Friday, July 15, 2016

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.


Look, I've been in a middle-late Residents fugue state for weeks,
you're just going to have to roll with it guys.

• I see conservatives are attacking Obama for not keeping France, the 51st State, safe from a truck terror attack. What I often wonder is, what is their plan for stopping such terror -- besides rhetorical muscle-flexing like "peace through strength," I mean, or promising to torture more detainees? Fortunately Newt Gingrich is around to fill us in:
“Western civilization is in a war. We should frankly test every person here who is of a Muslim background and if they believe in sharia they should be deported,” Gingrich told Fox News’ Sean Hannity...

Gingrich also said that the attack in Nice is the “fault of Western elites who lack the guts to do what is right, to do what is necessary,” and suggested that mosques in America need to be monitored.
The Washington Post showed some guts, at least, by pointing out that "Gingrich’s proposal, which made no distinction between U.S. citizens and noncitizens, would violate scores of First Amendment-based Supreme Court rulings as well as civil rights laws..." But since we are not at one of those rare "libertarian moments" right now, I doubt the yahoos care. Maybe a war on Tunisia, where the assailant is from? Or, hell, on Iran, that's a popular favorite. If this becomes the Id Monster Election, Trump has it hands down -- which would be okay, because if we fall for this we're finished as a society anyway.

• I subscribe to a wingnut newsletter that connects me with some of the lesser-known culture war scolds, and today it brought me a lulu: At Standpoint, one of those fancy journal only Ross Douthat impersonators read, Daniel Johnson raves at hyperlength about the usual stuff: for example, how Trump is a betrayal of some much classier True Conservatism, the through line of which Johnson hilariously traces "from Edmund Burke to William Buckley, from Samuel Johnson to Paul Johnson, from Irving Kristol to Bill Kristol" -- a classic culture-war tell of conflating the Great Ancients with one's, er, less exalted buddies. But he really gets churning when he reaches a favorite subject of the chin-pullers, How the West Has Lost Its Way and Only My Scolding Will Save Her. Hark:
There are numerous viruses attacking the Western body politic, but only one medicine. To face the future unflinchingly, we must return to the past: listen to the patriarchs and prophets, the ancestral voices of our literature, break open the arsenal of our intellectual history, and mobilise the resources of righteous indignation against the dominions, principalities and powers of darkness that threaten to overwhelm us. The great books, from Homer to Shakespeare, from Plato to Pascal, from Dante to Bellow, must once again not only be assigned to every student, but learned where possible by heart. The music of the masters, from Gregorian chant to George Gershwin, from Sebastian Bach to James MacMillan, from Palestrina to Arvo Pärt, must not only float across the courts and quads of our colleges, but fill our airwaves and headsets.
From Shakespeare to James McMillan! Yessir, Johnson sure loves that trick. Note how perfectly this expresses the culture warrior's idea of art as ordnance. Not only in Johnson's imagining is it an "arsenal" to use against the Muslims and the Marxists, it's also a scourge with which to drive Western Youth into battle with them; their headsets must be filled with music selected by the Committee, even if they prefer Drake or 2Chains; they must memorize passages from It All Adds Up, et alia. For them art is not pleasure, and you can't expect even your own people to embrace it; it must be pounded into their skulls. Johnson imagines that by this he will save the West, but can a more despairing view of Western culture even be imagined?

• Oh, yeah, there's a writer named Tom Block who is looking down the barrel of a very tough diagnosis and he is not so financially secure (I mentioned he's a writer, didn't I) that he can be sure of a safe and comfortable place from which to fight it. If you're looking to drop a mitzvah, you could do worse.

Thursday, July 14, 2016

ALWAYS LEAVE 'EM LAUGHING.

"Comedians in Cars Getting Abortions" with Alice Wetterlund and Nato Green is a mildly amusing web video (the bit where a "crisis center" counselor shows Wetterlund a picture of a 10-year-old and says it's "your baby at 536 weeks" is one of the better ones ) which probably renders its greatest sevice to comedy by turning wingnuts into Margaret Dumont. National Review's Ian Tuttle:
It’s extraordinary that this needs to be said, but: Killing a human being isn’t particularly funny. Imagine if the NRA made a sketch called “Comedians in Cars Invoking ‘Stand Your Ground’ Laws,” or the Fraternal Order of Police filmed “Cops in Cars Using Lethal Force against Resisting Suspects.”
Hmm, I think I get the analogy he's making: liberals are pro-abortion, while conservatives are in favor of beating and killing black people.
The folks at NARAL probably wouldn’t be amused. And rightly so.

But there’s a particular moral derangement that accompanies abortion. It’s been observed time and again (including by yours truly) that the days of “safe, legal, and rare” are long gone. “Rare” vanished as an aim years ago, and the dancing in the streets that accompanied last month’s Supreme Court decision striking down Texas’s abortion-clinic regulations should mark the official end of “safe” as a goal.
These bitches refuse to feel bad about it! In fact they're dancing! Quick, pass another funerals-for-fetuses law to soothe my rage!
What remains is the hope of a Cecile Richards-designed utopia in which, like Wetterlund’s character in the film, you can order an abortion like a McChicken. (“One abortion, please!”) And, just as important, enjoy it.
This is an apparent reference to the Abortions at Krispy Kreme and Chipotle Act of 2014, muscled through Congress by Hitlery Benghazi.

National Review is so outraged it gave the video two posts! "Comedians in Cars Getting Abortions video is A) not funny and B) based on a lie," claims Tuttle's comrade Alexandra DeSanctis. In fact, she insists, it's easy to get an abortion in America -- well, outside the woo-woo crazy Christianist hellholes, which DeSanctis doesn't mention; she seems to think the joke is about conscience exemptions for doctors, which suggest she didn't watch the video but instead had her preacher read a summary to her. "...procuring abortions anywhere else isn’t good enough for NARAL," she sputters. "Abortion has to be available everywhere." These guys are really working that abortion-everywhere angle; why they aren't adding WHERE MY KIDS CAN SEE IT! I can't guess.

Other wingnuts are catching the fever, some of them trotting out their film criticism chops: "This is a thing that exists. People made it. Watch what they made... They thought this video was funny and informative, apparently," cracks comedy genius Jim Treacher. "It’s terribly unfunny and riddled with misleading statements," tsks Bre Payton at The Federalist -- just like those banana peel gags; banana peels aren't actually that slippery, you know.

Then there are the deep semiotic analysts like Heather Wilhelm at Real Clear Politics. The video has a throwaway where Wetterland, after explaining why she wants an abortion, says "look at that kid" and gestures to some raging child off-screen. “That kid is slapping his dad in the face,” says a horrified Green. Got the bit? OK, attend Wilhelm's exegesis:
Hold your befuddlement, folks: It gets worse. “Also, I mean, look at that kid,” Alice says, gesturing out the window. We hear the sounds of a crying toddler, off camera. This toddler is, at least according to the latest science, a living human being with a heart and a brain and, depending on where you stand, a soul.

“That kid is slapping his dad in the face,” Nato says, in the manner of a man whose own soul has lost its batteries.

