A THREAT FROM THE REAL VICTIMSTM.

It appears some advertisers are pulling out of the Breitbart ad streams:

Kellogg’s has announced that it will pull all advertising from the site. 

The company cited concerns that Breitbart News, which has been described by many as portraying alt-right ideals, does not align with its values... 

Kellogg’s isn’t the first brand to pull its advertising from the website. That growing list includes Allstate, Nest, EarthLink, Warby Parker and SoFi.

Breitbart.com says Kellogg's is "blacklisting" them:

“Kellogg’s decision to blacklist one of the largest conservative media outlets in America is economic censorship of mainstream conservative political discourse,” it said in a statement. “That is as un-American as it gets.”

That would be a fair analogy if, say, Zero Mostel and Millard Lampell were able to keep making movies even if some producers didn't like them, and Breitbart were thrown off the internet.

Interestingly, the response from Breitbart's CEO, per the Hollywood Reporter, is more belligerent:

"We'll handle this the way we always do — war," Breitbart CEO Larry Solov told The Hollywood Reporter (founder Andrew Breitbart, before his death in 2012, declared "war" on what he called the "Democratic-Media Complex," his term for a liberally biased news and entertainment industry)... 

"Our readers are mainstream America and, frankly, that's who these advertisers risk alienating," Solov said of Kellogg's and Allstate. "They're creating economic censorship of conservative discourse. They say we don't represent their values — but we represent American values."

To review: A commercial entity is declining to buy ad space from a publisher. The publisher proclaims itself a victim of a "blacklist." Its CEO says it will go to "war" over this. And the chairman of the publisher is chief strategist to the President Elect of the United States. 

In other words, wingnut business as usual -- professing victimhood while wielding power and making threats. 

I doubt Solov means a boycott -- if we've learned anything from conservative consumer activism, it's that you can get them to consume more of what they already gorge on, but not to consume less of it. No one's going to stop buying Frosted Flakes to glorify Steve Bannon. But when his boss, who does not seem like the type to observe ethical niceties, comes to power, maybe we'll see what Solov does mean.  

GOEBBELS COMES BACK AS A LESS-CHARISMATIC DON DRAPER.

I don't normally do a second post on Pimp Village Voice Column Mondays, but I found something I wanted to make sure was noted before we're all thrown into gulags. You may have seen that the Associated Press -- whose business is clarity of thought expressed by clarity of prose -- laid down standards for use of the term "alt-right" that make clear AP will not accept use of the term as the disguise for which neo-Nazi goons like Richard Spencer obviously intend it, and counseled editors thus:

Again, whenever “alt-right” is used in a story, be sure to include a definition: “an offshoot of conservatism mixing racism, white nationalism and populism,” or, more simply, “a white nationalist movement.

Enemies of clarity such as Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit erupted as one would expect:

Don’t be fooled – The left is doing this so they can label all Trump supporters as racists. This enables hateful liberal reporters to label all Trump reporters as evil racists. The AP can go to hell.

So I guess Hoft will stick with the "Grammar & usage R for fags" stylebook he's been using all along.

Not causally related but very relevant is something CNN ran, by one Brad Todd, identified there as "a founding partner at OnMessage, Inc., an advertising agency where he has produced ads for Ron Johnson, Rick Scott, Bobby Jindal, and many others."

So, already, an obvious scumbag -- but one with an interesting Age of Trump angle:  He famously said on one of the talk shows that "voters take Donald Trump seriously but not literally, while journalists take him literally, but not seriously." So far as it goes it's an astute observation of the poetic sense of political rhetoric. But Todd wants to take it further:

Months later and on the far side of the election, the press is still taking Trump more literally and less seriously than voters do. The most recent case in point is the furor over his baseless claim on Twitter about voter fraud, that "millions of people who voted illegally" cost him the popular vote. It's the latest instance of the media buying into Trump's outrage-tweeting strategy. 

And journalists keep falling for it because they, like politicians, over-value words -- and they are now covering a politician who does not. President-elect Trump still takes the same cavalier approach to verbal description as he would in hawking a condo tower that's yet to be designed. And more than enough voters don't seem to mind.

Those of you who value words as -- well, as what they were meant for: a means of honestly communicating with your fellow man -- are just being silly and precious, says the adman: words are just a sales tool, something to put on a brochure with the pretty pictures and every bit as suitable for Photoshopping:

Trump has spent a career interacting with journalists, but as the first president never to serve in the military, the cabinet, or another public office before his election to the White House, he's never been immersed in the word culture that drives political journalism.

Translation: He can't read. Hey, but who cares! What's "word culture" got to do with leadership? And look at those chumps who can read and their childish concerns:

Journalists are conditioned to believe that words are the ultimate product, to be curated, sweated, grinded and polished. The profession slavishly follows the Associated Press Style Manual...

Boo! Hiss!

..which is hotly debated on every revision, to achieve industry-wide consensus on exactly which words are forbidden and which verbal shortcuts are allowed. Any exceptions to that manual come in the form of a style manual unique to each publication or network, a supplemental set of inviolable stone tablets.

You've heard this kind of talk before -- not so much from other admen, who (like David Ogilvy) are usually in favor of clearer communication, as from neo-reactionaries such as Mencius Moldbug and Rod Dreher, who denounce "The Cathedral" of people who maintain intellectual standards ("stone tablets") because they don't serve the racist revanchism in which Moldbug and Dreher believe and are therefore illegitimate. The only reason they can imagine anyone would pay close attention to words is to advance propaganda; the idea that anyone would value the symmetry of words and meanings for any higher purpose or pleasure eludes them, probably because (as their prose betrays) they take no such pleasures and their purpose is lower than shit.

Todd's pretty much the same way, philosophically -- he thinks you're only grinding and polishing words to peddle something, just like he does, see! -- but (thank heaven for small favors) he's not as addicted to spooky pseudo-mysticism as Moldbug and Dreher. He's a sunny salesman! And he's here to tell you, Mr. Gloomy Old-Fashioned Journalist, to get your head out of the clouds -- stop "writing endless columns on this or that flip-flop based on Trump's conflicting rhetoric," because you're "wasting the time" of readers -- "also known as 'customers'" -- who see Trump's words "differently than journalists do. They, or at least the members of his winning electoral coalition, see Trump not as a politician but as a businessman.... They may have met other real estate professionals in their own lives and they know better than to take the words of ad hoc marketing seriously."

