NEVER FORGET.

From James Taranto's Bergdahl thing:

There are some intriguing similarities between young Bergdahl and the young [John] Kerry...

No, it's not just a casual slur. Taranto proceeds to connect the 2004 swift-boating of decorated naval officer Kerry with the transformation of Bergdahl into the Manchurian Candidate by wingnut propagandists. Only in Taranto's view, that's a good thing. He actually compares Bergdahl's youthful despair ("the horror that is america is disgusting") with Kerry's reports to Congress on Vietnam atrocities, and even duplicates the swift-boat team's bizarre characterization of same ("[Kerry] stood before the television audiences and claimed that the 500,000 men and women in Vietnam, and in combat, were all villains -- there were no heroes") as if it were still convincing to anyone besides diehards this far beyond its sell-by date.

Then Taranto issues some clouds of gas to suggest that, despite centuries of tradition, the top brass secretly disapproved the Kenyan Usurper's scheme to reclaim the soldier because, allegedly,  the rescue efforts cost them men. (I never realized before this Saving Private Ryan was bullshit.) Not that these losses are confirmed, nor need they be; if "the Pentagon has been pushing back against claims, noted here yesterday, that the Army did take casualties as a result of the early search for Bergdahl," says Taranto, well, they have to do that, but never mind:

Today's Times features an even more detailed debunking, under the headline "Can Bowe Bergdahl Be Tied to 6 Lost Lives? Facts Are Murky." Murky they may be, but the Pentagon's defensiveness on this point belies the administration's suggestion that the military is heedless of costs when it seeks to rescue captured servicemen.

Don't try to find a coherent argument in that paragraph; as they used to say in Vietnam, it don't mean a thing.

And anyway, it doesn't matter what the generals say, or even what common sense says -- what's important is what some soldiers who served with him say about Bergdahl, and if they didn't like him, then rescuing him was a bad idea. True, the soldiers themselves didn't say he should have been left behind to die, but that sort of analysis is above their pay grade -- Taranto can handle that.

If the writing and reasoning is more slovenly than usual for Taranto, it's easy to see why: Like most conservatives who haven't yet gone full Rand Paul, he expects all he has to do is put up some gush about "the centrality of honor to military culture" and blow Taps, and everyone will accept that he speaks for George Washington and all the grunts and dogfaces since Valley Forge. It remains to be seen whether, after years of deadly foreign misadventure promoted by their propaganda,  many people still believe them.

IF YOU'RE PISSED THAT A BURGER-FLIPPER GOT A RAISE, YEWWW MIGHT BE A WINGNUT.

Aargh blaargh from "professional comedian and writer" Stephen Kruiser over Seattle raising its minimum wage to $15:

Hippie infestation... 

Apparently unaware that it doesn’t have the weather advantages that other places pricing themselves out of existence do (Los Angeles, anyone?), Seattle seems to be ready to set a record for how many businesses it can ruin. 

The earnest idiots who whip up this minimum wage frenzy... "...BECAUSE FAIRNESS.” No discussion of the fact that an entry level, part time job isn’t supposed to be your adult income wage for life. 

What they don’t discuss is just how stifling this progressive feel good, math-hating nonsense is to current and aspiring small business owners. 

Because they want to drive as many people as they can into financial hell.

Seriously, what is he bitching about? He believes in the market, right? So this foolish decision will cause businesses to abandon commie Seattle for the red-state hinterland, and capitalism wins!  I can see those bright folks currently working at Seattle-based businesses like Amazon, Starbucks, Safeco,  Nordstrom, Cray, Corbis, et alia, not to mention the venture capitalists and internet jockeys, and the hipster entrepreneurs of Sub Pop and Babeland, deciding they've had enough of this command economy and running off to Fritters, Alabama or North Dakota to enjoy all the freedom and fracking.

Maybe this'll be the tipping point for that great blue-red inversion of economic energy Joel Kotkin,  Rick Perry, and other great minds are always predicting.

Of course it'll take a while:

As Steve Allen first said and I like to repeat, how ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen the farm?

UPDATE. Some commenters are wondering what kind of capitalist announces his desire to keep workers' wages down. I doubt Kruiser really qualifies as a capitalist, though maybe he employs a maid. Neither do the wingnut-welfare cases at libertarian flagship Reason qualify, which explains this headline: "Seattle Prepares for Robot Revolution by Setting $15 Minimum Wage." At first I thought they meant that granting peons an almost-living wage would speed the rise of robot workers, though bosses need no such provocation and in fact already employ robots as soon as they can get them. You aren't going to slow them down by pretending to be happy with shit wages.

Then I realized it was a revenge fantasy.

Interesting too that they found a cleaning lady who allegedly had a "401k, health insurance, paid holiday, and vacation" only to see it see it ruined by the high-minimum-wage commissars. Maybe the poor woman should get out of that line of work and start driving a cab.

ACTING OUT.

Conservatives have had such a hard-on for Lena Dunham over the years that I've gotten not one but two Voice columns out of it. I'll never want for material, it seems; at National Review, Quin Hillyer ejaculates this under a big picture of Dunham:

If girls act like Lena Dunham’s character on Girls, they are sluts.

Hillyer's not just hard for Dunham, though, or even for women. This is one of those yeah I'm politically incorrect so what you pussies articles conservatives sometimes put up to feel butch. But it seems like it's been a while since we've seen one; it certainly seems as if Hillyer's had his sackful stored up a long, long time, and does not have complete control of his apparatus. For example:

And yes, I did say “aliens.” That is the precise, and precisely accurate, word for illegal immigrants. We won’t let the language be denuded any further just because somebody’s feelings got hurt. We long ago lost the word “gay.” The Left is now expropriating the word “marriage.” Several years ago, somebody tried to take away the perfectly wonderful “niggardly.” Well, I’m sorry, but they can’t have “alien,” too. And if Barack Obama happens to be miserly, then, well, he is niggardly, too.

 At National Review, no one suggests to your date it's maybe time to go home, apparently.

It's like he's reading slurs off fast-moving cue cards. Why is he straining so hard? Here's a hint:

Meanwhile, back to marriage: Many on the left say not only that the state should legally recognize just about any commitment somebody might decide to solemnize, but also that the state should penalize a private decision not to bake a cake or create a bouquet for a particular commitment ceremony. Now that should be grounds for civil disobedience. Hundreds or thousands of people should stand in solidarity with the baker. 

