Wednesday, October 08, 2014

LET'S MAKE IT NICE AND SIMPLE.

Let's see if we really need to read Charles C.W. Cooke's latest on George Will not getting to speak at Scripps University.
This is the college’s prerogative, certainly. George Will has no right to speak at Scripps. Nevertheless...
Thank you. Next!

I really don't see what's so hard about this. This is even less on the line than the cases involving all those millionaires were not allowed to keep their positions just because the PR wind shifted and -- oh yeah -- their contracts said they couldn't. Liberty University doesn't have to let me speak at their events, and Scripps doesn't have to let Will speak at theirs. Too bad for both of us.

Call me when they show this kind of interest when some poor person loses his job.

Tuesday, October 07, 2014

THE VIRTUE OF CLUELESSNESS.

I have noticed that, while once Ayn Rand fans boldly lorded over the littlebrains the wisdom of their hero, and were forever threatening to Go Galt, lately they've grown quieter and more defensive. Maybe they flew a little too close to the sun with their 47%/"looters and moochers" talk in 2012, from which waves of mockery (some of it from Obama!) ensued, and now even Paul Ryan has forsaken Rand. Her acolytes have retreated to worship secretly in their catacombs, only rarely emerging to issue apologetics, such as that Robert Tracinski piece about how Rand characters were not all about money but actually on a transcendent quest for love.

The latest of these, by Hunter Baker at The Federalist, offers more of the same -- the title, "The Devil And Ayn Rand: Extending Christian Charity To John Galt’s Creator," tells you most of what you need to know. But it also has one of my all-time favorite Randsplaining paragraphs, and it's at least as good out of context:
At this point it makes sense to return to the famous scene from “Dirty Dancing” in which Rand’s accusers put words in her mouth and leave no room for response. “Some people count and some don’t.” The implication, given the class dynamics in the film, is that the rich have worth and the poor do not. But Rand would have been outraged at the thought. In her economy, a shiftless man of wealth would rank well below a blue-collar welder who performs his craft with excellence (and probably also a talented dancer at a resort).
I would love to hear Baker's Randian exegesis on the walk-off challenge from Zoolander and how it shows the refinement of craft in the spirit of competition.

NOT LIVING IN THE REAL WORLD.

This CM Phillips thing I found at American Thinker resembles other modern conservative hissy-fits in which the Obamaization of America is blamed on something resembling linguistics. (You know the schtick: because liberalism is inherently awful, indeed anathematic, it can't possibly be its policies  that attract people to it, so its popularity must be due to some Jedi mind trick.)

But Phillips' essay is distinguished in two respects. First, while ordinarily these guys cite Saul Alinsky as the primal trickster with whose strategies liberals bamboozle the weak-minded, Phillips cites George Lakoff, who may be even less read than Alinsky, even by those conservatives who have pretty much memorized Alinsky in their struggle to prove he's the Mr. Big of contemporary liberal politics. (Maybe Phillips is just showing off for his friends.)

Most of  Phillips' numbered examples of how "liberals frame issues in narratives" which "undermines conservative’s positions" are  typical gibberish -- they call us "tea baggers," Phillips fumes, which is a "sexually offensive" slur on "decent Americans" who are the "moral opposite of the crude, law-breaking left’s Occupy Wall Street crowd," arrgh blaargh.

But then he gets to a few that I find instructive, because they're so obvious about something that usually gets soft-pedaled:
6) Trickle down -- The “trickle down” frame paints a picture of money trickling into the economy as the rich pay for their indulgences. This is just wrong. The rich are usually successful business owners... 
5) Capitalism -- Capitalism was Marx and Lenin's derogatory term for the free enterprise or entrepreneurial system. Even conservatives use this term too frequently... 
3) 1% -- The narrative is: “the top 1% have all the money, so there is little left for other 99%.” The top 1% pays more in taxes than the bottom 90%, but that is not enough for the Democrats. They attack the 1%, and if the greedy Democrats could, they would tax the heck out of the top 49%. The other 51% would keep them in office.
Notice that? Phillips got through all of these economic topics without once mentioning the global financial collapse of 2008, not to mention the slow-motion collapse of the American economy in the preceding years, from which we all continue to suffer.

If people are mentioning capitalism in something other than respectful terms, it's not because George Lakoff told them to, but because of what are regrettably still current events: While capitalism may have been possible to overlook when it was just quietly picking our pockets, it became impossible to overlook when it started breathing hard, thrashing, and foaming at the mouth. And the rich were not an issue until the ranks of the poor and verge-of-poor grew to include nearly all of us, and many more  than previously began to recognize that the 1% were not just lovable drunks from Dudley Moore movies, but an interest group whose interest ran directly and sometime violently counter to their own.

Yet Phillips can't even acknowledge that. To guys like him, nothing really exists except the epochal struggle of good conservatives and evil liberals -- not in Iraq, not in New Orleans, and certainly not in the market. It's like what they think about charges of racism -- that's just some kind of word you liberals are using; it doesn't have to do with anything real.

I remember when it was the liberals who were supposed to be the head-in-the-clouds, disconnected-from-reality types. They were assumed to have spent too much time looking at books but not enough time seeing life as it is -- you know, like Meathead on All in the Family. But as the ranks of wingnut welfare recipients have swollen to feed vast online opinion factories, they seem to have taken over meathead production. Another market triumph! 

