PRE-THANKSGIVING AROUND-THE-HORN.

•    Remember a few days back, when Rod Dreher was flipping out that New York magazine interviewed a guy who fucks horses, and blaming this bestiality breakthrough on our tolerance of gay marriage? He's still on about it! He has dragged in the equally awful Damon Linker, who tries to reassure Dreher that "most people will continue to live boring, mundane sex lives, monogamously committed to one human being of the opposite sex at a time." You'd think this vanilla vision of the future would cheer Dreher, but it does not; he rehashes his previous mopes and also complains that "'emerging adult' Catholics are abandoning the faith in droves." Dreher himself abandoned Catholicism years ago, but that was different because 1.) he's Rod Dreher, the center of the universe, and 2.) he quit to join another hardass skygod sect, not to go friggin' and frugin' with the hippies, as he seems to assume the non-Dreher apostates will do. I thought at first Dreher, despite his roots in rural Louisiana, was somehow unaware of the ancient association of Southern hicks with barnyard sex, but now I'm thinking he does know, and has in fact been hired by the local chamber of commerce to get it associated with urban sophisticates instead.

•    Erick Erickson has a full-on soregasm because Ezra Klein doubts Officer Wilson's story about how Demon Mike Brown made him kill him. Why that sissy Klein knows nothing about "the blue collar of existence of a beat cop and what that cop sees," unlike red-blooded, ham-faced lawyer/politician Erick Erickson:

I think liberals like Klein who find Darren Wilson’s statement as simply too incredible to be true need to call their local police force and see if they can tag along in a squad car a few times. I have done it. It is quite an education.

Yeah, like that time the cops Erickson was with those cops who shot a black guy dead, and then were allowed to bag their own guns as evidence, and the prosecutor told the grand jury not to take it all too seriously -- you libtards don't realize this is the real world!

•    If you need some what-a-bunch-of-morons for entertainment, look at the responses to any Progressive Insurance @ItsFlo tweet, such as this one; most of the respondents are wingnuts enraged that the insurer gives all its money to George Soros:

Lewis, who did contribute to liberal causes, stepped down as Progressive chairman in 2000 and died in 2013. But tell that to the salt of the earth, the common clay -- or to John Hawkins of Right Wing News, who was telling his poor readers in 2013 that Lewis was still in charge and "may be the biggest liberal sugar daddy on the block." Actually, considering the difficulty they have understanding health insurance, maybe conservatives should boycott all insurance as socialism. Hell, those pointy-headed actuaries even believe in global warming!

•    A John Podhoretz (ding!) column in the New York Post (ding!) called "Turning on the cops: Forgetting what crime was like" (dingdingdingding!) was bound to be a nightmare, and it is -- all about how you liberals don't remember the crime it was so bad you must worship the Man on the Beat etc. But the bit where Podhoretz tells black folks to cool it over Ferguson is awful even for him:

It might surprise Al Sharpton to hear this, but even among white people, it’s rare to find any American who’s only ever had pleasant interchanges with police officers. 

Every year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 41 million speeding tickets are written in the United States. The notion that only minorities have infuriating encounters with cops is belied by that astounding factoid. 

After all, is there a soul alive who hasn’t reacted negatively (in his heart, at least) to the cop who comes to the driver-side window and asks that obnoxious and oddly schoolmarmish question: “Do you know why I stopped you?”

I dunno what black people are bitching about -- white people get speeding tickets all the time!

REPUBLICAN OUTREACH TO MINORITIES CONTINUES.

Some online conservatives, who haven't had proper media training,  express their feelings thus:

The better-trained ones mostly settle on the notion that the simple-minded black folk of Ferguson would not be angry but for the Liberal Media, who have riled them to violence so they can Smash the State. Radio shouter Mark Levin:

Ferguson burns and violence has been unleashed thanks to the reckless liberal media, the lawless administration (especially Eric Holder) exploiting the shooting to smear police departments across the nation, phony civil rights demagogues, race-baiting politicians, and radical hate groups.

Missing from this list is "a white cop getting away with killing an unarmed black kid." To Levin, of course Brown got what was coming -- fired upon, he raced away from and then back toward the source of the gunfire, which makes perfect sense. Levin demands that we now  turn our attention to the real victims:

What we are witnessing now is the left's war on the civil society. It's time to speak out in defense of law enforcement and others trying to protect the community and uphold the rule law.

Well, so much for that GOP Libertarian Moment, huh? I expect a lot of conservatives who made meek objections to "militarized police" last summer will now return to their previous tut-tutting over obstreperous people of color.

Breitbart.com's Ben Shapiro also condemns "the media’s attempted racial assassination of Officer Darren Wilson." But even though Wilson got off, Shapiro remains so terrified of black people that he perceives President Obama's after-verdict speech, universally acknowledged as milquetoast, as having "fueled the flames for future racial conflagrations... Obama doesn't want to prevent crime," etc. And the column is topped by the most ooga-booga picture of Obama Breitbart.com could find. I expect if Obama sneezed Shapiro would consider it biological warfare against Caucasians.

It's almost worse when they make a feeble pretense of caring. "I am trying to see this through the eyes of those I disagree with," claims Jonah Goldberg, by which he means allowing as how it's too bad Michael Brown's family lost their boy before starting this rhetorical pee-dance:

Beyond that, I think critics who see Robert McCulloch as too pro-police have a point. Or at least I can see where they are coming from. His statement tonight was very powerful and very persuasive, but not what you would expect from a prosecutor in other circumstances. If McCulloch wanted an indictment, I think he could have gotten one (prosecutors and ham sandwiches and all that). Whether he should have gotten one is open to debate. I certainly think you could make the case that the country would be better off in the long run if there was an open and transparent public trial. On the other hand, we don’t have trials of innocent men simply for appearances’ sake. Having a trial just for show is too close to a show trial as far as I’m concerned.

That's it. Goldberg's prose reminds me of how, when you toss a coin on a hard surface, it rattles side-to-side with increasing speed before coming to a dead stop. (Later Goldberg makes fun of a guy who felt sorry for the kids who mugged him. Must've been a relief for him to drop the brief pretense of empathy.)

I should also mention National Review's Andrew C. McCarthy, who thinks Republican Administrations can torture suspects if they like and who insists that you can impeach Obama for spitting on the sidewalk, suddenly arguing for prosecutorial restraint now that it appears a rare instance of it got Wilson off.

But really, it's no better or worse than what they usually come up with when a white guy gets away with killing a black guy. And there's no reason why it would change, so long as there's a political upside to it.

UPDATE. Good for some grim laughs: The comments thread on a riot post at Reason, flagship publication of conservatives who identify as libertarians. The consensus at present is that it's all Al Sharpton's fault ("This is certainly one of those issues that reasonable people can agree upon....that is, it's being pumped up by the race baiters and media and others who make a buck off tragedy").

UPDATE 2. Speaking of which, a Republican Senator appears in Time, blames Ferguson on the War on Poverty, and peddles the traditional marriage-makes-you-rich bullshit...

The link between poverty, lack of education, and children outside of marriage is staggering and cuts across all racial groups. Statistics uniformly show that waiting to have children in marriage and obtaining an education are an invaluable part of escaping poverty. 

...as well as bootstrap philosophy...

While a hand-up can be part of the plan, if the plan doesn’t include the self-discovery of education, work, and the self-esteem that comes with work, the cycle of poverty will continue.

