism, a land of dreams. Except people are buying what Hollywood sells.

OOGA TO THE OOGITY-BOOGA.

neo-neocon started out with a fairly standard rightwing plaint about the big bad liberals:

It’s not just the heady victory of the moment that’s motivating them, it’s their conviction that it’s clear sailing from here on that empowers the left to openly up the ante and signal their next steps in establishing and capitalizing on their hegemony. No need to hide anymore when there’s nothing the right can do about it.

Then suddenly sproinnggg! out of nowhere:

In some ways the anti-white-man rhetoric that has become standard and acceptable lately is the worst sign of all. If the term “hate speech” has a meaning, it most definitely would apply to a great deal of what has been said recently about that despised group. Those who are first to shriek “racism” and “sexism” when criticism is launched against a group defined as oppressed (blacks, women) are turning the tables and dissing white men with impunity. It is both hypocritical and vile, and especially offensive when cloaked in the sanctimony of those on the left who believe they occupy the moral high ground (that would be everyone on the left).

Huh? neo-neocon doesn't explain what the hell she's talking about, so I had to trace back through a link to Victor Davis Hanson she'd left, perhaps inadvertently, as a clue to find out where she caught the fever.

Near as I can tell, this is it: That guy who criticized the Constitution in the New York Times called the Founding Fathers "a group of white propertied men" who "thought it was fine to own slaves." (I like the Constitution fine myself but yeah, obviously they were what he said they were.) Well, Hanson takes exception, but instead of arguing a case he just links the Constitution critic's sentiments to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, for reason unshared with his readers:

I can see Seidman’s vision now: Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi decides that semi-automatic handguns, not cheap Hollywood violence or sick video games, empower the insane to kill, and, presto, their 'considered judgment' and favored 'particular course of action' trump the archaic and evil wisdom of 'white propertied men.'

And that's about it, unless there's a coded reference or an acrostic or something in there that I missed.

Hanson's fit is weird enough, but the way neo-neocon got "everyone on the left" and "dissing white men with impunity" out of it -- that's just surreal. And then there's Ole Perfessor Glenn Reynolds' endorsement of it:

The Obama presidency has certainly been clarifying. Which is probably why gun sales are up.

To recap, some nut thought a professor's smack talk about the Founders owning slaves had something to do with Reid and Pelosi; this stimulated another nut to rage about the left's alleged insults to whitey; and this stimulated a third nut to cite Obama and cheer the rise in gun purchases. It's like a game of Telephone in an insane asylum.

Earlier today I was mildly disappointed that Commentary's new "What Is the Future of Conservatism in the Wake of the 2012 Election? A Symposium" was subscriber-only. But now I feel like I just read it for free.

UPDATE. "The white man has been oppressed ever since Django was unchained," explains Halloween Jack in comments. wjts and others point out that Hanson is once again complaining that someone stole equipment from his property and, once again, suggests the theft has something darkly to do with Obama. Soon these guys will be communicating entirely by dog-whistle: "Someone made off with my entrenching tool last night..." "OOGA BOOGA DEFEND WHITEY!"

HOW THE NUTTY HAVE FALLEN.

One of the original Tea Party spielers, Patrick Michael Leahy, was telling Americans in the week before the 2012 Presidential election that

in key swing states, the vaunted Obama ground game is being out-worked and out-organized by a loosely knit coalition of volunteer grassroots activists (both local and out-of-state), traditional conservative organizations like Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks, and the local and national Republican establishment...

With so many grassroots activists going door-to-door in swing states around the country, it's not surprising that optimism among conservatives for a Romney victory on November 6 are high.

Proving that professional bullshit artists are always in demand, here's Leahy today, claiming that the Tea Party's as powerful as ever and anyone who says different is double Alinsky Sociamalist:

Consider, for instance, the spontaneous outpouring of public support for Chick-Fil-et in August, and September's National Empty Chair Day phenomenon. Those strong sentiments have not suddenly disappeared. They remain fixed in the hearts and minds of millions of tea party activists around the country as we enter 2013.

Tell me, is there a degree below Pyrrhic victory? If not maybe we should name it after Leahy.

Even better is the follow-up. "There's polling evidence to consider as well," says Leahy. And that polling evidence shows the Tea Party rushing to join the Know-Nothings and the Anti-Masonic Party on history's D-list. But Leahy tastes the lemonade: "The 21% of the 128 million Americans who voted in 2012 and support the tea party," he offers, "still comprise a very large segment of the population --more than 26 million activists." 30% disapprove, true, but they're not activists -- merely moochers, too busy spending their government assistance checks to go hollering in tricorners, which is the key to victory.

