Thursday, May 12, 2016

DON'T SELL THE STEAK, SELL THE SCHIZO.

I think Budweiser's plan to call itself "America" through the summer is very clever. In these days of fancy beer, heritage and value are what they have going for them, and it's generally better to emphasize the former than the latter. And if Bud ain't American, what is?  (I have in my old age adopted fancy-beer ways, to my great shame, but when I visited a VFW hall in Takoma Park last year, Bud was what there was and I drank it happily and in volume, as the Founders intended.)

I would not have thought of this as a political thing at all, but here comes one Adam Schaeffer at The Federalist to tell us that the buzzword factory at which he works tested the campaign -- probably not at Budweiser's behest, or he wouldn't be publicizing the results like this -- and found it causes "Republican women" to "move +18 points toward Trump and away from Clinton."

Doubt if you will the lasting impact of such an effect, or even the veracity of his story, but feast with me on Shaeffer's analysis:
Taking a closer look, the Bud ad hits some powerful emotional buttons, themes, and stereotypes. The voiceover claims Bud is “proudly a macro brew” over a driving, stripped down, thumping soundtrack (piss off — we are who we are, and if you don’t like it, too friggin bad).

Quick cuts flash by — the pounding hooves of huge, strong Clydesdales, majestic trees, swinging axes, red …

The voiceover says Bud isn’t “brewed to be fussed over” and is “brewed for drinking not dissecting” (you’re the one who should be embarrassed, not us, you little sissy). More red, sissy men, manly men, red, large machines, victory cheers, steam, welding sparks.

It ends with a parting shot: “Let them sip their pumpkin peach ale. We’ll be brewing us some golden suds” (you’re beer is lame and so are you, we’re awesome, so there). More sissy men, manly men, logos, red, logos, red.

I’m stretching a bit here, but bear with me … what Party is most associated with the stereotype of a fussy, condescending, sissy man? And which Party goes with the stereotype of a no-nonsense, prideful, manly-man? How do these stereotypes feel about each other?
It's like the brainwashing scene in The Parrallax View, except I'm hearing "Yakety Sax" in the background. I wonder if people will still respond to these equities when America is a smoking crater?

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

SCREW YOU, WE'RE FROM TEXAS.

Uber and Lyft gave Austin an ultimatum -- vote away your foolish ridesharing safety laws, or else! -- and Austin told them to go fuck themselves. Andrea Grimes at the Texas Observer expects the corporations, which left Austin in a huff after the vote, to muscle the Texas legislature to override the city's laws -- which is a good bet to succeed, alas, because, as we saw when the lege and governor overrode Denton's anti-fracking law, in today's Tejas democracy ain't shit when there's some corporate ass to kiss.

Still, Austin's resistance gladdens my heart; it's like Dürrenmatt gave The Visit a happy ending. But conservatives feel very differently about it -- including those conservatives who like to call themselves libertarians. Actually Reason's Brian Doherty, to his credit, bravely maintains sangfroid ("as of Monday Austin will be a lot harder a city to get around in without owning your own car, which is a shame for everyone"), leaving only his mangled lede to show his true tortured feelings:
Activist obsession with "level playing fields" in non-commensurate businesses (taxis lack the user rating and identification systems that Lyft and Uber have) primed the citizens of Austin to vote for regulations that they knew (or had every opportunity to know) would drive the very helpful smartphone ride-hailing services Uber and Lyft out of their city.
When you have to work that hard to make it look good, it ain't good, Brian. Others had a harder time keeping their tempers. "Austin's Regulatory Regime Drives Uber And Lyft Out Of Town," sputters John Kartch at Forbes. His lede is nice and clean, since unlike Doherty he doesn't seem to have any shame getting in his way:
With the failure of Proposition 1, Austin’s innovation-friendly reputation has taken a hit. The city’s decision to saddle ridesharing apps with an extensive list of petty, burdensome, and unnecessary regulations is driving Uber and Lyft out of town, effective Monday.
And they tell me Facebook is prejumadiced! Kartch has an interesting take on public referenda, too:
Rather than adopt the less burdensome substitute ordinance, the city council forced the Saturday May 7 special election vote on Prop. 1. The local taxpayer cost of holding the special election was expected to be $500,000 but the city council pressed ahead anyway.
The voice of the people -- what a waste!
Prop. 1 failed by a vote of 48,673 to 38,539. The confusing ballot language written by the city council was of no help to pro-ridesharing residents.
Yeah whatever buddy. "Uber forced to leave Democrat-controlled Austin, thanks to new regulations," snarls Anthony Hennen at Red Alert Politics. "Say what you want about whether or not it is practical or necessary to require these companies to fingerprint their drivers but this still provides another example of government not working well with ingenuity of the private sector," says whatever Chinese slave writes under the alias Andrew Mark Miller for Young Conservatives.

The wettest hen is John Daniel Davidson, an apparent James Poulos impersonator at the The Federalist. Under the headline "How Austin Drove Out Uber And Lyft" -- characterizing the corporations' voluntary exit as a shotgun march to the city limits is a popular shtick with this bunch -- Davidson writes:
The story of how Uber and Lyft were driven out of Austin is a textbook example of how government-backed cartels force out competition under the guise of creating a “level playing field” or ensuring “consumer safety.”
That's how statists are, with their "truth in labeling" and "Pure Food and Drug Act" and other such scare-quoted chimera.
In this case, the cartel is the local taxi cab lobby, which successfully saddled Uber and Lyft with cab-like regulations that shouldn’t apply to ridesharing companies.
"Cab" and "taxi" are such unfriendly, old-sounding words, whereas "ridesharing," "Uber," and "Lyft" all sound fun and now and hip and shouldn't be saddled with your stupid rules, Mom!

It's nice, those rare occasions when the good guys win, ain't it?

UPDATE. The snittiest comment on this so far is from Kevin D. Williamson of National Review, who calls Austin "second-rate" for not letting Uber and Lyft write their laws. "The one thing New York cannot bear, municipally, is being second-rate... Austin, on the other hand, is cool with being second-rate," he writes. "...Given a choice between annoying its long-established transit cartels and confirming itself as second-rate, Austin voted for second-rate." Makes me think of Daniel Plainview at the end of There Will Be Blood: "Bastard from a basket. Bastard from a basket! You're a bastard from a basket..." Williamson also asks, "how about we let people decide for themselves, like adults?" as if there hadn't just been an actual election -- then immediately adds, "People in Austin apparently cannot trust themselves to make those kinds of decisions. They’re second-rate, and they know it." Try to imagine any constituency that would be moved by this, besides playground bullies.