But in an exciting twist, he mixes this ancient bunk with promises to end the drug war -- aw yeah, you caught on, it's Rand Paul, trying to maintain his libertarian USP in the GOP while talking traditional culture-scold rot. Well, what the hell, it's all just marketing anyway -- you might even say it's Uber for social conservatism!

PEOPLE YAKETY-YAK A STREAK AND WASTE YOUR TIME OF DAY...

Well, I see New York magazine interviewed a guy who fucks horses. I like to think the whole thing was designed as a practical joke on Rod Dreher, known for his eruptions over such evanescent prurientia as 2 Girls 1 Cup (remember that?); if so, mission accomplished!

I’m not linking to it, because it is sick, sick stuff. It’s incredibly graphic, and I had decided not to write about it. But...

Yeah, we can guess, preacher man. Or can we? Let's see where Brother Rod takes it:

What’s significant is not that this deranged behavior happens. It has no doubt always been with us. What’s significant is that this interview appears in a mainstream magazine... 

New York has won a slew of National Magazine Awards, including being named 2013′s Magazine of the Year. This isn’t an Al Goldstein rag. This isn’t even the Village Voice.

Yeah, the Voice published Roy Edroso and homos, but New York is a recent award winner! Its pages are glossy! Also, Robert George agrees with Dreher, and don't you pointy-heads discount George because he's writing on Facebook -- discount him because he's a weirdo who favors the anatomical-doll school of Adam and Stevery ("In coitus, but not in other forms of sexual contact, a man and a woman’s bodies coordinate by way of their sexual organs... they are biologically united, and do not merely rub together..."). George shares Dreher's disgust, and demands action:

I mention it, reluctantly, only to show that anyone who thought we had already reached the bottom of the slippery slope is mistaken. The descent into Gomorrah continues. I believe it can be reversed, but not simply stopped. “This far and no farther,” is not an option.

Hear hear, says Dreher, because we wouldn't have horse-fucking in glossy magazines if you non-reproductive bit-rubbers hadn't gotten the slope all slippery:

Ideas have consequences. If your idea is that all consensual sex is good, or at least beyond judgment, and that sexual desire is its own justification, then you have met your consequence in New York‘s anonymous zoophile.

 "Dogs and cats, living together" was not a JOKE, people! Soon everybody, human and animal, will be friggin' and frugin' and sticking their bits wherever they can, unless we reverse the flow! THANKS OBAMA!

UPDATE: Isn't it obvious now that the famous pervert Woody Allen was trying to normalize this kind of behavior?

UPDATE 2. A winning comment right out of the gate by Glock H. Palin, Esq.: "Sure, rural people do it, and have been doing it since before this was a country, but those godless heather urban types write about it. Is there no end to their depravity?!" Oh Glock, you don't know the half of it -- one of Dreher's commenters actually cites Ike Snopes and the cow from The Hamlet ("the whole passage pretty much turned me off Faulkner forever. Yes, I know Faulkner is considered 'literature'...") and betrays no awareness that farmers fucking livestock was not invented by Faulkner, but is part of the great American agrarian tradition.

GREETINGS FROM OCCUPIED DC!

The atmosphere is tense here in Washington as the Tyrant ObamaHitler has sent his brownshirts into the streets in a show of force...

Yeah, it's a bunch of bullshit, but at least we have the pleasure of watching wingnuts try to make hay of it. My favorite in the Ray of Hope category so far is this post from Andrew Johnson at National Review:

Univision announced earlier this week that it would delay its broadcast of the Latin Grammys to air President Obama’s announcement to use executive action to grant legal status to immigrants in the country illegally. While some saw it as a politically calculated move by the administration to reach a largely Hispanic audience, some viewers weren’t too happy to see the president rather than their favorite celebrities.

Then Johnson showed dozens -- excuse me, a dozen (well, almost) -- tweets from fans who were disgruntled that the show had been delayed, and who will no doubt be surprised to find themselves on a GOP mailing list and being asked to contribute to a Stop Tyrant Obama and His Messicans drive.

UPDATE. I should have realized -- no one out-crazys Ophelia WorldNetDaily!

Oh God this is so great:

Ted Cruz said it best in a Wall Street Journal piece following Barack Hussein Obama’s State of the Union Address earlier this year: “Dictatorships are often characterized by an abundance of laws. When a president can pick and choose which laws to follow and which to ignore, he is no longer a president"... 

I would go one further than Cruz: Obama has never been my president. I have steadfastly refused to acknowledge him as such. He is undeserving of the honorific. To this day, I am unconvinced he is even eligible for office... 

But that’s a can of worms few want to reopen – besides Donald Trump and me... 

I hereby join Ted Cruz in declaring Obama is no longer president.

Alan Keyes is going "And I thought I would be the winner in any crazy competition! I better step up my game!" and driving nails into his own skull.

UPDATE 2. Robert Tracinski (best known as a rhapsodist for the softer side of Ayn Rand) at The Federalist:

The ironic thing is that the media and Hollywood types have always convinced themselves, as George Lucas did, that their villains were metaphors for George W. Bush or a cautionary tale about the evils of the right. But here we are, the Old Republic is being dissolved, and it’s their hero who is doing it. They find themselves on the side of the Empire. (Or the Alliance. Yes, I’m looking at you, Joss Whedon.)

I think they should stop using words at all, and just make videos of themselves playing with their nerd dolls: "Don't worry Princess Leia, here comes G.I. Ted Cruz to save you, psshew, psshew," etc.

UPDATE 3. OK, one more: J. Christian Adams at PJ Media:

Take some comfort in this: executives acting lawlessly is a transgression as old as human history. Charles I similarly ignored the law when he went so far as to dissolve a Parliament with which he disagreed. When he started running out of money to conduct his wars with France and Spain, he violated Magna Carta by imposing a forced loan on the monarchs without the consent of Parliament.

And then they cut his head off! Get it? Well, maybe one of those nuts who seem to drop by the White House with a gun every couple of days will "take some comfort" from that story.

RHETORIC LEVEL ADVISORY: SEVERE.

Well, now that Obama is fixin' to give the Founding Fathers a Dirty Sanchez by handing driver's licenses to Messicans, let's see how the brethren are talking it down. Clash Daily:

HOW CONVENIENT: Obama to Grant Amnesty on Mexican Revolution Day 

Coincidence? I don’t think so. This is all part of “fundamentally transforming” America...

At dawn the car horns will play "La Cucaracha," and over the ridge they'll come -- thousands of low-riders led by Salma Hayek and George Lopez. And Rick Perry will be powerless to act! Here's a passage from an Instigator News essay with the something-for-everyone title, "Pavlov, Orwell, Alinsky, Hitler, and Obama: A Synthesis of Evil":

I offer here just a few points from an early platform of Hitler’s Nazi Party, courtesy of The History Place. With the exceptions regarding Germany’s nationalism and disdain for immigrants, they’re almost identical to the policies we’ve seen proposed and/or enacted by the Obama administration.

The Messican piece is Obama's way of making Nazism his own, see -- he's a great cover artist as well as history's greatest monster!

OK, that's fun, but come on, these are bottom feeders; surely no one legitimate is saying such stupid--

-- Huh. Well, guy's an American Spectator writer, that's still pretty fringe. The really big boys know it's ix-nay on the itler-Hay until this impeachment thing gets a little traction. Thus, Rich Lowry at Politico:

Barack Obama, American Caudillo

See? It even sounds Messican!

The last 400 years of Anglo-American political history...

