Douglas Kern of Tech Central Station says that colleges should have more speech codes--many more:

Big academia promulgates the illusion of free speech while quietly enforcing the de facto reality of opinion censorship. It's the worst of both worlds.

Like every good baby conservative, I spent my college years inveighing against academic speech codes that canted the sphere of acceptable public discourse to the far left. Naively, I assumed that the abolition of speech codes would inaugurate a new era of open, civilized academic discourse, free from artificially imposed bias. Ah, the bitter folly of youth! There was nothing artificial about that bias. Ridiculous speech codes were a symptom of deranged ideology, not the cause.

So let's stop playing five-card socialist stud and start playing five-card Texas Cultural Hold'em. Let's pull our smelly little institutional orthodoxies out in the open. Hey, big academia: you don't like social conservatives? Don't want to tolerate anti-feminist opinions, or reactionaries who reject rights for gay couples, or Neanderthals who question Darwin? Fine -- but say so directly. And be prepared to accept the consequences from alumni, bloggers, and taxpayers. The same goes for conservative schools, or schools supported with tax money squeezed out of conservatives. Don't want the Ward Churchills of the world to promulgate crypto-Islamicism on your time and your dime? Okay, but have the guts to put that rule in writing.

I hasten to add that I have no problem in principle with smelly little orthodoxies. I hold to quite a few of them myself, and some orthodoxies aren't so smelly. Every thinking person embraces a host of biases and prejudices with which to sort through a confusing, contradictory world. But I accept my prejudices. I don't conceal them. Quite the contrary -- I hold them up for public display and judgment. My "speech codes" are a matter of public record. Can Harvard say the same?

Had Harvard told its faculty from the very start that belief in the equality of the sexes was non-negotiable, reasonable people might have asked some probing questions: Why can't faculty members hold that view? What harm could come from such an opinion? Why does the pro-equality crowd fear even the possibility of open discussion of the subject? Open, fully articulated rules can be discussed, and accepted or rejected on their merits. But what good comes from a "speech code" that hides the preferences of the school under an unconvincing veneer of free speech?

Big academia suffers from the same problem of bias that afflicts the mainstream media. It's fine to be overtly politicized, but when you hide your biases behind a posture of perfect, disinterested neutrality, you insulate your biases from critical scrutiny. Behold the debacle of Memogate. Would CBS have behaved so recklessly but for its irrational certainty that its left-wing biases were nothing more than tough, objective journalism? Having concealed its prejudices for so long that it even fooled itself, CBS was rendered helpless when those same prejudices consumed its professional judgment. Harvard and Colorado know that helplessness well.

Having bashed modern pop culture six ways to Sunday tonight, it's only fair to look at one of the men who made the pop culture of the 1950s through the '80s great: Ahmet Ertegun, the man who founded Atlantic Records, and signed to his label at various times in their careers Bobby Darin, Ray Charles, John Coltrane, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, and a million other musicians, many of whose CDs reside on my shelf and yours.

It's telling though, that when asked, "Who are the great talents in music today?", Ertegun immediate responce, that "There are still many great surviving talents", unintentionally reinforces something Jonah Goldberg wrote last year: that so much of today's pop culture is living off the good will of its past, rather than forging new bonds with its audience.

It's even more telling that when asked a leading question by his interviewer in Slate, "How do you feel about the U.S.-led Iraq war?", Ertegun doesn't launch into a Michael Moore-like spasm involving Haliburton, Bushitler, and the like--and that he's been known to talk things over with Donald Rumseld.

I have no idea what Ertegun's politics are, or if such conversations are routine, but it's tough to imagine a similiar exchange ocurring between Rumsfeld, and say, David Geffen.

(Via Frank Martin.)

In a piece titled, "Hollywood Shoots Itself in the Wallet", Patrick Ruffini has some thoughts on Zogby's poll that 75 percent of Americans tune out the Oscars:

That so many people view Hollywood through this political prism is pretty remarkable in a country where people are more interested in the latest with Nick and Jessica than in the condition of Social Security.

And yet: liberals get all pissy when conservatives decide to tune out institutions that don't represent them and create new ones -- just look at the sneering at "Faux News" and Rush and homeschooling and values voters. In Hollywood as in mainstream media, there is a price to be paid when an institution decides to leverage its prestige to push a political position where none is warranted; it's a price that is paid in viewership, influence, and profit -- in this case, a 30% falloff in viewers.

