ANNALS OF ESRD (END-STAGE REAGAN DISEASE).

Some other folks wandered out of the National Review freak show tent looking spooked, so I wandered in and got a load of Kevin D. Williamson's latest outrage. It is indeed a corker. His thesis is that the declining state of working-class whites in America (which seems to spur them to support Donald Trump) has nothing really to do with economic circumstances such as job flight -- the figures may say it's massive but look, here's a factory town that died many years ago, so there! -- and their troubles are their own damn fault and they should open a map, look up Opportunity, and go find some:

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.

Most of the discussion I've seen around this marvels that Williamson dares to spit on "the base" -- those normally reliable masses of Republican voters who need only the merest sign that the leadership shares their concerns, prejudices, and objects of worship to be kept aboard. Why was he abandoning such a successful shtick? You just show some concern for their increasingly tenuous employment prospects, and (while continuing tax policies that encourage offshoring) promise to kick out Mexicans and to immiserate the other, darker poor so these good sons of the sod will never be mistaken for them, and they follow you like baby ducklings. It worked for decades! And you didn't even have to give a shit.

But in truth, conservatives have been losing that knack for a long time. I notice the one traditional conservative instrument Williamson employs in his essay is Marriage & Morality Nagging. We're rich because we no longer worry about meat shortages, says Williamson, but "the family-life numbers, on the other hand, came down on us like a meteor... divorce in 1960 was so rare as to carry a hint of scandalous glamour... add to that the violence of abortion, which fundamentally alters the relationship between men, women, and children," etc.

So Williamson does blame heathenism -- but he shows no sympathy for the poor crackers he says suffer from it. It sort of makes sense -- after all, backwoods preachers (on whose act modern scolds base their own) didn't show sympathy for adulterers, they called down wrath and invited shame.

Other conservative thinkers who specialize in M&MN may be gentler that Williamson, but they're not so much sympathetic as clinical. Charles Murray, in his Fishtown/Belmont mode as poor-white diagnostician, wants the enlightened richie class to "drop its condescending 'nonjudgmentalism'" and "start preaching what it practices" -- that is, telling white wastrels to get married and do other things richies do, presumably ballet lessons for the kids, golf for the men and service on charity boards for the ladies, which the poors will afford by floating a loan.

And there's Williamson's colleage, David French. When word got around about the elevated suicide and drug abuse rate among working class white people last year, French shook his moralizing fist. His target then was liberals; thanks to their "celebrating hedonism" with love-ins and pot parties, "the sexual revolution is gutting the working class," he cried, and not only that, these "cultural aristocrats" look down on their victims, the poor whites, because "mocking poor whites is among the last acceptable forms of bigotry."

But then came Trump and now look at French: He has a post called "Working-Class Whites Have Moral Responsibilities -- In Defense of Kevin Williamson." No longer does he rage at hippies for sexing up the honky proles -- though he sticks in a brief mumble over "the role of progressive culture and progressive policies in cultural decline," perhaps by reflex. Mostly he rages, or rather sighs dismissively, at the proles themselves:

For generations, conservatives have rightly railed against deterministic progressive notions that put human choices at the mercy of race, class, history, or economics. Those factors can create additional challenges, but they do not relieve any human being of the moral obligation to do their best. 

Yet millions of Americans aren’t doing their best. Indeed, they’re barely trying.

As proof, he tells us how his church tried to help a bunch of these meth-addled hillbillies and it didn't work -- so obviously it wasn't the church's approach that was the problem, it was the trailer trash's "sense of entitlement":

...it was consistently astounding how little effort most parents and their teen children made to improve their lives. If they couldn’t find a job in a few days — or perhaps even as little as a few hours — they’d stop looking. If they got angry at teachers or coaches, they’d drop out of school. If they fought with their wife, they had sex with a neighbor.

In short, it's everything they've been laying on their traditional enemies -- the hippies, the blacks -- except now they're turning on their traditional friends. I'm not quite sure why. Maybe grifts don't always die when the sucker catches on -- or even, as the Trump phenomenon suggests, when the sucker moves on to a splashier grift. Maybe grifts also die when the confidence man loses his confidence.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the cancelled Chicago Trump rally, and the room it gave some rightbloggers to hedge their anti-Trump positions. It was inevitable that some incident would trigger the lawn-order instincts of the brethren this political season, and for them Chicago was Double Stuf because 1.) black people, and 2.) the freespeech rights of a rich guy who already has more freespeech (in the form of freemedia) than anyone else on Planet Earth.

UPDATE. In the column I'm agnostic about the protesters' behavior because the column's not about them, it's about the reactions to them. I'd like to leave it as a tactical question, as Charlie Pierce eloquently does here, and just say it doesn't work, but I'm also against speech shutdowns as a matter of principle. Here's something I'd like to know more about, though: whether the Chicago rally had to be shut down, or whether the protesters could have been removed and the thing was just cynically closed by Trump for the boob-baiting effect.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

My buddy Bob -- fine fotog BTW -- sent me this.
I don't normally go for twee retrofittings but this is very well done.

•    Olde-tyme alicublog fans may remember that, back when Smallville was a Thing, I envisioned a goopy WB-style show called Riverdale ("'Are you proud of me now, Dad?' [Jughead] cries, forcing down another burger"). Later Point Blank Creative did a fake trailer for a similar imaginary program. And now I read in the trades: 

It’s fair to say that we here at ComicsAlliance are very excited for The CW’s upcoming Archie adaptation, Riverdale and its promises of a weirder, more adult version of our favorite characters including a hunky Archie, emo Jughead and adderall-addicted Betty.

Watching the world play out your fantasies is one of few advantages of old age. When they finally get around to that Lockhorns movie, I can finally let go of life!  Or maybe I should hold out for Dinesh D'Souza's Mallard Fillmore, done in the manner of Howard the Duck.

•   I'm kind of loving the hold-your-nose-and-vote-for-Cruz movement -- especially since, in contrast with other hold-your-nose movements, this one is actually headed by Cruz supporters. They love Cruz' religious-mania-infused hyper-conservatism, but recognize that nobody else likes anything about him -- indeed, many voters are willing to entertain the possibility that he's the Zodiac Killer -- and so go out hat in hand, explaining why their candidate's repulsiveness shouldn't matter. (Even National Review's official endorsement admits, "We are well aware that a lot of Republicans, and even some conservatives, dislike the senator and even find him unlikable.") From his email newsletter, Jim Geraghty:

Fairly or not, there are a lot of people who just don’t like Cruz. There’s a reason most Republican officials endorsed Cruz’s rivals and there’s a reason it’s taken so long for most of the Republican party to come around to Cruz. It’s not just that they’re all Georgetown cocktail-party elitists who see Cruz as too principled and a threat to their smug status. 

What’s fascinating is the number of people who completely or almost completely agree with Cruz on the issues who still openly talk about him like they can’t stand him. Ben Carson apparently is angry enough about the alleged Iowa rumor-mongering that he’s willing to endorse Trump, the man who compared him to a child molester...