He ain't just a traitor to America, he's a traitor to Anglo-America!

...can be read as a successful effort to establish and maintain a system tethering the executive to the law. What President Obama is contemplating will undermine that achievement, both through his own lawlessness and the precedent he will create for subsequent presidents to operate by extra-legal fiat.

Well, excluding presidents who already figured out how to get some bright fella to write them a Get-Out-of-Den-Haag-Free card, anyway.

The rest of them are just using regular Republican slurs, like "tyrant" and "emperor," but with a few twists to wring extra juice out of them. Take for example Damon Linker's essay, "On immigration, Obama is flirting with tyranny," in which, after getting the accusations of destroying democracy out of the way, Linker explains that this Messican thing is even worse than Bush's possibly illegal torture, because when it comes to torture "such judgments can only be fairly rendered once the state of emergency has come to an end," but everybody knows there's no rush about these illegals, they'll just keep on skulking between landscaping gigs and food banks forever. Also:

Compared with torture, rendition, and the extrajudicial use of surveillance and even deadly force against American citizens, Obama's efforts to help illegal immigrants can seem benign and even trivial. But that's precisely the point. No matter how you feel about Bush's actions, up until now, executive transgressions of the law have been made in the name of protecting the common good from a grave threat in a time of emergency.

I have to admit, I like to think I know these guys, but telling readers to try and be reasonable about the Black Sites while calling Obama a tyrant is one I completely did not see coming.

UPDATE. Shit, how'd I miss this -- Burt Prelutsky at Bernard Goldberg's site, on previous casus bellow Jonathan Gruber:

All in all, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that it has to be more than mere coincidence that “Gruber” sounds like “goober” and that Adolf Hitler’s birth name happened to have been Schicklgruber.

CONNECT THE DOTS SHEEPLE

MIKE NICHOLS, 1931-2014.

When I heard he was dead, I recalled that I'd seen his production of Streamers at Lincoln Center years ago; only later did I notice that he'd also directed the original Broadway production of The Gin Game, which I'd also seen (with E.G. Marshall in for Hume Cronyn, but Jessica Tandy still playing). 10 years ago (!) I made a mean gag about Nichols being "a one-man major entertainment institution for ninety years," because that's really how it seemed; he was always around, even when you didn't notice until someone gave him an award for it.

Those two New York productions were brilliant, but like most of you I know Nichols best from his movies. As Bruce Weber mentioned in the Times today, he was sort of an anti-auteur; you couldn't really pick out obsessions and motifs from his work like you could with Kubrick or Scorsese. He was more like George Cukor, a hard worker who knew that when inspiration failed elbow grease would do. And like Cukor he served the material. He served Edward Albee as well with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf as he did Charles Webb with The Graduate; if the latter is fussier, it's just that Webb's deadpan angst needed more active intervention than Albee's masterpiece.

Maybe some clue to Nichols' true feelings, in lieu of auteur signifiers and whatnot, resides in two of his crazier, more misanthropic efforts: the eco-downer The Day of the Dolphin, and Wolf, a jaundiced (one might say hepatitic) midlife fantasy, redolent of Tom Wolfe but much more fun if no more convincing. If so, it's just as well he turned the generosity of his talent to other authors. For me his sweet spot is Carnal Knowledge -- and I wish there were a YouTube of the scene where Jonathan thinks he's going to date-swap and gets a double whammy instead; it's not as flashy as the available showstopper clips, but it has the advantage of being perfect. But it's also worth remembering that he started out as a comedy sketch artist -- just like Adam Sandler, and how's that for a flattering comparison -- and worth watching those old Nichols and May bits not just for the laughs, which are still there, but also to see him and Elaine May learning on their feet how the game works.

YOUR MOMENT OF OOGA BOOGA.

The recent election has given some of the brethren the idea that they can continue to win elections without black votes. This stirs Michael Barone to analysis (the Democrats' "core groups," the "gentry liberals and blacks," he says, are suffering from "geographic and cultural isolation" from real Americans -- one might even say [puts on sunglasses] they've been segregated [YEEA-AAAAH]),  and Heather Mac Donald to, oh, the same horrible shit she always does, only worse, with the aid of the National Review editorial staff:

This Mandingette's black rage is so strong, its blowback has actually turned the police into harmless blurs! Among Mac Donald's choice bits:

No one is “bracing,” in press parlance, for white riots or police violence should Officer Wilson be indicted... 

Normal, as well, is the sickening sense of dread with which one awaits another possible outbreak of black rage... 

The Obama administration has lent its prestige to this conceit, charging, for instance, that the elevated rate of black school suspensions reflects administrator and teacher bias. The disproportionate rate of black students’ misbehavior is left completely out of the anti-discipline crusade, just as the disproportionate rate of black crime is ignored when the media, the White House, and academics discuss allegedly racist police activity and incarceration...

Well, guess it's time for Rand Paul to give another speech at a historically-black college!

UPDATE. In comments, mortimer2000 explains that "any random paragraph of MacDonald's bullshit needs a few additions to make it even remotely pertinent" and does some glossing on her current offering:

No one is “bracing,” in press parlance, for white riots or police violence should Officer Wilson be indicted [not even for all of Wilson's gun-toting racist supporters -- why is that?]. Nor were there preparations for Asian riots last month in Los Angeles as a jury heard a murder case against a 22-year-old [not-a-cop] thug from South Central L.A. [who was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole], who, along with an [not-a-cop] accomplice [who was also sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole], had shot two Chinese engineering students attending the University of Southern California in 2012.

It should also be mentioned that Mac Donald accepts the most cop-friendly interpretation of events in the Brown case as the irrefutable truth, and affects surprise that any black folks would see things differently:  "One might think that it would be good news if Wilson did not initiate the violent encounter or shoot Brown in cold blood: It would mean one less instance of alleged police brutality." Similarly, what if all those old-timers volunteered to work on those cotton plantations? You just have to know how to look at it!

SHIRTHEAD.

Regarding Matt Taylor, I couldn't give a shit about the shirt. As a punk rocker I wore plenty of offensive t-shirts and, while I no longer completely support such chest-borne sentiments as "No Money No Honey," I give my young self a pass because 1.) my business, like Taylor's, had nothing to do with creating a more enlightened society, and 2.) Fuck you.

Of course, Taylor's critics have every right to complain about his shirt; that does not make them thought police, as (also of course) various wingnuts have portrayed them, apparently in hopes of cementing the fledgling alliance between the conservative and Men's Rights movements, thus building the crotchswell of resentment needed for a big White Man victory in '16.

It's a sad situation -- but, as experience has taught us, Jonah Goldberg can always make it worse:

Many of my friends and colleagues on the anti-PC right have responded with understandable outrage. And it’s true: Taylor’s confession of wrongdoing did feel forced — awfully North Korean. 

Still, the feminists have a point.

Oh, no, no...

Although I like the shirt (which is now selling like hotcakes), I would never wear it to a nice restaurant, never mind on a globally broadcast TV interview. The reason I wouldn’t wear it has very little to do with my fear of offending feminists. It’s simply unsuitable professional attire. I’d ask critics of the feminist backlash, would you wear it on a job interview? How about to church or synagogue?

Being influenced by ladies' preferences in menswear is Orwellian; you should instead be influenced by Jonah Goldberg's sense of decorum; he wears a shirt and tie every day, though being a legacy pledge he doesn't have to; its about Burke and little pantaloons or something (fart).