And BTW: I see Chris Rock just lost the other sixteen conservative viewers with his monologue... Nice!

Update: Not surprisingly, Hugh Hewitt also has some thoughts on the Oscars.

With his Che chic T-shirt, Carlos Santana seems to be implying that while he's happy to be attending the Academy Awards, he'd rather be off leading Cuban firing squads. (Here's a copy of the shot, since all photos will scroll off Yahoo after a while.)

As Jay Nordlinger once wrote:

Listen to what Lincoln Diaz-Balart, the Miami congressman, has to say about Che. I doubt the New York Public Library would trust it — but you can: "Guevara was an Argentinian loser who alleged he was a doctor even though he couldn't give a simple flu shot. What he was good at was killing people, and he became one of history's cruelest serial killers. He was Castro's primary henchman, murdering hundreds of innocent people without due process, usually finishing off the work of the mass-production firing squads with shots to the back of the neck. He was and will always be the most despicable, disgusting figure of the Castro killing machine, the foreigner who was made a serial killer of Cubans by Castro, and got great pleasure from his role."

Indeed, he did. Guevara, famous as he is — famous as his mug is — is little known. He was, as Diaz-Balart says, Castro's number-one revolutionary thug. He presided over those summary executions at La Cabaña — the old fortress that Guevara commandeered — and he very much enjoyed administering the coup de grâce. He also enjoyed parading people past El Paredón, the reddened wall against which the victims were killed. Viva Cristo Rey! ("Long Live Christ the King!") they would sometimes yell.

Remember this, too: Guevara founded the labor-camp system, in which countless Cubans — judged "deviant" by the regime — would suffer and die. This is the Cuban gulag; it is Che's legacy.

Update: Earlier this month, I wrote a piece for the Weekly Standard on a new Miles Davis DVD that was built around documentary footage of his appearance at the 1970 Isle of Wight music festival in England. Santana appears fairly prominently in new footage on the disc, to offer a rocker's take on Miles Davis' music. I left this bit about him on the cutting room floor, to keep the article a managable length:

There’s a classic “shut up and play” moment (to paraphrase the title of Laura Ingraham’s recent book), when Santana, discussing how incredible and wonderful and universal pop music of the 1960s was, says:

Isle of Wight was a pure result of consciousness-revolution music. “Hell no, we won’t go to Vietnam” and “we shall overcome”. The sixties—the late ‘60s, early ‘70s—was the most important decade of the 20th century.

Why?

Because it gave birth to questioning authority, particularly if it’s not enlightened by God. Are you listening, George Bush?

Is the president listening to God, or to Santana? If it’s the latter, to coin a phrase that’s probably been uttered a few times at the ranch in Crawford, the odds are slim and none, and Slim just left town. And both Santana and the DVD's director know it—but that doesn’t stop them from preaching to the choir and alienating half of the disc’s potential audience.

As the Professor would say, not for peace, merely on the other side.

(Post title via Frank Zappa, incidentally.)

So why is 75 percent of America tuning out the Oscars? Let's ask the South Park guys!

While I'm not a huge South Park fan myself (click here and then scroll down to read James Lileks' early take on it, which works for me as well), I'm glad that there's a show on that's willing to take on liberal shibboleths--and receive a huge cult following in the red states as a result.

Which is why Hollywood, Interrupted's authors interviewed Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the men who created the show for their book. They have a great take on why Hollywood has increasingly alienated much of Middle America. Here's but a small excerpt:

Back when perennial Oscar bridesmaid Bob Hope used to host the show, he'd quip, "Welcome to the Academy Awards--or as it's known at my house, Passover."

The Oscars aren't passing over Hope anymore--he's gone on to the great back nine in the sky, and increasingly, we're the ones doing the passing over, via our remote controls.

Found via PoliPundit, John Zogby claims that only one in four Americans will watch the Oscars tonight:

Oscar-viewing habits do have a lot to do with where a respondent lives, and where they line up politically. While four-in-ten (39%) Democrats say they will watch the Oscars, this drops to one-in-eight (13%) among Republicans. Unsurprisingly, political independents split the difference, with 22% planning to view the awards show.

"The Republican/Democrat split really isn't shocking," pollster John Zogby said. "This is the time when Hollywood liberals shine—the awards are dominated by them, and they are their most glamorous."