Except Hillyer can't get hundreds or thousands of people to do this, not because we live under Liberal Fascism, but because even relatively apolitical people would look at his rant and recognize he's not making a point about liberty, but just being an asshole. The politically incorrect bit can be fun once in a while, but it gets old fast -- and these guys have been at it for decades. (When was the last time you pulled down the P.J. O'Rourke and had a laugh about how bad the poor smell?) I think Hillyer must know the squares won't get it, and so sprays his spoor as a signaling device for such Republican Party Reptiles as are still around. There may not be as many of them as there once were, but at least they get his jokes.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the latest conservative "reform" craze. C'mon guys, I had to read all those manifestos, the least you can do is look at the column.

UPDATE. Comments are busy, considering this was a longish, wonkish column. Well, that's the sort of bright boys and girls this lantern attracts! Regarding the Yglesias-Ayn Rand anti-licensing alliance, Derelict says, "Personally, I'm looking forward to eliminating the onerous licensing requirements for airline pilots. I've spent many hours on Microsoft Flight Sim, so handling that New York-Frankfort Airbus A-380 flight should be a no-brainer." "Sure, there will be a few crashes in the transition period," adds montag2, "but consumers will quickly get the hang of which flights have competent pilots and push the industry in the right directions." Freedom!

Several commenters are creeped out by the reformers' weird family-values theories -- e.g., that if you make it hard for paupers to afford non-family alternatives like day-care, they'll rely on relatives to watch the kids and thus become more tight-knit. "They want to return to the days when entire families did piecework in their homes," marvels Shakezulu. "That way the family can be together while it works." It's the reasoning behind their policies on entitlements, too.

AROUND THE HORN.

•  I've always enjoyed Armond White's totally insane film criticism, and now that he's at National Review he's gotten even better, leaning more heavily on his culture-warrior malarkey. Since his targets are mostly crap like Maleficent ("All that’s certain is Jolie and Disney’s intention to overturn fundamental moral precepts"), who gives a shit? It's even funnier when White celebrates the "affectionate, often ribald humanity" of... Adam Sandler (who is also the target of the "Lamestream" and its "barely veiled political invective" -- why, do you know, they even call him "tasteless or corny"! Yeah, Adam Sandler!). But in one way it's sad: Once upon a time National Review hired critics like John Simon. Simon was temperamentally conservative (that is, an asshole) and at least as funny in his disapproval as White, but  also interesting when he liked something -- because, for one thing, that happened so rarely, and, for another, he was an astute observer whose tastes were as broad as his standards were high. He could identify and explain the true art in films that wouldn't seem to his tastes -- not only Bergman and Wertmuller, but also, for example, John Avildsen's Joe. Sociopolitical analysis didn't play a big role in his criticism because he focused on the art. It's a shame that no one could expect such a thing of National Review nowadays.

•  Ramesh Ponnuru on Hillary Clinton's age: "Age was a legitimate issue to consider when McCain ran for president. (I wrote an article urging him to allay concerns about his age by pledging to serve one term and picking a reassuring running mate. His campaign let me know my advice was considered, but he went a different way.)" As I am a Christian I want to believe "let me know my advice was considered" is a joke on Ponnuru's part. If so, nice one! There, that's my bipartisanship quota for the month. (Ponnuru's plan for McCain 2008 was sweet reason itself compared to Noah Millman's Palin-resigns-upon-McCain's-death idea. I wonder if the McCain campaign called him back.)

UPDATES.

•  No week is complete without a Jonah Goldberg mouthfart. This one's on the UCSB killings:

And, yes, guns need to be part of that equation. But blanket efforts to ban guns seem like an analogous effort to ban dangerous speech or art.

"Seem like an analogous effort" is the mush-mouth tipoff that Goldberg is lost in the clouds (actually, "blanket efforts to ban guns" is similarly meaningless), but what makes it even dumber is that for years Goldberg's been telling readers that he's in favor of censorship. I guess defending guns after a massacre is such a key part of the National Review mission that he doesn't mind breaking character for it.

•  Oh Christ, Patheos' "Postmodern Conservative" things has been transferred to National Review, and its greatest horror so far is a 2,000-word essay by Carl Eric Scott ("I’m a Gen-X academic arguably too interested in rock") called, I swear to God, "Carl’s Rock Songbook No. 95, Woods, 'Moving to the Left.'" Get a load:

[On some stupid Millenials survey] You don’t need a weathervane to know that those sociological findings predict a leftist direction for politics. 

Conservative columnists Jonah Goldberg and Ross Douthat noted that the report’s results were not exactly comforting to progressives either, as they showed that the habits of trust and involvement vital to any genuinely democratic movement are also in marked decline. When you listen to contemporary rock music, you hear frustrated recognition of this by the millennials themselves. For example, while Mikal Cronin’s “Apathy” provides poetic affirmation of the report’s finding about declining religious identification – old men, sing the song about Jesus, it deadpans at one point – its main message is the repeated refrain I don’t want apathy. Perceptive Millennials fear that many of their peers have fallen into a politically apathetic pattern, and that they could be drawn into the same.

Look what's happening out in the street/ Got to revolution, got to revolution!

...Woods has not been a noticeably political band, but as they’ve always cultivated a hippie-esque sound and image, and as they prominently display a peace symbol on their new album, we can assume their political sympathies are at least somewhat leftist... 

The other possibility is that Earl himself isn’t a good leftist at heart but, as the leader of an artsy Brooklyn rock band, finds the typical bohemian expectation of and faith in leftist social change wearisome.

Another possibility is fuck you.

SEASON 7, EPISODE 7.

(Mild spoilers) (And yes, I'm later than usual on this episode, but I am writing for the ages, not for a prestige online journal mining the glass-teat afterglow.) This one went by in a rush, and no wonder: It was about the silliest Mad Men episode yet. I mean, forget the ending (for now, we'll get to it) -- this is an episode in which Peggy, transformed into an unbitch by reconciling with father figure Don, not only wins the Big Account but gets a phone number from a nice handsome day-laborer, whom I'm sure bitch-Peggy would have found beneath her. She's even nice to Julio.

Also, upon review Cutler's "You're just a bully and a drunk -- a football player in a suit" is the sort of thing that would have cracked me up on SCTV's The Days of The Week.