Sunday, October 05, 2014

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN...

...is not at the Village Voice this week. Nor will it be hereafter. Village Voice Media informs me they're cancelling the Rightbloggers column forthwith for budgetary reasons. I swear, when I went by the Voice offices each week to pick up my sacks of Kruggerrands, I thought those malnourished children were some kind of joke. Apparently not. Things is tough in journalism!

Well, six years is a good run. Now it's time to start suffering and write that symphony.

In any event, I had a column ready, so here it is, on my own premises: It's about the Ebola, and how Obama snuck it in America's back door because he hates this fucking country and wants to see it overthrown by radical Islam, which totally rocks.

Have a look, have fun, and if you have comments leave them here. As for next week and the weeks to come, I'll figure something out.

Friday, October 03, 2014

FRIDAY ROUND-THE-HORN.

•    Like Lorenzo Semple DuBois says in The Producers, they try; man, how they try -- Tim Cavanaugh of National Review:
Vice President of the patriarchy Joe Biden used a common anti-woman epithet to describe the strains of being a second in command during a visit to Harvard University Thursday. The misogynistic slur was treated as a harmless bit of Joe-will-be-Joe japery by local media. 
“Isn’t it a bitch, that Vice President thing?” Biden said after student Sietse Goffard identified himself as student council vice president at Harvard — whose former president Larry Summers famously said in 2005 that women might be underrepresented in science and engineering due to a “different availability of aptitude at the high end.” (Summers went on to serve on the Obama administration’s economic brain trust but was later beaten by a woman in his quest to become chairperson of the Federal Reserve Bank.) 
In a report on Biden’s use of the term “bitch” — a technical term for a female dog that is frequently used to deny women agency and silence female voices...
The word "bitch" has many meanings: It can also be applied to a person of either gender who whines on and on about insignificant shit.

•   I speak roughly of rightbloggers, but in reflective moments I think: Surely they have some decent qualities. For example, now that there's a visitor to our shores suffering from Ebola virus in a Dallas hospital, they wouldn't use his misfortune to try and drum up panic among the ignorant -- well, okay, maybe some of the stupider ones would, but surely not the big names in the field?
And while I’d like to know more about how this freelancer may have caught it, he’s a westerner, presumably aware of the dangers and how to avoid infection, not treating people with Ebola, and he still got infected. That could happen to anybody, of course, but it makes me wonder if this strain of Ebola is easier to catch than we think.
I take it back, they're all scum.

•   Speaking of which, I see that asshole Matthew Continetti has honest-to-God  written something called "The Case for Panic," in which he uses the traditional conservative premise that government can't do anything right to encourage Ebola pants-pissing among his co-delusionists.  He even closes with this:
Know hope? That’s passé.

Know fear.
I have to give him credit -- that's as eloquent a summation of modern conservative philosophy as we're ever likely to see.

Thursday, October 02, 2014

BRINGING A PUTTY KNIFE TO A CULTURE WAR.

Last week I mentioned some kulturkampf krap from the folks at libertarian flagship Reason. They are apparently serious about pursuing this editorial direction and have enlisted Meredith Bragg and Nick Gillespie to devise a list of "The 5 Best Libertarian TV Shows Ever," available as a video (no fucking way) and as text -- here is a sample:
The Wire (2002-2008). Widely considered one of the greatest TV shows of all time, this Baltimore-based drama has been called a visual novel that explores and analyzes class, race, and politics from multiple viewpoints and perspectives. Different seasons keyed in on different institutions—schools, police, the media—and the ways in power was exercised and abused, often in the name of helping the underprivileged.
I assume this is just Gillespie's way of getting back at David Simon.

Read it and weep -- or read my three alternative entries. And devise some of your own in comments!
Twenty-One. Not only did this pioneering game show feature the sort of intellectual feats of strength at which libertarians excel (you should see us at Quizzo Night!), for a brief, magical period (until the statists shut it down) contestants were allowed to freely engage in informal business arrangements with like-minded entrepreneurs -- or, as the littlebrains would say, to cheat -- which made for a more enjoyable entertainment product and demonstrated the cultural superiority of capitalism. 
The Flintstones. Not being acquainted with the work of Hayek and Ricardo, people of the Paleolitic era lived in Rousseauian confusion and squalor. What would the experience of early man have been like if he had access to a capitalist model? The Flintstones answers this question: It would be like early-60s America, but better, because the meddling hand of the state would be nowhere to be seen. While business thrives, crime in Bedrock is non-existent; Fred and Barney refrain from predation and rapine because their behavior is positively influenced by engagement in "little platoons" such as the Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes, and of course by the threat of deprivation should Mr. Slate fire them from the quarry, the "safety net" not having been invented because you can't make a net out of rocks. Saber-tooth tigers gotta eat something! (Bonus: It's a total rip-off of The Honeymooners, and if it weren't for the whole "intellectual property" racket we'd have lots of quality shows like this.) 
Hannibal. It's a miracle the liberal network NBC allowed this story of a truly free man on the air. Most of us are so ground down by the politically-correct conventions of our age that we can't even begin to know what we want, but Dr. Hannibal Lecter not only knows, he also gets it, and lets neither so-called "morality" nor the bumbling fascist police stop him. At last -- for the first time since Dallas went off the air, a character to whom libertarians can really relate.