Tonight is that special moment for all conservatives when we get to be lectured on political views by good-looking morons that make $10 million for a few months work - no, I'm not talking about the UN Oil-For-Food Oversight Committee, but rather, the Oscars. The glamour, the glitz, the absence of Fahrenheit 9/11 - it should be a night to remember, at least until two seconds after it's over.

To make this year's ceremony more bearable, I'm going to be putting up Oscar-related posts throughout the day, then live-blogging the proceedings from the countdown show through the awarding of best picture to Million Dollar Baby, er, to whatever picture happens to win.

So stay tuned...if we stick together, maybe, just maybe, we'll all be around to see the dawn...

Update: Michelle Malkin has a round-up of Oscar-related links.

Another Update: More here, here, and here.

When it was obvious that a Monday Night Football game had become a rout during its classic original years with Howard Cosell, Frank Gifford and Don Meredith, Meredith would sing, "Turn out the lights, the party's over".

Mark Steyn writes that when it comes to Europe, while it's not quite time to sing "turn out the lights", the fourth quarter is rapidy approaching:

Many Americans wander round with the constitution in their pocket so they can whip it out and chastise over-reaching congressmen and senators at a moment's notice. Try going round with the European Constitution in your pocket and you'll be walking with a limp after two hours: It's 511 pages, which is 500 longer than the U.S. version. It's full of stuff about European space policy, Slovakian nuclear plants, water resources, free expression for children, the right to housing assistance, preventive action on the environment, etc.

Most of the so-called constitution isn't in the least bit constitutional. That's to say, it's not content, as the U.S. Constitution is, to define the distribution and limitation of powers. Instead, it reads like a U.S. defense spending bill that's got porked up with a ton of miscellaneous expenditures for the ''mohair subsidy'' and other notorious Congressional boondoggles. President Ronald Reagan liked to say, ''We are a nation that has a government -- not the other way around.'' If you want to know what it looks like the other way round, read Monsieur Giscard's constitution.

But the fact is it's going to be ratified, and Washington is hardly in a position to prevent it. Plus there's something to be said for the theory that, as the EU constitution is a disaster waiting to happen, you might as well cut down the waiting and let it happen. CIA analysts predict the collapse of the EU within 15 years. I'd say, as predictions of doom go, that's a little on the cautious side.

But either way the notion that it's a superpower in the making is preposterous. Most administration officials subscribe to one of two views: a) Europe is a smugly irritating but irrelevant backwater; or b) Europe is a smugly irritating but irrelevant backwater where the whole powder keg's about to go up.

For what it's worth, I incline to the latter position. Europe's problems -- its unaffordable social programs, its deathbed demographics, its dependence on immigration numbers that no stable nation (not even America in the Ellis Island era) has ever successfully absorbed -- are all of Europe's making. By some projections, the EU's population will be 40 percent Muslim by 2025. Already, more people each week attend Friday prayers at British mosques than Sunday service at Christian churches -- and in a country where Anglican bishops have permanent seats in the national legislature.

Some of us think an Islamic Europe will be easier for America to deal with than the present Europe of cynical, wily, duplicitous pseudo-allies. But getting there is certain to be messy, and violent.

Until the shape of the new Europe begins to emerge, there's no point picking fights with the terminally ill. The old Europe is dying, and Mr. Bush did the diplomatic equivalent of the Oscar night lifetime-achievement tribute at which the current stars salute a once glamorous old-timer whose fading aura is no threat to them. The 21st century is being built elsewhere.

Update: Captain Ed looks at just one of many examples of why Europe is a potential powder keg.

Another Update: Follow the link in this Power Line post for more from Steyn himself on Europe's future.

Joanne Jacobs writes that all too frequently these days, pushers supplying contraband are roaming the halls of American schools--who have only themselves to blame.

To paraphrase one of my favorite lines from Robert Altman's original film version of M*A*S*H, "Fair's fair, Colonel: if I call 3000 innocent casualties 'little Eichmanns', plagiarize art and punch a reporter, can I ask for ten million dollars from my employer, too?"

Robert Novak writes that America's red states are continuing to grow in size and power: growing populations equal growing power at the ballot box:

A projection by Polidata, a Republican-oriented political mapping and redistricting firm, shows population trends will make Republican-dominated "Red" states more influential in winning presidential elections and determining control of Congress after the 2010 census.

The new study forecasts that "Red" states will pick up a net six electoral votes, with Florida and Texas gaining three each. The "Blue" states carried by John Kerry, according to Polidata, will lose a net six electoral votes, led by New York's loss of two. Under this distribution of electoral votes, George W. Bush could have been elected last November without carrying Ohio.