Meanwhile here's Tom Giovanelli, head of the free-market think tank Institute for Policy Innovation, with the libertarian angle (it's entitled "Only Government Could Oppose Ride-Sharing" -- apparently referenda and regulatory overreach are the same thing to the Sons of Rand):
Unfortunately, some cities insist on maintaining their corrupt cartels with taxi companies, even at the cost of depriving their residents of valuable and convenient services like Uber and Lyft. Austin, Texas, recently made this mistake. Because the states have an interest in protecting the freedom of their residents and the economic vitality of their state economies, states should consider legislation that preempts municipalities from restricting ride-sharing services. As we have argued before, local control is not a trump card that allows municipalities to restrict economic freedom.
Feel the freedom, peasants!


Monday, May 09, 2016

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about "presumptive nominee" Trump and the slow shift in rightblogger sentiment toward him. Some #NeverTrump types will hold firm, I think, but Principled Conservatism will leak a great many soldiers because many of them have no real reason to resist Trumpism -- the National Review guys are obliged by the terms of their sinecures to talk about policy, but do you think someone like Ace of Spades or the guys at Hot Air really give a shit about the Constitution as anything but a rhetorical weapon to use against the dirty hippies they hate? That being the case, what's stopping them from lining up with the ultimate dirty-hippie hater?

I'll be interested to see how Rod Dreher's case resolves itself. For months, Dreher has been pee-dancing around Trump, saying things like “I want Trump to beat the SJWs at their game. They are making America ungovernable… But it is not sufficient to cheer Trump for opposing these idiots. Whatever my heart says in the moment, my head tells me that I don’t want Trump to win…” blah blah blah.

Dreher has remained unproductive on the pot, but lately his hints at Trumpism have gotten stronger. Last week he read a rude blog post by Harvard professor Mark Tushnet, moaned for the millionth time that “we cultural conservatives have lost, and have to prepare for active resistance under occupation,” and declared, “the only good reason I can think of to vote Trump this fall is that we can be certain that President Hillary Clinton, who will probably get to name three, maybe four, Supreme Court justices, will do her best to appoint justices that believe as Mark Tushnet does…”

I imagine Dreher will keep this up till one day Hillary Clinton supports some trans woman using the ladies room, whereupon he'll declare THIS IS IT! and go whole hog. No more lesser-of-two-evils shit, like when he voted against David Duke but “felt sick inside over it.” And he won’t be the only one. After all, if guys like Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich have gone over, how bad can it be?

UPDATE. The rats are boarding the sinking ship! At National Review, Fred Schwarz:
For both candidates, their main interest is, of course, themselves; but Hillary’s basic inclination is far to the left and so is the base of her party, whereas Trump’s inclination is centrist consensus and the base of his party is to the right. Even if you assume they both will practice Clintonian triangulation (govern from middle and placate your base with gestures), Trump’s middle will be to the right of Hillary’s. She will fight to shift the nation leftward, while he may let such a shift occur but will not aggressively pursue it (for instance, on immigration, he won’t do much to stop it, but neither will he aggressively work for legalization and amnesty, and he will let Border Patrol and ICE do their jobs).
So if Trump gets elected and drones some guy because he beat him on a land deal, or clubs Paul Ryan to death with a baseball bat on national TV, Schwarz can confidently say, "Yes, but his capricious evil inclines to the Right!"

Friday, May 06, 2016

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.



10 days of drizzle -- let's fight it with Hasil! Hoo! Hee! Ha! Ha!

• I got another thing in that Sherman Oaks Review of Books. Not only is it funny, it's humor. I am a humorist, like Dave Barry and Dennis Prager. [struts gaily into bankruptcy court]

• I mentioned the other day how weak Jonah Goldberg's columns had become -- not that they were ever strong, mind you, but they once had some energy, powered either by crowing certainty of untrue facts or desperation at the possibility that readers would notice what a dunce he is. I think the Trump surge took some of the break-wind out of his sails; when Trump attacked him personally I think he expected all conservatism to rise to his defense; instead goons flooded his inbox, called him a cuck, and took over the Republican Party. Well, Goldberg seems to have found a coping mechanism: a weird sort of fatalism, because oh well, Trump may destroy his movement but at least he'll beat up Hillary, and thus restore the honor of the Goldbergs [obligatory fart]. It's kind of like cheering a serial killer on the loose because he might murder someone you don't like. Get a load of this:
And, more to the point, The Hillary Story is far less entertaining than The Trump Story. Clinton is boring. She’s as fun as changing shelf paper on a Saturday afternoon. 
Meanwhile, who wouldn’t want to see a sequel to Back to School in which the Rodney Dangerfield character becomes president? Clinton is rich, and morally and ethically corrupt. So is Trump. But at least he’s entertaining. Everyone suspects they know what President Hillary Clinton: The Movie would look like. Trump: The Movie? That could be a wild ride.
Goldberg's template for black humor is a shitty Reagan-era comedy, apparently. If things get really grim, maybe he'll give us Ernest Goes to a Concentration Camp.

• "An old friend" sent Rod Dreher another Tale of Trans Terror from (get this) "North Texas" and -- well, I don't know guys...
“I thought I knew what was going on in this country,” she said. “I was wrong.” 
She had taken her teenage son to see the Captain America: Civil War movie for his birthday. In line behind them waiting to buy tickets stood several men in their early 30s who were obviously transgendered, and a young woman who presented as a man, though was plainly a female. My friend, “N.”, said the group started talking about sex, including their favorite positions, their favorite sex toys, you name it. One of the group was 20; an older transgender said to him, “You’re just a kid now, but when you turn 21, we’re going to take you out and get you broken in.” They proposed an orgy. 
On and on like this. And more transgenders joined them, not waiting in line, but moving towards the front to stand with their friends. N. told me that the trans group was very aware of itself, and did not care who heard their filthy talk...
...and then they pulled out their switchblades and had a rumble! This scene sounds unlikely to have taken place in the West Village, let alone Texas. Could Brother Rod be trying to heighten the contradictions -- as groundwork for his Benedict Option book? Would a Christian lie to us?