Wednesday, October 01, 2014

...UNTIL GOLDBERG WRITES SOMETHING ELSE, PART 3,402.

Bucket-footed press critic Jonah Goldberg thinks he's got a hot one:
I must say, there’s something about the way accused White House intruder Omar Gonzalez is constantly described in the media that bothers me. I keep hearing him called “Army veteran Omar Gonzalez.” It’s true he’s an Army veteran. So I’m not disputing the fact.
Oh Jesus.
But I have a little trouble with the relevance. I know there is a cottage industry out there trying to hype up the threat of returning vets as the real source of domestic terrorism (we all remember the DHS-report controversy).
That's why, every time a veteran knocks over a liquor store, the liberal media runs his mugshot next to a picture of Tim McVeigh.
But it’s worth noting that Gonzalez’s alleged motivation was to tell the president the atmosphere is collapsing. In other words, while PTSD — or some other mental defect — may be to blame for his delusions, describing him as “Army veteran Omar Gonzalez” doesn’t really tell us anything about his motivations. It doesn’t fit into the “narrative” save as evidence that he might have PTSD. But to use “Army veteran” as a euphemism for PTSD sufferer is somewhat obscene.
People think Gonzalez might have PTSD because a family member told reporters he had PTSD. His bizarre post-service actions may reflect a madness independent of post traumatic stress disorder, which is why responsible media and public officials have been pretty good about not saying for sure that he has it -- with the understanding that the modifier "responsible" excludes some people, like Howard Kurtz ("The fact that Gonzalez, a war veteran suffering from PTSD, even made it to the door"), Darrell Issa ("...a crazed, solo, knife-wielding veteran with PTSD..."), et alia.

This is why Goldberg is very careful about decoupling his "calling Gonzalez a veteran, though true, is unfair" charge from his charge that something something media PTSD. He's not smart, but he does possess a certain low animal cunning.

Goldberg goes on --
... But compare all this to the coverage of Alton Nolen... He’s never described as “Muslim Alton Nolen” or “Islamic extremist Alton Nolen.” And that’s probably right. But why is Omar Gonzalez not afforded the same standard? In the case of Nolen, I suspect part of the reason is that the press, like the White House, is very reluctant to say anything that might cast aspersions on the larger Muslim community.
This is bullshit. The New York Times, like every other news source on the planet, has told readers the guy is a Muslim. (The Times said "Mr. Nolen is a recent convert to Islam," which is the same thing as "Muslim Alton Nolen," unless what you're going for is some sort of pejorative lilt a la "Dirty Dingus Magee" or "Evil Roy Slade.")

As for calling him “Islamic extremist Alton Nolen," that would be much further out than suggesting Gonzalez might have PTSD -- though (as detailed in my recent Village Voice column, which you really should read or at least click on) there are plenty of media outlets that are not only doing that, but also asserting that Nolen is part of a jihad army, fanning out across the heartland on the orders of some Islamic Mr. Big.

Goldberg's big close:
That’s perfectly defensible (though calling the beheading simple “work place violence” is indefensible Orwellian nonsense).
Nolen went to his workplace and committed violence. Newspeak!
But shouldn’t the larger community of Army vets get at least the same deference?
"Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we're not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America" was funny in the movie, Jonah, but as you may have noticed at parties, if you want to be asked back you're gonna need some fresher material.

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

LET US CLASP HANDS OVER THE BLOODY CHASM.

Ole Perfesser Glenn Reynolds thinks Obama should pick a Republican for Attorney General because bipartisanship:
Perhaps President Obama — and, for that matter, future presidents — should take a lesson from the way we handle the Department of Defense, and apply it to the Department of Justice: Consider naming someone outside his own party as attorney general... 
Having a Defense secretary from the other party makes war bipartisan, and reassures members of the opposition that the powers of the sword aren't being abused.
Defense -- you mean Chuck Hagel? I remember that confirmation fight -- here are some typically bipartisan Instapundit posts by Glenn Reynolds from that time:
CHUCK HAGEL: “Let the Jews Pay For It.” Related: Obama Expected To Pick Hagel.

WHY IS CHUCK HAGEL STILL IN THE MIX? [quote from Jennifer Rubin screed about Hagel's unacceptable positions, including "poisonous animosity toward the Jewish state."] Personnel is policy. If Obama appoints Hagel, you’ll know what his policy is, regardless of what he says. 
CHUCK HAGEL: It was a war for oil! [quote from Billy Kristol screed about how Hagel's "far left" and "vulgar and disgusting charge" proves he's a peacenik nogoodnik; "Is President Obama really going to nominate this man as secretary of defense?"] Well, really, isn’t Hagel a perfect fit?

SO HOW’D THAT HAGEL HEARING GO? “It is very clear from the testimony that Sen. Hagel will not be bringing the potato salad to the next Mensa picnic.” And that’s from a Democrat... 
DAMAGED GOODS: Hagel's Brand Suffers from Confirmation Battle. I think the original plan was to nominate a Republican who could take the blame for defense cuts — and actions. I don’t think Hagel can fill that role usefully now, even if he’s confirmed.
Etc. After Hagel got in, Reynolds did posts on him like "JAMES TARANTO ON MILITARY JUSTICE: Hagel’s Science of Logic: The Secretary compounds Obama’s unlawful command influence," and "WITH THINGS FALLING APART ALL AROUND THE WORLD, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel Is Talking About the NFL. UPDATE: From the comments: 'And even there, he’s punching above his weight.'" That last one, by the way, was from nine days ago.