On the other hand, two phone calls from Don to the non-Peggy women in his life are bracing and sensible. The lesser of these is the kiss-off with Megan, because that was always a ridiculous relationship, but it was an appropriately low-key way to end it. Better still is his call to Sally, because he's doing what he always does, trying to play sky-God Daddy -- "Don't be so cynical. You want your little brothers to talk that way?" -- and Sally is so clearly over it. She dropped that receiver with authority.

Now to Cooper's exit. I never liked that character or his zen bullshit. I know one of the reasons Weiner wanted Robert Morse for this show was his pedigree as the original J. Pierrepont Finch in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, but before this episode I don't believe they ever really lined that equity up with the actual show. What was Bert Cooper? He was supposed to be old Madison Avenue, but he seemed mostly a dispenser of cracker-barrel wisdom dressed in a fine manner and complex sentences. Maybe he was supposed to be a mix of Leo Burnett's "sodbusting corniness" and the mandarin sleekness of old ad grandees. But he never registered with me as anything but someone everyone had to respect because he'd been around.

This episode attempted to change that, and entirely after Cooper's death. First of all, the climactic partners meeting is really like something out of How to Succeed, or The Solid Gold Cadillac or a dozen other old Broadway business farces. Once we are hustled past the fact that there's no actual contract to vote on, the whole scene's a riot -- with Joan and Pete perched in a corner, dollar signs in their eyes, Don Draper talking Ted Chaough off the ledge, and Cutler's curtain-closing button -- "It's a lot of money" -- worthy of Moss Hart. We're a long way from the existential dread of Don Draper.

So it was easier then to accept Bert appearing in a fantasy sequence, crooning "The Best Things in Life are Free." I'm sure Weiner was thinking of "Brotherhood of Man," the finale of How to Succeed, but that would have been too much of a muchness. As it was the Tin Pan Alley tune was much more to the point. Earlier, when Roger called Don about Cooper's death, he lamented that "the last thing I said to him was the lines to some old song." That was "Let's Have Another Cup of Coffee," a similarly breezy Depression-era number. I took the symmetry to mean that Cooper was meant to be the embodiment of the blithe bullshit on which advertising is based -- the smile and shoeshine that rings cash registers. Advertising is real and rough business, but the giants of it usually had some sense of its fun and absurdity, too, which informs the popular perception of the craft. Don, on the other hand, is deadly serious about it; recall his speech about love and nylons and no tomorrow. Both Cooper and Don are acquainted with hard times, but Cooper has always chosen to float above where Don has wallowed. That's why Cooper's dancing in the afterlife.

For the show's purposes, the important thing -- at least it may be important; we have another delayed-half-season season to go -- is that Don sees him.

COMRADES! IS NEEDED CONSERVATIVE COMICS TO BRING TRUTH TO MASSES!

In the latest culture war eruption, the horrible Amity Shlaes wants conservatives to start producing propaganda comics, but first she has to explain to her apparently geriatric shut-in audience "the oddly named genre of the 'graphic novel'":

Counterintuitive as it may sound, these graphic novels not only feature nonfiction but also lend themselves enviably to difficult nonfiction topics. Take Persepolis, a mauve-and-grey depiction of a girl’s life in the Iranian Revolution... Maus, another graphic novel...

Also, sometimes they even animate these drawings! What a world we live in.

What’s more, these long cartoon books have much the same capacity as films to entice the reader to delve deeper. As Bill Bennett, one who gets the medium, noted recently: “After reading the comic of The Iliad, then I read the children’s edition of The Iliad, and then I read The Iliad.”

I don't know what's funnier: The idea that the noted blowhard Bill Bennett "gets" graphic novels, or that he worked his way to The Iliad via comics.

What was and is troubling, therefore, is that the many of the more serious graphic novels are like Marx’s Capital — reinforcement weapons for progressive, or even outright Marxist, messages.

Shlaes mournfully catalogues some of these wrongthink funnies ("other graphic novels lionize redistributionists and revolutionaries"). The saddest bit, for me, is her description of "a hilarious but anti-capital comic"; I imagine the poor woman tittering and then shuddering, a la Justin Green's Binky Brown: But my thoughts -- no! -- impure thoughts -- no!

"But where are the conservative mangas and graphic novels?" asks Shlaes. Get this:

One explanation for the missing graphic novels is the political bent of the artists themselves. A number of these talents — some of the best, in fact — study and draw together in White River Junction, Vermont, not too far from the home of President Coolidge. A few years ago I traveled up to this cartoon heaven to find someone to draw my own print book, Forgotten Man, or even to help illustrate a bio of the local president, Coolidge. The artists had to work to live, clearly. But this kind of work, they let me know, and in the politest way, they would not take. I left impressed: At least they lived by their convictions.

Rather than wait for the Invisible Hand to starve the Vermont commie-artists into acquiescence, Shlaes  found someone else to do a comic of her book, and advises her comrades to follow suit. First she flatters them, though -- which makes sense, because the target audience, wingnuts with money, is probably thinking they spend enough keeping the thinktanks running and Jonah Goldberg farting out columns, so why should they pay for comics too?

Shlaes assures them she understands: "conservatives themselves have expressed no demand for graphic novels: After all, they have plenty of lively content of their own." When you've got the films of Dinesh D'Souza and books like God Less America to amuse you, comics may seem a useless luxury. Also, "giving in to the graphic style is perceived as dumbing down, and offends conservatives’ inner librarian." So you guys are too smart, too intellectual to do this "visual art" thing. But you should bite the bullet, pull out the wallet, and find some art-drones to do your funnies anyway:

But this attitude, high-minded though it be, is itself a bit of a manga. After all, almost nobody reads books these days. Not radio hosts, not newspaper editors, not union officials, not politicians, and certainly not children. By turning their collective nose up at graphic books, conservatives surrender education ground to the more artful progressives. In the case of economics, conservatives leave fans of markets, not to mention fans of balanced history, unequipped to rebut when the progressive cartoon books come along.

The dummies don't read, and they're being exploited by "artful progressives" -- so we must hire somebody to counteract them. After all, "these long cartoon books have much the same capacity as films to entice the reader to delve deeper" -- so even if they have no intellectual value in and of themselves, they may lead the sheeple on to Hayek and Ramesh Ponnuru.