In the end Geraghty tells readers that they should look past their feelings and face their patriotic duty: "Is Cruz really so unlikeable that everyone is willing to send the conservative movement, the GOP, and the country through the chaotic damage of a Trump nomination or presidency?" The problem with this is like the problem with Trumpism in general: These voters have been living on a thin gruel of Republican ressentiment for decades -- lots of hate, few results. Now someone's turned them on to the harder stuff. Why would they go back -- especially when the pitch involves a Call to Duty? When 9/11 went down, George W. Bush told them to go shopping; the promise that they wouldn't have to bestir themselves on behalf of other people (let alone a common purpose) was a big part of the sell. So why would they give up the best high of their lives for Ted Cruz?

OBITCHUARY.

De mortuis nil nisi bonum and all that, but this isn't so much about Nancy Reagan as Rhonda Robinson of PJ Media, whose tribute to the former first lady begins,

When Nancy Reagan died, she left a legacy that we can all claim as our own. At least, it's within our grasp if we choose to reach for it.

After some gush about how "completely, unashamedly devoted to her husband" Mrs. Reagan was, Robinson gets to the nut:

She was not famous for the bills she wrote, the laws she passed, or a product or company she created. She did none of those things. She was a wife. Her most noted attribute was her adoring gaze at her husband, a man to whom she devoted her life. In doing so, she committed the ultimate sin against feminism.

[Blink. Blink.]

As someone born at the tail end of the Boomer generation, Nancy stands as a monument in my mind.

Nancy was born at the tail... oh, right, PJ Media -- no editors.

Her life was a stark contrast to everything women in my generation were told was important.

What's that slogan from Our Bodies, Ourselves, again? Oh yeah: "The one who dies with the most abortions wins."

When planning your life, setting your goals and dreams, it's always best to begin at the end. When everyone gathers for your funeral, when your family lines the seats in the front row, what will they say? It's at that moment everyone's legacy will be revealed.

"Jesus, these folding chairs are padded with ermine! She sure was rich. It'll be fun watching her brats fight over it."

...If you're alive enough to read this, you can alter your legacy today. Simply follow Nancy's example and focus on the most important part of your life.

You heard the lady: Move to Hollywood and start sucking cock!

SECOND-SUPER-TUESDAY THREAD.

I enjoyed this:

But I enjoyed this more:

I mean, it's guilty fun to see rightbloggers blinking in the hot white light of the Trump Express as it bears down on them, but it's unashamedly a riot to see them acting pissy about the instrument of their destruction: Hmmph, he thinks he's such a big deal, well I'll show him with my Tweet! It's even more enjoyable than their ObamaHitler shtick, because they only got occasionally around to being dismissive about him -- you know, the talk about his sissy mom jeans and so forth; most of the time they have red-facedly denounced him as the tyrant crushing the Constitution with his big black cock. I still think Trump fades, but if he doesn't I look forward to watching conservatives fumbling to develop Trump snark -- they're so not used to being genuinely bullied that they haven't got the chops liberals (older ones anyway) developed over decades of Reaganism and Middle East war fevers. Maybe after five or ten years they'll learn to make jokes that are actually funny.

Ah, who am I kidding -- even before the electoral coup de grace they'll be on the Trump bandwagon, thumbing their nose at the people too sissified to climb up there with them.

UPDATE.  Jonah Goldberg farts fretfully, or frets fartfully, over what might have been:

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of this sorry state of affairs is that many conservatives have been arguing for years that we must update Republican policies to help the very people Trump is now winning over through ideologically haphazard and substance-free demagoguery. Indeed, a diverse group of intellectuals associated with the Conservative Reform Network and the journal National Affairs developed a host of policies that apply Reaganite principles to today’s problems.

"Policies that apply Reaganite principles to today’s problems!" Why would people choose an entertaining strongman over that! But look, Goldberg's willing to be reasonable:

As Ramesh Ponnuru (my colleague at the American Enterprise Institute and National Review) has argued, cutting top marginal tax rates were a priority when President Reagan took office in 1980 because they were at 70 percent. Now they’re at 39.6 percent, so maybe other forms of tax relief should take priority?

We've been servicing the rich and telling you to wait for the trickle-down for 35 years, but now that you're coming down the lane with pitchforks and torches, I am authorized to offer you a slight expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit. (Also, what's with the question mark? Maybe Goldberg is emulating Vox-y millennial uptalk in hopes it'll make him look smart, like a dog with glasses and a pipe.)

...Reformocons, as they’re sometimes called, were trying to find a way to grow the party without abandoning Reaganite principles...

I wrote about the Reformicon scam back in 2014 -- it was a self-evident smoke-and-mirrors show to make disastrously failed old policies look fresh 'n' wonky. But I thought they were still pushing it -- Big Chief Reformicon Michael R. Strain keeps appearing in the pages of NR, most recently to pimp his own Washington Post column in which "I argue against Mr. Trump." Yet Goldberg talks about Reformicons' efforts in the past tense. Has the routine been shelved, and is the "Young Guns Network" of Reformicon wonks at this very moment being reimagined as some other kind of racket -- maybe as a legion of super-heroes? Stay tuned!

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the state of Trumpism during the current Cruz surge. And by "surge" I mean two caucuses, which is still enough to start another rightblogger mood swing and the release of a whole lotta hooey before the next Trump panic hits.

I get a little bit into the case of Breitbart's John Nolte, who is sort of the poster boy for a certain kind of conservative who acts very pro-Trump but always takes care to preserve plausible deniability for the Great Cruz-or-Rubio Correction to come. Rush Limbaugh is the major market version of this -- Conor Friedersdorf has a long overthink on the subject, but Limbaugh's wide stance strikes me as a market decision and nothing any deeper; no point in alienating customers when, ideologically, there's so little at stake. Nolte, who clearly doesn't have to hit any ad-sale targets, is  a different story -- I think he's more like a typical Trump yahoo, just chasing the latest groovy hate fuck -- if it turns out he has to get it from Cruz (who's really no less vicious than Trump), that's okay too.

But my favorite part is about the Trump philosophers, who find some entertaining ways to pin Trump on everyone but the guys who are voting for him.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Hey Beyonce: How about this next year at the Super Bowl?

•   There was a GOP debate last night and, as you would expect, the whole National Review chicken coop is clucking its disapproval of Trump, though they've at least learned their complaints don't mean anything; Rich Lowry ends his Cruz blowjob, "This was Trump at his worst, although past debates have established that outrageousness doesn’t hurt him because for his supporters it’s part of his appeal." I would enjoy the betrayal of Lowry by his conservative "base" more if I thought it was actually hurting his feelings. But Lowry's a pro, and I suspect he's already drafting Strange New Respect stories about Il Douche for the coming war with Hitlery. Eventually he'll turn up at Mar-a-Lago, dancing and singing "the best campaign dinners are no campaign dinners" like Ed Begley Sr. in Wild in the Streets.