Apparently for Goldberg the real outrage is that bitches be Occupying his moral superiority:

But why are feminist motives so special? What if you’re a devout Christian, Muslim, or Jew working in the humanities? What if you like cartoonishly sexy ladies, but you hate guns? What if you’re simply the kind of person who thinks male professionals should wear a jacket and tie on TV?

Also, what if you have a serious uniform fetish? Feminists are so thoughtless.

As is traditional, Goldberg finds himself out of ideas but with more space to fill, and so drifts into the gas clouds of Uranus, telling us "diversity comes at a cost" and no one knows how to dress anymore:

In this age of unprecedented cultural liberty, we’ve lost sight of the fact that common standards of decency and decorum can be liberating. They inconvenience everyone — a little — but they also free us from worrying about who we might offend or why. School uniforms, remember, constrain the wealthy kids for the benefit of the poor ones.

[blink] [blink] School uniforms constrain... the...

Let us leave off. Sometimes the works of the immortals cannot be analyzed; we can only marvel at them, silent upon a peak in Derpian.

WITH THEIR SPITTIN' AND THEIR ANTICS...

National Review's Tim Cavanaugh does an obit for Glen Larson, the TV producer who died recently. One of Larson's shows was "Quincy, M.E.," which gives Cavanaugh an opportunity to correct the record on a malign social influence from years past:

While Quincy has a claim to being the progenitor of the CSI shows, the tools at Klugman’s crime-solving disposal now appear medieval, and the show is today mostly remembered for “Next Stop Nowhere” a late-period episode in which Quincy saves a troubled teen from the clutches of L.A.’s then-thriving punk rock culture. Made long after social causes of the week and Klugman’s penchant for soppy lecturing had begun to capsize the series, the fabled punk rock episode serves as an ironic touchstone for aging hipsters keen to remember when they were all scary and hilarious. On a fresh viewing, however, “Next Stop Nowhere” paints a fully true picture of punk rockers as they really were: deceitful social predators who wouldn’t think twice about framing you for murder and forcing you into a codeine overdose.

Always fighting the last culture war, these guys. But where do they stand on beatniks?

ANNALS OF THE CULTURE WAR, PART 432.333.

Big claim in this headline by Andrew Klavan:

There’s Something Happening Here: Conservatives Are Catching On to the Culture!

That would indeed be news. So, did they finally make The Joe McCarthy Nobody Knew or any of the other big-budget projects I've recommended to them? Don't be silly; "It’s not enough to have talented artists and good works," says Klavan, which is why instead of supporting any such specimens as exist they "catch on to the culture" by piling on a lefty artist they don't like -- and surprise, the target in this case is their traditional fantasy hate-fuck object, Lena Dunham.

Recently, my friends at Ben Shapiro’s website Truth Revolt did for Miss Dunham what the economy and ISIS have done for Obama. They introduced her to non-leftism, also known as reality. They quoted sections from her recent autobiography Not That Kind of Girl under the descriptive headline “Lena Dunham Describes Sexually Abusing Her Little Sister.” Miss Dunham threatened to sue the site for quoting her verbatim! Then she canceled parts of her book tour. Then she went on a “rage spiral.” Then she jumped up and down three times and went through the floor like Rumpelstiltskin. Okay, that last part is a joke — but only just.

In other words, they kept Dunham's book, which if James Wolcott is any judge (and he is) has little intrinsic value of its own, in the headlines for a few more weeks. That's good culture-warring, soldier!

The whole thing is priceless but for my money this is the best part:

But the point is that the folks at Truth Revolt have recognized the revolting truth: liberty lovers need a cultural echo chamber of our own.

Maybe he thinks a bigger and better right-wing echo chamber will work like a Large Hadron Collider to advance his Zhdanovite cause, instead of just increasing the maddening din of their Bedlam.

FRIDAY AROUND-THE-HORN.

•   Here's a video from the audience of that Springsteen-Grohl-Brown performance of "Fortunate Son" that had the dummies dribbling this week. Something no one asked, though: was it a good cover? Well, it was a nice matey sing-along (why no one was booing and yelling "Have you forgotten 9/11", I can't guess) but pretty uninspired, unless you think the best thing you can do with a cover is get everyone to go, "Wooo, I know that song." The covers I like put a little spin on the ball -- else, why bother with a do-over? If the performer has enough personality, he or she can keep the spirit and even much of the arrangement of the original and still make it their own -- like Lucinda Williams' "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)" (warning: the live versions of this on YouTube aren't very good). To me, though, the best is what The Residents do to "Viva Las Vegas": At first listen it may seem like one of their goofy glosses, but I think they really pulled something mysterious and poignant out of it. Or put it in. (UPDATE. Oooh, lots of fun covers in comments!)

SIDESHOW.

The simple version is, a consultant to the Democrats on Obamacare made some impolitic remarks about voters, and the conservative response has been to elevate the consultant, Jonathan Gruber, to the imaginary office of Architect of Obamacare so they can impeach him from it -- Washington Post:

Hearings floated as Hill Republicans seize on Gruber Obamacare comments... 

Jordan said House Republicans have been sending each other a blizzard of e-mails and text messages this week, and he expects the interest in "bringing [Gruber] up here to talk" will gain traction as members return to Washington. House Republicans will gather Thursday evening for their first series of votes since the election. 

"I just had a colleague text me saying, 'We've got to look into this!" Jordan said as he glanced at his phone outside the House floor Wednesday morning.

It's not like they have anything important to do.

This miasma has led some of the brethren unto weird, elaborate fantasies. Bryan Preston at PJ Media:

Allah makes another good point, which is that Republicans probably shouldn’t lead with Gruber’s capitol dressdown. Gear up for it, make sure it’s not another missed opportunity, wasted on grandstanding instead of asking the witness questions and letting him squirm on national TV.

Wouldn't want any grandstanding!

But not first thing. First thing, they should take Mary Landrieu up on a Keystone vote first, see how the Democrats behave and what Obama does after it passes. Increase dissension in the opposition’s ranks before launching the assault on their castle.

Preston's D&D cards and Risk gameboard are getting a workout today.

Just make sure to get him [Gruber? I guess] in Congress under oath ahead of the Supreme Court’s look at the exchange issue. He’ll surely provide more useful soundbites about how he and the Democrats lied to everyone, gamed the CBO, and knew all along that the subsidies/exchange

Maybe Gruber will insult Chief Justice John Roberts specifically while he’s under oath, too. 

Then he'll yell I'M A BIG STUPID JERK AN I KISSED OBAMA AND HE LIKED IT and dissolve into smoking dust as an outraged public rises up and makes Bryan Preston (who, after all, told them how to assault the castle) Lord Protector.

As usual with rightbloggers, delusions of grandeur must alternate with persecution mania, and there are actually people who will tell you that this fulsomely-covered story is being hushed up by the liberal media:

It's always piquant when they take a break from hollering that the hated MSM is dead to complaining the hated MSM is not only alive but so powerful it can hide all the videos of Jonathan Gruber from the public, except on YouTube. 

Their aim, inchoate as it is, seems to be to convince enough reporters that they must be even-handed about this (that is, take their bullshit seriously) to generate sufficient airtime to make them feel all zeitgeisty. They've already been pretty successful  (from the Washington Post story: "The controversy has lit a fire under conservatives eager to dismantle the law and has raised eyebrows among the law’s defenders, who are concerned that such comments will further damage" blah blah), but they won't be satisfied until some big-time brow-furrower like Jake Tapper has done a hard-hitting special series, maybe even bringing on Ron Fournier to do his Mickey Kaus act and talk about innocence betrayed. For extra laffs they could get Romney, for whom Gruber labored to develop Romneycare, to weep that he had ever nourished such a snake at his bosom.