Thursday, May 05, 2016

BUT IT JUST DON'T WORK OUT THAT WAY/ AND THE COURSE OF A LIFETIME RUNS.

How will you celebrate Mother's Day? By fighting statism? No? But Stella Morabito -- some of whose other loony columns at the Federalist we have previously enjoyed -- says that's the Reason for the Season:
Motherhood is the first and last line of defense against totalitarianism. If you think this statement sounds over the top, you ought to ponder why the family has always been the ultimate target of tyrannical systems of government such as communism. Advocates of cultural Marxism tend to view families as akin to subversive cells that get in the way of centralized state power. 
Well, Abbie Hoffman did say "Kill your parents." I didn't think that many people took him up on it. But Morabito says the matricidal instinct yet rages -- in Barack Obama!
Lately we see devoted mothers -- particularly traditional, stay-at-home mothers -- increasingly mocked and challenged as cultural throwbacks. Even President Obama has criticized them in policy speeches, including his 2015 State of the Union.
This is such bullshit that Morabito uses a link to Mollie Hemingway to back it up. (Obama was self-evidently promoting his pre-school program for working parents, not mocking or, as Hemingway had it, taking a "bizarre swipe" at stay-at-home mothers.) But if you're reading The Federalist for anything other than lulz, chances are you believe Hussein and Moochelle and everyone else who sends their kids to Sidwell Friends is trying to sacrifice families to the dictatorship of the proletariat -- but being reeeeal crafty about it, see:
Sure, on the surface and for the moment, they will publicly tolerate mothers, and even offer platitudes honoring them on Mother’s Day.
Here's your Mother's Day card I mean false flag, breeder!
But the fact is that Big Brother is now -- and always has been -- in a perpetual state of war with Little Mother...
And by what nefarious means does BB war with LM?
Big Brother: 1) uses the lures of orgasm and vanity to separate men from women through faceless and perfunctory sex (i.e., the sexual “revolution”)..
Orgasms and Vanity and The Revolution! Sounds like a Prince tribute.
As we change language and pronouns to suit gender ideology—and hence build a sexless society—the terms “mother” and “father” will legally be abolished...
I can't wait for that executive order! What will we call them instead, I wonder? "A and Not-A"? "Pete 'n' Tillie"? "Sacco and Vanzetti?" The rest is even worse gibberish, but for connoisseurs there are some golden glints of madness:
A healthy mother-child bond anchors and stabilizes children. It imbues them with a sense of security to go forth and explore the world and make friends. This is very bad for the grievance industry of central control...

We don’t quite understand or accept that most of a mother’s work in forming good citizens is in many ways a covert operation...

As the state invades private life, it removes the laboratory in which the seeds of civil society can gestate. We might say it performs an abortion on civil society...
It's like a Chick Tract written by the guy from Se7en. STELLAAAAA!

Wednesday, May 04, 2016

WE WHO ARE ABOUT TO BE KILLED BY OUR OWN TROOPS SALUTE YOU.

I don't know who's funnier -- the pre-emptive rightwing Trump sellouts, or the #NeverTrump dead-enders. On the one hand, among the former are guys like National Review's Mark Krikorian:
Donald Trump is unfit to be president. He’s a braggart and a liar. And a serial adulterer. He’s behaved shamefully during the primary campaign. He wouldn’t recognize the Constitution if he tripped over it in the street. He doesn’t know even the Cliff Notes version of any policy issue. The idea that the party of Lincoln and Reagan, Coolidge and Eisenhower, Justice Harlan and Senator Taft has nominated Trump is appalling.

And I’m going to vote for him anyway.
Krikorian claims it's because he hates Hitlery Klintoon and fears she will make everyone bake gay wedding cakes, though history shows he hates Mexicans at least as much, so this may not be much of a stretch for him.

On the other hand we have the loyal Niedermeyers of True Conservatism. At Erick Erickson's ridiculous The Resurgent, "Josh Hammer" (I mean come on) gives the last full measure of Derp:
This morning, my Resurgent colleague Steve Berman noted that Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), which is now in Israel and begins at sunset tonight here in the U.S., actually falls this year on the same day as Star Wars Day. Readers know where I stand on issues pertaining to the former, so I’d like to focus on the latter—and, specifically, on borrowing from Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Here we go: we are the Resistance. Yes, the orange-hued demagogic “presumptive nominee” charlatan and his “alt-right” ilk are the First Order, and movement conservatives comprise the Resistance.
Wait... did he just compare the Holocaust to Star Wars? I guess it will end with us all in death camps, but meanwhile this election should be hilarious.

Tuesday, May 03, 2016

RED LIGHTS ARE FLASHING AROUND ME/ GOOD LORD IT LOOKS LIKE THEY FOUND ME.

I'm beginning to think I've been too generous in my assessment of the Republican Party. I assumed they had enough ward-heelers, shoulder-hitters, and all-around goons to defend against the Trump onslaught, but it looks as if they can't even keep it close enough to steal.

Well, if I'm disappointed, you can imagine how actual Republicans think about it -- and by that I don't mean a majority of Republican voters, I mean Republican operatives who got #NeverTrump tattoos and whose media perches are now under threat. Bret Stephens at the Wall Street Journal seems to have suffered a brain injury. He's tut-tutting Trump's adoption of "America First" as if seven years of boob-bait articles about Obama's "apology tours" hadn't crossed his field of vision without raising so much as a Bretpeep. Oh, and get this:
Did Mr. Trump know anything about the history of the America First Committee before he seized on the phrase?... 
With Mr. Trump it’s hard to say: He has a way of blurring the line between ignorance and provocation, using one as an alibi when he’s accused of the other. Is he Rodney Dangerfield, the lovable American everyman pleading for a bit of respect? Or is he Lenny Bruce, poking his middle finger in the eye of respectable opinion?
I guess in this reading Rodney Dangerfield is the muse of ignorance and Bruce the muse of provocation, though I can't imagine how his editors let him speak better of Bruce than Dangerfield. Oh, but the follow-up makes it:
Whichever way, the conclusion isn’t flattering.
No wonder he's got it in for comedians -- in the depths of his seriousness the guy's a laugh riot.