•   The real howler at this morning's National Review is Jim Geraghty, who has the tough job of explaining to his readers that while war crimes like torture are supported by his colleague Andrew McCarthy and are therefore no big deal, the war crimes Trump was proposing -- killing terrorists' families and so forth -- are Beyond the Pale. Give him credit: Geraghty came up with what, outside of a seance with Reagan, would seem the gambit most likely to sway a National Review reader:

If this argument feels familiar, it’s because we’ve seen this before. It was on 24, season two...

The sudden reveal that Jack Bauer wasn’t willing to kill an 11-year-old in order to extract information, was one of the most important moments of the show; to have the protagonist, who we’re supposed to root for, kill a child would be passing the moral event horizon. Jack Bauer might be the most relentless and ruthless fictional federal agent in history, a man willing to behead a murderous child pornographer who’s a federal witness – “I’m gonna need a hacksaw” – but he always has enough moral clarity to recognize that certain acts can never be morally justified. That’s not what the heroes do, that’s not what the good guys do. And, the show’s creators were telling us, that’s not what Americans do.

Sorry, Jim: They've already seen 24: The (CIA) Director's Cut, and if the sequel doesn't deliver even more blood and guts they'll be disappointed.

•   Well, with the Republicans melting down, surely it's time for yet another Libertarian Moment, eh? Doing his part: Daniel Payne at The Federalist:

Girl Scout Cookies Prove We Need To End Child Labor Laws

I could and probably should stop there, but I will add that Payne wishes to do away with Big Gummint's "baffling and ridiculous slate of prohibitions" on child labor. For instance, did you know the statists won't let your kid do "outside window washing" -- even though Francois Truffaut showed us in Small Change that babies can survive steep falls? Plus think how much the Makers would save if their roof-rigs and descent chairs only had to hold a child-size payload.

The end result of these laws is ultimately not child protection but prohibiting children from using their innate potential to earn their own money.

If it weren't for these cursed laws, Daniel Payne would have been able to start his career as a propagandist much earlier, and maybe gotten that Times column before Douthat. Now look at him! Life is unfair, especially to Galtian supermen.

THEY HAD IT COMING.

Peter Beinart worries that

The United States is headed toward a confrontation, the likes of which it has not seen since 1968, between leftist activists, who believe in physical disruption as a means of drawing attention to injustice, and a candidate eager to forcibly put down that disruption in order to make himself look tough.

At National Review, David French agrees:

It would be painfully easy for leftist activists to position themselves close to a group of strategically-chosen Trump supporters, initiate a disruption, and then resist the instant the crowd tried to push them out. A racially-charged brawl would be endlessly replayed on the nightly news, complete with injured, bleeding victims, and national tensions would start to boil over.

Ours is an amazing country, where black people can get the shit beat out of them for hundreds of years, and chuckleheads agree that the real danger in a demagogic racist's volatile campaign is that black people might make his white supporters look bad by forcing them to beat them up some more.

JOBS BEN CARSON CAN DO NEXT.

Carson's Belt Buckles. Hanging with a rough crowd? Afraid you'll get shivved? Buckle up for safety with this ultra-tough Carson buckle, and your assailant will really need Gifted Hands to get at your gut! Not only is this buckle made of super-strong Tintinabulum -- it's also fitted with extensions that can be slipped through the placket of your shirt and expanded to protect up to a full square foot of your abdomen. The buckle itself, modeled on one of Carson's most famous portraits, is attractively molded and enamel-plated by the Franklin Mint.

Gentle Ben. In this warm-hearted, post-modern take on the old TV show, the titular bear is transformed by a divinely-directed lightning strike into a simple country doctor portrayed by Carson. The new Gentle Ben solves the problems of local townsfolk with rambling stories that leave them wondering what they were complaining about in the first place. Ben remains every bit the beloved member of the Bedloe family he was in ursine form, and sometimes he will playfully growl and roll on the ground with original cast member Clint Howard.

"Believe It... Or Not" starring Ben Carson. Like Jack Palance in the original series, except of course less disturbing, Carson hosts an omnibus program that invites the viewer to take a second look at fantastic folk tales in which most people have ceased to believe -- the Loch Ness Monster, the pyramids as grain silos, that Ronald Reagan was a great president, etc.

Carson's Fruit Salad. Canned, with plenty of syrup. Slogan: "Don't expect too much."

Ha ha but more likely, once his (typically vague, confusing) Presidential race exit is complete, Carson will move on to the usual sort of conservative grifts: TV shows devoted to his inspirational mutterings, well-remunerated speeches, and reverse mortgage ads. The grift goes on forever and the book tour never ends!

(My Village Voice columns on Carson here and here. I think it's especially interesting to note all the people who are currently incensed about the Trump scam but once thought Ben Carson was a legitimate presidential contender.)

THE FRENCH HAVE A WORD FOR IT: DE TRUMP.

All is going according to plan. As I have been insisting, the GOP will find a way to unTrump itself, either before or during Cleveland, and Cruz and Rubio's slight victories on Tuesday will help. But when it all comes down, it will come down to power relationships -- among those who run and wish to continue running the Party, and against the Trump faction -- and not with the bullshit-Agincourt #NeverTrump "movement" of pencil-necks declaring war on fucking Twitter.

To show you just how bogus this is, Megan McArdle is now pitching in: Inspired by alleged real-life events ("'She’s beside herself,' my mother said of a near relation, who is apparently seriously considering voting for a Democrat for the first time,") McArdle "asked on Twitter whether this was a real thing, just as the hashtag #NeverTrump began trending," and you'll never guess what she learned!

What surprised me? First, the sheer number of people who sat down and composed lengthy e-mails on a weekend.

Yes, your elderly aunt in Sarasota who wants you to know the truth about Obama's FEMA death camps isn't the only one who does this. Thank God for bcc!

Second, the passion they showed. These people are not quietly concerned about Trump. They are appalled, repulsed, afraid and dismayed that their party could have let this happen. They wrote in the strongest possible language, and many were adamant that they would not stay home on Election Day, but in fact would vote for Hillary Clinton in the general and perhaps leave the Republican Party for good. 

Or maybe that nice John Anderson will run. I swear I'd vote for him, or at least tell people I did!

Third was the sheer breadth. I got everything from college students to Midwestern farmers to military intelligence officers to former officials in Republican administrations, one of whom said he would “tattoo #NeverTrump” on a rather delicate part of his anatomy if it would keep Donald J. Trump from becoming the nominee. They were from all segments of the party...

Stop and think about this a moment. These correspondents 1.) know who Megan McArdle is and are following her on Twitter, and 2.) when given the chance are not just willing but eager to write her long letters about how they want Trump stopped. They're probably not John Q. Public types who don't know much about politics but were just looking to catch up with old friends or maybe look up some recipes on the Twitter and this McArdle lady asked so nice I said "Muriel, fetch me down my email-writing laptop" etc.