The signal irony of the whole grift is that the grifters are pretending to be outraged that someone said voters are stupid, which is the First Principle of their livelihoods.

WHO'LL STOP THE DERP?

I expect everyone had a great time at yesterday's Concert for Valor in D.C. -- except Ethan Epstein of the Weekly Standard, who must have feverishly thumb-typed this right from the Mall:

Who would have thought that that Bruce Springsteen, Dave Grohl, and Zac Brown, accomplished musicians all, would be so, well, tone-deaf? But how else to explain their choice of song—Creedence Clearwater's famously anti-war anthem “Fortunate Son”—at the ostensibly pro-military “Concert for Valor” this evening on the National Mall? 

The song, not to put too fine a point on it, is an anti-war screed, taking shots at "the red white and blue." It was a particularly terrible choice given that Fortunate Son is, moreover, an anti-draft song, and this concert was largely organized to honor those who volunteered to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

Think how traumatized those vets must feel every time they hear this hateful song played in an oldies bar or at a ballgame or in a jeans commercial!

On a musical level, “Fortunate Song” is not a bad song—that's one hell of a riff.

I mean, it's okay if what you want is a cool, extremely popular MOR rock song at a big public concert, but why would you want that?

But the “Concert for Valor,” a Veterans Day event sponsored by HBO and Starbucks, in front of the Capitol Building, was not the place for it.

Epstein forgot to mention the big finale, where the rockstars spit on the vets from the stage and called them war pigs.  (I haven't heard any actual veterans complain, but maybe they can provoke Allan West into providing some mouth-foam later.)

There's some harrumph-harrumph Let's Examine The Controversy stuff at the Washington Post and elsewhere, but fuck it: Some ideas, if we're so generous as to call them that, are just too stupid for anything but cold buckets of derision.

UPDATE. Kudos to this guy ("a grassroots activist who distinguished himself as one of the top conservative bloggers in Florida") for crafting the perfect lede for this story:

Perhaps we should expect no less during the Obama administration...

Don't fault him for failing to work in #Benghazi, he was on deadline.

UPDATE 2. Ann Althouse gets in on it, and actually sounds sane for a while, but inevitably --

I couldn't watch the clip at the first link. I can't stand Bruce Springsteen, and much as I dislike the Weekly Standard's bellyaching, it's not as bad as listening to Bruce straining histrionically. I have to concede that it's possible that Bruce thinks — and somehow conveyed — that those who volunteer today are doing so because it's their best option in the limited array of choices they have because they are not rich or well-connected. If that's the message, then it really is a rotten thing to say to our American volunteers.

That's a lovely example of even-handedness as practiced in our current political discourse: Sure, what actually happened was clear, but on the other hand here's an unsupported fantasy about what Springsteen might be thinking, so you see both sides etc.

UPDATE 3. Here, enjoy the nightmare of Breitbart factotum John Nolte arguing about the lyrics to "Fortunate Son." (Sample: "Read lyrics from 'star spangled eyes' to 'military son, son' and understand the context of troop-bashing era, obvious imo.") Everybody retuck your shirts! Coming up next: Is "Louie, Louie" Dirty, and Whether The Flintstones is Indeed a Rip-Off of The Honeymooners.

UPDATE 4. I think this is my favorite: The Washington Times calling "Fortunate Son" "Creedence Clearwater’s Revival’s draft-dodging anthem." No, wait, my favorite is NewsBusters referring to Eminem swearing onstage (I know!) as "liberal celebrities embarrassed families in the audience and those watching at home with heavy-handed profanity." No, wait, I -- oh, hell, they're all winners.

MORALITY PLOY.

Shorter Jonah Goldberg: Y'ever notice there are no real heroes on TV or in comics anymore? Not like when you were a kid? Hello? Hello, anyone still there? Farrrt frt frt farrrrt....

In other words, all the young'uns are friggin' and fruggin' and doin' their own thing, baby, and "it’s impossible to predict what Integrity 2.0 will yield — because no society in the history of Western civilization has so energetically and deliberately torn down its classical ideal and replaced it with do-it-yourself morality." Stop the presses! Apparently everyone in the media just recently discovered Nietzche, perhaps in a viral clip from Adult Swim.

Really, that's pretty much it. The essay's other distinguishing feature is a higher-than-usual count of intentional jokes, most of which sound like P.J. O'Rourke failing a competency hearing.

Oh, there is one telling bit -- Goldberg mentions the internet trolls who, not yet having a gamergate to rally 'round, focused their misogynistic rage on Anna Gunn during the run of Breaking Bad:

It got to the point where the actress (Anna Gunn) who portrayed the poor, beleaguered Mrs. White wrote an op-ed for the New York Times complaining about the tsunami of hate aimed at her character, which had spilled onto her in real life as well. In liberal pop culture, this was the equivalent of yelling “I’m telling!” and running to the principal’s office.

?

Gunn blamed the whole thing on sexism. Her complaint may have some marginal merit, but it’s also really, really, really boring. The more interesting explanation (i.e., my explanation) is that “purely formal” integrity is just about the only kind of integrity our popular culture celebrates anymore...

Somebody actually got hurt but tscha, let's get back to the real evil, namely the questionable morality of Game of Thrones characters.

ANNALS OF THE CULTURE WAR, PART O.F.F.S.

Let's see, what's a new movie culture warriors might --

5 Conservative Themes Hidden in Interstellar

Oh for... John Boot, ladies and gentlemen:

3. Christian teaching continues to be immensely powerful. 

Though we won’t go into detail about it, there is an element introduced in the second half of the film that celebrates the story of God sacrificing His only son in order to give salvation to humankind.

Christ imagery in a movie? That's a new one.

4. Climate change isn’t going to doom us. 

Nolan’s Dust Bowl sequences seem to be the latest iteration of the idea that climate change is going to have sweeping consequences. The difference in this film is that, thanks to the confidence and competence of the Cooper character played by McConaughey — his motto is, “We’ll find a way, Professor, we always have” — there isn’t the slightest doubt that Nolan’s view of climate change is that it is simply another of the many environmental situations that man is equipped to cope with...

Just the thing to get people to stop worrying about climate change: Civilization as we know it may be wiped out, but we'll find a wormhole and pull this thing out!

Sometimes I think these things are written on bets -- it's the only possible justification for paying the writers.

UPDATE. Way back on October 30, James Pethokoukis actually wrote a National Review post called "Just What Are the Politics of Christopher Nolan’s New Film, Interstellar?" You hope for his sake and humanity's that he's kidding, but...

Is Nolan making a point about the Common Core? Fiscal austerity? Or just about the belief that we need to focus exclusively on problems here on this planet and forget about space exploration? That last one affects folks on the left and right. You have liberals who think NASA dollars might be better spent on universal pre-K. And just the other day the Federalist ran a piece...

Someone give this guy a Princess Leia doll and a bottle of NyQuil.

TROLL: PAGES FROM A SPORTSMAN'S NOTEBOOK.

On the last post alicublog had a troll infestation -- that is, we had one troll donning multiple identities, which was observable by the IP addresses and by the lack of variation in style. Not that his tone didn't change: He started out kind of funny, then devolved to tired the-real-racist material ("can't be arsed to even mention Mia Love or Tim Scott, because, you know, the narrative"), then finally personal insults ("You are some stupid unemployed loser who edits for a free libtard blog. Definition of libtard loser," "how are your tits," etc).