This projection points to probable Republican control of the White House and the House of Representatives far into the future. It makes more urgent the contention by Howard Dean, the new Democratic national chairman, that his party needs to do much better in "Red" states.

(Via PoliPundit.)

Most sports fans remember Lynn Swann from his days as a Pittsburgh Steeler, where he helped his team win four Super Bowls in the 1970s, before retiring with a bust in Canton. But since he's recently announced that he's considering running for the governorship of Pennsylvania, Carpe Bonum looks at Swann's political views, and dubs them radical chic ultra leftwing surprisingly conventional, with the exception of the "vicious attack on bloggers" he once made:

The computer is a wonderful tool, but it should not be a way of life for everybody where you sit in front of the computer and you do nothing else.

(Via Betsy Newmark.)

In 1973, Hanna-Barbera contacted Hunter S. Thompson to guest star on Scooby Doo. For obvious reasons, the ensuing episode was simply too much for Saturday Morning kid's TV, and it never aired, remaining sealed in H-B's Burbank vaults.

Until now...

Update: This article about Thompson's death and its immediate aftermath would be a morbidly funny parody as well, except that it's real, sadly.

Mark Steyn was on C-Span Friday, in a wide ranging interview by Brian Lamb (and his call-in guests). For those with Real Player software, click here to view it.

(Via The Brothers Judd.)

Well, not exactly. However, Reggie Fowler, the multimillionaire entrepreneurial tycoon who is planning to buy the Minnesota Vikings from its current owner, the multimillionaire entrepreneurial tycoon Red McCombs, is currently having a bit of a fuss with the press concerning his resumé--which contains, shall we say, several items that have been slightly exaggerated:

"And now you know--[beat]--the rest of the story!"

Two articles today look at what was left out of Martin Scorsese's The Aviator. Harold Evans examines the brilliant career of Pan Am's Juan Trippe:

Everyone who sees the Oscar runaway nominee "The Aviator" will come away with a dark impression of the man Howard Hughes sees as his enemy--a plump Alec Baldwin playing Juan Trippe as the suavely conspiratorial head of Pan Am. The film deserves its acclaim because it captures the romantic and visionary spirit of risk-takers like Hughes who propelled America to new heights--but the image of Trippe as the bad guy has to be retrieved before it congeals in the popular imagination.

If you are one of the 3.6 billion who have flown on a 747, it's Trippe, not Hughes, who merits the raising of a turbulence-free glass. Mass international jet travel was Trippe's achievement. He deserves a movie of his own. Of course, the film is right that Trippe worked the Washington lobby to try and retain his prewar monopoly of international air services. Hughes, having acquired Trans World Airlines in May 1939, won that one, gaining permission to operate overseas in December 1945. But even before he went mad, Hughes never had the early vision that Trippe did. Even when LaGuardia was an amusement park, Trippe was more prescient than anyone, including his new best friend, Charles Lindbergh. Trippe was indeed a political operator, but was also the greatest creative force through four adventurous decades.

"Do you think if they asked a man if he was a Democrat or a Republican that he would refuse to answer on the grounds that his answer might incriminate him?" said Hughes. "The very fact that this man pleaded his constitutional privilege — that is his admission that he is not talking about politics. If you believe that the Communist party is in the same category as the Democrat party or Republican party, then I think I can answer you in this way: We are not fighting Democrats or Republicans in Korea."

* * *

As a businessman, Hughes didn't want to jeopardize box-office receipts. He believed that having party members employed at studios was a financial risk. By the time of the Jarrico case, however, he was beginning to find the idea of having someone supportive of the Soviet regime working for him disturbing on a more fundamental level that had nothing to do with money. "The public has begun to dislike — I should say, detest — not only Communism but Communists. It is beginning to recognize that they are traitors to our country, and to feel that they should be discouraged in every way," said Hughes during the trial. "The public is beginning to ask all who assist the Communists, in any way, why they are doing so, and to transfer some of its resentment to [those who help]."

Accused by a Boulder, Colorado TV reporter of plagiarizing, then selling, famous artwork depicting American Indians, academia's golden boy responds by taking a swing at the reporter's cameraman:

BOULDER, Colo. (CBS4) An exclusive report by CBS4 News indicates embattled University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill may have broken copyright law by making a mirror image of an artist’s work and selling it as his own.