In fact, McArdle goes to the trouble of reproducing parts of some of the emails, and you can get some idea from them of the sort of Republican we're talking about:

I paid for my education, in part, with scholarships that had the name "Reagan" in them...
Even then, at the tender age of 12, I knew I was a conservative...
I was the conservative hack at my college newspaper...
I've written $2,000 check for four Republicans (John McCain + 3 others)...
Played Reagan in our school debate in '84, when I was in eighth grade...
...serving a brief period as a city committee member...
...I count Milton Friedman and F.A. Hayek among my idols...
...I owned Sheriff Joe Arpaio pink boxer shorts...

So they're basically hardcore, deeply-involved Republicans who have pretty much bought (and sold!) everything else the party has been selling until Trump. And why are they against him, mainly? In a follow-up, McArdle tells us:

What they cared about was, very broadly speaking, character. The bullying, the authoritarian instincts, the lying, the erratic behavior, the lack of any interest in policy, the lack of impulse control, the misogyny, the brutal xenophobia. These are issues that are rarely issues at all in a political campaign, because most politicians who become serious contenders for the nomination pass the basic threshold of not behaving as Trump has. (I'll say more about that in a future column.) 

Trump fans should know that the #NeverTrump Republicans who wrote to me are not rejecting you [Trump voters], or even your issues. They are rejecting Donald J. Trump, because they think he is a bad person...

The NeverTrumps are not rejecting your issues, ordinary Republican voters who have made Trump the front-runner of your party -- they're rejecting your avatar. They were Reagan in a school pageant or owned pink Arpaio panties; Trump wasn't and didn't. And he's gross, not like Ted Cruz, whose face makes babies cry but that's just because of his integrity. Sure, Trump is right on immigration but he doesn't use a dog whistle -- he just sticks his fingers in his mouth and blows, like he's summoning a taxi. What would we think of ourselves if we allowed a person like that to enact our favored policies?

What is it conservatives like to call this sort of yap in another context? "Virtue signaling," isn't it?

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about Trump, Christie, and the Kübler-Ross clusterfuck of the rightbloggers, who seem to be experiencing all the stages of grief at once.

One of the weirder aspects of last week's events was the brethren's call for Cruz and Rubio to employ the dark art of humor as a weapon against Trump. As I've observed before, these guys don't really understand humor. They don't think of it as balm to the human spirit -- they think of it as ordnance, something Saul Alinsky taught Hollyweird Liberals to use against them, and they stay up nights studying files marked "set-up" and "punch line," trying to crack the code. "Cruz and Rubio Unveil Plan to Mock and Dismantle Frontrunner," announced Jonathan V. Last at The Weekly Standard, as if "mock and dismantle" were a military operation. When Rubio managed to get in some jokes at the debate, they were delighted, but seemed not to know or care whether the jokes were funny. They issued reviews like "Rubio mocked and belittled Trump in the humorous, mocking and highly effective manner that Trump used to make Jeb look small" (William Jacobson, Legal Insurrection) and "Obviously this strategy, of diminishing Trump as a clown by clowning on him relentlessly, is worth trying... we can sit here and spitball the strategic virtues of the 'mock Trump' strategy all day long — it shows Rubio’s not a beta male who’s afraid of Trump..." (Allahpundit, Hot Air). Sounds like fun, huh? Zhdanovism's a tough gig.

Anyway, I've got some jokes in my column, but they're the funny/keep-from-crying kind.

UPDATE. Speaking of ugh, Robert Tracinski at The Federalist:

Call it the 1980s Underdog Movie Theory of the Republican Primaries. This was practically its own genre. It was not just “The Karate Kid.” It was a theme in “Back to the Future”.. and in “Top Gun.” (Though that’s a better analogy for the Rubio-Cruz relationship, with Cruz as Iceman.)

And Megyn Kelly as Charlie. After more like this ("Rubio certainly found the 'Eye of the Tiger'") we get the konservetcult comedy angle:

Actually, this is a darker variation of the narrative in which the hero has to learn to fight the villain on his level. So the guy with a command of policy whose brand is his positive, optimistic style has had to learn how to win by using his opponent’s weapon of ridicule. 

So that's why Rubio was talking about Trump pissing himself.

You know what last week was? It was that moment in “The Untouchables” when Sean Connery says to Kevin Costner, “What are you prepared to do?” And he eventually realizes he needs to fight the Chicago way: “He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He puts one of yours in the hospital, you put one of his in the morgue.”

With Trump creeping ever upward in the polls, it's clearly time for Rubio to escalate. Prepare the joy buzzer and the fart cushion!

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN (HOLY SH*T CHRISTIE EDITION).

That's how the pros do it, folks.

•   Ha ha ha ha ha. First they finally get Rubio to do insult comedy on Trump at the debate -- not well, but at least he was sassy, and that made the people who follow him as the GOP savior feel sassy too -- "This is fight-them-on-the beaches time. This is Agincourt," perorates National Review's imported wingnut Charles C.W. Cooke. (Yes, this was their finest shower!) Rubio even started to warm (some might say unseasonably warm) to his new role -- and then Chris Christie went and fucked it all up. Some folks are pointing to Jon Ward's "Why Christie Never Went After Donald Trump" for the explanation:

...Rubio was ascending to be the Trump alternative, a spot Christie wanted for himself. With his kneecapping of Rubio, Christie eliminated the Florida senator from the running in New Hampshire, although Rubio’s unimpressive finish there didn’t improve Christie’s standing in the race. And as a result, the non-Trump lane has remained muddled between Rubio and Ted Cruz, while Trump has won three consecutive states with less than 50 percent.

This suggests by cracking Rubio, Christie was doing what he had to do to get to Trump's level -- knocking off the contenders before engaging Mr. Big. It makes some sense. But what's missing is why Christie decided to quit. A large part of Christie's appeal among Republicans is his gift for insult comedy. It's actually sharper than Trump's, but Trump's is currently more popular -- apparently Christie's shtick is a little too intellectual for the GOP proles, who don't want to have to work hard to get the references (i.e. know something about government). So my guess is Christie doesn't expect Trump to win. (In fact it's beginning to look like no top Republicans are expecting their Party to win.) He's decided to embrace the current Sultan of Insult and wait for 2020, when Trump's act will be old and the crowds may have learned to love the Christie variation.

I'll add one more thing. I remember when Ann Coulter said during early days in the 2012 campaign, "if the Republicans don't nominate Christie... then Romney will be the nominee and he will lose." Coulter is now a reliable Trump booster, and her ravings may suggest to some that immigration is the reason for her devotion. But Christie was never focused on immigration. The real unifying factor among these three parties is faith in rage and vituperation as the way to the hearts of the people. In fact, it may be all they believe in.

•   At The Federalist, Mark Hemingway has an online aneurysm some poor editor could only think to call "Bernie Supporters’ Hatred Of Work Is Why Trump Supporters Are So Mad." It starts with Hillary's emails (or as the Bowery Boys/rightbloggers call it, Routine 12) and thereafter spatters like a rotten tomato across a broad barn door of sub-topics. But you can smell something solid coming at this point:

The odd thing is that people are voting for Bernie Sanders overwhelmingly for kind of the same reason as Trump supporters, in that they don’t want larger economic issues forcing them to change their culture or lifestyle. However, the motivations of Sanders supporters are much less sympathetic.