Since this equity is clearly pissed out, we should start placing bets on the new niche brand they'll bring out in the next few elections. Five bucks says it'll involve a new kind of patriotism.

ANNALS OF THE CULTURE WARS, CONT.

John Daly, published by media scold Bernard Goldberg, wants "Conservatives To Use Pop-Culture Messaging." The awkward wording is no mistake; Daly doesn't know what culture is; he seems to think of it as some kind of weapon that'll work for him if only he can wrestle it away from his opponent.

If you doubt me, here's his pitch:

Imagine a series of television commercials, in the format of public service announcements, featuring actor Vince Vaughn. I’m using Vaughn as an example because he’s one of the few, outed fiscal conservatives in Hollywood. He’s also an immediately identifiable celebrity who audiences have an affection for. In his trademark comedic, dapper style, Vaughn throws out some metaphorical explanation of how screwed up our nation’s spending problem is, and how that problem affects each and every one of us. The presentation should be simple, but it should also get across a point that people can relate to – much like the Apple vs Microsoft commercials from a few years ago, or the “this is your brain on drugs” campaign from the 1980s. The series could expand to cover over-regulation, over-taxation, and more. They should be aired not on cable news networks, but during some of the popular, prime-time reality shows.

Better still is his follow-up after the client gives him that "Springtime for Hitler" stare:

It’s the clueless, unprincipled vote that conservatives can no longer afford to concede to the Democratic party when it comes to elections. These people are sway-able, and they’re prime for a wake-up call. Dumbing down the conservative message through the pop-culture world may just be the way of doing it.

Dumb ideas aimed at people you don't respect: A winning formula. Especially if --

...if wealthy, conservative donors truly want to make a difference in public perception and support, they might want to consider backing such a shift rather than just the politicians themselves.

-- the goal is not so much to change minds as to cadge change.

MORE ANNALS OF THE CULTURE WARS.

While you're ringing in the new year with champagne and revelry, conservatives are hard at work in  their basement warrens, fashioning a new cultural offensive to lure the proles back in.

Some go the old-fashioned route, declaring victory because all the top movies are rightwing. At TownHall, John Hanlon reviews conservative film victories of 2012.  Lincoln, for example, "showed the Republican president as the grand leader that he was -- fighting against unscrupulous Democrats who wanted slavery to continue, despite the injustice inherent in the practice." Just like today! Also, in The Avengers "two of its story’s main protagonists represent deeply-held conservative beliefs" -- that is, Captain America "believes in old-fashioned values and longs for a simpler time," and Iron Man Tony Stark "isn’t afraid of his own money and doesn’t begrudge himself the luxuries that he has earned through his hard work and dedication," whereas Loki wants a high capital gains tax and free healthcare for all.

With that,  The Dark Knight Rises' "inherent criticism of the Occupy Wall Street movement," and The Hunger Games "Orwellian and disturbing version of an all-powerful government that will be hard to forget," the cineplexes are telling truths the MSM dare not utter. The next step is to have early voting in movie theaters, maybe by getting ushers to collect ballots like they used to collect donations for the Will Rogers Institute.

Crisap at Conservative New Ager goes further, proclaiming Les Miserables "a movie for conservatives." Sure, its impoverished heroes band together to support the 1832 Paris Uprising, but that doesn't make them communards: Jean Valjean, for example, is a "successful businessman who not only created a whole industry in a town, bringing it out of poverty and into an economic renaissance, but who also out of Christian charity... creates hospitals and schools for the poor.  In a day and age when lesser writers like Dickens would just recycle the terrible image of the robber baron, Hugo gave us a noble businessman as an example of what others should be."  He's pretty much Mitt Romney with a rich tenor voice. "And dare we forget," adds Crisap, "that much of the second half of the story is taken up by an uprising by Republican revolutionaries, seeking a return to law and not the capricious whims of a king." See, they're Republicans, just like Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, proving that "if a modern day liberal went back to see him, Hugo would try to slap the stupid out of the Occupy trash." With Zola standing nearby yelling "Lemme at him," no doubt.

Meanwhile at Pajamaland, Bill Whittle answers a viewer question, "What aspect of the culture, movies music books etc., do you think holds the best hope for conservatism?" with this:

I think it's video games. I think it's video games. I think things like Call of Duty and Medal of Honor and so on which basically glorify our military, glorifies 'em for the reasons they should be glorified, . I've been playing video games since high school, junior high, where we played a Star Trek game on a printer... these first-person shooters get better and better and better, and nowadays you get into these first-person shooters and it gives you pretty immersive idea of what it is our guys actually have to go through, minus the actual terror and blood and all that other stuff. And the ability to respawn is a nice thing, I'm sure a lot of guys out in the field like that respawn idea a lot...