UPDATE. Ted Cruz has dropped out, and the #NeverTrump gumps have gone gaga. National Review's primary Jesus freak David French weeps, as is such people's wont, over the "culture" that kept Trump prominent even while French was furiously writing nasty columns about him. If only we could do something about that damned culture! one imagines French seething -- though his own writing suggests that culture, as understood by normal human beings rather than culture-war dumbbells, had nothing to do with it:
The great tragedy of Trump’s Republican establishment is that — unlike mainstream media outlets that are built from the ground up to chase ratings — these “conservative” institutions and individuals were allegedly built around principles. Yes, they wanted eyeballs and page-views, but until this presidential race, many of them took great pride in their ability to attract an audience through the force of their ideas and the strength of their convictions. Indeed, these individuals and institutions used to pride themselves on policing the conservative movement, on calling out the “RINOs” and moderates in our midst.
And who are these "tragic" figures who once stirred the masses with the "force of their ideas and the strength of their convictions" -- like Burke, like Buckley? According to French, they are "Breitbart, Sean Hannity, Drudge, multiple Fox News personalities, Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter, and... Rush Limbaugh."

I'd say part of the problem, at least, is that conservatives have been grading tragedy on the curve.

Oh, for lagniappe let me mention that French also denounces (now that it hasn't worked for him) "furious rhetoric" because it's "polarizing." You can search my archives for evidence of French's moderation, but spare yourself and just take in this item about French denouncing Griswold v. Connecticut -- yes, the landmark 1965 birth control decision -- as a tribute to "the awesome power of the sexual revolution over law and logic." In short, French is nuts, and now he's standing in front of the Trump mob screaming I'M NOT NUTS, YOU'RE NUTS! Notwithstanding that this is the fall of the Republic, you have to admit it's damn funny.

Anyway, all hail Donald Trump -- Republican standard-bearer! It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of guys.


UPDATE 2. French is getting weirder:
Now is an ideal time for the Libertarian Party to get its act together and nominate a truly serious candidate — a person who may not meet the party’s typical purity tests but who can at least make a serious argument and advance a range of policies that unite both conservatives and libertarians.
The Libertarian Party! This, from a guy who thinks birth control should be illegal. Well, libertarians aren't too into women's rights anyway; in fact, sometimes I think Reason magazine's refreshing opposition to trans bathroom laws is based on the fact that some of the persecuted parties have penises.

Monday, May 02, 2016

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...on the brethren's elegies for Prince, which took one of two approaches: 1.) Prince was a distraction from the true path of dull sexlessness, or 2.) Prince was rightwing and that's what was really great about him, not that bogus "music" stuff.

Friday, April 29, 2016

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.


The song starts at 1:27. We're not gonna wash our face; we're not going anyplace.

OMG Bobo:
I was surprised by Trump’s success because I’ve slipped into a bad pattern, spending large chunks of my life in the bourgeois strata — in professional circles with people with similar status and demographics to my own. It takes an act of will to rip yourself out of that and go where you feel least comfortable. But this column is going to try to do that over the next months and years. We all have some responsibility to do one activity that leaps across the chasms of segmentation that afflict this country.
Can you -- excuse me -- can't catch my breath -- whoosh. Now then: Can you imagine David Brooks out among the hoi polloi?

[SCENE: a low dive in Lancaster, Pa., Wednesday night. Smallish crowd of men in gimme caps; country music loud; David Brooks enters. To fit in, he has ditched his Brooks Brothers suit and tie, and wears instead his old rowing blazer over a light blue New & Lingwood shirt open at the neck, Berle Charleston Khakis, and Hush Puppies. He stands motionless at the bar until the music quiets a little.]

BROOKS (to bartender): Yoo-eng-gling, please.

BARTENDER: (handing him a Yuengling) It's Ying-ling.

BROOKS: Ah! Sorry, my Cantonese is a little rusty. (Looks around; no one is laughing; clears throat) Can one of you fellows tell me whether they still make Rolling Rock out at Old Latrobe?

(Silence.)

BROOKS: Bartender, a round for my friends here.

(Beer is delivered. Men drink.)

MAN #1: They moved to Jersey in ought-six.
MAN #2: I ain't worked since.
MAN #3: My grandma is in jail for crystal meth and my paw lives in a treehouse.

BROOKS: You don't mind if I take notes? To what do you gentlemen attribute your financial difficulties?

MAN #1: Nigger president.
MAN #2: The freemasons.
MAN #3: I keep a dead woman wrapped in plastic in my trailer for company.

BROOKS: I assume you're all voting for Trump?

MAN #1: Hell no. I'm voting for that Clinton bitch cuz I want to see her go to jail but these Republican sons-a-bitches won't do shit unless they can impeach her.
MAN #2: I'm not just voting for Trump. I'm gunna be his Secretary of the Treasury, he tells me.
MAN #3: I'm voting for Trump cuz I'm a heighten-the-contradictions guy. Lemme send you my article in Salon.

BROOKS: Bartender, can I get some Slim Jims for my friends?

MAN #1: I think we'd all prefer the charcuterie. (to the bartender) They got organ meats from Brook Farm today, don't they, Christopher? And maybe a nice pinot noir.
MAN #2: Kale salad for me. That nose-to-tail shit makes me gassy.
MAN #3: I shoot my rifle into a tree stump out back and if I do it enough I get a boner.

Aaaaand scene!

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

POSITIVELY THE WORST PRINCE MEMORIAL COLUMN.

Almost without my noticing it, David French has become the worst thing at National Review. Jonah Goldberg has, as we know, a distinguished history of stupid, but his recent columns are just so lazy and aimless that they're not even worth making fun of (I mean, look at this shit). Contender Kevin D. Williamson seems at first a clinical sociopath, but once you tumble to his shtick (call everyone else stupid, drop in an obscure reference or two to make it look intellectual-like) it's kind of like Porky Pig tumbling to Daffy Duck's "People shouldn't push me around... I'm a split personality!" routine; the magic is over.