In other words, it's all bullshit, and you shouldn't harsh the customers' mellow by trying to give them anything else:

Donald Trump's electoral coalition has shaken up American politics in ways few expected. Smart operatives in both parties are already trying to adapt practices and metrics to better suit the wave of change Trump rode. 

The Washington press corps, already suffering through a decade-long decline in viewer trust and consumption, would be foolish to not adapt as well. If the press covers Trump the way it covered prior presidents -- too literally -- it may find its own customers take journalism itself a lot less seriously.

[flaps hand at Mr. Smartypants Journalist] C'mon, get with it! Quit pretending you're better than flacks like me! Be a smart operative! Here are the talking points, now don't fuck things up by checking them against your precious "facts." Do you like your job?...

You know, I turned away from the Church many years ago, but I still can't get over the feeling that the Devil is trying us.

UPDATE. Todd's idea has caught on, at least in some crippled form, with one of the dimmer rightbloggers -- "Trump Punks Media With Claim Of 'Millions Of Illegal Votes.'," writes William Teach of Right Wing News. "Could Trump be correct? Probably not," admits Teach. But that's not important -- what's important is, Trump spurred a "Typical Media Freakout," which shows that "the media still do not get Donald Trump." Boo-yah!

Teach hasn't quote grasped the Tao, though -- he goes to the trouble of trying to explain Trump's bullshit:

But, hey, without an examination of the tallies in places like California and New York, how do we know that they didn’t have millions of illegal aliens, felons, people voting two or more times, and legal aliens voting?

Similarly, how do you know I wasn't kidnapped by aliens, and that these cops who claim I was driving 100 mph drunk aren't in on it? Without a major outer space exploration to check out my assertion, we'll just have to agree to disagree.

So Teach still has traces of oldthink in his system -- to go that extra mile, he has to accept that even dishonest explanations are unnecessary and may even be injurious; best to follow up only with chants of "U.S.A.!" or those bouquets of emojis, hashtags, misspellings, and conspiracy theories with which Trump followers respond to The Leader's tweets. From the evidence of his writing, Teach is not so devoted to "word culture" that he can't get with this program -- especially when he sees how much less effort it takes.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the "normalization" of Trump, and the rightbloggers' resistance to any indication that Trump is anything but normal (or superhuman).

In the column I noted Peggy Noonan pretending to be mortally offended by Trump's multiple conflicts of interest. Had I room I would have also treated her later, even worse column, "What to Tell Your Children About Trump." I should mention here, for readers who have not long followed the woman I used to call the Crazy Jesus Lady, how absolutely full to bursting Noonan is with shit. In an earlier, post-election column, she whimpered that "Donald Trump doesn’t know how to be president" and implored the citizenry, "Help him," as if the practiced grifter would not cheerfully help himself every chance he got.

Then came the column I cited, professing to keep an eye on the fellow lest he (inadvertently, no doubt) rob the Treasury. "What to Tell Your Children About Trump" probably came after many cocktails and/or stern warnings to get normalizing if she knew what was good for her. It came with this peculiar illo:

The attempt to make the vicious, hate-faced Trump look avuncular in this image is, amazingly, even more repulsive than the actual Trump's real-life rictus when clutching horrified children, because it shows a more benign countenance than Trump has ever managed to show at any time; it's as if he had died, and had his face wrestled by an undertaker into a cheerful, Uncle Toby grin for the casket, and then someone thought it would be nice if, before he was planted, he could be crunched into a seated position, then surrounded by children who have been promised $10 not to scream in terror while the scene was photographed.

Even more artificial is Noonan's historical analysis. "The legacy media continues its self-disgrace," she claims, because they aren't showing Trump the proper deference -- "Any journalists who are judicious toward Trump, who treat him fairly or even as a human being, are now accused of 'normalizing' him." And what could be abnormal about a crooked grifter elevated to our highest office? Instead, decrees Noonan, the media should "respect" the "happiness" of "60 million people" who "haven’t taken to the streets... they haven’t broken car windows..." which I guess is Noonan's way of saying they're all white, though they are in a sense a minority.

Then comes the kind of Noonan bullshit that makes you proud to be an American, where even the most unbelievable I-walked-with-an-immigrant bullshit can net you seven figures:

Five days after the election I met an Ethiopian immigrant on a street in Washington.

"Hello, drunk white lady! Let us share our stories."

We got to talking. He spoke of how bad it was in his old country, all the killing. He’d been here 15 years. “I love America,” he said. “It gave everything to me.” But he was deeply concerned by the election. He has two sons, 8 and 6. The younger got up Wednesday morning, saw the TV and burst into tears. Trump won! The boy calls Trump “the mouth man.” How could a bully be president? “He wept,” said the Ethiopian. “How do I explain it to him?” 

I thought. Finally I said, “Tell him to trust America.” Tell him that we are the world’s oldest democracy, that we are a good people, that we’ve been through shocks and surprises, and that we have checks and balances. “If it turns out good,” I said, “we’ll be happy. If it turns out really bad, America has a way of making your stay in the White House not too long. But tell him to trust America as you did, and it gave you everything.”

Later Noonan tells us about what a lovely chat she had with Trump -- "how charming, funny and frank he was—and, as I say, how modest. How actually humble," and I see the people who can afford a Wall Street Journal subscription nodding and thinking, of course, he addresses the crowds as the idiots they are, but when he speaks to one of us he is probably as charming as I am when I joke with my caddy about his inferior genes!

I wonder if she'll get to share this touching story with the Ethiopian before he's thrown out of the country to make a swing-state honky feel better about his employment prospects.

Meanwhile the Next Noonan, Megan McArdle, says for Thanksgiving you should be nice to people different from yourself. No, not liberals, silly -- they're scum! But:

...the first thing I’m choosing to be grateful for this year is the strangers I’ve met who were nothing like me, but nonetheless did me some extraordinary kindness. The people who hate everything about my politics, but who have reached out, again and again, to wish me well and even offer me money or expert help when I was going through some sort of crisis. Those people I’m grateful for, and America, you have a lot of them.

Someone offered McArdle money? Did her Thermomix break down?

(Do read the column, it's pretty good.)