“Yeah, we don’t need more of those in the world!” declares Alice. Yeah, girlfriend! We don’t need any more pesky kids! Let’s get rid of them in a vague and unspecified fashion! Oh, but wait a second: My brain just got in the way, because it is larger than that of a stegosaurus. Why are toddlers related to your problem, Alice? You’re not incubating a person, right, so why worry?
Now that's funny! And I haven't even gotten to Wilhelm's extended denunciation of the 536-weeks bit ("For years, large segments of the pro-choice movement vehemently denied abortion involved a human child, or at least avoided that fact. Now, many no longer even try to hide it"). I suggest Greg Gutfeld snap Wilhelm up for "Comedians Raging About Abortion." That ought to give Fox ratings a bump -- at least until 2018, when the last of its viewership dies off. But I'll still be watching, because YouTube jokes come and go, but agitated wingnuts are a joy forever.


Wednesday, July 13, 2016

WHO'S AN ASSHOLE?

At National Review David French laments that "Donald Trump Confirms Progressives’ Worst anti-Conservative Prejudices," and boy does he ever, but not for the reasons French thinks. He starts with standard-issue bitchery about PC:
In the aftermath of both the Orlando and Dallas massacres, millions of Americans have been absolutely dumbfounded at the response of the Obama administration. In one instance, a Muslim man openly and repeatedly pledged allegiance to ISIS. In the other, a black radical openly and repeatedly declared his intention to kill police officers as retribution for alleged police abuse. In both cases, the administration stated that it may be difficult to discern the attacker’s true motives. Yet when Dylann Roof murdered nine black Americans in Charleston, there was no reluctance to ascribe motive. Why?

The obvious answer is “political correctness"...
I'm guessing the "millions" of dumbfounded Americans were about 98% white. I'm also guessing this is the part of Obama's speech after the Dylann Roof massacre that French is complaining about:
The fact that this took place in a black church obviously also raises questions about a dark part of our history. This is not the first time that black churches have been attacked, and we know the hatred across races and faiths pose a particular threat to our democracy and our ideals.
So to avoid political correctness, after Dallas Obama should have talked about America's dark history of black people oppressing and murdering white people. Fair's fair! (Actually I think French is just pissed that after the Charleston murders people got down on the Confederate flag, despite his eloquent defense of it.)

Anyway eventually French says that his and his buddies' own "reason and truth" would carry the day among the American people were it not spoiled by people like Donald Trump -- the Presidential nominee presumptive, you may recall, of the Republican Party:
The result is a movement built on spite, in which the desire to enrage progressives creates a continuous font of speech and conduct that works mainly to confirm the progressive world view. In the name of defying political correctness, Trump and his fans do absolutely nothing to temper the worst progressive impulses and do much to appall and repulse everyone else. They leave the American people without a morally defensible choice. It’s the scold versus the asshole. The scold feels vindicated, the asshole feels gleeful, and everyone else feels despair.

Make no mistake, Trump is not beating political correctness; he’s feeding it.
Again I remind you: Trump is the Republican candidate for President, and all the talk about how he's not really a conservative because he once talked about taxing the rich (only to back right off later) is a load of bullshit. Trump is actually the best possible avatar of contemporary conservatism. Because aside from the license to be an "asshole," as French puts it, what does conservatism have to offer voters? A sound economy? That was revealed as nonsense in 2008. Foreign policy? Ask your Republican aunt how eager she is for another Mideast war. Social policy that reflects the public will? Straights are cool with the gays now, and conservatives are outside the group hug screaming about bathrooms; white Americans are even starting to get what black people go through, which explains why conservatives keep stepping on their dicks explaining themselves on the issue.

No, political incorrectness -- that is, being an asshole -- is the only big seller left on the shelf. That's why the top career politicians in the Republican Party are flocking to Trump. Unlike the guys in the PR Department, they don't have to pretend to be nice.

UPDATE. Comments are marvelous, as usual. smut clyde notes, "If Trump is any guide, the central weapon of the War on Political Correctness is the call for the Wahhmbulance after any criticism he receives from others." Just so. Attend, for example, the weeping and wailing (led by the New York fucking Times!) over Justice Ginsberg calling Trump out. Few of the brethren noticed that the Judicial Code of Conduct that might restrain such comments does not apply to Supreme Court Justices (why should they, when Times reporters don't notice it?), and none could admit that Ginsberg is 100% right about Il Douche and truth, in the book of all wise men as well as in defamation cases, is an absolute defense. Instead they snarl about "Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s unhinged assault on Trump" (Seth Lipsky, New York Post) etc. One of my favorites is the Daily Caller's "[Andrew] Napolitano: Ginsburg’s Trump Comments ‘Damages The Reputation’ Of The Court." Andrew Napolitano! That's like Dwayne Johnson saying what a shitty actor Daniel Day-Lewis is. It's something, isn't it, that the people who in this life have the most need of shame possess so little capacity for it.

Monday, July 11, 2016

FOR HONKY FOLK WHO HAVE CONSIDERED SUICIDE/WHEN DONALD TRUMP IS ENUF.

Just read Rod Dreher's rhapsody on Hillbilly Elegy, an autobio by one J.D. Vance about how he, a son of Appalachia, escaped the depredations of the holler thanks to Mamaw and the U.S. Marines. Dreher's main take-away seems to be that hillbillies (the ones who didn't get out) are lazy, sexed-up, stupid, and self-deceiving and they need Jesus and Brother Rod's Benedict Option, in stores soon. Here's just one depressing piece:
Vance plainly loves his people, and because he loves them, he tells hard truths about them. 
(That's the bless-their-hearts part.)
He talks about how cultural fatalism destroys initiative. When hillbillies run up against adversity, they tend to assume that they can’t do anything about it. To the hillbilly mind, people who “make it” are either born to wealth, or were born with uncanny talent, winning the genetic lottery. The connection between self-discipline and hard work, and success, is invisible to them.
Plus they's always a-fuckin' and a-feudin' -- "Marriages rarely last, and informal partnerings are more common," he tsks. Why, they're as bad as the blacks!
Is there a black J.D. Vance? I wonder. I mean, I know there are African-Americans who have done what he has done. But are there any who will write about it? Clarence Thomas did, in his autobiography. Who else? Anybody know?
Maybe the job of Black Wingnut doesn't pay as well as it used to -- I mean, I'm sure this guy (author of "If You Don’t Want Police To Shoot You, Don’t Resist Arrest") gets lots of high-fives from Young Republicans, but I doubt he's making Clarence-level bank. But whatever Dreher's problems with black folk, this is just a brief detour for him; clearly white worthlessness is his hard-on here; he loves that the enlightened hillbilly Vance got out because it shows how shiftless the rest of them are. In fact, he references Kevin D. Williamson's infamous hymn of hate for poor whites --
I criticized Williamson at the time for his harshness. I still wouldn’t have put it the way he did, but reading Vance gives me reason to reconsider my earlier judgment.
Thank you, Rod "Imitation of Christ" Dreher. (Isn't it perfectly Dreheresque that, though he feels himself closer to Williamson's hatefulness, he wouldn't "put it the way he did"?)

As I mentioned when I wrote about Williamson's column, Dreher's review is part of a growing wingnut literature on how badly the poor honkies have let them down. There are a couple reasons why it's growing. For one thing, obviously, the rise of Trump has got these white-collar conservatives scared -- for years they applauded Joe and Jane Sixpack (remember them?) because they thought the Sixpacks were sufficiently racist, sexist, and otherwise class-resentful that they would reliably return Republican electoral majorities; then, however, it appeared they'd lost control of their Monster.