I don't like to delete comments or ban commenters, but in this case it eventually became necessary -- and required some diligence because the guy kept coming back with new names. But the effort may have been worth it because it yielded this poignant moment:

The need for acknowledgement, and to humble the object of one's obsession by compelling it -- this, let future generations know, is the essence of troll. You're welcome, internet!

FUN WITH WORDS.

I thought I'd seen some far-out iterations of the "liberals are the real racists/sexists" schtick, but Ann Althouse has pushed out the frontiers. Charlie Pierce did a fun election night round-up, full of lively insults ("James Lankford... a red-haired fanatic who believes that welfare causes school shootings.... Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin..."), and Althouse complains:

1. Why is "red-haired" considered acceptable as an insult?

?

2. Why is it considered okay to call attention to what seems to be an eye disorder? Whether something is wrong with Scott Walker's eyes or not, the epithet "goggle-eyed" is disrespectful to all of the people who suffer from conditions like esotropia.

??

Eventually she explains, sort of:

(By the way, "escadrille" is how you say "squadron" or "small squadron" in French. I'll refrain from adding an anti-French kicker, given my attention to political correctness above.)

After running this through BabelFish, I have determined that she means you liberals are all into political correctness (yes you are libtards you like to kiss it and hug it), yet you yourself are being offensive to red-haired people plus squinting is a medical condition etc. Who's the real esotropia-ist now?

I see a bunch of people in the news calling for compromise between the camps, but it's hard to know how to even begin a conversation with people like this.

(She also thinks it's bad to make jokes about hayseeds for some reason. I'm sure glad no one ever told Paul Henning!)

MORNING BETTING LINE OF IMPEACHMENT ARTICLES:

9-1:   Miscegenation with Hitlery
7-1:   Questioning the tax-exempt status of non-partisan Obama-fighting organizations
6-1:   Treason by not sending The Expendables with jet-packs to fight ISIS
5-1:   FEMA camps (special guest appearance by Colin Powell to show us where they are)
4-1:   Treason by making Marines hold umbrellas over him, thus leaving America defenseless
5-3:   Treason by sending Central American child-moocher-soldiers to invade the Confederacy
2-1: #Benghazi
1-3: #Benghazi Plus (e.g., Obama did #Benghazi so he could get with Chris Stevens' boyfriend, for a golf bet, etc.)
1-5:   Resisting arrest

If there's time, we'll also see the Anti-Witchcraft Act, the Mandatory Fracking Amendment, and the National Apology for Reconstruction. But mainly they'll spend the first few months tunneling under the Mall and attaching a giant Hoover to the Treasury to suck public money out of Big Gummint control and into the pockets of their campaign contributors. Priorities!

Ah, my dears, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

UPDATE. Ugh -- okay, who's the person you least want to hear from on this topic? (Besides the troll in the thread, I mean, and I swear I didn't create him just so my brilliant commenters would have something to do.)

Give up? Surprise, it's Megan McArdle, who tells us the President was too high-handed with the Republicans in 2009, instead of generously offering to work with them on their shared goal of providing Americans with a national health care system, and "his presidency has never recovered from that mistake." If only he'd been more conciliatory!

Oh, and according to McArdle Obama's not the only Democrat to blame:

The Tea Party Republicans who unnecessarily brought the government to a halt, and double-unnecessarily cost their own party many key elections, have much to answer for. But the Democrats who helped create them have some accountability, too.

You gotta admit, it takes some crust for a Koch celebrant to blame American politics' biggest astroturf boondoggle on the Democratic Party.

Then McArdle says Obama should now work with the Republicans so Hillary will have an easier time of it in 2016 -- you know, the way Clinton's cooperation with Gingrich paved the way for the Al Gore Administration. Then she waves impeachment like a stick to punish naughty Obama --

The American public might view an impeachment over policy with less distaste than they did an impeachment over intern nookie. And if they remember the lessons of 1998, and decline to take the bait --

[Pause here to ask: Lessons of 1998? Who on God's green earth looks back at the Clinton impeachment and thinks, "God, why didn't we nail him when we had the chance"?] 

-- Obama could find his favorables in a Bush-style free fall that dooms his putative Democratic successor. If I were an adviser, I’d counsel against taking this course. But then, I am cautious by nature.

"Cautious" is a polite word for it.

GOTV.

Election season has brought the usual crop of conservatives telling you that too many people vote so you filthy paupers should desist and to leave the franchise to your betters. In the last ditch, knowing that you won't vote Republican, they may try and steer you toward their deceptive niche brand. But by and large they'd rather you just gave up.

National Review legacy pledge Jonah Goldberg has been doing this routine for years but never gets any better at it. Perhaps sensing his audience has become jaded, this year he's added a hook designed to excite them:

They just can't quit Lena Dunham, see; she's like the anti-Fox Fembot and her very existence, even on the fringes of popular art, enrages them. (I understand Goldberg's second choice was "Why Obama's birth certificate shouldn't be allowed to vote.") National Review even has an actual editorial about Dunham, as if she were ISIS or the Cyprus question.

Back to Goldberg: How's the content? Bet you're sorry you asked:

Dunham says that "voting is kind of a gateway drug to 'getting involved.'" 

This is a widely held view and, as far as I can tell, there is absolutely no truth to it. But even if voting boosted civic participation, the very idea puts the cart before the horse. It is like saying you should buy a car because that way you might learn to drive or take the test and then study for it.

Similarly, it's like reading a book to become smart, which is backwards; everybody knows that only smart people with Van Dykes and designer specs can read books cuz they've been properly educated in liberal fasciology -- try and read without that, and you might learn the wrong things.

Anyway, you know how they feel about you voting -- and in America's redder precincts on Election Day, their message is spread by deeds rather than words. So let's go ahead and vote, then, if only because it pisses off the idiots.

UPDATE. So, when's the impeachment start?

ANNALS OF THE CULTURE WAR, PART 438,283.

Remember in the summer of 2009 when some guys put up Obama/Joker/Socialist posters, took pictures of them, spread them around the internet, and claimed it was about a national wave of resistance to the tyrant Obummer? And how every once in a while they, or someone like them, will put up some more posters, and claim it's "part of a larger campaign by street artists who are filling cities with political messages in opposition to the current administration," except you never see them anywhere but at rightwing websites?

Well, here we go again, except -- record scratch! -- this time it's a different black Democrat:

Blar har, in your face Maxine Waters!

Normally this sort of thing at this time of year is associated with the word "desperation," but Steven Hayward of Power Line has learned a new word, apparently, and is perhaps over-eager to put it to use.

So I learn from my students that the new descriptive term for showing someone up is “flexing”—I suppose a reference perhaps to what body builders do in a gym? Not sure, and I’ll make a point of asking for a more complete explanation and proper usage guide in class next week. 

But even before then, it appears someone is flexin’ ol’ Maxine Waters, the openly socialist Democratic Congresswoman from south central Los Angeles...

I think Professor Hayward hasn't quite got it . In the classic sense, you would have to have something to show off in order to properly flex. "I made an ugly poster of you while you cruised to victory" doesn't really qualify.

At American Thinker, Thomas Lifson explains what it's really all about:

The left long ago discovered the subversive power of street art. By expressing forbidden thoughts in a flamboyant manner, guerrilla posters plastered in walls, on utility poles, and in other public spaces can plant seeds that quietly sprout and grow where they can’t be seen: in people’s minds.