THINK OF YOURSELVES AS INTERNS AT THE PRESTIGIOUS UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!

When a Texas judge stops an executive order granting overtime rights to millions of workers, you expect the usual suspects to rush to yell hooray; though I see Megan McArdle is a little slow off the mark this morning, National Review got Carrie Lukas on the case pronto. Unfortunately, Lukas' bullshit dispenser wasn't warmed up. After announcing the injunction is "good news for workers," she falters in the crucial "make it look good" part of the routine. After trying the old employers-will-just-reclassify-those-workers bit -- at least that's what I think she's trying to convey with that Tammy McCutchen quote -- she gives us this:

Moreover, many workers simply don’t want to have to track their time and inform their bosses exactly when they are leaving early and when they are working late. Moving to an hourly position entails a loss of prestige for some workers, who prefer to feel as though their contributions to the company are bigger than just their time logged.

Sure, you would have gotten a higher rate after 40 hours, but you'd have had to record your hours! And if you're like me -- a rightwing factotum -- you hate bureaucracy more than you need to feed a family! Also, think of the loss of prestige -- imagine your "walk of shame" from the paymaster's office as your coworkers glare at you; you can even hear some of them saying, "yeah, looks like old Smith's only slaughtering pigs for the money!"

Well, there's one real upside: We should stop hearing about economic anxiety any day now.

UPDATE. Hi, guys, Disqus seems to have deleted a bunch of comments I did not ask to be deleted, and I cannot yet figure out how to get them back up. Working on resolution now. New comments seem to work, so feel free to blow off steam here.

THE LITTLE PEOPLE.

Salena Zito has a habit of going among Pennsylvania Republicans and delivering the big news that they're for Trump. In this September 26 article she claimed Trump was convincing "undecideds and Democrats" in Westmoreland County, which she characterized as "formerly or traditionally Democrat-blue" even though it's been voting Republican for President since 2000.

Since Trump took Pennsylvania she's been certified by the credulous as a White-Working-Class Whisperer. Today she's here to tell us that "Trump’s voters love his Twitter rants against popular culture." To this end she spoke to four Pennsyltuckians, who say things like "but he did the right thing, and the media and the elite still keep making the same mistakes" and "“Trump is standing up for the so-called deplorables, intolerables and irredeemables excoriated by Hillary and the left,” which totally don't sound like they came out of a talking point factory.

Just for grins I looked up one of her sources on Facebook and found him (or, to be fair, maybe someone else with the same name in the same town who's FB friends with Zito) talking about how most of the anti-Trump protests are paid "orchestrations of the left," and that he saw this one lady protesting and asked her "exactly she was protesting as the election had already taken place on Tuesday. She refused to answer and just repeated 'I'm a woman.' She spoke with an accent (can't tell if it was real or not)..."

Can't you just feel the economic anxiety? The best part is Zito's explanation of this phenomenon:

Here is what the cosmopolitan class still does not get: It’s not just Donald Trump you are making fun of, it is people outside your circle, the voters whose sentiments and values that have been the punch line of Hollywood’s jokes for their entire lives.

I do in fact get it: I am indeed making fun of the handful of people she quotes, mainly because they're doing a hilariously piss-poor job of pretending to be the Common Clay.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about Mike Pence's poor reception at Hamilton, and Trump's simultaneous machinations behind the scenes. Don't mistake me for one of those guys who think the Hamilton thing is a mere "distraction." I mean, obviously you couldn't put it past Fat Goebbels to gin up an effete-East-Coast Kulturkampfire for that purpose, but I hardly see the need: Trump's got so much wrong with him in so many ways, yet months of experience show it doesn't mean anything to his marks; they've always known he's corrupt as hell, and don't expect high office to change him. They just want to swim, maybe drown, in his bullshit. That's how it is with the better class of fascist -- they spew scum from every orifice, till everything is a distraction from everything else, and those so inclined may surrender.

Rod Dreher makes an appearance in the column. All weekend long he ejaculated over poor innocent American Pence and the fascist arty-farties who oppressed him. Sample:

I mean, is it the case that liberals believe that artistic performances — theater, music, and so forth — must be limited only to people who share their moral and political views? If I were worried that the Trump administration was going to be hostile to minorities and gays...

(Pause to imagine a Rod Dreher "worried that the Trump administration was going to be hostile to minorities and gays," unsuccessfully)

...I would have gone out of my way to make Mike Pence feel welcome at Hamilton, and hoped and prayed that the power of art moved his heart and changed his mind. But that’s not how the audience saw it.

That, Brother Rod, is because the audience weren't morons. They knew Pence wasn't going to see a fucking play and go, "Wow, suddenly I see minorities and gays in a whole new light, no more gay-straightening for me!" More likely he'd think, heh, them sub-humans sure do sing and dance good, and then cheerfully go back to Washington to fuck up their lives even worse. In other words, some people you can't and don't try to convince; with them all you can do to them is warn. For starters.

Extra negative points to Dreher for adding a column about why we should applaud his toleration in going to see Brokeback Mountain and writing an incredibly shitty column about it.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

I thought the only lonely place was on the moon.
•  You know it's trouble from the hed and dek:

Why This Twitter Purge Is Okay with Me
In the case of Richard Spencer, the media jackboots are getting it right.

And make no mistake: National Review's Ian Tuttle still thinks that, while libtards kinda-sorta-maybe have a right to invite or disinvite whomever from their own social media networks and college commencements, they're still liberal fascists because liberals are fascists Q.E.Duh. Here's Tuttle's extremely unfortunate object lesson:

Those of us on the right spend our time trying to loosen the very real clamps that exist on speech, for instance, on university campuses. And that’s important work. DePaul University has the right to forbid Ben Shapiro from speaking, as it did this week. But conservatives oppose DePaul’s doing so because they object to the idea that Ben Shapiro is somehow morally beyond the pale. He’s not. He’s a mainstream conservative, working within a delineable tradition of conservative thought.

Actually Ben Shapiro is a fucking asshole, and DePaul needs no better reason than that to disinvite him. You don't have a Constitutional right to be the skunk at someone else's picnic. I've been saying this since wingnuts wept because Rutgers students didn't want war criminal advice from Condi Rice,  but they never seem to have a better answer than Yer Hitler. Anyway, Tuttle approves of the (still fascist!) Twitter throwing a bunch of neo- and crypto-Nazis off their rolls because he doesn't like them, which he justifies with a lot of gloopy talk e.g.,

Communities form a consensus about what is right and wrong based in part on public debate, but also on custom and taboo and religious practice and a whole lot of other factors that were built on syllogisms and that are not entirely subject to rational debate.