But French just keeps finding new ways to be wrong. Take his Prince column. Yes, seriously, this horrible wingnut Jesus freak wrote one.
Prince died last week, and America overreacted. No, I’m not diminishing Prince’s talent. He was one of pop music’s most gifted songwriters and musicians. As millions shared his more memorable performances, I realized I’d forgotten what a great guitar player and showman he was. He could write hit songs like few others, and he shared his talent freely, “gifting” songs to other artists. In short, he was one of the few pop stars whose fame was fully justified.
You can really feel his pleasure at Prince's work, can't you? You can't? Well, of course not; this is exactly the sort of thing I would write about a NASCAR driver ("I had forgotten what a great NASCAR driver he was... he could turn left like no other") if I were trying to pretend I liked him as a way to win the confidence of someone whose intelligence I didn't respect.
But to spend time on the mainstream and left-wing Internet last week — or to listen to some of the web’s more popular podcasts — you would have thought America lost a national hero, and not merely an immensely gifted artist.
You heathens didn't cry like this when Andrew Breitbart died!
...In our post-virtue culture, we worship celebrity and talent not for its own sake but for ourselves. Their talent is all about us. Their fame is for our amusement. Pop music fills the hymnals in the temple of the self. We are the stars of our own biopic, and we just lost someone who wrote part of the score.
Can't you see how selfish, how narcissistic it is to enjoy music? I mean, music that isn't hymns?
The sentimentality is understandable, given the millions of people who could remember some significant moment in their lives that happened to the sounds of “Lets Go Crazy” or “When Doves Cry.”
(You know he had to look them up.)
...Our country doesn’t lack for heroes, but our true heroes certainly lack for fame. Even on the Left’s terms, valorizing Prince for his transient activism disrespects those who spent their lives in the trenches, fighting for their vision of “social justice.”
Hmmm -- I don't remember "the Left" telling me not to mourn Prince; maybe I missed a meeting... but hold on, brother French has taken up a snake:
For conservatives, Prince was ultimately just another talented and decadent voice in a hedonistic culture. He was notable mainly because he was particularly effective at communicating that decadence to an eager and willing audience.
GLORY HALLELUJAH THIS "PRINCE" WAS A VILLAIN IN A CHICK TRACT, MAKING THE KIDS GO A-FRIGGIN' AND A-FRUGIN' WHEN WHAT THEY NEED IS CHEESUS!
...I don’t say any of this to denigrate Prince or his talents.
Fuck you.
And I don’t say this to shame people out of listening to music they enjoy, though not all music is worth hearing.
You heathens ever hear Three Doors Down?
Rather, it’s time for a dose of perspective. Music has its place...
!!!!
...and gifted musicians undeniably enhance our lives...
You know, like air conditioning or wall-to-wall carpeting.
...but if our hearts are given to these songs and those who make them, then our lives are unnecessarily impoverished.
And then it hits you -- French isn't just ignorant of Prince, or even just of music -- this poor, twisted freak literally doesn't know what art is. He doesn't know its place in human history, or why human beings invented it, or why it persists even when it doesn't make money or is suppressed. He thinks it's upholstery. He thinks it's some sort of trivial comfort. And he thinks so because he's been taught that all you need are Jesus and Bill Buckley and the pleasure you can take from the suffering of your inferiors, and anything else that has a claim on the human soul, whether it's justice or sex or art, must be crushed lest it steal their thunder.

These are the monsters that monsters bred. You think Trump is bad? You have no idea.

THE LAST ACT OF A DESPERATE MAN.

Somebody explain to me how pre-selecting Carly Fiorina as a running mate is an advantage for Cruz. A failed CEO who lost thousands of jobs -- that's what primary voters in Indiana are screaming for! (I guess he figures California Republicans nominated her for something once and they might do it again. But that time she was actually on the ballot, and not the appurtence of the nation's only charmless Texan.)

If you're not up on Fiorina or have managed to banish her from your memory, check my columns on her lack of qualifications, her outrageous Planned Parenthood slanders, and her maladroit supporters in wingnut media -- the worst of whom, as you might expect, is Megan McArdle, who actually argues on Fiorina's behalf against success as evidence of competence. (If only I could get employers to buy that one!)

Enjoy -- and enjoy also the sad endorsement of Brandon Morse at Red State. ("While Fiorina has a fair share of criticism aimed at her, and her successes and failures at HP are hotly debated..." Oh brother.) Fave bit:
It should also be noted that a Cruz/Fiorina ticket would also strip Hillary of one of the sharper arrows in her quiver; the fact that she’s a woman.
Look, we got one too! Maybe Cruz, should he get the nomination, will try to fix it so Fiorina debates Clinton in his stead, while he goes around the country scaring children. I can just see Hugh Hewitt at the moderator's table: "Mrrowr mrrowr! Hissss!"

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

...BUT NOT FOR THEE.

So there's a site called Market Urbanism, against which I am predisposed for two reasons: because they announce chirpily in their header, "Believe it or not, free-markets and urbanism go well together"; and because they like to cite Joel Kotkin, who for years has been harboring a hate-on for the Blue Cities and is always predicting their downfall. But I figured I'd give it a chance. I mean, heaven forbid Vox should call me smug or something.

The first item I looked at, by Carolyn Zelikow, about how Richard Florida and his "creative class" (and not, as you might think, rapacious capitalism) have ruined the cities by flooding them with yuppies -- in fact the title is "Richard Florida Should Replace The Term ‘Creative Class’ With ‘Country Club.'" The thing is rife with the conservative version of virtue-signaling (values-signaling?); Zelikow refers to creatives' penchant for "superficial diversity" and "Florida’s tacit preference for bike lanes over food stamps," she accepts the claim that "members of the Creative Class embrace diversity, except when it comes to blacks, whom they prefer not to live around," etc. But look at how she starts:
Here’s a fun fact about me: I embody the Creative Class.

I live in a big, old witchhatted townhouse between Dupont Circle and Adams Morgan in Washington, DC. I love locally raised produce and my exposed brick yoga studio has a juice bar. I fall in love with every silver bullet remedy for civic malaise I come across: teach kids to code! bike lanes! murals! And guess what? I work at a think tank, where we think… for a living!
I should note that at no point in the essay does Zelikow inform us of any plans to move away from creative-class-ridden D.C. -- though she notes that there are "many American cities that are doing just fine without a preponderance of Creative Class representation: Houston, Atlanta, Oklahoma City all come to mind." Can't she telecommute from Oklahoma City? She thinks for a living!