So yeah, reach out, Obama. The Perfesser's got your back.

Their occasional swinging of the bipartisanship incense pot probably doesn't convince much of anyone anymore, but it's always good to be reminded that our cynicism is amply justified by their mendacity.

Speaking of bullshit, guess who agrees with Reynolds, and in the sort of convoluted language that shows he's hoping no one holds him to it:
I'm not sure I want war to be bipartisan but the idea of a Republican AG would really restart any number of conversations that have stalled out or stopped due to acrimony all around.
Ladies and gentlemen, Nick Gillespie for the libertarians, serving their traditional role in these interparty disputes.

Monday, September 29, 2014

CONSERVATIVE (AND LIBERTARIAN) OUTREACH TO WOMEN IS GOING GREAT, CONT.

Last week I mentioned the  spate of  conservative complaints about Emma Watson's very measured feminist speech at the U.N., which apparently spoiled their bedtime Hermione fantasies. Since then, in Time magazine -- a major outlet of what was once called the Liberal Media, for reasons lost to history -- Cathy Young of Reason has delivered the libertarian response. Guess how that goes?
Sorry, Emma Watson, but HeForShe Is Rotten for Men
Until feminism recognizes discrimination against men, the movement for gender equality will be incomplete.
Lots of weeping about "anti-male biases in the court system," and how if a woman beats up a man (as they frequently do) no one sympathizes, whereas if a guy beats up a chick everyone gets bent out of shape, etc. This pretty much comports with what libertarians usually say about women's rights. I wouldn't be surprised if folks started catching on at last that social issues don't mean as much to libertarians as the transfer of wealth from paupers to the deserving rich.

While his colleagues were raging at Watson, Kevin D. Williamson of National Review kicked it old school with a rant about Lena Dunham. the Brooklyn actress who started driving culture warriors crazy during the 2012 campaign, and whom, despite their protestations of disgust with her tattooed ass, they just cain't quit.

Dunham wrote a pamphlet for Planned Parenthood (or, in Williamson’s view, “a gang of abortion profiteers”) called “5 Reasons Why I Vote (and You Should, Too),” spurring his column-length sputter. Mostly it was about  how voting is stupid (“the most shallow gesture of citizenship there is”) because people with whom he disagrees get to do it (and are only doing so “as an act of self-gratification,” not to get candidates elected) and seem at present to outnumber him and his lunatic fringe. But Williamson managed to stuff unchivalrous comments about Dunham in there, too, and plenty of abortion ravings, including an assertion that women have abortions out of a “desire to fit nicely into a prom dress."  "FWIW, I've been dumping of democracy/voting fetishization for almost two decades," cheered Jonah Goldberg in response.

Later Williamson went on Twitter to tell people that women who had abortions should be hanged as murderers. The boy will go far.

Our favorite stray ladyragebit, though, is a line from Bryan Preston at PJ Media. Angered to learn that Alicia Keys was appearing naked for some social justice thing, Preston seethed, “She and the [New York] Times see this as ‘empowering.’ Is it empowering that an insanely successful woman and mother believes that getting naked before the entire world is the best way to draw attention to her cause? Or is it just plain old attention-whoring from her, and sucking up to leftwing celebrities from the New York Times?” Fucking bitches, with their whoring and sucking! 

“Yet here she is,” sneered Preston, “being all empowered. Naked, to push for gun control.” And now, his piece de resistance:
Try confronting an Islamist madman like this.
Message discipline is message discipline -- squads of headchoppers roam America's streets! Even in the midst of ladyrage, there's always time to pick on Muslims.  

Sunday, September 28, 2014

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about Alton Nolan, the mad jihadist of Moore, Oklahoma. The idea this guy is just a nut who happens to be Muslim seems to elude the brethren, who affect to believe that Nolan's attack on his ex-workplace means Oklahoma is now crawling with ISIS sleeper cells. Well, maybe it'll give the boys on the range something to talk about, though I suspect they're too smart to fall for it.

UPDATE. In comments, randomworker: "Now, if someone was selling (at flea markets out of the back of their Impala station wagon) a semi-automatic beheader that could behead up to 20 people before needing a reload, I imagine the bedwetters would be calling for some kind of regulation on that device!"

Friday, September 26, 2014

FRIDAY ROUND-THE-HORN.

•   Though it's been days since Emma Watson's perfectly sensible feminist speech at the U.N., willful misunderstandings keep rolling in from our conservative brothers and sisters. There are, as you would expect, the usual blarhars from local oafs: Watson "hopped on the misogyny-patriarchy-rape-train," says Phil Elmore at WorldNetDaily; Breitbart's Milo Yiannopoulos yammers on about Watson's "figure-hugging overcoat" and "ten-thousand dollar outfits, with jackets cut perfectly to accentuate every curve of her body," apparently to make clear that the bitch is asking for it. But some conservatives put a little spin on their spin, so to speak,  portraying Watson's speech itself as anti-feminist. When Watson said, "Fighting for women's rights has too often become synonymous with man-hating. Feminism, by definition, is the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities," Rush Limbaugh pounced: "Right there she's telling you, feminism, as she learned it, means man-hating, means men are the enemy, means men are predators, rapists, brutes, purse snatchers, muggers and all that." "EMMA WATSON CONCEDES WOMEN 'ARE CHOOSING NOT TO IDENTIFY AS FEMINISTS,'" headlined Breitbart's Tony Lee. Etc. The weirdest bit so far, though, comes from Heather Wilhelm at The Federalist:
...[Watson said,] “I think it is right that I should be able to make decisions about my own body.” (Here, of course, was a bout of wild applause.) “I think it is right that women be involved on my behalf in the policies and decisions that will affect my life.” (Good thing all women think the same!)
In other words, the leftists who hijacked feminism have twisted it to be about female autonomy and basic human rights, whereas it used to be all about the music. They musta got that from Alinsky!