Placing Churchill’s work beside that of renowned artist Thomas E. Mails and the two look like mirror images. But one is a copyrighted drawing. The other is an autographed print by Churchill.

When CBS4 News tried to talk to Churchill about a possible copyright infringement, we received an angry response.

“Get that camera out of my face,” Churchill said.

CBS4 News reporter Raj Chohan: “This is an artwork we’ve got called ‘Winter Attack.’ It looks like it was based on a Thomas Mails painting; it looks like you ripped it off. Can you tell us about that?”

That prompted Churchill to take a swing at Chohan.

Should he lose his tenure? Jim Geraghty has an interesting discussion on the topic, as does Glenn Reynolds.

Update: Watching the video again, Churchill took a (rather wussy) swing at the reporter himself, not his cameraman.

Last night, we linked to Jonathan Last's look at how Hollywood makes money even on films that bomb, which began with this trenchant observation:

A survey of the muck soon to be celebrated at the Academy Awards confirms William Goldman's sad truism: Every Oscar night you look back and realize that last year was the worst year in the history of Hollywood.

How can you spot a film that's deserving of the award? The man who created them uses this as his criteria: "One of the ways you can tell a Razzie", John Wilson says, "is that even if you're seeing it on an airplane, you think about walking out."

Heh.

CNN shows the final photos taken by a Canadian couple vacationing at Khao Lak, a Thai resort, when the tsunami hit on the day after Christmas:

John and Jackie Knill of North Vancouver, frequent visitors to the popular Thai resort, Khao Lak, were apparently on the beach when the tsunami hit December 26.

The couple disappeared and relatives say they were notified about a week ago that the identities of their remains had been confirmed.

Searchers later also recovered the couple's destroyed digital camera but were able to print photos from its memory card.

In a sequence of photos over the course of a few minutes, some curious onlookers are shown wandering onto suddenly exposed tidal flats, a sign of the impending tsunami. In one, a large wave appears to be breaking in the distance.

The pictures show that within minutes, the wave grows larger and some beachgoers begin to take notice.

"I don't know why they didn't run," their son Christian Knill told Global TV in Vancouver. "Either they knew they couldn't or they didn't know the power of the wave."

(One quibble: why the "apparently"?)

The first shot the couple took (linked to above) looks to me like just another set of ocean waves in the distance. Strictly from the appearance of it, there's no way on earth I'd know that trouble was on the horizon.

Radio man Glenn Beck has an assemblage of amateur camcorder videos of the tsunami on his Website, all of which is a reminder of how increasingly these days news is documented by everyday people with camcorders, digital cameras, and/or Weblogs, not just by those at the TV networks and wire services.

« Close It

Anthony Lane of The New Yorker goes Inside Deep Throat, so you don't have to.

Found via Jonathan Last, who calls it "a snort-your-coffee review". Personally, I had a couple of medium chuckles (plus a quick eye roll at the inevitable Republicans are Nazis reference that seems obligatory in most Manhattan-based publications), not a Danny Thomas spit-take, but you're warned that there's a possibility that beverages and monitors could interact.

Take appropriate precautions.

And the only prescription is more of the footwear!

Chris Muir catches Manolo fever, and the Shoe God himself achieves the immortality of the Weblogosphere. (And yes, it is incredibly easy to start talking like him; it's driving my wife nuts as I keep doing vocal impersonations of the Manolo's ultra-idiosyncratic writing style.)

Jonathan Last has a review of The Big Picture by Edward Jay Epstein, who argues that because Hollywood and its endless chain of national and international movie releases, along with related soundtrack, DVD releases, TV rights and merchandising deels is so profitable, it doesn't need to worry about making decent movies:

Robin Givhan of the Washington Post channels Sigmund Freud channeling Mr. Blackwell as she gives us her take on the semiotics of Condi Rice's stylish duds.

Update: On the other hand, as Tim Blair writes, "The never said that about Lawrence Eagleburger".

Can't argue with that!

Democratic Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles Schumer were jointly named "Porker of the Month" today by the non-partisan Citizens Against Government Waste advocacy group:

Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles Schumer were jointly named "Porker of the Month" Thursday by a citizens advocacy group.

The non-partisan Citizens Against Government Waste, which fights pork barrel projects in government, said the two made the designation because of the New Yorkers' pledge to oppose President George W. Bush's intention to end the government's $4.7 billion Community Development Block Grant program to curb spending.