This is how things look to someone who has no idea what art is for, and who thinks people only respond to it because they're stupid.

JAY-Z DELENDA EST.

From "The Real Fat Cats" by Victor Davis Hanson, December 13, 2012:

Who exactly were the rich who, as the president said, were not “paying their fair share”? The rapper Jay-Z (net worth: nearly $500 million)? The actor Johnny Depp (2011 income: $50 million)? Neither seems to have heard the president’s earlier warning that “at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”

From "Conservative Populism" by Victor Davis Hanson, December 18, 2012:

The truth is that everyone from the college president who gets his taxes paid by his university to Jay-Z is a beneficiary of Republican advocacies that he damns.

From "The New Affirmative Action" by Victor Davis Hanson, March 14, 2013:

Will the children of multimillionaire Tiger Woods — or of Jay-Z and Beyoncé — qualify for special consideration on the theory that their racial pedigrees or statistical underrepresentation in some fields will make their lives more challenging than the lives of poor white children in rural Pennsylvania or second-generation Arab-Americans in Dearborn, Mich.?

From "The War against the Young" by Victor Davis Hanson, April 9, 2013:

The administration seems aware of the potential paradoxes in this reverse “What’s the matter with Kansas?” syndrome of young people voting against their economic interests. Thus follows the constant courting of the hip and cool Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Lena Dunham, Occupy Wall Streeters, and others who blend pop culture, sex, youth, energy, and fad...

From "Our Postmodern Angst," by Victor Davis Hanson, August 13, 2013:

Today, obesity, not malnutrition, is America’s epidemic. Our youth’s education is hindered by too many cell phones, not access to too few books. Misogynistic and obscene lyrics may have enriched Jay-Z, but they reflect the sort of values that lead millions to remain in poverty, rather than becoming disciplined cadres organizing for social justice.

From "An American Satyricon," by Victor Davis Hanson, August 27, 2013:

Civil rights once meant an existential struggle between the oppressed and villains like Bull Connor with his dogs and fire hoses. Now Oprah is miffed over being treating rudely while eyeing a $38,000 purse in Switzerland... near-billionaire rapper Jay-Z warns that the have-nots may riot...

From "Miley Cyrus and Ugly Sex" by Victor Davis Hanson, September 3, 2013:

Where is the elemental inspiration, the existential need to tap popular anguish and turn it into revolutionary artistic expression?
If multimillionaire rapper Jay-Z performs at the White House, where is to be found the font of resistance? In short — resistance to what?

From "Medieval Liberals" by Victor Davis Hanson, October 8, 2013:

As recompense, [the Medieval Liberal] is not just liberal, but liberally hip and cool... in his 50s he listens to Jay-Z and Beyoncé as well as Springsteen and the Dead.

From "Progressive Insurance" by Victor Davis Hanson, April 15, 2014:

Certainly racial venom is not a career ender for the fully insured. Jay-Z, a frequent White House guest, is not shy about wearing a Five-Percent Nation medallion, which reflects an ideology that considers whites inferior devils...

From "The End of Affirmative Action" by Victor Davis Hanson, May 1, 2014:

Class divisions are mostly ignored in admissions and hiring criteria, but in today’s diverse society, they often pose greater obstacles than race. The children of one-percenters such as Beyoncé and Jay-Z will have doors opened to them that are not open to those in Pennsylvania who, according to President Obama, “cling to guns or religion.”

From "Egalitarian Grandees" by Victor Davis Hanson, May 27, 2014:

Being liberal in the abstract also provides psychological penance for enjoying the good life in the concrete. A Johnny Depp or a Jay-Z is cool and therefore free to enjoy compensation based entirely on what the free market will bear.

I feel bad for the kids, who have this instead of Biggie and Tupac.

UPDATE. In comments (always worth visiting! No trip to alicublog is complete without the comments!) D Johnston observes, "Everything [VDH] writes about politics is just a random assortment of talking points, creaky old bugaboos and Mark Steyn-brand simulated humor, all tied together with the pseudo-scholarly pablum of a bright but seriously self-obsessed high school senior." Johnston does us the further favor of identifying the paragraph subjects in Hanson's latest column: "Para 1 - Elizabeth Warren, Al Gore; Para 2 - Michelle Obama; Para 3 - 'Silicon Valley to Chevy Chase'; Para 4 - Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz; Para 5 - The Steyer brothers and 'the media'..."

You get the idea. The basic Hanson is that rich liberals are hypocrites because all liberals are supposed to live in rags and filth like their best friends The Poor -- I think that was in Herodotus -- and because they made their money in the arts and sciences they are morally inferior to people who made their money buying property with oil under it (whom Hanson takes care to associate with hard-bitten sons of toil, usually by adjacent description).

Also, Hanson's most recent column actually contains a reference to Pajama Boy. Is this what they mean when they call Hanson a classicist?

HOW BULLSHIT WORKS, PART 32,456,798.

Sometimes one little thing just shows how they do so perfectly that I have to call it out. At Right Wing News and other wingnut outlets, Walter Williams goes on and on about how terrible it is that schoolteachers are indoctrinating your children to believe that white people are treated differently than black people in this country. Can you imagine! Here's one of Williams' laugh lines:

But the propaganda and lunacy go even deeper. Jacqueline Battalora, professor of sociology and criminal justice at Saint Xavier University, informed conference participants that “white people did not exist before 1681. Again, white people did not exist on planet earth until 1681″ (http://tinyurl.com/lkoqj9b). That’s truly incredible. If Professor Battalora is correct, how are we to identify William Shakespeare (1564), Sir Isaac Newton (1642), John Locke (1632), Leonardo da Vinci (1452) and especially dear Plato (428 B.C.)? Were these men people of color, or did they not exist?

Har de har har. Now here's what Battalora was talking about, from her book: When American colonists devised their early anti-miscegnation law, which law was "neither derived from the statutory laws of antiquity nor from the common law of England but was a creation of colonial North America," they took a while to refine their phrasing, starting with "free borne" women who should not marry "slaves" but proceeding finally to a new distinction:

The Maryland law of 1681 includes the first appearance of the term "white" used to designate a distinct group of humanity in law, and served as a corrective to the antimiscegnation law of 1664 that had the unintended effect of encouraging slaveholders to promote the very marriages the law expressly intended to discourage (Arch. Md. 7: 203-205). The law provides that freeborn English or "white" women who enter into marriage with a slave of African descent do so "to the satisfaction of their lascivious and lustful desires" and to the "disgrace not only of the English but also of many other Christian nations" (Ibid. at 204). This language reveals important perceptions and reflects persuasive efforts to shape a human group now being referred to as "white."