"A whole lot of other factors." That's really threading the needle, buddy. Well, I guess one benefit of our increasingly post-logical environment is that intellectuals don't even have to pretend to try, and we will know them only by their tweed and shitty attitudes.

• From "Annals of the Age of Trump," a continuing series: Larry O'Connor of Hot Air announces Jeff Sessions' AG appointment, then cackles, "And right on cue, the mainstream media and Democrats (redundant) are shouting 'racist!'" Ha ha, stupid libtards, always with the racism! Then O'Connor quotes CNN to show how they're all worked up over nothing:

The former US attorney for the Southern District of Alabama and Alabama attorney general isn’t without controversy. His appointment to a federal district court by then-President Ronald Reagan sank when a former Justice Department employee testified that Sessions had made racially tinged remarks.

He had denounced the 1965 Voting Rights Act and had labeled the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP “un-American” and said the organizations “forced civil rights down the throats of people.”

A black Justice Department staffer said Sessions had called him “boy” and claimed he had thought the Ku Klux Klan “were OK until I found out they smoked pot.”

Maybe O'Connor didn't read it. Maybe he assumed none of his readers would read it, since it was printed in a grey box. There are other possible explanations, none of them flattering. (I think we can rule out economic anxiety, though.)

FOR A BAG OF SALT.

Now that Trump has won the election, says Megan McArdle, we must all come together as a nation for the sake of her and her buddies's careers:

I don't see a moral obligation for anyone to serve in a Trump administration. But people who opposed Donald Trump, on both the left and right, should commit right now to one thing: We will not tar good people for joining the Trump administration. Their motives will not be questioned, and if things do turn out as some of his critics fear, the people in his foreign and domestic policy apparatus will not suffer guilt by association.

And no fair sending them to Den Haag for war crimes.

It is just too important that Trump have good advisers...

..He is going to have to staff regulatory agencies. He is going to have to decide about policy priorities, and push legislation to advance them. If smart, competent people refuse to be a part of that, because they think it’s likely that they will suffer permanent stigma from having joined his team, then Trump's administration will still do all those things -- but it will do them poorly, and the nation will suffer.

"You're way behind quota, General. Why aren't you torturing more prisoners?" "We're trying, Mr. President, but we suffer from a lack of competent personnel!"

...Good economists in an administration cannot come out and say “This is bad policy,” for obvious reasons; their job is to have those conversations internally, and then support their boss’s decisions. That will also be the job of an adviser in a Trump administration, and we want good people in there making the good arguments.

"This must be an error, Mr. President -- it says, 'No taxes on anyone making a million and up'!"
"No error. Get it done."
"But it doesn't make --"
"Do it."
"But I --"
"Now."
"Won't you at least --"
"Every minute you stand here, I deduct five grand from your salary. (The respected economist flees.) Buh-bye!"

I expect she's already given instructions for the design of her inaugural gown. (re: the title -- see the end of this review.)

UPDATE. A number of commenters (and comments are, as always at alicublog, excellent) wish it pointed out that McArdle opens her essay by praising Milton Friedman and his Chicago Boys' service to the brutal dictator Pinochet, when in fact their libertarian bullshit immiserated Chile.

MINE, BY THE RIGHT OF THE WHITE ELECTION.

The Federalist cheerfully declares:

This Election Marks The End Of America’s Racial Détente
Jamelle Bouie is right about one thing: the racial social contract we’ve had is over. Whites aren’t content to let everyone but them get special treatment any more.

Wondering WTF? Got you covered: The article is by David Marcus, who had previously regaled us with "How Anti-White Rhetoric Is Fueling White Nationalism," in which he complained that black people were inexplicably harshing on his white brothers and sisters:

What is new is the direct indictment of white people as a race. This happened through a strange rhetorical transformation over the past few years. At first, “white men are our greatest threat” postings tended to be ironic, a way of putting the racist shoe on the other foot. They were meant to show that blaming an entire race for the harmful actions of a few individuals is senseless.

Then the tenor changed. What started as irony turned into an actual belief that white people, specifically white men, are more dangerous and immoral than any other people. Loosely backed up by historical inequities and disparities in mass shootings, this position has begun to take a serious foothold.

Marcus went on to warn us that if blacks didn't cut it out, him and his honkies were going to get "tribal" on them. From the new column, it would appear he thinks the Trump election proves Der Tag has come. At first he moons over Jamelle Bouie's "White Won" election post-mortem with the performative empathy of David French or Rod Dreher mooning over Ta-Nehisi Coates, then catches Bouie's observation on American whites and blacks that "I thought this meant we had a consensus. It appears, instead, that we had a detente." Darn right, says Marcus:

The rules of the deal were pretty straightforward. For whites, they stated that outright racist statements and explicit appeals to white racial identity were essentially banned. Along with this, whites accepted a double standard about the appropriateness of cultural and political tribalism. For obvious and reasonable historical and economic reasons, black and brown people explicitly pursuing their own interests was viewed differently than whites doing the same thing.

Finally, the answer to the ancient "how come they can say 'nigger' and we can't?" riddle! But when Trump got away with racist shit in broad daylight, says Marcus, that showed "the white acceptance of legitimate racial double standards had dissipated, and without it the détente could not stand." And that's because black folk got out of hand, and started "calling everyone a racist" -- white people got pissed and now you people have to accept their terms. These terms are left vague -- some bullshit about listening to each other, which probably means no more kneeling at ball games, and definitely no getting upset about an elected official cheering the idea that Michelle Obama is an ape -- come on, we let Chris Rock make fun of the way we talk! Marcus attempts to sweeten the deal with some poetry:

The détente was far from perfect. It often allowed quieter racism to lurk unchallenged. In some ways, it was a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. But Band-Aids have a role to play in treating bullet wounds...

Yeah, this guy should definitely be at the table for the negotiation of the New Detente, right next to Attorney General Rudy Giuliani.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the brethren's reaction to the Trumpening. The focus is on the Trump skeptics who are now beginning their great suck-up. Some of them are pretending to be wary, but you know the old song: Their lips say no but their eyes say yes.