For two weeks the NRA's been telling us video games inspire people to shoot up schools, and now here's Whittle telling us they actually make people honor the military and vote Republican. Maybe he's trying to make some kind of point about sublimation.

JON SWIFT ROUNDUP'S POSTED.

Batocchio, bless him, has done the usual bang-up job with the annual Jon Swift Memorial Roundup of top blog posts by your favorite fellow travelers. I found it a great opportunity to revisit writers I never get to read because I'm too busy reading idiots. I've looked at a bunch of the recent entrants and they're excellent. (I especially recommend Lance Mannion's essay on Asperger's; I used to think that I had it, but now I'm quite sure that I'm just an asshole.)  Pick a link, any link, they're all winners.

IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SUCCEED, CRY, CRY AGAIN.

Victor Davis Hanson's on his plinth again, crying "Vanitas!" while the dry ice swirls:

Obama once had mused that he wished to be the mirror image of Ronald Reagan — successfully coaxing America to the left as the folksy Reagan had to the right. Instead, 2012 taught us that a calculating Obama is more a canny Richard Nixon, who likewise used any means necessary to be reelected on the premise that his rival would be even worse. But we know what eventually happened to the triumphant, pre-Watergate Nixon after November 1972; what will be the second-term wages of Obama’s winning ugly?

Impeachment? Sure, why not -- it's not like they can beat him in elections.

But what would be the MacGuffin? This week at WorldNetDaily:

As many news sites and pundits break down the biggest stories of 2012, one story too big to miss has been resurrected by the website TeaParty.org, a story at least one national pundit believes could send Barack Obama to prison. 

The tea-party site posted a Glenn Beck video from October in which the TV and radio host insisted a case for treason could be built against President Obama for his role in the attack of Sept. 11, 2012, in which armed Libyans captured and killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three others at an American diplomatic mission in Benghazi...

A two-month-old Glenn Beck rant. But wait -- WND has more! In another article they say Obama could be impeached for invading Syria -- and Charlie Rangel's on board! Actually Rangel has made common cause with Republican Congressman Walter Jones to warn the President off an intervention, which WND interprets as "NEW IMPEACHMENT THREAT, WITH DEMOCRAT 'INVOLVED.'"

Playing Lafayette to their Founding Fathers is Lyndon LaRouche. Now it's a coalition!

Much as I'd enjoy it, I don't think they're serious. At Forbes Larry Bell tips their hand:

Before I carry this any farther, let me be clear that I believe any chances that President Obama will be impeached range somewhere between nil and none. That ain’t going to happen to the historic first American black president…THE ONE…most particularly when his party controls the Senate and his fast and furious friend is his attorney general. But just for argument’s sake, let’s imagine that these conditions were different, and on top of that, he had ill winds of the liberal media blowing in his face rather than friendly breezes at his back. And what if he wasn’t “cool”…instead, being someone like Nixon, who was the un-coolest guy in almost any crowd?...

So this impeachment thing is going to be like everything else in wingnut world these days: Another excuse to piss and moan about how unfair it all is. Pretty soon they'll be telling us that Obama should have been assassinated by now, but that damned liberal Secret Service keeps protecting him.

GALT 2.0.

We got another Go-Galt guy, this one named Will Spencer, who tells us that "clearly, 'Going Galt' does not mean the same thing to all people. Going Galt is a very individual expression." That's for sure -- we've seen folks Go Galt by leaving lousy tips, by alerting local merchants that they planned to "buy nothing – other than vacations out of the country – until the president exits," by quitting smoking, etc. Or at least talking about doing it.

I had despaired they'd ever get serious about it. Spencer, though, has an impressively meticulous list of tactics, which he has divided into four sections.

It takes awhile to pick up speed. Under "Earn Less Taxable Income," Spencer lists actions I assumed entrepreneurs/hustlers would already have been doing, Galt or no Galt -- "Relocate to a state which charges lower or no income taxes," "Contribute the maximum allowable amount to an IRA," etc. Under "Reduce Expenses and Pay Less Sales Tax," his tips would not be out of place in The Dollar Stretcher -- "Repair and reuse when possible instead of buying replacements," "Buy over the Internet when possible, to avoid sales taxes," etc.

So far so Horatio Alger. Then we get to section three, "Prepare for the Collapse." "Stockpile water, food, and ammunition to prepare for coming shortages" and "Fortify your home to protect your family against looters" are among Spencer's suggestions. A little crazy, but still within the normal conservative spectrum -- after all, even the big-time rightbloggers love to play at disaster preparedness.