Well, we can sprout in people's minds, too, libtards! Our interns know Photoshop.

BOO.

A big Count Floyd ah-woooo for Daniel J. Flynn of the American Spectator, who has given us the culture-war Halloween essay of the year and perhaps all time.

Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, and Michael Myers kill kids rushing to become adults. Is it too much to ask of the ghoulish trio to apply their talents toward adults rushing to become kids? 

The grownups who have decimated the ranks of trick-or-treaters by aborting 10 million of them in the last decade offer penance for their sins against Halloween by dressing up in place of the missing children.

I can hear you all out there in the darkness, going blink... blink... Let me explain: See, us godless liberals killed all the kids in the womb and stole their costumes, and now enact a grisly, Walpurgisnacht travesty of what should be a red-blooded, cowboys-and-princesses American Halloween!

One way thirtysomething Halloween enthusiasts recoup the money spent on costumes involves not dispensing candy. One can’t help but notice the same couples, dressed in the late night as a sexy Ebola nurse and her doting patient, hiding in their kitchens with the lights out earlier in the evening when the doorbells ring.

Can't help but notice! Who says the Spectator doesn't do reported pieces?

Thereafter it's a jumble of cultural signifiers -- Ray Rice! Milton Berle! -- till inevitably it's time to blame Obama for evil abortion Halloween:

Surely the National Parent sets a bad example here. Pajama Boy, that cradle-to-grave sponge “Julia,” and the health-care act regarding 26-year-olds as dependents entitled to coverage from their parents’ insurance plans all recast adolescence long beyond its biological boundaries -- 25 is the new 12.

This is even better than the gibberish Flynn came up with for Martin Luther King Day. Party on, cowboy!

UPDATE. Just found that Flynn did something very similar last Halloween ("The scariest thing about Halloween isn’t the goblins... It’s adults who impersonate children"). It's lighter on the abortion than his current holiday column, but it does have topical references (50 Shades and Miley Cyrus, remember them?) and a terrific title: "WHOREOWEEN."

TOO MANY CREEPS.

While people argue about the absence of honkies from that catcalling video, let us not forget that some people (hint: wingnuts) are less likely to worry about that than about how feminazis ruin everything.  At Patheos, "John Gabriel, Ed.":

Apologies to the video editor, but “how you doing today,” “how are you this morning,” and “have a nice evening” hardly count as harassment. If they do, I’m violated by polite tourists, panhandlers, and assertive shopkeepers every time I stroll along a busy city street.

If, when he reciprocated these greetings, they were reliably followed by "I wanna suck your sweet pussy" or similar sentiments, he might feel differently. Oh, and get this:

For better or worse, I’ve never followed fashion. Not only have I never catcalled, I still open doors for women, surrender my seat on public transport, and ensure that I treat them with an extra measure of kindness. I was notified by several liberal men on Twitter that this is A Bad Thing.

Sure you were, buddy.

Found via Ole Perfesser Instapundit, who amplifies with some of his traditional cracker-barrel wisdom:

And let’s be honest. What makes these catcalls offensive isn’t that they come from men. It’s that they come from low-status men. Like an unconsented kiss from President Obama, if the catcalls came from George Clooney there’d be much less female outrage.

You all know I enjoy extrapolating from the text, but I'm not even gonna try and visualize the fantasy life from which this kind of thing emerges. Don't these guys have mothers?

Title ref:


UPDATE. In comments, D Johnston:

That line ["And let’s be honest. What makes these catcalls offensive isn’t that they come from men. It’s that they come from low-status men"] is straight out of the MRA playbook ('You wouldn't think it was creepy if I were rich and attractive')... It's yet another example of how the right blogosphere is beginning to absorb the Men's Rights blogosphere. Or maybe the MRA blogs are more like some horrifying gamete, bringing the right blogosphere into a new stage of being?

I've noticed the coalescence of the Men's Rights and conservative movements, too; it gets more obvious during events like the Santa Barbara massacre and Gamergate, but it's always there (and of course in the works of the Perfesser) like a stalker. You just have to challenge them a little tiny bit and it comes busting out.

UPDATE 2. I swear commenter ALPHA.MALE is not a sockpuppet I made to give you guys something to play with.

GIVE MY REGARDS TO BUMFUCK.

PJ Media:

GOP Cities Have Cheaper Houses than Dem Cities

Ole Perfesser Instapundit:

WHY DO DEMOCRATS HATE POOR PEOPLE? Liberal Cities Like L.A. Face Much Higher Housing Prices.

TownHall:

Most Expensive Housing Markets in US are in Liberal Districts 

...Correlation or cause? Union work rules, land availability, and building restrictions (or lack thereof) are all likely in play.

I thought these guys believed in the free market, but they seem not to understand that when people want something a lot, the price goes up, and when they don't want it so much the price goes down. Ordinary citizens pay large sums just to visit New York City; it makes sense they would pay top dollar to live in it, unless you've convinced yourself that it must be awful because of all the blacks and socialism.

Conversely, I don't see anyone paying top dollar to live in Fritters, Alabama, despite the many advantages of Republican government. Sorry for your self-esteem, comrade, but that's capitalism!

UPDATE. I can't believe people are still going on about this. (Oh, of course I can believe it -- it's standard-issue Liberal Plantation crap.) As he has in the past, National Review's Kevin D. Williamson suggests that if you can't buy a three-bedroom house in the liberal city of your choice, you're being oppressed:

Progressivism is a luxury good for coddled urban professionals; it immiserates everybody else.

Why then, I wonder, don't New York's poor head out like the Okies of yore to the promised land of North Dakota? "Maw, I can smell the fracking from here!" Except the rent in those boom towns is no bargain either -- though of course you're probably closer to a Wal-Mart and a Chick-fil-A, so there are cultural advantages.

UPDATE 2. Williamson's other recent expression of sympathy for the poor is amazing: he would like to imagine shoeshine men paid more when they work on more expensive shoes, though he offers no method to accomplish this save the free market, which from recent evidence seems unlikely to come through. For this daydream philanthropy Williamson considers himself morally superior to liberal policy wonk Eva Longoria. I swear they recruit these people from nuthouses.

THE WORSE, THE BETTER.

What’s Bad for America Is Good for Democrats

I'm beginning to think National Review's Dennis Prager is just toying with us now.

...Even today, after decades of feminism, most Americans agree that it is better for women (and for men) — and better for society — when women (and men) marry. Yet, when women marry, it is bad for the Democratic party; and when women do not marry, even after — or shall we say, especially after — having children, it is quite wonderful for the Democratic party. 

Married women vote Republican. Unmarried women lopsidedly vote Democrat. 

It is both silly and dishonest to deny that it is in the Democrats’ interest that women not marry. 

Which is why we make them wear those ugly Birkenstocks and not shave their legs.

Also, "the more a black American considers America a racist society, the more he or she is a guaranteed Democratic voter," which is why Democrats make such obvious efforts to stir up racial resentment: Prager offers in evidence Ferguson, which only really got out of control when Debbie Wasserman Schultz went down there and started setting trash cans on fire.

The Democratic party cultivates singlehood, black anger at America, Latino separatism, victimhood, group grievance, and dependency on government... 

The Democratic party has been become a wholly destructive force in this country. Even though you may not intend to, if you vote for any Democrat, you contribute to that damage.