•   As near as I can figure this out: Katy Waldman wrote a column objecting to an A.J. Delgado column about how women make up rape accusations. Later Cathy Young also published a column about how women make up rape accusations. Brendon Bordelon finds the liberal hypocrisy: All three columns appeared at Slate! Thus:
Slate Attacks NR for ‘Crying Rape’ Column, Then Uses Exact Same Headline Months Later
Slate could avoid this sort of thing by not publishing Delgado or Young, both of whom are incredibly awful wingnuts, but then by the rules of conservative victimhood that'd be censoring/oppressing them. You can't win (except in elections).

•   Grim laughs from the American Enterprise Institute (catch the byline):

Whereas Yoo refused to obey the Geneva Conventions, and has no regrets at all. Every time I see that man's name, I get the same feeling that comes over me when the narrator at the end of A Man For All Seasons tells us Richard Rich died in his bed.

•   To me, it's not even so much that Ilya Shapiro compared Eric Holder to George Wallace -- "please proceed, wingnut" is usually my reaction to something like that -- but more that he (or his editor, assuming despite appearances that he has one) removed the reference without acknowledging it. Come on, buddy, you've deprived us of a perfectly hilarious explanation.

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

ANNALS OF THE CULTURE WAR, PART 91,048,281.

New! At libertarian flagship Reason:

Lost is all about challenging authority and seeking a non-coercive way to live together. Libertarians don't need to claim the show as theirs exclusively, but they should at least recognize it as friendly to their outlook.
But by then everyone had left because it was a nice day outside, and he smelled.

Also new! From Nick Gillespie at The Daily Beast:


Between this and their hundreds of articles about millennials, tomorrow belongs to them. Prepare yourselves for the ice floes, statist seniors!

UPDATE. sharculese, in comments: "You know what else Lost is about? Ten years old, now."

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

TEMPEST IN A TEACUP.

You have probably seen the fauxtrage over Obama saluting Marines with a cup of tea in his hand. Power Line's Paul Mirengoff, for example, declares it "speaks volumes about President Obama, not only concerning his underlying disdain for our military, but also as regards basic decency." He also claims he knew "a lawyer who was badly wounded serving in Iraq" who was also offended. Why he didn't call up the veterans who were turned away from the WWII Memorial during the government shutdown and get their opinion I'll never know.

My favorite coverage so far is that of Debra Heine of Breitbart.com.  First, this:
Not seeing a problem, the president's aides published the video on his Instagram account.
Assuming no one has caved yet and issued an apology, good for the White House. Better still, Heine feels the need to explain why the outrage is such an outrage, which works as well as you'd expect:
ABC excused the sloppy salute, saying, "while it is protocol for U.S. service members in uniform to salute the commander in chief, it’s not required for a civilian president to salute back, military experts say." 
Ronald Reagan is said to have begun the practice back in 1981. 
Whether or not it's "protocol" to do something that has been the practice for over 30 years, it is official protocol to execute a salute properly.
Then she quotes noted military expert Neil Munro on how to execute a salute properly. I believe in the military, and elsewhere, this is known as picking corn out of shit.

UPDATE. There is nothing on earth, no matter how awful, that cannot be made worse by a column from Andrew Fucking Malcolm.
The military salute is a simple hand gesture but loaded with tradition, honor, symbolism and packed with respect, both given and returned. It began in the days of chivalry when knights would raise their right hand approaching other knights to show they had no weapon unsheathed.
Obama's disrespectful not only of Our Fighting Men, but also those of bygone eras. Zoom in on a single tear running down the face of Genghis Khan.
And both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have had trouble with the salute. Clinton because his first-term salutes were sloppy and awkward.
In his second term, Monica Lewinsky helped Bill snap to attention. Hey-yo!
By definition, all presidential gestures -- physical or verbal -- are loaded with extra significance. George Washington, for instance, refused to shake hands as beneath his dignity. Thomas Jefferson thought such gestures a welcome sign of democracy among countrymen. 
Today, American politicians shake so many hands, they must at times soak theirs in ice to stem the swelling. Chief executives use their gestures to advantage, waving or pointing into crowds where hundreds will recall the gesture was directed at them.
To the extent this means anything besides "have I hit my word count yet," this suggests that Presidential gestures are heavy weapons, and Obama is wantonly misusing them like Mapache with the gatling gun in The Wild Bunch. Probably doesn't ice his hands properly after handshaking, either. Make sure to get that in the Bill of Impeachment!

Oh, and extra hack points for "former Navy officer Ronald Reagan."

Monday, September 22, 2014

DO SOMETHING DIZZY AND NEW, KEEP UP THE HULLABALOO! ALINSKY! ALINSKY! ALINSKY!