This is an interesting way to look at the pressing economic issues of the day: Voters aren't worried about money to live on, replace a worn-out car with, save to send a kid to college, etc. -- they're worried that money will "change their culture or lifestyle." What's that even mean, and why are Sanders supporters' concerns worse than those of Trump's? Apparently it has something to do with the Sanders kids wanting to have a job, a good job, one that satisfies their artistic needs; Hemingway is here to tell these puppies they "can’t 'do what they love' without financial realities being such a killjoy." And what does he use as examples of their foolish utopianism? Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Brooklyn -- the places in America, in other words, where you're most likely to make a living "doing what you love," rich cities that are in fact getting crowded because the market has spoken and youngsters prefer those places to such Republican Valhallas as Topeka, Kanas and Fritters, Alabama. Listen to him:

Portland’s celebrated “artisanal economy” is basically a result of overeducated hipsters who want to live in Oregon because the cost of living is relatively cheap and it’s beautiful, but there are no traditional jobs with opportunities for advancement. 

So they’re all starting craft businesses and restaurants. When you have one food truck for every 1,000 people, as Portland does, that is a result of desperation, not necessarily the kind of enterprise and initiative you want to celebrate.

Whereas they could be churning out rightwing propaganda like a real man! The rest is near-incomprehensible, but it seems Hemingway thinks work is only real when it's difficult and unrewarding and being done by someone besides him.

GOING DOWN WITH THE FLAGSHIP.

That National Review broadside against Trump last month seems not to have done the trick, and the magazine's employees are hysterically demanding Republican Presidential contenders lay down their political lives for the good of the Bush tax cuts and their phony-baloney jobs.

Culture-warrior David French sputters that Ben Carson and John Kasich, good Christians though they may be, have given in to the sin of Pride by staying in the race, and must repent:

And here’s the ultimate irony — these pro-life Christian candidates can do nothing by staying in the race except help a biblically illiterate, thrice-divorced, proud philanderer hurtle ever closer to the nomination. Every vote they take from Cruz or Rubio is a vote toward embracing Planned Parenthood and cozying up to Vladimir Putin. It’s a vote away from sensible judicial nominations or a rational foreign policy. And it’s a vote toward the potential destruction of a Republican Party that — for all its faults — is America’s last political hope of protecting life, religious liberty, and national security...

Ah, but "every vote they take from Cruz or Rubio" is also a potential vote for John Kasich or Ben Carson! Think how many more books they'll sell, how many more dollars their speaking engagements will draw! And isn't that really what the Almighty wants -- whatever will make any given member of the Elect richer? Read your Bible, French!

As the race goes on, my respect for Scott Walker and Jeb Bush grows. Both men had plausible paths to the Oval Office. Both are immensely accomplished public servants with solid conservative records. Both were once favorites to win the nomination. But they both had the integrity and foresight to bow out the instant it was clear they’d missed their chance.

Walker had the "integrity and foresight" to see he'd run out of donor-suckers, and Bush, whose heart for the struggle seemed to have caved in like an overdone soufflé months ago, probably quit in dutiful response to a note shoved under his door by The Family.

Meanwhile imported wingnut Charles C.W. Cooke says "It’s Time for an Anti-Trump Manhattan Project," and blames not the candidates but that plurality of the GOP electorate who won't vote for National Review-approved, housebroken wingnuts:

For the last eight months or so, a significant portion of the Republican party’s voters have been in thrall to a bizarre, Occupy-esque conspiracy theory, which holds as its central thesis that sabotage and pusillanimity are the root causes of the Right’s recent woes. In this mistaken view, the conservative movement’s failure to counter all of the Obama era’s excesses is not the product of the crucial democratic and structural factors that prevent any one faction from ushering in substantial change, but of a lack of will or desire...

On its face, this theory is irrational to the point of absurdity — if I am told one more time that it makes sense to nominate a single-payer-supporting defender of Planned Parenthood because Congress’s repeal-and-defund bill was vetoed by the incumbent, I shall begin to order bourbon in bulk.

Shall he, now? Yet Cooke is the same guy who, a few years ago, wrote in "In Praise of Paranoia" that "reflexive suspicion of government power is a magnificent and virtuous tendency, and one that should be the starting point of all political conversation in a free republic," and also this:

Odd as it might sound, having a sizeable portion of the population reflexively take the view that the government would hurt them if it could is, I think, a good thing. There are no black helicopters and there may never be any black helicopters. But isn’t it positive that people are worried about them?

Now, having fluffed the black-helicopter-watching, lunatic fringe of his movement in expectation that all the benefit would accrue to him, Cooke has seen them go Trumpers -- who could have predicted! -- and tries now to summon sensible conservatives to shut them down. But don't worry, he has suggestions:

If Donald Trump can flood the airwaves with his nonsense, his opponents can counter it incessantly. And while they are at it, they can tie him up in court, just as he’s trying to do to Cruz. There are a good number of “just asking” questions ready to be put to them, among them “Trump’s mother was Scottish, can he really be president?” and “Trump ran a host of scams designed to rip off the poor; surely one of them would like to sue him?

Ha ha, Scottish! Imagine the confusion among the Trump fans: "S'coatish? Is thet what them funny-boys call a nigger?" Also try to imagine Trump confronting an aggrieved poor person in front of an audience of Republicans -- they'll probably start chanting "moocher!" and kill the pauper before security can haul him away. Here's Cooke's closing peroration:

“If not us, who?” Ronald Reagan asked in the heat of the 1981 budget battle. “If not now, when?” Time to go nuclear, chaps.

I say! Screw your courage to a sticking place, wot? There's a good fellow. I hope they pushed a few desks aside to make some room for volunteers at NR headquarters.

But hold on, it's not over till the fat homey sings: Jonah Goldberg, raise the roof!

As things stand, Donald Trump is the presumptive GOP nominee. That’s awful news, and depressing to contemplate. But terrible possibilities don’t become less terrible if we refuse to contemplate them. Rather, they become more likely.

It may be cribbed from his freshman comp assignment "Our Friend, The Beaver" but it still sings! After some similar rhetorical dazzlers, Goldberg proposes to the Presidential Candiate action figures on his desk "a Rubio-Cruz ticket":

Cruz won’t work at the top of the ticket for the simple reason that too many GOP quislings fear Cruz more than Trump. But a unity ticket — a la Reagan–Bush in 1980 — in the form of Los Hermanos Cubanos might just do the trick.

But the silence of the action figures seems to have gotten to Goldberg --

There are real costs to such a deal (not least the fact that there are better general-election running mates for Rubio).

A series of tiny farts like the squeaks of a trapped mouse (Frrt frt frt FFrrt frt), a drop of flop-sweat,  and Goldberg lunges to close the deal:

Maybe there’s another way, but I haven’t heard it.