But this tendency slightly pre-dates Trump -- Charles Murray's book about the plight of white "Fishtown" punters (and David Brooks' effusions over it) go back to 2012. So there are clearly other reasons, and I can see them, too. First, the demographics that created the second Obama victory shattered mainstream conservatives' belief that whiteness might yet save them another time. Second, white-collar conservatives noticed that when they raved about lazy, sexed-up, stupid, and self-deceiving black people, everyone under 60 years of age gave them the stinkeye -- but if they just ported their viciousness over to another out-group, no one except obsessives like me paid any attention.

In fact, poor whites' very status as an out-group may have been the clincher. When it came out that white working-class people had begun committing suicide at an alarming rate, the first reaction of David French at National Review was to blame liberal hippies for making crackers feel bad.  But four months later French had changed his tune: "No one is making them do it," he had decided; "...The economy isn’t putting a bottle in their hand. Immigrants aren’t making them cheat on their wives or snort OxyContin..." They were, rather, only the victims of their own "self-destructive moral failures."

In many ways, my friends, it's no fun to get old, but there is some grim amusement to be had seeing people who thought for years that hate had made them safe learning God's truth the hard way. (You may think I'm talking about the poor whites, for whom I have much sympathy -- after all, I come from them -- but I'm really talking about the guys who've just thrown them overboard and are about to find out that the mainsail won't hoist itself.)

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and Dallas, and the rightbloggers doing their thing. For the most part the brethren were predictably ooga-booga, but there were some brief glints of sanity,  and I'm still wondering where they came from -- I mean, they didn't last so maybe they'd don't matter, but maybe even their momentary existence suggests a way out of this madness. Or maybe I'm just getting soft.

I spent a long time on the thing (so read it, you ingrates!), and had to leave a lot out. There was for example the New York Post column by celebrity gun nut John R. Lott Jr., which he mostly devoted to ordinary rightwing racist tropes, e.g. "there were numerous cases around the country of blacks attacking whites and invoking [Trayvon] Martin’s name," and a suggestion that any claims of police racism were nonsense because “if black victims really believe police are so racist, why would they even bother reporting crimes?” (You People better be nice to us -- we're all you got!) One wonders why this famous Second Amendment scholar didn’t instead devote his column to advising African-Americans on how to start their own well-regulated militias. Ha, kidding, I don’t wonder at all.


Thursday, July 07, 2016

COLOR BLIND.

A couple more black people just got shot by cops for what appears to be no good reason, so it's time for conservatives to trot out their usual weak-ass offers of conditional solidarity only so long as nobody mentions the R word in which case everything's off. At National Review Charles C. W. Cooke:
The officer could have been squarely in the wrong, and that would not necessarily render the incident “racist.”
In the same locale, Jim Geraghty:
But for some reason, some will point to this and say, “ah-ha, more evidence that cops are racist and murder with impunity!”
At The Federalist, Rachel Lu really strains to get the dopes who visit her site to accept that maybe not every person of color shot by the police has it coming, starting with the title, "You Don’t Have To Be Black Lives Matter To Support Police Accountability." Well, that's a relief! In 2,000 words, she mentions racism exactly once:
We understand how easily cops can become scapegoats for progressive liberals with an agenda. They deal daily with the grim effects of social breakdown, and when those confrontations take a tragic turn, liberals would much rather blame the “racist” police than acknowledge the bitter fruits of the sexual revolution and the welfare state.
So many innocent people of indeterminate race gunned down, and it's all because of LBJ and Hugh Hefner. Well, I trust we've learned a valuable lesson here; question, if you must and very gently, the police, but never question how good we are to You People.

Wednesday, July 06, 2016

SOCIETY'S CHILD.

You may have heard about that imbecilic mope-ed in the New York Observer today by its boy publisher Jared Kushner, also Donald Trump's son-in-law, defending Pa Trump from charges of anti-Semitism. The thing is all kinds of awful, but one part jumped out at me:
In December 1972, a month after Richard Nixon’s 49-state landslide, the New Yorker’s great film critic Pauline Kael gave a speech that said “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken.” I encourage Ms. Schwartz—and all reporters—to get out there and meet some of those people “outside their ken.” One of the reasons the Observer has more than quadrupled its traffic over the last three-plus years is that we’ve been actively broadening our perspective.
Let's lay to one side Kushner's humorous claim that he has the heart of The People because they buy more of his slop than they did before he dumbed down that once-sorta-good newspaper. There are two genuinely interesting things about his editorial. The more mildly interesting thing is that Kushner actually tells the real Pauline Kael story rather than the unflattering fake version -- wingnuts are not usually so scrupulous.

The other, more interesting thing about it is that anyone, especially a New York media mogul, still has the nerve to go out in public and tell liberals that they don't know anything about The People, and that they should go amongst them and learn as Kushner did.

Part of the joke for me is the persistence of the ancient limousine-liberal slur -- that if white people of some means (that is, who can afford to bother to know what the Observer is) believe in social justice and safety nets, it can only be because they never see any poor people or minorities, because they all live on the -- well, it used to be the Upper West Side, and then it was the West Village, and now I guess it must be Davos or some shit -- and that if they ever found themselves amongst darker people they would be disgusted and turn right-wing -- you know, like Rod Dreher did.

But a lot of white people who believe in these things are poor and have lived among other poor people of various shades and hues. I certainly was, and have, for several years, and I ain't exactly rolling in dough now. I've never owned a house or a car, and now, as often, I live in a majority-minority neighborhood. Yet I am invited to feel like some rich snob compared to Trump supporters, who make an average of 72 grand a year, just because I think Trump's bullshit is bullshit, which is allegedly (and despite his inferior poll numbers) elitist.

I see a parallel between Kushner's Rich Pal of the Poor routine and several other recent columns by big-time right-wingers who, while they might not quiiiite endorse Trump themselves, are yet happy to use Trumpism as a cudgel to beat liberals. The clearest example is Ross Douthat, who in his "The Myth of Cosmopolitanism" article ties (as others have) Trump to Brexit to make it seem more inevitable-like:
The people who consider themselves “cosmopolitan” in today’s West, by contrast, are part of a meritocratic order that transforms difference into similarity, by plucking the best and brightest from everywhere and homogenizing them into the peculiar species that we call “global citizens." 
This species is racially diverse (within limits) and eager to assimilate the fun-seeming bits of foreign cultures — food, a touch of exotic spirituality. But no less than Brexit-voting Cornish villagers, our global citizens think and act as members of a tribe.
Sure, I know about tribes. I was raised in a working-class New England Catholic family. (I don't know where Douthat got his wisp-beard Chesterton impersonator shtick, but I'm guessing it isn't from the streets.)  But I got out and found another way of life. And it wasn't as a "global citizen" -- because I don't know what the fuck that means. Maybe some rich people think of themselves that way, but I've never met anyone else who did. I just found a place I liked better and put down roots there. You know -- like Americans were once expected to do.

