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Radio Daze
By Ed Driscoll · January 31, 2006 11:57 PM · Pajamas Theater 3000
Virginia Postrel has a great post on how content and aesthetics drove the launch of radio in the late 1920s and 1930s. Long before the Web--heck, long before television, radio was the new technology of the pre-World War II era. We take it for granted today, but how remarkable it must have seemed when it first debuted. (Woody Allen, before auguring his career into the ground, did a wonderful job of capturing that era with Radio Days.) What Hath Ed Wrought?!
By Ed Driscoll · January 31, 2006 11:46 PM · Muggeridge's Law
Inspired by my quip that George Galloway in his red Big Brother tights looks like some strange bloated Teletubbies on acid moment (yes, that is redundant, I know), the apply named Slapstick Politics "humbly offer the photographic proof of this connection". The horror. The horror. Marathon Man
By Ed Driscoll · January 31, 2006 07:21 PM · Ed On The 'Net
John Ruberry, the Illinois-based Marathon Pundit was kind enough to permalink us, writing some prose that was entirely too kind in the process, and we wanted to thank him. Click over to his fine blog early and often. "A Revolution of Conscience"
The prepared text of President Bush's State of the Union address is online, here. Glenn Reynolds has a list of live bloggers; in a shocking turn of events, Stephen Green is booze blogging the speech, replacing his trademark vodka with "a nicely icy gin martini with my patented 'confetti twist' of lemon". Michelle Malkin writes, "CNN is reporting that Capitol Police arrested Sheehan after she unfurled an anti-war banner inside the House chamber". Like Dennis Rodman, Cindy's the consumate self-promoter. Meanwhile, K-Lo notes two mentions of the phrase "Radical Islam", which means, thankfully, "CAIR didn't write this speech"--much as they wanted to. And Betsy Newmark writes: It's so funny to see what lines the Democrats have decided that they won't applaud for. Having military decisions made by the military and not by politicians in Washington is apparently something that they oppose and won't applaud.Because that worked so well for LBJ and Robert McNamara during Vietnam. Update: Robert Byers looks at what he called "Zen Politics: The Sound of One Party Clapping". Update: Mark Steyn writes, "Nancy Pelosi's Not Wrong". Now there's a sentence you won't see me type very often. One More: Jonathan Last has a round-up of "The Best and Worst of SOTU '06" (subtitled, "Putting the trivial back into politics"--and taking it out of show business, I guess) with this tidbit: Best Howard Dean moment: Democrats erupting in applause when the president began a sentence saying, "Congress did not act last year on my proposal to save Social Security . . ."Michael Graham notes a missed opportunity for Bush to lob one out of the park had he planned for that applause. It's The Pictures That Got Small
By Ed Driscoll · January 31, 2006 04:24 PM · Hollywood, Interrupted
Jason Apuzzo of Libertas examines the New Hollywood Triviality: You may remember George Lucas. Some thirty years ago he made a little film called Star Wars that revolutionized filmmaking, inspired a new generation of filmmakers, and saved Hollywood's finances. Lucas recently revolutionized filmmaking again by pulling Hollywood kicking-and-screaming into the digital age. In 2005, he made a little independent film called Star Wars Episode III that was the year's box office champ, received some of the warmest reviews of Lucas' career, and successfully rounded out the most popular and influential film series in movie history.Indeed. As I wrote yesterday: How a slate of leftwing political movies such as Good Night and Good Luck, Syriana, The Constant Gardener, The Interpreter, and Munich could be greenlighted for release last year is beyond me, unless Hollywood in mid-2004 assumed that a Kerry win was inevitable, or after he lost, decided to put the celluloid shiv into Red State audiences. Why anyone thought these films would make money is utterly astonishing. But, to build on Michael Barone's recent op-ed, the Hollywood left is currently as stuck in the 1970s as liberal politicians are.They won't win any awards, merely keep Hollywood afloat. Speaking Of Legacy Mediums...