Whatever you think of Battalora's scholarship, it's obvious that she didn't mean that darker and lighter people did not exist before that law -- she was talking about a specific and real legal event. I don't know whether Williams knew this or not, but it probably wouldn't matter if he did -- indeed, other conservatives express similar incredulity even when they demonstrate awareness of what Battalora is talking about. The mere idea that the category "white" might not be God-given is risible to them.

Don't let it get around, but I really do try to get what these guys are saying and, at least going in, admit the possibility that they have some kind of argument. But so often -- I'm tempted to say increasingly , though it may just be that I'm noticing it more -- conservatives are so obviously just making propaganda out of whatever sticks and mud they find lying around that I find myself tuning out and assuming they're full of shit from the get-go.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about Elliot Rodger, the crazed misogynist killer in Santa Barbara, and the rightbloggers who don't see what's so sexist about his feverish rants. My only regret is that Dr. Mrs. Ole Perfesser hasn't said anything about it yet. Well, I can always update.

UPDATE. FMguru informs me in comments Dr. Mrs. Ole Perfesser has weighed in, and I swear to Christ this is her headline:

The Elliot Rodger Case: If Pick-Up Artists Are Guilty, Then So Are the Feminists

DMOP hears that women are getting plenty of mental health care but men aren't. What might the cause of that be? Is it that men often don't like to admit they need help, as the feminazi National Institute of Mental Health suggests? Or are all those "you must have a vagina to enter" signs at psych wards keeping them out? For Dr. Mrs. it's not a tough call: "Perhaps it is the feminists and their supporters who block funding and education going to boys’ and men’s issues that are to blame," she says. Don't worry if the feminized shrinks don't want your money, fellas, DMOP's man clinic is always open.

AROUND THE HORN.

Some quick thoughts before everybody heads out for Memorial Day weekend to whatever little slice of heaven (I remain here in the pestilential Capital, watching the frontier):

•  The American Spring folks who decidedly failed to overthrow ObamaHitler last Friday were good for a laugh, but I have to say I feel for them. Granted, when they're united in a reactionary electoral force to keep the country down, as they have been for decades, they're harder to sympathize with. But when I see them in small numbers howling on the Mall, unable to do America much damage and maybe even livening up some tourists' day, my resistance is reduced and I can see that they have genuine complaints. For example, they're pissed about the VA hospitals and a lot of other things that leaders who gave a shit about America might help fix. But they don't send that kind of people to Congress -- they send instead flim-flam men who make things worse, then tell them it was the dad-burned Gummint that made it bad because it can't do nothin' right nohow. And they tell them all would be well if the Kenyan Pretender and his socialist comrades were turned out of office, and encourage them to imagine themselves the heirs of the original Tea Party: Revolutionaries with the right and the means to overthrow. Fox News does its bit, announcing that "a group of self-described revolutionary-style patriots with a million mobilized militia members are heading to downtown Washington, D.C.," as if it were something other than a pathetic delusion. "A million" perhaps share the fantasy, but their suburban inertia will always keep them from exerting themselves to realize it, apart from hanging a confederate flag in the garage or yelling at the teevee -- only this ragtag band actually walked the walk, and they raged for the cameras, crying that they'd been betrayed, but not knowing, as I once observed of the Sarah Palin Army, that they were marked for betrayal all along.

•  I've been asking on Twitter but maybe you guys don't go in for microblogging, so: Can someone tell me what gives with the Right's recent hard-on for the Export-Import Bank? I've seen it on and off for years but in the past few months there's been a buttload of ecrasez-l'infame among the brethren  -- including this typically muddled Jonah Goldberg thumbsucker, which all but screams "did I get the talking points right, Mr. Koch? I added some of my signature farrrrrrRRRt."  My best guess is, 1.) Victory is easy  -- the authorization expires in September, and 2.) the major complaint about the Bank seems to be "crony capitalism" -- which is a major Obama-era propaganda theme among conservatives -- and deauthorizing the Bank is one of the few things they can do that (as they believe) will show the voters that they're not just tools of big business without getting their hands slapped by major donors. What do you think?

•  Conservative "reformers" like Ross Douthat with big plans to attract the masses to the GOP (remember the Party of Sam's Club? Good times!) have a hard row to hoe --  sensible people keep pointing out that Republicans crush the poor because they find the poor easy to crush, and even voters outside the reach of these sensible people are brought to the same conclusion by observation and common sense. In this blog post, Douthat acknowledges such observations "prove the case that the GOP includes a strong ideological tendency that cuts against what some of the reform-conservative essayists want to do." But -- I just love this -- "What they don’t prove, however, is that the current Republican Party could never be a vehicle for such a policy agenda." Don't stop believin'! For example, "The Democratic Party of the late 1970s and early 1980s stood rather firmly for all kinds of ideas (price controls, middle class tax increases) that the Democratic Party of the 1990s deliberately backed away from." In other words, the Democrats got more conservative, so Republicans should be able to get more -- not liberal, certainly, but conservative-with-an-explanation. Electoral gold! Interestingly, Douthat acknowledges that the "internal party debate... swung in [a] more Randian direction in 2009-2012," which leads one to wonder where Douthat thinks it's been swinging in 2013 and 2014. The Party of Rent-a-Center? Or of Singapore?

UPDATE.

•  "They had a dream," starts Noemie Emery at the Weekly Standard (interesting allusion, under the circumstances). "For almost a hundred years now, the famed academic-artistic-and-punditry industrial complex has dreamed of a government run by their kind of people (i.e., nature’s noblemen), whose intelligence, wit, and refined sensibilities would bring us a heaven on earth..." Obama is the first person like this to rule since, it would seem, John Quincy Adams (Emery is unclear on this point), and Obama made Obamacare which everyone hates, so the judgment of history is clear: "They wanted their chance, and they got it. They had it. They blew it. They’re done." Back to electing haberdashers and Nixons! Unfortunately the part where a disgusted electorate threw Obama out in 2012 is missing from the essay. Editing error?