It warms my heart to see Saul Alinsky back in the rightwing papers -- and with Hillary Clinton as a bonus!  We've been around this mulberry bush before: Remember the 2012 primary campaign, when Newt Gingrich was talking about Obama's "Saul Alinsky radicalism," and supporters of his Republican opponents began calling Gingrich the real Alinsky?

Well, now they've stopped using this mudball as a medicine ball, and are pitching it at Clinton, claiming her youthful correspondence with Alinsky proves that the wife of triangulating trimmer Bill and the candidate who got outflanked from the left in 2008 is actually a dangerous radical. Chief among the complainants is National Review's Stanley Kurtz:
The difference between Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren is that Warren flouts her ideology, thrilling the base by making the leftist case as few other Democrats dare. Ever the Alinskyite, Hillary prefers to achieve leftist ends incrementally, in pragmatic guise.
Ah, but that's all her craft and artfulness! It reminds me of what Kurtz said about Obama back in 2011, when our communist President signed a deep-cutting Republican budget:
Here’s my take on the puzzle of Obama’s leadership style. Obama is still every inch the Alinskyite organizer. He talks about uniting, even as he deliberately polarizes. He moves incrementally toward radical left goals, but never owns up to his ideology. Instead, he tries to work indirectly, by way of the constituencies he seeks to manipulate...

Obama is a bad negotiator because Alinskyite’s don’t negotiate, they intentionally polarize. As for their own groups, here they try to placate all factions and hide their own goals. That about describes Obama’s performance on the debt deal, which included a dollop of both of these stances...

The left yearns for Obama to take on the Tea Party in an overt ideological battle. But that is exactly the sort of thing Alinskyite organizers are forbidden to do.
Cutting taxes, deporting immigrants, bombing ISIS -- there's no end to the subterfuges Obama will employ to convince the unwary that he's not really a communist. One might grow old waiting for him to finally rip the mask off, but when you've got the Alinsky tipoff like Kurtz does, you know there has never been anything false about hope.

The brethren have a few years to try and explain to the public who Alinsky is, why he's such a menace, and how he's a hero to the liberals who don't talk about him one-hundredth as much as conservatives do. Go with God, fellas.

UPDATE. Among the many joys of comments, Spaghetti Lee seems to have gotten my titlular reference to Rodgers' and Hammerstein's Allegro, and doubled down with some musical comedy parody lyrics. Here's one to the tune of "Shipoopi" from The Music Man:
Now the girl who goes for a single-player plan is usually a hussy!
And the girl who goes for a strong public option's anything but fussy!
But a girl who goes for the corporate plan --
Won't make demands, even if she can --
She's the girl who listens to the man, the man named Alinsky!
I say we offer these to Mark Steyn.

Sunday, September 21, 2014

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the Rice and Peterson NFL scandals, and how conservatives have turned the relevant issues from corporal punishment and domestic violence to femmie liberals versus butch real Americans.  These celebrity controversies are not very good teaching tools and, as I've said before, I'm sick of these guys attributing decisions made by risk-averse corporations to liberalism, but at least this time the psychological twists kept it amusing.

Friday, September 19, 2014

FRIDAY ROUND-THE-HORN.

•   Kevin D. Williamson has another in his series of columns on why his current abode, New York, sucks, apparently pitched at gomers who can't understand why anyone would want to live in one of them itty-bitty apartments surrounded by blahs when they could have a nice spread in Butte. In this case Williamson focuses on that "inequality" you stupid hippies pretend to be concerned about, which he attributes not to the lack of jobs suitable to a middle class such as manufacturing once provided, nor to the rich outsiders who increasingly buy up the properties, but to "progressive policies" such as rent stabilization (which mainly helps poorer New Yorkers, which may be why people like Williamson hate it so much) and, natch, high taxes. "When it comes time to pay for college or to leave behind a bequest for children or grandchildren -- an important means of building wealth within families -- you’re almost certainly better off in San Antonio or Provo than in New York or San Francisco," hmmphs Williamson. His beef seems to be that a Bible salesman's family of eight can't afford a house on Fifth Avenue. Well, that's capitalism, comrade, take it up with the Invisible Hand. Also, I have to ask, as I do of all city-dwelling city-haters: If that's the way you feel about your progressive hellhole, why don't you move to Provo? The American Enterprise Institute says telecommuters are happier!

•   Hey look, here's the new #Benghazi -- whoops, I mean the new Journolist (tired today, can't keep my ginned-up controversies straight): This time, we are told by he-man woman-hater Milo Yiannopoulos, America is being assaulted not by Dave Weigel and his combine of communist journalists, but by "high-profile editors, reporters, and reviewers from heavyweight gaming news sites" -- i.e., nerds -- who are "engaging in activism on behalf of their reporting subjects" -- i.e., talking shop -- which is "disturbing to many in the industry, who have long suspected a persistent bias and unusual levels of co-operation and co-ordination from senior journalists" -- i.e., bros who enjoy harassing women. "It’s basically Journolist for people who didn’t go to Harvard," says Ole Perfesser Glenn Reynolds (Yale Law 1985), proving its pedigree as bullshit. On a similar note, PJ Media's J. Christian Adams has his own shocking expose on the campaign software Catalist, which is used by Democrats, for which reason Adams tries to make this legal product sound somehow worse than, say, the data mining tools used by every damn corporation, though his real complaint shines out halfway down the page:
Unfortunately, Republicans have no functioning counterpart data tool to Catalist. They have multiple and competing shells of Catalist, but they have nothing on the collaborative scale as Catalist, largely due to the fact that Republicans won’t collaborate and are fiercely territorial of their competing data sets.
That Adams doesn't realize how funny this is just makes it better, don't you think? You can go there and gather mangoes yourself, but let me leave you with this choice tantrum-fragment:
Leftist players sacrifice their egos for the larger messianic call of destroying Republicans, obliterating conservatives, and ultimately gutting the Constitution.
No fair -- socialism is winning!