But the tide turns in section four, "Civil Disobedience":

This is where things get serious. This isn’t just trying to escape from a corrupt society and let it collapse; many of these steps involve making active decisions and taking risks that could negatively affect your personal liberty. Nonetheless, many people feel that the hope of living in a truly free world is worth the risk.

Tremble, tyrants, at what Will Spencer has in store for you:

• Comply with government orders as slowly as possible. 

• Fill out government forms incompletely and illegibly.

• Pay all taxes and fines at the last possible legal moment.

• Make it difficult for the government to enforce all unconstitutional or immoral laws.

• As a juror, exercise your right to nullify unconstitutional or immoral laws.

• Take multiple copies of all printed government forms to increase their costs.

• Take a job with the government, and then don’t do it.

• Boycott government propaganda outlets such as PBS and NPR.

• Get your money invested offshore while it is still safe and legal to do so.

So next time some guy at the DMV fills in his license application with scribbles, then winks at you; or sneakily takes a whole stack of change of address forms from the post office; or takes a government job and, unlike any other civil servant you've ever seen, goofs off -- then you'll know the revolution is afoot. This time for sure!

UPDATE. Comments  are choice, as usual. Spaghetti Lee nominates further Civil Disobedience tips like "Address all government forms with pseudonyms 'Mike Hunt' and 'Dick Hertz'" and "Inform all government officials that you are rubber and they are glue." hells littlest angel suggests the Galt-goers "get sushi and not pay." And Jeffrey_Kramer has written a stirring Go Galt anthem:

I dreamed I saw John Galt last night
A-watchin' my TV
Says I, “So when's this strike of yours?”
“I'm on it now,” says he. 

I said “And how will sitting here
Bring down this tyranny?”
Said John, “I slay the MSM
By watching Hannity! 

“O John,” I said, “Our tax will rise,
How will you make a stink?”
“I'll write out all my forms,” John said
“With funny-looking ink.” 

“But will you pay this evil tax,
This higher marginal rate?”
“I'll pay it,” John said with a grin,
“But maybe minutes late.” 

“But John, what if the Kenyan sends
us all to FEMA camps?”
“I'll slow the trains of death,” said John
“By using two-cent stamps.” 

Then I woke up, but still I knew --
I'd take it to the bank --
Whatever came, John would be there
To cry and piss and wank.

GOD AND SINNERS RECONCILED.

Most of you have seen it, but if you haven't, this is the real thing:



All honor to Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol -- the recent replay of which was sadly truncated to remove the theatrical framing device. (Did NBC think revealing it to be a stage production starring trouper Quincy Magoo would limit its appeal? Maybe they worried somebody would find the fun over Magoo's blindness offensive.) And there are things to like in many other versions.

But this production with Alastair Sim is in a ripe melodramatic style that I imagine Dickens would have appreciated. It is decidedly not modern. Michael Holdern's Marley's Ghost is eerie as much for his Delsarte presentation as for his predicament -- moaning, keening, "Lon Chaney big." (He even presses the back of his wrist to his forehead and he's not kidding.)  The lower- and middle-class characters are perfect expressions of type, individuated only by the ingenuity of the actors, who have this sort of thing down cold.  And Sim is for me the only Scrooge. His style is big, too, but so is his insight: That Scrooge is at bottom a terribly frightened man whose unsociability and hardness were formed as defenses against pain. He spends half the film in abject terror and dejection. In some versions Scrooge seems to be educated by his Spirits, with some shocks thrown in to underline the lesson, but Sim is emotionally flayed by his, and the Scrooge that's revealed is wonderfully child-like ("I'm as light as a feather! I'm as giddy as a schoolboy!"); in fact, he's sort of a jokester. (The little fright he gives Mrs. Dilber by ruffling his hair on the staircase is one of many sublime moments.) This is redemption through repentance, and appropriate for the feast of Christ.

If that's not your style, there's always Kurtzman. Or have both -- what the hell, we embrace multitudes. Merry Christmas!

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP

-- reviewing 2012 rightblogger highlights. Your typical holiday special: Some familiar bits, some new material, and a happy ending. Enjoy!

UPDATE. While looking cartoons to break up the column I came across this:

I don't remember being able to bring loaded guns aboard commercial airliners even before 9/11. This gun-grabber conspiracy goes deeper than I thought.

YOUR GUESS IS AS GOOD AS MINE.