The other item I examined was by Nolan Gray and called "Reclaiming 'Redneck' Urbanism: What Urban Planners Can Learn From Trailer Parks." Gray likes trailer parks on the expected conservatarian grounds -- "a trailer owner pays rent not only for a slice of land in an apparently desirable location but also for a kind of club good known as 'private governance,'" plus there's no "top-down, paternalistic planning," etc. Alas, neither does Gray walk the walk:
The lesson here is not, of course, that we should all go live in trailer parks. As a Kentuckian, I have spent enough time in and around trailers to think better of that idea. But...
Yeah thanks. Still I find even this much honesty refreshing. I wonder when regular, non-niche conservatives will start picking it up, e.g., "Welfare recipients should take regular piss tests and only be allowed gruel to eat -- though of course if I ever get into economic trouble I expect to maintain the standard of living to which I am accustomed, because I think for a living."

UPDATE. Comments, always excellent, outdo themselves on this one. For example, weedcard:
This dipshit has obviously never lived in a trailer park. WTF does he mean by "private governance?" That a man can discipline his woman when she "sasses" him and not have to worry about the statist police force enforcing the radical, left-wing Violence Against Women Act? That since most trailer parks do not require a lease the landlord can kick you out anytime he wants for any reason?
No, weedcard, he means freemarket ReaganHayek doubleplusgood. I mean, it doesn't matter what it means so long as he doesn't have to live in it.

Monday, April 25, 2016

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the Andrew Jackson/Harriet Tubman swap on the $20, and rightbloggers' bright idea of portraying this as a conservative victory because Jackson was a Democrat and Tubman was a Republican and what about guns libtards? I don't think this strategy is meant to attract black voters, or even get rightbloggers' usual followers comfortable with such voters -- a visit to the comments sections of their pro-Tubman posts shows how fruitless that would be. It's really just a way for them to take some sting out of an event which, were it not so racially fraught, they would be denouncing as a politically correct outrage (and don't worry, sports fans, some of them do). And you know what? That's fine. It's not a bad thing when the enemy starts pulling uniforms off your dead soldiers and putting them on so they can pretend they were on your side all along.

UPDATE. If you like blowhards gassing about politics on internet radio AND WHO DOESN'T, you may enjoy my appearance on Joshua Holland's latest Politics and Reality podcast or whatever you people call them these days, never listen to the things myself. BTW Josh, a writer for The Nation and not often wrong, is wrong about one thing in the broadcast: this blog's name is pronounced al-i-CU-blog, based as it originally was in the web magazine alicubi, from the Latin. There -- when your grandchildren are studying the fall of the American Empire you'll have an interesting footnote to share with them before they shove you into the Elder Hole.

UPDATE 2. Hat tip to commenter J--- for bringing my attention to this encomium from RedState:
My only hope is that someday, one hundred and fifty or two hundred years hence, we will have occasion to honor on our currency a brave (and as yet unknown) warrior who will have helped to erase the stain of legalized infanticide from this nation's history, in the same way Harriet Tubman helped erase the stain of slavery.
I picture Erick Erickson IV,  who kidnaps pregnant women from abortion clinics and chains them up in birthing pens, wanted by the police but celebrated by conservatives.

Friday, April 22, 2016

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.


I'm sorry Prince is dead,
but there's not much on the internet of him I can use.
I'm sorry Hound Dog Taylor is dead too.

• Chuckleheads like Steven Hayward at Power Line are trying to portray the placement of Harriet Tubman on the 20 dollar bill  as a crisis for liberals because a few authors (including my old pal Steven Thrasher) have noticed the irony of a soldier of liberation appearing on the currency of her oppressor. But by and large the liberals I've talked to (and I see lots of them at our frequent abortion-fests) are pleased to have Jackson o'erthrown by a freedom-fighter. Actually the real split appears to be among conservatives: The Hill cites a survey showing the Trump faction (which, I remind you, is yuge) mostly against the new avatar for reasons I bet you can guess. The anti-Trump conservatives, perhaps sensing a propaganda opportunity, have devised a claim on Tubman because, as National Review's Eli Lehrer writes, she was "black, Republican," and "gun-toting" -- as if she were an NRA yahoo rather than a person of color operating in a time and place where she could easily have be killed without consequence. Some of them even want Tubman shown holding a gun on the bill. I would agree, if she could be shown using it to kill a white man. (Also, I bet every one of these cowboys would plotz if they came upon a live black woman with a gun.)

• Oh and yeah, Prince. So much has been said already, but I will say that he was always reliably fresh in a way that even the most talented non-genius musicians aren't -- after I stopped paying close attention to him in the glyph era, every so often a new AFKAP/Prince tune would pop up and suddenly all would be funky and right. I'm listening to HITNRUN Phase Two now, and with its rock-solid pop values -- not just in the way it's written but in the way it sounds, the way the stings and squeals are placed, the reverb on the flute, the twist of the stomp-box dials -- he could have written it 30 years ago. Who knows, maybe he did. But it has no smell of the basement or the retro vault; it's as new as today. And so is everything he did from I Wanna Be Your Lover onward. Even the cheesy 80s synthesizer and drum pad sounds on the old stuff don't chain his music to the past. That's because of his gift, but also because he was always down in it -- though he was a great guitarist his real instrument was the recording studio, and he played its variations obsessively and revealed them to be limitless. That's good to remember at those moments when you get sick of pop music or feel too old to participate and start to believe that what the withered scolds of the past hundred years say is true, that it's just cheap crap for children; Prince always proves them wrong. We didn't get tired of him because he never got tired of music. He believed in jazz, rhythm and blues, and this thing called soul; he believed in rock 'n' roll.

Thursday, April 21, 2016

ON CURT SCHILLING'S CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO A JOB AT ESPN.

As you may know, people get fired for their Facebook comments all the time; the National Labor Relations Board seems to hold that employees' "concerted activity" in social media (e.g., agitating for a union) is protected while posts that disparage or put their employers in a bad light are not -- maybe like this lady who talked to the Washington Post about her shitty job and got fired for it.