NATIONAL REVIEW TALKS TO THE LAY-DEEZ.

At National Review, Jim Geraghty has one called "Jill Abramson, and Why Most Women Should Cut Themselves Some Slack." By "Cut Themselves Some Slack," he means don't worry your pretty little heads about any economic injustice you may have hysterically imagined you've experienced. Part of his argument:

As I was saying, employers are people (“Corporations are people, my friend!“) and there will be good ones and bad ones. The bad ones tend to have karma bite them in one way or the other — most often by watching their best, or perhaps most motivated and talented employees leave to work elsewhere.

Either that or they'll grow fat and rich on the exploitation of their workers, though Geraghty won't notice because the free market is dreamy and the exploited are generally the working poor, who are gross.

I’d argue very few Americans really benefit from buying into Democrats’ (and the New York Times’s! ) preferred simplistic, demagogic narrative that America’s workplaces are a Kafkaesque, dystopian landscape of nasty male bosses conspiring to pay their female employees less. This viewpoint may in fact hold women back. If you perceive your boss as a sexist, conniving shyster who’s out to rip you off, then it’s going to be hard to show up every morning and do your best work. And whatever your circumstances, you’ll probably benefit, directly or indirectly, from doing your best work.

You're only hurting yourselves; c'mon, smile, baby! Then he tells the ladies that men have it rough, too, but you don't see us guys complaining, and (I swear to Christ) that you girls should try it sometime:

I am speaking broadly, and generalizing when I make this next statement: Men do worry about this sort of thing, but they don’t talk about it. They’re generally less likely to obsess about it, and/or publicly beat themselves up about it. There are not nearly as many bestsellers about the struggles of working fathers, magazine covers asking “Can Men Have It All?”, daddy blogs with passionate arguments and comments sections aflame, etc. 

It's like Geraghty never saw an MRA rant or Dr. Mrs. Ole Perfesser.

...the guys’ approach certainly is an one that involves less angst, self-doubt, and self-flagellation for failing to live up to some preconceived notion of how all of those roles should be fulfilled.

Also, a woman who thinks more like a man would understand why I want to have my cock sucked every morning.

For lagniappe with the emphasis on the yap, National Review also offers James Lileks chasing the not-all-men meme off his lawn.

Actually, pointing out that you’re not one of [the rapists and abusers] would indicate that you’re not the problem, and hence are part of the solution.

Let me ease your pain, ladies, with old matchbooks and accounts of my trips to Target! Eventually the lack of strawgirl response convinces Jimbo he's not being listened to:

I suppose this is useful information for men who want to have tendentious arguments about male perfidy with the sort of person who might want to put a “trigger warning” on Winnie the Pooh because a reader might have a honey allergy, but most men don’t. In fact, most –

Oh, never mind. Why state the obvious?

I didn't want to talk to you bitches anyway!

Have a nice electoral map, guys.

SEASON 7, EPISODE 6.

(Mild spoilers.) There plenty in this episode but the main thing is Don, Peggy, and Pete, and Burger Chef. Even though it was probably mandated by licensing considerations, I think the choice of a defunct rather than an active burger chain is significant. It ties in with the frequent mentions of Buick -- which brand persists, but in nothing like its former glory -- and Peggy's (widely-noted) observation of the happy-family image her team has been playing with: "Does this family even exist anymore?" In a historical fiction, talking about people and things that the audience knows are doomed is an easy layup -- years ago a friend of mine adopted as a comical catchphrase, "This Hitler will be the death of Germany, mark my words" -- but I like to think the Mad Men staff was going further with the conceit than many of us have noticed.

All Mad Men fans are Don-and-Peggy fans, and it was pure catnip to have them lay down their arms and get cozy in this episode. Note, though, what came before: Some very good scenes about Peggy being pushed, humiliatingly, into having Don "bring home" the pitch. Elisabeth Moss is a marvel in these scenes. I especially like her weird, absent way of saying "what" when people (Don) or circumstances (Ted fucking Cheough popping up on speakerphone!) are discomfiting her; it's as if she's in a dream state. Even better is her response when Don, stunned that he has been proposed as the pitchman, asks Peggy whose idea it was. I love the way she swallows the word "mine." She's funnier than she's been in a while, but no less sad.

Don has less work to do to get to their big scene. We are already well-briefed on his love of Peggy: "I will spend the rest of my life trying to hire you," The Suitcase and so forth. Here, he's only got to be pleased to be asked to the big dance, and walk into his working-and-drinking session with Peggy in a relaxed mood. (It shows a little growth on Don's part that he's able to do that, but not much. Don is coming along but slowly. He may need another lifetime to get where he has to go.) Peggy, on the other hand, has to work harder than anyone else, as usual. She has go through heavy emotional changes, and accept that all Don can do in response is give her a hanky and say "You're doing great."

And the way Peggy's engineered her life, the expense of soul she's been willing to pay for it, it's inevitable that she not only accepts the thin sustenance Don has to offer, she also gets inspiration from it -- inspiration to create... another crappy ad. It may be that I'm suffering from late Sopranos syndrome, where I feel the creator's disgust with his characters seeping in whether it's really there or not, but I want to believe that we've reached the point in the series where we're supposed to see that this "creativity" that Don and Peggy are all about, their search to always go further -- "there's always a better idea" -- is not leading anywhere, even to personal fulfillment; it's just an excuse not to have real relationships with other human beings. And that the things they're lavishing this talent on -- Burger Chef, Buick, the nuclear family -- are doomed anyway.

Peggy's new idea, born of pain, about a place where everyone is family, may be a better ad concept than the previous, but it's still crap to sell burgers, and if it's presented as an adland version of [great artist here] expressing his pain through [great artwork here], then it has to be a joke -- because really, how can we take it seriously? Maybe back when Don was pitching the Kodak Carousel as the wheel of life, his life, we could be stirred by the reflection of his own pain in the pitch, because that was dramatic irony, the spectacle of a guy doing one thing he has to do while feeling something else. In this episode, Don and Peggy are drinking, the lights are low, and they're talking to each other through stupid ad concepts, and finally dancing together -- and how realistic is it that they would, no matter how gamely the actors tackled it? -- to "My Way," a song that embodies the grossest, cheesiest kind of solipsism. To me that's just sad: Really, this emotionally stunted man who can only love her for being a reflection of himself, he's Peggy's family? Along with, in the final scene, Pete, the emotionally retarded, unacknowledged father of her unacknowledged child? Maybe that long dolly out from the Burger Chef -- which, despite the past few episodes worth of references, is the most Kubrickesque thing in the series -- that leaves these three framed in neon and formica, and cosseted in treacly 50s music, is the big honking tell -- that this brief, cheery moment is only an interlude, a little fort made out of slogans and denial, and that the back-biting and disintegration that have been advancing through the season are really what they're in for.