[A concussion grenade of farts.]

And in a race where Trump has changed everything with his boldness, it’s long past time for his opponents to provide some of their own.

Be bold, shitheel Republicans who will never have a better chance at the Presidency, and stand down at the command of magazine editors! Your reward will be great in the buffet of their next subscriber cruise!

UPDATE. The struggle is joined! Pimped by futility infielder Megan McArdle herself, there's a conservative anti-Trump PAC called "Make America Awesome" -- cuz "America's already great," get it -- run by Republican operative Liz Mair. Did you know they've been around since December? They kinda sneak up on you. Check out their humorous ecards, e.g., "When I get hitched, it'll be to a guy who won't invite Hillary Clinton to our wedding." Feeling the Rubiomentum yet? No? Obviously they need more donations to make the magic happen. Then, when the GOP finally puts Trump on Double Secret Probation, they can have a beer bust with the leftovers and pad their resumes with declared victory. The grift goes on forever and the party never ends!

KIDS TODAY ARE INTO CASUAL SEX, SNAPCHAT, AND THE GOLD STANDARD.

Much as I'm enjoying the lamentation of the wingnuts over Trumpism, let's not forget there's nothing in Rightwing World that can't be made worse by libertarians. In a Reason article called "How Political Correctness Caused College Students to Cheer for Trump," Robby Soave seeks to tell us how Il Douche's rise may be good for the Makers Up Takers Down Cult. To this end, he claims that "at a recent Rutgers University event, throngs of students erupted into cheers of 'Trump! Trump! Trump!'" and follows with several grafs about how political correctness is yuck and The Youngs are getting sick of it I bet I bet. But eventually Soave is forced to provide the context for the chanting:

To be clear, this was a pre-sorted group of non-liberals: conservative and libertarian students affiliated with the campus's Young Americans for Liberty chapter. The occasion was a visit from Breitbart's [Milo] Yiannopoulos, a social media celebrity associated with the GamerGate and online anti-feminist movements.

The YAL and men's rights activism! Now there's a groundswell. I hear the kids now eschew the beach at Spring Break, and congregate instead at Sharon, Connecticut.

The crowd at Rutgers -- and at Yiannopolos's other appearances -- certainly suggests that some students are sick to death of the liberal orthodoxies being drilled into them during every waking moment of their time in school. What if millions of Americans feel the same way?... 

Matthew Boyer, a Rutgers student, leader of its YAL chapter, and organizer of the event, told Reason that the people chanting "Trump," were "individuals who have been railing against political correctness" and identify with "Trump's recent actions as part of the anti-PC movement."

Why, we might be on the verge of another... LIBERTARIAN MOMENT! [Crowd breaks into Lambada, the forbidden dance.] Thereafter it's all bitching about safe spaces and #FreeStacy, but no evidence that young people are going libertarian -- indeed, such evidence as we have suggests they're headed the other way. Here's Soave's closer:

One person who is definitely having a good time is Yiannopoulos. He doesn't mind that protesters scream at him wherever he goes—in fact, he welcomes it. He enjoys it. 

"The whole thing was pandemonium," Yiannopoulos told me, recalling the Rutgers event. "But a wonderful spectacle." 

Pandemonium, but a wonderful spectacle. Would anyone deny that the same could be said of the 2016 GOP presidential race? 

You know who to thank for that.

The only meaning I can discern from this (aside from "please keep paying me, Nick") is that chaos is good for the movement -- maybe in the confusion you can slip a pamphlet into someone's pocket, or grab a tit.

UPDATE. Comments are already fun! whetstone, using the old template: "I used to be a centrist, but ever since I had to read a bell hooks essay in freshman comp, I want to ban Muslims from entering the country."

Also worth your while is the link to In These Times' story on the Young Americans for Liberty -- here's one especially ripe passage:

The [YAL] convention featured a number of sessions devoted to growing the YAL movement on college campuses. But it included others focused on attracting the roughly 300 attendees to seek employment in one of the many different arms of the conservative movement, like the series of sessions on Friday afternoon devoted to “A Career of Liberty.” The Campaign for Liberty sponsored a panel on “Working on the Hill,” the Institute for Humane Studies sponsored a panel on “Becoming a Professor,” and the Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation and State Policy Network all organized a panel on “Working for a Think-Tank.” 

At that last session, panelists offered advice on how to market oneself to think-tanks and discussed the benefits of their respective organizations.

What I'm wondering is, when it's time to intern for Justin Amash how do they get these kids out of their Skinner boxes?

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...on the weeping and lamentation of the rightbloggers in the wake of South Carolina. It's a day late because of some VV administrative issues, but the extra hours haven't shaken my thesis -- especially the bit about how hard it will be to get either Cruz and Rubio to stand down for the Good of the Party. Since I filed, we've seen the hilarious contretemps over whether Marco Rubio believes in the Holy Bible -- which I love, first because Rubio's originally-alleged crack about the Revealed Word of the Lord ("Got a good book there, not many answers in it") sounds like something Dougal on Father Ted would say, but also because at first I thought Rubio might indeed have slagged the Bible just to wind up that religious maniac Rafael Cruz, and was tempted to switch my support to him on that basis.

Also, I noticed rightbloggers pushing and pulling for their favorite anti-Trumps, and now there are even more of them; for instance, D.C. McAllister at The Federalist declares -- in defiance of an avalanche of new Rubio endorsements  -- that "Rubio Needs To Move Aside For Cruz, Not Vice Versa." To a suggestion that Rubio promise Cruz a seat on the Supreme Court in exchange for his withdrawal, McAllister says, "even if Rubio did nominate Cruz, it is highly unlikely he would be confirmed. The establishment wing hates Cruz. Sen. Lindsey Graham said he’s worse than Obama. The chance of Cruz being confirmed as a Supreme Court justice is slim." So the right place for this lovable character is at the top of the GOP ticket.

My favorite fallout so far is from Ben Domenech, explaining that evangelical Republicans are flocking to Trump because, basically, that Jesus stuff was all bullshit and they're really just mean sons of bitches who want to get back at the hippies:

Congratulations to the American left: you asked to win the culture wars -- and evangelicals are giving you Donald J. Trump.

On to victory in November! And please do read the column.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Comin' to D.C. March 29. Looking forward.

Beautiful day, let's play two! Kia found this one.