By Ed Driscoll · January 31, 2006 03:45 PM · The Substance of Style
Virginia Postrel has a great post on how content and aesthetics drove the launch of radio in the late 1920s and 1930s. Long before the Web--heck, long before television, radio was the new technology of the pre-World War II era. We take it for granted today, but how remarkable it must have seemed when it first debuted. (Woody Allen, before auguring his career into the ground, did a wonderful job of capturing that era with Radio Days.) Dave's World--In The Blogosphere
By Ed Driscoll · January 31, 2006 02:26 PM · The New, New Journalism
The San Francisco Chronicle has a profile of Dave Barry, who tells the newspaper that "Newspapers are dead": Several years ago, Barry created the blog www.davebarry.com. It features typical "Barryisms," odd news stories sent in by ubiquitous "alert readers," columns, and a recurring feature called "A Fine Name for a Rock Band." (Most recent submission: Loincloth Outrage.)Meanwhile, Arnold Kling asks, "Is Blogging a Fad?" He doesn't think so, and I don't either--but with one caveat: individual self-publishing on the Internet is not a fad--but it's possible its form could change radically in the coming years. I picked up the February 7th issue of PC Magazine to read on a flight to L.A. last week--and wide swatches of the issue are devoted to its cover story: video on the Web. It's entirely possible that within a few years, Blogs could be supplemented by much more dynamic multimedia formats. But in a way, that just proves Kling's argument. There will still be millions of blogs, just as television didn't eliminate movies, and didn't eliminate radio--and the 'Net hasn't eliminated any of those mediums either. (Pace Dave Barry, it's a fairly safe prediction that any metropolitan area with a large number of commuters will have dead tree newspapers of some sort for decades to come--but they probably won't have the same level of prominence they once took for granted.) Looking For Irony In Silicon Valley
By Ed Driscoll · January 31, 2006 01:16 PM · Hollywood, Interrupted
According to Louis Wittig, Albert Brooks' new Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World is much more of a bust than its title suggests: With his characteristic inclination for meta-comedy, Brooks plays himself: a neurotic comedian drifting through Hollywood. Because its first few choices passed, the State department drafts Brooks to fly to India with a pair of handlers (John Carroll Lynch and Jon Tenny) to compile a 500-page report on what makes the Muslim world laugh.I had to chuckle though, when I saw last night that the film was billed at the Camera 7 multiplex in Campbell as simply "Looking For Comedy", implying the theater was--for a mystifying reason that I certainly can't figure out--afraid to run the whole title, even though there was plenty of room for it on the theater's large signage. Somewhere, I know Theo Van Gogh is enjoying the irony. "The Godwin Candidate"
Ed Morrissey and Betsy Newmark have some thoughts on Colleen Rowley, a former Time "Person of the Year" who is now running for Congress against Representative John Kline of Minnesota. As Morrissey writes: She has descended far into the fever swamp during her brief yet notorious campaign to unseat Mr. Kline. When last CQ heard from Ms. Rowley, she had just missed her chance to draft off of Cindy Sheehan's momentum in Crawford, Texas. Rowley had trekked down to her campout just as Sheehan gave up on her protest. Unfortunately, she has resurfaced to start her campaign -- and in doing so, she decided to depict the Marine Corps veteran as a Nazi:The many violations of Godwin's Law over the last three years or so become numbing: when I first saw the screen grab of Rowley's slanderous Photoshop exercise, I thought "ho-hum, another Republicans are Nazis slur, here we go again". And that same numbing effect works in reverse, making it an ad hominem that becomes all the more easier to use. But as Jonah Goldberg wrote shortly Dick Durbin's Springtime For Gitmo meltdown: Hitler holds our fascination because of his singular villainy. But this shouldn’t crowd out our ability to make distinctions. Hitler is supposed to define the outer limits of evil, not the lowest threshold.Exactly. In The Aftermath of the Filibust
By Ed Driscoll · January 31, 2006 11:00 AM · Democracy In America
Judge Alito is now Justice Alito, voted in, as Paul Mirengoff writes, on fairly straight party lines, 58-42. Ed Whelan of National Review Online's Bench Memos blog has some thoughts on the aftermath of what John Hinderaker dubbed "The Filibust": By pushing a filibuster vote upon their fellow Democrats, John Kerry and Teddy Kennedy have achieved quite a bit already. Among other things:As Mirengoff writes, the vote changes the "rules" for confirming Supreme Court Justices: Under the Alito rule, Senators will vote against highly qualified nominee for no reason other than that they expect the nominee to rule contrary to their preference on major issues. Under the Alito rule, the president's party, in effect, must control the Senate in order for the president to have top-notch nominees of his choice confirmed. When the the president's party doesn't control the Senate, only compromise nominees acceptable to both parties can expect to be confirmed.If in four, eight or 12 years, there's a Republican minority in the Senate and a Democrat in the White House, it will be interesting to see if another Ruth Bader Ginsburg would be swept in with a 96-3 vote. Coretta Scott King, Dead At Age 78
By Ed Driscoll · January 31, 2006 10:42 AM · The Future and its Enemies
Details here; much more via Google News. Animal Crackers
By Ed Driscoll · January 30, 2006 03:10 PM · Muggeridge's Law
In "Best of the Web Today", James Taranto writes: That's Easy for You to Say!I'm sure AP's headline was vetted by The Law Firm of Hungerdunger, Hungerdunger, Hungerdunger, and McCormick. Hollywood's Tipping Point?