It is something to see Ole Perfesser Instapundit go for plausible deniability:

I DIDN’T SEE THE PRESS CONFERENCE, but reader Theo X. Rojo writes: “I’m very proud of my membership in the NRA as a ‘Life Member.’ I thought Mr. LaPierre hit it out of the park today.”

Maybe before he can endorse it, he has to watch Kindergarden Cop and see how it all works out.

The weirdest bit, though, is this:

UPDATE: Jeffrey Goldberg: “Reporters on my Twitter feed seem to hate the NRA more than anything else, ever.” I think there’s a race/class angle to that.

Race/class angle? Does he think most journalists are black? Not bloody likely. Or does he think his opponents have been mongrelized?

If you're wondering why our moderate Republican President is doing so well in the polls, look no further.

ANNALS OF THE CULTURE WARS. Culture warriors are having a hard time churning up some actual culture of their own. Take a look at Liberty Island, an arty online pub with Ben Shapiro on the masthead. Back in August Ole Perfesser Instapundit pimped its "call for submissions." Yet four months later the project remains rather thin on content -- among the few contributions is a short story by Shapiro himself, of which we will not speak. This week the Perfesser pimped a new "call for submissions" for the thing. The fundraising ain't going so hot either.

They're probably better off claiming long-dead artists; hell, look how it worked with Orwell. At Pajamas Media, one R.J. Moeller instructs us on the proper way to read Dostoyevsky. I'll give you a hint -- it has something to do with American politics!

In the course of a number of his books – The Devils (aka The Possessed) and The Brothers Karamazov for example – he foretold of the coming socioeconomic and geopolitical nightmares that awaited 20th century societies who would adopt progressivism, nihilism, and socialism as their guiding principles... 

Dostoevsky held that the inherent weakness of the Utopian visions of socialism was a rejection of God and the institution of the family. He saw that for the Left, their politics became their religion. The members of the progressive-Left were demanding standards of Judeo-Christian morality be replaced with new (arbitrary) standards handed down from central councils and planning committees...

But this is my favorite part:

From Walter E. Williams’ August 8th column "Liberals, Progressives, and Socialists":

Well, as long as it keeps them from writing any fiction themselves, I suppose we'll all be happy.

FIGHTING WORDS. Before approving the protest of Erik Loomis' treatment, I went back to my Gabby Giffords rightbloggers column to see if I'd accused Sarah Palin of inciting murder. To my relief, I found I had not.

Maybe it means little more than that the liquor store closed early that night, but I flatter myself that in the main, though I am silly and snarky and snide, and sometimes come dangerously close to willful misapprehension of my targets (and by dangerously close, I mean I do it all the time, waving my Satirist's Immunity card), at least you can say for me that I don't gin up fake outrage over transparently bogus offenses and try to get people fired for them, as have the people who've come after Loomis for saying after Newtown he'd like to see the NRA President's head on a stick. (Hell, I didn't even agree with the drive to fire Rush Limbaugh.)

But enough about what a swell guy I am. There are real differences between the factions which, for want of better terms, I will describe as Us and Them. Though it is meaningful that we are right and they are wrong about nearly everything, how we go about defending our righteous beliefs is at least as meaningful. I suspect there are practical political benefits to not demanding apologies and retaliation like a butthurt asshole, but the main reason for not demanding apologies and retaliation like a butthurt asshole is that demanding apologies and retaliation like a butthurt asshole makes you a butthurt asshole.

FROM THEIR WARM, STICKY HANDS. I trawl other blogs' comments sections but rarely, and almost never to approve. Others are less selective. Ole Perfesser Glenn Reynolds, who has reached the throw-the-gun-at-the-pursuer stage in the current gun control debate but can't bear to part with his weapon, holds this Althouse comment up for commendation:

In the olden days, when leftists wished to argue against gun owners, they claimed that guns were phallic symbols and that the excessive love of guns demonstrated latent homosexuality. Keep oiling and loading that pisstool, big boy. We know what you’re really doing….Can we not now claim that excessive fear of gun ownership indicates a streak of homophobia. They don’t want to ban guns. We know what they really want to ban.

To which the Perfesser adds:

Well, phallophobia, anyway. Which seems about right.

Looks like these guys are taking that "man card" thing a mite serious. Don't worry, fellas; as a person of the "gun" myself, I will defend to the death your right to bear that thang.

UPDATE. The Althouse post to which the comment is attached is ridiculous, too, but it does raise the fascinating possibility that Justice Scalia and Matt K. Lewis are only kidding which, if I could only believe it, would greatly elevate my faith in humanity.