The NLRB has its standards, and Rod Dreher has his:
OK, that’s a provocative image, and Schilling was unwise to post it in this LGBT-McCarthyite environment. But is so bad it merits firing? Besides, I’m pretty sure that a rather huge number of people, especially ESPN viewers, share disgust with how if you aren’t on the Trans Bandwagon, you are basically a neo-Nazi...

This is called Progress. Sit still for long enough, and they’ll find a reason to smear you too.
I have never heard Dreher complain about any other poor sucker (emphasis on the "poor") getting kicked off his job for something he said or posted -- but when it's someone who slags gay or trans people, he's Clarence fucking Darrow.

In the Brendan Eich case, which this one resembles, you frequently heard conservatives saying some variant of "don't get me wrong, private companies can fire whomever they want but [homophobic gibberish]." Well, I'm always willing to compromise and fix it so no one gets fired for anything they say.  I doubt Dreher would take the deal, though. Guess why.

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

ANOTHER CULTURE WAR CASUALTY.

Remember that "Intellectual Case for Trump" made by Mytheos Holt at The Federalist a few weeks back? If you saw it, surely if nothing else Holt's tale of how he turned out a racist chick when she let him "probe her ideology" stays seared in your brain. Did you know that was only Part One? Yeah, I blocked that out too, but Part Two has arrived and it's even stupider. A lot of it is about how liberals got bored with free speech and now they're Hitler -- but God help us, Holt also has a Culture War angle:
For decades, the institutional Right has ceded American culture to the Left, in spite of many voices who pointed out ample areas where the Right could carve out a countercultural movement against leftist domination, or even co-opt some of modern culture for itself.
Not sure what "voices" have advocated a "countercultural movement" as Holt provides no link -- but the voices urging conservatives to "co-opt some of modern culture for itself" we have heard; they're the guys who write articles like "How Star Trek Explains The Decline Of Liberalism" in rightwing rags, and who come up with concepts like "South Park Republicans" to make their sponsors feel au courant.

Holt is true to the template -- he even devotes a paragraph to a South Park episode recap! -- and tells us that the problem with conservatism is that it has become infested with "young fogeys" who are no fun at all, which is why all the cool conservatives are flocking to Trump: "Trump is many things, but a fogie he is not." Trump makes liberals mad, see, just like us cool dudes make our parents mad; he's "taking his cues from his time as a pro-wrestling heel personality," and when all those WWE fans get old enough to vote they'll vote for him, or maybe for Triple H -- he's pretty awesome too.

Eventually Holt gets to the inevitable "choc-o-muts ice creams is conservative" list:
The Right doesn’t have to conjure up its own art from scratch. It can and occasionally has co-opted modern entertainment as well. After all, don’t films like Christopher Nolan’s “Batman” series make the most powerful statement about the tension between chaos and civilization since John Ford? Don’t Nietzschean fairy tales like “Breaking Bad,” “House of Cards,” or even “True Detective,” not to mention most video games, utterly brush aside the Left’s fantasies about Rousseauistic, universal human goodness?
Boring a girl at a party with a rant about how your favorite TV show means Social Security sux is the revolution, comrade -- I mean bro!

These people are always going on about Saul Alinsky -- and The Frankfurt School and the Long March Through The Institutions and all those other wingnut equivalents of the Illuminati -- so naturally they think culture is not something to make, or even to appreciate and enjoy, but something to "co-opt."

UPDATE. Sorry, I can't leave out this bit from Holt's essay about Bill Clinton yelling at the Black Lives Matter guys and how it shows liberals went fascist:
In this, they break from the past in many respects. Bill Clinton himself revealed how significant this shift was when he challenged Black Lives Matter. Clinton was advancing a policy argument in defense of his approach to crime in the 1990s, in the face of protesters who would hear none of it. His arguments were based on the facts, where the BLM protesters’ signs were based on the equivalent of brand loyalty to a cultural movement. No matter how correct Clinton’s case was, it inevitably fell on deaf ears.
No, you read that right: he's really saying BLM's protest signs lost an argument with Bill Clinton. I'd say the signs were at a serious disadvantage; maybe they should have used dry-erase to reduce response time.

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

LOST IN AMERICA.

In what sounds like a reboot of the 2009 tale of financial woe from New York Times econ reporter Edmund L. Andrews ("Granted, the beach house was an embarrassing mistake"), well-known writer Neal Gabler reports in the Atlantic that he does not have $400 on hand for emergencies, nor indeed a pot to piss in, and it's his own  fault because he never learned to balance a checkbook. Gabler's hook is that he's actually middle-class, though his is the exalted idea of "middle-class" popular among his type -- which leads to some hilarious sections, like the story of how he had to carry two mortgages because "the co‑op board kept rejecting the buyers," and "my wife had been out of the workforce so long that she couldn’t get back into her old career, and her skills as a film executive limited her options."

Still, I feel for the poor bastard. So does Rod Dreher, which is great because he's the one guy who can make Gabler's story even funnier. Dreher focuses on Gabler's revelation that "I made choices without thinking through the financial implications," and the fact that those choices included living in New York and being a writer. At first, as you would expect, Dreher condemns this as a symptom of our godless, willful times:
He felt that he deserved the life he had, and could not choose otherwise without betraying himself. I think this must be an extraordinary thing, in terms of history: people who spend recklessly to give themselves the lives they think they deserve. If you think about it, though, our culture, which valorizes Authenticity, encourages this.
That's what causes overspending -- the search for Authenticity! (If only Gabler knew he could get it much more easily at one of Dreher's Walker Percy Weekends.) Plus Dreher knows a landscaper who says people are lazy and don't want to work, blah blah. But eventually Dreher has to face the fact that he, too, is just an ink-stained wretch and in time the financial reaper may come for him, too. He muses:
If for some reason the market for my writing dried up, and I had to take a job doing something else to support my family, I would do it. But I would probably resist it for as long as I could, because it’s very hard for me to separate my sense of identity from my writing. Still, bills have to be paid, and I would hope that I didn’t hold out for long.
Now, I ask you -- who could read that and not imagine Rod, at some future date when the Benedict Option racket has collapsed and nobody wants 5,000-word essays on how transsexuals are destroying the Republic anymore, in a variety of alternative professions:

Customer: Hello, I'd like to order a cake please. 
Dreher: Would this cake solemnify a homosexual union?
Customer: It's for a gay marriage anniversary party, but we don't want anything written on the cake.
Dreher: Hmm, that one's on the line. Would you mind praying over it with me?
Boss: DREHER YOU'RE FIRED

Customer: Hello, three tickets for Zootopia please.
Dreher: You're bringing children to this?
Customer: Yes. It's rated G.
Dreher: But it promotes anthropomorphic miscgenation. Have you read Robert Putnam? Well, I mean Steve Sailer on Robert Putnam -- Putnam doesn't know the importance of his own words.
Boss: DREHER YOU'RE FIRED

Furniture mover: Why you sit down? Only on job fifteen minute.
Dreher: I have mononucleosis. I have to rest frequently. 
Furniture mover: Why you take job you sick? 
Dreher: Because that's what a man does! You think they'll mind if I just lay down on the sofa that's still in the truck?
Furniture: Boss catch you he fire.
Dreher: Well, of course -- I'm white.
Boss: DREHER YOU FIRE

Oh, I could do this all day.

Monday, April 18, 2016

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the week in Ted Cruz, and rightbloggers' strained attempts to promote him. "Lion Ted Cruz" strikes me as the saddest, but there's enough cringebait to go around. If they weren't actively trying to destroy the country I'd feel sorry for them.

UPDATE. I also recommend you have a look at The Sherman Oaks Review of Books, a funny internet thing with which I am associated

Friday, April 15, 2016

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.


I was just listening to his "Girls Talk," and realized
some of you good people may never have heard "Trouble Boys."

•   Whoever wrote the dek for Daniel Henninger's latest at the Wall Street Journal -- "Donald Trump is running against two things -- immigration and free trade --that made New York City great again" -- had to have read the whole thing to the end, poor sod, because the column starts very differently, with Henninger pulling on his overalls and pretending to despise the Big City: Ted Cruz "had a point" with his "New York values" slur on New York, says Henninger, "but he blew it by not describing it so that even many New Yorkers would agree." Oh yeah? So what should Cruz have complained about that would touch on what the locals hate about their own home -- scumbag landlords, gentrification, subway delays? No, among the real New Yorker issues Henninger sees is how mean Bernie Sanders has been to rich people:
More revelatory of New York values, though, is Vermonter Bernie Sanders, ranting about “Wall Street” and “bankers.” To be clear: Those people, much mocked of late for living on Park Avenue and such, annually give tens of millions to support charter schools, scholarships to parochial schools, social entrepreneurs, and innumerable nonprofits and arts institutions. Most, Republican and Democrat, would do it without the tax deduction.
Then let's remove the deduction and see what happens! Anyway, why does Henninger even care what New Yorkers think when this is what he thinks of them:
...Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio, like Jerry Brown in blue California, stay afloat on public unions and a liberal urban sea of smug, yuppie self-absorption. Donald Trump learned this week that these people don’t even bother to vote. In 2013, New York’s now-unpopular Mayor de Blasio won with 17% of eligible voters (turnout was 24%).
If only the Republican silent majority weren't too busy on Election Day lighting bums on fire to vote for Joe Lhota! Then Henninger has a mood swing (or a phone call from an editor who reminds him this is not the Fritters, Alabama Journal) and starts yelling at Trump for going upstate to appeal to rubes, because his trade policies which so excite the folks in Rome, N.Y. would fuck up New York City. Suddenly Henninger is the self-absorbed yuppies' best friend! But he still doesn't like the way they vote:
Also true, however, is that in 2012, an incredible 71% of Asians voted for Barack Obama because living in Democratic cities like New York, they rarely hear the alternative.
Really? They're unable to read the Wall Street Journal? Plus Charles Murray told me they were all rightwing anyway.
Mr. Trump, an entrepreneur, should be the ideal pitchman to New York’s many Asians, or to the black voters former Texas Gov. Rick Perry appealed to in his remarkable July speech.
You just know Henninger started that last bit with Jack Kemp and his editor said, "you know Kemp's been dead for seven years, right?" and Henninger thought a while and finally said, "hell, why not Rick Perry -- no black people are going to read this anyway."

Thursday, April 14, 2016

THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE-DOWN.

National Review God-botherer-in-residence David French tells us corporations are people -- and a buncha dang liberal people at that! He knew this even while at Harvard Law:
...my classmates were recruited not just by top law firms but also by top consulting firms and multinational corporations. Very few of them were conservative. Barely any of them were social conservatives.
French was at Harvard in the early 90s. Why weren't these left-wing corporations pushing for gay marriage, a living wage, and trans bathroom rights back then? Musta been Newt Gingrich holding back the red-and-grey-flannel tide. Plus which,
Back when I still did commercial litigation, my larger corporate clients were almost uniformly left of center, and the few Republicans on staff were stereotypical “Wall Street” conservatives.  They may have been fiscal hawks, but they positively loathed the religious Right. 
They don't hate homos so they don't count. 
My small-business clients were far more mixed. Conservative communities tend to spawn conservatives.
Jesus, to hear French tell it, liberals have been totally running American big business for decades, with only a small rump of Mom-and-Pops holding the line. Chamber of Commerce meetings must be total drug orgies by now! 
Progressives mock the notion that corporations can have “values” when those values are religious or conservative, but then they endlessly obsess over the progressive culture and values of their favorite companies. 
Yeah, I seem to remember the other day Bernie Sanders was talking about how corporations are our buddies. Anyway, French proposes his comrades reverse "the Left's long march through America’s most significant religious, cultural, and economic institutions" thus:
Conservatives must do the hard work of institution-building and institution-joining — of reshaping the notion that the “best” conservatives are those who become activists or politicians. Board members and CEOs can have far more cultural impact than governors or legislators. A single, high-level conservative academic program can place top talent in every major industry.
So French proposes conservatives seize power by... going into business.

Conservative persecution mania is really getting out of hand. If they're not in business -- nor, per French's "long march" statement, in the arts, nor academia, nor the churches -- then where the hell are they? In the military, it would seem, and in think-tanks and wingnut sinecures like French's at National Review. If so, maybe they're not losing because they're blocked by nefarious libs -- maybe they're losing because there just aren't enough of them.