 I'm guessing what Douthat is trying to do is pierce or at least uncomfortably tickle some soft, white-guilt underbellies from the Times subscriber list. (If yours is black or brown, forget it, he has no reason to bother; from his perpsective you don't count.) If by any chance these assholes have made you feel at all bad about not living in Fritters, Alabama or not going to church or not voting for Trump, let me remind you that this has been their racket since time immemorial: Telling you that you should feel bad because you've turned against your kind. The big difference from the days when they more overtly told you to stick to your own kind is that far, far fewer people are listening to them, and they're desperate to get those numbers up.


Tuesday, July 05, 2016

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the Bill Clinton/Loretta Lynch thing and the Hillary Clinton/FBI thing and (mainly) rightbloggers' hysteria at being foiled by The Clenis and Hitlery once again. Like most Americans I'm kinda bored already by the CLINTONS CAUGHT SPITTING ON THE SIDEWALK (BY WHICH WE MEAN THE CONSTITUTION) stories emanating from Wingnut World. But after nearly a quarter century of this shit, even the brethren seem tired of it, too, and that's what I think I caught in this latest round of Clinton Contra action.

Some bonus material for the real-people late-night crowd: Here's some high-class hackery from Stephanie M. Jason at The Hill:
Given the "Teflon ability" of the Clintons to avoid political fallout from past questionable dealings – Whitewater, Chinagate, Travelgate, Monica-"gate", Clinton Foundation’s "pay-to-play" – Hillary’s karma may be catching up with her now.
Translation: We know The Clenis and Hitlery are guilty of something even if no legal or regulatory body has ever agreed — the law of averages is on our side!

Also I had to watch judicial cosplayer Judge Jeanine explain why Hillary was getting away with it this time: Apparently Boss Obama “knew [Clinton] had a private email server, so he is complicit -- and they will not allow a Constitutional crisis where the President of the United States knew about the risking of the security of the United States… Career prosecutors, FBI guys that I know, they’re pulling their hair out…" Maybe it's time Judge Jeanine and Wild Man Kurt Schlichter  and Allen B. West and all the other secessionists took their act on the road and overthrew another wildlife sanctuary!

UPDATE. Haven't had time (thanks to the inevitable post-holiday work-beating) to really examine the rightwing seethe-fest after Hillary got the fuck off, but now that I've had a look-in, all I can say is, between the armchair re-litigators like Joel B. Pollak of Breitbart.com ("FBI PROVES HILLARY CLINTON COMMITTED PERJURY BEFORE BENGHAZI COMMITTEE") and National Review's Andrew C. McCarthy ("FBI Rewrites Federal Law to Let Hillary Off the Hook"), and screaming mimis like David Harsanyi at The Federalist ("She is above the law. And there is no one to stop her"), it is to LOL. One obvious thing never occurs to them about the Clintons: if everyone thinks they're corrupt, what does it say that people will still side with them against you?

Friday, July 01, 2016

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.


For the weekend of the glorious Fourth, the obligatory.

• At The New Criterion James Bowman is mad that obituaries of the recently departed Michael Herr often refer to Herr's Dispatches as "the definitive account of the war in Vietnam." Stuff and nonsense, huffs Bowman; it was instead a definitive liberal media put-up, as was Herr's contribution to Apocalypse Now. Says Bowman:
Neither the book nor the movie tells us anything about the war that the media, echoing the anti-war movement, hadn’t already told us. On the contrary, both existed to confirm our prejudices about the war as senseless, savage, insane, and criminal.
How else would people get a negative impression of war, if not from mendacious liberals? Bowman also laughs at Herr for having a nervous breakdown over the war, which Herr saw close up as a correspondent ("[we] were all 'traumatized' by Vietnam just like poor Mr. Herr..."]. Bowman is "well known for his writing on honor," according to his bio, which mentions no military experience. I'm pretty well accustomed to conservative culture-war gibberish, but it's always something of a surprise to find it in their actual cultural journals; it's as if Film Comment contained nothing but YouTube comments.

Good old Nancy Nall reminded me about Jim Lileks the other day and I realized I hadn't read him in a while. So I pulled up a 2016 Bleat more or less at random and there he is complaining that the Oxford American had chosen to write about Terry Southern:
But the hangers-on - who had limited talent, if any, and whose purpose was to flatter the guy who Did That One Thing, would somehow believe that they were part of a great creative era because they had gotten high with the writer while he talked about Mick Jagger, who was interested in this project. Mick Jagger, man! He knows Mick! And the people to whom he's telling the story think then his dope must be really good.

There's a deadness at the heart of the period. Endless hours of unlistenable psychedelic music, endless pages of unreadable prose, cheap movies...
This from a guy who apotheosizes old matchbooks. Here's part of a more recent one:
Lest you think all Traders Joe clerk-customer interactions are a model of sparkling wit and bright banter, I had a disconcerting exchange the other day...
Yes, it's another in Lileks' endless series of insufficiently understanding service workers. They're still letting him down! He told that rapscallion about "Halt and Catch Fire" all right. Then on to Brexit:
The idea that a transnational organization is superior in its nature to a government that arose organically from a thousand years of culture and reflects the national will and character is wishful thinking, and there's one big example that comes to mind: the USSR. No, the EU is not the USSR, but given their druthers they'd love the scope of control the USSR had. Over the proper things. For the Good of the Many, of course.
You should see those gulags where they sent people who wouldn't use metric! Well, that visit will do for a few years.

• I have Monday off, so like many of my fellow citizens of this wretched neofeudal society I am being crushed with work to make up for that tiny respite, so that does it for this week's 'round-the-horn. This weekend celebrate your country as you see fit: as something to be seized by the dictatorship of the proletariat, by radical Islam, by the glorious sexual revolution or whatever -- remember, it's our dreams that make us Americans!

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

PERMANENT REVOLUTION.

Hey, guys, am I wrong or was the "Sexual Revolution" back in the 1960s? Wikipedia says it went "from the 1960s to the 1980s," which seems a bit long; I think once birth control pills came out, that was pretty much the whole ballgame.

Reason I'm asking is, conservatives have been using the term a lot lately and speak of it as something that's still going on. Here's Rod Dreher when the Texas abortion decision came down:
The bottom line, it seems to me, is that the Supreme Court will never let any state restriction stand meaningfully in the way of the Sexual Revolution. Ever. No federalism, no democracy, not when it comes to defending the Sexual Revolution.
Now, we all know Dreher is crazy, but he's far from the only wingnut talking about the Sexual Revolution as a live issue. When SCOTUS refused to hear the case of the pharmacist who wouldn't dispense Plan B, National Review's David French seethed, "to anti-Christian bigots, it is intolerable that Christian professionals exist unless they bow the knee to the Baal of the sexual revolution..." Also at National Review, we have Mary Eberstadt, who says liberal women's reactions to the Texas decision ("quasi-religious euphoria, a gnostic rave... intoxicated as maenads in the Bacchae") proves "secularist progressivism" is now "a religious faith grounded in theology about the sexual revolution," in the service of which we liberals gather regularly to celebrate abortions like Masses or Quaker Meetings:
The cold-blooded, untoward jubilation over yesterday’s Supreme Court decision is one more proof that in the matter of abortion, as in all else pertaining to the perceived prerogatives of the sexual revolution these days, the secularist-progressive alliance does not wage politics as usual. It instead orchestrates a bloodless religious war — bloodless, that is, apart from its central sacrament.
Elsewhere: "The Sexual Revolution, Like All Revolutions, Leaves A Wasteland Behind" (Brett Stevens); "virtually all of the opposition to Christianity and to religious liberty today derives from Christianity’s opposition to the sexual revolution" (Gene Veith at Pantheos); at Commentary, B. Richardson and J. Shields suggests campus rape is "the necessary price of the sexual revolution"; "Total destruction of everyone and everything that stands in the way of final annihilation of Western Christian foundations is the goal of the sexual revolutionaries," says some doofus at American Thinker. Etc.