NEW ON THE BLOGROLL. My old friend Joe Mackin had this idea: Write about stuff -- yeah I know, like everyone else -- but limit yourself to two grafs at a time. Thus, 2 Paragraphs. It's much better than it should be, and still better in daily doses. (Here's a prime example.)

My old boss Tony Ortega has left the Voice but continues harrying the derps of Scientology at his own scoop shack, The Underground Bunker. Tony asks the hard questions, like "How'd you like to spend New Year's Eve with Scientologists?" (Short answer: You wouldn't.)  Tony is a realer sort of journalist, and his forthcoming book on everyone's favorite nut-cult should be prime.

GO AHEAD, TRY IT THAT WAY. I'm always eager to learn what it is we liberals are really up to when we pretend to be interested in, say, preventing schoolroom shoot-'em-ups. Daniel Greenfield, "Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and a contributing editor at Family Security Matters," explains our philosophy in "Gun Control, Thought Control, and People Control":

The individual cannot be held accountable for shooting someone if there are guns for sale. Individuals have no role to play because they are not moral actors, only members of a mob responding to stimuli... 

You wouldn't blame a dog for overeating; you blame the owners for overfeeding him. Nor do you blame a dog for biting a neighbor. You might punish him, but the punishment is training, not a recognition of authentic responsibility on the part of the canine. And the way that you think of a dog, is the way that the left thinks of you. When you misbehave, the left looks around for your owner.

That's from John Rawls, right?

Individual behavior is a symptom of a social problem. Identify the social problem and you fix the behavior. The individual is nothing, the crowd is everything. Control the mass and you control the individual.

Or maybe it's from James Q. "Broken Windows" Wilson. It's hard to tell; Greenfield seems to think any attempt to change circumstances to influence behavior is a form of mass hypnosis. (I wonder if a woman ever had him over to her apartment, turned down the lights and put on some soft music. That must have really freaked him out.)

Of course I'm being unfair. Though most of the article consists of enraged, outlandish metaphors -- "You train monkeys to fetch bananas for you. That is how the enlightened elites of the left see the workers whose taxes they harvest," "The Nazis believed that they were the master race because they were genetically superior. Liberals believe that they are the master race..." etc. -- Greenfield does have one real-life example to buttress his argument:

That is how the left approached this election. Instead of appealing to individual interests, they went after identity groups. They targeted low information voters and used behavioral science to find ways to manipulate people. The right treated voters like human beings. The left treated them like lab monkeys. And the lab monkey approach is triumphantly toted by progressives as proof that the left is more intelligent than the right. And what better proof of intelligence can there be than treating half the country like buttons of unthinking responses that you can push to get them to do what you want.

Greenfield's argument is perfect in its way. Have anti-pollution laws made our air and water less foul? Proof of liberal contempt for the individualism of the polluter! Do blacks rise to heretofore unrealized positions of respect and even prominence in society? Liberal mind control techniques at work!

So if the kind of gun control people are calling for now (and which, by the way, is Greenfield's ostensible theme) were actually tried and shown to reduce gun violence in this country,  that would make it even more of an outrage.

This is the sort of conservatism I look forward to seeing more of: One where they gibber and spit over our successes.

UPDATE. In another post, Greenfield asks:

And yet would Thomas Jefferson, the abiding figurehead of the Democratic Party, who famously wrote, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants", really have shuddered at the idea of peasants with assault rifles, or would he have grinned at the playing field being leveled some more?

I think he would have swum to England to tell King George he'd made a terrible mistake.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the brethren's reaction to Newtown and how guns don't kill people, [fill in the blank] kills people.

CULTURE COPS, OUTREACH DIVISION. Ole Perfesser Glenn Reynolds offers his services as culture-war consultant to the GOP:

Which is why I think that rich people wanting to support the Republican Party might want to direct their money somewhere besides TV ads that copy, poorly, what Lee Atwater did decades ago. 

My suggestion: Buy some women’s magazines. No, really. Or at least some women’s Web sites... 

...those magazines and Web sites see themselves, pretty consciously, as a propaganda arm of the Democratic Party. So while nine out of 10 articles may be the usual stuff on sex, diet and shopping, the 10th will always be either soft p.r. for the Democrats or soft — or sometimes not-so-soft — hits on Republicans.

Two things: 1.) What is it with Republicans and women? I guess the New York Post editorial board figures their readership in 90% misogynist, so they didn't have to worry about alienating female voters by implying they're idiots. 2.) The magic of the free market -- which suggests that gal mags prosper by feeding their readers what they know they'll like, rather than indoctrinating them against their will -- always seems to disappear from the conservative theology whenever they strap on the Goebbels revolver.