•  The latest thing among those eternally-whining wingnuts is that Twitter is censoring them via something called "shadowbanning," by which self-promoting men's-rights activists and people who use "cuckservatives" unironically allegedly "have their posts hidden from both search results and other users’ timelines." Evidence: an "[unnamed] source inside the company, who spoke exclusively to Breitbart Tech," whose "claim was corroborated by a[n unnamed] senior editor at a major publisher." Good enough for alt-journalism! According to Breitbart's Milo Yiannopoulos, Twitter seeks "to interfere in the 2016 presidential election by muffling conservative voices on the platform," so if Trump loses the nomination by a handful of Tweets, you'll know the reason why. One preponderator of this story blames "Twitter’s recruitment of radical feminazi Anita Sarkeesian to lead its censorship board, I mean, 'Trust & Safety Council.'" Sigh, girls spoil everything, don't they? At least this guy has some dim awareness that Twitter is not a public trust but a private company that can have whatever terms and conditions it likes, and so lays off the ridiculous "censorship" yap in favor of some free-market fist-shaking:

On Twitter as on Facebook, the deck is stacked against countermoonbats. A lucrative opportunity awaits whoever can create a social media outlet that does not impose an oppressive left-wing political creed.

Get ready for Conservapedia: The Social Network!

•  In another fartful post, Jonah Goldberg starts with what may look like a startling admission:

We get it already. The Iraq war was a mistake.

Indeed, on this point pretty much everyone agrees.

But he's done this before. Nine-and-a-half years ago, Goldberg said, "The Iraq war was a mistake." Of course he didn't want to leave -- he wanted to stay in: "A doctor will warn that if you see a man stabbed in the chest, you shouldn't rush to pull the knife out," his reason-fart echoes down the years. Some paragraphs later, he added, "I think we should ask the Iraqis to vote on whether U.S. troops should stay. Polling suggests that they want us to go. But polling absent consequences is a form of protest." Sounds like he was feeling cornered, and rightly so -- the American electorate was days away from returning Congress to the Democrats. Now he's confessing error again. I wonder what's worrying him this time? (BTW: This seems as good a place as any to recall Conor Friedersdorf's roundup of conservative slurs against those of us who were against the war before they were.)

•  I get what some people say about Bernie Sanders' electability problems, but I also see that conservatives absolutely do not know how to deal with him. We've seen, God knows, plenty of Sanders=Trump bullshit, but even rightbloggers seem to be getting sick of that. The other popular shtick is "Socialism = Stalin, vote Bernie and get the gulags," a ploy which depends strongly on explaining away European socialism -- usually by pretending Scandinavian countries with universal health care are Reaganite laboratories of unfettered capitalism -- and hoping nobody tells the voters about the "sewer socialism" under which millions of Americans once cheerfully lived without being hassled by the Secret Police. But Jazz Shaw at Hot Air has come up with an interesting new angle:

Sanders really seems to have it in for money and you have to wonder where the grudge comes from. 

In an editorial at Investors Business Daily, we get a glimpse of one possible source of Bernie’s unrelenting war on dollars: he’s never really had many of them.

Yes, the argument against Bernie Sanders is that he never made a lot of money. Well, at least that'll kill the Sanders=Trump thing.

As IBD notes, he never really earned a steady paycheck until he was in his forties and even then it was from the government when he was finally elected mayor. Before that he ran up debts, failed to pay his own utility bills and was known for being perpetually broke.

It's almost like something was more important to him than money! I imagine Shaw hearing the Gospels and going, "Pfft! Who is this loser?"

This is the guy who now wants to oversee the management of all of our collective money in the federal government?

Part of me wishes they'd run with this -- "Poverty Sucks, Vote Alex P. Keaton" -- but maybe there's some appeal here for a certain type of Republican voter -- the kind who really worries about whether his neighbor's car is nicer than his, who likes to brag about what a killing he made on the market or by only ringing up two of the three cereal boxes he got at the Safeway, and who is less outraged by human suffering than by a welfare recipient who got to eat fresh fish instead of gruel. You know -- assholes.

TWO TONS OF FUN.

Been following rightwing millennial outreach a bit. National Review got their "Collegiate Network fellow" (i.e., intern) Celina Durgin to write a corker about how all her coevals are stupid to vote for Sanders. Fave bit:

Now, I’m not an old fogey trying to patronize the youngsters. And I believe I apprehend the reasons for their support that go deeper than his “free-stuff” policies. What I am is a Millennial pleading with my peers: Please resist jejunely embracing the notion of “justice” that conceals radical political and economic transformation.

Well, I was young once, too, so I will resist senilely disdaining young Durgin's prose. But over at The Federalist we have a pair of striplings who bear further examination. Bre Payton and Rich Cromwell -- despite their tender years, both have been treated here before -- tell us "Why Sports Illustrated Isn’t The Right Place To Talk About Body Positivity" and if you're thinking it's because either feels his/her spank mag spoiled by fatties, no such luck -- they lack any such refreshing directness of purpose.

First they mention that "plus-size" model Ashley Graham's 2016 SI Swimsuit Issue cover is merely a variant among three, so "it’s almost like they were afraid that plus-sized model Ashley Graham wouldn’t be able to sell enough magazines on her own and got skittish. Way to embrace positivity!" Actually one of the cover models is pugilist Ronda Rousey, which ain't exactly trad cheesecake either -- but wait, that chiding was just a humorous feint; next they tell us they think Graham "looks smoking hot." They even use a gif of an appreciative Audrey Hepburn because millennial (or maybe they're trying to tell us Hepburn was gay, not sure which). Now who's the enlightened chubby-chaser, libtards?

But eventually they have to come up with something like a thesis. Here is their first try:

She’s a departure from the norm, and that’s not such a bad thing. On the other hand, there are a few sizes—15 according to our numbers—between size 0 and size 16. Don’t get us wrong, we think it’s great the magazine is using a model who looks like she eats lunch on the regular. But why does it always seem that whenever a publication or a company uses a woman who isn’t a size 0, they swing for the fences?

We mean we like a little junk in the trunk, but WHOOOOOA you-all are goin' for the gold medal of Giganta-Gal if ya know what we mean and we mean get yourself a radiator and join the Junkyard Band! Even though you are smoking hot [emoji].

A few backstage-at-the-school-play fumbles later, they try another one:

In a TED Talk last year, Graham told the women of the audience that most of them were considered “plus sized.” She went on to decry this as a bad thing, saying women should reject the unfair labels the industry was handing out.

Graham is right—most American women are considered “plus sized”—but what she failed to mention is this is largely because we’re losing a battle with an obesity epidemic. Most Americans (roughly two-thirds of adults including women) are overweight, and nearly a third are obese.

[Blink.]

So while it’s important for women to have an opinion of themselves that exists outside of the noise of the digital world, it’s not the best idea to encourage everyone to ignore a problem that shaves an average of 6.5 years from one’s life...

[Blink. Blink.]

But wholesale acceptance of anything and everything, every shape and size, disincentives us to work for something better. That’s where the body positivity movement — and focus on appearance — get it wrong. Yes, we are more than our appearance, but that doesn’t mean we should just tear open a package of cupcakes and sit down while reveling in our elastic waistbands...

What they're telling Graham, and for her own good, is: You're gorging yourself into an early grave, tubbo, and that's why true Americans should only whack it to waifs -- it's a public health issue. Well, if Payton and Cromwell are going to stick with this wingnut welfare racket, it's never to early to learn to endure public humiliation.

CULTURE OF COMPLAINT.