What's behind it? I guess some of the more forward-thinking ones want to make sex look dull by associating it with revolutionary practice, like rifle cleaning and awful Chinese opera, and hence undesirable. But mainly I think it's because, as this blog continually shows, they can't help but fantasize political motives in every area of life, no matter how inappropriate, where they feel themselves at a disadvantage, such as culture and consumer choices. If only they could create an affirmative-action equivalent of sex, the way they come up with oddities like "The 50 Greatest Conservative Rock Songs" to make themselves feel better about art!

Alas, even if they're married and keep the lights off, any time they feel like fucking but don't really want to make a baby, or are tempted to stray from the kind of strict genital protocols of which Robert P. George could approve, they know they're living the sexual revolution. And the more society tells them it's no big deal, the bigger a deal it becomes for them.

No wonder they're so crabby.

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

WORST OF A BAD LOT.

I know there are lots of other candidates and we do have fun with them, but sometimes I think the guys at Power Line are the worst -- it's just I don't look at them much as I do the other rightbloggers. alicublog faves such as Jonah Goldberg are fun to watch, because they're flummoxed, bamboozled, and scared by the truth into falling down three flights of stairs in an entertaining fashion. But the Power Liners are cold-eyed propagandist shits who aren't so much flummoxed by the truth as committed by whatever mad scientist created them to obliterating all traces of it. It's like the difference between the border guards at the beginning of The Grand Budapest Hotel and the border guards at the end.

Fortunately, they're lawyers, so their arguments are transparent to normal people as bullshit. Today, for example, I noticed a June 21 post by PL's Paul Mirengoff in which he responded to a thoroughly vetted and well-supported Politifact post, "Donald Trump said, 'Crime is rising.' It's not (and hasn't been for decades)," by:
  • Calling Politifact "a biased liberal operation";
  • Insisting "Trump, in this instance, is correct. Crime is rising."
  • Supporting his claim by:
    • Citing a poll that says the percentage of Americans who “personally worry about crime and violence" is up. and "this dramatic increase in concern surely reflects a change in the facts on the ground — i.e., increased crime and violence." Right you are if you think you are!
    • Citing rising crime stats in FBI's "preliminary" numbers for 2015 which, though unvetted by the Bureau, nonetheless "still represented the FBI’s best estimate as to whether crime was increasing as of the beginning of 2016." Which is rather like saying that the famous chart of the status of the British Pound after Brexit shows, because of a couple of rising blips near the end, that Brexit has actually launched the rise of the pound:

So I dropped by Power Line tonight to see what their headline was, and found this by John Hinderaker:
TRUMP HOLDS BIG LEAD AMONG WHITE VOTERS
No doubt. But Clinton in the latest poll leads by 12. So?
One thing is worth pointing out, however: even in this outlier poll, Trump holds a ten-point lead among white voters, 50%-40% (down from 57%-33% in May!). It is remarkable that even at his low ebb, Trump wins by a near landslide margin among white voters, a majority of the electorate. Not many years ago, that would have assured him of victory.
Jesus, I know these guys think black votes should only count three-fifths, but really...
This is why Democrats are so anxious to “fundamentally transform” the United States through mass immigration from Third World countries. Only by building up the minority population do they have a chance to stay competitive. But that still wouldn’t be enough, even if the Democrats got most of the votes cast by minorities, if minorities voted in anything like a normal pattern. In order to win, the Democrats need to roll up ridiculous margins, like the 90%-8% lead that Clinton holds with blacks in the ABC/WaPo poll.
He doesn't support this math with anything but, if he and his candidate Trump keep talking this way, 90% should be a cinch.
Racial conflict suits the Democrats. In fact, they need it to have a chance of remaining competitive.
Lucky for them they're running against you.

Monday, June 27, 2016

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about Brexit and the curious enthusiasm of rightbloggers for the result. Since most of them (like me!) know fuck-all about British politics, it would seem they relate mostly to the rightwing ressentiment the vote suggests. Professional shit-stirrer Perfesser Glenn Harlan Instapundit Reynolds writes in USA Today, "A lot of [British] people felt powerless, and the political system not only didn’t address that, but seemed to glory in it." I wonder how the political system "glories" in it; maybe they got their BBC cronies to run ads mocking the outlanders for their poor fashion sense, in much the same way American conservatives believe that TV commercials make men look stupid to promote feminism. Anyway, as usual the moral is Donald comin', yo ("America, too, is experiencing a populist upheaval, of which Donald Trump’s candidacy is more of a symptom than a cause"), and if you elites don't get Right in a hurry you'll deserve the catastrophe that ensues -- namely, voters shooting off their nose to spite their face while rich people keep getting richer.

Thursday, June 23, 2016

NO, THAT'S NOT WHAT WE MEAN BY BOOBOISIE.

Yeah, so someone told me there was something at The Federalist that --
Men Did Greater Things When It Was Harder To See Boobs
[Blink. Blink.]
While some have made the case that Kim Kardashian and her friend Emily Ratajkowski have made boobs boring, breasts are in fact are so potent that they may be hastening our decline. Breasts and female nudity have always been eye-catching to positively distracting, depending on your sex. The sheer boobitude immediately available either through online porn, Kardashian’s Twitter feed, and Tinder (otherwise known as Uber for boobs) has rapidly accelerated to the point that men have stopped creating because there’s so few obstacles to seeing them.
I won't string you good people along: this really is Amy Otto's argument -- that men aren't sufficiently productive because they can see tits -- and it never gets any less stupid. She eventually gets around to saying people are also having too much actual sex -- naturally, it's basic wingnut theology -- but she sincerely seems to think that looking at internet porn and sex are, basically, the same thing. No, really -- look:
Men also used to marry younger and in larger numbers to lock down their very own real-life woman. Now, why bother doing the decent work of marrying and raising a family if you can swipe right and see a new pair every night?
Beating off is pretty good, Amy, but actual sex with a partner is an exponentially different and preferable experience. Trust me, I've done the research. Otto's proof points for the social ravages of sex aren't so hot either:
Further, take note that the prime age for invention used to be one’s early twenties; often, scientists and other folks were not as productive in later decades.
Yeah, back when life expectancy was 40, people tended to hurry up. Maybe what we should really be doing away with is antibiotics! (Actually we sort of are.)
Now, that is often not the case: “There’s a boom in inventions by people over 50,” John Calvert, executive director of the United Inventors Association, told the New York Times
The article she cites is from last year, so who knows, maybe since then a bunch of pre-teens have created snapchat plugins that have bent the curve.