For $150 million, you could buy or start a lot of women’s Web sites. And I’d hardly change a thing in the formula. The nine articles on sex, shopping and exercise could stay the same. The 10th would just be the reverse of what’s there now.

Go ahead, guys, try it that way. But I know them -- they'll never let well enough alone, and soon you'll have this:

UPDATE. This is officially confirmed as a bad idea: Jonah Goldberg approves!

WELL, YOU TRIED, PART II. Ace of Spades, whom we discovered trying to engage the "culture" yesterday, is still at it: He read an interview in the Washington Post with the Pajamas Media nut Roger Simon about Simon's new play, which tells the story of, get this, Walter Duranty. The interview is conducted by Jennifer Rubin, whom Ace normally derides as a RINO wet, but all is forgiven because Ace has his beret on and is trying to look at the arts  -- let's see, how did he put it -- "simply because they're interesting, without any direct or indirect implication on our politics." Which means of course --

[Simon] says it's neither conservative nor liberal, and I believe him, but there is hardly any question that no liberal would explore the question of what happens when a large group of people begin subverting the truth for political purposes. Well, they wouldn't explore this going on in a liberal institution. I'm sure they'd explore it in, say, the conservative movement. 

And that's part of the problem right there, isn't? Liberals style themselves truth-tellers and truth-seekers, but as we're seeing yesterday and today, they embargo truths that aren't helpful to the Great Patriotic Cause of Progressivism/Marxism.

-- it's still more argh blargh liberalz blocked mah big hit play.

Ace's attempt to break into the liberal arts by sitting sullenly in the corner of a Modern Drama class and drawing superheroes in his notebook is extremely disappointing to me. I don't know why, but I keep hoping against hope that he'll live up to his putative expectations of himself, and he never does.

I guess I'm just tired of all the rightwing gabble about "culture" being such stupid bullshit. In the Ace post previously treated, he referred to an old Rod Dreher whither-culture bleat that, expectedly, is worse than useless -- Dreher too seems to intuit that if you can't drop politics long enough to actually engage your imagination, you're not going to make any art, but he also seems to believe the acceptable alternative is endless pseudo-philosophical gassing along the lines of "conservatives have names like Lenny and liberals have names like Carl." (And if you are foolish enough to follow Dreher's links, I warn you, you will be punished by Dreher and Will Wilkinson talking about country music. You'll need about a half-hour of Uncle Dave Macon to wash that out of your head.)

I have a theory about why this is all coming up now. These guys recently lost something they'd been living on for years -- the illusion that they are America, all by themselves, with no bleeding-hearts allowed. It's an illusion we liberals learned to give up on long ago, of course. But it may be hard for conservatives to learn that most voters are okay with the man they're convinced is a Maoist Black Power Chicago thug -- or at least that voters like him better than them. In their dejection they wander the streets, and finally enter the libraries and music shops, pick up the books and instruments there, and, peering at them like curious apes, wonder: Maybe pretty thing faggots like am powerful? Maybe if Ace use them him feel good?

I think they're less interested in art than in art therapy.

WELL, YOU TRIED. Hey guess what -- Ace of Spades is getting into the conservative-culture thing!

A film is usually about something a little bit more complicated and a little more human than a seven-word bumper-sticker sentiment. A good film always is, a good novel always is. This sort of reductivist approach just isn't interesting or worthy. At least not to me. 

Don't we do some things just for fun? Or read some things simply because they're interesting, without any direct or indirect implication on our politics?

This is so promising -- not profound, just unusually thoughtful for Ace -- that I began to think he was serious. I'm such a naïf! Some paragraphs later:

I suppose I'm suggesting a sort of Invisible Hand in imagination or intellectual inquiry -- a free market in ideas should wind up producing the best ideas, and if it doesn't, the market is rigged to guarantee bad results. 

I think the market is so currently rigged -- first, by a venal monopoly which uses its market position in one market (the media, culture, the academy) to leverage a dominant position in another (the political realm)...

Back to the bitch-bunker, boys! George Clooney can rest easy.

MISTER, I MET A MAN ONCE. At National Review, David French tells us how Big Gummint done in his ole buddy Rob (not his real name) in Tennessee, who "supported himself and made his child-support payments on time" until the Obama Recession of '09:

In early 2009, Rob was laid off from his latest job and immediately began receiving unemployment benefits... He looked for work, but he looked less and less diligently with each passing week. Benefits were extended — then extended again. While unemployed, he lived a far more sedate lifestyle and quickly began gaining weight — eating foods purchased with government assistance — and as he gained weight, his health deteriorated. His joints ached, his blood pressure rose, and he became extremely anxious. 