Thursday, September 18, 2014

SCOTS WOO HOO.

I know less about British politics than [George Costanza pause] anyone in the world, but ignorance has never stopped me before, so I hereby declare myself in favor of Scottish independence, mainly because the worst people on earth are against it. For example, David Frum, whose "five important ways" in which "a vote in favor of Scottish independence would hurt Americans" are so poorly cobbled together that they actually reduce my opinion of him, which I never thought possible. Get a load of this:
Second, a ‘Yes’ vote would lead to a longer-term decline in Britain’s contribution to global security. The Scottish separatists have a 30-year history of hostility toward NATO. They abruptly reversed their position on the military alliance in 2012 to reassure wavering middle-of-the-road voters. But the sincerity of this referendum-eve conversion is doubtful. Even if it was authentic, the SNP’s continuing insistence on a nuclear weapons-free policy would lock U.S. and U.K. forces out of Scotland’s naval bases.
What if ISIS attacks the Isle of Man while the UK's moving its rockets to Berwick-Upon-Tweed?
The SNP’s instincts are often anti-American and pro-anybody-on-the-other-side of any quarrel with the United States, from Vladimir Putin to Hamas.
Gasp! The Union of Scottish Socialist Republics will become the Anglosphere's Cuba, or at least its Berkeley! They may have to set up a blockade. (I think these guys are up for the job.)

But here's the convincer:


I mean, come on, wouldn't it be worth it just to see their faces the morning after? Tell me I'm wrong in comments.

UPDATE. Or tell me jokes! keta tells a good one in comments. I'm not sure this one I heard Tom Conti tell in Whose Life Is It, Anyway? is supposed to be about Scots, but what the hell: Two Scots are in Vatican City, thirsty. They go into a trattoria, order two pints of ale. They are informed there's no ale, no lager either. "Well," says one, "what's yer Pope drink?" Benedictine, he is told. "Right," says the other Scot, "two pints of Benedictine." In short order the two men are legless. "So this is what yer Pope drinks?" says one; "Christ, no wonder they're always carryin' him about in a fookin' chair then."

UPDATE 2. A commenter notes that Dave Brockington of Lawyers Guns & Money has made what he or she reads as a fair argument for Better Together. I see it as more mixed, but Brockington does make the good point if Scotland leaves it will make the rest of the UK  totally nuts politically (or as Socialist Cubone puts it, "UKIP with nukes").

We've also taken on more jokes in comments, and I appreciate Muriel Volestrangler hooking us up with Billy Connolly's version of the Vatican joke, which is terrific.

Oh by the way, no exit polls, so we'll just have to wait for a result. I expect to be disappointed, as usual.

UPDATE 3. Ah bollocks. Catalunya, you're my only hope!

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

OGLING WHILE MUSLIM.

So David Solway of PJ Media went to the swimming hole the other day and these guys tried to peep between the towels he was holding up as his wife changed out of her bathing suit, "mesmerized by the partially hidden lure of a woman in semi-undress."

This is not just gross behavior, Solway will have you know, because these people are not like, say, Florida assistant state attorney William Richard Ezzell, recently accused of trying to film a woman in her underwear at a tanning salon, or any of the other white peeping-toms and molesters you'll read about in the news; no, these were Muslims, and "dark-clad" Muslims at that. What's more, they were also seen "conspicuously observing the traditions of their native culture" -- that is, praying. And some people had to drive around them as they bowed toward Mecca.

Solway's inevitable conclusion: We Westerners are all mesmerized by the "sedatives and platitudes of multiculturalism" into ignoring our creeping dhimmitude:
Such behavior is patently different from the Muslim-inspired havoc and thuggery erupting in Canadian cities like Calgary, Toronto and Montreal, or in the municipal war zones of many European cities with sizeable Muslim populations. But it was nevertheless a visible presumption of specialness and of indifference to the conventions of ordinary civility.
And "the spirit of natural entitlement that goes hand in hand with Islam," and they're all "enjoined to conquer, enslave, tax and slay the kafir, or infidel," etc. etc. -- all the standard anti-Muslim yak, weaponized for the Age of ISIS.

I'll grant him this: Religion does make men fucked up about women -- remember when the Israeli Hasidim used to attack women who had the affrontery to pray at the wailing wall? I think the American answer is to give religious maniacs pluralism good and hard -- which is why we're making Jesus freaks bake all the gay wedding cakes. Enjoy your re-education, assholes!