I should leave this ridiculous thing alone, but here's a final mango for y'all:
This may sound a bit Trumpesque, but to Make America Great Again we may need to Make Seeing Boobs Rare Again. Men did great things often in pursuit of women. Eric Clapton, in desperate love with George Harrison’s wife Patti, wrote the famous rock anthem “Layla” in pursuit of her.
Because before 1970 Eric Clapton had never seen a woman naked. Well, at least not a grown woman.

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

HOW YOU GONNA KEEP 'EM DOWN ON THE FARM AFTER THEY'VE SEEN THE FARM? PART 296.

"The New York Times Shows Why the Blue Model Is Doomed," says Walter Russell Mead. The Times ran a story, see, in which some guy left "hot, crowded Austin, Tex., and moved into an apartment on Munjoy Hill in Portland, Me., with a commanding view of Casco Bay only steps away." OK, good for him. So?
This is told as a fantastic story of human empowerment and social transformation, which it is. More and more of us are escaping the tyranny of location; thanks to the telecom revolution we can work where we want and when we want. 
The rise of telecommuting will lead to better, richer lives. Families will be stronger. The environment will benefit from less commuting. All good. 
But it also represents the death of the political philosophy and economic system that the Times is otherwise prepared to defend to the last: the blue social model. If this revolution continues—and it will—fewer and fewer people will be stuck in big, high tax, over-regulated cities. While some will still choose to live there, many, especially those raising children, will not.
Quite apart from the "three's a trend, unless you're on deadline in which case one will do" angle, I have to say I'm amazed that conservatives are still doing this. We live in an era of mass migration to the cities. It's not like New York, San Francisco, Philly, Minneapolis, et alia, are emptying out. In fact rents in most big cities are going up -- and surely conservatives know that when people pay more for something it's because they prefer it.

This is an old routine for the brethren. For years I've been following Joel Kotkin's crusade to make everyone hate urban life and move to the suburbs and exurbs like Real Americans, or to pretend this has already happened, all evidence to the contrary. And Mead's "rise of telecommuting" reminds me of Ole Perfesser Instapundit Glenn Reynolds himself pushing hard for telecommuting 11 years ago as an alternative to commie light rail. Reynolds actually proposed as a benefit of telecommuting that unions don't like it "because it's harder to organize workers who aren't all in one place."

Which, incidentally, reminds me of one big reason why people flock to the cities: Because that's where the jobs are. Some of you may remember a few years back when conservatives were trying to send poor people to North Dakota to soak up those big oil boom bucks (or to get a long-haul trucking job -- but that was always an obvious fraud). During that boom, capitalism did what capitalism does and drove housing prices in boom towns sky-high. Michael Warren at the Weekly Standard called these oil-boom immigrants "The New Pioneers" -- "The oil boom that began in 2007 has transformed this area of sleepy ranching communities into America’s new energy powerhouse," Warren gushed, and he said that whether you were young or old, whether you were an able-bodied pipe-fitter or "a receptionist at a man camp, those groupings of dorm-like lodgings for temporary workers that flank the highways of the Bakken," there was a place for you in this bright economic future-land.

Well, fast forward a few economic cycles and things ain't looking so great. Thanks, @jfxgillis, for pointing out this September 2015 Bloomberg story of what happened in the Bakken:
Fracking’s success has created another glut, and crude prices have fallen more than 50 percent in the past year. Now North Dakota’s white-hot economy is slowing. More than 4,000 workers lost their jobs in the first quarter, according to the state’s Labor Market Information Center. Taxable sales in counties at the center of the nation’s second-largest oil region dropped as much as 10 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, data from the Office of the State Tax Commissioner show... 
With the region’s drilling-rig count at a six-year low of 74 and roughnecks coping with cuts in overtime and per-diem pay, the vacancy rates in Williams County man camps are as high as 70 percent. Meanwhile the average occupancy rate of new units in Williston was 65 percent in August, even as 1,347 apartments are under construction or have been approved there.
It's all well and good for Mead to tell people that telecommuting's where the boom is now, sonny! But you actually have to provide the jobs to back that up, and unless I'm missing something there is no boom in internet jobs that pay a living wage.

So why do guys like Mead tell people -- people who probably trust him; they aren't reading his shit for the scintillating prose style -- that cities are over and they should avoid them? That's easy. Look how people in the cities vote. The only hope for wingnuts is to keep their dwindling pool of supporters in the outlands -- cut off from culture, from minorities and foreigners, from the experience of living among crowds without packing heat all the time, from anything that would show them that one could have a pretty good life without fear, isolation, and bigotry. (And if you can't guarantee that your peeps will stay in Fritters, Alabama, at least give them the idea that they can live the dream on the internet, so it doesn't matter whether they relocate by choice or necessity, they'll still be isolated, and you may yet keep them in the fold.)

Then you can keep dangling the Next Big Boom in front of them -- some Eden of free enterprise where they'll be able to shoot off guns and make a living with their hands and no goddamn unions or homos. And they won't know it's a con. How would they? 

Monday, June 20, 2016

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about Orlando, and the ways rightbloggers have been fucking it up. They're alway prone to self-pity, especially when guns are involved,  but what's making this worse is that the public is turning away from them, which is driving them nuts.

They have no one but themselves to blame. Take John Podhoretz's rant in the New York Post last week. Remember what President Obama said right after Orlando about the victims' families:
God give them the strength to bear the unbearable. And that He give us all the strength to be there for them, and the strength and courage to change. We need to demonstrate that we are defined more -- as a country -- by the way they lived their lives than by the hate of the man who took them from us.
Podhoretz's response: “That’s just disgusting. There’s no other word for it." Huh? Podhoretz was mad because Obama hadn’t said Radical Islamic Terrorism/Rumpelstiltskin, and furthermore, Obama had implied the attack had something to do with the furshlugginer gays. “The attack on the Pulse nightclub was an attack on us all, no less than the World Trade Center attack,” Podhoretz huffed. Because Mateen didn’t care those people were gay — except to the extent that he was Muslim, in which case of course he was a terrible bigot, because all those people are every bad thing you want them to be! As an American with an AR-15, though, anti-gay thoughts certainly never crossed his mind.

If you're wondering how we got to the point where that the NRA is actually declaring that the Republican Presidential candidate has gone too far for gun rights -- even though Trump's drink-and-draw proposal is endorsed by no less exalted a gun-rights enthusiast than John R. Lott -- this is why. Conservatives have been making themselves ridiculous for years, and it was inevitable that over time a majority of normal people would notice.

Sunday, June 19, 2016

LOCAL WOMAN WINS INTERNATIONAL CONCERN TROLLING COMPETITION.

There ought to be a political journalism equivalent of the Bulwer-Lytton Award, if only so Megan McArdle can at last have something to decorate her mantlepiece:
This past weekend, I found myself in the British borough of Luton, pondering a British exit from the European Union. “How did you find yourself in Luton?” you will ask, and I will reply, “That is a long story, and alas, a very dull one, so let’s just proceed upon the assumption that I was indeed in Luton for good and sufficient reasons.” And why was I pondering Brexit? Because the penultimate chapter of this dull story involved many hours spent in a horrible third-tier European airport with middle-class Britons heading home from their holidays.
Christ in heaven. The thinking's just as ugly as the writing: McArdle talked to these "middle-class Britons" (presumably all white, smoking Players, and 'aving a cuppa) and they weren't really racist at all, she assures us, just suffering from "what is often called compassion fatigue" over having to have their buildings cleaned and tea served by foreigners. Now, McArdle herself isn't bothered, you understand -- she's a woman of the world! -- but she understands why these poor white Britons might feel alienated by all those foreign voices and all that curry:
As an American, this did not strike me as odd; this is what our cities have been like for centuries, particularly on the coasts. One group of immigrants moves in, creates an enclave, then gets rich, assimilates and moves out, making way for the next group that will throw a little of their food, their language and their customs into our vast melting pot. But this is not normal in most of the world. Nor is it necessarily welcome...