Knowing friends on disability — and realizing that the benefits were roughly equal to the pay he received at his last job — he applied, claiming that his muscular-skeletal problems combined with his anxiety prevented him from working. Within months, he was approved, and he stopped any effort to look for work, knowing that if he found a job his benefits would cease. His sedate lifestyle continued, his health deteriorated even further, and — soon enough — he was truly "disabled" by any objective medical measure.

In other words, we safety-netted Rob into chronic illness and long-term dependency.

In the old America, Rob might have starved, but he'd have starved proudly and wouldn't be having no fat-people problems. And if Rob should get the diabeetus, I bet Big Gummint'll give him medicine for it, thus denying him a dignified early death.

As a liberal, I'd say Rob's sad case calls for federal Bowflex subsidies.

THUMBS DOWN. I hate to get on Glenn Greenwald's bad side but his claim that he isn't really reviewing-without-having-seen Zero Dark Thirty, when his hostile non-review contains phrases like this --

That this film would depict CIA interrogation programs as crucial in capturing America's most hated public enemy, and uncritically herald CIA officials as dramatic heroes, is anything but surprising.

--and--

...the film's glorifying claims about torture are demonstrably, factually false.

--and--

What this film does, then, is uncritically presents as fact the highly self-serving, and factually false, claims by the CIA...

-- is extremely disingenuous. Greenwald's points about some of the journalism surrounding the film are valid, but his characterizations of the film itself are ridiculous. Zero Dark Thirty isn't a shadowy political figure whose hidden movements you track by eyewitness reports. It's a fucking movie. Have your editor buy you a ticket.

This is still more proof -- as if more were needed -- that you shouldn't bring your political obsessions to the temple of art. It is both more personally edifying and more pleasing to the Muses to approach a work of art as a work of art, however obnoxious it may be to you on other grounds, than to approach it as a political phenomenon. Because when you do the latter, you get into company you really don't want to be keeping.

If the thing you've actually seen, heard, or read is a piece of shit, then fire away.

I would explain further, yet again, why this is so, but I'm busy and I assume adults already know this.

UPDATE. Lotta pushback in comments. Like I said, what people are saying about the movie may be stupid, but the movie itself will make or not make its own case. Right now the whole thing's reminding me that once upon a time the big issue with Citizen Kane was supposed to be whether or not Welles had been fair to William Randolph Hearst.

CLOSET CASE. Ace of Spades:

Conservatives who live in liberal areas, or move in liberal circles, on the other hand, tend to either be pretty quiet about politics or, if trying to suss someone else out, employ shibboleths to see if the other party is a member of the tribe. 

I don't have a go-to shibboleth for this purpose. I suppose that something noncomittal and sneaky, like "Are you a fan of David Mamet?," might work. Hey, you might just mean his movies and plays. Alternatively, you might mean his recent political conversion to conservatism. A member of the tribe might pick up on that last bit and say something like, "I've become a bigger fan lately."

Maybe they should just go with a hanky code.

(There's a whole Vince Vaughn section at the link, for those of you who like it rough.)

THE TRUTH REVEALED! You heard that Obama has to take the Second Inaugural Oath on January 20, but it's Sunday this year so he's doing a private oath then and a public oath on Monday, right? OK then --  Alana Goodman, Commentary:

Politico reports that Obama’s second inaugural oath for the “most transparent administration in history” might be administered privately, without any media present... 

...Obama hasn’t exactly followed through on his vow to run a more transparent administration. It’s about time the press finally started calling him out on it. Maybe now that he’s won reelection the media will actually do its job and report critically on his presidency. At the very least this is a sign he’s not going to get the kid-gloves treatment he had during the election season.

Would you be surprised to learn Goodman's not the only nutcake making a thing out of this?

Andrew Malcolm, IBD: "So Obama, who promised once to have the most open administration in history, will take the presidential oath in private on Sunday, Jan. 20."

Michael Fletcher, Bearing Drift: "Conspiracy or not, it’s quite odd that the 'most transparent administration in history (TM)' doesn’t want the country to see the second term begin."

Rick Moran, American Thinker: "Maybe Obama wants it private because he wants to be sworn in using the Koran. Perhaps he's changed the oath, taking out 'faithfully' ('execute the office') and that last bit about preserving the Constitution... "

Dammit, Moran stole my joke! But thanks to my connections in the Administration I can at least show you the planned staging for the event:

It's just a rough; in the actual performance, Obama will trample the Constitution Gangnam Style.  And if you really want to see it, of course, they'll be showing it later on BET.