I will only add that it was very clever to mirror Bill Hartley's arrest and Benson bailing him out -- in these current, heady times for gay rights, a bracing reminder of pre-Stonewall realities -- with Roger's innuendos concerning Jim Hobart from McCann ("I think you're making eyes at me"). The world is still turning outside these people's lives.

MORE CONSERVATIVES GETTING STRAIGHT-BASHED.

As it gets less and less acceptable to yell "pray I don't kill you, faggot," conservatives become more and more panic-stricken. "Gay-Marriage Decisions Read Like GLAAD Press Releases Now," sputters Jason Richwine at National Review. He's upset that Judge John E. Jones III's Pennsylvania marriage equality decision was freighted with such obnoxious phrases as "all couples deserve equal dignity in the realm of civil marriage." "No one could read this decision and think the judge is merely following the dictates of the law wherever that might lead," Richwine cries. "...in what other discipline is inserting one’s personal politics into a technical analysis celebrated rather than discouraged?" Next they'll be working gay slang into bookkeeping! It's a Michael Sam sack dance, linguistically speaking. (Wow, even "sack dance" sounds gay now. What hath GLAAD wrought?)

As you were expecting, Rod Dreher is even better. He's particularly enraged that Jones used the term "ash heap of history" in reference to the exclusion of gay people:

That phrase “ash heap of history” used in this context is outrageous. Know where it first came from? Trotsky, denouncing moderate revolutionaries, and consigning them to “the dustbin of history.”

The very next sentence:

Ronald Reagan memorably used it to describe the fate of Marxism-Leninism.

Reagan can cleverly appropriate commie metaphors, but when you homosexualists do it, it's like you're giving it back to Trotsky. Further down: "This kind of radicalism is familiar, but it must be said that Robespierre was a much better writer."

Poor Rod is having a bad gay week. In a later post, after hearing about the possibility that the U.S. is spying on domestic dissidents, he shivers, "I look forward to what [Glenn] Greenwald has yet to report. All Americans, especially we whose beliefs are being consigned to what a federal judge called this week 'the ash heap of history,' are going to live through some difficult times." That's why Obama wants them drones -- not because no Democratic President could get away with even one-hundredth of a 9/11, but because he yearns to snatch up Maggie Gallagher and put her in Gay Gitmo. (Equally hilariously, Dreher cites J. Edgar Hoover in his headline.)

Dreher's highlight, though, at least so far this week, is an earlier post in which he quotes Thierry Cruvellier, interviewed on "a trial in Cambodia of one of Pol Pot’s henchmen," and winds up guess where:

If you read the boldfaced material in Cruvellier’s response, and think of the culture war in this country over same-sex marriage and gay rights, you will understand much better the Error Has No Rights phenomenon, and the Law of Merited Impossibility — and you will better be able to anticipate what comes next in the name of justice.

Pol Pot and gay rights -- there's a new one. Where can he go next?  Please, nobody tell him about Ernst Rohm.

UPDATE. Comments are lively, but I must single out what aimai found in a 2013 Rod Dreher update to yet another why-do-all-these-homosexuals-keep-sucking-my-cock post:

It’s funny. Some liberal commenters complain that I spend too much time blogging about gay marriage, but those threads are almost always the most popular ones, in terms of comments. Only race consistently draws the number of comments. If marriage weren’t at issue, I would almost never blog about homosexuality, because it just doesn’t interest me all that much.

Whatever you say, Mary. Can we get a drag queen in here to do video responses to Dreher? It would beat the holy shit out of Bloggingheads.

THE ANSWER IS ALWAYS PRIVATIZATION.

Jonah Goldberg's essay on poor management of VA hospitals is up to his usual standard:

We are constantly told that we could get so many wonderful, super-fantastic things done if only both sides would lay down their ideological blah blah blah blah and work together for yada yada yada. Well, welcome to the VA. How’s that working out for you?

"Work together"? What account of Republicans screwing veterans would you prefer -- the most recent, or some vintage?

It is absolutely true that the VA was plagued with problems before Obama came into office and Republicans who talk a lot about how much they love the military are open to criticism as a result. But Democrats talk about how much they love the government. And everything they need to make the VA work is available to them. And yet, it’s a mess and has been a mess for decades. Why? Maybe it’s a mess because such messes come with the territory when you put bureaucrats in charge. Criminality, as alleged, may not be inevitable (though I’m not so sure). But rationing, incompetence, bloat, waste, rent-seeking and a sort of legal corruption certainly are.

This is a perfect reductio ad wingnut: If a government agency has problems, it's proof that government can't do anything right, including things that governments pretty much have to do, like veterans' services. Who's going to take them over, the guys who run the outsourced prison industry? As I've said before, normal people can easily imagine what a for-profit medical corporation would do with uninsured veterans -- shove their gurneys in the general direction of a county hospital, probably, or secretly grind them down into pet food.

Nobody in their right mind believes veterans' care should be privatized. But cases of government mismanagement are windows of opportunity for conservatives, just as ambulances bring out ambulance chasers, and so here's Goldberg like Paul Newman at the beginning of The Verdict, except less in need of mouthwash than Shreddies, pressing privatization cards into the hands of the bereaved. Though, as I recall it, Newman's character was ashamed of himself.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about recent developments in climate change, and the rightblogger response -- which seems to lean more heavily toward "get used to it, we're never going to do anything anyway" than I remember. Maybe I was blocking it out.

UPDATE. In comments, I think hellslittlestangel speaks for us all when he says "the only thing that will stop climate change is a good guy with a gun."

THIS IS ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW.

The guys who continue to worship the most senile President in history want you to think Hillary Clinton is too old and feeble to serve.

TODAY IN CAREER ADVANCEMENT.