The CDBG provides money to cities and towns for development, but the administration argues it is ineffective and redundant. In his 2006 budget proposal, Bush suggested taking the program from the Department of Housing and Urban Development and merging with similar, more effective programs under the Department of Commerce so that cities would need to list proposed projects in advance and compete for approval.

The advocacy group criticized Clinton and Schumer for saying the current program, rife with mismanagement and waste, is essential for development in New York.

Past grants to New York, it said, included $25,000 for a music conservatory in Westchester County, one of the richest in the state, and $500,000 for street improvement there.

UPI says that a hotel will built on the site of Adolf Hitler's Alpine retreat at the Obersalzberg in Bavaria:

OBERSALZBERG, Feb. 24 (UPI) — A Jewish leader in Germany has termed as tasteless a luxury hotel set to open March 1 on the site of Adolf Hitler's Alpine retreat at Obersalzberg in Bavaria.

Michael Friedman with Germany's main Jewish organization said the 138-room Intercontinental Resort Berchtesgaden is "tasteless and robs the place of its history," the BBC reported.

But Kurt Faltlhauser, Bavaria's finance minister, said: "There can be no covering up and absolutely no glorification of the Nazi regime."

The hotel has been built on the spot where Hermann Goering, the former Nazi air force chief, had his summer residence.

Guests will pay about $264 per night for a room.

Hitler developed Obersalzberg as a second seat of government for his regime after becoming German chancellor.

To be honest, when I saw the URL "PirateBallerina.com" show up in my referral logs, I thought it was one of Manolo's fans who found me via his link earlier today.

And, hey, of course it could be--but the actual site is a compendium of links to the Colorado moonbat himself, Ward Churchill. And well worth scrolling through.

The Pittsburgh Steelers' hall of fame wide receiver Lynn Swann is entering a new competition: running for governor of Pennsylvania.

He's certainly got a huge leg-up on name recognition, but I'm not sure how well he'll sell to Iggles fans. Fortunately, the Steelers and Eagles are in different conferences in the NFL, and rarely play each other, except in the preseason.

(Captain Ed notes one immediate upside: Cleveland Browns fan Hugh Hewitt "will have to learn to love the Pittsburgh Steelers. A perfect world will truly have arrived!" Heh.)

And this seems like as good a place as any to hang news about current NFL players: Randy Moss is apparently headed to Oakland, where his bad boy image makes him a natural. And Drew Bledsoe is definitely heading to Dallas, where he'll be reunited with Bill Parcells. The Dallas press have been loathing the idea (even before it was officially announced), but Bledsoe, at 33, probably still has a few decent years left, and is familar with Parcells' tough Lombardi-era style of coaching.

Stephen Schwartz writes that with the death of Hunter S. Thompson, the Baby Boom Era is officially over:

In yet another Oliver Stone moment, the Empire State's Congressman Hinchey puts all the pieces together for Sean Hannity. (Note: scroll to end of post for transcript.)

No word yet if Amelia Earhart was involved, though.

Update: this related post by the Blogfather is well worth reading. Here's an excerpt:

Has a new meme been born?

Meet Ward Churchill: Republican civil rights pioneer.

(For an update on Churchill himself, click here.)

Political guru Larry Sabato writes that Hillary's chances are overrated: she carries heap big baggage from her first tour of the White House with Bill.

Meanwhile, a possible opponent is looking mighty stylish in the Washington Post (and no, I don't mean John McCain).

(I wonder if the Manolo likes the boots?)

Update: It's official: Condi's kicks are Manolo approved. (And welcome to his readers, incidentally!)

Another Update: Steve Green has more from Sabato.

Back in 2002, during the early days of this blog, we reviewed Ridley Scott's film of Mark Bowden's great mid-1990s book, Black Hawk Down, especially the most important scene in the movie--and simultaneously, its most flubbed:

Charles Johnson has a pair of photographs which wonderfully remember what it was like to raise the flag in 1944--and in 2001.

Power Line has some thoughts on the former, incidentally.

It was late last August, so my memories today are a little hazy. And I think I was a bit stunned at the time by the high level of the fellow covert operatives in the room with me, but near as I can recall, this post by Tim Blair is exactly what transpired in the secret underground lair I was taken to blindfolded...

Update: I seem to recall this interactive device being used as well, but the secretary later disavowed all knowledge of its existence.