Watch what they do with Trump's appointment of Breitbart /alt-right kingpin Steve Bannon as chief White House strategist. Even wingnut rageclowns like Kurt Schlichter are complaining; Newt Gingrich and Ben Carson are cabinet material, but the pied piper of Nazi frogs makes the thing look bad.

But don't worry, Bannon's being normalized already. See Philip Wegmann at the Washington Examiner, who describes the struggle between the "establishment" and this crypto-Nazi creep as if it were a Hollywood catfight: "But if there's a fight, they will throw their weight behind the brawler from Breitbart," "the two champions have now entered the cliché Thunderdome," etc. The headline, "Tea Party bets big on Steve Bannon," refers to the Tea Party Patriots, a pack of grifters who skinned supporters so badly that, frankly, I've surprised they still meet even the drastically forgiving standards of the modern conservative movement.

So the brethren will come around, especially after the first time Bannon's strike force destroys (perhaps literally) some liberal who gives Trump a hard time. Then there'll be someone else to deplore -- maybe George Lincoln Rockwell IV -- until he makes his bones, etc.

The elevation of Bannon reminds me of the famous criticism Steve Jobs had of Xerox under John Sculley from PepsiCo:

So the people who make the company more successful are the sales and marketing people, and they end up running the companies. And the ‘product people’ get run out of the decision-making forums. The companies forget how to make great products. 

Conservatism doesn't do anything real for the American people anymore, so they're promoting their marketing people.

There were many outtakes from the column. I really wanted to fit in Reason magazine's podcast, “The Case for Optimism About Trump's Presidency,” in which Nick Gillespie interviewed libertarians on various Trump policy predictions.  One, Thaddeus Russell, was thrilled Newt Gingrich would be part of the Administration.  I know what you guys are thinking -- why is a libertarian backing an interventionist lunatic? True, Russell said, Gingrich is “a sociopath, generally," but he has “thoroughly repudiated neoconservatism and foreign military interventions generally” and admitted “the Bush Doctrine was a disaster.” And if you can’t trust Newt Gingrich to see the light, who can you trust?

Russell, who giggled nervously throughout his interview (and, whether it was nerves or drugs, who could blame him), also said in some respects “Trump’s foreign policy will be equally bad as Obama’s or worse” and that Trump will “let Putin have what he wants in Eastern Europe" but, on the bright side, “Trump is the first president to call bullshit on that claim that we have any moral reason to help anyone in the rest of the world,” so his foreign policy will be better than Hillary Clinton’s, which Russell had previously called “dangerously coherent.”

Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute was glad Trump wants to destroy Obamacare, but worried that Republicans might try to keep the ban on refusing people with pre-existing conditions, which Cannon called “price controls that prohibit insurance companies from charging actuarily fair premiums if people switch plans.” (“So it’s kind of like rent control for health care!”  a-ha’d Gillespie.) On SCOTUS, Randy Barnett predicted that Trump would appoint judges “more in the mold of Justice Thomas but perhaps even more so than he.” I tell you, the only thing that keeps libertarians from losing even their current tiny market share is the fact that no one besides me listens to these things.

Do read the column, though.

AND NOW FOR THE LIBERTARIAN PERSPECTIVE ON TRUMP...

...Robby Soave of Reason says you liberals -- 'scuse me, you "smug, entitled, elitist, privileged leftists jumping down the throats of ordinary folks who aren't up-to-date on the latest requirements of progressive society" -- made Trump president with your political correctness. The proof is that "I have warned that a lot of people, both on campus and off it, were furious about political-correctness-run-amok." I mean, there are no stats, but Soave knows Milo Yiannopoulos and he's totally against it.

You might be wondering what Soave means by political correctness. Here:

Example: A lot of people think there are only two genders—boy and girl. Maybe they're wrong. Maybe they should change that view. Maybe it's insensitive to the trans community. Maybe it even flies in the face of modern social psychology. But people think it. Political correctness is the social force that holds them in contempt for that, or punishes them outright.

No link to support "punishes them outright," so I guess he means (in addition to the usual dirty looks and lack of universal approval that libertarians always consider P.C. oppression)  in some places they may have to use a public restroom that's also used by members of the opposite sex. Or maybe if they go to certain colleges they might get made to apologize for saying "trannies." No wonder  these poor people snapped.

If you're a leftist reading this, you probably think that's stupid. You probably can't understand why someone would get so bent out of shape about being told their words are hurtful. You probably think it's not a big deal and these people need to get over themselves. Who's the delicate snowflake now, huh? you're probably thinking.

Boy, it's like he's reading my mind.

I'm telling you: your failure to acknowledge this miscalculation and adjust your approach has delivered the country to Trump.

It's like those other privileged leftists back in the 50s -- they wanted their friends to use the same drinking fountain as they did and hey, Robby gets that, but if you'd just recalculated you'd never have had  Orval Faubus and he's all your fault.

THE AGE OF IL DOUCHE.

America is fucked. But you knew that. The rise of Il Douche merely accelerates the stroke.

I'm still seeing some people talking about this election as if Trump voters were a bunch of poor oppressed hillbillies desperate to be freed from the meth and misery to which Tyrant Obama had condemned them. But as has been shown, Trump voters aren't poor -- though they obviously do feel as if they've been deprived of something, and that voting for Trump would give it to them. You can get a glimpse of it in Rod Dreher's reaction to the news last night:

Sure, Trump stirred up the Nazis, but look on the bright side, he made the liberal elites sad! I think this was a big part of the winning formula. I doubt Trump voters seriously believe their man will make international trade more advantageous to the U.S., or settle race relations, or bring global peace. But they don't like the people who are actually working on these things; they are delivering unsatisfactory results and, in the Trumpkin mind, that isn't because these things are difficult and complicated, but because they spend too much time thinking about their friends the blacks, the women, the foreigners, and the gays. Never mind your so-called rights, widget sales are fluctuating, now how'm I going to afford that second home? It's gotta be the fault of liberal elites!

You don't have to be a yokel to think like that -- hell, you don't even have to be a Republican. You just have to be a certain kind of American who's always wondering where's his.