Wingnut-watchers may remember A.J. Delgado, author of a book of culture-war mad libs. Turns out she's been picked up by National Review. Among her maiden efforts: A long essay that's ostensibly a review of a new film loosely based on Jim Jones and Jonestown (Ti West's The Sacrament), but mainly about how the People's Temple was a traditional communist cell -- you know, sort of like the American Spring loonies are traditional Republicans -- and people who call it a cult are just covering up for Marxism and Marxists like Jerry Brown and Harvey Milk, who must be exposed.

It was with some trepidation that I attended a screening: Would West eschew any mention of Jones’s leftism, as others addressing the subject had before him? Would West blast organized religion as the culprit, rather than Marxism itself?

 That's what Mr. and Mrs. Moviegoer will want to know! Delgado has mixed impressions:

But the big question is: Does the film represent the truth — i.e., Jones’s leftism? The answer is yes, somewhat. While not overtly highlighting Jones’s ideology or that of The People’s Temple, West certainly does not omit it. In a gripping, seminal scene where Sam interviews [Jones stand-in] Father, the ideology is in full view, for anyone willing to listen closely. Father bemoans issues at the top of any leftist’s top-gripes list: “poverty, violence, greed, and racism.” (A majority of Jonestown’s inhabitants were African American — another angle West truthfully represents.)

When Father mentions heroes who have been shot down for “trying to help others,” those heroes are: Malcolm X, MLK, JFK, and RFK. Not all leftists but not all exactly right-wing idols, either.

So, we know he's a commie because he's against poverty, violence, greed, and racism, is surrounded by black people, and admires Martin Luther King.  But Delgado is concerned that Father also uses a cross and hymns, which might give filmgoers the false impression that Christianity can be used to confuse people, and "reaches out" to West, who politely explains to her that it's a movie. Delgado for some reason finds herself vindicated:

Father quotes Scripture in the film but, if one notices, only to the extent that it can be distorted for his social-justice arguments. Jones did the same, quoting Jesus Christ and Scripture only as red meat for his socialist sermons.

Whereas real Christians only use Jesus to denigrate homosexuals. I predict this young lady will go far.

SEASON 7, EPISODE 5.

(Mild spoilers.) Ginsburg has never been a real character, so I guess they felt they could dump some excess metaphorical freight on him and push him out to sea.  Nothing about his scenes rang true on any level -- even the great Elisabeth Moss didn't seem to know what kind of relationship she was supposed to have with him -- and it left me wondering: Why was he ever here? Maybe just to signify the infusion of nervy Jews on Madison Avenue (why not someone more like George Lois, then*? That would have livened things up), or merely to be wasted, so his psychotic break could be a harbinger of some end-of-60s bad craziness to come.

Unlike some watchers, I wasn't worried about Laurel Canyon in this regard. The SoCal sybaritism Megan's gotten into is as vapid as any of other supposed fun scenes, from Greenwich Village to poolside L.A., that Mad Men likes to sneer at from time to time, as if to say, see, they think they're better but they're not; besides, to tell the truth if Tex and the gang came helter-skeltering in I don't think I'd feel much loss. And I don't think Don would either. I have never, never understood that relationship except on the most banal Freudian level, and it never made less sense than when Megan was pushing him into a three-way and Don was looking at the two chicks with astonishment, as if they were Cosgrove tap-dancing on speed. By the next day maybe Megan thought so too. But why is that a big deal for her? Come to think of it, why is she here, either?

The most interesting person in the episode was Lou. I didn't realize Allan Havey, who plays Lou, had a comedy career, but it figures: Actors like to play villains, and the more ee-vil the better, but they don't generally like to play pricks and schmucks; Lou is both, and Havey applies a comic's malignant brio to him. His fit over the mockery his stupid cartoon engendered -- a hundred times better than Underdog! -- had some good sour stomach acid in it, which was a relief because the rest of the creative staff has been floating off into the ether for a while now. Jesus, fellas, back in the day they did some work in addition to getting stoned, you know.  

As much as we've been warned not to root for Don anymore, and as unbelievable as his pitch was, it was fun to see him throw elbows in the Commander pitch. But it's a guilty pleasure. They're the only kind, I fear, Don has to offer us anymore.

Oh, I wish I could remember the person on Twitter who noted that when Ginsburg said "What am I, Cassandra?" he might actually have been talking about this guy.

* OK, so Lois is Greek; that's close enough, right?

UPDATE. I forgot about the Francis family thread, which I liked very much. Betty, to my surprise, actually seemed stronger after she cracked; I wonder whether she was surprised too. Sally is becoming wonderfully horrible, and I admire her feeling for her brother, which is about the least narcissistic relationship in the whole show. Speaking of which, their discussion of running away reminded me of the episode's title, and of what I suppose is Don's equivalent -- pressing Harry to leave Megan's party with him for a bar, where he also shakes some useful agency intelligence out of the poor schlub by telling him, "I hope you know how much I appreciate this." Now that's narcissism.

FREE SPEECH FOR ME...

You know, I have to admit they surprised me: I thought at least some conservative would step up and give lip service to the rights of the Harvard Black Mass celebrants to exercise their freedom of worship in the setting of their choice, and thus show, after weeks of blubbering over Brendan Eich and Donald Sterling, that they really, really are in favor of expansive Constitutional rights for people other than themselves and affiliated racists and gay-haters.

These people are full of shit.

My favorite is Da Tech Guy, who last month bewailed the violation of Eich's Constitutional right to be CEO of Mozilla without the support of his board of directors ("the removal of Mr. Eich was done without threats of violence, but rest assured those days are not far away... If I was a young ambitious lawyer looking for a big payday and publicity I’d find a few Christians in companies like this willing to sue for the creation of a 'hostile work environment'"), but is now delighted that the Black Mass was chased off-campus by Catholics. Best part:

A postscript: As we drove to my car at Alewife Station [Mary Ann Harold] related that as she sat down in the then empty church she saw an apparition of the head of Satan appear over and to the left of the altar over the church. The head was disfigured and was screaming in pain and anger. 

Given the results of the night, that was completely understandable.

 Maybe these are the victories they will celebrate now that they can't win elections. (If you hear of any contrarian conservatives sticking up for the Satanists, please let me know in comments.)

UPDATE. Professor Bainbridge steps up.