I was waiting for him to tell me that doctor in New York purposely spread Ebola to drum up business for the Democrat-medical complex. I think even people who refer contemptuously to wingnut welfare can agree that Prager is one of those poor souls who really couldn't survive without it.

UPDATE. Elsewhere at National Review, Tim Cavanaugh

The Only Ebola Panic Is Being Caused by Doctors and Nurses

The theme of the article, near as I can pick out of the fevered prose, is that the conservative Ebola panic brigade does not exist, it's really elitist public health officials and a New Yorker writer who are trying to spread "Ebola panic among people who didn’t go to college" by saying there's no reason to panic when there really is because look, bowling shoes, but Cavanaugh is totally not trying to panic you, plus Chris Christie's a RINO. Someone should take Cavanaugh's temperature, or at least quarantine him.

UPDATE 2. Mollie Hemingway, having made a similar we're-not-the-panic-you're-the-panic case before, returns with more of the same and worse:

I’m sorry, but if you read the phrase “based on science” and don’t immediately guffaw at the unfounded arrogance and unchecked assumptions of it all, you are probably a typical reporter.

People wonder what happened to the Know Nothing Party -- well, wonder no more! First climate studies, now epidemiology -- wonder what branch of science conservatives will come out against next? (I know, I skipped psychiatry.)

AT LAST!

New York Post:

Comrades, it's finally here! After six long years of pretending to be a moderate -- giving America a Rube Goldberg reform system that keeps all the current health-care capitalists enriched, for example, instead of the true socialized medicine other developed countries enjoy -- Obama's finally going radical! We were all disappointed when he didn't come through after the 2012 election, I know, but this time for sure -- because after 2016 there won't be any way to run bullshit stories like this, and the gutter press will have to content itself with "Hillary = Obama's Third Term." (They're already testing this one out.)

Alas, the actual article is a disappointment. Under "war on terror," for example, I had hoped to learn how Obama hates this fucking country and wants to surrender it to radical Islam, which totally rocks; but instead we hear about a "whitewash" of the Bowe Bergdahl case (remember him?). I fear Sperry, Dick Morris, and the rest are just warming us up for the inevitable impeachment, at which Bergdahl will be one of the 238 high crimes and misdemeanors the GOP will prosecute.

This one's a little more promising:

The Orwellian-sounding regulation would force some 1,200 municipalities to redraw zoning maps to racially diversify suburban neighborhoods... 

It’s part of the administration’s ambitious agenda to eliminate “racial segregation,” ZIP code by ZIP code, block by block, through the systematic dismantling of allegedly “exclusionary” building ordinances. In effect, federal bureaucrats will have the power to rezone your neighborhood.

Gasp! I'm surprised they didn't put this invasion-of-the-blacks thing up front. Maybe they're saving it for their illustrated election-day flyers.

FRIDAY ROUND-THE-HORN.

•   Jonah Goldberg is doing his usual propaganda from a slightly higher horse than usual today:

You may boil down your beliefs to a series of ideas, but odds are that every lesson you ever learned came at the end of a story, either one you lived or one you watched unfold. All great religions are taught to us as stories. Every great journalistic exposé came in the form of a story.

Much like great novels, which, Goldberg earlier informed us, are "inherently conservative."

We evolved to learn through stories. We may as well be called homo relator, or storytelling man.

What's Latin for "bullshit"? Goldberg then tells us that while the things conservatives believe are ideas and the revealed word of the living Reagan, everything believed by liberals is just a bunch of stories (maybe fairy stories, har har why you gettin offended), including those so-called "studies" by so-called "scientists" with their "environmentalist" Gaia myths about how pollution is bad for you. ("If science could settle, man would never learn to fly or read by electric light," puffs Goldberg. Wait'll you stupid eggheads see the money he'll make on his fart-powered Cheeto-stuffing machine!)

Another example:

For much of the summer, large numbers of Americans insisted that the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., was one kind of story. It was a tale of institutional racism in which the police are the villains and young African-American men the innocent victims. This was the storyline many in the media wanted, and it was one they were determined to get. 

Now, as a grand jury goes about prying fact from fiction, the story is falling apart as a matter of legal reality. But you can be sure the story will live on for decades to come. That’s in no small part because...

...of centuries of actual African-American experience?

... because many decent Americans have locked themselves into the belief that the heroic chapter of the civil-rights movement can never end. The story must go on so they can continue to cast themselves as the heroes.

Gotta love that "decent" -- when you're telling black people they're just playing the victim, Goldberg seems to think, throw in a nice word and no one can complain.

•   I see Rod Dreher has identified a new liberal-who-hates-liberals-which-proves-liberals-suck. I thought Mickey Kaus had that market cornered. For half the column Dreher quotes the guy copiously, then tells us he read somewheres about another guy, "a white man who had grown up in a hardscrabble way... and he was expected to deprecate himself and apologize for his Straight White Male Privilege," so see, it's all true. The very best part of this plea for you-other-guys to be tolerant:

It’s not that I believe conservatives are free of these things; it’s that in my own world, it’s usually the liberals who behave this way.

Also he doesn't seem to get Woody Allen jokes.

•   Oh God, Ross Douthat drew the short straw at Dracula's castle and thumbsucks over why liberals have a lot of newspapers and TV shows while he's stuck with Fox News. Allow me to synopsize his three possible reasons:

1. Liberals are "open-minded" and conservatives are "conformist sheep." Ha ha, as if!
2. The only people who read The New Yorker and junk like that are arty-farties and other members of the "liberal clerisy" who live on welfare/Soros checks, while "well-educated and well-informed conservatives are often businessmen" who "treat their media consumption mostly as a source of information rather than identity," so there. Plus liberals can waste their time reading about foreigners and operas because they don't have any children to beat.
3. Damn liberal media!

Too bad the free market isn't giving him the media empire Douthat really wants -- one that everybody thinks is smart and cool. Then Douthat could quit the New York Slimes and join it!

•   If someone told me years ago that one day a big-time wingnut hack would be denouncing appeals for calm during a public health emergency and telling people science is bullshit -- well, actually, I would have believed it; I've always been pretty cynical.

SICK, SICK, SICK.

I knew Heather Mac Donald was ridiculous, but Jesus:

The public-health establishment has unanimously opposed a travel and visa moratorium from Ebola-plagued West African countries to protect the U.S. population. To evaluate whether this opposition rests on purely scientific grounds, it helps to understand the political character of the public-health field. For the last several decades, the profession has been awash in social-justice ideology. Many of its members view racism, sexism, and economic inequality, rather than individual behavior, as the primary drivers of differential health outcomes in the U.S. According to mainstream public-health thinking, publicizing the behavioral choices behind bad health—promiscuous sex, drug use, overeating, or lack of exercise—blames the victim.

That's why, instead of fooling around with pump handles, John Snow should have just had cholera sufferers put in the stocks for spreading miasma.

...The public-health profession has a clear political orientation, so it’s quite possible that its opposition to a visa and travel moratorium is influenced as much by belief in America’s responsibility for the postcolonial oppression of Africa, and suspicion of American border enforcement, as it is by a commitment to public-health principles of containment and control.

The philosophy behind this is that anyone who wants to help people is some sort of freak and therefore can't be trusted despite their training and accomplishments in the relevant field, and we should instead listen to political hacks like Heather Mac Donald.

When seen from a distance of years, this alarmism will disgust and embarrass our descendants. But the spreaders themselves are only looking as far ahead as Election Day.