So it’s not that my food was bad -- it was all quite good -- or that there was anything wrong with the immigrants serving and eating it. They all looked like quite nice people. But it was all very different from traditional British food, traditional British people. And no matter how hard we try to argue that it doesn’t matter, it does -- politically, if in no other way. Especially when things aren’t going all that well for the natives.
Son of a bitch -- she's found a way to outsource bigotry! Whatever the Koch Brothers are paying her, it's not enough.

Friday, June 17, 2016

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.




See, I like new music. Well, new-ish. 
Well, and it has to sound like Heaven 17 or something else I recognize from my youth. 
Fuck, don't listen to it then if that's how you feel.

• Anti-gun-control conservatives like to portray themselves as the rational, cool-headed ones: Look, I am not flustered by this mass shooting that has you libtards all worked up for some reason! (I think they roll right past the preliminary "of course this is a terrible tragedy" bit anymore because they think it weakens their argument.) But you read something like this, from Charles Two Middle Initials Cooke at National Review, where he tells his readers the Orlando massacre shows nightclubs would be safer if you let people bring loaded guns to them, and you have to wonder:
I must say, I find this way of thinking somewhat bizarre. Certainly, one could argue that there would be more accidents/shootings/suicides if more people carried in general (although this isn’t borne out by the data). Likewise, one could argue that nightclubs are bad venues for concealed- or open-carriers because they are dark and loud, and because people tend to drink a lot and/or take drugs while inside them. But those are aggregate, not specific arguments. When one gets to the specifics, can one really say with a straight face that the victims at Pulse wouldn’t have been better placed had one or more of them had been armed?
"One could argue" that loaded guns at the disco on a Saturday night is a bad idea! Motherfucker, talk to a bartender! Ask him or her if it's a bad idea. And "those are aggregate, not specific arguments" is the last act of a desperate man. I bet Cooke has a flowchart showing drunks in a bar turn into "polite society" if you give them loaded weapons. (Though, under a "Bring your guns, ladies drink free" policy I suppose the Mateen shooting might have been prevented by Pulse being shut down long beforehand, due to its frequent dance-floor gun battles.) While I am on the whole glad that our immigration laws are as yet sufficiently relaxed that we still allow even Thatcherite twats to become citizens of this country, I wish the authorities had first taught Cooke some of our folk wisdom.

• I keep saying on Twitter that I have a new funny thing at The Sherman Oaks Review of Books but Twitter obviously is over because my item has not blown up. So go have a look why don't you, and then stick around to look at the other stuff at the Review which is also funny. It's a humor site. We're humorists. And we mean that in the old-fashioned sense of producing laughter, if that's the sort of thing you go for.

• Remember when a couple of posters of Obama as The Joker in 2009 meant Obama was washed up? Well, they work this same routine every so often, and it currently is being worked with a clutch of rainbow-flag "Shoot Back" posters in West Hollywood. Gay folks in the neighborhood don't seem to appreciate the sentiment, per the L.A. Times, but the artist, Sabo, interviewed by PJ Media, tries strenuously to counteract that impression; "it's important that people know that this image came out of the gay community," he says, meaning out of him. This reminds me of the post-Orlando Red Alert Politics story (amplified by the ridiculous Washington Examiner), "Gays rally around Trump after Orlando attacks," based on the testimony of... four allegedly gay guys on Reddit, and two allegedly gay guys on Twitter ("'I am a gay man and this disgusting incident has persuaded me to join the Trump train!' Snowduckling wrote"). It's like they want to co-opt the gay vote but know it's useless and so aren't even putting the usual effort into their propaganda. Maybe they should get a high-ranking Trump surrogate to go on air and talk about how he loves cock.

Thursday, June 16, 2016

ROAD TO DUMBASS-KISS.

I know some of my readers who are over the age of 30 may be wondering when conservatives began agitating for the rights of people on the no-fly list? Answer: Very recently! Because back in the day no-fly lists were all the rage among the rageaholics -- in the Bush years, because it was saving us from Terrah, and in the early Obama years because Obama was keeping it from saving us from Terrah. But now that Democrats are craftily using the list against the NRA with their no-fly no-buy bill, conservatives have suddenly (and, I assure you, temporarily) turned into Clarence Darrow.

Let's look at some old National Review items on the no-fly subject for perspective. Here's Greg Polowitz asking, "If [shoe-bomber Faisal] Shahzad Was on the ‘No Fly’ List, How’d He Get on the Plane?" Here's Andrew C. McCarthy lamenting that "a lot of [terrorism-related] information gets exchanged – but a lot doesn’t – and none of it ever makes it to the no-fly list."

Here's Anne Morse complaining that the ACLU was suing because "the 'no-fly list' violates passengers’ right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure," at which she scoffed and said the ACLU was partly to blame for "security procedures that are lax, politically correct, and likely to lead to another 9/11." (Morse also promoted the Arabs-on-planes-make-me-nervous bullshit of Anne Jacobsen, then popular among wingnuts; Jacobsen later went on to promote an even more bizarre terror-in-the-skies scenario.)

Here's Jay Nordlinger fuming at the ACLU's suit because "The administration is trying to protect us from mass murder, and the ACLU is trying to thwart that effort."

And here's Skree Queen Michelle Malkin raging that the list was not complete enough: If we were truthful, she said, "the 'no fly' list would be known around the world by its right and proper name: the 'go fly' list... to this day, TSA still doesn’t check all domestic and international airline-passenger manifests against the no-fly/go-fly list," etc.

So the NR people were once upon a time mainly concerned that the no-fly list wasn't restrictive enough. But when, more recently, it became apparent that the ability of no-fly listees to purchase weapons could be used against them in the court of public gun opinion, they started to get nervous -- as was glaringly apparent from the very title of this 2015 post "The NRA Is Absolutely Right to Fear the ‘Terrorism Watch List,’" by Charles C.W. Cooke, who was then only recently imported by National Review and so did not have the paper trail of no-fly rah-rah that his colleagues had. The magazine's Cato Institute loaners have also been useful in this respect: Here's Michael Tanner, announcing "the no-fly list clearly violates the presumption that a person is innocent until proven guilty," to the chuckles of older readers.

This week NR has promoted an anti-no-fly-list article by an intern, which makes sense, because he's probably not only too young to have any embarrassing published opinions on Bush-era civil-liberties outrages to his credit, but also being indulged in the traditional youthful libertarian phase, the conservative equivalent of Rumspringa.

Better late than never, I guess. And who knows -- maybe associating civil rights they're not so hot about with guns will make conservatives more likely to support them. I know: Let's tell them that married gay people fuck each other with AR-15s!