By Ed Driscoll · January 30, 2006 02:01 PM · Hollywood, Interrupted
From virtually its inception in 1997, I've enjoyed The Digital Bits Website, which does a tremendous job of tracking down rumors and release dates for upcoming DVDs. I even interviewed Bill Hunt, its editor, for a couple of articles in the late 1990s. And speaking of Hunt, he writes today: Now then... if you're in the Hollywood area tonight, I'm going to be participating in a panel discussion at the Creative Artists Agency (CAA). Sponsored by the Northwestern University Entertainment Alliance and hosted by producer David Zucker (Num3ers), the event is called Film & TV & DVD: The Next Generation. Here's the description:"The ritual of movie-going" is dependent upon providing product that audiences want to see on a big screen. And since Star Wars' release in 1977, it's been conditioned that if you give them big budget, effects-laden, relatively apolitical fare, it will turn out in droves to be blown away by the action on the big screen. Certainly, Philip Anschutz, executive producer of The Chronicles of Narnia and 2004's Ray Charles biopic isn't betting that the ritual of movie-going drawing to a close--he's betting some serious contrarian money on just the opposite. And he's got it to spend, with Narnia and Ray having earned a collective $353,078,995 at the American box office."Have we reached the tipping point? Is the ritual of movie-going drawing to a close as the speed in which new DVD titles reach store shelves increases? Has the filmmaker's craft been diminished or enhanced by ‘extras’ and ‘uncensored cuts’? And as the size of televisions grow and the era of downloads and on-demand explode, where will these trends ultimately deliver us? Hollywood Armageddon or a New Genesis?" For background material to use in my recent post about Robert Altman, I pulled out my copy of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind. I have to laugh at the tunnel-vision of the filmmakers of the 1970s (and to a certain extent, Biskind himself, as he chronicles their rise and cocaine-laden fall). Sandwiched between blockbuster crowd-favorites of the 1960s such as Dr. Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia, The Sound of Music and The Dirty Dozen and then the Star Wars, Star Trek and Indiana Jones movies (not to mention the bulk of Steven Spielberg's first twenty years of filmmaking), they don't understand what an aberration their late '60s to early '70s films were. Much as I love some of the darker movies of the 1970s (such as M*A*S*H, Taxi Driver, Chinatown, and The Conversation), while all of these films were critics' darlings, its always been popcorn fare that's kept Hollywood afloat. How a slate of leftwing political movies such as Good Night and Good Luck, Syriana, The Constant Gardener, The Interpreter, and Munich could be greenlighted for release last year is beyond me, unless Hollywood in mid-2004 assumed that a Kerry win was inevitable, or after he lost, decided to put the celluloid shiv into Red State audiences. Why anyone thought these films would make money is utterly astonishing. But, to build on Michael Barone's recent op-ed, the Hollywood left is currently as stuck in the 1970s as liberal politicians are. Want the ritual of movie-going to return? Give mass audiences movies they'll want to see. Politicizing Science
By Ed Driscoll · January 30, 2006 01:28 PM · Bobos In Paradise
The Only Republican in San Francisco suggests that "calling a group of people racist is the new racism". Read the whole thing. Needles in Haystacks
Mary Katharine Ham and Andy Roth of the Club for Growth are compiling a list of newspapers across the countries with conservative editorial pages. Not surprisingly, it's a faily short list so far, but feel free to post or email them suggestions to add to it. Duped And Deranged
Orrin Judd links to this astonishing passage by Michael Kinsley: Obviously the party that has lost the White House, both houses of Congress, and now the courts needs some new ideas and new energy. But it seems undeniably true to me—though many deny it—that the Republicans simply play the game better. You're not supposed to say that. At Pundit School they teach you: Always go for the deeper explanation, not the shallower one. Never suggest that people (let alone "the" people) can be duped.OK, it's not all that astonishing. Kate O'Beirne recently noted another example of this phenomenon in her interview with Kathryn Jean Lopez: Lopez: In 1977, Jean Stapleton, hanging out with Bella Abzug announced that Edith Bunker would support the ERA "if she understood it." Does that pretty much sum up what the feminist establishment thinks of many American women?Or as Orrin writes, "Nothing has served the Democrats worse than their insistence over the last twenty-five years that the rejection of liberalism and return to power of conservatism are a fluke and as soon as people wake up the stars will realign themselves". Putting The Mini Into MiniTrue
Back in July, Anne Applebaum noted: In 1949, when George Orwell wrote his dystopian novel "1984," he gave its hero, Winston, a job at the Ministry of Truth. All day long, Winston clips politically unacceptable facts, stuffs them into little pneumatic tubes, and then pushes the tubes down a chute. Beside him sits a woman in charge of finding and erasing the names of people who have been "vaporized." And their office, Orwell wrote, "with its fifty workers or thereabouts, was only one sub-section, a single cell, as it were, in the huge complexity of the Records Department."Evan Coyne Maloney writes that on the Chinese version of Google, Tiananmen Square has gone down the memory hole. "Stuck In The '70s, And To No Good Political Purpose"
By Ed Driscoll · January 30, 2006 10:37 AM · Bobos In Paradise
Michael Barone explores a theme we've discussed here numerous times over the past couple of years: Do you ever get the feeling, while listening to the political debate, that we're stuck in the '70s? The 1970s, that is, that slum of a decade which gave us the worst popular music, the ugliest hairstyles and clothes, and the most disastrous public policies of the 20th century.Why yes, I do. I most definitely do. (Via Betsy Newmark.) Vanity Editing
By Ed Driscoll · January 29, 2006 05:19 PM · Bobos In Paradise · Democracy In America · The New, New Journalism
In the old days of the Internet (many, many moons ago, my son--'round about, say, 1999), vanity searches ruled the Internet (that's how I ultimately discovered InstaPundit, and ultimately, the then-budding Blogosphere, back in 2001, just before 9/11). These days, vanity editing is apparently the in-thing among the really cutting-edge digerati: The staff of U.S. Rep Marty Meehan wiped out references to his broken term-limits pledge as well as information about his huge campaign war chest in an independent biography of the Lowell Democrat on a Web site that bills itself as the "world's largest encyclopedia," The Sun has learned.Betsy Newmark and Will Collier have further thoughts. Dr. Google, I Presume
Google is impersonating Austin Power's Dr. Evil, according to the Riding Sun blog: I can't seem to find the link for this one; I think it was on a Rooters website somewhere. But I just read a shocking news report: In the wake of its decision to censor its Chinese search results, Google is changing its corporate motto from the original "Don't be evil."With its customized splash page, Google is celebrating Chinese New Year today (as are my neighbors--a fair amount of fireworks have been going off since last night); too bad Christmas and Easter are considered passé by the Diet Coke of evil. Say What You Mean, And Mean What You Say
By Ed Driscoll · January 29, 2006 11:03 AM · War And Anti-War
Mark Steyn writes about the two clarifying moments in politics last week: Joel Stein (no relation) of the Los Angeles Times took a lot of heat last week for coming right out with it and saying that he didn't support the troops and that it was a humbug phrase that he and his anti-war comrades shouldn't have to use as cover for their position. Good for him. He's right. It's empty and pusillanimous, the Iraq war's version of "But some of my best friends are Jewish . . ." If you're opposed to the mission, if you don't want to see it through, if you're supporting a position whose success would only demoralize those serving in Iraq and negate their sacrifice, in what sense do you "support the troops"? Stein ought to be congratulated for acknowledging that he doesn't. We armchair warmongers are routinely derided as "chickenhawks," but Stein is a hawkish chicken, disdaining the weasel formulation too many anti-war folks take refuge in.Steyn adds: So what happens now? Either Hamas forms a government and decides that operating highway departments and sewer systems is what it really wants to do with itself. Or, like Arafat, it figures that it has no interest in government except as a useful front for terrorist operations. If it's the former, all well and good: Many first-rate terror organizations have managed to convert themselves to third-rate national-liberation governments. But, if it's the latter, that too is useful: Hamas is the honest expression of the will of the Palestinian electorate, and the cold hard truth of that is something Europeans and Americans will find hard to avoid.We concur. The Manolo's Mystery of the Monkstrap
By Ed Driscoll · January 27, 2006 06:54 PM · The Substance of Style
The Manolo, he love the monkstrap shoe for the man of the mystery: Where the fashion for the men is concerned, the Manolo he is the traditionalist. Men should wear well-polished, good quality feetwear, which should distinguish itself not with the outré color, or the hand-tooled cat leather, but with the high quality of the material and the workmanship, and with the classical, elegant line of the shoe itself.The Ed, he cannot help but agree, merely adding that the suede monkstrap--while it takes a certain amount of time to perform the scoping of its retail location--is one of the best forms of this classic shoe with the faintest whiff of the mystery. Seconding That Emotion
An Israeli reader of Real Clear Politics agrees with the gist of my post last night on Hamas's electoral victory. (Via Architecture And Morality.) Update: Glenn Reynolds compares Hamas to Windows ME. Well, they do both tend to crash and explode quite a bit. The Rightwing Media Bias Meme Returns--With A Twist
By Ed Driscoll · January 27, 2006 11:16 AM · Oh, That Liberal Media!
After the left lost ground during the 2002 midterm elections, prominent Democrats such as Al Gore floated a bizarre meme that the mainstream media was dominated by the right wing--which must have been pretty amazing news to editors at Reuters, AP, The New York Times and The Washington Post, as well as producers at ABC, CBS, and NBC, where at the time, Dan Rather, Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw still ruled the airwaves. (Not to mention CNN, PBS, and NPR, and the Columbia Journalism School.) In contrast, nobody floated the vast right wing media conspiracy theory after the 2004 election--and for good reason. The mask had dropped, completely, and permanently. But this is a meme with legs--it's back! Only this time, instead of coming down from on high in 2002 from men like Gore and Tom Daschle, it's bubbling up from the left side of the Blogosphere, as the Washington Post recently discovered, and as Tim Russert, Chris Matthews, Katie Couric and Aaron Brown, none of whom are exactly favorites of the right (with the arguable exception of Russert, who cut his teeth working Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan) are finding out. As one blogger wrote, on the weekend in 2004 that the New York Times came out of the closet: If you find yourself arguing that the major news media do not lean liberal, then you almost certainly have identified yourself as being to the left of the mainstream news media and well to the left of the rest of your fellow Americans. Which is fine. I'm not sure if I agree entirely with the conclusion Paul Jaminet reaches, but the contempt that the MSM now finds from both sides of the aisle is quite a unique development--and it will be fascinating to watch how it all plays out. In any case, seventy years after its creation, how's that one-size fits all mass media concept playing out these days? The Unknown Future Rolls Towards The Middle East
By Ed Driscoll · January 26, 2006 11:12 PM · Radical Chic · The Return of the Primitive · War And Anti-War
While the consensus is that Ariel Sharon is unlikely to recover sufficiently from his very severe stroke to re-enter politics, his legacy his secure: for better or worse, he's radically reshaped the Palestinians' relationship with Isreal. First, as Mark Steyn wrote, Sharon's most important decision was giving the Palestinians the space to create their state: It was my National Review colleague David Frum who came up with the clearest assessment to date of the Israeli strategy: “Could it be that Sharon is calling the bluff of Western governments and the Arab states? By creating the very Palestinian state that those governments and those states pretend to want but actually dread Sharon is forcing them to end their pretense and acknowledge the truth.”And did that gamble payoff? In one sense, absolutely perfectly, as Emanuele Ottolenghi explains: What victory does to Hamas is to put the movement into an impossible position. As preliminary reports emerge, Hamas has already asked Fatah to form a coalition and got a negative response. Prime Minister Abu Ala has resigned with his cabinet, and president Abu Mazen will now appoint Hamas to form the next government. From the shadows of ambiguity, where Hamas could afford — thanks to the moral and intellectual hypocrisy of those in the Western world who dismissed its incendiary rhetoric as tactics — to have the cake and eat it too. Now, no more. Had they won 30-35 percent of the seats, they could have stayed out of power but put enormous limits on the Palestinian Authority’s room to maneuver. By winning, they have to govern, which means they have to tell the world, very soon, a number of things.And just as Jimmy Carter has already done, Europe will tie itself into knots trying to excuse and justify their actions. There's a huge downside though: while Hamas's victory makes the Middle East situation much clearer, it's also gotten much, much more dangerous. Between the Hamas-led Palestinians and an Iran that's steaming rapidly towards The Bomb, (with a leader who makes Sterling Hayden's General Jack D. Ripper seem like a model of cool, logical reasoning), check your calendar: no matter what the date printed on it says, 1939 is getting closer. (H/T: Roger L. Simon.) Update: Neo-Neocon writes, "Hamas wins--and now we get to see if they can make anything run on time". Meanwhile, Tim Blair adds, "Elections in the US are sometimes won in the Bible belt. This may the first election on earth to be won by the suicide belt". Just A Buck, You Can Change Their Luck
By Ed Driscoll · January 26, 2006 11:02 PM · Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal · The Memory Hole · War And Anti-War
John Hawkins has a graph comparing the cost of Operation Iraqi Freedom as a percentage of GDP with previous wars America has fought: The chart was prepared by Robert Whaples, professor of economics at Wake Forest University. Bowyer then calculates the cost of the Iraq war as a percentage of America's GDP and finds it to be the second cheapest war we've ever fought -- 2% GDP cost-to-date versus 1% GDP for the 1st Iraq war. You remember that one - the one we didn't finish.IndeedTM. Riding The Mobius Loop
By Ed Driscoll · January 26, 2006 10:36 PM · Bobos In Paradise
Arnold Kling has a piece in TCS Daily that I wish I had written myself, titled "Stuck on 1968". I probablly would have chosen 1972 as the year I'd pick to set the Mobius Loop for, but that doesn't negate how spot-on Kling's thesis is. I'd quote from it, but I'd end up pasting in the whole article. IOW, RTWT, as those post-'68 acronyms go. Update: Tangentially related thoughts from Hugh Hewitt. The Paranoid Style
Hugh Hewitt had Karl Rove on his show today, who said: We have had two strains in American politics. We've had the strain of bipartisanship in foreign affairs, particularly in the decades of the 40's and the 50's, and 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's. That has obviously frayed somewhat. We've also had a tradition of internationalist strong Democrats: Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy. You know, the hyperventilation by some Democrats can be chalked up to having lost an election or political aspirations. But I'm at a loss to explain why so many Democrats seem intent upon focusing their energies and efforts upon hatred of this president, rather than staying focused on the principal responsibility that all in government, and all in the public life of our country have, and that is to sustain the country in a time of war.In February of 2004, just as the election year was gathering steam, I wrote: Arguably beginning with Hillary Clinton's "Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy" quip in early 1998, why have so many conspiracy theories been coming from the left?Dr. Sanity answers the question in the first of a two-part post titled, "The Political Paranoia of the Left": Even if, hypothetically, every single justification for the war would be eventually proven not to have any basis ( and this is already demonstrably impossible); it would still not validate the absurd claims on the part of the left who, in characteristic paranoid fashion, have come up with all sorts of conspiracy theories and paranoid fantasies that connect dots in a much more irrational and delusional manner than what they accuse the President of doing.Needless to say, be sure and read the rest (including Part II)--if the voices in your head allow it, of course. Update: Somewhat related thoughts about that mindset, here. (Don't miss the punchline!) Christmas In Macho Grande
Senator Kerry calls for fillbustering Alito--apparently after Senate minority leader Harry Reid said there would be no fillibuster. On the other hand, John Podhoretz says: Bring. It. On.: That's what I want to see. A filibuster. Led by John Kerry. Standing there. On the Senate floor. Talking for 22 hours, like Mr. Smith. Except that Mr. Smith was played by James Stewart and John Kerry will be played by John Kerry. Even before his voice gives out, there will be mass suicides on the floor of the Senate. Kind of like when Ted Stryker talked about his breakup with his girlfriend Elaine.Surely he can't be serious! The High Church of Recycling
By Ed Driscoll · January 26, 2006 11:28 AM · Bobos In Paradise
The Weekly Standard and Tinkerty Tonk look at the religious faith of the hardest of the hard-core Gaia worshipers. Count us as a fellow skeptic, as well. Or as Julian Simon once said, "excuse me, I’m not dressed for church.” Update: Gaia must have been smiting me: I posted this and then went to lunch, only to find multiple copies of this post on the homepage--a whole 'nother kind of recylicing I guess. "Oogling My Googling"
By Ed Driscoll · January 26, 2006 10:59 AM · Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal · Radical Chic · The Future and its Enemies · The Gulag Archipelago
In his latest syndicated column, Jonah Goldberg writes: A wave of pious indignation and table-thumping has spread across the nation's editorial pages over the freedom to search for Internet porn. Don't get me wrong: I think you do have the right to search for porn. But it is interesting to see what gets people's First Amendment gag reflex going. The Baltimore Sun, for example, warns that a "witch-hunt" for search-engine abusers might be around the corner if Google cooperates with the government.And ironically, companies such as Google are more than willing to cooperate. Google's original corporate motto was famously "Don't Be Evil". But as Publius writes: It looks as if there is a limit to that. Google will resist the U.S. government, but won’t stand up in any way to China? Judging by its actions at home, one would think Google to be a pioneer in bringing access to information and resisting attempts from governments to repress it or monitor it. This says that isn’t the case, and it makes me wonder — just a little — what its motivation is to resisting the U.S. government and giving in to the Chinese. Perhaps they should change their motto to, “It’s just business.”As I wrote back in October, when Google was more than happy to shaft Taiwan on behalf of China: Half the cars in Google's parking lots probably have the ubiquitous Silicon Valley "FREE TIBET!!" bumper stickers. Too bad that Google's current ozone layer of management doesn't seem to want to symbolically free Taiwan.Or, most damning of all, China itself. Much more, here, including a few contrarian views, as well. I'm Looking At The Man In The Burka
Mark Steyn has some thoughts on the Artist Formally Known As The King Of Pop: For all his wretched songs, it's the impenetrability of Michael Jackson that fascinates. Let's take it as read that the default mode of a celebrity is weird. Why wouldn't it be? Nobody treats them normally except in respect of their abnormalities. For example, a couple of years back, Jacko visited Britain accompanied by Omar Bhatis, a 12-year-old boy who came first in a Michael Jackson look-alike contest in Norway. If you checked into the Saskatoon Econo Lodge with a prepubescent look-alike wearing matching white gloves and surgical masks, the gal at the front desk would give you the fish eye and buzz the house detective. But at the Dorchester in London it's not a problem -- if you're a pop star.Meanwhile--speaking of wacky lifestyle choices--Jackson and Blanket were recently spotted wandering around Bahrain, in togs that suggest that they're perhaps rehearsing out of town for the Saudi Arabian roadshow version of Some Like It Hot. Five O'Clock Teletubby
So as he flies the blue lady of the skies into the sunset, we say "aloha, 5 O'clock Charlie" and return to our duties. Let me remind you the Weblog is open 24 hours for your dining and dancing pleasure. The Origins Of The Fourth World War
By Ed Driscoll · January 25, 2006 10:37 PM · War And Anti-War
Back in September of 2004, Norman Podhoretz wrote an incredible--and incredibly long--piece for Commentary titled, "World War IV: How It Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to Win". (If you haven't read it, click on over. We'll be here on Monday when you're done.) Just as, in retrospect, the end of World War I signaled the beginnings of World War II, Rachel of the Tinkerty Tonk blog explains how what Podhoretz dubbed WWIV grew out of its predecessor struggle as well. Navahoax
By Ed Driscoll · January 25, 2006 08:21 PM · Bobos In Paradise
Marathon Pundit writes that Chutch has met his match: LA Weekly has an article on Nasdijj, a Native American author. Or is he?As I noted last year in a piece titled "M For Fake", there does seem to be a lot more charlatans running around these days, huh? (Via Pajamas.) "Are Newspapers Doomed?"
By Ed Driscoll · January 25, 2006 02:24 PM · Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal · Oh, That Liberal Media!
![]() In a recent essay in Commentary, Joseph Epstein asks, "Are Newspapers Doomed?", and proceeds to list a whole host of reasons why things are looking grim for the Fourth Estate these days. |