The title -- "Sanders and Trump Have Risen from the Wreckage of a Broken Culture" -- makes it look like yet another of those "I literally can't tell them apart" comparisons of the share-the-wealth Senator to the TV bully-boy. But National Review's David French doesn't explain the rise of the two candidates or what it means, and I'm not sure he was really trying. He mainly talks culture war. That's his usual hobby horse and it's even lamer than usual, but in an instructive way. He begins:

Pop culture can normalize radicalism with astonishing speed. Conservatives have long known and lamented the truth of Scottish politician Andrew Fletcher’s famous declaration: “Let me write the songs of a nation — I don’t care who writes its laws.” Artists and the media shape our cultural environment so profoundly that their progressivism has become the default, the air we breathe. Wherever the progressive current flows, the people will drift.

Taking his own Zhdanovite POV for granted -- that liberals have the Billboard 100 while conservatives have Congressional majorities -- I'm not sure what this political operative has to complain about. If you're getting the laws you want, why do you care what the art looks like?

Since its birth, the modern conservative movement has fought bravely to create its own counterculture, in hopes that at least some people could drift the right way, and eventually the current would be reversed.

"Fought bravely to create its own counterculture"? What could that possibly mean? Have they been woodshedding or workshopping their counterculture in a black-box theater at the Heritage Foundation? Before attempting to explain, French bitches about how hard it is for such as he to make how-you-call-the Culture:

But it’s impossible in one generation to either replace or match liberal-dominated institutions that have existed, in some instances, since before the founding of the nation. One doesn’t simply create a conservative Harvard out of thin air. Hollywood is the product of generations of artistic effort. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the major broadcast media are collectively immense institutions, governed by a set of shared assumptions and located in geographic regions where dissent is rarely heard.

This makes no sense. If you don't like Harvard, why not build up Bob Jones University and other Bible schools into the academia that you claim to desire? If you don't like Hollywood, why not make your own indie flicks? People do it all the time. And haven't you guys been telling us that the Liberal Dinosaur MSM is dead as the dodo, and pumping out conservative newspapers, magazines, and TV networks for literally decades? But French goes on whining:

The Right, by contrast, hasn’t truly had time to build institutions, so it has built celebrities.

OH COME ON.

It’s easier to make one man famous than it is to make Harvard --

Oh, well, if it was easier I don't see what else you could have done

-- so conservative culture is dominated mainly by a series of personalities, and those personalities are often defined and exalted not so much by the quality of their distinct ideas but by personal charisma, with particular emphasis on anger and “fearlessness.”

Long story short: The dog ate their manifesto, so instead of building a counterculture they built a living pantheon of radio shouters, bow-tie dicks, and other assholes, and now one of them is the Republican Presidential front-runner and it's someone else's fault.

... As William Butler Yeats wrote at another time of existential crisis, “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” We’re left with a world where “the best lack all conviction, and the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

When a culture breaks, so does a nation.

Buddy, you don't know what culture is. Nor counter-culture. Those movies, books, videos, songs, etc. that you wish were promoting your values? You can have them -- all you gotta do is make them yourself. Don't waste time squawking about how Big Culture is against you -- or go ahead if it makes you feel better; avant gardists and punk rockers did it all the time, when they were the new kids on the block. But they also did work. That's the only way anything gets done. If Jasper Johns or Patti Smith just bitched about how they ought to be the next big thing, raised a bunch of money off that, and didn't use that money to make art but instead used it to bitch some more about how they ought to be the next big thing, you never would have heard about them.

I mean, holding the back of your hand to your forehead and moaning like Dr. Smith on Lost in Space isn't getting you anywhere -- unless you goal is to get some saps to pay you good money for it, in which case mission accomplished.

UPDATE. As is traditional at alicublog, comments are excellent. Yestreblanksy gives us the full provenance of that Fletcher quote, and it's so much richer than the looka-me-I-read-books use French put it to. MichaelNewsham posits:

If only there was a vast entertainment complex producing its own movies and TV shows, owning its own studios and broadcast and cable network, owned by a right-wing billionaire who also had an enormous chain of newspapers to help push his conservative productions without fear of the liberal MSM.

As I've been saying for years, Murdoch knows better than to throw good money after bad.

POINT/COUNTERPOINT.

From January, Victor Davis Hanson:

A few hours before delivering that State of the Union, President Obama met with rapper Kendrick Lamar. Obama announced that Lamar’s hit “How Much a Dollar Cost” was his favorite song of 2015. The song comes from the album To Pimp a Butterfly; the album cover shows a crowd of young African-American men massed in front of the White House. In celebratory fashion, all are gripping champagne bottles and hundred-dollar bills; in front of them lies the corpse of a white judge, with two Xs drawn over his closed eyes. So why wouldn't the president’s advisors at least have advised him that such a gratuitous White House sanction might be incongruous with a visual message of racial hatred? Was Obama seeking cultural authenticity, of the sort he seeks by wearing a T-shirt, with his baseball cap on backwards and thumb up? 

To play the old "what if" game that is necessary in the bewildering age of Obama: what if President George W. Bush had invited to the White House a controversial country Western singer, known for using the f- and n- words liberally in his music and celebrating attacks on Bureau of Land Management officers...

From the Grammys last night, Kendrick Lamar:


Kendrick Lamar Grammy Awards Performance 2016 from Jamie Apps Media on Vimeo.

Take a fuckin' seat VDH.

UPDATE. In comments, a very worthwhile reaction by dauwhe:

I'm the worst kind of music snob, listening only to Jazz for the last three decades. Curiosity lead me to Kamasi Washington's "The Epic," which bothered many of the critics, but on first hearing had me dancing around my living room in a transcendent state. Many of the same musicians contributed to Kendrick Lamar's "To Pimp a Butterfly." And so I ended up with a CD in my house with a parental warning (Thanks Tipper!). I'd never bought a rap album. I don't listen to the radio... Yet Kendrick Lamar blew me away. Staggering ambition, searing emotion, musical genius at the smallest and largest scales, and a dramatic political statement—I feel lucky to have experienced this music. I can only surmise that VDH did not listen, or did not recognize the profound humanity and intelligence of the music and its creator. His loss.

Yeah; it must suck to be so committed to an ideology that requires constant blinkers and earplugs.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the death on Antonin Scalia and the freshly-discovered tradition requiring Democratic Presidents to refrain from nominating SCOTUS replacements while the Republican Party is imploding.  Readers taking a hard de mortuis nihil nisi bonum line, please note that most of the jokes are on rightbloggers and their panic-stricken reactions.

I didn't have room for everything I would have liked to include. John Zmirak's proposed "Keeping [Scalia's] Court Seat Empty — for Years, If Necessary" is in, but I hadn't space for his wow finish:

In the meantime, of Justice Scalia, I feel sure that he is enjoying his reward, and I hope that the Catholic Church recognizes him soon. As they said of John Paul II, santo subito! Antonin Scalia, pray for us.

Shouldn't they work on Ss. Breitbart and Bork first?