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

I HATE TO SAY I TOLD YOU SO....

One of the many interesting fallouts from this horrible Orlando situation is the brethren demanding that the President perform a magic incantation -- in this case, "radical islamic terrorism" -- as if it would, like saying "Rumpelstiltskin," immediately destroy the enemy.

This ridiculous demand started with Donald Trump, whom Obama schooled on the issue. Wingnuts nonetheless have been backing Trump up:  For example, Jay Caruso at RedState cries "UNBELIEVABLE: Obama Is More Upset At Donald Trump Than He Is At ISIS!... When people are slaughtered by terrorists he's 'No Drama Obama.' When somebody gets under his skin, he's Stompy McStompfeet." (Yes, someone actually wrote that shit and signed his name to it. Apparently Chris Christie's not the only one who's sold his ass.) "No One’s Looking for ‘Magic Words,’" sputters Commentary legacy pledge John Podhoretz, dimly aware that he's being mocked and spinning defensively like a teased hog:
This is all an effort at misdirection. The problem with Obama’s conduct isn’t that naming radical Islam would solve the problem. Of course, it wouldn’t solve the problem. The issue is that the refusal to name radical Islam is part of the problem. Obama’s refusal speaks to the mindset at work in the White House about the threat we face.
We didn't say saying "Rumpelstiltskin" would fix everything! The real problem is Obama refusing to say "Rumpelstiltskin"!

Does any of this sound familiar? It did to me, so I went back to the alicublog archives and found this from ten years ago:
Oh, this is cute: the boys at The Corner are debating on what name we should give our adversaries in the War on Whatchamacallit. Slow propaganda day! 
[Jonah] Goldberg shows off some of the names he learned while researching his alleged book; he certainly can parrot catch-phrases, but alas, education gives Goldberg about as much real benefit as Cytosport Muscle Milk would give Stephen Hawking, and his proposed name for the dusky hordes is -- get this -- "Bin Ladenism." 
Bin Laden? Isn't he that guy we don't care about anymore? Also, what if we find Bin Laden? Does that mean Bin Ladenism is dead, and the war over? (Fools! Bin Laden is at this very moment enjoying the hospitality of our luxurious American psychiatric facilities!) 
Cliff May sums up:
We are struggling to come up with a term that (1) accurately describes the network of ideologies and movements that have risen up with the “Muslim world” (I hate that phrase) and which seek to defeat America and its allies, a term which also (2) clearly conveys to the average person in the West that this is an enemy who must be taken seriously.
Are you tempted to send in your own suggestions -- but painfully aware that The Corner, which keeps a large bin of prepared "reader responses" next to Goldberg's cooler of Snickers, will never publish them? Drop them in our comments box! Somebody will read them, as I plan to visit an internet cafe later and loudly announce, "Hey check out http://alicublog.blogspot.com/2006_08_27_alicublog_archive.html#115712390303821411 -- they got Shakira fucking a dog!" 
Just try and pick something that can complete phrases like "In our war against..." and "England, alas, is already a casualty of..." in a such way as to warm the willies of warbloggers. I'll start:
  • Ooga-Booga.
  • Islama-dama-ding-dong.
  • Homosexuality. 
Actually, I'll just stick to "Whatchamacallit." 
UPDATE. Thanks to commenter R.Porrofatto, who points out that winger nuthouse Gates of Vienna has just concluded a WOT Slogan Contest. Among the entrants: "Kill 'em All, and let Allah sort them out," "Eradicate or be Eradicated," and "Burn the Koran." The winner was "Allah Akbar -- It's the New Sieg Heil!" Oh, that'll get the crowds on their feet! I imagine half the Cletuses asking, "Whut's Ally Akbur?" and the other half asking "Who's Zig Heil?" 
If they'd only had the humility to ask, I could have told them that FREE BEER! or PARTY! would serve their purposes much better, assuming that the sound trucks from which they blared would also distribute weapons and Pantone chips indicating the darkest acceptable skin tone! 
My own slogan: Death to Dhummitude!
Aaaaaand... scene. Sometime this gift of prophecy [places back of wrist to forehead, swoons dramatically like Victor Davis Hanson]... actually feels like a curse!

Monday, June 13, 2016

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the Orlando Pulse massacre and the brethren's response, which was in many ways typical for a massacre (i.e., Guns Are Not to Blame, Hate and Fear Muslims, etc.), but acquired an added degree of derp because LGBT people were targeted by the gunman. The brethren can't acknowledge homophobia as a factor because in their world gay and transgender people are their oppressors, forcing them to bake wedding cakes and share bathrooms. So to the extent that they even noticed the obvious target, their responses were mostly unfriendly or passive-aggressive. Their rare attempts to relate were if anything worse: take Baseball Crank Dan McLaughlin's tweet: "It's a small thing, but small things are the stuff of life: how many of the gay Orlando clubgoer victims were looking forward to the Tonys?"  These people like musicals, right? What else do they like? Poppers? I did speed to get through my law boards, so I can relate!

Making everything worse as usual is Rod Dreher:
I expect the emerging story from the Left will be it’s all the fault of conservative Christians and the NRA, because the Left will not be able to bear the tension between two of its favorite causes: fighting “homophobia” and fighting “Islamophobia.”
Dreher can't grasp that a human being can stand against the unjust persecution of Muslims and against the unjust persecution of gay people without any "tension" at all. One of these days I expect Jesus will bring suit against Dreher for false representation.

UPDATE. Longtime anti-gay advocate Maggie Gallagher says this is "not an occasion to score political points" and "today I am not going to attack any of my fellow Americans except the one who killed in cold blood" and "may we learn to love one another, with all our flaws," etc. Then she goes on about "the Left's hypocrisy in downplaying Islamic terrorism" and "the Left's increasingly anti-white racism." I don't think they even know when they're doing it anymore.

UPDATE 2. Rightwing uber-dummy Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit comes out as gay — or as WorldNetDaily puts it, “WND CONSERVATIVE BLOGGER COMES OUT AS 'GAY’” — you have to put gay in quotes at WorldNetDaily, see, ’cause real conservatives only use slurs for such people. Anyway, Hoft wants his previously unacknowledged gay brothers and sisters to vote Trump because he’ll “protect all gays and all Americans," unlike Dummycrats like Obama who expect them to be satisfied with so-called "rights." At Right Wing News, Greg Campbell knows he’s supposed to be happy for Hoft but seems kinda flustered:
Hoft’s admission doesn’t change a thing. He’s still a strong conservative voice at a time when we need strong conservative voices. How he chooses to live his life, so long as I’m expected to celebrate him, is of no concern to me.
”So long as I’m expected to celebrate him” seems like a botched version of the typical Christian complaint about being “forced to celebrate” gayness. Maybe Campbell was flustered at the memory of having shaken the man’s hand once at CPAC. Anyway, Campbell stumbles on:
However, Hoft’s declaration does touch on an important topic. He (and so, so, so many others) have wrongly confused this as an attack against homosexuals. This was an attack against the Western world- an attack against America.
Naseen really wanted to shoot up a Cracker Barrel, but he took a wrong turn and had to make do.
It was homosexuals that were killed this time. Next time, ISIS could target a church... 
…if a neo-confederate doesn’t shoot it up first.