Jonah Goldberg and Fox's Eric Burns conclude that the odds are extremely high that Deep Throat was Hal Holbrook.

Whoops--let's try that again. Jonah and Eric conclude that the odds are extremely high that Deep Throat was a composite invented by Woodward and Bernstein's book editor to provide a more compelling narrative to All The President's Men--which certainly makes sense, when you read the details that Jonah includes in his column, which he ends by writing:

Watergate prompted a generation of preening journalists to lecture America from a pedestal. The least Deep Throat can do — or, the least the leading Deep Throat suspects can do — is to let us know if the journalists belonged on that pedestal in the first place.

Sorry for the lack of rich bloggity goodness yesterday--I had an article to polish and a newsletter to write, and by late afternoon, Nina and I were both feeling like we needed a break and decided to get out of the house for dinner. While northern California isn't in danger of washing into the Pacific like its southern counterpart, we've definitely gotten our share of rain this year. It's left us feeling a bit claustrophobic. Not Jack Nicholson in The Shining claustrophobic, but still.

So we did what any couple near San Jose would do. We went to the Village where Leo McKern is always interrogating Patrick McGoohan.

Say what? Read on.

Iraq's Shia News looks at Saddam Hussein's legacy of mass graves:

I just saw the headline on Drudge that Hunter S. Thompson blew his own brains--or what was left of them--out.

Gee, what a shocker.

No doubt, some of Thompson's early stuff was great, such as his Hell's Angels book. Tom Wolfe hailed him as one of the great new journalists in the early 1970s, and even prior to that, Thompson's rise to journalistic superstardom had already begun, thanks to his impeccable timing: a generation exploring pharmaceutical substances--in other words, popping drugs like they were jelly beans--needed a journalist with similar habits to iconify, and Thompson was only too happy to play the part.

Like William S. Burroughs, all that drug consumption eventually caught up with him of course, but not before he turned into a parody of himself. Sadly, with the exception of Wolfe himself, Gay Talese and possibly Michael Herr, time has not been kind to a lot of the heroes of the 1960s and '70s New Journalism period--they've really become parodies of their former selves: in addition to Thompson, Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, and Jimmy Breslin all immediately come to mind.

One of Charles Johnson's readers catches Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) on audio tape during a public speech on the advertised topic of Social Security reform making a wild accusation straight out of Oliver Stone/Michael Moore-land. But then this has been a trend since 9/11 as the left has become increasingly conspiracy-obsessed as they seek to emerge from the political wilderness.

Update: Jim Geraghty writes:

In the course of research for a book proposal, I've been looking at the reaction of the far left of the Democratic party to 9/11. You probably remember a lot of it--Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, etc. The "well, we had it coming" voices were not that numerous in the fall of 2001... but what was interesting was how few mainstream or centrist Democrats were willing to denounce their ideological brethren.

Perhaps the most extraordinary change in American politics over the last few years is how comments that once would have seemed ridiculous, or silly, or way out there have now become fairly common sentiments in what was once mainstream circles.

Another Update: Gee, what a surprise--Hinchey's rant got zero coverage today in his district's newspapers. On the other hand, Charles Johnson will be on MSNBC tonight to discuss it with their viewers.

James Lileks once again reminds us that he's not planning to run for the Senate in '06, no matter who drafts him, and lists numerous reasons why. The last item--about having to live in Washington--certainly sold me:

If I could work from home here in Minneapolis and send out a lifelike robot to do my public appearances, that would be fine. Especially if the robot concluded news conferences by vaporizing a few impertinent reporters and walking through a stone wall before flying off; people like that sort of thing in a senator. I daresay 100 fearsome robot senators could make short work of North Korea, and the worldwide sales of licensed action figures would fund a dozen campaign cycles.

Barring that, no. I lived in D.C. in the '90s, and they were not happy years. Police helicopters, 24/7 car alarms, hopeless local government and that general big-city / East-Coast go-to-hell attitude toward you, the citizen taxpayer. And it's not even a real East Coast city. It's a training-wheels version for people who hope to move to Boston and really drain the joy out of other people's lives. Senators do not have to encounter the city's myriad problems, of course; they get chauffeured to the job, and they work in this imaginary world of marble and crisply saluting guards and innumerable oil paintings of men in britches shaking hands. It's a wonderful theme park. It's the only one in the country where the clowns think they're the management.

Mark Coffey of Decision '08 has some thoughts on who whens the Long Tail of weblogs compete with the mainstream media.