There was never really any reason to feel sorry for these guys before, and there sure isn't any now. They're going to get what they asked for good and hard, and so, alas, are we.

We could feel sorry for ourselves, but that trick never works. Best I can tell you is to keep your head up and don't let 'em talk you out of the truth -- or your sense of humor. Those are the two things their kind most despise, in part because they can't take them away from you.

EARLY AND AWFUL.

That's how yez do it in a Demmy-crat town, yerrah!

It's Election Day, and already hilarious, with turnout depressed in traditional bellwether Dixville Notch -- 4 for Hillary, 2 for Trump, 1 for the stoner and 1 for Mitt Romney. Protest votes in Dixville Notch! By 2020 they'll have armed poll watchers.

At the New York Post Charles Gasparino just can't fathom "The markets’ foolish panic over Donald Trump":

Since nearly the moment Comey made the announcement, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has lost 357 points, or nearly 2 percent of its value, through Friday...

All of which is lunacy.

As crazy as Trump’s demeanor has been at times during the campaign — I’ll admit it’s more than a bit odd that the possible leader of the free world gets into late-night Twitter feuds — there’s nothing nutty about what he has proposed on taxes or regulation, at least from the market’s perspective. If history is any guide (see the Reagan years, and the last six years of President Bill Clinton) lower taxes on individuals and corporations, as Trump is proposing, are usually a good thing for stocks, as are fewer regulatory burdens for business.

I know Uncle Ragey smells like "medicine," runs red lights, and has a tendency to reach over the seat and grab the girls, but I still don't see why you'd rather take the bus to school -- the bus costs money!

Will update as often as goddamn job allows.

UPDATE. At National Review, Dennis Prager is bringing in the sheaves:

I was one of you in vigorously opposing Trump’s nomination – on my national radio show and in my syndicated column. And I paid a price, as you have, in losing longtime supporters – in my case, any number of listeners who supported Trump from the outset and found my strong opposition to him disappointing and worse.

Unlike you, however...

I'm a sleazebag whore who's really only here for the money and the white supremacy.

...I did say from the beginning that if he were to be the nominee, I would vote for him.

Oh man, Dennis, you were so close! Quit living the lie, Dennis! You're only 27 years old, your hair shouldn't be that white!

Most of you are simply too intelligent, too idealistic, and too self-questioning not to have at least on occasion had second thoughts. If you understand – and I cannot believe that most of you don’t – how destructive another four years of any Democrat in the White House, let alone the truly corrupt Hillary Clinton, would be, it is inconceivable that you have never questioned your Never Trump position. Never Trump, after all, is not the same as Never Question.

"Doesn't my hand feel good on your little pussy? You can say 'Never' to Uncle Dennis, but you can't say 'Never' to pleasure!"

To prove my point, one of my favorite Never Trumpers, Jonah Goldberg, wrote in May: “If the election were a perfect tie, and the vote fell to me and me alone, I’d probably vote for none other than Donald Trump.”

In that moment of exquisite honesty, Jonah acknowledged one of the most important moral arguments to be made for voting for Trump – the lesser-of-two-evils argument.

YOU WERE RIGHT ALL ALONG -- YOU ARE ALL ALONE IN THE UNIVERSE! YOU ALONE CAN CHOOSE THE FACE OF GOD, AND YOU KNOW YOU WANT IT TO BE ANGRY AND MALE FOREVER! Prager also addresses that tiny minority of conservatives worried about their conscience or, as Prager dismissively refers to it, "self-image":

How can they, truly decent people, vote for someone who has exhibited the uncouth speech and behavior that Trump has? Or, as some have expressed it, “How can I explain to my daughter that I supported Donald Trump?”

As someone who also thinks of himself as decent...

Yeah I know but give it a minute.

...I think that saving America from Hillary Clinton, the Democrats, and the Left is the most decent thing I can do. And as for your daughter, just have her speak to any of the millions of wonderful women who are voting for Donald Trump. They will provide your daughter with perfectly satisfying moral and woman-centered answers.

He doesn't say what the woman-centered answers are; probably the usual bullshit, only in pink.

UPDATE 2. Roger L. Simon dismisses the "virtue-signaling" conservatives who couch their support of Trump and act embarrassed -- "I have supported Donald Trump unabashedly from the moment I thought it was clear he would win the nomination," he says. Trust me, what he's signaling ain't virtue:

At first blush, or any blush, Donald Trump -- a brash real estate tycoon who made much of his money from gambling casinos -- would seem an unlikely leader for such a crusade. But I submit it's the contrary (and, no, I'm not virtue signaling—at least I don't think so). The extreme situation we are faced with today -- we might call it "crony socialism" -- needed and needs an extreme personality both to get our attention and to get change accomplished. Nothing much would have happened, in all probability, with any of the other candidates. This time, of all times, an outsider was necessary.

Put another way, we have to fight their thuggery with a thug of our own.

In hell, Franz von Papen gets the small comfort of seeing, albeit through a wall of flames, his shtick become fashionable again. My favorite of Simon's insights is this:

He is also the first Republican in decades to make a serious attempt for the African-American vote. We can only hope that others will follow his lead, for the benefit of all our communities.

If only Republicans knew it was so easy -- and so effective!

UPDATE 3. As of 9:30 pm, I see some of you guys are nervous. Don't be! Not because the worst can't happen -- the worst currently has the inside track. But let's be honest with ourselves -- the frog knew that scorpion was a scorpion when it gave him a ride. Is America the frog, or the scorpion? Questions Remain!

If it all goes to shit, remember, nothing in this life is guaranteed. The next four years may require more of us than you expected. But when you get to a certain stage in life, you realize that no road is smooth all the way. Get you some tires with more tread, and press on.

UPDATE 4. 

Silver lining: They're not going to even pretend not to be white power peeps. 

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the end of the 2016 election cycle. And good riddance. Or maybe not -- could be we'll look back on this as one of the last decent weeks before chaos came again and the Dark Time ensued. Vote, for Chrissakes!

Not much in the way of outtakes -- the column is extra big, as befits the topic. I did look in on Mr. Spades, my go-to rageclown. He seems demoralized. Get a load:

The Washington Post has been particularly foul -- starting about four years ago, they re-made themselves into, essentially, a Social Justice Warrior blog with a sports section. 

More: Don Surber says the press went all in for Clinton -- and got a tie for their spastic efforts. 

They've stripped themselves of all credibility, reputability, and, worst of all, influence. 

No one will ever believe them again. 

No one. Ever.

I don't know what's funnier: That Mr. Spades is discoursing to his audience of aging fratboys on the credibility of the Washington Post as if he were Churchill after Dunkirk, or that he's citing in all seriousness Don Surber. 

ONCE-SLOW GOLDBERG SHOWS HE'S GOT PLENTY OF GAS IN THE TANK.

I have noticed that the Trump takeover of the GOP has left Jonah Goldberg a bit adrift and demoralized, so it is with pleasure that I announce he's returned to form with a column worthy of his alicublog tagline: the stupidest thing ever written until Goldberg writes something else.

First, recall all the recent news stories of hours-long lines of early voters and Republican voter suppression and voter harassment. OK, now catch Goldberg's headline:

How early voting endangers democracy

Not even kidding. In his lede, Goldberg suggests that the recent blockbuster (and bullshit) Comey email drop is vital voter information that would have gotten early Clinton voters to change their minds, then follows with a classic Goldberg tic: trying to make this look bipartisan-like by adding,

...a couple weeks before that, NBC News released a tape of Donald Trump describing how he likes to sexually assault women. Since then, nearly a dozen women have come forward describing treatment that closely tracks the behavior Trump himself described...

Early-voting start times vary by state and often by county. In Minnesota, people started casting ballots in September. In Ohio, voting began just five days after the “Access Hollywood” tape surfaced...

Someone who voted in early October might have missed that Trump was a scumbag! Acknowledging that "early-voting supporters concede the point and then say it just doesn’t matter" -- i.e., everyone knows this is a phony argument made up by Republicans who typically get creamed in early voting -- Goldberg tries this:

They note that the people most likely to cast early votes are committed partisans, immune to new facts and information. There’s surely some truth to that --

Which is why the Comey drop would have made them vote for Trump, I guess.

-- but as the scale of early voting increases with each year, it must also be less and less true every year.

It must be, because the longer the line for something, the less likely it is that all the people on that line really want what's on the other end, that is I mean  farrrrt did you hear that? Who did that? Why are you looking at me, I say that's grounds for ending this argument with me winning --

Unfortunately all around Goldberg still has a word count to fulfill, so we come to this:

Also, one might wonder why people who decry the rise of ideological polarization and partisanship are so eager to make it easier for hardcore partisans to vote... 

Every day we hear pious actors, activists and politicians talk about the solemn and sacred duty to vote, and yet everyone wants to make voting easier and more convenient.

[Blink. Blink.]

Many dream of the most cockamamie idea of all: online voting, so we can make choosing presidents as easy as buying socks on Amazon.

This gets human nature exactly backward. Nothing truly important, never mind sacred and solemn, should be treated as a trivial convenience. Churches that ask more of the faithful do better at attracting and retaining congregants. The Marines get the best and most committed recruits because they have higher standards...

Drop and give me twenty, then you can vote! That's how we did it when America was strong -- well, sort of, actually we used poll taxes and literacy tests. And, because we wanted to motivate black people to be all they could be -- like the Marines, and the Church! -- we used it mostly on them.

I predict that whoever wins Tuesday, we're in for a golden age of Goldberg. Keep a gas mask handy!

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

I'm serious, there's things to do.
• If you had Marina Abramovic in the pool, congratulations: The latest Wikileaks thing is that because John Podesta was invited to an Abramovic performance, he and all Clintonites are into black sex magic. InfoWars:

“SPIRIT COOKING”: CLINTON CAMPAIGN CHAIRMAN INVITED TO BIZARRE SATANIC PERFORMANCE
Menstrual blood, semen and breast milk: Most bizarre Wikileaks revelation yet...

In what is undoubtedly the most bizarre Wikileaks revelation to date, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta was invited to a “spirit cooking dinner” by performance artist Marina Abramovic, to take part in an occult ritual founded by Satanist Aleister Crowley.

In an email dated June 28, 2015, Abramovic wrote, “I am so looking forward to the Spirit Cooking dinner at my place. Do you think you will be able to let me know if your brother is joining? All my love, Marina"...

Spirit cooking is also an “occult practice used during sex cult rituals, as explained in the book “Spirit cooking with essential aphrodisiac recipes,” notes Mike Cernovich.

The revelation that John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, is presumably interested in weird, gory occult ceremonies was too juicy for even Wikileaks to ignore.

This has inspired some of the brethren to great feats of epistolary analysis.

You might be asking: Roy, you never messed with this Infowars stuff before, why now? The answer's simple: They're the new Republican base.

WE ARE NOT SO VERY DIFFERENT, YOU AND I.

This being the week before the election, there's a lot of garbage being written, and someone may beat this entry by John Ellis of PJ Media, but he's set a high bar. Ellis affirms he's NeverTrump, but does not allude to the reason, which he spelled out in a recent column: He suspects Trump of trying to throw the election to  Clinton ("Here's a conspiracy theory for you: Donald Trump entered the 2016 presidential race at the behest of his good buddy Bill Clinton. If that's true, Trump is serving his friends the Clintons well because almost everything that he does seems to be in order to help Hillary get elected…").

But let that pass. Now Ellis is back to tell us that the "squabble" within his movement just shows how pure it is, because it "reveals a desire to protect the integrity of the conservative movement." He apparently is not referring to Nazi frogs and neo-Confederates, but to Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and all the other guys who denounced Trump as a special menace and then endorsed him -- which is noble, not craven as it looks, because

...many of the Republicans who are planning on voting for Donald Trump next week are planning to do so with their noses firmly plugged and with a deep sense of regret about what might have been. Many who disagree with my #NeverTrump position agree with my assessment of Trump's lack of competency and virtue. Outside of the shrill voices of the alt-right, very few conservatives who are planning on voting for Trump are attempting to put lipstick on their pig. And that's the way they see it—Donald Trump is most definitely a pig, but he's their pig and they'd rather have their pig in power than the other side's pig.

Thaaaaat's an interesting definition of integrity.

...Thankfully, many Republicans continue to retain their integrity even as they prepare to vote for one of the two worst candidates for president in American history. Over and over, I see an acknowledgment of Trump's vileness even while calling for people to embrace the "lesser of two evils" arguments.

I must have missed the director's cut of Cruz's "vote for this scumbag" speech.

Democrats, however, can't embrace that argument because they refuse to acknowledge that their candidate is evil.

This has got to be the saddest version of the "at least I admit it" tropes since the Joker told Batman he completes him. Five more days! And the goodbad news is they'll never get less crazy.

SURPRISINGLY!

What the hell is up at The Hill? In September they published a couple of particularly egregious long-distance diagnoses of Hillary Clinton. Now look: today I saw a tweet from The Hill saying "Trump surprisingly popular in Africa." It leads to a story called "Trump’s tone resonates in strongman-weary Africa" -- an even more counterintuitive headline.

After claiming for Trump "surprising resonance in parts of Africa where people are weary of the political establishment" and that he's "enjoying a strong amount of popularity in Uganda and other African nations," the reporter quotes a "a lecturer in political science at Northwestern University and columnist for a Ugandan newspaper" who seems to agree; then, paragraph 7:

To be sure, support for Trump is not unanimous.

One poll conducted in South Africa and Nigeria, the continent’s two largest economies, showed a marked distaste for Trump. According to the WIN/Gallup International Association poll, released in October, respondents in those two countries overwhelmingly preferred Clinton 69-20.

Later we hear how some people were excited by a fake Trump quote that suggested he would "lock up" African dictators ("a Trump campaign spokeswoman confirmed that the quote is false" is one of the more revealing sentences in the report), some more quotes from professors, and a joke by Trevor Noah in which he called Trump "basically the perfect African president” and showed a picture of him dressed like Idi Amin.

At first I thought this story was uniquely awful, but then I realized: It's like the apotheosis of pro-Trump "reporting" -- and indeed of the Trump campaign itself. It's built on great mounds of bullshit adorned with thin wisps of fact. Plus -- and this is what distinguishes the Trumpian from the traditional Republican variety of journamalism -- it cites stuff that is clearly, even admittedly, not true as evidence. Because why not?

We do face catastrophe on Tuesday, but to a great extent the catastrophe's already happening.


UPDATE. Speaking of garb campaign reporting, from the once-good, now Trump-in-law paper The New York Observer:

Bernie Sanders Abandons Clinton in Final Week

This week Sanders made campaign appearances for Clinton in Milwaukee, Plymouth, NH, Portland, Maine, at Dartmouth College, in Youngstown, Ohio, and Kalamazoo, Michigan. I may have missed a few. In Friday and Saturday he's scheduled to stump for her in four Iowa towns.

Nonetheless the Observer offers commentary such as this:

Though Sanders supporters have been relegated to apathy since he officially ended his presidential campaign at the Democratic National Convention, Sanders is beginning to show every intention of giving his supporters something to be excited about after Election Day. Clinton’s free pass from Sanders is over.

That's not glory you're covered in, guys.

ROD TOOK THE MANGER, BECAUSE THE INN WAS FULL OF GAYS.

Airbnb has written a non-discrimination clause into its user agreements. As reported by the New York Times, this would appear to be less a spurt of SJW enthusiasm and more a PR/business decision -- Airbnb was getting shit because some of its renters have been a bit, er, exclusive about whom they'd allow to rent through their listings:

[Airbnb's] reputation was stained in December, when Harvard University researchers released a working paper that concluded it was harder for guests with African-American-sounding names to rent rooms through the site. Several Airbnb users have since shared stories on social media saying they were denied a rental because of their race. In May, an African-American Airbnb user filed a suit against the company, seeking class-action status, saying he had been denied a place to stay because of his race.

Thus does Airbnb avoid association with bigotry, and people who only want to rent to white people can go to or even start up a competitive service, perhaps called Honkyhost. The magic of the marketplace in action!

Longtime readers will be unsurprised to learn Rod Dreher, spokesman for the oppressed white straight masses, is incensed, and declares he would never sign such an agreement, because in his view Airbnb is "passing judgment on my religious beliefs, and committing itself to bias against me and others who hold them."

Fine, you might say -- then hie thee hence to Honkyhost (or, given Dreher's hard-on for the LGBT, HetHost) and luxuriate in your straightwhiteness. But you don't understand -- for Brother Rod, the problem is that you and Airbnb would so readily dismiss him; he considers himself and his fellow "religious traditionalists" oppressed by your noxious non-discrimination:

I’m about to check out from a Courtyard Marriott. What if in the future, hotels like this compelled their customers to sign such a commitment? There would be few places that religious conservatives and others who didn’t accept the LGBT line could stay when they travel. It’s not hard to imagine gay activists in the near future instituting a corporate campaign to get “Fairness Pledges” to be part of the business model of hotels and other businesses. If they succeed, then somebody will need to come up with The Religious Conservative Motorist Green Book.

The original Green Book, if you don't know, was a guidebook for black travelers disaccommodated by Jim Crow. I already had been looking forward to a nation free of racial and anti-gay prejudice, but that the very idea of such a world drives Dreher to Freedom Rider cosplay just makes the prospect that much sweeter.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the Evan McMullin fantasy presidency. Yeah, I contemplated making this week's column about the Comey bullshit, but the situation is still in flux and in the absence of an actual accusation it's basically a scarecrow for Republicans to shake and make scary noises behind. I mean, look at the Ole Perfesser's page from last night:

PREDICTION: “Comey broke precedent about announcing a criminal investigation near an election because he saw something disqualifying.” If so, Hillary may regret the demand that he release everything ASAP . . . .

Meanwhile, as to the timing, note this: FBI agents knew of Clinton-related emails weeks before director was briefed. Does this mean that the agents were afraid to tell him for fear of Loretta Lynch-style interference, like last time?

Posted at 6:48 pm by Glenn Reynolds 

Questions Remain! Jon Stewart already has "Bullshit Mountain," so what can we do with this -- Bullshit Tsunami? Bullshit Event Horizon? (No, better save that for the endless Congressional investigations.)

The McMullin thing, on the other hand, in addition to being hilarious reflects the brethren's deepest fears and desires. The sources cover a good cross-section of wingnut-world, from Jonah Goldberg to the Christer nuthatch Witherspoon Institute to Erick Erickson's clubhouse. Plus when rightbloggers mention it their eyes go all gooey, like that dog whose owner dressed up as his favorite toy.