UPDATE. In comments, FlipYrWhig: "If this habit of attempting to look surreptitiously at women undressing happens to take root among Westerners, it's going to make for a very naughty 30,000 years of unrecorded and recorded history."

mortimer2000 directs us to Solway's personal page, where "The Bard," as he refers to himself, discourses on several topics, including country music:
Country music loves America and cares about those Americans in ‘fly-over country’ whom sophisticated New Yorkers and CBC listeners love to hate: the farmers, ranchers, truck drivers, waitresses and cowboys who still work the land, go to church, and fight the wars that keep other Americans safe (at least for now).
As a sophisticated former New Yorker who loves his Country I take exception, particularly to being thus lectured by a guy who was first brought to the music by Brooks & Fucking Dunn.

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

ANNALS OF THE CULTURE WAR, PART NEGATIVE GAZILLION.

In his Morning Jolt email, Jim Geraghty engages A.O. Scott's thumbsucker on the lack of adulthood in sitcoms, and for a couple of seconds sounds non-crazy ("Not all popular culture needs to hold a mirror up to us" -- boy, where's that synapse been all these years?); but then, alas --
It's not that America doesn't have any grown-ups or non-loser dads left. We dads didn't go anywhere; it's just that television networks don't make as many shows about us, and when they do, the kind of people who review film and television for the New York Times aren't as interested...

Remember a moment ago when I described "communities dominated by underemployed urban quasi-professionals, unmarried, without kids, without mortgages, without a career path or plan"? How large a portion of the communities of our creative classes fits that description? Or perhaps more specifically, how many people in our creative classes percolated for years in that sort of extended-adolescence Bohemian urban environment? There's nothing inherently wrong with that environment -- for a while, at least — but it's light years away from being universal. Our national storytellers may be quite convinced that they're holding a mirror up to society — but they're only reflecting their own limited personal experience.
They're elitists, is what they are, these arty-farties who live in (spit) cities and don't know how to change a diaper. Not like the shirtsleeves, shot-and-a-beer kind of pundit-dads you see hand-lathing shelves at the National Review woodshop in Skunk Hollow, Ala.!
This sort of "You Hollywood types are too insular" complaint usually gets dismissed as whining when it comes from a conservative...
Come on little synapse!
...but maybe it sounds more valid coming from a Latino or Asian-American, when they note how few movies at the Cineplex or shows on the dial reflect the stories and experiences of their communities.
Is Linda Chavez still alive? Our nagging needs minority cover. Get her busy on a piece demanding the return of The George Lopez Show.

Believe it or don't, there's even worse at NR today: Kevin D. Williamson considers Hamlet and Sons of Anarchy together because, he says, they both address "maternal guilt" -- wait, don't run screaming yet, because here comes the sheet-enseaming shot:
“Hamlet and His Problems” was published in 1921. Seven years shy of a century later, Sons of Anarchy presents the question: Is the theme of maternal guilt still “an almost intolerable motive for drama” [as J.M. Robertson said]? 
The model of motherhood that prevails in 2014 is fundamentally different from the model of 1921, so different in fact as to be an almost entirely distinct moral and social phenomenon. This begins with the world-changing fact that the progress from conception to birth is today optional. The millions of acts of violence that have been committed in utero since January 1973 inevitably have shaped our views of motherhood...
I ain't even kidding. There follows a catalogue of post-Roe horrors -- "feminist doublespeak, which regards the developing person as morally indistinguishable from a tumor," "the 117-minute meditation on sundry pregnancy horrors that is Ridley Scott’s 1979 film Alien," etc. -- meant to convey that as compared to the delicate, Jainistic Elizabethan era, we moderns wade through cord-blood in a global charnel-house where
meditations upon maternal guilt are hardly intolerable; they are, rather, inevitable... we have a different sort of problem than Hamlet had: His drama had to do with the degradation of his mother; ours has to do with the degradation of motherhood categorically. Dragging that into the sunlight is an unpleasant business, and a necessary one.
I wonder what his readers think this means; probably "See, Sons of Anarchy is conservative, just like choc-o-mut ice creams and everything else I like."  Me, I want to be generous to Williamson, in return for all the laughs he's given me: Maybe his is a stealth mission to discredit modern liberal arts education by his example.

Sunday, September 14, 2014

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about Obama's ISIS speech and the brethren's reaction, which was outraged that it didn't contain enough hatred, especially of Muslims, because come on, they can't talk smack about blacks, they can't talk smack about gays or Hispanics, you gotta give them something or it's, like, persecution.

UPDATE. Adding to the anti-Muslim ooga-booga at National Review is Theodore Dalrymple, who asks, "why there should be proportionally more jihadis from Britain than, say, from France" in ISIS, and "why they should be more brutal." Considering that ISIS is overwhelming native-based, this is a ridiculous line of inquiry (not made less so by Dalrymple's admission that "the premises of the questions themselves are somewhat speculative") unless your goal is to try and tar a whole people with the actions of some weirdos, and this is what Dalrymple is up to: The Muslims in Britain, apparently, aren't performing as well economically as the Sikhs or the Hindus, and so the Brit Muslim  male is a "failure," and his "resentment is all the stronger because of the additional element of personal responsibility for that failure, actual or anticipated," leading to his savagery.

Dalrymple does offer an alternative environmental cause for those who prefer their Muslim-bashing with a chaser of kids-today yak: "contemporary British culture... is the crudest, most aggressive, and most lacking in refinement of any of the Western cultures," says Dalrymple, and the Brit jihadis are basically lager louts gone tea-total for Allah, which goes to show how "partially British" they are. Wouldn't it be easier to just blame the malign influence of Henrik Ibsen?