Speaking of which, Dave Johnston, writing from a new blog with a beautiful photo on its masthead of the Chicago skyline from Lake Shore Drive inward (love that city's architecture!) links to a piece on Weblogs in Salon from 1999, that could have been written this year. It sort of proves how little the legacy media has learned from its successors.

Roger Kimball looks at just how deep the roots in academia run when it comes to hiring professors like Ward Churchill.

Incidentally, like the collegiate equivalent of an NFL superstar being nominated to the Pro Bowl, Ward's off to the Aloha state to discuss "little Eichmanns" at the University of Hawaii.

Speaking of Pejman and the current state of the Democrats, he has an interesting piece on the duties of an opposition party, over at Tech Central Station.

Martin Peretz of the liberal New Republic magazine echoes many points that conservatives have been making about the modern face of liberalism--and indeed, he echoes more than a few themes we've illustrated here. His essay is titled, "Not Much Left", and frankly (if you'll pardon the pun), he's right: the Class of '72 has run aground, and conservatism has assimilated much of the rest of traditional liberalism's ideas. Additionally, George W. Bush has co-opted many of Bill Clinton's "third way" concepts, making many leftwing politicians look like sputtering hypocrites as they now bitterly oppose the very same ideas that they backed when President Clinton offered them in the 1990s (not the least of which were regime change in Iraq and Social Security reform).

It's a must-read piece. But will anyone in Peretz's intended audience heed his advice?

Update: Not surprisingly, Orrin Judd and Pejman Yousefzadeh have some thoughts.

Following on Michael Medved's piece in the Wall Street Journal today, James Bowman makes a great point about movies and politics in The American Spectator:

Don't make Nick Schulz (my editor at Tech Central Station) angry, as Al Franken recently did--unlike Franken, he can slice and dice an argument with surgical precision.

Tim Worstall of Tech Central Station uses the article I wrote for them earlier this month on the Long Tail as a jumping off point for a discussion on tax policy.

Betsy Newmark wonders why PBS is still receiving taxpayer funding:

I still fail to see why we need the government to subsidize TV when so many people have access to cable and when shows like Sesame Street and Masterpiece Theater could certainly find a home somewhere and be supported by advertising revenue.

Heck, it's there already, as I see reruns of Sesame Street, This Old House, Poirot (the short, eccentric Belgian detective, not the short eccentric Texan who was against NAFTA), Monty Python and other original and PBS-imported shows that PBS ran into the ground, every time I click through my DirecTV onscreen guide.

Meanwhile, Hugh Hewitt, who is a former veteran PBS producer, has some thoughts on the network's woes:

The biggest problem is that PBS is indifferent to market forces, which allows everything to grow old and stale, for indifference to audience, and snail's pace programming innovation. It is your grandfather's network, and soon it will be your children's great-grandfather's network. Contrast any program on PBS with MSNBC's new Connected Coast to Coast, on which I appeared yesterday, and you'll see in an eye blink why PBS sheds viewers every day. MSNBC is trying to capture the energy of the new media and the news news cycle. PBS just slumbers on, confident that the claim that some folks in rural America don't have cable will forever protect it from reality.

In the Wall Street Journal, Michael Medved defends his decision to give away the surprise ending of Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby:

Underlying all of the assaults on those of us who have dissented from the near-unanimous praise for "Million Dollar Baby" is a tone of exaggerated horror that well-known conservatives could dare to question the work of a right-wing icon like Clint Eastwood, pointedly described by Frank Rich as "a former Republican officeholder" and "Nixon appointee to the National Council of the Arts." I would have thought that a willingness to criticize even a onetime political ally would demonstrate integrity rather than insanity, evincing our determination to evaluate films without fear or favor. On a similar note, I stand proudly by my harsh reviews of the violent movie excesses by a fellow Republican (and former actor) who currently serves as governor of California. Criticizing onscreen work by Mr. Eastwood (or Arnold Schwarzenegger) isn't the equivalent of indicting their character or politics, any more than my previous praise for, say, Tim Robbins as an actor or director amounts to an endorsement of his character or politics.

John Hawkins has a roundup of some of the new DNC chairman's more outré utterances.

Charles Johnson, linking to a piece in Front Page, writes that while "Colorado University professor Ward Churchill may have written and said some outrageous things", Northwestern University has on its faculty somebody who's done some outrageous things--a former member of the '60s far, far left radical group the Weathermen: