FRIDAY 'ROUND THE HORN.

Mama had this record. Whole thing's great, but I particularly like the part

with the Leslie'd organ and what I believe is choked-pick percussion git.

•   National Review's John Miller is again pimping Liberty Island, the website whose politically-driven belles-lettres we've examined before, so I figured I'd have a look. Among recent offerings is the winner of its recent Memorial Day writing contest, a story called Bait, in which he-men with Marine training use a sissy Hollywood actor to break up a super-sophisticated dogfighting ring, and then see to it that the sissy gets beat up because he's a sissy. The author demonstrates a great deal of knowledge about armaments, and sympathy for dogs if not Hollywood sissies; if you're going to be cruel at Liberty Island, it pays to be sentimental, too. Fave line: "Hell, there was even the rock god my kid sister had worshipped in high school [at the dogfight]. I guess meat was only murder sometimes." Picture Morrissey crying "ten thousand quid on the pitbull with the faraway eyes." Also in rotation: "WILL YOU SURVIVE IF (WHEN?) THE POWER GRID GOES DOWN?" which I think is sponsored content but with this bunch you never know. Oh, and an announcement for a new Book of the Year contest, sponsored by the Conservative-Libertarian Fiction Alliance, for people who like their art-product vetted by ideologues.

•   Elizabeth Warren says "the game is rigged" and she's right, says National Review's Jim Geraghty, "but she’s off-base in her assessment of how it’s rigged" -- it's you liberals and your so-called "education" that rigged it! Geraghty points to an article in The Economist called “America’s new aristocracy: Education and the inheritance of privilege," and tells us,

...the liberal-dominated world of higher education has turned itself into the exorbitantly expensive entry gate to the middle class, setting aside quite a few slots for the offspring of current elites.

Wait a minute -- colleges are expensive, and the children of the rich get unfair advantages in them? This is brand new! Thanks, Obama! Wait, it gets worse: Geraghty says the article also tells us

...law firms, investment banks, and consulting firms tend to hire applicants from well-known universities who were already “culturally similar” to the institution. “Employers sought candidates who were not only competent but also culturally similar to themselves in terms of leisure pursuits, experiences, and self-presentation styles. Concerns about shared culture were highly salient to employers and often outweighed concerns about absolute productivity.” In other words, if you don’t remind the elite employer making the hiring decision of himself, you’re less likely to be hired for the big job.

It sounds as if Obama has changed human nature itself! In the old days, you could just search the candidate's chest for the right class pin or school tie; now I suppose you have check out his "self-presentation style" -- to see if it's liberal! Next Geraghty will read somewhere and rush back to tell us that under Obama rich people eat fancy food while ordinary Americans eat sammiches. This could break the election wide open for whichever rich theocrat the GOP nominates!

•   I'm tired of doing all the hard work around here, so I'll just point out that in this Michael Brendan Dougherty column the job of proving, or even making an argument, that letting all kinds of people (including gays and singles) have babies will lead the disaster is entirely left to the framing device, which talks about an abandoned baby left in a bag -- another thing that never happened before Obama! -- and then shock-cuts to the tale of a child-support suit against a sperm donor and proceeds to other such curiosities, none of which, so far as the column tells, are related to the abandoned baby except in that abandoned babies are bad and these things near it are, in Dougherty's view, also bad. I knew these guys were feeble in the logic department, but couldn't they take a weekend course and learn something about metaphors at least?